PortalTech

PortalTech had just been introduced into the market earlier in the year, and stations were popping up everywhere. If you bought one for your home as well, you could simply program where you wanted to go, step inside, and you’d be there in an instant.

Ashley and Trent had bought one for their home. They thought they’d try it out with a quick trip to the mall. So they set the destination, grabbed each other’s hand, and stepped inside. A moment later, they were at the mall...but inside of each other’s bodies!

Ashley, now inside Trent’s body, pressed the help screen next to the mall portal. A woman appeared on the screen. She was an AI assistant, but she certainly looked real.

“The portal swapped our bodies!” Ashley explained.

“Users are required to step through the portal one at a time. Violation of proper use terms voids warrenties; rendering PortalTech harmless,” The AI assistant said.

“But how do we swap back to normal! Do we walk through together again?”

“PortalTech cannot advise violating terms of use.”

“So how do we get back to normal? How do we fix this?”

“PortalTech detects no anomalies. If you would like additional assistance, please provide an email, and PortalTech will respond within six to eight weeks.”

Tourists

“I know that teleporting out brainwaves into the bodies of locals is way cheaper than flying, but did you know they were going to put us both in women’s bodies when you booked it?” Robert asked his wife.

“Women’s bodies here were significantly cheaper,” Betsy explained, “Maybe you’ll learn to appreciate me better being like that for a few weeks while we try to truly embrace the culture here. It also feels nice to be the taller one for a bit! Not that you’re new little body isn’t cute as well!”

“Oh, shut up. I know you’re loving this, but I hate it. I’m just thankful she had a few button up shirts and pants in her wardrobe.”

Other End (Part 2)

A few seconds later, Edward looked at his surroundings. He was certainly no longer at the beach, but inside a rather sterile office. He was feeling excited that the teleporter had actually worked and he celebrated until he remembered what the woman was saying right before this thing started to work. She mentioned swapping.

Then he looked down. He had become a woman!

“What the hell!?” He screamed.

“Were you not told about the swapping?” A man asked.

“I guess it was mentioned, but you made me a chick! I thought this was a teleporter!”

“You signed the release, Ma'am -- er, Sir. It clearly stated that it only teleports minds and not the physical body with no guarantee about the type of body you’ll end up with.”

“Well, I want to go back!”

“You’ll have to wait for the next participant.”

“She ran off with my body!?”

“It was all in the release, Sir.”

Other End

Edward couldn’t help but notice the odd device set up on the sidewalk not far from the beach.

“What the hell is this?” He asked the woman tending to it.

“It’s a teleporter,” She said.

“Seriously? Cool. Are you guys demonstrating? Can I use it?”

“Yes, you’l be teleported to our corporate office, but --”

“Naw, whatever it is, I’m in.”

“Okay, but you at least need to sign these consent forms.”

Edward quickly signed and then waited. Finally he asked what he hold up was.” “Any second now,” The woman explained, “We’re just waiting for someone to agree to swap with you on the other end.”

“Swap with -- ?” Edward was cut off as the teleporter began to activate.

Enjoying a Vacation

Teleportation pods were installed in about half a dozen places at first, but within a short time period there were hundreds all over the globe (and a few on the moon and Mars as well). It was simple, you sat in an object that looked like a chair, type in your destination along with your departure and return time into the keypad on the armrest, then the pod would get to work. It would search for another pod at the location specified, once two people matched, it would transmit each person’s brain into the other’s body. This allowed for instant transit across many miles.

Of course, there was no guarantee about the body you’d end up in. Byron was using the teleportation pods for the first time and was a little surprised to find himself in a woman’s body. He was probably a foot shorter, over a hundred pounds thinner, and pasty white. He chuckled to himself imagining this woman now that she was an overweight, balding black man. He was enjoying this vacation already.

Crap Shoot (Part 2)

Click here for Part 1.

After hanging up on the call with his boss, Martin smiled. He may have pretended to not enjoy swapping with a woman with the teleporters, but he actually preferred it! He always made sure to schedule plenty of time before and after meetings to explore the women’s bodies he teleported into. Today would be no exception!

With still a fair amount of time before the meeting, he was ready to get down to business beforehand. He ran his hand up his nylon clad leg and his grin got even bigger. He could tell this was one of the best bodies he’s gotten yet!

Crap Shoot

“Just wanted you to know I arrived safely this morning, and I’ll be at the meeting with the investors in a few hours,” Martin said into the phone.

His boss was on the other end, nervous as always.

Martin continued, addressing his boss’s concerns, “The teleporter worked fine. Yeah, I got another’s woman’s body this time. You know how the selection process goes for these last minute trips. It was either this or a guy who looked like a drug addict. And don’t worry, she’d completely presentable.”

