After doing some research and talking with trans men on the forum Avery had recommended, he’d reluctantly decided that binding her breasts wouldn’t be right, given possible health risks for Dakota if he wound up staying in her body for months.

A few days later, after careful consideration of the budget, Kevin bought a couple of new outfits for work which de-emphasized Dakota’s assets as much as was feasible without long-term consequences for her body. After doing some research and talking with trans men on the forum Avery had recommended, he’d reluctantly decided that binding her breasts wouldn’t be right, given possible health risks for Dakota if he wound up staying in her body for months. Most of the potential health problems — back, chest or shoulder pain, for instance — would go probably away shortly after she got her body back, but some, albeit less likely, could give her trouble for months or even years to come. If he got a respiratory infection and it developed complications... So he simply wore a sports bra. Along with a loose sports jacket and dress shirt, it did help — he was a lot less feminine-looking than he’d been when wearing what Dakota had insisted he wear to protect her image, though he couldn’t fool himself that he passed as a man.

He sent Dakota a message about what he was doing and why. Perhaps predictably, she was angry and threatened him with a lawsuit if he didn’t start wearing her clothes and makeup again and change his hairstyle back to what it had been.

That was scary. Kevin doubted she would win purely on the merits of the case, but she had much deeper pockets than he did and could pay for more and better lawyers. He’d heard of some body-shuffled people suing the people in their original bodies for smoking, engaging in risky hobbies like mountain-climbing or sky-diving, or other dangerous things, but none of those cases had been decided yet. With the family’s uncertain financial position, could he risk the costs of a lawsuit? He decided, after discussion with Elise, that he’d continue going to work like this for a few more days and see if the gender dysphoria went away or got less frequent, and if so, risk the legal consequences. It did help, although not as much as he’d hoped.

* * *

Not long after returning home from Dakota’s cabin, Kevin had tried to get back to work on the model train layout he’d been working on before. But he found it hard to focus. When he did manage to focus on it, it helped distract him from Dakota’s body, but too often it was the other way around. After a few days, he abandoned the train for a while.

He tried to get into it again after taking Avery’s advice and starting to wear masculine clothing. It went better this time, but he still had days when he felt too bad to do anything after work but watch TV.

Despite her threat, Dakota didn’t actually file a defamation suit until photos of Kevin at the grocery store appeared on the Internet, two weeks later. But after a visit with a lawyer, he was somewhat relieved.

“It’s going to be very hard to prove that you’ve harmed her or done anything illegal,” the lawyer told him after doing a little research. “There’s no existing laws governing what people can do in borrowed bodies because it’s a situation no legislator anticipated was possible. You’re not making false claims about her, because it’s common knowledge — at least among the people who know and care she exists, which isn’t as many as she likes to think — that she wasn’t wearing that body when those photos were taken, you were. And she can’t claim a breach of contract, even a verbal contract, because that agreement you two made didn’t have any obligations on her part balancing your obligations.

“Suppose your friend asks you to help him move, and you agree. But he’s not paying you or anything. You don’t show up on the day, and he tries to sue you — well, assuming he could get a lawyer to take the case. It would be thrown out because he wasn’t compensating you for the moving help, so it’s not a contract.

“Even the people who’ve been much more provably harmed by the people borrowing their bodies, like those who’ve posted nude selfies or neglected necessary medical care, are going to have a hard time proving their cases, and I don’t think this one will get very far before it’s thrown out of court. But because it’s an international case, it will take longer and cost more before it’s thrown out than if an American was filing the same frivolous lawsuit against you. We can stick her with the legal costs when that happens, but until then...”

Nothing much seemed to happen with the lawsuit for the next several weeks. Kevin continued to wear men’s clothing; Bryce joined a senior water aerobics group; Elise worked long hours and arrived home too tired to say or do much. Kevin and Bryce continued going to the support group meetings most Saturdays, but Elise didn’t join them again as, on the rare Saturdays she didn’t go to the lab, she was too tired from five long days at work to go anywhere else.

Finally, five weeks after the lawsuit began, Elise came home from work with good news. “We may have it! We’re going to do a test tomorrow, and see if we can swap a couple of people back.”

“Just a couple? How would that work?” Kevin asked.

“Most people are part of a chain of mind-shifting,” Elise explained. “Like Amy’s in your body, you’re in Dakota’s body, she’s in that guy Bennett’s body, and so on through a few dozen people who all teleported at about the same time, until you reach the person who ended up in Amy’s body. But there were two people who ended up in each other’s bodies, and a couple of other relatively short chains, less than ten people rather than dozens. We’re going to do our tests on them before we try to swap everyone else back.”

“I hope it goes well.”

And it did. The following afternoon at work, Kevin got a text from Elise saying “It worked!!!”, followed half an hour later by Levi, one of his co-workers, telling him, “Hey, did you hear the good news?”

“Some of it,” Kevin said cautiously. He didn’t want to violate his NDA if Levi wasn’t referring to a press release from InstaThere.

“Check it out; InstaThere says they’ve put some people back in the right bodies, and they’ll be ready to do it for everyone else pretty soon.”

“Awesome, thanks.”

He watched the press release video and didn’t learn much new. InstaThere Labs had swapped back two people who’d ended up in each other’s bodies, and they were planning to swap back everyone else once the logistics could be worked out.

Later in the week, Elise told him that they’d done the first test of the system they would use for the bulk of the shuffle victims. They’d swapped back a small chain of eight people who’d swapped into each other’s bodies, but instead of bringing them all to InstaThere Labs, they’d had them each go to a specific teleport station near their home at the same time, then teleported their bodies to them. “We’ll have to do it that way for everyone else, there’s no R&D facility or teleport station in the world that has enough teleport booths to sort out even a hundred people at once, much less everyone. And Dr. Karga says we’ll probably do everyone at once, rather than doing each chain on a separate day — it would minimize the number of times we disrupt the operation of the various teleport stations around the world.”

