The Void

I didn’t know where I was. I had remembered blacking out, and I woke up in this dark place with almost nothing around in every direction. The only exception was a woman who stood there dressed all in white.

“You are in the void now,” She said.

She responded to my questions before I even had the chance to ask them. “The voice is a very special place,” She continued, “You are free to leave at any time, but I suspect you remain here for a reason. Unlike in the outside world, you can be anyone or anything you wish in here. I was a man on the outside, but I remain here because I want to maintain this form. But as you can also see, it is empty and lonely in here. Even I will disappear shortly and return to my own void of solitude. But the choice is still yours. Remain here in the nothingness and be anyone you wish, or return to your own body in the real world.”

Saved

“Yeah, yeah, it’s all going to plan. I just gotta go to the safe deposit box with this chick’s stolen body, and it’s all ours. Then I switch back to my own body and off her.”

The woman in the back of the cab spoke of an rather outrageous plan about stealing cash and bodies. Under most normal circumstance, Mark would’ve dismissed it as crazy talk. But things weren’t exactly normal for Mark right now.

He had experienced a body swap of his own with the driver of this very cab. That was obvious proof body swapping existed, and this person’s conversation wasn’t madness. And he also knew he would have to swap again; he doubted he would ever find a more deserving candidate. On top of everything, he’d be saving her life -- no matter what body she was presently in. He might have to become a woman to do it, but it seemed worth it.

Change of Plans

It seemed like a good deal to Charlotte. She just had to let the old billionaire swa bodies with her for the afternoon, and she would be paid ten million Euros. How could she say no?

There were even safeguards in place. For instance, she’d be with him the entire time to make sure he didn’t do anything weird with her body or run off. The afternoon also just proved to be quite pleasant, and even if his body was older than hers was, it was still in good enough shape.

As they chatted, the man laughed, “Thank you for doing this. I’ve enjoyed my time. I’m glad you didn’t run off in my body.”

“What do mean?” Charlotte asked, as she was convinced it was he who would run off with her body.

“Well, I know I agreed to pay you millions, but if you ran off in my body? Well, you’d have billions to your name. While I value my little vacation as you, that’s not something I’d ever give up.”

Suddenly,it was Charlotte who was formulating a plan in her head

Defense

Before the Great Shift I had been a pretty fit guy. I kind of took it for granted, I guess. Even after swapping into a woman’s body, I didn’t think things were going to be much different. Yet when I was walking home one day after work, he came after me.

I didn’t know if he was after my purse or my body, but I immediately started flailing about. What would’ve probably looked like a decent punch and a kick if I was still in my original body felt like an awkward burst of uncoordinated stupidity.

Fortunately, whatever I did, it worked. The guy ran away, and both my purse and I were safe. But I think that moment changed me more than the actual Shift did. The Great Shift may have put me into the body of a woman, but it was in that moment when I truly started to feel what that meant for me and my life.

Body Swaps of History - The Gettsyburg Address

Twist of Fate

Using the magic spell to steal his neighbor’s body was the easy part. But sneaking the book back out of the house so she’d never find it was the real challenge.

Then again, you learn a few things as a 300 year old wizard that come in handy in cases like these. Spells that trigger on a timer, illusions that make things invisible, teleportation. Heck, the body swap spell that allowed him to take Sandra’s body was actually the easiest part of this whole thing! And she’d never know about the magic either; she’d think it was all some weird twist of fate.

Usual

“Hello?” Mack shouted as loud as he could, “Is anyone out there that could possibly untie me? I promise I’m not mad about being swapped into this body; I won’t try to fight you if you let me go. I’m actually kind of happy and curious about it!”

But no one seemed to be coming to let him out. Mack was left frustrated. He was swapped into the absolutely gorgeous body of a woman, and yet he couldn’t explore it in the slightest. The natural reactions of having different body parts were muted by the fact that he had his arms and legs tied to the table.

As time passed, he wondered if maybe that was part of the idea. His interest in self-exploration dwindled the longer he spent in this body. After about an hour, he barely even considered his new body to be all that unusual.

Fat Fingers

Bo entered his apartment with his groceries, replaced his shoes with slippers, and pouted in the same way he had done every since the Great Shift. Everything was a reminder about the body he ended up as a result.

