Mad scientist John Crevil and his wife swapped bodies with billionaire Jacob Astoria and his wife, but they got found out, and performed a second swap into the bodies of the Astoria’s chauffeur and maid in order to try to escape. How’s it all going to end?

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Fred Johnson at his apartment

Thursday, I started going back to the classes I’d missed for two days, while the Astorias used my apartment as a base of operations.

They kept me updated. On Thursday, the fakes went to their appointments as expected, and no doubt figured out we’d contacted everyone they were likely to meet and convinced them what had happened, either telling them to play it cool, or to make life miserable for them while still seeming to behave normally. Friday, the fake Jacob still went to work but the fake Margaret postponed her hairdressing appointment to Monday. No doubt that one was doing something, but we weren’t sure what.

With enough people to support them, the Astorias went to the police Saturday morning and explained everything that had happened. By that evening, the police called back to say they had confirmed their outlandish story and they had the Astorias’ home under surveillance with unmarked cars.

Sunday they reported that nothing happened. Nobody came or left in the first 24 hours of them watching.

Monday morning they went out to their expected appointments. With the cooperation of Jacob’s co-workers, they had plainclothes officers in the building observing and ready to put the impostor under arrest if he caused trouble or tried to run. But nothing like that happened. The co-workers reported the fake Jacob was acting even stranger than before, and tried to get out of everything he couldn’t do by saying he forgot rather than pretend and make stuff up. Margaret’s hairdresser also noticed her hair was shorter than it should be, as if she’d had another trim since she last saw her, and appeared not to be styled at all. She said fake Margaret acted like she’d never been in a salon before. That didn’t seem right; the impostor Margaret’s hair on Thursday had been styled when she arrived at the party, so the women there said. Clearly she’d been to some salon. Maybe at the party they had messed it up so much in their torture of her that it came out that way. We couldn’t explain the shortening. Had she gotten something in it and trimmed her hair as a way of removing it?

But the police said they were ready to take them in, convinced by behavior that everyone thought was weird and out of character, so Monday after lunch a squad car came and picked them up from my place to take them back home. Around 4 the Astorias called and gave me the password we’d agreed upon to say the fakes had been removed. They were back in their own home and invited me over. They wanted to reward me for all my help. Also, they had left their new computers at my place and asked me to bag up anything that didn’t belong to me and bring it over. That was all their clothing as well, even though it was the Crevils’ clothes. I figured they needed it because they were now the wrong sizes, unless they wanted to cross-dress.

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Fred Johnson at the Astorias’ house

I drove over. They let me in at the gate and I parked in front of their garage and walked up to the front door. The people I’d been living with for much of the last week, who looked like the Crevils even though they were really the Astorias, were waiting for me, along with their servants, a maid and a chauffeur they introduced me to. Their maid was also a cook, and served us all dinner.

After we ate, Jacob announced, “I want to reward you, now that all this is through. I think a hundred grand is good enough that we don’t have to try to account for how much of your money we spent trying to survive.”

“Thank you very much, sir.”

He set up the wire transfer on his new computer while the maid took things away, I entered my information when he got to that point, and then they went to their bedroom for a little bit.

When they came back, Margaret said, “We found some clothing from our wardrobes that we can wear for now, so that we don’t have to wear the Crevils’ clothes all the time until we can get our correct bodies back. Speaking of which, Lucinda, Harvey, did you see them stash anything here that could have been used in their body-changing routine?”

The help both professed ignorance.

“I guess we will have to do this the hard way.”

We split up, the help searching downstairs and me with the Astorias upstairs, looking for anything out of place. Since I didn’t know what things should look like here, I was helping them with specific tasks like moving things.

They found a big stash of items in a trunk in what they called the sitting room, including syringes and various vials of medication. There was also some camera equipment and a pad that appeared to be set up to view them. We also found some of those cameras around the house, and when we asked the maid and driver, more cameras like that were all they had found. Someone from the Police Department had given them a card with a number to call, and they did and had someone come out and pick this stuff up.

