Fare's Exchange It had been a long morning dealing with the long list of system builds I had to work my way through. Fortunately I had put together some scripts that made the setup process a lot quicker for me to deal with. I'm lazy that way. After kicking off the last in the list, I closed my eyes, yawned and stretched my arms up to get the kinks out. When I opened my eyes I was confused. Oh, my cubicle looked the same. The stuffed penguins, the sailboat sculptures, binders, books, certifications and the big LCD monitor I'd scrounged, all the way I was used to. That seemed the same. But my seat must've dropped, so I reached and pushed... and the seat was all the way up, where I usually set it. So why did my viewpoint seem so much lower? And that's when things turned sideways as I saw my hands-- because they weren't _my_ hands. I knew who these hands really belonged to which threw me for a loop. Yeah, yeah, I know, I must have abused some substances... But I don't drink. I don't even like meds that have been prescribed for me. Granted. maybe I was having another TIA but that seemed unlikely. No, the hands I found attached to me belonged to Hannah, the one co-worker that I've been infatuated over for the last 5 years. These slim, brown hands were supposed to belong to her, not to me. I stood up and found that I was just as short as Hannah so it _really_ looked like I was "her". It didn't help that I wasn't immediately able to look over the cubicle walls as easily as I was used to, having to stretch a little bit to get my eyes high enough. I looked and found the company badge hanging from where it usually would, on a lanyard around my neck, and, yes, it had Hannah's name and photo on it. Well, that kind of came with the body, I figured, so I stood up to look around. It took me a bit to steady myself given my sudden shortness and changed point of view. I still had no idea of what was going on but figured that I'd need to look around. I decided to take a closer look at where I was and found my certifications all had her name. Inside the covers of the books I kept, like the big Perl book, had Hannah's name where I would have had *mine*. This was getting far too involved to be some kind of a joke, so, with an un-lady-like grunt, I stepped to the entrance of *my* cubicle and looked at the name plate. The surprise finding "my" cubicle with Hannah's name on it was muted given all of the other evidence I'd so far seen. This was weird. I was wondering what was going on and decided, at that moment, to walk over to where I knew Hannah really sat. This went _well_ beyond anything approaching a practical joke, though. It would pretty much require an omnipotent actor to pull _this_ one off. One oddity that struck me as I looked down at myself in this small feminine body was that it was dressed more-or-less the way *I* would have dressed rather than the far more elegant ensembles that Hannah would usually be found wearing. It was obvious to me that there was something terribly wrong with the universe. As I approached the cubicle where Hannah usually sat I saw _my_ name by the entrance and quietly looked in and saw... me. With a telephone headset on, the way I usually saw Hannah, apparently trapped in yet another of those interminable conference calls. I realized also that there was a big difference: the body that should have been mine was holding a pen in his right hand, not his left, as I would. Another thing adding to the confusion was how "Hannah's" cubicle hadn't, to my eye, at least, changed any more than "mine" had. If it weren't for the indications that I was, indeed, wearing Hannah's skin, it would have been far more comfortable to *try* believing this all was just some kind of weird practical joke. A thought _did_ cross my mind that this might be just a very weird and detailed dream... except for the fact that I never seemed able to recall my dreams or even _having_ dreamt, so, this seemed unlikely. Then things got weirder still. I looked closely-- _I_ had never dressed that well, usually preferring to wear polo shirts and slacks, just as the body I was wearing now was attired. What I saw in what I recalled as Hannah's cubicle was a version of "me" with more of Hannah's kind of fashion sense, albeit in a more masculine form. Then the face I was used to weariing turned towards me as I stood anxiously in the entrance of the cubicle and "he" saw me. I had thought I was shocked, but I had an advantage. Having one of the most mass-produced faces in the world, I was used to seeing people who looked like me. Not so for Hannah, apparently. I saw "my" face look like he had seen a ghost. There was some clumsiness in that body as he lunged for the phone to hit the mute button and I could see that whoever was driving my body wasn't used to the size of it. It also seemed that "he" wasn't comfortable with anything else that "he" was seeing, like the hands. He sat there staring at those extremities for a moment before