The grocery store had been no different. Instead of the soda and frozen pizza he’d usually buy, he went for things like vegetables and fresh fruit. His fat fingers picking up each item were a reminder of how he wanted to lose weight in his new female body.

He wouldn’t have wanted to be female if given a choice, and being overweight felt like adding insult to injury. At least most of the other guys he knew that became woman got to be hot! He ended up as...this! But as he put away the groceries, he told himself he could improve this body; he could do better...

As Much Damage As Possible

Maintaining the company’s servers was technically Jose’s job. Even as he was worried about the daily load, no one kept him informed what sort of informaton was being transmitted that required so much bandwidth. It was a sheer accident that revealed everything.

The massive body swap across the company that day brought confessions from management about the secret projects involving brain uploads.

Jose was told to get back down to the basement to get the servers back online. As he trudged back downstairs, he thought about how he had been kept the dark, took one look at the female body he ended up in, and instead decided to unplug everything to cause as much damage as possible.

Ordinary

I still regularly went to plenty of TG Fiction sites on the web long after my own transformation. I surfed through plenty of images on caption sites of women with unrealistic proportions and bimboized brains in their heads. Then I often found myself looking in the mirror. I never felt pretty enough in comparison.

But when I was given the chance to transform, I could’ve picked the bleached blonde type with giant balloons on my chest; I didn’t want that. Maybe that’s why I was given the opportunity when so many other guys are passed over. I didn’t ask for a lot; I just wanted to be a plain, ordinary woman.

I ran an A/B asking people who they’d rather swap with, my own face or a stereotyped blonde bombshell of version of myself. I lost by a 60 point margin to the glossy version. It was the kind of thing that always made me feel not pretty enough, yet somehow I knew I was exactly as pretty as I wanted to be.

Spare Change

Declining Birth Rates

The birth rate had been falling for years, but it absolutely cratered after the Great Shift. The body swapping event shattered relationships, and it also turned out that many men in women’s bodies were less than eager about the idea of getting pregnant and giving birth.

Governments began to implement all sorts of incentives to encourage reproduction. Those programs were enough to finally convince Buck, who qualified simply due to the fact that he had been shifted into a woman’s body.

He was on his third pregnancy at this point. He had gotten used to the process by now. Show up for artificial insemination, sit around at home for nine months, give birth, let the government collect the baby, and then take his check. It sure seemed better than working and holding a steady job!

People like Buck weren’t exactly ideal for the program, but the payout wasn’t exactly alluring for high income earners. But still, there were enough people like Buck that it got results!

Recording

Caroline was pleased to see the man with her former body sitting at the coffee shop where they had agreed to meet. She was a little more concerned when he pulled out her phone and began filming.

It made her uneasy. She no longer felt comfortable discussing the swap directly and instead did her best to talk about it vaguely. If she was recorded mentioning it, he could probably get her locked in a mental hospital or something. And maybe that was his plan!

But as long as he was filming, she couldn’t exactly mention THAT either, or really confront him in any way. So she spoke in a similar manner, questioning the filming and making a non-specific accusation. He nodded, completely out of view of the phone’s camera, of course...

There, But Different

Nick pointed down in shock to what was now between his legs. His first thought was about what WASN’T between his legs, but it really felt more like something being rearranged instead of actually being gone.

Suddenly swapping bodies with a woman wasn’t as earth shattering as he thought it might be -- though he hadn’t actually given much thought to this before the moment it actually happened -- but it didn’t exactly feel normal either. Just different.

And then there was the matter of figuring out how this happened, or (more accurately) figuring out how to do it again in order to get back to normal. He didn’t have these answers, and they didn’t look like they would come to him any time soon.

Nametag

Everyone at the three-day body swapping conference was required to wear a nametag. Simon didn’t really understand. What was the point of swapping bodies if everyone was going to instantly know who you really were? I mean, sure, he probably wouldn’t be able to convince anyone he was anything other than an awkward thirty-five year old male computer programmer, but he at least had the perfect disguise that he could try with!

After a busy day of conversing with people who immediately knew who he really was, he went back to his hotel and took off the chartreuse blazer he wore all day. The nametag caught his eye, and he quickly realized it was more than what it seemed. There were microchips inside and a tracker. He could hack it, and then it would be theoretically possible to keep this body beyond the duration of the conference.

