Experimental System is abused; Co-worker gets revenge.



I work for a state of the art research company (I’m an office drone, I don’t do the cool shit) and our company likes trialing their new systems in house before putting it on the market. Technically I’m breaking my NDA for telling this story but fuck them, it’s not like they’ll read this.



Background: Our company it’s the leading expert in new and innovative technology with all sorts of government and independent contracts (I’ll let you guess who they are). It's one of the reasons I applied to work for them. I loved the borderline sci-fi stuff they were working on even if I didn’t understand how it works. Anyway their latest invention was one that allowed two people to switch minds (that’s right a body switching machine). This machine could literally change lives (so naturally Corporate found a way to use it to exploit their employees immediately).



One of the practical applications they wanted to test was a way to keep up productivity when key personnel were sick or couldn’t make it to the office due to car troubles. (They were able to remotely use the system as we had smart chips inserted under our skin for a previous invention. I should’ve seen that as a red flag but we all got a 1k bonus). The idea was, say Sally had the flu but there was an important client meeting that same day. Rather than canceling the meeting she’d swap bodies with Claire who was either someone who could spare the time for the meeting or a dedicated cover employee (DCE), so Sally could continue work in Claire’s body and Claire would deal with Sally’s flu. DCEs were also used for time saving costs such as a manager needing to come in for five minutes on his day off or to inspect a factory overseas without the 10hr flight (and without paying an airline).



Given how dangerous this system could be in the wrong hands, naturally only HR, Upper and Middle Management as well as the DCEs could access the system. They now had the power to switch us with anyone they wanted (though they usually had to still list a reason). I don’t know the science behind it but the way it worked is, you’d call in sick or not show up during your rostered hours and that would alert your supervisor or HR, they’d activate the system and you’d find yourself in the body of a DCE or a co-worker (the policy was to have same gender transfers unless no one else was available). The chips that allowed the system to work also made it easier to work as someone else as all our employee access was sent over with the switch. I should also note once switched the chips marked you as such, so you couldn’t be switched again.



The system worked as intended for about a month. I didn’t get sick during that time so had yet to experience the system for myself, though a couple of my co-workers had and hated it. They complained that the DCE hadn’t looked after their body per instructions and hadn’t relayed information from their doctor. They also said how uncomfortable it was having someone else in your skin and that I was lucky I didn’t experience it. Despite their distaste for the system, their productivity rose during this time (apparently when you’re uncomfortable in the body you’re in, you go for what you know and while working, you focus harder on that).

I didn’t know the system was truly broken until the co-worker that sat across from me (let’s call him David) took a personal day to attend his son’s school play. When I went to work that morning I was surprised to see a DCE sitting across from my desk. David was absolutely pissed that a DCE used his personal time as justification to swap with him. David complained to HR about the abuse of power, but they didn’t care (I think the abuse was a part of the experiment). After that David refused to work, hoping to get fired. But it turns out when you have the ability to swap your employee’s bodies around, even someone refusing to work could be taken advantage of. David and I discovered this the hard way.



It was a normal Monday afternoon, I was working as usual, trying to fly under the radar, while David sat across from me refusing to do work. I needed to use the bathroom and got up from my chair. My supervisor looked at me annoyed that I’d even dare stand up and asked me what I was doing. “I’m going to the bathroom” I said. She just gave me a wicked grin and turned towards David. “That’s not your job anymore,” she said before turning her attention to her pad. Before I could clarify any further I found myself in David’s body and was instructed to continue working. From that moment on, whenever someone needed to go to the bathroom, it was David’s job, it didn’t matter who it was.



Anyway I’ve ranted long enough, now time to get to the subject of this thread, the revenge plot. After the incident with David (who’s job is still to go to the bathroom and worse) the DCEs discovered Corporate didn’t really care how the mind switching system was used. So it was abused even more, I was now being swapped with DCEs on my days off and I wasn’t the only one. They were even taking our vacation time.



This is when let’s call her Mary comes in. Mary was engaged and her wedding was coming up. She had scheduled the time off before the system was implemented and before it was abused. There was a real dick of a DCE (we’ll call him Richard) who loved to swap out with anyone who had extremely long vacation time (even with the abuse there still needed to be a reason to swap, taking anytime off was now a reason). The thing is Richard never read the reasons and unlike some of the other DCEs he didn’t follow through on the commitments either. Richard also didn’t care who he was as long as he got to slack off.



When Mary’s time for her wedding came up, Richard took it and swapped places with Mary for two weeks. He skipped out on the wedding and honeymoon and broke things off with Mary’s fiance. With one selfish act, he had destroyed Mary’s life and she couldn’t explain this to anyone because of the NDA (not that they would believe her anyway). Knowing what had happened to David and others Mary didn’t take the issue up further and it was now impossible to quit the company (we couldn’t remove our chips and if we left we’d just get demoted to DCEs used for sick days only). So backed into a corner Mary just focused on work.



A few months later, Mary found out she was now pregnant to her ex-fiance. Before Richard ruined her life, she would’ve been excited for this news but now she wanted nothing to do with the baby. That’s when I got a brilliant idea. Having a baby meant maternity leave, which could last a few months. Like I mentioned earlier, Richard always looked for the longest time off and never looked at the reason. It took some convincing, as Mary hated Richard’s guts and didn’t want him in her body again but the idea of him having to give birth put a smile on her face. So I took my ‘vacation’ ending it just before Mary went on leave.



Anyway the plan went off without a hitch, Richard took Mary’s maternity leave and ended up having the baby. It must’ve really screwed his head as after they swapped back he was practically begging Mary to see the baby (who he named). Mary didn’t have an attachment to the baby so used them to gain emotional control over Richard (who ended up adopting the baby). With a DCE under her control Mary was now able to request any changes she wanted.  



Edit: For people asking what the reason for David’s new ‘job’ was, it was he was being unproductive and other staff members going to the toilet was also impacting productivity. So they were able to pawn any in house productivity issues onto David.



Edit 2: Yes, it was likely Richard would’ve done this to himself anyway, that’s why I scheduled my vacation days when he was available and ended them just before Mary went on leave.



Edit 3: Mary found this thread and is pissed I shared her story, remember how I mentioned she had a DCE under her control… well now I’m on ‘productivity’ duties like David.