Technological Transformations

Chapter 3- The Multi-Stream

Among the many particular, life-changing altercations to reality that had transpired, the shit-shows that are our school's sports' teams did not change. I had soon found that out from Faith and the other students who joined in as the conversation progressed. It wasn't long before she walked in.
"Fuck.." I let out under my breath as I watched Dawn walk into the classroom. Of course we'd have homeroom together.
Dawn was my, or Charles', ex who I completely forgot existed throughout all this commotion. She had broken up with me about when summer started, her reasoning being because she "wasn't attracted to me", which I mean first off; ouch. Second off, not entirely sure why she dated me in the first place, but I set that aside and didn't really protest much, though it did hurt. That was another reason I didn't want to get out of bed this morning as well; knowing I'd be seeing her again. Watching her now, I knew fully well that despite it all, I was still very much attracted to her. In those few seconds I took in every part of her I could, the Dawn I grew to know so intimately hadn't changed much.  Her eyes landed on me as she walked further into the room, and against what all logic was telling me, she smiled at me. Probably out of pity if anything, but her smile quickly vanished and she turned away abruptly; focusing solely on walking up to Mr C. That was more of the response I was looking for, but she had looked away from me. Oh right, I'm not "me" anymore, so she wouldn't immediately hate me or anything. Something logic overlooked.
"Ugh, I thought she was leaving the school" I heard Allison, a tall and fit girl who was very enthusiastic to join in on the sports talk earlier, say as Dawn walked past our little group.
"I had hoped she would." Faith replied bitterly through gritted teeth, and I turned away to look at her. She was staring at Dawn with an icy glare, arms instinctively crossed under her sizable chest. I now knew who Dawn was so turned away by before, but as to why..
"Who's she?" I asked, knowing fully well who that was.
"That's Dawn Corbin." Mia, the smartest girl in our class and of Hispanic descent, spit out.
"I take it you guys don't like her too much?" Dawn was a relatively nice person, and was close friends with most the girls who now seemingly hated her very being before.
"She's a total and complete bitch, in every sense of the word." Caitlyn explained, while turning away from Dawn as she talked with Mr C.
"She doesn't really look that bad." Dawn meets my eyes and waves to me.
"No, she doesn't" Faith says: I can see her nails digging into her arms.
"Are you okay, Faith?" I genuinely asked her, resting my hand on her arm. She looked off from Dawn and back to me, her entire composure loosening.
"Dawn was, er is.." Caitlyn trailed off as she looked over to Faith.
"My ex. She cheated on me, and things didn't end well." Faith spoke up, her eyes still trained on mine.
"She's lesbian? You're lesbian?" The universe made so much more sense now.
"She's trouble, Chelsea. You don't want to get involved with her" Faith warned, completely ignoring my obviously ground-breaking questions.
Our attention was broken by the final bell signaling the beginning of our very first period for the year. Everyone who had taken a desk to talk to their friends began moving them back.
"Oh, you can just push your desks up next to eachother and sit in pairs. And yes, you can choose where you want to sit." Everyone got up to follow Mr C's instructions and begin pairing up. I pushed my desk up next to Faith's old desk, in what appeared to be the second row of four being formed, and I took my seat. I saw Faith take a seat in the desk next to me, and I turned to her confused.
"You don't gotta sit in your "assigned" seat from before you know? Pretty sure Caitlyn's waiting for you." But as I said that, I saw Hayden, a beautiful blonde girl with warm, hazel eyes, take the seat next to Caitlyn. They high fived eachother, then Caitlyn turned to me looking and gave me a thumbs up. They certainly suited eachother as friends, that's for sure.
"What, you don't think I'd want to sit next to you?" Faith asked teasingly as everyone else had settled down into whatever seats were left.
"I think you have better options" I replied with a shrug, and she shook her head in response. Whether or not she planned on saying more was dismissed as Mr. C begun his introductions to the class, with a clap.
"Alright, now that the seating situation is sorted, lets get started. For those of you who don't know, my name is Mr. Collison, but pretty much everyone refers to me as Mr. C. I am, of course, your homeroom teacher for your entire 11th year of high school, as well as your Physical Science teacher. Now this year, the school's doing something new, even for us teachers. We had a training meet to learn the basics of them, but forgive me if I mess something up along the way. As I'm sure you're all well aware, as you're wearing it, you all got a smart watch for school use, correct?" I had forgotten about the bugged piece of technology that had caused all of this in the first place entirely. He brought up what appeared to be a "roll call" of sorts on the projector, with all of our names greyed our.