Martin waited as his boss complained about the last female body he teleported into for a meeting, who didn’t own a single piece of respectable clothing. The body he got this time was nice with a good wardrobe appropriate for the meeting he had. But teleporting technology was kind of a crap shoot. Sure, you got there instantly, but you had to swap with someone who was in that physical location who also had an interest in being in your physical location. That being said, it sure made taking a meeting halfway across the country on short notice much easier.

Transporter malfunction

“O’Brien is working on finding the transporter malfunction,” Picard assured Troi, “We hopefully won’t be like this for long.”

Having her half-Betazoid body, Picard could sense her sadness even before her soft face started to form tears. It was weird for him to see her gentle features on his body, and he was sure it was even harder for her to see him. He wasn’t even sure O’Brien could reverse the malfunction that caused their bodies to be mixed up like this, but he knew he had to be hopeful for her sake.

Blue

Steve sighed. He knew teleportation was a new technology, but he had used it three times for business now and three times something weird had happened. The first time, he had selected a body to swap with at his destination and there was a mixup resulting in him swapping with the wrong person. The next time they couldn’t find his body on the return trip, resulting in a multi-day delay. And now this! He had selected the woman to swap with at his destination due to her professional-looking photo. It turned out she had since dyed her hair, and he felt completely silly.

He did consider flying, of course, but it seemed like such a waste to take an eight hour flight for a day of meetings abroad. Instead, it seemed much more logical to use the teleportation service. Your mind would simply swap with someone at the destination of your choice. It was instant and easy. Then again, he was now going to have to go to important meetings with a body that had blue hair. He had also requested that she wear “professional attire,” which she clearly hadn’t. He knew it wasn’t too hard to go to a store and buy a skirt suit, but he also knew he didn’t have time to go to a salon for a dye job. He sighed again. Other people he had met with encountered situations that were similar with the teleportation service. Everyone seemed to overlook them, but they were growing increasingly frustrating. If the company couldn’t get this sort of thing worked out, he couldn’t imagine they’d succeed in the long run, even given the amazing convenience they brought to the world of travel.

Early Adopter (Part 3)

Click here for Part 1.
Click here for Part 2.

Jack had nearly finished the coffee and was feeling much better. He was ready to head back to the hotel room to browse the suitcase of clothes this woman had left him with. Due to the nature of his meetings, he had requested “professional attire.” Of course, this too was a bit of hit-or-miss situation with the people you’d swap into when teleporting. It wouldn’t surprise him to find a suitcase full of ripped jeans up there -- it has happened to him before. Luckily, if the swapper doesn’t provide the requested attire, Jack can always notify the teleportation company and get reimbursed. Any such expenses are added to the other person’s final bill. It’s something Jack felt a little bit bad about last time, but he really doesn’t get much of a choice when it happens.

Early Adopter (Part 2)

Click here for Part 1.

Even after just one sip of coffee, Jack felt so much better. He couldn’t wait for teleporter technology to be more embraced. The more people who participated, the more choices of people to swap with, and the less likely to end up in a body that was hungover. Plus, considering his co-workers who had traveled by plane got up hours earlier and were still in transit, he had plenty of time to get over this.

He took another sip of coffee.

The hot liquid sliding down his throat felt so comforting. He savored each sip.

Early Adopter

The teleporter was an invention that didn’t catch on right away. Even though it allowed you to travel to any place on the globe in a matter of seconds and even though it was cheap, the idea of sending only your thoughts to the destination and spending a few days or weeks with someone else’s body just seemed very weird to a lot of people.

Jack was an early adopter. He had a different business meeting just about every week in some other place, so spending a little less time on a plane was a huge time saver. The selection of people to swap with was always pretty sparse. This time around, he could only pick between a 25 year old woman and an 80 year old man. He picked the woman.

After arriving at the teleporter station, the staff hooked him into a machine, and moments later, he was at his destination, strapped into a similar machine, now in the woman’s body. He felt hungover and tired. This was fairly common for people using teleporters -- to really live it up the night before, knowing they wouldn’t be the ones to deal with any of the consequences the next morning. The first thing he did was check into the hotel room where he’d be staying while in this body, but he had a more important task that he decided to tackle next; he needed to find some coffee!

Consciousness

Artie was feeling pretty proud of himself. He had just used his latest invention to send his consciousness halfway across the country and into another person’s body. He had no way to aim the thing, so the woman whose body he was now inside of was an unwilling participant. And, of course, he had no way to return his consciousness without his machine, so he’d have to just take this body, get in a car, and start driving. It was going to be a little weird to spend the next couple days inside someone else’s body, particularly a woman’s, but he was just so glad his invention worked. It was going to be revolutionary; he just needed a way to sell or market this thing.

