Basic

The thing about Emily was that she was pretty ordinary. I didn’t know anything about her before swapping into her body, but it didn’t seem to matter; I could just sort of fake it with a lot of bland cliches about twenty-something year old women.

Her style seemed basic and unoriginal. When I saw another woman on the street -- I wasn’t sure if she was a friend of Emily’s or not -- but I just sad some things about Taylor Swift and Pilates, and then we both went about our day.

If I had known it would be so easy to be a woman, I think I would’ve stolen the body of one years ago. Then again, maybe it wasn’t all women who were so simple....maybe it was just Emily.

Oh.

Lou still couldn’t believe he was going on his first date since the Great Shift. He was still nervous about it, but there were things that would make it easier. When he arrived at the bar, it was pretty easy to spot Clarice with his own former face, for instance.

It all seemed to be going quite well until he mentioned the date.

From inside his body, she laughed, “Are you serious? We’re just exchanging info here, because we should be friends.”

“Oh,” It was hard for Lou to say much more.

“I mean, my former body is a 3 or 4 at most. But now? I’m like a 7 or an 8! I’m really sorry for what you lost, but a date?” She laughed, “No way!”

“Oh,” Lou repeated.

Allergic

One thing I didn’t anticipate when swapping bodies with Nikki was the effects of her female hormones on my male brain. I never expected to start finding cute guys attractive, and I certainly never wanted my heart skip when just the right one looked at me. Yet that was exactly what was happening to me.

But it wasn’t my own shyness or any kind of social norms preventing me from talking to any of these guys, it was another aspect of Nikki’s body -- her allergies. Why did every cute guy seem to own a dog? And why did Nikki have to be so allergic to animals?

Then again, I had a body swapping machine. I didn’t have to stay in Nikki’s body to remain a woman, I could literally be any woman who would be willing to swap bodies with her. I just had to find one without allergies...

Sit. Stay. Swap.

Hotwire

It was a rough neighborhood. While Nathaniel had grown up here, it was a place he had told himself he was never coming back to. The Great Shift had other plans.

It wasn’t just that he had found himself thrust back into one of the roughest areas. It wasn’t just that the Shift happened in the middle of the night. He also found himself in a woman’s body. All those things added up seemed like a recipe for disaster, and Nathaniel decide he wasn’t going to stick around.

Of course, growing up in a bad neighborhood ha given him some useful skills. There was the time some guy taught him how to hotwire a car -- he was certainly using that skill now. He knew it probably wasn’t ethical, but feeling safe while in a strange, unknown body was a higher priority right now.