Public Transformation Network
“Hey bro, could I borrow your phone?”
You looked up from the online textbook you’d been reading. And up. And up. Looming over your bus seat was an absolute behemoth of a man. His black hair was slick with sweat, a clear sign he’d just been at the gym, although his beefy physique and rank musk could’ve clued you in just as easily.
“S-sorry, what?” you stammered.
The guy responded with an easygoing smile on his broad, bearded face. “Your phone. Could I borrow it for a sec? I’m visiting my bro, but my phone’s outta juice and I forget what stop to get off at. I just need to call him real quick.” His voice was deep and vacuous.
“Uh, yeah, sure,” you said. “Knock yourself out.” You placed your phone in his meaty bronze hand, carefully trying not to notice how dainty and pale your fingers looked compared to his sausages.
With nothing else to do, you watched awkwardly from your seat as he dialed his friend’s number. “Yo dude, it’s me,” he greeted boisterously. “Yeah I’m on the bus using this nerdy guy’s phone right now, mine fuckin’ ran out, haha…”
You blinked in outrage, and embarrassment. “Nerdy guy”??? Just because you wore a white button-down, and had a mousy brown mop and a complete lack of facial hair, and your entire body was skinnier than his arm, didn’t make you a nerd! You had a leather knapsack — those were cool, weren’t they? Anyways.
As the bus continued on, you caught snippets of the conversation unfolding in front of you. Evidently, the guy had gotten hopelessly turned around, and his friend was trying to figure out how to get him to his destination. Privately, you thought this seemed too complex for his simple brain to comprehend.
“Ok wait, so you’re saying I need to be on the 115? And then take Johnson Street to the 67 line? Uh-huh, uh-huh. Gotcha. Thanks, bro. That means I should get off on…” He glanced at the route map above you, and you could see his thick head visibly struggling to make sense of it. Then his brown eyes widened comically. “Shit, this stop right here!”
Sure enough, the bus had been decelerating, and now it came to a complete stop. The guy pushed his way to the crowded exit, still absorbed in his conversation. You noted with disgust that he had your phone lodged between his bristly cheek and his broad shoulder, both of which were sheened with sweat. Then it hit you — he was about to leave with your phone!
“Wait!” you said, trying to get his attention. You hated how squeaky your voice sounded compared to his bovine bass, but still, it worked.
“Huh? Oh right,” he said. Speaking into the phone, he said, “Fuck bro, gotta go. See ya soon, king.”
Then, he hung up and turned his attention to you. “Yo, thanks so much, little guy!” At this point, he was too close to the door, and there were too many people pushing to exit, for him to turn around and give your phone back. So instead, he stood up straight, braced his knees, and lobbed your phone at you with a dumb, cocky grin. “Catch, bro!”
Oh my god, what was this idiot thinking? You were going to miss, and then your phone would hit the floor and shatter into a million pieces, or it would smack someone’s head and they’d sue you for everything you had, or…
You gripped something in your hand. Peeking one eye open, you found that your phone was secure in your grip. Despite your lacking hand-eye coordination, you had somehow caught your phone, acting purely on instinct.
Then you immediately laid it on your lap, because it was slick with sweat and had thoroughly absorbed the guy’s scent. As you leaned down to clean it, your phone screen lit up with a notification. It was a message from an unknown number.
wait did u say u we’re on the 103
BRUH u werent supposed to get off yet lmaooo 💀💀
You internally groaned. Did that meathead’s friend think he was just going to keep your phone forever? He probably did; he was obviously just as much of a dumb gym bro as his friend.
You prepared to type in a polite response informing him that he had the wrong number, but suddenly the bus lurched and you lost control of your phone for a moment. Glancing back at your screen, you realized that you had accidentally pressed send:
bro just gimme ur addy i’ll put it into maps
That was absolutely not what you had typed in. You tended to be pretty dexterous, so you had no idea how that had happened. Although… you looked at your hands consideringly. They were brown and veiny, with wide and hairy fingers. You supposed it was hard to type on a phone keyboard with massive mitts like yours. Briefly, you thought that your hands seemed disproportionately large against the rest of you, that they weren’t supposed to be this big and manly, but you dismissed it, because why wouldn’t they be?
