Quad090-c

"There you go," my boyfriend said, "that's all four done. What do you think?"

"Sit me up," I replied, "I want to see my new shape in the mirror."

He turned off the device and put it on the window-sill. He lifted my shoulders until I was upright, and held me there for a moment until I got my balance. He stepped back, and I looked at myself in the big mirror on the wardrobe door.

"Well?" he asked. "Is that the sort of thing you wanted?"

I waved my little stubby arms, checking that they were definitely too small to be useful, and shifted my weight on the stumps of my newly-vanished legs. I imagined him pushing me over, flipping me onto my front, lifting me by my hips and burying my face in the pillows. I was delighted. "Yes," I said, smiling, "it's just what I wanted. Thank you."

He tapped briefly at his laptop, and picked up the remote, a small grey slab of plastic with a red button on its surface. "This has got your original shape backed up, and your new one saved. Press the button, give it twenty or thirty seconds, and you're back as you were before we started. Press it again, and you'll be just as you are now."

He went as if to press the button, but I stopped him. "Wait," I said, "don't press it yet." I pointed out of the bedroom door with one of my new little arm-stumps. "Hide it somewhere else in the house, don't tell me where it is." He raised an eyebrow at me. "And come back here, so I can try and persuade you to keep me like this."