Chapter 1: The Unexpected Visitor
The crunch of gravel under tires was my five-minute warning. I’d seen the dust plume from Andrea’s beat-up Jeep coming down the long driveway. I shoved the last empty protein bar wrapper into the recycling and gave the living room a cursory glance. It looked the same as always: clean, quiet, a little sterile. The sunset was doing most of the work, painting the pines outside the floor-to-ceiling windows in streaks of orange and deep violet.
I opened the heavy front door just as she killed the engine. Andrea bounded out, her spiky hair a dark silhouette against the fading light.
“You’re letting the bugs in, Zygurski!” she called, grabbing an overnight bag from the passenger seat.
“They’re more interesting than most of my guests,” I said, but my words trailed off as a second figure unfolded herself from the back seat.
Jennifer. Andrea’s friend, the quiet one. She moved with a deliberate, almost apologetic slowness, hefting a fluffy pink bag that looked like it belonged to a cartoon character. She gave me a small, tentative wave, her honey-blonde hair catching the last of the sun.
“Surprise!” Andrea announced, slinging an arm around Jennifer’s shoulders. “Jen needed a weekend away from campus. I said the hermit’s fortress was perfect.”
“Oh,” I said, adjusting my glasses. “Yeah. Sure. Hi, Jen.”
“Hi, Justin,” she said, her voice so soft I almost didn’t hear it over the cicadas starting up. “Thank you for having me.”
“No problem. Mi casa es… well, it’s just my house.” I stepped aside to let them in. Jennifer’s eyes went wide as she took in the high ceilings and the wall of glass. She was wearing a top that looked like a long-sleeved shirt but was made of some kind of ribbed, stretchy material, and it ended several inches above the waistband of her jeans. When she walked past me, I caught a faint, sweet scent, like vanilla and something else.
“Still looks like a tech bro’s showroom,” Andrea declared, dropping her bag on my pristine concrete floor. “Needs more life. More mess.”
“I have the garage for mess,” I said. “Which, speaking of… I found something weird. Really weird.”
That got her attention. Andrea lived for weird. Jen just hovered, her hands clasped in front of her, watching me.
“Weird how?” Andrea asked, already prowling toward the kitchen. “Weird like you finally got a girlfriend? Because that would be weird.”
“Weird like… extraterrestrial, maybe.” I went to the locked display case next to my bookshelf, keyed in the code, and carefully lifted out the object. It was heavier than it looked, a oblong slab of brushed grey metal about the size of a TV remote, but thicker. It had no visible seams, no buttons, just a single, shallow crystalline depression on one face that pulsed with a very faint, internal blue light.
“Whoa,” Andrea breathed, instantly ditching the beer she’d just pulled from the fridge. “What is that?”
“I don’t know. I was walking the north tree line after that big storm last week. Found a small, perfectly circular crater. No burn marks, no debris. Just this, sitting in the center, cool to the touch.” I placed it gently on the glass coffee table. “It doesn’t respond to X-rays, ultrasound, electrical current… nothing. But that light pulses. It’s alive, or powered, somehow.”
Jen crept closer, her hazel eyes fixed on the device. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
“It’s a paperweight until I figure it out,” I said, though I was absurdly proud of their reaction.
Andrea scooped it up before I could stop her. “Hey, careful!”
“Relax, it’s not a grenade.” She turned it over in her hands, then pointed the crystalline end at Jen. “Smile, Jen! Say ‘probing’!”
“Andrea, don’t—” I started.
She pressed her thumb into the crystal depression.
It wasn’t a sound. It was a silent concussive force, a wave of blinding white-blue light that filled the room. It felt like every atom in my body was being torn apart, stretched into an infinite thin string, and then ruthlessly snapped back together.
The world returned in a dizzying, nauseating rush.
I was on the floor. The polished concrete was cold against my… my cheek. I tried to push myself up.
The first shock was the hands that planted on the floor. Small. Slender. With perfectly manicured, shiny pink nails. A delicate silver ring on the right ring finger. They were not my hands.
A thick cascade of honey-blonde hair fell across my field of vision. My vision. But higher. The perspective was all wrong. The coffee table looked taller. The room seemed… bigger.
I tried to say “What the hell?” but what came out was a higher, softer, panicked warble. The voice alone sent a bolt of pure terror straight down my spine.
My body felt alien. A deep, heavy ache settled in my chest, a strange weight pulling forward. I looked down.
