Aftershocks (Part 1)

Originally posted on June 6, 2013.

Thomas took a deep breath before opening up his laptop to type the first entry in his new blog.

“When the Great Shift hit, I thought I was one of the lucky ones.” He wrote, “I hadn’t been shifted; it was short-sighted. For the next year, I was quite arrogant about the fact that I still had my original body. But that all changed in an instant about two weeks ago. I imagine the experience was much like the rest of the world had the year prior: a period of extreme disorientation before finding myself in a new body. I swapped with a business woman of Asian decent who hadn’t been swapped in the original Shift either. It took a while for us to convince anyone to believe our story. Surprisingly, considering the entire world had swapped bodies not long ago. But there were soon other people reporting the same thing. Leading scientists couldn’t ignore it any longer and dubbed such swaps like mine as ‘Aftershocks’ from the Great Shift. These aftershocks happen in small pockets of two to twelve people -- at least, twelve is the largest so far. They seem to happen more often to people who weren’t affected by the original Shift, though no one is completely immune. It also seems that once you have been hit by an aftershock, the more likely you are to be affected by a future aftershock; these tend to occur a few months apart. I plan to chronicle my experiences here. Currently, I am still in the body of the Asian business woman. She is 5’2”, 32 years old, and 110 pounds. She has black hair and brown eyes; she is single. I will continue to update you on all my future aftershocks.”