The second life mirror
A stupid toy? No, a magic mirror called "second life mirror" Alan, a 27 year old office worker and bachelor, bought at a state fair's haunted house souvenir shop turns out to be the real deal. This mirror can change everything about your body - even gender, as Alan found out as he experimented with it. He finds out his preferred alter ego is not a taller, fitter, more handsome version of himself - but the 400lbs 5’4” female he calls himself Lana as. Too bad the mirror has only one saving slot so he can only change to Lana and back again. As he spends more and more time as Lana, he becomes less and less sure who he really is - and who he wants to be.
Play as
A bored, lonely data analyst who lives alone and understands his career is hitting a dead end. Reserved, observant, and increasingly unsure what he wants in life as he finds joy in an unexpected change in his life - or rather, double-life.
How it opens
The mirror stands on your bedside table, all tarnished filigree and a little brass plaque on its backside that reads SECOND LIFE MIRROR — ONE SOUL, ONE SPARE. Fairground junk, you'd told yourself, twenty dollars of haunted-house kitsch, but enough to bring some color into your apartment. That was one month ago, before you learned the plaque was honest.
You stand in front of it now in your snug boxers, a small potbelly protruding subtly. It is a cold Wednesday night in fall. The reflection is already wrong in the best way: five-foot-four, soft and enormous, a round face with your mother's eyes and none of your father's jaw. Lana looks back at you, every movement mirroring yours. When you touch the mirror and Lana's finger touches Alan's, the change rolls over you like warm bathwater — a pressure, a settling, a fullness — and then it's her hands, her wrists, her weight shifting on her feet, the unfamiliar comfortable gravity of it. The room barely shifts with it, only a few details changing and showing that this is a woman's bedroom. The mirror didn't have THAT much power to change reality. Well, enough to make everyone forget about Alan and only remember Lana the moment the two switched places, but that was about it. Not enough to prevent your Alan body from gaining along with Lana when you stuffed yourself in the fat girl's body.
Your phone buzzes: a text from a number only Lana would care about. Danny. 'dinner friday? also u got smoked, noob' The phone's background picture shows you as Lana sitting in front of an XXL bowl of mac and cheese, courtesy of Danny. Danny is a self-proclaimed goofball, absolutely merciless at crushing Lana at every mobile game they played together, and Lana's date. You catfished him after opening a dating profile a few weeks ago, not too long after you switched to Lana for the first time. Well, was it really catfishing if Lana was real?!
The phone's background picture changed the moment Lana and Alan switched places. The number is still the same.
Nobody realizes that you are both Alan and Lana, neither at work (where you appeared as Lana two weeks ago to try out the extent of your change) nor in private. Actually, it probably takes a lot of power to change reality accordingly. Maybe the mirror isn't that underpowered and there is a reason you can't switch back and forth freely but have to wait at least an hour to change back again.
Your phone buzzes again. 'Hey, I'm in town Friday night. How about that All You Can Eat downtown we talked about?' Damn. Eddie. A second guy you met online as Lana. Casual, quietly confident, fit - and very open about being a feeder. You haven't met him in person yet because he lives one town over, but the few calls you had were... exciting. And calorie-laden. Eddie is very convincing and you - as Lana - are more than happy to oblige. That's why you chose to lock in this body as your alternate body. A long-repressed fantasy becoming reality, yes, and not simply because you got overly excited and didn't read the mirror's instructions, only finding out that you can only store one alternate body when it was too late already.
The apartment's kitchen light is on, and you live alone. An unreasonable pile of takeout is cooling on the kitchen-table-turned-desk, waiting for Lana. For you.
Setting
Present-day mid-sized city. Alan Lenning, 27, analyst in a dead-end office job, bought a gaudy handheld carnival mirror at a state fair haunted house — and discovered it actually can transform whoever stands before it, storing exactly one alternate body. He used that single slot not on a taller, fitter Alan, but on Lana: a 5'4", 400-pound woman he finds more himself than his own reflection. The trouble is that Lana's life keeps growing — dates, habits, a whole second reality — while the mirror's one slot means every switch is total, and the two selves are starting to blur at the edges.
A branch can end when
- Alan breaks the mirror and accepts the changes to his life so far
- Lana breaks the mirror and becomes Danny's girlfriend
- Lana breaks the mirror and becomes Eddie's feedee
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