In Space No One Can Hear You Swap

The power on the space station went dead so suddenly. We all had to rush into our spacesuits for fear the backup life support systems could go at any moment. In fact, that’s exactly what happened, but it didn’t end there. We all blacked out and awoke floating in space, and each member of our international crew found we were now in each other’s bodies.

I had been an American, Colonel John Spence, but now I was in the body of the Chinese scientist onboard, Xie Wu. And she found herself in my body. My colleague, Captain Susan McAllister, was not in the body of the Russian Yuri Petrov. Petrov was in Lyam Durand’s body. Durand was European, and he was now inside of Susan’s body. I considered the phenomenon the result of truly unknown origin, but Petrov and Durand were sure it was evidence of aliens. There didn’t seem much point in arguing, and even being stuck in the wrong body didn’t seem to matter much if we only had a few hours of oxygen left in these suits. But then we noticed the lights going back on at the station. A short space walk back and we were saved, but now we were all going to have to deal with the very real problem of being in the wrong bodies.