When it rains, it pours. New Oak Academy was a sprawling, rainsoaked university in a swath of muddied American Northwest known for its perpetual foul weather. Anxious Sam Park hated foul weather. A damp, cold, and thoroughly waterlogged childhood only fifteen miles away ensured it. In highschool, Sam told himself he'd apply to universities near the Sonoran or maybe the Chihuahuan way south. Then he'd be dry. In the static of the television, he had heard of droughts and dryspells, even heatwaves - all things fantastical and exotic to Sam.
The young man shivered. The thought of leaving home, even if it meant getting away from the constant deluge, caused a pang of worry in the back of his mind. How different would life be in the South? Entirely, he suspected. There were a great many things that made Sam nervous, and being away from home in a foreign, unfamiliar place was a big one for him. Heck, even moving a few hours away to the next big city seemed too big a step for him. So instead, he found himself here, trudging through shin-high waters to the humanities building.
"Meet me on the rooftop," the glowing LED screen of his brick of a pocket phone read, quickly gathering raindrops that obscure its digital text. Sam frowned and pulled his dingey slicker tightly around his itchy old sweater, shivering and muttering about missing buttons.
Ahead was a janitor, clad in a filthy dark jumpsuit, teetering in his high heeled ankle boots in the pouring rain, scrubbing viciously at the graffiti painted on one of the dark brick campus walls. As Sam passed, the man glared at him over his shoulder and muttered something growling and inarticulate at the boy. Sam got the hint and moved along quickly. 'That's strange,' he thought. Not the ankle boots, those were perfectly normal work custodial attire, but the glare and the muttering. 'He must not be a morning person.'
Strange things were common in this soggy part of the world. The unlikely was more likely. The unnatural was sometimes just natural. Strangest of all, in Sam's humble opinion, was Kelly Atwell. Kelly was a linguistics and foreign language dual major, but she regarded herself something of an adventurer. She was a thrill-seeker, a thief, an agent of mischief, and all around too exciting for Sam.
Ascending up the rickety iron ladder that clings to the old brick humanities building, Sam pulled himself up onto the flat roof deck with a huff. Peering up and rising to his feet, his eyes met with a glimpse of what was usually pale blonde hair, now darkened from the rain with bangs wet and flattened over the forehead of a pale and pretty face. Kelly was leaning on an iron rail, soaked, but she was beaming through the shower as if it were a sunny day. She was wearing a baggy over-sized once-pastel sweatshirt that entirely failed to keep the water out. Peaking barely out from under the shirt was a pair of shorts that left most of her leg exposed.
"Salut!"
"Why aren't you wearing a raincoat? You're soaked through!" Sam squinted through his foggy glasses in the rain.
"It's a warm rain!" she chirped, simply.
Sam stared at her for a moment, unsure how to process her words. Rain is rain. There's no good rain, only rain.
"It's five-thirty in the morning. I miss my bed. What are we doing here?"
She laughed, looking up at the dark, cloud-coated sky. "Five-thirty already?" Sam could tell by her inflection that she hadn't slept last night.. and yet, somehow, he was the one with seemingly permanent bags under his eyes. Squinting, he could see, now, the subtle signs of exhaustion on her face, despite her jovial expression and bubbly demeaner. "Here, nerdboy. Catch."
She tossed a bulky grey remote to him, tumbling through the rain, and, in an effort to catch it, the boy slammed his body backwards into the rooftop railing behind him. The device landed softly in his hands.
"God damn," he huffed. "You're gonna kill me." He looked down at the device in his hand. It was a piece of junk with unlabelled unlevel buttons jumbled all over and a screen that was fogged over from time and exposure. Heavy squinting was required to make out the text displayed on it. "Aspect Exchange Menu." Whatever it was, it had a GUI, despite its cobbled appearance. "What is this?"
"Zippy here is a trait swapper," Kelly smiled, walking over and snatching it back from him. "Thought you'd want to test her out with me. You like gizmos AND you really need to get out of your shell. It's a two-fer. Besides, it's a beautiful day. Perfect for experimenting!"
"A trait swapper? Aspect exchanger? What does that mean? It sounds like random words strung together to me. Does this hunk of junk have a manual?"
She hangs her mouth open wide with her brows furrowed and a hand on her hip in a show of mock offense. "C'est pas vrai! Zippy's no hunk of junk; she's the real deal! She's a trait-swappin', aspect-exchangin', reality-bendin' doohickey. Anything you can think of, she can swap: physical things, mental things, social things... any-things!" As if quick-drawing from a holster, she aimed it at him. "Here, I'll show you!"