looking back to me. Those gray eyes looked into mine. "Jack?" I heard my voice quietly ask, with Hannah's accent. And, yeah, the voice didn't sound much like what I always hoped it would sound like. I nodded. I quietly assked "Hannah?" and got a nod back. "This is weird" we both said, in stereo. Then he stood up. I felt both a little thrill of excitement run through my new body as I looked up at a man almost a foot taller than I was now. He looked down at me, still looking surprised, then looking around the cubicle farm and... That smile was almost frightening as he looked down at me and said "I could get to like this." Next thing I knew my hand was in his and I was being led to the main corridor and then down to find an unoccupied mini conference room. We were lucky, finding one almost instantly, and we sat down opposite each other with the door closed behind us. "All right, what the fuck is going on, here?" He asked. I shrugged. "This is impossible, you know. I found myself in my cube but everything I saw there inplies that whoever you are *here* does _my_ job. And it looks like whoever I usually am in this here-and-now does your job. Like I said, this is impossible." He nodded and then smiled. "I can't believe I heard myself talk like that. I also can't believe what my... ummmm... voice has sounded like to you. I feel it run right through me, making a tingly feeling." I nodded her head. "I can imagine. It usually took some concentration to *not* get an erection. I have always loved the sound of your voice, along with everything else about you." The man sitting across from me wearing my rightful face blushed and got a feminine look on his features, looking coy. I have no idea what kind of expression I had on her face but hoped it didn't look like a smirk. At the same time I could tell, just squirming in the seat, that the body I was wearing was more than just a little bit turned on. Hannah, wearing my face, then asked "Kiss me?" If there was one thing I was afraid of, it was kissing. I was an _awful_ kisser, my ex-wife not having liked to do so, along with a lot of other things that seemed to drive her discomfort. Despite my fears of being inadequate, I got up from the chair, walked around the small table, and did what I've fantasized Hannah doing, by sitting in "his" lap, closing my eyes, and offering my lips. Education can be very sudden. I learned how to kiss from her as my toes seemed to curl and a line from my crotch through my nipples got electrocuted. Hannah was a good, no, a *great* kisser. I kept my eyes closed, feeling the bliss of having our arms intertwined. It was strange when I opened my eyes and took stock of all of the sensations I had. I was me again, I had Hannah's bony little butt on my lap and our arms were still tangled up around each other... in the opposite orientation, so it felt the same both ways to me. We pulled back and looked in each other's eyes. And, once our eyes came back from expressing shock, she pulled my face back to hers and we kissed again. Somehow, through this impossible event, my fear of showing my weakness had been broken, like the ice between us. Somewhere, in another universe, Hannah and I were together like we here were, and, I don't know about them, but I was not willing to let her go any time soon. ---------------------------------------------------- I'd like to say there was a happy ending to this, but, no, there wasn't. There were happy _times_, though. Hannah and I had a year of bliss, though, which neither of us would have experienced had we not made this breakthrough from our fears. We spent a lot of time together even with our differences in personality. We knew marriage wouldn't have worked out well but we spent a lot of quality time together. We did occasionally have "blips" into whatever alternate universe our stunt doubles lived in, and I got to feel what it was like to be a woman, just as Hannah got to experience sex as a man. None of these jumps lasted more than an hour or so and occasionally I found myself doing the same work there that I did "here". But we had a year of blissful contentment. I never wanted our time to end. Life, however, is both transitory and far too temporary. We were away from each other, with me on a business trip, when she died in her sleep of heart failure. There are times when I wish I could have died in the here-and-now instead but, then, *she* would have been alone. As I learned that her counterpart was alone in that alternate world, for that alternate Hannah and I still had exchanges now and again, and, with the realization that "I" was dead, there, I also got to feel a child growing in my small body. So, perhaps, somehow, our chance to experience happiness and contentment may have been engineered. I don't know. But we still leave love notes for each other when we cross ways. It is an odd kind of haunting. In some ways, I can't touch her the same way, but it helps to know that she is still alive... Somewhen.