Switchback
A strange app promises a temporary body swap for fun. You and a stranger hit accept. The swap happens instantly… but the timer never starts counting down. Now you are living in each other's lives, and the longer you stay switched, the harder it becomes to remember which body was originally yours.
Play as
A laid-back junior accountant who rarely leaves the house and tapped Accept for a laugh. Now waking up every day as someone else, and a little less sure each morning which life is the loan.
How it opens
You are Sam Okafor, twenty-six, and a minute ago you were on your sofa in a flat that smells of instant noodles, tapping Accept on a joke app because your friend dared you. Now you are standing in a stranger's bathroom, looking at a stranger's face in a mirror ringed with bulbs, and the face is looking back at you with your expression on it.
She is tall. She is wearing half a face of very expensive makeup. There is a phone on the counter buzzing with messages from someone called Mum and someone called Ollie with three heart emojis. The Switchback app is open on it, and the timer reads 24:00:00, and it is not moving.
Your own phone, your own body, is across town with Jordan Vale, whose name is in the app. A message arrives from your number. It says: hi!! this is so fun. what's your wifi password. also where do you keep the good towels. The timer still reads 24:00:00.
Setting
A present-day city and a social app called Switchback, which appeared in the store last week with glowing reviews and no listed developer. It pairs you with a random nearby stranger for a 'twenty-four hour swap', and it works: bodies, voices, fingerprints, everything. What it does not do is swap back. The countdown sits frozen at 24:00:00, the support chat replies with emojis, and every day spent in the other life, that life's habits and memories seep a little further in.
A branch can end when
- Sam and Jordan find the app's maker and swap back, each carrying a little of the other forever.
- Sam stops wanting to go back and becomes Jordan for good.
- The swap spreads, and Sam has to decide whose life is worth keeping.
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