Rob had been having a bad coding day. As soon as he fixed one bug on the web site, another two popped up to replace it. Meanwhile his line manager Pete kept messaging every five minutes to ask when it would be fixed. By lunchtime, Rob was feeling very stressed and deflated.

To add to his annoyance, a pesky message kept appearing on his work laptop, asking him if he wanted to “upgrade”. He kept dismissing it, but eventually sighed, caved in, and angrily clicked, “Yes, Upgrade Now.”

As soon as he clicked the button, a blast of incredible light energy suddenly emerged from his monitor and jumped across the kitchen table, instantly engulfing his hunched and depressed frame. Then, Rob was upgraded.

The next thing Rob could remember was a combination of shock and euphoria as he stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed at his new handsome reflection in the bathroom mirror.

Intrigued by the attractiveness of his new, taller, athletic body, Rob rolled up his sleeve and was delighted to reveal a strong, thick arm. His arm! Rob had muscles now!

“YES!” laughed Rob triumphantly. He caught himself in his reflection as he instinctively flexed his new strong arms in a victory pose. It was the sort of thing Rob had seen sports fans do many times, but Rob hated sports…didn’t he?

Intrigued to see more, Rob moved to the bedroom, and stripped down to his underwear in front of the full length mirror.

Initial trepidation was soon replaced with a growing sense of pride as Rob quickly came to realise just how impressive his new athletic figure was. Rob knew he looked good now, and he felt like he could compete and win at anything – whether it was sports, at work, or any other aspect of life. Yeah, Rob was a competitive guy now, and Rob loved that feeling.

New sensations of confidence and masculinity were setting in now. Rob once again flexed his large biceps for the mirror and loved the look of strength and seriousness in the handsome face reflecting back at him. It felt good, and it felt right.

On returning to his laptop a short while later, Rob sighed as he quickly realized that not only did he have no idea how to code anymore, he found the whole thing utterly geeky and boring now!

He was about to slam the laptop shut and head straight for the gym, when he suddenly got an unexpected call from his line manager Pete.

“So, I hear you got selected for an upgrade today,” came the voice of Pete with a tone of jealousy and resentment. “Mike wants to take you out to dinner, apparently. Have fun!”

A grin spread across Rob’s face as Pete cut off the call. Now it all made sense. Rob had signed-up for the experimental HR staff “transformation” project several months ago, but never realised the transformation would be so literal!

Rob dressed himself up, and headed out to meet the recently appointed department head Mike for dinner at a fancy restaurant. Rob had thought Mike was sizzling hot from the day he arrived at the office, but in his former geeky body, he knew he had no chance with a guy like that. Now, things were different.

The mutual sexual attraction was clear as soon as their eyes met at the restaurant, but then Mike dropped a bombshell by revealing that he had also been upgraded, and that he had formerly been one of Rob’s fellow coders – an obese bespectacled nerd named Michael!

“The company AI selected both of us for the upgrade,” explained Mike. "It saw our weakness in coding, but our untapped potential as managers. From now on, you will work directly under me, which means you will become Pete’s line manager. Is that OK?”

"That is very much OK," laughed Rob.

As soon as the dinner was over, Rob wasted no time in phoning Pete.

“I want you to arrange a meeting with all the guys, 9am tomorrow, in office, yeah?” Rob stated assertively. “We’re going to be making a lot of changes from now on.”

Rob put the phone down, buzzing from the feeling of having asserted his new authority.

Suddenly, he felt a strong male hand gently squeeze his shoulder.

The next morning...

Mike and Rob laughed with each other in Mike’s kitchen as they remembered the ugly nerds that they had once been, and simultaneously rejoiced in their new good looks, confidence, and masculinity.

Mike leaned forward and kissed Rob on the forehead, before whispering in his ear, “you’d better hurry up and get dressed, you’ve got a 9am meeting to lead remember?”

One hour later...

“Morning guys!” exclaimed Rob enthusiastically as Pete and the team of developers sheepishly shuffled in to the meeting room to greet their new manager.

“Morning...boss,” grunted Pete through gritted teeth.

Rob could already tell that being a hot young manager was going to be a challenge, but he loved challenges now, and he was determined to shape his team up to become the best in the business – starting by getting them to fix those damn web site bugs!