"To activate it, you simply have to lift it up slightly and it should automatically "wake up". Now on the homepage there should be an app called Headmaster, with a little apple for the cover? If you'll tap on that and open it, it should automatically sign you in. If your name lights up on the screen up here; you did it right" I lifted my watch up, the screen coming to life and showing the few started apps, as well as headmaster. I looked around to see everyone else messing with their watches, most people were slowly getting put it as evident by the roll call. No one seemed to have the same life-changing event like I did; but frankly, how would I know if they did? I opened the Headmaster app and after a few seconds of signing me in, it brought up a homepage with different options, and the avatar I had created for Chelsea in the bottom corner. Glancing over at Faith's screen, I saw an avatar of hers as well, but something seemed off.
"It seems everyone's in, good. Now you should see these options available; settings, report card, assignments, utilities, personnel and sign out. Go into the settings options, and we'll make sure everything's set up correctly." I noticed what had been different; my homepage had an arrow at the bottom, signifying more options. Tapping on it, the screen shifted to reveal one sole feature not on Faith's, or anyone else's presumably; Enter Multi-Stream. Ignoring Mr. C explaining what to do in the settings, I chose this mysterious option laid out in front of me. The interface faded to a purple-white mix, weirdly flowing across the screen like waves. Suddenly it opened up an entirely new page; one with a list of names, and my avatar next to it. Upon closer inspection, I realized the full layout; the names were of all the other students, not just in my class, but in the entire school. The first one being myself, but upon choosing another name the avatar changed to theirs; with the choice of "edit" appearing under each avatar. Based off what had happened to me, I came to the conclusion that; I could alter everyone who had a watch connected to this "Multi-Stream". A digital hive mind that I was in control of, but I had no idea how or why. I shook this thought out of my head as common sense hit me. I felt so stupid, there was no way any of this was possible. I thought the school must have given me a special watch for the principal or something; one that acted as a "moderator" for the program. But that wouldn't explain my own transformation; maybe I was right. I knew I had to test it out, it was the only way I could be sure. I scrolled down and found the name I was looking forward to; Faith Henman. I tapped on the edit button, and her avatar was centered on the screen, with various options around it; much like when I created my own. Not wanting to draw any attention to the situation, I made a very subtle change only someone watching for it would notice; I made her hair about an inch longer. Hitting a big "accept" button, the familiar "UPLOADING CHANGES" bar appeared, and I watched closely as the bar began to quickly fill. Ever so slowly I noticed the tips of her hair grow out just slightly; but enough to confirm my theory. The full realization of the power I held on my wrist dawned on me; I could do so much with this. But I had to be careful; I didn't want to be found out. Then another thought came to me; would anyone even notice? My entire family didn't react at all to my entire gender change, was I the only one aware of the affects? I definitely needed to test it out, it would make things a lot easier. Now wasn't the best time to try it, I didn't want to be wrong in front of the entire class. I closed out the Multi-Stream, and tuned back into the lecture.
".. the questions with the answer choices will be both on the board, and on your watches, I'll read out all of it beforehand since I know that helps some people. This will make taking tests, quizzes, doing general school work, etc a lot easier." Mr. C finished explaining the "assignments" tab, and moved on to the various utilities within the app. "Under "personnel", you can find all the students and staff registered with one of these watches. You can use this to message eachother and the teachers within school hours- however, do keep in mind that these are monitored." He explained, but my mind drifted back to the Multi-Stream, and all the different possibilities my horny boy/girl- mind could think of. I just needed a good time to test it out more, then I could have so much fun, and help people out in the process. The end of class couldn't come soon enough.

A/N:
So for anyone reading these chapters around when they come out; I tend to go back to previous chapters to make small changes, add in little details I didn't know I wanted when I originally wrote it. So, if when your reading a new chapter something doesn't make sense; there's a good chance I added it into a previous chapter. Hope you all're enjoying the story so far, I have BIG ;) plans for it, so if you have an questions, suggestions, just wanna say hi, whatever, feel free to leave a comment, or if you'd rather keep things more private (understandably for a story like this) be sure to DM me.)