"--oh, hey, rude, it's locked you out for some reason..."

He taps the spinning Z irritably.

After the fourth tap, this is apparently an expected user behavior. A popup appears.

Z has become informed, and

- cannot be edited.

- will not produce pearls.

Roll back memory? (There will be a ten second grace period.)

YES (50 0)       NO

Z looks at the phone, and then at him, and then back at the phone.

“Uh?”

What friendly UI design, Camillo reflects, and that's the main thought in his mind as he hits YES.

Z’s face goes blank, for a moment, eyes staring past the phone and through it into nothing.

Then he blinks, a few times, looking slightly disoriented.

He stares blearily at the phone screen, trying to make it resolve into an image.

Camillo switches apps and shows him a meme he's saved instead.

Ten seconds on the dot after Camillo hit the button, Z’s eyes refocus, and he snorts.

“I’m always saying this.”

"It's what you're always saying," Camillo agrees. "Gimme those fortune cookies."

Z forks them over. 

“This one’s got an extra half a cookie in it.”

"My life is literally perfect."

Even if he has magic (?) powers (???) but can't tell his best friend about them.

Z complains to him about his homework, and shows him a picture of a fat lizard, and throws a noodle at him. Normal stuff.

Camillo eats cookies and admires fat lizards and makes plans to study together.

As soon as he can decorously immerse himself in his phone, he does. 

Z has already made him a few pearls.

All the options from earlier are looking clickable again. The tutorial isn’t showing him anything new, yet.

Well. Z doesn't need his impulse control adjusted -- actually, belay that, what if he adjusted Z's impulse control up?

No obvious changes here, at least not right away.

A little green up arrow flashes briefly next to Z’s pearl counter, but apparently it’s not enough change to show up.

He's done his good deed for the day. Assuming any of this is real and isn't some kind of absurdly involved high-budget prank with his entire class and best friend complicit. Which frankly seems less plausible than magic.

Anyway. Body tool time. He taps on Z's hand and investigates those sliders.

The options here are extensive.

On Z’s hand alone, he can adjust the sensitivity of the palms and fingers up and down, tweak the vascularity and the roughness of the skin, change the length of his fingers and the width of his palms and the shape of his nails.

Camillo likes Z's hands just the way they are.

Back to full-body view. What's under that Advanced button?

The “Advanced” button is currently greyed out. It vibrates its offense when he pokes it.

Well that's no fun at all. He'll have to level up.

Fine. What else can the BrainTool do for him?

The BrainTool’s “Basics” have a decent spread, albeit with a specific bent. Libido, impulse control, aggression, IQ (Z, despite his own protests, is up there), masochism (Z is also up there — although only about halfway up the slider), sadism, volition…

Well, okay. Adjusting IQ seems ... kind of weird and fraught ... so he's going to leave that alone for now, even if probably a good friend would just turn it all the way up. Volition seems good? Volition can go higher. Goodbye executive dysfunction. Libido can go just a touch higher, that doesn't hurt anything, right?

...that's not as many pearls as he was hoping for.

Libido can go moderately higher. Z can have pointy nails -- fingers and toes -- because he'd like that. And ... well, the sensitive hands were some good points last time.

He starts noticing when the point of his thumbnail clips the screen of his phone.

That wasn’t…like that…a minute ago. He’s pretty sure. Almost positive.

And then the other physical change hits, halfway through his one last automatic scroll.

Z drops his phone in his lap.