Dude!

“So, you’re saying that on this website, you can literally modify your features to make you look in any way you want? And people will always think you were like that? I dunno. It seems a scam to me.” Mike mused as he looked a the laptop open in front of him.

“Dude!” His roommate Jason exclaimed, “Look at me! I pushed that thing to the limit and turned myself into a chick! The only thing I didn’t realize was that it was one time only, and now I’m stuck like this!”

“You haven’t...always looked like that?”

“It may change what you look like, but it doesn’t exactly transfer the needed life skills over. I had to figure out how to put on a bra this morning, Dude! And that’s still the least of my problems! I need to figure out my cycle and birth control pills and so many other things I wish I didn’t need to know.”

Unearned

The Great Shift had happened hours ago, swapping the bodies of all the locals and tourists on the small island. Most people had gone home or returned to their rooms, but Austin just sat on the edge of the resort property the entire time since the Shift. He hadn’t budged.

It had only been a few days prior when he realized a truth about himself -- or perhaps herself would be more apt -- the realization of being a trans woman. She hadn’t started any sort of process yet; she hadn’t even picked out a new name. As a result, the sudden shift of being in a woman’s body was still...difficult.

The problem wasn’t with the gender of her new body -- that was obviously the good part. The problem was that the body still wasn’t hers and it didn’t feel like hers; it felt stolen, unearned, and fake. Austin didn’t miss her old gender in the slightest, but she did miss her body...

Experiment in Empathy

It was meant to be an experiment in empathy, a way to help their failing marriage. It had been three months now since Beth’s husband, Mac, had been turned into an exact copy of Beth. The only problem was that the copy of her body also meant he had a copy of her brain. For all intents and purposes, he thought he was Beth and always had been.

As a result, they often argued about who the real Beth was and who was really Mac. And the fact was, they didn’t really know. Beth began to question her own identity. Maybe she was really Mac, and she just didn’t know it -- though she’d never reveal she thought that to him. Mac (of course) had the exact same thought. So they both kept insisting they were Beth -- the REAL Beth.

Even the scientists weren’t sure which was which, and refused to force either of them to go back to being Mac for ethical reasons. The marriage continued to be just as tense as ever.