"Hey, look at that, Mommy," a 6-year old girl said, looking out the window of the plane. The girl and her mother looked out and saw what looked like a translucent wave of faded greenish blue light. It seemed to fade in and out among the clouds. It was very beautiful, kind of like the aurora borealis. Only they weren't anywhere near the north pole.
Suddenly, the little girl seemed to twitch. "Are you okay, honey?" the mother asked.
David looked down at himself. What happened? He was out on his lawn, mowing his grass when suddenly someone bumped into him, and then he was here. And what was he wearing? It looked like an over-sized version of a little girl's dress, white knee socks, and black Mary Janes. He reached up to his head, as he tried to figure out what was happening, and that's when he felt that his relatively short hair had been pulled back into two pigtails. Two very short pigtails, but he could feel the hair clips holding the clumps of hair in place.
"I'm not your fucking daughter, lady," he heard a little girl say. He turned and saw that the woman sitting next to her was panicking, wanting to know what happened to her little girl. Then David noticed that other people in the cabin were acting strangely as well. He got the sense that his predicament (as weird as it was) was not so unique.
"Honey?" the woman next to him asked. He had a sinking feeling that she was mother of the girl he was now supposed to be. But if he was her daughter now, what happened to the girl?
"Please," a man dressed in a pilot uniform said. He was standing just outside the cockpit. "Does anyone know how to fly a plane? Anyone at all?"
This body switching thing happened to the pilot? What was the chance of that?
David looked around the cabin, seeing if anyone would stand up. And when no one did, he stood up.
"Sydney? Honey, sit down," the woman next to him said.
"I can fly," he said.
Everyone in the cabin turned to look at him, including the mother. First she looked surprised, then dismayed, probably at the conclusion that he wasn't her daughter.
"Believe me, I'm older than I probably look."
"How much older?" the pilot asked.
"Maybe about twenty years."
The pilot seemed hesitant, but considering what was happening on the plane, he probably shouldn't have been. Then he nodded.
David looked down at the mother. "Sorry. I promise I'll try to find your daughter." He moved past her, as she remained silent. He walked down the aisle towards the pilot. "I've only flown single engine planes, for recreation. I've never flown commercial."
"It's okay," the pilot said. "An inexperienced pilot is better than none at all."
They walked into the cockpit and David sat down in the pilot's seat. Out the window, they could see a translucent ribbon of faded greenish blue light. And they were headed straight for it.
"What's that?" David asked.
"I don't know. I've never seen anything like it before." The pilot stood closer to the window and saw that it extended in every direction - up, down, left, right. There was no way to get around it.
David looked at the pilot, with a worried expression. And then the plane flew through the ribbon of light. The plane shook, as a flash of green-blue light filled the cockpit, then the cabin and the cargo area. Then the light was gone, and the plane stabilized.
David looked down at himself and saw that he was still wearing the over-sized girl's dress. Whatever had happened didn't change him back to normal or have any sort of effect on him, that he could tell. He wondered what the ribbon of light was.
Unknown to anyone on the flight, the ribbon of light they saw was the perimeter of the six-mile body-swapping affection zone. The perimeter was visible only because it was interacting with the atmosphere, this high up in the sky. Anyone on the ground wouldn't see anything of the perimeter. It would just look invisible. So now, since the plane was out of the affection zone, no more people would be swapping with the passengers on the plane. But the ones who were already swapped will have to live with their new identities, maybe for the rest of their lives.
