Here's a transformation trope that felt like it was all the rage about 20-odd years back: Accelerated Evolution!

Chances are that in a sci-fi movie or, more likely, a video game you've run into an antagonist who pursues power and then hurls themselves into the accelerated evolution apparatus only to emerge as a rampaging terror creature with a higher than average number of appendages. So now that we've seen what WOULDN'T happen, what would such a device actually do to a person?

Personally, I see evolution as the accumulation of decisions driven by environmental factors. Not every decision results in an optimal outcome, and in many cases organisms are the result of hedging bets (i.e. generalist species) or simply sticking to a pattern because it has lasted a very long time (i.e. sharks, horseshoe crabs). Replacing that chain of organic decisions with artificial ones made by a machine could have strange (and funny) consequences. Imagine that the machine heeds a man's desire to become the optimal lifeform and, given its extensive knowledge of life on earth and its radical changes in environment, turns him into a small crab... who is then eaten by a seagull because it turns out that 'optimal' averaged across the entire timescale of life on Earth does not necessarily mean 'optimal in all situations'.

So, let's breathe a little life and inquiry into this old trope. To rephrase the question: What would an accelerated evolution device ACTUALLY do to a person?

*****

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgp7JdmHibA
Track: Subways of Your Mind (aka The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet)
Album: Subways of Your Mind
Artist: FEX