"Well, fire this bad boy up," she said without hesitation. Clearly, Cindy was looking at this new project from her bleeding heart mindset. "Johnny, this could fix so many problems throughout the world!" She said excitedly.
"Alright sis. Just take a seat here," he said, indicating the barbershop-style chair. He proceeded to hook up the metallic connectors to various regions of Cindy's head. "This might sting a little at the beginning, but you'll be fine. When we start this, you'll need to concentrate on a personal experience you want to share with me."
He continued explaining the subtleties of the machine he was hooking her up to. She understood some of what he said, was skeptical of other parts, and was completely lost with large swathes of his explanation. "...so, you get all that," he finished.
"Uh, yeah. We're good," she said.
"Alright, just another minute," he said as he began to toy around with the computer terminal. "Alright, we'll set this here... adjust this level slightly... and remove that safety protocol... that should just about do it."
Johnny walked over to the chair that was adjacent Cindy and sat down. He began attaching the connectors to his own head. "Last chance dance, sis. You ready for this?" he asked.
"More than ever," she said. Part of her figured this wouldn't work, so it didn't really worry her.
Without hesitation, Johnny initiated the starting sequence. Lights flashed, cooling fans whirred, and monitors hummed. Cindy sat, nervously waiting for something to happen. She was concentrating on her experience as a volunteer at the local soup kitchen, hoping to give Johnny some of her volunteerism.
A slight tinge of pain shot through her head. Ouch, thanks for the warning, Johnny she thought.
The activity of the machine increased, with the cooling fans working overtime to keep the increasingly warming hardware from overheating. That's when it happened. Both Johnny and Cindy's vision blurred, and they both temporarily lost consciousness. Then it went black. The entire shack had lost power, probably a blown fuse.
"Uhhh, was that supposed to happen?" Cindy asked. That's weird, she thought. She cleared her throat several times.
"Cindy, are you okay? I think we blew a fuse back here" Johnny said. What's going on?! He knew something was amiss, but with the lights out, he couldn't see anything. Luckily, Johnny knew this shack like the back of his hand, and he made his way over to the wall. As he felt his way over to the fuse box, he knew something was up... he felt... bigger and bouncier. He opened the box and flicked the fuse switch.
"AHHHHHHhhhhHHHHHhhh!!!!" Johnny heard someone scream behind him, but it sure didn't sound like Cindy. As he turned around, finally able to see with the lights on, he was completely taken aback at what he saw. If he didn't know better, he'd swear he was looking at himself.
That's when this Johnny imposter started pointing at him. "Johnny, is that you," his body said.
"What? Of course it's me," he replied. The gravity of the situation was falling upon him like a ton of bricks. "Wait a minute..." He looked down, and almost fainted at what he saw. Why am I wearing the black and white sun dress that Cindy was just wearing? And why does it fit?!
That's when it clicked. "The overload in the software mainframe must have caused a feedback loop, which would have triggered the emergency purge of all gathered information..." Johnny said, seemingly to no one.
"Speak English?!" his body demanded.
"Cindy, is that you?" Johnny asked.
"Yes."
"When the machine shut down, it sent all it's collected data back to the bodies it drew from... but it looks like it downloaded to the wrong bodies," Johnny tried explaining.
"Are you saying..." Cindy said, mouth agape.
"...we've switched bodies," Johnny finished.