Business Trip

Peter couldn’t understand why there were some people who still insisted on traveling by airplane. Teleportation technology was cheaper and much faster. Your brain was uploaded into a computer and downloaded into someone else’s body at your destination while their brain was downloaded into your body for the same period. Peter figured that some people just felt weird about spending a little time in someone else’s body, but he saw it as an opportunity for new experiences. Every time he arrived at the teleportation center, he tried to select people who were as different from him as possible. It was always a good idea to select a lot of people, in order to ensure a match for your travel. Peter always selected a lot. For his latest business trip, he didn’t get his first choice, but he also couldn’t complain. For the first time ever, a woman had agreed to teleport with him for the duration of the visit. His first pick was a little younger, but the blond woman’s body he got was still quite different from his own. In a word, she was hot. The leather pants and heels were a particular surprise. The one hang up he did have was that he insisted on still going to a hotel. Some teleporters often offered their home, but while he felt more than comfortable in someone else’s body, staying in someone else’s home still felt weird.

Meeting (Part 4)

Click here for Part 1.
Click here for Part 2.
Click here for Part 3.

After two long days, Thomas was glad to be teleporting back home into his own body. He waited as they uploaded his brain into the computer. “Welcome home, Miss Jennings.” A voice said. Thomas was shocked, even more than when he teleported into Ming’s body -- at least he expected to be a female. He started demanding answers. It seems that with all the meeting delays and pushing back his return time, there had been a screw up. The teleportation company had lost his body! They told him it didn’t happen very often, and that they usually found a person’s rightful body within a few days. Thomas didn’t want to be stuck in someone else’s body for a minute longer, let alone a few days. He was certainly regretting his travel decision!

Meeting (Part 3)

Click here for Part 1.
Click here for Part 2.

The meeting finally happened the next day, and Thomas was thankful to return home and to his own body as soon as possible, except their foreign business partners insisted on treating everyone for drinks. Thomas tried to decline, but his boss told him that he had to go (and he pushed for Thomas to change into something sexier). Knowing Ming owned plenty of sexier clothing, he went back to her place, changed, then met the others at the bar. He was uncomfortable before, but now it was even worse. As he ordered a beer, he could tell his co-workers were checking him out also. They’d probably be hitting on him all night...despite knowing who he really was. Plus, he probably wouldn’t be able to teleport home until morning.

Meeting (Part 2)

Click here for Part 1.

Thomas cringed at the fact that he was going to have to spend longer in Ming’s body, but at least he saw it as an opportunity to find something more appropriate to wear to his meeting. He went back to Ming’s home to change. While she may have had a plethora of designer clothing, there wasn’t much that he felt very comfortable wearing and even less that he felt was appropriately modest enough. Ultimately, he decided that he would wear a black dress. It showed more leg and cleavage than he would like, but most everything else she owned was much worse. He sighed. He just wanted this meeting to be over with and to teleport back home and back into his own body.

Meeting

All of Thomas’s friends had been raving about the new teleporting technology that had just been introduced a little over a year ago. Your brain was uploaded into a computer and could be zapped halfway around the world into a host body a few seconds later -- making air travel look pathetically slow in comparison. Thomas had been hesitant to embrace the new tech, but a last minute meeting schedule in China for work forced him into using it. Of course, much like air travel, scheduling in advance allows for a better choice of seats and a lower price, so too with teleporting. Thomas merely had to accept whatever body was left. Her name was Ming. It turned out she made a living by being a host. She was always available for a last minute swap since they paid the most money. Thomas felt completely awkward and uncomfortable in her body. Her expensive designer clothes hugged and pinched him in all the wrong ways. His legs felt exposed in the short skirt, and he felt off-balance in the high heels. He just wanted to get to this meeting and get back home. But when he arrived, it seemed that too many people hadn’t been able to make it on such short notice. The meeting had been delayed, and he’d be stuck in Ming’s body for another day waiting for everyone else to arrive.

Teleport

Over the course of five years, teleporter technology had completely bankrupted the airlines. It became the only way to travel long distance. Justin was still a little skeptical of the new technology, but he was forced into using it due to a last minute business trip to Japan. There was just something unsettling to him about spending the week in someone else’s body .-- That’s how the technology worked. It didn’t teleport your body, only your mind. -- Due to the last minute booking, the body selection was minimal. He ultimately picked out a young woman. In only an instant after entering the telepoter, he was in her body overseas. The first thing he noticed was how short he now was, barely over five feet. Next, he went to meet up with his cab. While some stayed in the home of the bodies they inhabited, Justin felt uncomfortable with that and insisted on a hotel. He’d probably need to get a women’s suit for this meeting as well, as he guessed this body didn’t own anything nice enough to help close a seven figure deal with.

Some rights reservedAttribution Photo by Surya

Some rights reservedAttribution Caption added by Great Shift Captions