Out of all the music videos I've done, this is still probably one of my favorites. I re-uploaded to Tiktok because the album is out NOW!
On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/7mL02sZ34T9MLKyb97dJUL
And AppleMusic: https://music.apple.com/us/album/시프트/6777472553
@bodyswapshift S41FT (시프트) - "Paper Constellations" | Official Music Video #braintransplant #bodyswap #musicvideo #tgtf #mtftransformation #tg #mtf ♬ original sound - Alicia Shift
“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.”
I remember waking up in the dark basement, and I had trouble controlling my body. Everything about it felt wrong, like even down to my arms and legs being the wrong length (which, of course, they were -- I just didn’t know it yet). As my eyes began to adjust, I stumbled over to a shelf with some jars; at least one had a brain inside.
As I reached out a voice spoke. “I’d be careful with that,” The voice said, “That’s your body’s brain in that jar.”
“What?” I asked without being able to quite tell where the voice was coming from.
The voice laughed, “If anything happens to it, well...it could break the chain and make it very difficult to restore the right brains to the right bodies.”
It was in that moment the realization hit me. It was why everything felt to strange. I was inside the wrong body; I was in a woman’s body. My arms flailed in a panic, knocking the jar off the shelf. It shattered on the floor as I heard the voice laugh again.
Dr. O’Reilly watch his colleague, Dr. Park, come into the lab each day and spend about a half hour running electrical current through a brain she kept at her station. This when on for several months before he asked why she was doing this.
“I’m keeping it alive,” She told him, “It’s cutting edge research, and it’s very important to me.”
“What’s research? Whose brain is that?” Dr. O’Reilly asked, as confused as ever.
“It’s mine.” She paused. “Perhaps more accurately, it’s Dr. Park’s. It was swelling and had to be removed, or she would have died. I agreed to keep it alive and look for a cure.”
This begged an obvious question from Dr. O’Reilly. “Then who are you?”
“I would’ve thought you’d recognize your old professor by the quality of my work.”
“Mark Steincroft? Professor Mark Steincroft? But you died five years ago!”
“And now you understand just how experimental, groundbreaking, and important Dr. Park’s work was, and why I must continue it while aiding her brain here.”
The months passed, and the physical therapy was painful. My words were clearer. I could grip things and feed myself. I was able to stand and walk. I probably wasn’t at 100% -- I mean, even though I was able to stand and walk, I couldn’t do it for more than a few minutes, and running was still out of the question.
However, I was well enough to be released from the hospital. I sat on the bed waiting for my sister to arrive and pick me up. I wanted to lie down. Even sitting this long was sometimes painful, but I wanted to prove I could do it.
“Are you ready?” She asked.
“I could use some help getting dressed,” I replied, “But otherwise I’m good to go.”
“I’m sorry you couldn’t go to your own home.”
“Sarah visited once. I don’t think she likes seeing me like this.”
Sarah was (and still technically is, I suppose) my wife. Her signature was on the paperwork right beside mine. I don’t think she expected them to transplant my brain into a woman’s body, and it was hard for her to see me like this. She had apparently been around quite frequently initially, and then less so after the transplant. And only once after I woke up. She was nearly in tears the entire time. So when it was time for release, I had called up my sister. As she helped me hook the bra in the back, I found myself thankful for her support. It had been difficult since the accident, and with Sarah not even wanting to talk to me, it was good to have someone...
Chuck screamed as the alien spaceship teleported him down to the center of a remote field before flying off. He had been aboard that ship for the past few hours, being subjected to all sorts of weird experiments. He was among several human participants, and he watched them remove organs like heart and lungs -- and often just as quickly putting them back. When they arrived at Chuck, they looked him up and down and eventually settled on removing him brain.
While the aliens did place all the organs back in people’s bodies, they weren’t exactly knowledgeable as to which parts were interchangeable and which weren’t. When he realized his brain was now in the wrong body, he tried explaining that he wasn’t supposed to be in this body; he wasn’t supposed to be a woman! He could rationalize why they would screw up, but he still wanted his body back! Of course, the aliens had no way to understand any human languages, and so Chuck got more and more angry. The only consequence of this was that the aliens agreed to bring him back to earth first.
