Glancing around the busy cafe I take a tentative sip from my cup, my hand shaking a little and threatening to spill the piping hot liquid into my lap. It isn't just the heat of the drink and the risk of it dropping that was making me shake, the thought of why I was here almost leaving me more than nervous.
Shifting in my booth I feel my loose and oversized teal sweater shift over my slender lanky frame, catching the occasional hair as it moves. Beneath the warm and baggy fabric I feel the clunky bronze amulet around my neck shift and sway, the heavy and permanently cold metal accessory leaving my heart racing a mile a minute.
The ornate necklace had made its way to me by happenstance. When I had been let go from my job as a lecturer and tutor at my local college I had been working on a side project cataloguing our old archival storage. Books, newspapers, and loose items were store away in poorly organized tubs and boxes, strewn about the labyrinthine structure of basements beneath the main courtyard.
Upon being let go, with not so much as a thank you or good luck let alone any form of real severance, I had developed a mild case of sticky fingers. Anything I could reasonably hide on my person was taken, from old first editions of rare books to antiques and artifacts.
As my collection built up over my two weeks notice I had started to research the 'finds', selling off what I could discretely to pad out my savings after years of being underpaid and over worked. It wasn't until I tried to search for the necklace, it's distinctive artistic intermingled swirl of metal in the center making it easy to describe, that I had trouble finding any information on the topic. Search after search turned up little to know results, no exhibitions had shown it in the past and no books had pictured the item themselves.
As the days turned to weeks I soon found some information on the necklace in the far corners of the internet. From the colorfully patterned chain links shifting from dark burnished browns to bright platinum and all manner of golds in between to the mesmerizing swirl in the center of the wide metal plate that made up the central adornment, it was all to easy to find the odd person describing the item on forums in panicked tones.
While there were one or two discussions, largely asking if anyone had ever seen this medallion that some crazies kept talking about, other sounded more terrified and desperate to find the necklace. From school chatroom to spaces for single mom's and even a few posts in foreign language threads being the only ones in plain English, it was clear that some subset of the world craves this thing.
My mind had first started racing at the thought of these obviously desperate people paying through the nose for their chance at getting their hands on this particular item. However, as my research burrowed down more and more in search of a price point my mind soon began to expand and open up to further possibilities.
Beneath the layer of desperate and out of place seeming posts asking if anyone had seen the medallion sat groups of people discussing the odd artifact, both the history and the potential uses.
The Medallion of Zulu had been a capricious entity throughout history. The original name of the bronze Age relic had been lost to time, but the effects it had were all too well known by those with enough wherewithal to find out. When work with along with at least a single article of clothing belonging to another it would transform the wearer into an exact copy of the clothing's owner.
While a person could simply remove the magical artifact at that point it would leave them ill-equipped to pretend to be act like their new doppelganger. With some extended wearing the Medallion could adjust mannerisms and thoughts to some small degree, though never enough to complete rewrite the wearer's personality.
The artifact had been used for many purposes, from espionage and identity theft, to helping with double dates or simply to spice up a person's love life. All these stories ended the same way however, with the Medallion disappearing at the most inopportune time.
Accidentally stealing their overweight neighbors bra and using it thinking it belonged to the stripper a fall down, only to have the Medallion to slip their grasp and fall down the laundry drain.
Becoming their sister's twin to help seal a double date only for the Medallion to be stolen in a mugging on their way out if the restaurant.
Mistakenly wearing their grandmother's maternity dress only to have the Medallion to up and vanish while they checked out their apparent baby bump belonging to a copy of their mother.
As time rolled on however enthusiasts had become wise to the curse, or at least it had seemed that way. If the curse would leave the user trapped at the most inopportune time then they would simply ditch the Medallion before then. Discussions in forums were littered with plans for either theft or mutual trades using the Medallion, each one followed by where they would ditch the Medallion for the next person to 'steal' in order to leave the user trapped.
No matter how hard I looked I simply couldn't find a post about my college in all the discussions, the though soon sinking in that I had been an accomplice in whatever curse this damned thing had placed upon it.
Despite the sinking feeling in my stomach at leaving someone trapped in a body other than their own, the possibilities of what I could accomplish with the artifact was simply too much to ignore.
Reading over the plans of previous users I slowly started to form one of my own. Theft had seemed risky, with numerous posts soon being followed by pleas for help after getting the wrong body or simply finding they no longer enjoyed their life as some gym bro who needed to carefully monitor their calories and workout for hours a day.
Those who had seemed to have the most success had planned their use with another person, carefully sharing their information to prevent any shock and to have some support along the way. One would simply take the Medallion afterwards, ditching it somewhere and posting for another user to find it in order to kill the temptation to use it again.
Before long I had started to seek someone out, prowling in forums and communities in search of someone who might not only be wanting to make such a drastic life change but who would be open to the possibility of the Medallion actually working.
It was slow at first, not wanting to sound like a crazy person as I stayed pent up in my apartment. Bouncing from forum to forum I looked for someone like myself, a person who yearned for something different and who may take a chance to get it.
It was why I had come to the cafe, why I had hidden the Medallion itself beneath my clothes so I could feel it was still in my possession. It was all to meet the person I had found on a...
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