The Swap (Part 1)

Freshman year. Right after coming back to campus after winter break. The swap happened. It had been three days since that swap. I was in Li’s body, and she was in mine.

“Every day I see you, it looks like you just woke up. A little makeup wouldn’t hurt, you know?” She said while staring me dead in the eye.

“Pastels?” I asked, basically responding with my own criticism of how she was dressed in my body.

“Your mom sent it.”

“It’s fine. It’s passable.”

We both knew we were pushing the limits of what would be an ‘acceptable’ look for the other. Neither of us really wanted to embrace our new bodies; we just wanted to swap back!

Friend

Brittany and I had been friends since childhood, even as I became a jock and she became a dork. It didn’t even change in college -- where I got in through an athletic scholarship and she just had the grades.

I knew it was social suicide to hang out with her, but we did anyway. Though I really put my foot in my mouth when I told her that she might actually be hot if she actually tried.

Then the body swap happened.

I don’t know if it was some sort of cosmic revenge or maybe the gods heard what I said or maybe it was just bad timing. But I was Brittany now. And it turns out being hot wasn’t exactly as easy for women as I thought. Putting off the girlie stuff like makeup and dresses, I thought I could at least get Brittany’s body in better shape, but nothing I do seemed to improve her physique. I don’t know if her asthma was limiting me or her genetics, but I really felt like I was learning a lesson in the hardest possible way.

A Choice

“Amisha? Are you okay, Amisha?” I heard the soft voice flutter in my pounding head.

“Ugh. What the hell happened?” I asked, noting how strange my voice felt before adding, “And who’s Amisha?”

The soft voice continued, “There was like a flash of light and an earthquake. You fell down and hit your head. Do I need to call campus medical center?”

“Campus?”

As I started to look around, it was obvious I was in a dorm room. The soft voice came from a woman who seemed to be around twenty years old. And it also became very apparent I was in a body that was no longer my own. I realized I ha a decision to make. I could pretend to be “Amisha,” presumably this woman’s college roommate, or I could tell her the truth about being a 30 year old man who suddenly found himself in this body.

Extra Credit (Episode 3)

View Episode 1 of Extra Credit.
View Episode 2 of Extra Credit.

Roommate - Boyfriend

I was a little bit unsure of what to think at first when my boyfriend swapped bodies with my roommate. I had always found her a bit annoying, so not having to put up with her was the first plus. But I wasn’t immediately sure how I felt about my boyfriend being a woman.

It turned out not to be so bad -- at least at first. It was fun to see him develop an interest in fashion and makeup, and we began to share clothes and gossip. Plus, I was able to explore the other side of my bisexuality freely. It felt like our relationship was stronger than ever.

Then he dropped the bomb. He wanted to break up with me, because he wanted to explore a relationship with a guy. He said it like with the same ditzy blonde intonation my roommate used to use (one of the reasons I sort of hated her). I tried to hold strong. I grinned as he told me; I said I accepted it. Inside I was crying.

Reading and Research

It was a question I had been asking myself ever since I swapped bodies with Caroline -- why was she even in college? She didn’t seem to care much about reading or researching how or why we could’ve swapped bodies, leaving all the work to me. She did, however, seem greatly concerned with how I was choosing to dress her body while we were swapped. I still couldn’t believe that was more worried about that than finding a solution.

Several months later, I was still looking for answers; she was failing all my classes in my male body. However, at this point I was beginning to think I would be spending the rest of my life s Caroline, and I was starting to think I would have to get used to it. At least she no longer picked out the clothes I would wear each day, and I could go to the library in something comfortable....

Pledge

“What the hell is going on here?” Michelle asked looking down at her now larger and hairier hands.

“OMG!” Derek exclaimed, “You don’t know? There was a whole thing a few years back about hazing and harassment an stuff. Now as part of the pledge process, the frats together with the sororities to have pledges swap bodies for a bit. I think it’s supposed to teach empathy so, like, we don’t take advantage of you at parties or whatever.”