Ding!
Text crawled across the screen of the remote.
"Subjects: Kelly Atwell, Sam Park,"
"Aspect: Footwear (left),"
"Aware: Kelly Atwell, Sam Park,"
"Unaware: Else"
Suddenly, one of Sam's scuffed rubber rainboots was no longer. Instead, in its place was one of Kelly's white canvas sneakers, soaked through entirely. It was resized, laced tightly in lilac, and fit perfectly, despite his own now damp foot dwarfing Kelly's own. His balance was now skewed, thanks to one foot being raised an inch or two higher than the other.
He looked over to Kelly, and noticed that she was also wearing one boot and one sneaker. She had high mismatched socks peaking out of her mismatched shoes, one striped in pastel blues and purples and the other striped in muted pinks and reds. Sam noted that neither of those socks were his, and that Kelly wearing mismatched socks was fairly common. A quick check would confirm to him that he was still wearing both of his regular white socks, one wetter than the other, but he was, at the moment, too stunned to do so.
"Tada! I swapped your boot with my sneaker!"
"I- I see that..." Sam, wobbling, felt a churning in his gut, and grabbed desperately to the rail to stay upright. It hit him at once that Kelly, his friend - his highly unpredictable, incredibly reckless friend - could swap anything between two people. Kelly Atwell could swap anything between two people. Anything. Sam shakes at the thought.
"Sam? Are you okay?" Kelly narrowed her eyes, her brows pinched in concern. "It's only a shoe."
"A-anything?"
"What?"
"You can swap anything between two people?"
"I think so. To be honest, I've only swapped shoes so far. But I did do a whole lot of shoes! Pretty much half the campus is jumbled at this point," she laughed. "Don't worry, that sneaker was mine originally."
"H-half the campus? It's only five-thirty!"
"Yeah. I found it this morning - or I guess yesterday morning, since it's tomorrow now - while splunking in that abandoned physics building from the old campus. I guess I got a little fixated."
Sam looked out and over the campus from the rooftop, his heart racing, his worried mind readied for shoe-begat riots and violence, plumes of smoke and lynchings. Only, there was nothing. A few people were out, walking between buildings on this peaceful and sleepy, if rainy, morning. A few lights flickered on in the windows of the dorm across the way as, one-by-one, unlucky people with morning commitments started begrudgingly waking up. "But... you swapped half the campus. Why aren't people panicking?"
"Sam," she repeated. "They're only shoes. Not exactly panic-worthy. Besides, little Zippy here has a dial on her side that cycles through awareness settings: the only people who are aware that anything is amiss are the people I want to be aware. Currently, that's just you and me. And everything I did yesterday was my eyes only."
Sam exhaled deeply. "Sorry, I need a minute." Slowly, he eased himself to the roof floor, sitting in the rain water with his back against the rail. He wiggled his toes in the lilac-laced hi-top canvas sneaker, trying to dispell what felt like an illusion.
"Jeez. Sorry, Sam. I thought you'd be more excited about it." Kelly plopped down into the rainwater beside him. "Like, you're always super fascinated by the tech our physics department puts out. Want me to switch us back?"
Sam stared at his foot a bit longer. "This feels more like magic than technology. Why would our physics department just leave something like that just lying around? Why wouldn't they bring it with them when they moved to the new campus last year?"
"Maybe it's only a prototype." Kelly shrugged. "Magic, I like the sound of that."
Sam rolled his eyes. "Prototype or not, I can't imagine someone just leaving something so powerful behind for anyone to find."
"Yeah, the safe it was in was super easy to break open, too. A couple thwaks with a crowbar, and it opened right up."
Sam's eyes widened. "You broke into a safe for that thing?"
"C'mon, it's the old campus. The place is a wasteland. Everything's already so dilapidated and falling apart that you'd have to be crazy to leave anything valuable behind. Clearly whoever made Zippy didn't think much of her. She's in much better hands with me. Now, do you want your rainboot back or not?"
"Yeah, please. I'm ready to be put back to normal now."
Ding!
Kelly, back in her sneakers, hopped up from the puddle she had settled into, splashing her friend a bit as she did. "It's a good thing Zippy's water-proof. She probably would've shorted out by now if she weren't," she said. "So, what do you say, frérot?" She extended a hand out to a sullen Sam. "Want to test her out with me?"
Sam took her hand, pulling himself up into a standing position. "I... I'm going back to bed. I need to process all of this."
Without another word, the boy trudged back over to the ladder and began climbing down to the street.
~~
