What Have I Done?

Originally posted December 22, 2019.

Dr. Carl Yunger had just developed a machine that could swap two people’s brains, and he was overjoyed to be running the first tests. Two people sat across from each other in his lab sitting in large chairs with a dome over their head. Thick wires connected the domes and chairs with a central computer in the middle. That’s where Dr. Yunger stood with his assistants. As he carefully monitored the progress of the swap, there was some sort of power surge. Suddenly the swapping was out of control. The participants swapped with each other, then began swapping with Dr. Yunger and his assistants. Before he could stop anything, Dr. Yunger found himself outside of the lab. He seemed to now be in the body of a woman who came by every night to clean the facility. He rushed back to his lab, but the door was locked. He saw the keypad next to it. He knew the code, but this woman’s fingerprints wouldn’t be registered in the system. Both were required for access. He cursed, knowing that if he couldn’t get in to stop it, there would be a chain reaction; it wouldn’t be long before everyone on the entire planet started swapping bodies with each other. He only hoped one of his assistants was still inside one of the bodies in there, and that they could figure out enough to shut it all down. As he found himself swapping bodies again into someone several miles away he asked aloud to himself in a high pitched feminine voice, “What had I done?”