The view was obstructed by two significant curves, sheathed in the thin, ribbed fabric of Jen’s top. I felt them, truly felt them for the first time—the dense, soft weight of them, the slight pull on my shoulders, the way they shifted with my ragged breath. A jolt, hot and sharp, went through me. I was suddenly, acutely aware of the soft push of inner flesh against fabric, the subtle, unfamiliar sway.
I scrambled to get my feet under me. My center of balance was completely different. Lower. My hips felt wider, my thighs… thicker. As I stood, a profound, unsettling wobble propagated through my lower body—the shift of weight in my backside, the inner brush of my thighs against each other. I was wearing jeans, but they felt like they belonged to someone else, tight across the hips and thighs in a way my own never were.
My feet, in cute ankle socks, felt tiny and precarious. I took a step and stumbled, the motion sending a ripple through everything. The weight on my chest moved independently, a soft, persistent jiggle that anchored me in a horrifying, undeniable reality.
Across from me, still holding the device, was… me. My own body. My familiar face, with my glasses slightly askew, stared back with an expression of stunned, silent wonder. It brought its hands—my hands—up, turning them over, flexing the fingers. It touched my own face, my own stubble. Then it looked down at the front of my simple t-shirt, at the flat, familiar plane of the chest, and a slow, incredulous smile spread across my features.
“Justin?” The word came from my own mouth, in my own voice, but the inflection was all wrong. It was breathy with awe.
“What did you do?” My question—Jen’s voice, high and trembling—screeched out. I clutched at my throat. The feel of it was all wrong. The Adam’s apple was gone. The column was smoother, softer under my fingertips.
“I… I pressed the button,” Andrea said. She was standing by the kitchen island, untouched, her eyes wide with absolutely delighted shock. She wasn’t scared. She was thrilled. “Holy shit. It’s a bodyswap remote. You freaking nerd, you found a bodyswap remote!”
The person in my body—Jen—took an experimental step. It watched my legs move with a look of profound fascination. Then it did a little hop. “Whoa,” it said, and the baritone of my own laugh followed. “The center of gravity is so different!”
“Stop it!” I shouted, the sound painfully feminine to my own ears. “Stop moving me! Jen, is that you? Get out!”
Jen-in-my-body looked at me, and I saw my own brown eyes wide with a mix of fear and something else… a burning, hungry curiosity. “I… I’m in here, Justin,” my voice said. “And you’re… there.” She looked down at herself—at myself—and a faint blush crept up my neck. Her hands hovered over my chest, not touching. “This is so… strange.”
A fresh wave of terror closed in. I became aware of other things. The gentle pressure of a bra strap on my shoulder. The slight pinch of the underwire. The empty, airy feeling between my legs where something substantial should have been, replaced by a soft, tucked absence. The brush of long hair against my bare neck and back, a sensation both intimate and disturbing. My own mouth felt different—smaller, the lips fuller. When I ran my tongue over my teeth, the arch felt narrower.
“We need to switch back,” I said, forcing the words through the strange, pliant mouth. “Jen, give me the device. Andrea, help.”
I took a step toward my body. The movement was a cascade of unfamiliar physics. The world didn’t move with me; parts of me moved separately, following a half-second later with a soft, persistent sway. I felt the full, round weight of my new breasts drag forward against the fabric, then settle. I felt the heavier, broader curve of my hips pivot. My walk was unsteady, a teeter in socks on a smooth floor.
Jen-in-my-body took a step back, clutching the device to my chest. “Wait,” she said. My own face was flushing. “Just… wait a second. Let me think.”
“Think? There’s nothing to think about! Press the button again! Point it at us and press it!”
“I don’t know if that’s how it works!” she fired back, and it was so bizarre hearing my own voice plead. “What if it does something worse? What if we get stuck in her body?” She gestured with my chin toward Andrea, who raised her hands.
“No thanks, I’m good. I’m the control group. This is amazing.”
I was within arm’s reach now. I lunged for the device. Jen-in-my-body yelped and twisted away. I, in her smaller, softer form, was clumsy and off-balance. I stumbled into my own chest—a firm, masculine wall I knew intimately but had never collided with from the outside. The impact resonated through me, a dull thud against the softer, more vulnerable flesh of Jen’s torso.
I recoiled, horrified by the sensation. My own hands came up to press against the ache in my chest, and the feeling of soft, giving flesh under my palms made my stomach lurch.
“Just give it to me!” I begged, my voice cracking.
Jen-in-my-body looked down at me—a full head taller now. In my own eyes, I saw a flicker of something like guilt, but it was quickly swallowed by a hard, possessive gleam. She took a firm, steadying breath with my lungs.
“No,” she said, my voice low and firm. “Not yet.”