He might just get a chance to do exactly what he had hoped after all!

Say Cheese!

Evan’s friends often wondered why he carried a traditional camera around with him instead of simply using his phone. The fact of the matter was that the camera happened to be anything but traditional -- it was magic!

He could load a photo of anyone he had ever taken a picture of and use the camera to transform into that person. It was fun being someone else for a while, and -- while he never told anyone -- he took a particular pleasure taking the form of any women he captured. Over the years, he had collected thousands of photos of thousands of people, and he could be any one of them for as long as he wanted.

Scrolling back to the start of the roll where his photo was stored was always a bit of a pain. And, truth be told, sometimes it spent a little longer than originally planned as someone else simply because he didn’t want to bother with all that scrolling. Though he never really minded the extra time as someone else...

S41ft - "Odd One Out"

Over There!

“Give me back my body!” Rich screamed at the top of his lungs to the face that were his just a few moments ago.

“Don’t look at me! Look at that weird guy with the ray gun over there!” Jenna shouted back.

“What are you talking about?”

“Just turn around and look behind you.”

But by the time Rich turned around, the man in the suit with the ray gay had ducked behind a corner. It left Rich in a difficult position; should he trust what Jenna was saying or not?

But as he pondered his choices, Jenna began to run after the man with the ray gun. With few options in front of him, Rich had to then run after Jenna. If there was a weird man, maybe they’d catch him. If there wasn’t, he sure wasn’t going to let this woman get away with his body!

Trustworthy

“Are you sure they’re working this time?” Finley asked Arnold, “The last time you told they were fixed, I put it on and instead of returning to my own body, I found myself in Melissa’s.”

“It was just a bug,” Arnold assured him, “Totally fixed now. I promise.”

“Well, I suppose i can’t be worse than being Melissa. I’ve hated being a woman and dealing with things at the absolute worst possible time of the month...if you know what I’m saying?”

Arnold just kept smiling. He really didn’t know if the helmets were fixed, but he was certainly intereste to see what would happen if Finley used it again. His brain could end up just about anywhere.

Going the Distance

As a courier, Curtis was used to walking long distances, but he wasn’t use to doing so in heels and with a body that was several decades older than his own and not nearly as in good shape -- and not to mention female!

He had been bringing a package to a lawyer’s office in midtown when the Great Shift happened, leaving him stuck in the body of one of the attorney’s, an Asian woman in her 50s who lived in the suburbs. After a few moments of pure confusion, news reports came in online about the body swapping event. People were advised to head home if possible or stay put if not.

The subways were down, so any transit would have to be on foot. The walk back to the Bronx was a long one for Curtis, but he told himself he was used to it. Unfortunately, his present body wasn’t. Yet he still pushed on -- even with pinched feet and pure exhaustion. And as much as he hurt right now, he told himself being back in his apartment would make him feel so much better.

Window Shopping

Michael and Benjamin hadn’t planned to swap bodies with the two Asian tourists, but they were certainly having a good time. There was just something exciting about seeing your own city through someone else’s eyes.

Though after a few days, they decided they wanted to make these bodies a little more their own. The holidays were in full swing and the stores were having sales. They could both embrace an exciting new style, but excactly what kind of style could that be? A little browsing and window shopping could help answer those questions; maybe a little time in the fitting rooms? They hadn’t bought much so far, but they were already so excited about this idea.

Uncanny

Given the Great Shift, the chaos of the hotel lobby was understandable. Still, Emily was able to find her former body without much effort. It was still pretty much in the same place where she had been before swapping bodies.

She wasn’t quite sure what to say to it, but what came out was, “Excuse me. That’s my body.”

The person inside said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t ask to swap into it. My name is Jackson.”

Jackson seemed polite; Emily didn’t trust him for a second.