“That’s what it’s supposed to teach you; what the heck is this supposed to teach ME!?”

Derek shrugged. He was pretty sure he wasn’t going to learn anything anyway.

Even Better

Tammy had found Adam to be a more than a little annoying. She had only agree to tutor him for one simple reason -- he paid her, and it was a very generous amount. She certainly never expected to swap bodies with the guy in the middle of one of their study sessions.

“Oh, Dude!” Adam exclaimed as he looked down at Tammy’s body, “This is awesome!”

Tammy had been looking in the mirror, horrified that she was now inside Adam’s body, but the statement caused her to snap her head back to look at him. “You’d better not do anything weird while in my body,” She said.

“Oh, no! Nothing like that! I’ll be respectful and, like, a perfect gentleman. I won’t even do anything when in the shower or using the bathroom or nothing! But this situation is even better than all that -- because now I don’t need to study; you can just take the tests for me!”

Miss

Melissa walked up to her former body and looked down as it sat at the bench where they had agreed to meet. She was going to miss being this tall for sure.

“Are you ready to swap back Professor Lee?” Brent asked from inside her body.

“No,” She replied bluntly, “I’m going to miss a lot about being you.”

“It’s not fair that I already missed out on an entire semester of college while those eggheads worked on a way to swap us back to normal.”

“I know. It’s not fair. I’m just going to miss a lot about being you. I liked being young again for a while, even if I had to do it in a guy’s body.”

“I won’t miss being a woman. Menopause sucks.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that.”

First Month at College

Morgan was surprised to see her former body with a big smile on it. She couldn’t remember the last time she had smiled. She had experienced a lot of bullying growing up -- due to either her mixed race heritage in a small, rural, white town; or due to the fact that she was overweight; or both.

But Jay seemed to be beaming from inside Morgan’s body. Of course, Morgan knew why. Jay was a transwoman.

Jay had also grown up in a rural town, and she often hid who she truly was behind a male exterior that was expected of her. For Jay, being inside of Morgan’s body was a dream. She had only recent started hormones thanks to the college health office, but a body swap? Well, it skipped all of that. Morgan was happy to be a part of it, and -- to be honest -- she kind of liked being in Jay’s body, just not nearly as much as Jay seemed to enjoy being in hers.

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.

What a Day

Chris sat down after explaining just how the old science equipment might have caused the body swap between him and Rita, but he realized it didn’t really matter much; she wasn’t exactly the smartest pupil at college.

So he sighed, attempting to dumb it down for her. Saying that they swapped bodies due to some science stuff, and that given enough time, he might be able to switch them back to normal.

Under normal circumstances, Rita might not trust a nerdy guy like Chris, but considering he was currently the one in her body, she generally wanted to trust what her own face was saying -- even if it all seemed very confusing to her.

Still, he was only asking for a day, and she figured she could give him that....

Solutioning

Professor Whatley’s jaw dropped. Emily Chen had only been in his body for a few hours, and she was solving equations that had stumped him for years.

“Do you know what this means?” He asked her.

“That we’re one step closer to nuclear power plants? with no toxic waste” She asked looking over her work.

“Well, yes, but it also means that if you solved that equation, you can probably also figure out the problems I was having with the machine that was preventing us from swapping back to our own bodies.”

She looked at it again, then she looked at him. “But I couldn’t solve this yesterday when I was in my own body. And neither could you. And you can’t solve it now.” Emily sighed.

“What’s your point?” He asked, though he already had a good idea what she was implying.

“My brain in your body solved this problem. Think of what else I could solve. If we swap back, that might all be lost.”

She was right. He hated that she was right, but she was right.

Re-Invent

It is often said that college is a time to re-invent oneself. Whether you were cool or a nerd or the class clown in high school, no one in college would be aware of any of it. That was especially true in the years following the Great Shift when people had a particular interest in trying to forge a new life with whatever new body they might now have.

