Swappers 2 Chapter Six (Patreon)

Someone knocked on the door at exactly 8:AM the following morning. Mindy had been up most of the night, smoking and trying to keep the anxiety at bay. She opened the door.

Michelle stood in front of her. Justin’s former wife. She smiled, and her hair had been fixed different, but it was definitely her.

“Michelle!” Mindy wrapped her in a hug. “Oh my God, you’re okay!”

Michelle stood stiffly, allowing herself to be embraced but not returning it. “I think you might be misunderstanding, Miss McTavish.”

Mindy pulled away, immediately feeling embarrassed and ashamed. “You aren’t the real Michelle.”

“Your former wife is in our care, in a different body, Miss McTavish. If you follow me, we will see her and the rest of your friends and family, I promise.”

Mindy nodded, and grabbed her cane and purse, then followed “Michelle” out the door.

“So can I ask your true name then?”

The woman wearing his ex-wife’s body turned and smiled. “Best you call me Michelle, for now, Miss McTavish.”

She led her to a waiting car and opened the back door for Mindy. She placed her cane in, then slowly sat down in the car, and swung her legs painfully around, as Michelle shut the door.

Michelle sat in the front seat and closed her door.

The driver was Latino, tall, and appeared to be in his mid-fifties, though it was hard to tell. He had a pockmarked face, wavy dark hair, and did not say anything as the two women settled in.

“So where are we going?” Mindy said after a few moments.

“I’m afraid that’s confidential,” “Michelle” responded. “We’ll be blacking out the windows shortly…” 

As if on cue, all the interior windows went black. The driver had put on a pair of glasses in order to see the external input through 360-degree cameras.

Mindy sighed, tapping her knees with her fingers. Her stomach churned, queasy as they drove through unknown streets to an unknown location, to do an unknown thing. Mindy hated all the unknowns and felt like something awful must surely happen. She should have reported this but couldn’t risk losing the people closest to her.

The vehicle stopped, and the tinting cleared. They were in some type of garage. Several other vehicles perfectly lined the other spaces. It appeared to be someone’s private garage, with different vehicle types from vintage through modern arrayed in a razor straight line.

Mindy got out of the vehicle with a little assistance from “Michelle,” and they stood in front of a small service elevator.

“So private patron?” Mindy said.

Michelle smiled and pressed a button without responding.

The small elevator went up several floors and exited on an immense wood grain rotunda. Natural lighting from skylights above illuminated the front room of what must have been a mansion with thick pile carpet extending in every direction.

On one side was living space with couches, chairs, ottomans, and other furnishing perfectly matched and arranged with the opposite side featuring a large kitchen and dining area. A glass staircase wound around a central pole, carefully manufactured to imitate rusted steel.

Several people sat in the entertainment area watching a television. A children’s show appeared to be on, with animated dinosaurs filling the screen.

A small girl sat wearing a blue dress with a bowl of puffed cheese snacks in her lap. Her dark hair had been braided into two pigtails on either side of her face.

A man and woman sat next to her... Both had pale complexions but of different ages. The man had cornflower blue eyes but appeared to be in his late fifties while the woman was very overweight, tall, and had long stringy blond hair. 

They all stared at me as I entered. Disquieted, I followed Michelle as she led me through the living room to two paneled doors and paused.

“Now that we are all back together again, if you’ll please follow me, we can explain what’s happened to you.”

“Is that you, Mindy?” The older man said.

Mindy nodded. “Who are you?”

“Oh my GOD! How could they put you in that…”

“Again, if you’ll please follow me, we will let you know what’s happened and what the next steps will be.”

“Michelle” opened the door, and they entered a darkened room. Several folding chairs had been set out in front of a large screen. A man stood at a podium at the opposite end of the room. 

“Welcome, welcome, friends. Come and sit, please.”

From another door near the front, three other people entered. Mindy gasped as she saw her small, gorgeous body walk in, wearing sunglasses and looking perfect. Michelle, Jessica, and Justin also walked in, taking a seat and giving small smiles, as if they knew a secret that no one else knew.

A Latino man dressed all in white sat at an extravagant chair at the front of the room. He had a monitor setup, and was watching, intently, some action on the screen. As Mindy took her seat, she frowned. The action was familiar…black and white, with stylistic red and blues thrown in. It was Erotique.