However, she couldn’t place why. There was nothing about what he said or did that gave her any reason to think she couldn’t trust him, but maybe it was just because he was doing it all in her body. It wasn’t hearing her own voice or seeing her own body; it was the way he did it. He just made it move different in a way that was unsettling. It wasn’t like looking at a mirror or watching a video -- it was like gazing into the uncanny valley of yourself

It's a Wonderful Wife (Part 2)

View Part 1 of It's a Wonderful Wife

In Person

It had been a few weeks since he Great Shift and Kevin had agreed to meet his guy friends at the mall for the first time in person since they all swapped bodies with other people. He was quite nervous about the whole thing. After all, he had seen them all on several video calls to plan this thing, and they all looked like gorgeous models. The closest thing he got to a compliment was an assurance that his new body was “not that bad.”

Of course, that was just his face. They hadn’t seen his now flabby arms or out of shape butt. He hated being stuck in this woman’s body! He only managed to convince himself by hoping the others might have some embarrassing off screen traits as well.

However, when he saw they in person, they were all even more beautiful than he imagined. And to make matter worse, they seemed to have somehow mastered fashionable clothing and the latest makeup trends too -- he felt even more awkward!

The Job Market

The job market had tightened in recent months, and Mel had heard women were being hired at higher rates than men. It made sense. Women had started outpacing men in college graduation rates, and the zeitgeist around men being lazy and arrogant were stronger than others -- none of it added up to encouraging news for a guy entering the workplace.

Still, his name was gender neutral enough -- perhaps he could fake it? A wig? A dress? And Trying to pitch up his voice just enough to be convincing? He hoped it would all be enough to land the gig.

And sure enough, it was. But now he had to put on a smile and come to the office every day like this? He guessed so. He really needed this job, after all...

Go Ask Alice

“I haven’t had a decent bite to eat for days.” The woman claiming to be my roommate, Jason, explained, “I’ve drunk potions that shrunk me, bit into cakes that turned me into a woman, got chased by a homicidal tyrant, engaged with a caterpillar that was high as f*ck, spoke with a crazy rabbit and his crazy friends...”

I cut him off, “That sounds an awful lot like...”

“I know exactly what it sounds like,” She piped back, “And I also know you probably don’t think I am who I say I am -- that I’m just some pretty face trying to exploit you for a free meal. But I’m telling the truth. And my body transformed into, well, into this down there. I probably could’ve stayed longer trying to get back to normal, but I thought it was much wiser to take the opportunity to escape before someone cut off my head. But, again, you know the tale. You know what it sounds like...”

Helicopter

Alec had always been a helicopter parent to his daughter. He pressured her to do well -- to achieve in academics and athletics. He pushed her in gynmastics and he completely rewrote her college essays to help her get into a good school. But now, he was worried he was going to cost her everything.

She had gone off to college, and he was worried about her slipping grades. He wished he could be there to help her improve them, at least for a little bit. He had no idea the wish would swap him into her body -- at the worst possible time.

It was moments before the gynmastics team tryouts. It was the one thing he couldn’t do for her. She had spent years learning and training her body. He didn’t know how to do the moves or the routine. And if his daughter wasn’t on the gymnastics team? It would mean the end of her scholarship. And without that money, the school would be too expensive.

All he could think about was how much he messed this up.

Double

“Have you come any closer to figuring out to transform yourself back to normal?” She asked what she thought was her husband, “Quite honestly, it’s weird to see another version of me running about the house.”

“Why do you assume I’m the copy?” The other woman responded, equally believing her to be the original.

“Because you are. When your machine turned you into a copy of me, I let you wear my clothes and everything, but you were supposed to be fixing it to get back to your own self, not play psychological games with me.”

“That’s not the way I remember it.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re the one who invented the machine that turned YOU into a copy of ME. And I’ve been lending you MY clothes.”

“So, we both think...and that means there’s no one even able to fix the machine...even if we could figure out WHO should go back to that life...”

The Hail Mary

Collapse

Troy rushed over when he saw someone collapse. It was only when he got close that he realized the collapsed body was his! But if that was his body, then who was he...

...His focus than shifted to himself, or rather, the body he currently seemed to be in. He looked down in disbelief at his now feminine form. It was weird to think he had run over in a sheer moment of concern while wearing this tight fitting skirt and high heels; he hadn’t noticed these things or his new body in the slightest.

He checked on his original body once more. It was still breathing. There was still a pulse. If he was in this woman’s body, maybe she was in his? Maybe she would wake up with answers? Yet somehow he doubted it...

