The Altered.

Chapter I.

Tuesday probably liked to think it wasn't as bad as its predecessor, but it was.

Miles despised Tuesdays as much as Mondays.

Or at least, he liked to say that. Complaining was a good outlet. Tuesdays weren't, he had to admit, so bad. His classes weren't especially unenjoyable, and school wasn't either, once he was with his friends.

That's where he was now; with his friends, on a not-so-miserable Tuesday. A rowdy group they were, but not nearly so much as they had been prior to when they turned sixteen.

Before they'd been altered.

The process of Alteration wasn't meant to change peoples' personalities. It was an operation that every human being, without fail, received when they reached sixteen years of age, made to perfect their intelligence, beauty, and many other minor details, like health.

The problem with the Alteration was, it took months - in some cases, even years - to properly mature. Hence, sixteen-year-olds still managed to possess a hint of childishness, and adults that had been Altered for many years were virtually the very definition of perfect.

In essence, the Alteration was a process to rid the world of competition and everything else that was classified as problematic.

There was no competition when everybody was beautiful. Everyone was smart. Everyone was healthy. There was no crime, no cruelty - not amongst the Altered, anyway.

Miles spoke from personal experience when he said that the Unaltered used their youthful years to their advantage. Caused havoc while they can; for once they were Altered, trouble-making was out of the question.

Miles was incredibly jealous of how delightful all of his friends had suddenly become to look at when they'd turned sixteen. One of the largest processes of the Alteration was perfecting one's appearance. It didn't change them much. Perhaps got rid of excess, undesirable weight and blemishes. Sharpened the jawline. Miles was admittedly disgusted by the fact that the world thought such a process was necessary - people should be comfortable as they were. Of course, the Alteration was not optionable once you reached sixteen, but some aspects of it were; especially concerning the appearance modification. How much would you like changed? How much would you like to keep the same?

Everybody came out of their Alteration in a body that they deemed their definition of perfect.

Plus a significant amount of society's definition of perfect too, of course. That was inevitable.

But Miles hadn't cared much for the change in appearance that his friends had all undergone. It was the little things about them that bothered him most. Their sudden sense of maturity, their lack of desire to stay out late, or go to parties. They were too sensible, and he hated it.

Miles was the only one in his friendship group - bar Harvey, who was the youngest - who had not yet turned sixteen, but it was just a few weeks before he would. He didn't know if it unnerved him or excited him.

"Miles!" called Harvey from across the table, and Miles glanced up at once. "You going to eat that?" The blond pointedly gestured towards the untouched apple on Miles' lunch tray.

Before Miles could shake his head, there was a voice that answered Harvey's question for him; a voice close to Miles' ear. "He's not going to give it to you, Harvey," Ty responded, resting his head on Miles' shoulder from behind. "You're not going to eat it either."

Harvey groaned, "Dude."

"Harvey, you've never liked apples. You're going to do something stupid with it, I can tell. Go find some other food to play with."

Harvey did just that. The fact that he was Unaltered shone through.

"Your breath on my neck tickles," Miles commented, no longer worried by Harvey's behaviour. Ty, who was sitting right behind Miles on the backless seat, kept his head resting on Miles' shoulder. Ty's arms were wrapped comfortably around Miles' torso, fiddling idly with the hem of his shirt.

Ty's unruly hair grazed Miles' neck. His lips brushed against Miles' skin, and the action sent electricity whirring through Miles' body as it always did. Before Miles could make a comment or perhaps tip his head to kiss Ty in return, Rewi leaned over from across the table and thwacked Ty over the head with a rolled-up assessment paper.

"Get a room." He hit Miles with the paper, too. Miles swatted it out of the air.

"Mind your own business," Miles retorted. "You've already been messing around with my phone - I don't need you hitting me with your homework."

"I haven't been playing around with your phone. And this isn't homework."

"Then who's been on it?" Miles asked, tugging the device out of his pocket. He waited for the face recognition to process before opening to his home screen.

He knew his friends had a tendency to cause mischief; their Alterations hadn't fixed that completely, though hopefully soon it would properly settle and they'd ditch their troublemaking habits. On many occasions, they'd found ways into each other's phones, and Miles was thoroughly convinced that this was just another of their stunts.

"Dude, your phone has been with you all day," said Matt, who was tearing apart a burger with his crooked teeth.

"Well, there's an app on there that wasn't there yesterday, and I didn't put it there." Miles lifted the screen to show them the application: a small, circular icon on his screen with no name. "I can't delete it. One of you has played with my settings."

"Nobody has touched your phone," Harvey said, but he was distracted and probably didn't even know what was the topic of conversation. He was intently eying a banana he had set down on the floor in the hall, waiting for somebody to trip on it as they did in decades-old cartoons. That did, though, prove Ty's assumption that Harvey had wanted the apple earlier for reasons that didn't involve eating it. At least he'd managed to substitute the apple for a banana.

A robotic cleaner was faster to the banana than any student was, and soon there were no traces of the fruit left behind on the floor. With his mission unsuccessful, Harvey defeatedly grumbled to himself.

Miles, frowning, repeatedly attempted to delete the application on his phone.

"Have you got fingerprint sensitivity enabled?" Ty murmured, but Miles shook his head. That setting bothered him; it allowed only somebody with a fingerprint registered into the settings of the phone to use the screen. The feature meant he had to hold his finger a certain way every time he was touching the screen just to make sure it was registering his movement - he didn't use the feature. He wasn't exactly sure that anybody really did. Of course, his phone was a version from 2048; almost three years ago, now. The technology probably worked more effectively now than it did on his outdated phone.

"No," Miles replied, "but I should. Keep all you assholes off my phone."

Ty snicked, leaning his head into Miles' neck. "Calm downnnnn, Miles. It's just an app. How much damage can it do?"

Miles wrinkled his nose and tossed his phone a little too carelessly onto the steel table. "It's annoying."

Matt said, through his burger, "A little app never hurt anybody."

And Miles, because he could not ever have predicted how much chaos the app would cause in such little time, simply rolled his eyes, leaned back against Ty, and disregarded the curious application.

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