Jacob explained to the officer who came to pick it up, “We don’t know what this medication is, apart from that it doesn’t belong here, but we recognize that these vials could represent our key to getting our old bodies back, if there’s a way. But we need someone qualified to examine it.”

“Of course,” the officer responded. “We’ll have someone look at this, and it’ll provide evidence at trial, but we also want to help you get back to your right bodies, Mr. and Mrs. Astoria. The same investigation should help both causes, but we’ll make sure if there is a chance to get your bodies back that we don’t lose it.”

“Unfortunately, we don’t know how they got all these cameras in here. The maid and chauffeur don’t know anything either. We don’t have recording cameras around here and there isn’t a log for the gate camera. All things that we mean to fix.”

The officer left with all the stuff we found, and soon afterward I left too, so everybody could get to their own beds.

---

John Crevil, in the guise of Harvey, at the Astorias’ house

I couldn’t believe it when that guy Fred showed up. It looked like he hadn’t changed at all. I don’t know how the treatment could have failed so completely. It’s done something on every other person and animal who has taken it, even in the cases where I didn’t administer it right and it killed the subject.

And then Jacob paid the guy a hundred grand. If we could have taken his place, we could have gotten that and escaped clear away. But we didn’t even know where this guy was living in order to make a swap, and we didn’t collect his DNA before trying to change him.

Then they got to searching the place, and since they were clearly going to find the cameras we hadn’t already removed, we picked out the ones from downstairs while they worked on the upstairs. They weren’t much good for us at this point anyway, and they would help build the case against the fake Crevils.

And then the police took all the treatments away. That was going to make our plan to swap with the Astorias harder. I was going to have to start all over, and probably without access to our old lab that the police were surely cleaning out at this moment. We had the five grand we’d taken from the safe, the small amount of money Lucinda and Harvey had saved up, and fortunately, thanks to smart thinking by Betty, the key to about 10 grand worth of bitcoin in an account we used for gray and black-market purchases like some of our drugs. It clearly wasn’t enough money to set up a full lab, but maybe I could set up just the things I needed to make up new batches of treatments. At least getting the DNA was going to be easy now.

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Jacob Astoria, in the form of Betty Crevil, at the Astorias’ house

We let that kid Fred get back to his schooling. Those two impostors were going to go on trial at some point, and he’d be called to testify then, but he wasn’t the person we needed right now. We needed several different people, really, but he wasn’t one of them.

I contacted my office, where I’d been working with several people already. Some of Margaret’s dresses fit me now, just a bit longer than they were meant to be. With Mrs. Crevil’s underwear under them, and her shoes, I could still attend my meetings. I planned to get out the next weekend and get some more clothes that actually fit this body.

The people who managed my appointments were contacting all the people I had those appointments with to let them know I was going to be female. I provided a selfie I’d taken and a link to the news coverage to send these people. And I was going to have plenty of those in the next couple weeks, since all the people who’d met with the impostor were rescheduled for real meetings.

Margaret canceled some of her appointments, including the sex parties she’d only just revealed to me before all this happened. I promised her that if we got our proper bodies back I’d make love to her more often, and offered to do it with the bodies we had now, but she was too freaked out by the idea. To tell the truth, I was scared of that, too, but now that I realized how much I had neglected her, I wanted to try to make it up to her. Margaret kept other appointments, and also made an appointment for me with her hairdresser tomorrow morning, so I’d only attend one meeting with whatever my hair looks like now.

Lucinda and Harvey seemed a bit shaken up by it all, which is understandable, but they were carrying on with their duties. Still, Harvey didn’t have any accidents and made all our appointments on time. Lucinda’s cooking was a little off for the first few days, but she got back to normal soon.

We arranged with a security specialist, Jane, to meet us at the house Friday afternoon, when I managed to not have any appointments after 2 PM. She’d heard the story, but we told her the details of how these impostors had managed to look so much like us they defeated our face-based ID system.