He kept screaming even after they were long gone, even though he knew it wouldn’t matter. But in some ways, it just felt good to let his frustration out.
As I was being wheeled into the hospital after the accident, I apparently signed the paperwork for the experimental procedure. At least, I think I did. I barely remember it. I felt like there were so many people around me doing all they could to save my life that if one person threw a paper in front of me to sign, I probably managed to do it despite my injuries. They told me I fell into a months long coma after that night. That made it easier to transplant my brain into the new body. I remained in a comatose state for a few more months after that. To some extent, they expected that, but I was apparently out for longer than the doctors anticipated.
When my eyes fluttered (and I do mean fluttered) open that day, the nurse was actually surprised. They had chalked up the operation as a failure by that point. The ones who had their brains transplanted before me still hadn’t woken up.
I remember being thirsty. I remember wondering where I was with only fragments of the accident still in my mind. It wasn’t until the doctors began to ask me questions that I even noticed my new body -- and my new gender. My movements were more like a toddler as I tried to move my fingers. I surely could grasp anything and lifting myself up with the aid of the adjustable bed was impossible. My speech was slurred as I answered their questions. I wasn’t sure how much of this was due to the coma, but the doctors seemed to indicate much of it was due to the brain transplant -- that my mind was learning many motor controls like a baby might. They told me it would be a while before I could feed myself or stand up on my own. I’d be in the hospital for quite a while longer.
Adam’s eyes briefly flickered open.
“What’s happening to me?” He asked in a weak voice as he caught a glimpse of a man with green skin wearing a lab coat poking at him with medical instruments, not realizing his own brain was presently exposed to open air while being injected with various fluids.
“Entspannen, mein Freund,” Doctor Gunther Bismark said in a calm, measured tone, “I apologize that none of this is ideal. But when I heard you had perished, I came as quick as I could.”
Adam couldn’t respond, but he did flinch when he heard the word “perish.” The reaction was not lost on Dr. Bismark.
“Yes, you were dead. It was only a minor inconvenience. Fortunately, the technology has progressed significantly since my own incident. They couldn’t stop the rot once my brain was placed in this new body all those years ago. I had to go into hiding. But you? Well, no one will notice anything once I am complete here. Your brain will be in this new body, and no one will notice anything is amiss. Well, YOU might notice something is off. How can I say this? You’re new body is quite different from your old one. I do apologize for that fact, but it is still quite good to see that I wasn’t too late to save you.”
“This sucks,” Marisa said with a frown, “I don’t want to be in your body! I like wearing cute clothes and painting my nails! Do you think this is permanent? Or do you think that weirdo old guy is going to come back and put our brains back in the right bodies?”
“I think that brain transplantation is likely very invasive,” Dave replied, “Whatever damage was done to our nervous systems is probably going to exponential if we undergo a second procedure.”
“You sound way too calm about this. Aren’t you freaking about being a woman?”
“I should be, shouldn’t I? And yet I’m not. Maybe it’s the a neural pathway that wasn’t reconnected. Or maybe the mad scientist just removed the part of my brain responsible for that.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Why would he switch our brains in the first place? The guy was absolutely crazy! Do you know he showed me a man that he tried to graft gills onto? Maybe we should be thankful that this was the worst thing that happened to us.”
“I’d rather have gills.”
“The guy with gills was dead, Marisa.”
Mark could feel the wires and machines attached to his body or, in some cases, replacing entire body parts. He couldn’t remember what had happened to him, but he was sure these machines were keeping him alive -- which meant whatever misfortune had fallen apart him must have been pretty bad. A woman was beside him, whom he had barely noticed as he tried to wrap his head around his now half-mechanical self.
“What’s your deal?” He asked her, “Are you my mechanic or something? Keeping me all tuned up or whatever?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” She replied.
“Try me.”
She took a deep breath before saying, “I’m you.”
“What?” It was the best Mark could respond with.
She continued, “I’m not sure if I’m the original, or if you are, or if we’re both copies. But we’re both technically Mark Cooper. I think they put me in this woman’s body to torture me. I think they put me in your robotic body so they can keep reseting you; I’m pretty sure you have no idea that this is the sixth time we’ve had this conversation. I’m pretty sure they want the secrets in our head. It’s why they killed Lexi and Trevor, but we’re still here.”
