Edits - Ch 4.3.1

Chapter 4.3.1 - He makes Mr. Jacobson 7.

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Tim decided that Mr. Jacobson ought to be younger than his own children. It would be funny to see someone so authoritarian become the littlest member of his family.

Tim erased the 45 for age in the caption and replaced it with a 7.

When Tim saved the change, a new text box appeared that asked him “Do you wish to automatically revise the rest of the caption to better match the subject’s new age?” There was a “Yes” and a “No” button beneath the question. Tim pressed “Yes.”

A new popup appeared with a loading bar filling up as it started “Initializing changes.”

Tim watched Mr. Jacobson closely, looking for the first signs of the change. It took a few seconds before the teacher began to look subtly younger. His scattered gray hairs darkened to match the rest of his brown hair. The lines on his face faded away, smoothing out his skin. Looking fresh-faced and energetic, his lecture became more passionate. As a consequence of his revitalization, the students who had been paying little attention to him started to notice that something out of the ordinary was happening. Their teacher seemed less like a veteran educator and more like a man just out of college. Then, he looked like he belonged in college.

Through all of the changes, Mr. Jacobson had not noticed anything different. That only lasted until he descended through his teen years and hit puberty going the wrong way. Becoming a pimple-faced boy, his voice cracked up awkwardly and his clothes hung loosely from his dwindling frame. He cleared his throat, tightened his belt, and tried to continue his lecture. Hearing him sounding like a croaky boy, the students started whispering and giggling. Again, he tried coughing his voice back to normal, but he no longer had an Adam’s apple to clear.

Seeing his students’ amusement, a middle-school aged Mr. Jacobson chided them, “Students, please act your age.”

It was then that his pants lost their hold on his hips and dropped to his ankles.

The class broke out in uproarious laughter as Mr. Jacobson blushed and pulled his pants up.

“Stop laughing!” he shrieked at them in fear, having lost all authority in his childish voice.

His height fell quickly then, dropping him close to four feet tall. He held on desperately to his rumpled clothes, even if they only emphasized how much size he had lost. His face grew round and smooth, his nose shrinking to a tiny nub, his ears sticking out wide on his little head. Then, just as he had almost given in to panic, his changes stopped.

Students were on their feet, craning past each other, holding out their phones to get a view of their 7-year-old teacher.

“Someone call for help,” he begged the class, whimpering, but there was no response from anyone in the room. However, his clothes did appear to listen as they shrank to fit his body, leaving him looking like a boy dressed up for some fancy occasion.

The whine started up again from Tim’s phone, growing more piercing until it ended in a burst of blinding light.

“Hey kid,” said some girl in the front of the room. “Are you lost?”

The boy who had been their teacher looked around the room nervously and nodded.

“What’s your name?” the girl asked.

“Adam,” he said and stared down at his shoes.

“Where’s the teacher?” someone asked.

Tim’s phone buzzed, and he checked it. A notification had appeared: “Would you like to select a subject to be the new teacher for the class?” He pressed the notification and saw that all of the pictures he had taken for the app were available in a gallery, including his photo of Danielle, his picture of little Adam, and his selfie with the whole class.

He could pick any of them to be the new teacher.

Who would he choose?

He turns himself into the teacher.

He turns Danielle into the teacher.

He turns a girl in the class into the teacher.

He turns a boy in the class into the teacher.