Jane explained, “What they did to defeat face unlock isn’t strictly necessary. A really good rubber mask could do it as long as the shape of the head under it is right, and that could be tricked by putting it on a mannequin head or a molded one of the right shape. You really shouldn’t depend on that. Fingerprint unlock is much better and harder to get around, but it isn’t a good choice for you right now since this treatment that changes your appearance has changed your fingerprints so that they neither match your originals nor those of the impostors, and you’re hoping to have this done again to restore your appearance.”

“So what other option do I have?” I asked.

“There’s only one suggestion I can offer better than ‘just use passcodes’ and that’s RFID keys. These can be on a card in your wallet, or if you want it to be more convenient, they make tiny RFID keys you can have implanted under your skin, such as in a fingertip. They are passive computer chips that run off the power emitted from a radio signal and respond to a proper cryptographic challenge as used in some other security systems. But the chips can fail, so you need a backup mechanism to unlock your phone. It’s possible to set up a system where it sends a message to a trusted third-party security provider, who will email you a code that is good to unlock your phone for, say, 30 minutes. Provided you can access your email from another device, this can be your failsafe. Then you can turn off the RFID lock and just use a passcode until you can get the chip replaced.”

“OK, I guess that works.”

Margaret agreed, “Yes, I think so. I’m willing to do that.”

“For your gate, I’d recommend a two-factor system. An RFID card combined with a passcode. The standard rule is something you have and something you know, so that stealing the device or learning the passcode alone isn’t enough. If you have services authorized just to come into the yard, you can send them RFID keys. You can authorize as many different keys as you want, and deauthorize ones that have been stolen or whose holders are no longer trustworthy. You can assign different passcodes to different keys, and change those along with the compromised keys. And the individual keys are cheap, pennies a piece, really.”

“That sounds great.”

“Finally, you have to have some kind of logging. Ideally, you have cameras recording pictures of everyone coming in and going out, in other sensitive locations on your property, logs of which RFID keys were used and when, and access logs on sensitive accounts. I can show you how to set all that up.”

Between the meetings with Jane and clothes shopping, my weekend was filled. She had the system installed over the following week and activated the following weekend.

---

John Crevil, in the guise of Harvey, at the Astorias’ house

I knew Harvey’s routine, which was pretty much ferry the Astorias around to their appointments, service one car once a week at a time I wasn’t needed, make sure either I or Betty was around to receive deliveries, and once in a while to be here to help install some kind of hardware. Harvey had in his phone everything I could need to know about the locations I needed to go for them, and I pretty quickly learned all the frequent ones and expected I could go look up the infrequent ones when they showed up without raising any doubt.

The security people Jacob brought in installed their own stuff and had their own tools and ladders, and I didn’t have to help at all there, except to be here when they wanted to authorize me for the security system. Jacob does not suspect me at all, and being here got me deeper into their new security system than I was into the old one.

Meanwhile, I was able to work in side trips on the way to pick up one of the Astorias or after dropping them off to set up a post office box, and pick up some deliveries there, and start setting up my minimalist lab in my quarters. It’ll take a few more weeks to get everything set up.

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Jacob Astoria, still looking like Betty Crevil

Several days after we turned the stuff over, the crime lab people called. They had found someone who could analyze the contents of the vials, and came over to discuss it.”

“This was indeed a kit to change people into other people. Six of the vials have custom viruses designed to completely replace a person’s DNA with that contained in the virus. Such viruses are used medically, but usually just to edit out and replace specific problematic genes, usually the ones that cause inherited diseases. There were also some with animal DNA; I am not sure if these would work on people at all, but if they did anything, they would surely kill them. There were three other drugs. One was an immune suppressant. This was probably needed to keep the body from rejecting or destroying modified cells before the change was complete. Another speeds up the process by which cells are regenerated to replace other body cells. Just changing the DNA wouldn’t change your appearance, but by forcing the body’s cells to all regenerate, they would effectively make you look like an identical twin of the person whose DNA is in it. There can still be differences in appearance, because not every aspect of your appearance is based on genes, but it would be a pretty good resemblance. So this is almost certainly what was done to you. The last drug was a sedative.”

“Daramine,” Margaret interjected.

“Yes, how did you know?”

