ding
ding
ding
Sam slammed his hand down on his alarm clock, stifling its shrill, droning noise. Blurry red digits read something approximating 8:45. He rubbed his eyes. Sharp red digits read 8:45 much more clearly now. That's three extra hours of restless slumber he managed dispite his stress. Somehow, he felt more tired now than he had before. He groaned, but bravely roused himself from his cocoon of sheets and blankets. He examined his hands and arms, his chest, his legs and feet. He ran his hands over his face, prodding, poking, and grasping for any noticable changes. Everything seemed normal, he was still his average boyish self.
The device wasn't limited to body parts by any means, he experienced that first hand this morning. As he got dressed, he rummaged through his shirts, pants, boxers, feverishly searching for anything that didn't belong. It all seemed perfectly normal. He sighed, pulling on a fresh black-and-white striped sweater and a pair of jeans.
He checked his backpack and the contents within several times over. Inside was all the same notes and all the same books for all the same classes he always had. His daily planner indicated that all of his classes were even still in the same order. His syllabus for calculus indicated that all of the same material was planned for all of the same days. His calculus homework from a week ago indicated that he was still terrible at calculus. Would he need to retake next semester? His stomach flipped at the thought.
His boots appeared to be the same as this morning, but just in case, he examined them from all angles before tugging them on over his sock-covered feet.
Kelly had been waiting outside Sam's door, shivering, for the last thirty minutes when he finally stepped out. He locked eyes with her: dark, tired, and baggy. "Is my name still Sam?" he mumbled nervously to her.
"What? Yeah. Of course it is. Why wouldn't it be?"
"I just needed to know. For attendance and stuff."
"Sam, I'm not going to randomly swap your name away. Why would I do that?"
He shrugged in response and ran a hand through his messy tangled hair. Kelly looked the same as this morning. She was still wearing the same clothes and still had the same body, at least. The clothes in question were her staple hospital gown and nothing else, save for the purple-laced converse sneakers on her feet.
"You look cold as usual," he said simply.
"Yeah, I traded clothes as a favor to a new friend. It's more usual to you than to me, unfortunately." She rubs her arms and tried desperately to ignore the fact that her butt was entirely exposed behind her.
There it was: reality itself bending seamlessly around him, and he was none the wiser. Sam fidgets. "Surprised you haven't traded out for something warmer in that case. Dunno how you deal with the weather like that."
Kelly smiles lopsidedly in agreement. "Just haven't seen anything that calls to me yet. Y'know, to be honest, I wasn't sure if you were coming out this morning. You must've been really out of it. Usually you're up and ready to go like thirty minutes ago." Kelly stated casually.
"What do you mean?" Sam checks his phone. Pixelated digits read 8:52. "It's not even 9:00. Class isn't until 10:00."
"Don't you usually run track at 9:00 on Mondays?"
Sam's eyes widen. He did in fact run track on Mondays. Not because he wanted to, but out of obligation to his parents. 'Join a club, meet new people,' they always said. He wished he had opted for the chess club or the journalism club, anything even remotely less physical.
"You forgot, didn't you?"
"I even checked my planner today. It was in there, I just... I was so focused on looking for swaps..."
"Looking for swaps? Jeez, maybe we should talk about this. I don't wanna trigger an OCD episode or anything."
"Later. I'm gonna be late," says Sam before breaking into a sprint through the dormatory halls.
Running mostly exposed through freezing rain was not something Kelly had planned to do today. At least, she thought quasi-optimistically, she hadn't traded away her shoes with her clothes. By the time Kelly reached the gym, Sam was already there, bent over, wheezing. She chuckled between huffs of her own. Some track kid he was. Sam checked his phone again. Pixelated digits read 8:57.
"I think I made it. I just need to change quickly and..." Sam paled. "I forgot my gym bag."
"You're kidding."
"No, I forgot it." Sam gulps.
Kelly sighed. "Let's at least get out of the rain, please."