“I see you are a fan,” Mindy said, once they’d all sat down. The man, looked up at her, smiling widely. “Erotique is one of the greatest pieces of art I’ve ever experienced!”

“I’m glad you like it.”

He nodded, standing up. He wore a white suit with a gold shirt that displayed his hairy chest for all to see. He had gold rings adorning every finger, and a gold watch that looked hideously expensive.

“Welcome my friends!” he spoke with a heavy Latin accent. “I am Humberto De Rochelle!” he waved his arms as if that should mean something.

The staff, along with their former bodies all began to applaud loudly. Mindy’s former body literally gasped as he said his name.

Mindy frowned in confusion but applauded slowly glancing around to see Justin and Michelle also clapping. The strange family across from her also clapped slowly, confused and Mindy realized that was probably the real Justin and Michelle and…could one of them be Jessica? 

The man grinned widely as the applause continued, then he motioned for everyone to stop. “You may be seated.” His accent made it “Ju may be seated.”

They all sat in their chairs. Mindy shook her head a bit at the strangeness of the scene.

“I know you are all wondering why you are here.”

They nodded, none of them wanting to speak.

“First a bit of a story.” He pressed a button on the console nested in his chair, and the screen began a presentation.

“I grew up as a very poor child in Mexico City…” The voiceover was Humberto’s, and the scenes showed a small child in the city, his parents, jobs he held, etc. 

I sighed, wanting to get to the point. The film discussed Humberto’s rough beginnings as an abused kid learning to be street smart in the streets of Mexico City before relocating to ‘Los Estados Unidos’ to live his dream.

Humberto became interested in drone technology and became quite the celebrated drone pilot in multiple industries, film, private enterprise, and military. He saw the crossover for the use of drones, and created a company called OMEGA CORP to manufacture and sell drone technology to the government and other institutions. He became incredibly successful, landing multi-billion-dollar contracts, but Humberto himself continued to learn more and more about drones, and piloting techniques. OMEGA partnered with other corporations in an effort to design smaller and smaller drones, that were smarter and smarter, piloted by AI.

“This is all well and good,” Mindy said at the conclusion of the film. “But how does it relate to us?”

“One of the companies I partnered with was Sensodine Incorporated.”

That name rang a bell. “Sensodine runs all the swapatoriums!” The older man said from across the table.

“Exactamundo,” Humberto said with glee. “I have learned mucho mucho about swapping and how it occurs.”

Everyone stared back at him expectantly. Who was who? Was Jessica here?

“The swapping process is a scourge on our society. It has created an elite class of individuals who use swaps as currency. Did you know this?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s part of the reason swaps don’t cost anything, I suppose.”

“Thee ultra-rich get ultra-richer while thee poor, the unfunded swaps, get riskier and riskier. You see this, yes?” His yes became ‘jes’ with his accent.

“I don’t know about that,” the overweight woman said. “The government oversight keeps the swapscape a level playing field.”

Humberto exploded in laughter at that. The person in Mindy’s body also giggled in her helium voice, bright and overdone, while ‘Jessica and Michelle’ also laughed.

“Government oversight.” Humberto stood up and began pacing back and forth in front of the screen. “Exists, to keep itself in power. Government oversight does NO exist for thee good of thee people. It exists to keep ITSELF continuing to do thee job it was assigned to do.” His accent made ‘job’ into ‘yob.’

“I still fail to see what this has to do with us, and why you have stolen our bodies,” Mindy said.

“To thee point!” Humberto flourished a finger extravagantly. “Yes, yes. To thee point.”

He pressed a button on the device in front of him, and images began on the screen again.

Drones lifted up from hundreds of drone pads in the thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands.

“I invent a drone that no need to land. No need to recharge. It use solar energy to keep going, and an AI for piloting.”

Drones could be seen flitting through clouds, amassing in different locations in coordinated, quite detailed formations.

“I also invent…” he took something out from under the podium. Small, metallic, and he held it between thumb and forefinger. 

“A Swap Virus!”

‘Mindy’ and the rest of them started applauding again.

A cold feeling swept through me that went from my scalp down my spine and into my stomach where I felt I might lose my breakfast. 

This was not good.

Not good at all.