“The young man who was with us found a wrapper for a package of it in their lab, and he was familiar with the stuff due to a kind of insomnia he has.”

“There were also Daramine darts here, which would be what you reported being attacked with in your garage at the start of the whole incident. But we are most interested in the DNA in the viruses. We’ve sequenced the DNA contained in each virus, and there are 6 different human genomes. Two of them match the DNA of the suspects we have jailed now. That is presumably your DNA, since they look like you now. We are hoping to match the other people. We assume two of them are based on their original DNA and were used to change you. The last two might be other test subjects they used before you, or they could be other people they tried to change into. So we’re going to try to get DNA samples from your friends and co-workers in case they were looking for other ways to get at you. Please let them know we will be making such requests so they understand why.”

“Will do.”

An officer who came with this analyst took samples from me and Margaret, and since they were here now, from Lucinda and Harvey as well. And other the next week they visited my workplace and at least twenty other people who knew us, collecting samples from everyone.

---

John Crevil, still in the guise of Harvey

The cops came and wanted DNA samples, and we couldn’t not give ‘em, as it would immediately throw suspicion on us. We’re going to be somewhat suspected anyway, as the pair in jail would have gotten their wits back by now and be describing how we swapped with them. Probably nobody would believe them now, but when they find that some of the serums match our DNA, that will lend weight to their story.

Importantly, though, it means we can’t pull the final switch with the Astorias now, even though I will have everything ready to do so by this weekend. Anything happens to any of us now, and the survivors will get grilled so that we’d be found out for sure. We have to let things simmer.

It’s possible we’re gonna get grilled anyway, so Betty and I have been reading through all of Lucinda’s and Harvey’s email history, like cramming for an exam. We want to know everything it’s possible for us to know that they would know.

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Jacob Astoria, still looking like Betty Crevil

It wasn’t long before the police came back, confirming the last two sets of DNA in the viruses were Lucinda’s and Harvey’s, and also that the people they had arrested were claiming to be Lucinda and Harvey, who’d been tricked into being changed into our real bodies. The police wanted our help to try and determine whether they’d really done another swap, or whether they had the real crooks in jail now and they were just claiming they’d been swapped. In any case, they came and picked up the two who appeared to be Lucinda and Harvey now and the four were all being kept in separate cells where they couldn’t communicate with one another.

The police wanted help from me and Margaret to question them about things the real Lucinda and Harvey would know and the fake ones wouldn’t. If they had done another swap, they would have had access to Lucinda and Harvey’s phones for a little while, since they had copied us in setting up Face Unlock, and ordinary secrets like passwords and stuff in email might be compromised. They probably also observed Lucinda and Harvey while they were watching us and had learned their routines. They would have needed to know theirs as well as they knew ours in order to interact with them and fool them that they were us, and that’s why they swapped with them as a Plan B, or tried to, or claimed that they did. Whatever actually happened.

But they wouldn’t have had time to go through everything, so we thought back to memorable things that happened years ago, back when it was unlikely they had been observing us. We were also able to get in touch with their parents, who’d know things we didn’t even know that would be able to identify them.

Meanwhile, the FBI seized all the viruses and drugs, claiming quite reasonably that if they really worked then it was a national security issue, but they still promised us to get us back to our original bodies when they were done with the investigation, if possible. At least we had the country’s top medical experts working on it.

At the same time, everybody I worked with was getting used to my new appearance. Our case had become headline news, which was actually good because it was easier to work with the many clients I worked with when they had already heard what happened to me. Margaret had helped me pick out a small new wardrobe, a week’s worth of skirt-suits I could wear to work and some casual clothes, and taught me how to apply some basic makeup. If I was stuck being a woman, at least for a little while, I was at least going to be a presentable one.

The one thing we weren’t doing was sex. Even though I had once volunteered to Margaret to do it, I wasn’t comfortable having sex as a woman at all. The closest I got was that I had masturbated to what was apparently a female orgasm. Margaret, in John Crevil’s body, wasn’t invited to the parties with her girlfriends. I had agreed that she could go again when she got back to her real body, if she wanted to, and she wasn’t sure that she would. She had masturbated to generic gay porn in that body and had come once as well, but felt too weird to keep doing it. We could both at least say we had experienced orgasm from both sides of the fence.

