You've been absentmindedly drumming your fingers along your knees in the waiting room for at least a half-hour when an attractive woman in a lab coat that you feel she's wearing more for show than due to credentials appears in the doorway and says your name. You pull yourself out of the chair that your rear end may as well have been married to, and offer a handshake. "My name's Carol McCabe," she says, flashing you a smile of stock photo perfection. "I hope you weren't kept waiting too long," she follows up, and you notice you've been staring for just a second too long. "Not at all," you murmur, giving a side-eyed glance at the waiting room attendant, another attractive young woman. "Well then, come right this way," Carol says, stepping back through the door she appeared through.
Her heels click against the linoleum floor resoundingly. "This place is like a sci-fi movie," you say. The high ceilings, platinum-gray walls, and dim lighting remind you of what you'd imagine Area 51 to look like. "Trust me," says Carol, "What we do here is crazier than what you've seen in any sci-fi-fi movie."
You'd only heard a little bit about this place; it was the first facility of its kind, the procedures that they conducted here were highly experimental, and they focused on... neurology? You couldn't quite remember. But your casual interest in tech, need for cash, and newfound attraction to this woman Carol McCabe seemed reason enough to go along with it. Maybe after they ran their focus groups or whatever, you and Carol could go out for dinner. And maybe if dinner went well, the two of you could go clubbing.
Mentally planning out a long and fruitful life with Carol diverted your attention away from Carol stopping next to a doorway, and you nearly bumped into her. "Sorry about that..." you mutter. She smiles. "It's a long hallway, it happens to the best of us."
You follow her into a room that's more like an average doctor's office that you'd visit for a physical than a room in which freaky experiments are conducted. "You can sit down right there," Carol said, nodding in the direction of a lightly padded cot. You sit, feeling it creak beneath your weight. Carol pulls a clipboard off the wall and sits down on a swivel chair. You notice her name tag reads "Dr. McCabe". So she really is a doctor.
She writes some information down on the clipboard, muttering to herself what she's writing. Sounds like all the basic information she should know: your name, the date, et cetera.
"How old are you?" Carol asks.
"Twenty-three," you answer.
"Height and weight?"
"Five-eleven, and, uhh... I wanna say one-sixty-five?"
"And your reason for this appointment?"
"I'm in need of some cold hard cash," you say, trying to come off as cool despite having just mentioned your less-than-desirable financial situation. She doesn't bat an eye as she writes it down, so it either doesn't affect her attraction to you or the attraction was never there in the first place.
"Now, I have to ask, because there's so many people who come here not knowing exactly what it is we do here. So, do you know what we do here?"
"Truthfully, I don't," you answer. She writes that down. "It has something to do with neurology, right?" You stammer, to combat her disappointment. She chuckles. "Yeah, it has something to do with neurology," she says. She boots up the computer on her desk and you're surprised to see a hologram image pop up in front of you. Seeing your reaction, she smiles, and says, "You haven't seen anything."
An attractive man in a lab coat smiles at you from the video.
"Hello, I'm Dr. Scott Grayson, and welcome to the Grayson Research Facility for Experimental Body Swap Technology," he says in a movie-star voice. "If you're viewing this, it's because you have no idea why you're here. And that's okay! Here at Grayson, we aim to be pioneers in a technology that, before us, was the stuff of science fiction: swapping two consciousnesses between physical vessels, or, in the layman's terms: body swapping.
"For all of time, problems have arisen due to the constraints of only having one body throughout your life: gender dysphoria, vegetative states, and just getting old are all crutches in human existence. But no longer! With our brand new technology, we've found a way to transfer one person's consciousness-"
A graphic of a man pops up in the hologram.
"-into another body."
The brain of the man goes from the original body to a female body.
"So again," says Dr. Grayson's hologram. "Welcome to Grayson Research, or as we like to say- 'Welcome to the Future'!" Dr. Grayson gives a white-toothed wink, and the video powers down.
"So... body swapping," you say. "That doesn't sound all too... real."
"It's brand new," says Carol, "Which is why we need people like you to try out the technology."
You look at your hands. You've had these hands your whole life. It would be so odd to see someone else's... to use someone else's. On the other hand, though, it may be cool.
"So, how long would I be in this other person's body?" you ask.
Carol gulps slightly. "Given how experimental this procedure is, at this moment we're only prepared to offer a one-way swap."
"So... I wouldn't be able to go back to my body?" you ask.
"Exactly," she says. "Additionally, you would not be allowed to tell anybody about the swap."
"This is a lot to take in," you say. You think about your friends, your family. You wouldn't be able to see them again if you swapped bodies. You also like your body; you're a handsome guy in his early twenties. All your instincts tell you not to do it.
"Look," you say. "Thank you for the offer, but I just don't think I can accept."
"I was worried you'd say that," she says. Before you can react, she pulls out a syringe and injects it into your neck in a fluid motion. You pass out before she finishes pumping it.
-----
You seem to be swimming in a tunnel of blackness. Random objects are floating all around you. Five seemingly random objects stop floating past you and start to hover right in front of you. Something in the back of your head told you to reach out and grab one.
Which one do you choose?
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