Unplanned (Patreon)

I didn’t plan for this but we’ve tried everything to fix it but nothing works.

One day I arrived at work soaking wet through, luckily most of my clothes were dry under my jacket but my feet were drenched. So wet that my boots squelched as I walked. My pal came to me with a suggestion and asked my shoe size. Fortunately, he had just gotten some new boots and always carried his gym kit in his car, even more fortunate was that we had the same size feet. We walked to his car where he handed me a pair of his socks and his old boots. I sat on the boot of his car removed my own socks and boots and put on his spares. It was a great relief because I couldn’t worked all day with my own boots. I thanked him and went about my day as normal.

Throughout the day I felt a bit off, sluggish, probably brought on by getting so wet earlier, well that’s what I thought. During lunch I craved a cigarette. I’d never smoked but for some reason I wanted one, no I NEEDED one. I borrowed one of a friend who I knew smoked. Then people whom I had never spoken too started to acknowledge me, saying hi and how’s your day been. Being polite I responded to them. Strangely, my own friends seemed to be ignoring me.

It was only when the boss came over to me and asked why I was using some equipment that I hadn’t trained for that i realised something wasn’t right. I tried to explain that I was trained but then he dragged me to the office.

He said “Look, you can’t be using equipment you haven’t been trained on, it’s not safe and carries an instant dismissal as punishment, I’ll let this one go, but don’t do it again.”

‘Boss, I’ve been trained for at least ten years’. I replied.

“Your, what 22, that would of made you 12 when you were trained.”

‘I’m closer to 42 boss, I know I look young for my age.’

The boss chuckled. “Let me grab your training record. Yes, here it is. Jake stephens. Training scheduled for two weeks tomorrow, your not trained. Keep this going and I’ll have no choice but to terminate you.”

‘Boss, I’m not jake, you’ve got me mistaken.’

“Jake, stop taking me for a fool, you look, sound and smell just like jake, you are jake stephens.”

‘Honestly, my name isn’t jake, it’s Mike.’

Just then I began to feel different, I looked down at my hands, they were much smoother, younger looking. Then I realised I did sound like jake too, and not that jake had a bad smell, but I did smell like him too, his aftershave was lingering around the room. Just then jake knocked on the door and the boss finally understood what had happened. Jakes old boots had been an experimental batch that the company got cheaply from a scientific group within the military. The boots had recently been recalled and all wearers were instructed to stop wearing them and destroy them or return them to the manufacturer. Jake didn’t get that part of the memo. The recall instructions stated that the boots should definitely not be passed on to anybody else to wear.

The military had developed a technology intended to ‘repair’ injured soldiers, but the technology didn’t work the way they intended and the project was scrapped. All unused, unworn boots were sold off cheaply. However, it was discovered that the boots did work and what actually happened was that they absorbed dna of the wearer and if they were passed into someone else, sold, given to charity or part of a work boot share, the new end user wold be given the body of the previous wearer. He directions stated that if the change was noticed caught in time then it could be reversed. This was time limited to one hour, which for me had passed a long time ago. A second option was for me to wear my old boots, which might, if caught in time would reverse the process, we tried this and with the amount of rain water they had absorbed, there wasn’t enough of my own dna left in the boots to change me back. A third and final option was for the real jake to wear my boots. Since his feet had worn the changing boots for an extended period, it occasionally meant that his feet could soak up minute traces of dna from my boots into his feet, turn into me, and then swap boots again and return to our own bodies. However, this option didn’t change jake into me and it appeared I was stuck having a body that was an exact replica of jake.

Jake wasn’t too pleased about there being 2 of him, but there was literally nothing anyone could do. I was stuck as jake and my age had just regressed by over 20 years, I acted annoyed but truthfully, it was the best thing that could of happened to me. At work, I’m know as jakes identical twin brother, I go by the name of Tim. Away from work, jake and I are best friends, but I lead my own life away from jake. It’s amazing.

Wear socks after it rained