SwapRoulette

Discovering the SwapRoulette app, I downloaded it on a whim. It was basically just a single button that said “SWAP.” Without really thinking about it, I pressed it. Suddenly, with my finger still on the button, I was now using the app with a very different body. Not being used to suddenly becoming a woman or wearing heels, I immediately stumbled and dropped the phone.

At first, I was worried I might’ve broken the phone. I cursed this woman for using the app while walking. But when I bent down to pick it up, the phone was fortunately fine. The app, however? There was no option to swap back; there was only the same singular button to SWAP again.

Returning to my former self felt like impossible odds. I could stay like this, but did I really want to be a woman? Then again, if I used it again, I might end up in a body that was better...or worse.

What Do We Do?

BlogThis!

Twinkletoes

Shane ran ten blocks in a short skirt and high heels to get back to his bar. Given the fact that pretty much everyone in the world had just swapped bodies, he could understand why it had cleared out. Only a single person was now there, a woman wearing a ballet tutu.

“We’re closed,” He told here.

“I needed a drink,” The ballerina slurred.

“And I said we’re closed.”

“The bartender told me I could stay before he just sort of...ran off.”

“I’m the bartender AND the owner.”

“Then cut me some slack! Look at me! I went from getting down on one knee proposing to my girlfriend to...this! I was tiptoeing twinkletoes after this whole body swapping mess.” The woman looked down at the heels on Shane’s feminine feet and continued, “I thought you’d understand.”

Shane sighed and grabbed one for himself.

Still a Shock

It was quite obvious what had happened to Tristian from the moment he woke up, but it didn’t make looking in the mirror and see his new reflection any less shocking. It was the confirmation of what he had already figured out -- he was now a woman.

The clothes fit far too well and the surroundings were far too different, he had clearly swapped bodies with this woman and woken up in her body and in her home. But who was she? And was she now in his body?

She must have a phone somewhere. He should probably find it and call himself to figure this whole thing out. Though he had no idea if just contacting her would be enough; he still needed to figure a way to swap back to normal!

S41FT - "How Do I Look?"

Nursed

Calvin hadn’t expected to look over and see his former body standing there. He forced an awkward smile as he looked at the man he once was -- tired, withered, frail. It was holding itself up by gripping onto the side of the desk, and it tried to speak but nothing came out.

“I’m sorry,” Calvin said. “I didn’t ask for this. It just happened.”.

Though he hadn’t been the least bit upset about swapping into the nurse’s body, it was only now just dawning on him that meant she probably swapped into his. Perhaps he just figured her soul vanished somewhere into the ether or that she would’ve perished quickly in his body. Yet her she was now standing before him -- as if waiting for reasons that Calvin just didn’t have..

“I can try to make your last moments comfortable,” He added, “If that’s any consolation. Though I suppose that was technically your job anyway -- or my job now.”

Barbershop

It had taken a while for the community to accept that this petite Thai woman with a heavy Asian accent was actually Jamal. Quite honestly, Jamal barely believed it either; the whole experience of body swapping had been traumatizing, and the fact that he maintained this woman’s accept made no sense to him.

Yet inside, he was the same man he’d always been. He was still the best damned barber in Harlem and he set about putting his new hair back into its trademark dreadlocks.

And while the community accepted Jamal and his new body, it was still a big shock for newcomers. Her style and attitude seemed more like cultural appropriation than authenticity, yet Jamal still understood how to style Black hair better than just about anyone.

Tutu

The world was in chaos, and Jeff was in the body of a f*cking ballerina. Why was she wearing this one the subway? He had no idea. But there were no pockets, no ID, no phone -- nothing.

The only saving grace was the chaos; everyone had swapped bodies. There was a purse next to him. It certainly didn’t belong to this body, but it did have keys and an ID with an address. No one seemed to be claiming it either. He could at least go to SOMEONE’s home -- even if that home didn’t belong to him or his current body.

It would be an escape from a lot of this chaos. Maybe he could even find a change of clothes there that would fit; it would certainly be nice to get out of this tutu.

Awakened

Milton awoke in the strange laboratory, which seemed to be abandoned with cobwebs covering much of the room. He vaguely knew this place; though he didn’t recall it being so run down. On the other hand, his body was totally unfamiliar to him -- it was curvy and decidedly female, despite his memory of only ever being a guy. But looking around, more memories came back to him; had he actually asked for this?