Anyways, now that that encounter was over, you could go back to studying. You scrolled through your phone, trying to locate your Kindle app. But it didn’t seem to be anywhere. Frustrated, you swiped back and forth across your home screen, not noticing how each tap sent a jolt up your body.
Swipe. You felt movement on either side of you — which you quickly realized was caused by the passengers sitting next to you. You couldn’t avoid brushing up against them with how broad your square shoulders were. It was a good problem to have.
Swipe. Absent-mindedly, you dragged your giant paws across your equally giant pecs. You didn’t know what made you feel more virile — scratching your tangled black curls of sweaty chest hair, or accidentally brushing against your protruding dark nipples. Oh wait, you knew the answer — scratching your tangled black treasure trail and brushing against your washboard abs.
Swipe. You splayed your tree trunk legs further out, stomping your size 14 feet on the floor of the bus. You didn’t care if the other passengers thought you were rude — with thighs this thick, it was impossible not to manspread, especially for someone as well-endowed as you. A wet protein fart trumpeted from your inflated ass, but you took it in stride.
Swipe. The bus lurched again, and for a moment it felt like you had leaped half a foot into the air. But your line of sight never shifted back down, and why would it? You had always been tall — just like you had always had perfectly sculpted lats and traps, and a thick bull neck, and…
Your swiping was interrupted by a notification: 5% battery remaining. You furrowed your caveman brow in confusion. Hadn’t you left your place with a full charge? How had it run out so quickly? As you were thinking, you grabbed your squirt bottle from the pocket of your gym bag and took a swig.
Duh, your gym bag — you’d been at the gym! That explained the phone battery, then; you liked to listen to workout podcasts or mindlessly scroll through TikTok as you worked out, and with how long you spent at the gym each day, more often than not you walked out of there with much less charge than you’d started with.
Judging by the sweat leaking through your black mesh tank top, though — and not to mention your musky stench — it had been an especially good session today. It had been an arm day, and you silently admired your hard work, the way your biceps and triceps swelled with power and your veiny forearms pulsed in time with your heartbeat, all wrapped up in a layer of thick black hair and perfectly tan coloring. Yeah. Those were some impressive arms you had.
A text notification popped up at the top of your screen:
bro how do you not know this by now 😭
its 992 carter st apt#208
Oh yeah, you’d been so distracted by your muscles that you’d forgotten why you were on this bus. You were going to visit your best bro later today, and your license was suspended from the last time you two had gotten a little too crunk, so public transit it was.
You glanced at the route map above you, trying to figure out the best way to get there. So you were on the red squiggly line on the left side of the image, which meant… no wait… maybe you were on that green dot in the middle? Your eyes glazed over, and your brain felt like it was stuffed with cotton candy. While that was a feeling you were very much used to, and even proud of, right now you were annoyed. Why’d they have to make these picture thingies so fucking confusing anyway? Whatever, that was why they’d invented Google Maps.
Copying over your friend’s address, you attempted to navigate to the map app. But your thick finger missed the icon entirely, instead opening your photo gallery. The most recent photo was a selfie you’d taken at the gym today, and you took a moment to admire yourself. You felt your blocky, bearded face form the exact same cocky smirk that was in the photo. Hell yeah, you were one sexy motherfucker.
Suddenly, the image turned black. You’d run out of power. You stared for a second at the face reflected on the blank phone screen, identical to the one in the photo.
“Fuck,” you muttered in your deep, slow voice, scratching your temple with one finger like a Neanderthal. You hadn’t gotten to put your friend’s address into Google Maps, and you definitely were too dumb to get there on your own. What to do?
Slowly, painstakingly, an idea formed in your thick meathead mind. Maybe… you could… use someone else’s phone… to call your friend up and ask him how to get there! You scanned the bus for people to ask. There were lots of people on their phones, but for some reason, one passenger stood out to you. He was shrimpy and short, sitting a few seats away from you in the opposite row as he tapped away at some mobile game.
Pocketing your dead device, you rose from your seat and swaggered over to the little guy.
“Hey bro, could I borrow your phone?”






