“But if they have our brain, or at least a copy of it, why can’t they just extract the information.”
“Because what we know is tied intrinsically to who we are. They can’t pull out a thought at random. They need a living, thinking brain to spill the secrets...”
Ahmed knew everyone was staring at him. Usually funerals were somber occasions, and here he was full of smiles. Of course, he couldn’t tell any of his relatives or friends who he was, that he was alive, and about how he had his brain transplanted into this woman’s body. He had signed all sorts of confidential statements to not reveal any of it.
He thought he’d be showing up to this thing as a way to say goodbye to everyone he knew. He thought he’d be just as sad as they were. But when he saw his former body in a coffin, it felt just so good to be alive! The smiles came, the laughter soon followed.
Eventually it became too much, and he knew he was being disruptive. He left everyone to mourn in peace without him. He still so badly wanted to tell everyone in there that there was nothing to be sad about. But he knew he couldn’t...
“Am I going to die, Doc?” David asked.
“It’s a miracle that you’re still alive,” The doctor replied, “Obviously, transplanting your brain into a new body was highly risky and experimental.”
“You’ve told me I’m a woman, but I can’t feel it. I can’t look down and see it. Even when looking in a mirror, I can’t reach out to confirm the reflection is truly me. Even the voice I hear when I speak, I have to tell myself it’s really different. My head hears it as my own.”
“You need to be parient. The stem cells and nanobots are still repairing the various pathways from your brain and spine to the rest of your body. They prioritized the vital systems like your heart and your lungs. You’ve only been able to speak since yesterday.”
“What if they stop working?”
“You shouldn’t lose your current functions, but you wouldn’t gain any new ones.”
“And whose body do I have? Who was she?”
“We don’t know. She fried her brain on a drug overdose, but she was otherwise healthy except for a few minor injuries that the nanobots are also repairing...”
If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or a crisis, please know you can reach out to the Suicide Prevention Hotline. <3
Stephanie absolutely hated the new law that required all cybertronic hybrids to have one obvious part exposed. She hated the day they removed the skin from one of her arms for the sake of “compliance;” she longed for the days when she just looked like a typical girl.
She no longer blended in; she was almost always bombarded with questions. She either wouldn’t answer, or she’d lie. Sometimes it was blatent. She’s say she was an AI or that it was just her arm. Sometimes she would start with the truth -- explaining that she had died, and her brain was transplanted into a cybertronic body. What she’d never share is that she had actually attempted suicide, or that she had once a guy named Stephen.
For the former Stephen, her brain inside a cybertronic body that looked like a woman was an instant dream come true. Everything felt right with the world, and she was truly the person she was meant to be. And then that stupid law passed. She felt so dehumanized by being forced to reveal a robotic piece of herself. It was why she switched to a pre-law major at her college. She was going to fight this for the rest of her life -- and the life expectancy of a human brain inside a cybertronic body was very likely going to be a very long life.
Brad looked down at the person in the hospital bed with a sense of trepidation. He turned to the doctor and spoke, “She’s older than I would’ve expected. And I’m still not wild about the fact that it’s a woman.”
Doctor Schwartz looked Brad right in the eyes, “We don’t exactly have a wide variety of brain dead patients. There are even fewer who have relatives to sign off on experimental procedures. And she is literally the only one who is a compatible donor.”
“I understand. It’s just weird. To think that I’ll go into surgery as myself, and yet wake up...as her. I’m just not sure I’m ready.”
“You know if you pull out, you’ll likely be dead in a week. And even if you merely hesitate, there’s no guarantee her body will stay alive in the state it is in. We need to act now to save your life.”
“I know. I know. I thank you. I thank you for showing me. I needed to see beforehand. I needed to know. But I’m ready now. When I wake up. I will be her. I will be Maria Cuervas. That will be my body. It’s still weird, but I don’t have a choice.”
“Who was she?” Lawrence asked looking down at the frozen woman in the glass box.
“No idea,” The man working at the Cryogenic Center replied, “People have been frozen here for years. We’ve lost a lot of records. We’ve had a lot of screw ups. This one, for instance. She’s one of the one whose brain just sort of melted inside the body. But, you know, its one of the ways we’ve pivoted as a business. We can sell the bodies to people like you.”