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Betty Crevil, still in the guise of Lucinda, in jail

Drat! Once the maid and chauffeur had gone to jail, the drugs we put them on wore off, and they told the police what we did. If this had been our original plan, we would have known it wouldn’t work, but this was just a hastily improvised alternate plan after our original plan fell through. The police came to take us in, too, and we had to go peacefully, because it’s what they would have done. And then they put us all in solitary so we couldn’t plan out our stories or anything.

A few days later they brought in the Astorias in our bodies, and several other people I was supposed to know. People the real maid would have known. I’m sure I did a crappy job pretending to be her and we were cooked. I knew her routine, but not her past.

---

Margaret Astoria, in the form of John Crevil

When the police questioned the people in jail with the help of all the people we had gathered who the real Lucinda and Harvey would know, they easily determined that the Crevils had performed another swap.

The Crevils, caught red-handed, or at least wrong-handed, in bodies that provably did not belong to them, both pleaded guilty to get a lesser punishment. Part of that deal included helping the FBI learn how the technology worked and, under the FBI’s supervision, being put back into their own bodies. This failed in a bizarre way. Scientists investigating the results discovered that remnants of the viruses that had changed them to Lucinda and Harvey were still in their bodies, not completely eliminated after their last changes. This caused them to become what geneticists call chimeras; they had some of Lucinda’s and Harvey’s DNA and some of their own. Surprisingly, the body was able to handle this; the immune system reboot worked, resetting them to a state that tolerated both bodies’ DNA. The Crevils then stayed that way, unwilling to risk further changes. They were going to be locked up for the rest of their lives, but not in a regular prison. They stayed in a special medical facility where the results of all the changes could be monitored.

This let the FBI plan how they were going to change the rest of us back. John and I could change back immediately, because we’d been in the Crevils’ bodies throughout the whole adventure. But Lucinda and Harvey had to stay as us for two weeks to avoid becoming chimeras.

---

Jacob Astoria, back in his own body

I had to cancel all my appointments for a week, because apparently that was the normal time the drugs took to change people’s bodies. But now I’m back in my own body, and going to work again wearing my usual clothes.

During the time Lucinda and Harvey looked like us, we all wore name tags. They borrowed our clothes, which we gladly lent them for the time needed to get everybody changed back safely. It was good that we were so close, like an extended family, and we could laugh about the confusion that occurred during that time. Eventually we all got changed back into our proper bodies.

We don’t know what the government’s going to do with the technology now. Undoubtedly there will be spies who change into genetically exact doubles of people they are impersonating, and probably ones with the skills to learn how to impersonate those people better than the Crevils could do, or only for a short time. But they know now that a round trip to impersonate someone and back to their original body takes more than a month, if they want to do it safely.

Private research into how to do this is also banned, but no doubt people are going to figure it out and we’re going to face a future in which nobody can ever be fully sure their friends are who they think they are. But people are adapting. It’s already a thing that people use secret spoken passwords, handshakes, and other such techniques to verify to their close friends that they are the people they are supposed to be.

Margaret and I, along with Lucinda and Harvey, are glad to be back in our own bodies. Since I learned how I wasn’t satisfying her sexually, I make time to have sex with Margaret more often, and do other things to please her. She still goes to some of those parties with her girlfriends that are no longer secret, but with my full knowledge she is doing it. They let me come along once, on the condition that Margaret and I have sex in front of the group.

Fred never fully lost his body due to his condition that makes his body cells live longer, get replaced less frequently, and be totally immune to the drug that accelerates cellular replacement for most people. However, his DNA did change, and the FBI were able to isolate his original DNA from his apartment as the common sample that didn’t belong to one of us or one of the Crevils. They gave him a treatment to restore his DNA so that he would stop slowly changing into a wrong-size duplicate of me. Four months after we originally planned it, we had Fred back over for the three-way encounter that we had originally planned for Margaret’s 40th birthday.