Jacob had always been obsessed with the idea of time travel. Books, shows, movies—he consumed it all. The concept of stepping outside his own era, of walking in another decade, thrilled him endlessly. So, when he stumbled across a classified posting about a laboratory conducting real-world experiments in temporal displacement and looking for volunteers, he didn’t hesitate.

He didn’t read the fine print. He barely skimmed the contract, his hands shaking with excitement as he signed it. To Jacob, the risks listed were meaningless words compared to the reward—getting to time travel. He imagined himself leaping centuries, standing in the past, watching history unfold with his own eyes.

The lab technicians strapped him into the padded chair, surrounding him with monitors and cables. They reassured him it would be painless. “Close your eyes,” one said.

So he did.

When Jacob opened them again, the sterile lab of 2025 was gone. Instead, he was standing in a warmly lit living room, the furniture faded but cozy, wallpaper in bold floral patterns straight out of the 1970s. The sound of a record player spun somewhere nearby. For a moment, Jacob’s heart pounded with exhilaration. He had done it. He had really traveled in time.

But then he felt it.

His body wasn’t his body. The weight was wrong, his balance different. His arms looked softer, his hands smaller. His chest pressed heavily against the fabric of a pale maternity blouse, breasts swollen and heavy with milk. The hem stretched tightly over the mound of a hugely pregnant belly, the skin taut and warm. Panic surged as he staggered toward a hallway mirror.

The reflection staring back made his blood run cold.

Gone was Jacob’s lean, twenty-something frame. In its place stood a woman in her early thirties, hair set in loose curls, a face rounder and faintly flushed. She looked tired but maternal, her figure soft with the signs of motherhood. Her belly was enormous, the movements beneath her skin unmistakably the kicks and rolls of late pregnancy. Wide hips, stretch marks, and the faint weight of breasts that had nursed before all told the truth—this wasn’t her first time carrying.

Jacob pressed trembling hands against the belly, only to feel a solid kick from within that made him stumble back in shock. “N-no…” he whispered, his voice alien, higher, warmer, female.

His memories fought against the flood of sensations, but a heaviness pressed in, as if the very identity of this woman was seeping into him. Janet. That name rose unbidden in his mind, along with flashes of children’s laughter, the smell of home-cooked meals, the voice of a husband coming home late from the law firm. Two daughters—ages five and eight—faces he suddenly recognized though he had never seen them before. And now, a son growing restlessly inside him, due in only a few weeks.

It hit him then—this wasn’t a trial run. This wasn’t a tourist’s trip to history. His mind had been thrown back into 1972 and anchored inside the body of Janet, a pregnant housewife. He had traded futures, his life in 2025 gone in an instant.

Jacob—or rather, Janet—gripped the sides of the mirror, staring at her flushed, matronly reflection. She didn’t want this. She hadn’t asked for children, for a husband, for the weight of motherhood pressing down on her. But as a wail echoed from down the hall, one of her daughters calling for “Mommy,” instinct tugged at her feet to go.

Her old life was gone.

Janet was here now—pregnant, married, mother of two, and soon to be three. And there was no going back.