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Jeremy enters his room, still starstruck at the Squip. He had barely finished processing everything that had happened at the mall. He really has an actual supercomputer in his brain, wow.
He flops down on his bed, groaning. He has a headache.
Yes, a common side effect at startup. Jeremy startles at the Squip’s voice, still not used to it.
It sits next to him on the bed and smiles kindly. Don’t worry, it’ll fade. For now, you should be getting to bed. We have, it looked Jeremy up and down, a lot of work to do tomorrow.
Jeremy groans. “Ugh, gimme five more minutes to lie here…” Instead, he jars into a sitting position as a shock runs down his spine. “Ow!”
Remember, think to me. You may be relatively alone right now, but best to get in the habit.
Okay, Jeremy thinks. Sorry, uhh…
He trails off. There’s a lot to get used to. Jeremy’s still kinda stuck on the way the Squip talks – it sounds like Keanu Reeves, yes, but kinda like if he was trying to imagine what Keanu Reeves sounds like.
I have other settings, you know.
Jeremy does know. He’s pretty sure he’s scarred for life from seeing it transform into a semi-realistic anime catgirl. Though, the tail wasn’t terrible…
Uhm. He wants something else though.
Well, there are plenty of other options. I can shift my form to be anything you can imagine – after all, your brain is generating my image, it explains.
Anything he could imagine? So it wasn’t just limited to celebrities or… anime people.
Yes. Anything. Allow me to demonstrate, it says, and then its form flickers and distorts. Pixels fly off its form and it rapidly and suddenly transforms into a series of shapes: Jeremy’s mom, Michael, Kermit the Frog, a rough combination of the five people Jeremy found hottest, a white cat with almost circuit-like black fur patterned on its back.
Maintaining the form of a cat, the Squip hops onto Jeremy’s lap. As you can see, the options are unlimited, and don’t necessarily require basis in reality.
Jeremy watches, mesmerized, as the Squip talks. The little cat mouth moved in time to its words. It was uncanny.
Jeremy could feel the pressure of the Squip against his legs, could feel the hints of claws digging into his thighs. Was the Squip making him imagine that too?
It flexes said claws, uncomfortably pricking Jeremy with unreal sensation. The short answer is yes. The long answer is far too complicated for your tiny brain.
Okay, he was not liking the cat thing. Can you change again? Jeremy asks.
Of course, it said, and shifted again.
Now the Squip looked exactly like Jeremy. Well, not exactly – it was Jeremy’s face, his body, but the Squip has taken the liberty to give his appearance a massive upgrade. His clothes were different – stylish, and tailored to fit his body well instead of the kinda baggy clothing Jeremy normally wore. His acne was just gone, and his hair was well styled. No glasses were in sight.
Whoa… Jeremy exclaims.
This is what you will become under my guidance, it preens.
But as it speaks Jeremy experiences a very odd sensation. For while it sounds like Jeremy, it didn’t sound like his real, actual voice, the one that permeated the real world. No, instead it sounds exactly like Jeremy’s natural thoughts. That kind of intangible, uncharacterized whisper in the back of his brain. Jeremy had to do a double take just to make sure he didn’t think the Squip’s words himself.
Of course, it will take great effort to scrub out your terribleness, the Squip continues.
Jeremy shudders as it keeps speaking. He can’t deal with the feeling that he intrinsically, fundamentally believes its every word when he hears them in his own head-voice.
Uhh, could you just change back to Keanu, please? He asks.
Very well. Your voice is quite grating, I’d prefer another setting too, it says, then swaps its avatar back to a slightly-more-robotic-than-normal Keanu Reeves. Jeremy breathes a sigh of relief.
The Squip was long gone now.
Well, mostly gone. Jeremy still hears it speak every so often, usually insulting his appearance or his fidgeting or the way he talks to anyone or well, pretty much anything Jeremy is mildly insecure about. It sucks.
But he can recognize that voice isn’t his.
But then… sometimes it mimics the voices of his friends. Not often – Michael theorizes that it doesn’t have enough power to switch up its vocal bank that much. Still, while Jeremy lies awake at three in the morning, it suddenly decides to monologue about what terrible boyfriend material he is in Christine’s voice, or it dons Michael’s voice and lists every horrible thing he did to Michael while under the Squip’s control.
Jeremy does his best to sleep it off.
Inevitably, he wouldn’t really get to sleep. Eventually the Squip would tire itself out, and Jeremy is again left to silence. Well, silence and his tumultuous head.
It was times like these that Jeremy would think back to that early moment, where the Squip had transformed into his funhouse mirror-distorted image. He could barely distinguish its words from his own thoughts, and back then he had the advantage of being able to see its lips move. Was it whispering to him in his own voice now? Would Jeremy be able to tell if it is? How could he be certain anything he thinks really came from him?
Maybe nothing he thinks is real.
Maybe it is all the Squip, and Jeremy is just playing along again.