Creeping through the empty courtyard with a pet carrier under one arm and pry in hand, I try to keep my head low. Clouds blot out the moon, leaving the sky glowing and ever so faint gray while the street is solely illuminated by artificial light.
It was the perfect night to make a break-in, the low fog creeping in for the coming morning doing more than enough to obscure my frame as I rush along the concrete paths and up to the metal door frames.
Sliding the pry bar between them I easily manage to pop the lock, the metal crunching from within causing the pet carrier to erupt with panicked squeaks and squealing. In hushed tones I try to calm down the tiny creature inside the plastic cell, the tiny pale mouse racing around its enclosure in a panic seeming to not pay me any mind as it freaks out.
Rather than waste any more time I pull my gray hoodie even tighter around my face, sliding between the doors and propping it open with the steel bar before heading further inside. With my now free hand I pull free a small USB along with a messy jumble of wires and steel, my heart racing as I play through the steps in my mind as I had read them.
With my head down low I approach the wooden door leading into the large multipurpose room, the entrance easily found thanks to the massive bundles of cables running out of room and holding the usually secure door ajar.
Slipping inside my eyes go wide, my neck craning up as I take in the sight of the massive metal behemoth crammed into the cramped space.
A real bonafide, if severally outdated, Swap Clinic machine.
The Swap Clinic had been renting out these machines for years at this point, making large sums of money for just two days a semester at most schools and colleges.
It was all that was needed to run one of the simplest classes around, one mostly made to help students develop empathy and social skills by walking a mile in the shoes if their fellow students and sometimes their teachers.
Swap Classes had run without so much as a reported hitch for years, hundreds and thousands of people around the world taking a whirl in the gargantuan steel pods in order to fill an elective or for easy college credit.
However, as time went on and the rented machines grew more and more outdated in comparison to those used in the Swap Clinic proper flaws began to be found. From bypasses on the safety features to hacking the record of swaps saved to the internal hard drive there was all manner of ways to mess with the aging machines as they were driven from school to school.
Despite this, even as reports of these 'tricks' circulated online the Swap Clinic did nothing. To them there wasn't any credible problem to solve, with none of their internal tests showing any form of fault in their state-of-the-art machines at the home office.
Those who discussed these hacks and modifications seemed to drop off the face of the earth as well, the people behind the accounts vanishing without a trace for unknown reasons rather than posting again.
It had been in one of these old archived discussions that my mind had been turned to Swap Classes. I had never been able to join one, having completed my degrees prior to the idea being introduced into the curriculum and never being a teacher for one of the classes with uneven numbers of students.
However, with little else to do while unemployed beyond sinking further and further into the strange and wild corners of the internet the classes and their machines soon became an obsession.
With each post and comment, every thread and reply, my knowledge of the machines grew and so did the budding yet horrid idea that lead me to my actions that fateful night.
"Who says I need to be a student or teacher to be in the class..." I chuckle under my breath, taking a knee before the large central console. "...Or to graduate from one."
With a little bit of work I pull the main panel free, revealing the large cavity within. Wires and circuit boards line the metal walls, though massive sections seemed to appear empty and bare. It was almost as though the machine had been built to appear larger and more impressive than it actually was, or perhaps it was simply to allow for refurbishment and expansion as time went on.
Regardless, with the empty space I easily slide the small pet carrier inside the hollow cavity nestling it amongst the wires.
"Sorry little buddy" I whisper, fiddling with the humble of wire and metal from my pocket as I try to sort it out. "Red wire to... That's the central... So that must be the cognitive buffer..." I mutter, pulling some wires free before pinning new ones in their place.
The level of compression on those machines is insane
IKR! I swear you could fit someone on a microSD or something
Clipping the USB in place at the buffer I slowly begin to start up the machine itself, a low hum filling the room.
A kid at my school got messed up by one of those swap things they're just empty
up there now
Did they check the cognitive buffer? Sometimes if the machine doesn't register it
as full then it won't release the mind stored inside
How do we fix that?
Just swap back and forth a bit, one of the passing minds will knock it loose
That's a disgusting way to talk about a human being
STFU...
As the lights inside the machine grow and grow I quickly begin to hook up the tiny frightened mouse to the crudely made bypass, clipping a tiny metal cap of electrodes her head.
Has anyone tried swapping with an animal before?
Asking for a friend
The machine's security features prevent cross-species swaps, can't happen
Nah, one of the com/sci teachers at my college did it. Swapped the vegan poli/sci
professor with a chicken from the community garden. Took us weeks to work it out,
the chicken acted just like her (if a little weirdly). Took the teacher
scratching out notes in the garden to get us all to notice, though I guess the
chicken had started to act a pretty weird in Ms Holland's body by that point as
well.
How the fuck did he do that?!?!???
Just unplugged the expansion RAM and plugged it back in, at least according to
his disciplinary hearing
And what do you mean by acting weird?
Yeah, was she trying to lay eggs or something?
Nah, just like different. Went from kinda weird and outspoken to a little more
demure and flighty, it was almost like that chicken knew what was about to...
The hum dies down and the lights flicker wildly as I unplug the expansion RAM, sweat building on my forehead as I try to make sure I did it all correctly.
"Storage hooked up to the cognitive buffer..." I mutter, chasing the mangled cabling with my eyes. "Stores my brain there while leaving it ready for the buffer to clear itself..."
Standing up I watch as the mouse scurries about, trying to free itself from the sticky electrode-covered cap I had forced it to wear. "Security features down, I swap with Poppy here..." I muse, wincing at the thought of getting stuck inside the terrified little rodent. "Except not really" I continue, looking to the precariously wired in USB stick.
I quickly tap at the keyboard, the few minor keystrokes soon bringing the machine to life. A subtle beeping emanates from an in-built speaker, the tone starting as a metronome before building in tempo towards some unknown end
Wandering over to one of the booths I sit inside, wincing as I feel the springs inside the heavily worn seat dig into my ass. "She'll go into autopilot... I hope... And leave here to go live my life as best she can. Still, better than being a mouse" I chuckle, bracing myself in the seat as the walls around me grow warmer and warmer by the second.
My head grows heavier by the second, the whirring machinery hidden poorly behind paper-thin sheet metal grasping at my mind with invisible hands. My muscles ache and twitch as my mind is siphoned away, a subtle chittering soon coming from the altered console as Poppy feels the effect of her diminutive form.
Suddenly, the word goes dark as my senses are ripped from me. In that moment it feels as though I'm moving through a tumble drier as the heat and the twisting sensations bombard me from all angles.
There is no break in continuity however, no floating in a void or darkness. Being trapped in the slightly expanded cognitive buffer is like not living at all, a brief second of non-existence before I'm brought crashing back down into a very different living breathing form as the original mind is plunged..
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