The friends entered the warm and toasty gym lobby. Kelly, happy to be out of the rain, but still shivering thanks to it, briefly searched around before spotting an unattended teal gym bag sitting on a bench. Checking it over, she discovers a label printed on it: Property of Blake Thompson. A name, it was all she needed.
"Alright, I know you don't like the whole swapping business, but maybe I can swap ownership of that bag to you. You could use what's in it this morning and I could swap it back later."
Sam frowned bitterly. This was exactly what he had hoped to avoid. Sam didn't know a Blake Thompson, or if he had met him, he never caught his name. He didn't know what sorts of workouts Blake did at the gym or what he would have packed in his bag. If reality altered such that a bunch of random items were suddenly his, how would that affect reality? How would that affect people's perception of him? "I can see if there's a spare set of gym clothes at reception."
"Reception is manned by Ralph Donahue today. He hates your guts. You'd really rather deal with him? Besides, after the swap, it'll be as if the contents of that bag were always yours. Completely sanitary."
"I'm more worried about whether there's actually anything useful in there. What if it's a bunch of junk, and we bent reality - changing my history, potentially changing my future for nothing?"
Kelly opted not to comment on the extent of reality-bending he pictured. From what she could tell, it certainly didn't SEEM like a target's history was changed all that drastically with each swap, though. "Sam, what do you need for track? Gym clothes? Running shoes? Deodorant? Everybody packs those things for the gym. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a gym bag that doesn't have those three thing here. And if it this one doesn't, I guess you'll have to brave a confrontation with Ralph at reception, but I can always swap the bag back later. "
Sam strained to push away his feelings on the matter, and mumbled something to the affect of an agreement, prompting an excited yip and a reassuring hug from the still shivering girl.
Kelly switches zippy from its standard visual targeting mode to a text-input specification mode, and hoped it worked as she suspected.
"Subjects: __________," Zippy prompted.
"Sam Park, Blake Thompson," Kelly typed.
"Aspect: __________," Zippy prompted.
"Gym bags," Kelly typed.
"Recepticle identified. Contents included? Y/N," Zippy queried.
"Y."
"Aware: __________,"
"Kelly Atwell, Sam Park."
"Unaware: __________,"
"Else."
Sam watched over his friend's shoulder as she inputted the prompted information. In a way, this felt much more methodical than the visual targeting system, but he couldn't help but wonder how precise it was. How did it know which Blake Thompson? Surely there was more than just one guy with that name. At least with visual targeting, you knew exactly who you were hitting... at least so long as your aim is decent.
"Hey," he poked his friend's bare exposed back. "How do we know it won't switch the physical location of the bags along with ownership? If it alters reality..." Sam fidgets. "...wouldn't this Blake guy have brought and left my bag, which he and the rest of the world considers to be his, on that bench instead of this teal one? Meaning to the rest of the world, the bag on that bench still wouldn't be mine?"
"Good point. I'll check the advanced settings and see if I can't disable switching the physical location during the swap..."
ding
The label on the teal bag, without any effect, now read: Property of Sam Park.
"Okay, hopefully you've got everything you need now," Kelly gives Sam a light and friendly punch on the shoulder. "I'm cold and you're late, so I'll get out of your hair."
"Hey, wait," Sam tugs his striped sweater off over over his head, temporarily exposing his belly, before finally straitening out the white long-sleeved shirt he had on underneath. He holds the sweater out to his friend. "I should've offered you this earlier, I... I just didn't think about it."
Kelly smiled. "Merci beaucou," she said warmly before pulling on the sweater beneath her gown (doing a little awkward dance with her arms to avoid flashing her friend or strangers). It looked kind of ridiculous, but it was large enough to cover down to her upper-thigh, and Sam hoped that was enough. The girl waved and headed out to a neighboring building in search of a new warmer set of clothes.
"Cutting it close there, Park," bellowed Jim, the track coach, who happened to be leaning into the boys locker room as Sam hurriedly entered, teal gym bag in hand, and found a bench facing an open locker to change at.
"Sorry, coach. Overslept," he stammered. Thankfully the coach had nothing more to say and simply walked toward the indoor track. "Okay, moment of truth."
Zip
