Time Warp

Janet sprung to life and turned towards me, "John?!"

I looked back sheepishly, "In the flesh...."

"Oh my God," Janet's eyes were as wide as dinner plates, "Are you your ex? Why are you your ex, John?!"

"I... don't know," I stammered, "I only set the machine back a week. This must be, like, three years ago!"

"John! You told me it was safe!"

"It is safe, Janet! I just don't know how this happened. We were supposed to project into ourselves from one week ago, to avoid crashing the car. Somehow, something got fucked up, and we projected back to before we even met," I got a sinking feeling, "and somehow, that put me in Julia's body and you in mine."

"Okay. Okay," Janet paced, "So how do we reverse this?"

"Let me see... What date is it?" I looked at my ex, Julia's phone, "Oh shit."

"What, John?! What is it?"

"This is like a year before I get the device. I don't think we'll be able to go back until ...you get it."

Janet turned white, "No.... no no no...."

"I know. I hate this just as much as you do," I looked back at Julia's phone, "I think this was also, like, two months before we broke up."

"What do we do? What do we do?" Janet was in a panic.

I held her hand -my hand, "We can't do anything. We have to wait."

Janet pulled her hand nervously away from mine, clearly not wanting to hold hands with my ex.

"It's okay," I tried to console her, "We'll be back in our original bodies when the time comes. It will be like no time has passed. For now, I'm afraid we have no choice but to assimilate into our new roles, to avoid arousing suspicion."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that, for the foreseeable future, you're gonna have to start calling me Julia."