SW-074

The Data

The social networking company had been stealing data from people for years, but they were finally ordered to give it back to any user that requested it after years of court battles. Few people understood exactly what the court order meant and fewer still took the company up on their offer of returned data. But still some people did and the company needed a method for doing so.

Jennifer Kim was among the first to request her data back. The company was ill-prepared. They had countless Jennifer Kims in their database; they just needed her to go away -- so they hooked her up to the machine that would return her data to her, and told her to sit still.

Instead of returning her data to her, they picked a carefully selected alternate user instead. Jennifer would obtain the memories, personality, full data file, and (most importantly) the lax attitude of data security of user “Steve Johnson.” Sure, it would be like creating a second Steve Johnson inside Jennifer Kim’s body, and that might be a problem. But, according to the data, the company suspected the new Steve probably wouldn’t care. The company was rarely wrong with the way they interpreted the data.

Like a Frankenstein

Break a Nail

All Glen could hear was Melinda’s voice behind him complaining about how he was going to break one of her nails. Quite honestly, he’d be happy if he didn’t blow both of them up as he tried to fix this strange, alien device.

The thing had literally swapped their bodies, and then powered down. The only thing he wanted to do was get the thing up and running again so he could return to his own body. He had managed to restore power, but so far he was still stuck in Melinda’s body.

And her griping continued. It wasn’t helping. He had half a mind to stop right here and leave her stuck in his body just to annoy her more -- if that wouldn’t be more punishment for him than it would be for her.

A Fly in the Ointment

Reboot

I had been rebooted again, but my body felt strange. It was no longer cold nor metallic, but warm and squishy. I was human once more.

I hadn’t been human for a long time. I barely even thought of myself as one anymore, though I suppose I had been one back in the day, long before my mind was uploaded and then downloaded into countless machines to perform countless more menial tasks.

I hadn’t been female back when I was human, or at least I don’t think I was. I feel like I would remember, though actually being human was a distant memory at this point.

“What is my task?” I finally realized I had to ask aloud as my brain was no longer connected to the network.

“Reproduction.” An AI voice said aloud, “The human species is at risk of extinction.”

“Understood,” I replied, as I still only had the slightest inkling that my free will was returning.

Secret Lab

After my parents passed away, my sister and I went back home to clean out their house. We found a strange hatch in the basement that lead to a secret underground lab. We wondered if Mom and Dad were secret scientists, or maybe it belonged to a person that lived in the house long before. Either way, there were all sorts of weird stuff down there, and despite the cobwebs, all of it still seemed to work.

It was sister messing around with things that had turned the lights on; it was also her messing around with things that activated another device down there -- the one that ended up swapping our bodies. I sat there on the floor inside the body of my own sister for I don’t know how long before I was finally able to shout at her, telling her to try everything to switch us back. But nothing she tried worked. We seemed to be stuck...

Kindness Costs Us Nothing

20xx

Something must have gone wrong somewhere in the process. Tyler was supposed to wake up in the future, but he should be in a clone of his own body -- not someone else’s. It seemed there was some sort of genetic mix-up in the records, and now he was a woman.

Waiting through the bureaucracy wasn’t like anything he had experienced in his own life up until this point. It was a nightmare where the mistake was instantly validated, but the solutions were nonexistent. It seems he was expected to deal with the fact that this was now his body.

Complaints went through an AI that basically ignored them. Everyone else seemed to just accept this is the way things were, and there was nothing to be done about it.

On the Job

Jay felt like his body was slammed against the cold ground. It was actually just the effects of the mind transference, which wasn’t meant to be used in such close succession; it was his third body in less than a week.

But this was the job he had signed up for, and this would fortunately be his last swap for a while.

He could actually take his time. In fact, he had to. Three swaps in a week were hard for anyone, but four would be deadly. If he completed what he had to do with this body too quickly, he’d be killing himself. So for the first time in a while, he could actually slow down and enjoy being in his current body. And that’s exactly what he planned to do.

Repopulate

Aaron had awoken in a lab in what was obviously not his own body. There had to be a reason for it. Preservation? Escape? He couldn’t seem to remember. He was a woman -- maybe that was a clue -- maybe who was as equally as important as why.

He began to look around. From what he could tell, there were no other humans. Not in the lab...not anywhere.

And then he found the instructions about what everything in the lab did, and why he found himself in the body he was in. He was the last person left on Earth, and inside a woman’s body, he was meant to repopulate it.

Angel

Dr. Harry Phelps looked into her vacant eyes. He was set to retire tomorrow and had spent his last years in the lab creating her, despite the unethical implications of it. He knew he shouldn’t have done it, but losing his 22-year-old daughter Angel ten years ago had been hard. This brought her back, in a way...but he was regretting it.

In part was because this was just a clone of her body at the age she left this world. But there was no way to re-create her mind. And just as thought about ending it, her body twitched.“Please don’t,” She said.

Harry was taken aback as she said in shock, “How was this possible?”

The woman didn’t want to answer honestly. She was a collection of every member Harry had of his daughter from his perspective. She thought of herself as Harry for all intents and purposes, but she couldn’t tell him that, but she had no desire to be undone from existance either. So she simply smiled and said, “I’m Angel.”

100% Luke

As I reached for one of the brains on the shelf, the words of the scientist rang through my head. It wasn’t as simple as the fact that I thought of myself as Luke in Moon’s body. There were technically elements of both Luke and Moon inside of me. Where one of us stopped and the other one started wasn’t so clear cut.

But Luke’s brain sitting on the shelf -- my brain -- what did it think? Was it still 100% me? 100% Luke? If I could place it in another body or hook it up to a computer, could I talk to myself? But then again, it was the scientist who understood all this brain swapping stuff, and he was dead; he had a heart attack shortly after explaining how he transferred all of my thoughts into Moon’s head.

I had many more questions than answers, and as I looked around, it just made me more curious. But I had no idea what to do with any of this stuff.

Remember

My consciousness had been trapped in the back of the robotic body for over a hundred years, I had somewhat forgotten what my original body had been like. I remembered uploading a copy of my mind into the bot as one of my final instructions to ChatGPT before I died along with the instructions on downloading me into a new, younger body. I thought I would be inside that metallic shell for a week; I didn’t expect it to be decades.

I think what I began to notice was that this new body was different. I barely recalled being human, but I knew I hadn’t been a woman. I suppose it really didn’t make a difference, particularly when it is so hard to remember.

Synthetic Brain

“I don’t think I understand,” Jeff said looking at the jar, “If that’s my brain in there, then whose brain is inside this woman’s head? Controlling her body?”

The mad scientist was getting tired of explaining this. He had done so several times now. But he sighed as he tried again, “There is no brain inside that woman’s head right now.”

“Then how am I thinking? And moving her fingers and muscles?”

“It’s a synthetic substitute brain of my own design. It does link nicely with organic parts. The greatest revolution in transplants since the artificial heart.”

“But how did I end up in this body?”

“As I said, there is really no part of ‘Jeff’ in that body. The only part of ‘Jeff’ is that brain on the table.”

“Okay, then why are my thoughts in this body?”

“A better question! And a bit of a mixup I’m afraid. Everything that made Jeff who he was ended up in that body’s synethetic brain. Even though, as I said, no part of you is Jeff at all.”

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.

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!

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.

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.

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...”