Federal Astral Transfer Assistance Agency

This one emerged out of a conversation on the chat site. You'll have to tell me what you think.

I got in the elevator, pushed the button, and then flexed my toes inside my shoes while taking the ride up.

For the upteenth time I cursed the dress code that meant I was stuck in heels.

I managed to put on my “pleasant professional” face on before the elevator door opened.

Mary the receptionist gave me a wave as I came in, and said “Morning, Director”

“Morning” I replied, and headed for my office.

Today was going to be a busy and important day, as it was the anniversary of the Agency’s creation. One of my jobs for the day was to create a brief summary of why the Agency had been created, so on my desk was a file folder full of the historical background.

Not that I needed much reminding, as the reason for the Agency showed up in my mirror every morning.

It had all started with a voice from the sky announcing “This is for your own good.” in every language in the world.

Then the Astral fingerprint machines arrived.

The instructions claimed that every human had a unique astral profile - a soul for the lack of a better word, which the machine would register. The instructions said we’d need the machines, and soon.

Before anybody could even begin to process that the transfers started.

At random, or at least so it seemed, people would suddenly find themselves in another body.

The transfers would usually last a couple of hours, then the person would return to their own body.

But every once in a while, something would go wrong.

And I was example number one of things going really wrong, as on my first transfer, the young woman who had gotten my body had a stroke and died, leaving me with nobody to swap back with.

Which meant that instead of being a 55 year old male, I was apparently going to spend the rest of my life as a woman.

My situation, and that of others like me, led the president to create the Federal Astral Transfer Assistance Agency, and he put me in charge as its director.

I took a break from reading the files and focused on the picture of a man and a woman that served as the wallpaper for my computer. They were the parents of the young woman whose body I now inhabited. They could have blamed me, but instead they have “adopted” me, and I believe that it was their willingness to take me under their wings that made it possible for me to not only survive this alteration, but thrive in my new life.

I smiled, and then returned to my paperwork.

Just the existence of the swaps has put all kinds of questions in our lap.

Atheists and agnostics have had the hardest time dealing with the idea of astral profiles - or souls, as many call them. Of course the astral profile by itself doesn’t prove any particular religion right, or even that our our astral profile goes to some eternal destination once we die, not to mention there aren’t any prophecies in any religious texts that predict the swaps, so the religious groups aren’t any happier.

People on all sides of the debate seem to be waiting until we can figure out the machines, since they’re are our only clue as to what’s really going on.

But we’re a long way from understanding the machines beyond some basics.

Mostly we use them to confirm or deny a swap had taken place, and that the person isnt faking. Because a swap leaves a marker on the astral self that is detectable by the machines. Our scientists believe this marker is used to make sure that the person is swapped back to the right body once the time for the swap is up.

The machines also have a record of the astral “prints” of the people who have switched, which has been helpful for us in learning a few things.

For example, we've discovered that children don’t swap. In fact the girl who swapped with me was one of the youngest people to participate in a swap.

Why that should be we can only speculate.

Another thing we’ve discovered is that while most swaps happen between people who are physically close to each other, that’s not a hard and fast rule.

We’ve also learned that our biggest fear about the swaps - that people would take advantage and hurt their new bodies, or clean out their bank accounts or something - hasn’t happened.

This seems to be because whatever the agency causing the swaps monitors them, and prevents such things from happening. There have also been a few known cases where someone tried to force a swap, including kidnapping the victim, but to the best of our knowledge, such attempts have always backfired on the person.

Sadly, some slip ups occur, like mine.

And there are other complications that can arise, like when a visitor to the U.S, gets swapped, or an American gets swapped while visiting another country.

There have also been a few cross border swaps, mostly right at border points. Like someone in Detroit will swap with someone in Windsor Ontario Canada.

Those swaps take up a lot of my time, as I have to work with other country’s diplomats or the head of whatever their equivalent agency to my own is.

One area I’m trying to get more data on is swaps involving trans individuals. There seems to be some evidence that most of the permanent swaps involve trans people, but I’d like to be able to prove it to my boss. It’s not easy, because any closeted trans person who got permanently transferred would be unlikely to come forward after the fact.

Which leads into my theory about the swaps.

I believe there are supposed to teach us compassion for each other. By forcing us to literally walk in someone else’s shoes, someone who is different in gender, or race, or economic status, we will learn to see them as being just as human as ourselves.

Once we’ve learned our lesson, maybe the swaps will stop.

But until they do, I’ll keep doing my job of helping Americans deal with the fallout.

After all who’d know the needs of the swappers better than I?

End