Sydney was particularly happy when he arrived at college, and people perceived him as the bookish woman he appeared to be. He never had to tell people he was once a jock or the star of the football team. He felt like he would finally be appreciated for his brain, and he was more than happy to play up the part. He acted shy with nervous waves; he wore skirts when he went out. No one even asked who he was before, and no one cared. And he loved that.

Extra Credit (Episode 2)

View Episode 1 of Extra Credit.

Dumb Townie

Though his hometown had a pretty notable college, Will never thought he was smart enough to go there. He started a career in the trades and often felt made fun of by the college kids and often heard them snicker “dumb townie” in his direction. It didn’t bother him so much, he just wished he could get a drink at a local bar in peace.

When Soo approached him at the bar, he thought she was going to make fun of him too. But she actually ended up being kind of nice. She even asked him out, and they went on a few dates.

But she soon had a favor to ask: if he would help test something she was working on for her graduate studies. She said a lot of technical stuff Will didn’t understand before mentioning a body swap machine.

The thing ended up working and Will found himself in Soo’s body with Soo in Will’s. But for some reason, it wouldn’t swap them back. Soo started working on it, and Will offered to help. But she snapped at him, telling her she hadn’t loved him and the whole thing had been a ruse as no one else had been willing to test the machine with her, but she figured tricking a “dumb townie” would be easy.

Will found himself running off crying. It was only a short while later when he picked up a book in the library that things got weird. He understood the complex equations. He not only had Soo’s body but important chunks of her knolwedge as well. If he wanted, he could single-handedly fix the body swapper. Then again, it might just be more fun watching Soo continue to squirm with his dumb mind.

Miss Personality

Angie gave a reluctant wave to her friends, but she felt disgusted looking at them. They were dressed in pink, preppy clothes with bubbly personalities; it all reminded her of how she had been just a few days ago. That was before the personality swap with Spike.

Slipping into his gutter punk aesthetics was easy. Pulling from thrift stores and even swiping some of Spike’s old clothes was a no-brainer. There was a subculture for it on the college campus. She imagined it was all much more difficult for him -- trying to fit into his dropout crust punk lifestyle with her perky preppiness.

However, external styles were the simple part of the personality swap. The fact that she now felt like a guy trapped in a woman’s body was a much more difficult struggle. And seeing all these femme, preppy girls was somehow making it that much worse...

Extra Credit

Fine!

“What do you think you’re doing?” Ellen Carver scolded the student in her body, “My body is much too old to dress like that! Do you plan to go to my classes and teach looking like that!? You’re going to get me fired!”

“Well, my girlfriend saw how you were dressing her body, and she told me to get revenge,” Lyle scoffed inside Ms. Carver’s body. “I’m not happy to be doing it. But she’s also not exactly thrilled with the fact that I’m in your middle aged body right now, and she will absolutely break up with me if I don’t do as she says while we’re all swapped.”

“What’s wrong with the way I’m dressing her body?”

“You’re making her look like a prude! But the solution is simple. We go to the bathroom, and we switch outfits.”

Ellen took one look at the pink sparkly shirt and short skirt. She didn’t want to dress like that, but she relented. “Fine!” She stammered.

Tuition (Part 2)

View Part 1 of Tuition.

I often didn’t give much thought to the differences between being a woman and being a man. I used whatever bathroom I felt like using; I wore clothes from either side of the store. Basically, despite the technical changes to my body, I tried not to think about it.

Yet sometimes it proved unavoidable.

As my professor gave a lecture of particle physics, I found myself distracted. It was like I was focusing on him and yet my eyes were just glazing over, looking past his words. Somehow I was deeply enamoured yet ignoring everything. And then all at once it hit me; I was aroused; I had a crush on my professor!

It was the first moment I could remember being attracted to...well...anyone since first becoming a woman. I tried to think about what I used to do as a guy in this situation. Think about baseball? Nope, not working; I just ended up imagining this guy in a uniform. It wasn’t as sexy as a nerdy professor, but it was...I was mid-though admiring him when he asked me a question.

“Hot?” I said with a questioning tone, praying it had something to do with exothermic reactions.