“You mean the sick and dying?” Lawrence sighed as he took another pill from the jar in his pocket.
The man laughed, “I mean the rich. Most of the people who come here ain’t like you. They ain’t coughing and wheezing or popping pills. Well, they may be popping pills but not to stay alive. Sometimes they buy, sure. But often times, they rent the bodies for a while, just to do stuff without consequences. Though a lot of times, what they do with the rented bodies -- let’s just say they don’t get their deposits back.”
Lawrence looked down at the woman again, “She deserves better than that.” There was a long pause before he added, “So, yeah, I’ll be her.”
“In that case, you go get ready in that room over there, and I’ll prep her up. The doctor will be in shortly to operate the equipment to transfer your brain into her body. Just a fair warning, the skin might stay blue for a few hours while you fully thaw.”
“What the hell is happening,” Charlie mumbled.
“Please don’t speak,” The doctor explained, “You are likely still weak from the procedure, and you may have some memory lapses. Allow me to explain. A few years ago, you were diagnosed with brain cancer, and we tried everything to cure you. Neither cutting it out nor radiation treatment seemed to be successful. But what if we could use donor cells to help reconstruct the damaged areas? We cut a bit deeper than we normally would and replaced very small parts with brain pieces from a recently deceased man. It sounds controversial, and it was certainly experimental, but I am happy to say it looks like you will make a full recovery, Miss Ramirez!”
“Miss?” Charlie asked, “Ramirez? No, I’m Charlie. Charlie Hendrix...a...man...”
“...Hendrix?” The doctor asked, “The donor? No, no it’s impossible. There wasn’t enough of the brain to...and the sections would be all wrong for that to happen. Oh, my...”
It didn’t take long for Everett to learn why the woman who sold her to him did it for such a low amount. It wasn’t just because she was desperate; it was because she thought she could take advantage of things once she was in his body. However, she was quite out of her league.
Everett had already sold his corporation and stashed much of his fortune in off-shore, unnamed accounts. With all the correct passwords, he was able to gain access to his funds, buying back a controlling interest. He was quickly able to squash any legal claims she thought she had. The biggest victory she had was maintaining possession of his mansion -- though he imagined the property taxes would come to bite her at the end of the year, if she even managed to live that long!
Everett tried not to give his former body a second thought, but every few months, something new would pop up. He was surprised at how many years this continued! He knew his old body was tough, but it was still no match for this young body with his keen, business-oriented brain inside of it!
Everett had invested a good portion of his fortune in his efforts to extend his life. The doctors researching brain transplants cost him millions, financial advisors to ensure continued control of his businesses were in the tens of millions, a good deal would be lost according to his lawyers simply from juristictions that wouldn’t allow his new body to claim certain aspects.
But the body itself? Well, he was able to purchase that for about $100,000. He could almost laugh at how desperate some poor people were! And this woman had been in dire straits. She was about to be kicked out of her home and onto the streets, and turning to vile acts as a way to earn a living. And yet she gave up decades of her life to Everett in exchange for cash. He wondered how long she even had left to live in his 80-year-old body, especially considering the brain transplant probably weakened it. He ultimately decided it wasn’t much of a concern to him now that his brain was now in her younger, healthy body!
It had two weeks since Tim’s near fatal car accident that nearly ended his life; the doctor’s saved him by transplanting his brain into the body of a woman who was also in the accident that had gone brain dead. It was hard enough to go from an 18 year old guy to a woman in her late 40s, but the fact that the woman in question was Terri Walsh, the mother of the obnoxious school quarterback, Brandon, that had often bullied Tim was particularly challenging. It also didn’t help that Terry seemed to own nothing but form-fitting designer clothes that were just so uncomfortable.
Still, Tim tried to do his best. When the yearly bake sale came around in May, Tim made some cookies for Brandon to bring in. The quarterback was shocked.“You BAKED these? Usually you just pick up some crap from the store.” He asked as he grabbed one and reluctantly took a bite, “And they’re actually okay? Who are you and what did you do to my mother?”
Tim did his best to give a small laugh. Brandon had no way of knowing how close he was to the truth. He hadn’t told Brandon; the doctors told him he couldn’t tell anyone. For these two weeks, he had to pretend to be Terri, and was going to have to continue to do so for the rest of his life.