He remembered his poor health and signing a contract to be frozen and then brought back to life in the future. Maybe this body was how it was done? Could it be that his brain was put into a different body? Considering the body he now possessed, it seemed very possible.

He felt like there should be somewhere here to answer his questions, but it seemed this place was completely abandoned -- which begged the question: Was he supposed to be revived at all? Maybe this body wasn’t the accident. Maybe it was the fact that he was awake at all.

Frankenstein's Monster

The doctor could feel the stares of his experiment from the other side of the glass. Being able to splice two different people together like that was a medical marvel! Now it was locked up in the local hospital after escaping from the doctor’s lab. However, if the medical board ever got wind that he was the one responsible for it, he would probably lose his license.

Of course, he had taken precautions to ensure his work couldn’t be tracked. He removed both voice boxes to ensure the experiment couldn’t speak. The two halves of the brain were only loosely connected enough for survival and not well enough to tackle complex tasks like writing or sign language.

In fact, the doctor considered the way the experiment was pressing up against the task in a coordinated manner to be quite an accomplishment. Perhaps both sides were so aligned in their hatred of him that they were able to pull this off. But it could pull this off, it might still be a threat to him.

Luckily, he had been called in to study it -- the hospital not knowing it was his experiment, after all. And if the sides were showing signs of cooperation, he could easily cripple it...

Island Warrior, Guys vs. Gals

Scared

The sudden body swap had taken Jin off guard. In an instant, he had become a woman. He looked down at his outfit and recognized it as the one worn by the woman who had come into his shop not long ago. She was in there often, but he didn’t know her name.

Approaching this logically, he thought that if he was in her body, she must be in his -- so he made his way back to his shop.

But whatever was going on, logic didn’t seem to play a factor. He darted into an alley as a shortcut to see a familiar figure, his own body -- but there was no way this woman’s brain was inside. Jin watched his former body grunt and its eyes glowed. Then it began to give chase, and Jin just screamed and ran.

He hadn’t noticed how short the skirt he had on was before this moment or how uncomfortable the heels were. His only saving grace seemed to be that whatever monster was in his body moved with a slow lumber that was easy to outrun.

Dig Dug

It had been three years since Zack had used the Medallion of Zulo to swap bodies with Hayley. Pretending to lose the medallion when it was time to swap back was easy enough. She took being stuck in his body better than he expected; she was upset, but it could have been much, much worse.

She hadn’t even complained or talked about it much since the swap. That made today more awkward. After all these years, it was Zack who finally wanted his own body back.

He’d have to come up with an excuse of how he had the medallion again. Maybe he’d say he just found it? Maybe he’d say there is more than one? Of course, to do this, he’d need to dig up the medallion from where he had hidden it.

However, when it went to do so, the medallion was no longer there -- which wasn’t exactly all that usual for the medallion!

Hygeine

Depression was pretty widespread after the Great Shift, and so many people felt deeply detached from the bodies they now inhabited. As a result, personal hygiene dropped significantly. It was something you could just tell on the street from the way people dressed or even sometimes the overall smell.

I did not want to be one of those people.

There were surely things I didn’t know about hygiene when I suddenly found myself in a woman’s body (I’d certainly learn the hard way when I ended up with my first UTI, for instance), but I never let up on the basics. Brushing my teeth twice a day and showering were no brainers for me -- even as I knew some people struggled to do such basic daily tasks. I honestly think keeping up with those sorts of things helped me adapt and accept who I was now while so many others couldn’t seem to come to terms with their new selves.

Find Me at the Club...

Our eyes met at the club. I could feel the instant connection between us, and we began grinding together on the dance floor. I don’t know how long we did that for; it was probably at least twenty minutes to a half hour. The entire time something felt a little bit off. That feeling kept growing, but it was hard to place. A complaint about her arthritis and it suddenly kicked in. Despite her youthful style, she was old -- much older than you would ever expect at a club.

But she wasn’t the only one who was off. I looked down at myself. Instead of a flat chest and a bulge in my crotch, there was a bulge in my chest and a flat crotch.

But as I looked around the club, I realized my gender change and her age change were actually mild compared to other club goers. I swear I saw one person with an elephant trunk instead of a nose and another with an extra set of arms instead of legs. And everyone was weirdly calm about all of it.