“I can’t wait,” Kevin said. “I thought the dysphoria was getting better when I first started wearing men’s clothes again, but it’s back with a vengeance this past week or so.” Dakota’s body’s period, the third that Kevin had experienced, had started a few days earlier, just in time for a crunch week at work.

Finally, everyone who’d been swapped was instructed to report to a specific teleport facility on the following Wednesday at noon, EDT, and stand in the booth they were assigned until everyone was in place and they could be restored. Kevin’s family reported to InstaThere Labs in Atlanta and stood in several teleport booths starting at noon. Kevin had with him in the booth a couple of suitcases of Dakota’s borrowed clothes and toiletries. The glass doors didn’t close yet; it was almost an hour before InstaThere employees all over the world reported that 99.8% of those affected were standing in the booth they’d been assigned. Kevin sat on the floor of the booth, bored and apprehensive.

Then Dr. Karga approached Kevin’s open booth and said, “We have a problem. Amy Jedynak in your body hasn’t reported to the booth at LAX she was assigned to, and she isn’t responding to calls or messages. So we’re going to have to punt on getting you into your body.”

“You mean I’ll stay in Dakota’s body?”

“No, Ms. Severin is waiting in her booth at her home in Toronto, and we need to put her back in that body. We’re going to put you in Ms. Jedynak’s body for now; the person with her body is waiting at Bradley International in Connecticut. Once Ms. Jedynak turns up, we can do a pair swap for the two of you any time during business hours. Give us a few minutes to recalibrate the shuffle for you and a handful of other people whose original bodies haven’t shown up, and we’ll be ready to go.”

The minutes seemed like hours, but there were only six of them. A chime rang, the glass door slid shut, and suddenly, Kevin felt different — but the scene outside the booth didn’t change.

Kevin looked down at Amy’s body. He’d never asked her what her original body was like; most of their conversations had focused on helping Ayesha take care of Bryce’s body, until she’d returned to California, and they hadn’t talked much since then. She was younger than Dakota, he knew, but it seemed she wasn’t in as good a shape; she was overweight, though not much more than Kevin or Elise’s original bodies, and she wore glasses. Hopefully Amy wouldn’t give him a self-care regimen as long as her arm to follow until they could swap back. He hoped she was okay, and he was frustrated with himself for feeling angry with her when he didn’t know why she hadn’t shown up at LAX. It was probably something beyond her control; he couldn’t imagine anyone slacking off on something this important.

The door slid open and Kevin stepped out. He saw Elise and Bryce emerge from their booths, looking at each other and then around at the strangers who’d been swapped back into their own bodies. Kevin approached Elise.

“It’s me,” he said, “Kevin. They told me...” Amy’s voice was a lot higher than Dakota’s had been; even from inside her head, it sounded almost squeaky.

“Yeah, she told me too,” Elise said, hugging him. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out.”

The family was asked to move over to a waiting area for a while, in case Amy Jedynak would show up late at LAX and they could swap Kevin back after all. Elise and Bryce cautiously talked about how good getting their original bodies back felt, giving Kevin sympathetic glances that he was too distracted with worry to resent.

“In a way I miss being young again,” Elise said, “but I don’t miss seeing a stranger’s face in the mirror, or reaching for something and missing because my arms aren’t as long as I’m used to. I’m sure it’s nothing compared to your gender dysphoria,” she added hastily, “but it’s still good to be back.”

“I sort of miss Mr. Chu’s lungs,” Bryce said, “but I don’t think mine are any worse than they were a few months ago. Ayesha’s taken pretty good care of them. And hey, my knees don’t hurt anymore!”

Kevin forced himself to congratulate them, but said little otherwise, anxiously watching the door someone would come out of to tell them if they’d found out anything about Amy. But another hour brought the news that Amy in Kevin’s body was in critical condition at USC Medical Center, having had some sort of accident at home. The details didn’t become clear until later.

When Kevin came back to work the day after the mass swap-back in Amy’s body instead of his own, he had to endure a new round of curiosity and commiseration from his co-workers, but it seemed like it wasn’t as bad as when he’d returned from “vacation” in Dakota’s body. He didn’t have any men’s clothes that fit Amy’s body, so for now he was wearing clothes from the suitcase that Amy had meant to take to her cousin’s wedding back in July, and which had been teleported to Atlanta along with her body.

Amy’s family kept them informed about her condition; it was touch and go for the next few days, but eventually Amy was out of danger.

By then, Kevin, who had just gotten done with a third of Dakota’s periods before the mass swap-back, had started Amy’s period as well. “Do you want to swap with Amy as soon as she can leave the hospital?” Elise asked him one evening after they’d heard good news about Amy being moved from ICU to a regular hospital room. “Or wait until she’s recovered more?”

“I’m not sure,” Kevin said. “I don’t know which would be worse, the pain of those injuries or the wrongness of staying in this body longer. But... given that I’m having panic attacks less often now — or I was before we got the news about Amy, anyway — and,” (he blushed hard), “Amy’s flow isn’t as heavy as Dakota’s... I guess I might wait a while longer?”

Elise nodded. “It’s probably a good idea. We still don’t know whether and to what degree that accident was Amy’s fault, but it certainly wasn’t yours. You shouldn’t have to swap back any sooner than you want to. After she’s recovered fully, or at least enough that you can keep working.”

What if she doesn’t recover? Kevin wondered, but couldn’t bring himself to say.

I have a spooky new novelette, "A Girl, a House and a Secret", available in epub and pdf formats from itch.io. You can buy it by itself, but you would get more value for your money if you buy it as part of the Secret Transfic Autumn Anthology.

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