S.W.A.P

Ref_ID.4899132 Kazanna : 0627 : 20 : 10 : 2017

My eyes open and slowly adjust to the delicate lights that are the sun, moon and stars of my new life. It might be the globes, but the colours in this small room all look different somehow, perhaps there is something wrong with his eyes. My eyes now, I correct myself. I sit up and activate the screezer. My vision is instantly changed to the Netverse, opening on the home page of the personal profile of my body's previous occupant. I do not even feel the lazers shooting the image onto his eyes, but if anything that only makes the technology more exciting. And there I go thinking they are his again - perhaps I should just give up and think about the body swap, let my mind deal with what has happened. I slump his too-heavy shoulders back against the cushioned wall of the cacoon and let out a sigh. It is a pathetic, almost shrill sound; the chest muscles of the body's former occupant are weak and atrophied from underuse. Time to change that. I deactivate the screezer. Immediately his undermaintained netverse homepage is replace by his unkempt cacoon. Fridge, sink, vacuum toilet-tube, retractable shower jets, hidden compartments and too many cushions. No place to stand – the entire room is a one person bed surface on which one can at best kneel. I take one last moment to breath in the luxury of which I have always dreamed, and then pop the hatch at my feet. Now is not the time for criticism of these peoples' way of life, its time to enjoy their world. My world now. I jump down from the cocoon entrance and instantly regret it, as his – no my – weak feet take the full impact of the cold glass floor. I then remember that everyone here wears shoes – high-tech cloud boots - and quickly grab the pair from in my pod and slip his feet into them. The boots expand and mould about my new flabby feet, much as the cacoon has my new body these past twenty hours.

I commence a kind of jerking run along the hallway. On either side of me there are two stories of cacoon entrances, spanning from floor to ceiling and all the way down the never-ending length of the clinically white hall. I know that within each there must be another citizen, busily engaging in some fascinating dimension of the Netverse, but the only signs of life are the occasional vicarious decorations with which some individualistic cacoon owner has seen fit to adorn the entrance to their otherwise drab abodes. I wonder how often people actually see these doors, I can't see anyone else in the hallway.

The last vestiges of the sleeping drug are being pumped out of my brain. Excitement and adrenalin now coarse through me, and are making me dizzy. The feeling is something like the time I was stuck out in the desert for two days without water, although instead of feeling like dying I find I have too much energy for my body to translate into motion. My brain doesn't quite know how to run in a man's body and I keep stubbing the oversized toes. The Trafficker assured me that the surgery always achieves perfect nerve fusion, but I have to wonder if he just said that to get Father's Thorium supplies. Whatever the case I don't mind. All my life I have wanted to live in the First World. Be a citizen, surf the netverse, live my life. And now here I am.

I finally round a corner. My new lungs are now gasping like some foolhardy prehistoric fish venturing onto land for the first time. I lean against a glass window and stare out the side of my new home. Far below the ocean crashes against the imperial white hull of the city-ship. New La Jolla. Radiating out from the habitation pod huge green algae farms form a flower about the stamen that is the city proper. I know that somewhere in the levels above me are gardens and skyscrapers from the original La Jolla, I must see them soon. The Trafficker told me that before the Great Parting this city used to be situated on the Californian Coast. Now, in swimming perpetual languid laps around the great pacific gyre it has finally joined the ocean it has always yearned for. Like myself, this city has arrived where it belongs. To my left and right the twinkling walls of glass stretch for kilometres in either direction. Nine hundred thousand people, all ensconced in their cacoons, which themselves are carefully packed into the giant metal can that was once a sea side town called La Jolla. Another sigh escapes my new lips, this time it is a utterance of profound satisfaction and sounds even more pathetic. I scald myself and turn away from the glass, and begin to giggle gleefully at the life of Netverse friends, online shopping and meme-curating ahead of me. How could my body's former owner have ever voluntarily left this life for one in the Third World?

It is then that I notice the old people. They are standing together, looking out over the sea about thirty meters from me. I realise they have seen me giggling and I decide now is a good a time as ever to make first contact. I walk towards them with my best most winning confident smile. It is the smile Father always wore when he went to meet potentially hostile leaders from other tribes, and I have studied it well. It is as I draw closer that I notice the oldness. Where I come from people don't usually make it past fifty. Despite the very best efforts of modern cosmetic surgery these two are easily double that age. I am transfixed by the wrinkled skin – they are like slices of flat meat that has been left cooking too long over the fires of life, and have lost all their moisture and goodness. Poor things, they mustn't have enough money to buy new bodies. My heart has already had too much excitement for one morning, and now it overflows with sympathy for these two fellow citizens as I extend my hand in formal greeting. I say hello and introduce myself, using the name of my body, Jaydan Almaraz. My brain is still stuck on Russian accent, and isn't used to the long vocal cords of a male body, so my words come out sounding strange to both me and my new friends. They stare at me and wrinkle up their faces even more – had not thought that this would be possible until they did it - and turn away. Without a word they just walked off in the opposite direction. Strange people. I recall The Trafficker telling me that the citizens in the First World Cities don't usually talk to people they havn't first met in the Netverse, as it is considered too forward, and rude to directly introduce oneself in person. But I hadn't really believed it until now. I begin to chasten myself for messing up this first meeting but then shrug it off, there would be other opportunities to make friends. Besides I've spent half my life gossiping, now I want to experience the online improvement of this eternal human pastime, namely the Netverse. I turn around and begin another jerking run back to my cacoon.