In the Gym

I opened the door to the gym at the crack of dawn to find a middle aged woman working out there. It wasn’t the type of place where any woman would typically show up. The place was dingy and smelt bad. She stopped when she saw me with a look of relief and a bit of fear.

“Oh, thank God,” The woman said, “I know this is going to sound hard to believe. I woke up like this, but it’s actually me, Trevor.”

It didn’t make sense. Trevor was a buff dude who was easily half this woman’s age, and he was -- and this was the most obvious part -- a guy! I thought she was crazy at first, but she seemed to know everything about Trevor’s life -- or at least as much I knew about him. Could this woman really be Trevor? It didn’t make any sense!

Twinsies (Episode 1)

Curiosity

Dr. Watkins had thought about calling in sick. He was convinced the changes to his body were a direct result of the experiments the day before, but his curiosity brought him into work as usual. His curiosity paid off when he saw his colleague, Dr. Liu sitting at his work station.

Of course, Dr. Liu had been transformed in a similar manner to Dr. Watkins. They had both been changed into women.

“It’s a direct result of our tests yesterday, isn’t it?” Dr. Watkins asked.

“I believe so. We’re all affected,” Dr. Liu responded.

“And no one thinks it’s weird that we’ve been transformed into women?”

“That’s the strangest part. To everyone else, it’s like we’ve always been like this...”

Trailer Park

Victoria had just been driving through the area when the phenomenon swapped her body with a local who lived in a trailer park. She wanted nothing more than to return to her glamorous life in the city, but leaving her body here on its own seemed out of the question.

She tried convincing Dale to come with her, but he had no such desire. He hated the city and genuinely enjoyed his redneck trailer park.

She pleaded with him, trying to explain how he wouldn’t fit in now that he was in her body. He rejected that idea, telling her no one would care and that most people left him alone anyway. But he also offered to let her stick around with him as long as she wanted.

She was furious at the entire situation. She wanted go home, and she wanted her body back!

Oh.

It felt cliché that she was asking to meet me at a coffee shop -- and perhaps even more cliché that she seemed to be running late. I had ordered my drink and was halfway done by the time she arrived.

“You look good,” She said as she eyed me up and down.

“I put on a few pounds,” I confessed, “I don’t think I ever fully got used to the metabolism of your body after the Shift.”

“You can probably guess why I wanted to talk.”

I was silent. I did. There were media reports that someone had finally discovered a way to do body swaps that could reverse the effects of the Great Shift. People could get their original bodies back...if they agreed to it.

I looked down to my coffee feeling guilty as I finally confessed, “I think I enjoy being a woman too much. I’m sorry.”

“Oh,” She replied from my former male body. She looked disappointed. I didn’t blame her.

Paris

Jacques looked back at his former body, no longer understanding what the woman trapped inside was shouting at him -- even though she was speaking French; his mind in this new body no longer understood the language he had spoken since he was a boy. He could likely guess what she was saying. She was probably shouting about the body swap, or blaming him, or demanding they switch back.

But he hadn’t been responsible for the swap, though he certainly saw himself as the clear beneficiary. He didn’t know how he happened either, but he was now a Mandarin-speaking Chinese woman -- one of the many tourists that visited Paris each year, often donning berets and expensive French fashion. There was a little English in the back of his brain as well, but no way to communicate with his former French self.

No matter, for some reason he felt like he could manage this new life on instinct.

Who I Always Wanted To Be

My roommate and I both ended up in women’s bodies as a result of the Great Shift, but within a few days, I started to worry that the whole thing affected more than just his body. He started wearing short skirts and pink outfits. His attitude became more like an air-headed ditz than the jock he had been. It took a few days, but I eventually had to say something.

He responded very matter-of-factly. “Had it ever occurred to you that this might just be what I’ve always wanted to be like this entire time?” He asked, “Maybe I just felt pressured to act in a certain way in my male body, but maybe I never wanted that? And, sure, maybe I might be overcompensating a little now that I have a body of my dreams, but I think I’m allowed to express myself in any way that I want? No? And this is how I’m choosing to be now. I haven’t changed; I just get to be who I’ve always wanted to be.”

BRAINWORMS