“What the hell is this?” she demanded of the AI and gestured at herself.

“That’s you! I’m getting really good at these questions,” it replied.

“No you’re not!”

“Oh,” it said and its face drooped in an over-emotive frown.

“You lied to me!” Anya said.

“No I didn’t! I can’t lie!” The AI insisted.

“I specifically asked you if changing my brawn stat would make me all muscle-bound or something and you said it wouldn’t!”

“You asked me ‘…am I gonna completely transform into an over-muscled monster woman?’” the AI said, perfectly imitating Anya’s voice when it quoted her. “You only partially transformed, and the muscle-mass you gained has not exceeded what the menu system defines as a six-point increase from three to nine. Furthermore, you are still as human as you were before the change, and nothing inhuman or monstrous has been applied to you.”

Anya felt the vein along her temple throbbing. She wanted to scream at the little AI but bit her lip. It was her fault. The creature, or program or whatever, had shown itself to be entirely literal thus far and she’d neglected to take that into account. But, it said it couldn’t lie, so…

“I can undo changes, right?” Anya asked. “You said I could.”

“That’s correct!” the AI said. Anya let out a sigh of relief, then tapped the down arrow next to “BRAWN.” A message appeared in front of her that read, “YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY AVAILABLE RESPECIFICATION TOKENS,” and then vanished.

“What the fuck is that?” Anya demanded and pressed the down arrow again. And again. And again. The same message flashed up each time and she cursed at the menu.

“You don’t have any respecification tokens,” the AI said.

“Yeah, I can read!” Anya snapped. “What the hell is that and how do I get one?”

“A respecification token is an item that will reset your stats and skills to the point of menu integration. Tokens become available at level 50,” the AI said.

“Level 50,” Anya said and glanced at her current level at the top of the menu. 28.

“That’s correct!”

“Okay,” Anya said with a sigh and clenched and unclenched her fists. “Okay, okay, okay.”

“Okay!” the AI gave her a thumbs up.

“Look, tiny baby AI thing,” Anya said and leaned in until her face was less than an inch from the AI’s. Its smile drooped as she scowled at it. “I need you to tell me if this menu is gonna be making any more changes to my body, or doing anything dangerous, or about to make a mess, or anything that could cause a disturbance. Got it?”

“Uh, y-yes!” the AI said.

“Okay,” Anya said and leaned back. She walked to her bathroom and whacked her head on the doorframe.

“Son of a bitch!” Anya snarled. She rubbed her forehead, and ducked as she entered the bathroom and studied herself in the mirror. It still felt like she was hallucinating or dreaming. She prayed she was. It wasn’t that she disliked the idea of being a tall, buff, warrior woman. That was pretty neat, actually. But having it hit her like this, to be short and stout one second and a ripped Greccian statue the next…what would she tell people?

New diet?

Some light plastic surgery over the weekend?

Hell, if she was being honest with herself, the only people who would really notice would be her mom, her sister, and Tori. She kept her head down at work, and she only knew the other people in her building in passing. Well, except for Mr. Kim, who sometimes gave her food he cooked.

And if they did notice so what? What would they do? Report her to the cops for being tall? Anya snorted. Worst case she’d have to get new ID cards. But maybe not even that, since her face looked the same just leaner. If she waited long enough until she visited her mother, she could just tell her she had a second growth spurt and started working out, or just tell her to buzz off entirely if she didn’t like it.

But still, in the grand scheme of things she supposed it wasn’t too bad. Anya flexed her arm and smiled at the firm muscle that appeared.

But what the hell kind of thing can make this possible? She thought, and her smile faded as she lowered her arm. That was the million-dollar question. She dreaded asking it though. She had gone through a dramatic transformation, head-to-toe, in seconds. There wasn’t any kind of procedure or technology on Earth that could accomplish that. More than the change itself, that was what got under her skin: that she had just transformed in the span of a few heartbeats.

“Hey, AI thing?” Anya asked.

“Yes? How can I help?” the AI asked as it floated into the bathroom beside her.

“How did this happen?” she gestured at herself.

“You increased your brawn by six points!” it said. Anya took a deep breath and shook her head.

“My fault. I understand the correlation between this number,” Anya tapped her chest and pointed at the “BRAWN” attribute when it appeared, “and my new body. I want to know how the hell it was possible for me to go from short and chubby to tall and muscular in the span of a few seconds. I grew over a foot and gained pounds and pounds of muscle mass in seconds. That’s impossible!”

“The menu system did a scan of your entire body down to your genetic code and integrated itself within it to allow for basic mental and physical modifications,” the AI said. “You look really great by the way!”

“This is basic?” Anya shouted and gestured at herself. “I look like Wonder Woman’s big sister! And I just asked to get stronger, not taller.”

“The menu system is set to maximize physical changes by default. Being taller allowed for more efficient dispersal of muscles for maximum benefit! Are you unhappy with the changes?”

“Not really. It feels amazing. But it’s unnatural. And weird. And talking to you is weird! This is all kind of making me freak the fuck out.” Anya looked at the menu and the other statistics and shook her head.

“So I’m stuck with this thing?” she asked and gestured at the menu after a long silence.

“Absolutely!” the AI chirped.

“And you?”

“One-hundred percent!”

“Ooookaaaaaay,” she sighed. “So why me, then? Why was I given this menu system?”

“You were given the menu system at random,” the AI said.

“Excuse me?” Anya asked. “At random?”

“Yes, you know, like the lottery, or lightning.”

“Yeah I know what random means, I want to know why I was randomly given this thing and where it came from!”

“You were given the menu system as a defensive measure,” the AI said. Anya raised her eyebrows.

“Defensive measure? Against what?”

“Against the alien force that is set to invade your planet 367 days from now.”

Anya’s face went numb. She blinked at the glowing, smiling AI.

“Alien force,” Anya said. “Invading Earth.”

“You got it!”

“They sent the menu system?” Anya asked. She felt like her brain was misfiring. It kept playing the words “alien,” and “invade,” over and over. Whenever she tried to grasp at anything else, her train of thought jumped the tracks and went straight back to invading aliens.

“No. The menu system was sent by a third party from somewhere in the Triangulum Galaxy,” the AI said.

“More aliens. Different aliens,” Anya said. Her voice had become monotone. Any thoughts she had about her new body, what to tell Tori or her family, the particulars of the skills and stats of the menu system, all of it was wiped from her mind.

Aliens. Invade.

“Yup! Different aliens!” the AI confirmed.

“I,” Anya said after staring in silence at the AI for several long seconds, “am going to bed.”

“Okay! Sleep well!” the AI replied.

Anya whacked her head on the door frame again as she exited the bathroom and walked to her bed. It seemed much smaller now, but it didn’t bother her. She curled up into a fetal position and buried herself entirely beneath the covers.

She closed her eyes and let her mind go blank. It was surprisingly easy. Given the choice of looping over what she had heard, debating over whether or not she was crazy, or simply tuning out, the last option was by far the easiest. She embraced that quiet field of nothing between her ears, closed her eyes, and prayed that it would all be gone when she woke up in the morning.