But he was soon distracted from his surroundings by a glance down at himself. At the clothes he hadn’t been wearing a moment ago, the shopping bags he hadn’t been carrying, and the breasts that hadn’t been part of him, displayed to advantage in a low-cut blue blouse.

“Make sure you’ve got your passport out,” Kevin instructed his son Bryce, “and the letter from Dr. Shaw. We’re almost to the head of the line.”

Bryce nodded silently and fished his wallet and a folded-up sheet of paper out of his backpack. There weren’t as many restrictions on what you could take with you in an international teleport as there were on domestic plane flights, but it couldn’t hurt to bring a letter from Bryce’s doctor about the medical equipment and medicine in his suitcase. The TSA guards or customs officials didn’t often hassle them about it, but when they did, the letter was invaluable.

The last of the group of college-age girls ahead of them finished having her suitcase scanned, and went on to the row of teleport booths ahead. Kevin stepped up and lifted his, Bryce’s, and his wife Elise’s suitcases one by one onto the conveyor belt, emptied his pockets into a bowl, and followed his wife and son through the metal detector. Elise was already arguing patiently with the TSA guard, who was looking at the letter from Dr. Shaw suspiciously while another guard pawed through Bryce’s suitcase and pulled out his nebulizer and other equipment.

“...and thus very clearly qualifies as medical equipment. Plus adapters so it will work with European power outlets. And it’s got nothing more complicated inside it than an electric motor, so even if it were turned on — it can’t be, it doesn’t have batteries — it couldn’t possibly interfere with a teleport. I know, I work on those machines for a living.”

Kevin let her talk; she had more patience for dealing with bureaucracy than he did. Bryce didn’t say much, either, fortunately; his sarcasm would not have improved the situation. Finally, the TSA guards decided to let them go, and they joined another, somewhat shorter line for the teleport booths.

Up ahead, they saw one person after another being called from the line by the teleport attendants, who would take their ticket, scan it to program the booth, and let them in. The glass door would close and the person and their luggage would vanish.

Finally it was their turn. Elise was at the head of the line, and one of the teleport attendants finished sending someone to their destination and waved at her. “See you in a minute,” she said to Kevin and Bryce, and briskly walked toward the empty teleport booth. Then Bryce was hurrying toward the next free booth, and then Kevin.

He handed his ticket to the attendant and showed her his passport. “Is your destination showing correctly?” she asked, gesturing at the display on the teleport booth, which was reading “International Customs, Heathrow Airport, London, UK.” They’d put the international teleport stations in airports because that’s where the customs posts were already set up, and because the airlines didn’t need as much space as they used to.

“Right,” Kevin said.

“Then have a nice trip,” she said, and pressed a button to open the sliding glass door. Kevin walked in, pulling his rolling suitcase. He didn’t have time to turn around before he heard the glass door slide shut behind him and —

— okay, this was wrong. He’d teleported before, more often than most people with his income due to Elise’s InstaThere employee discount, and he knew if you weren’t facing the transparent door, you couldn’t tell you’d teleported until you turned around and saw a different place. But he was still facing the back wall of the booth and felt really weird all over.

He turned around to face the glass door, which was already sliding open, and became more aware of the changes. Longer hair was tickling the back of his neck as he moved, and something wobbled slightly on his chest as it caught up with the motion of the rest of his body. There was not a customs receiving area beyond the open door of the booth, no desks or officials or queue of travelers or signage in various languages. Instead, he saw... a tiny little room with a couple of doors, a thumbprint lock, and a bell for visitors to ring. This looked like the teleportation vestibule in a wealthy person’s home, not that he’d ever seen such a thing except on TV.

But he was soon distracted from his surroundings by a glance down at himself. At the clothes he hadn’t been wearing a moment ago, the shopping bags he hadn’t been carrying, and the breasts that hadn’t been part of him, displayed to advantage in a low-cut blue blouse.

He started hyperventilating, dropped the shopping bag (which went flomph rather than clunk, fortunately), and staggered back against the wall of the booth, leaning against it trembling for a few moments before his legs (no, clearly not his) gave out and he slumped to the floor. Finally, after gasping for breath and staring down at that cleavage and the tight pants with no room for anything extraneous in the crotch for some time, he gingerly reached up and touched the left breast, just above the neckline of the blouse.

It felt real. But it wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him.

When he had calmed down enough to stand up, he walked out of the booth and tried his new thumb on the thumbprint lock. He breathed a sigh of relief when the door clicked open, revealing a living room. The owner of the house had to be rich, judging from the fact that they had a teleport booth in their house, but you wouldn’t have known that from the other furnishings. They looked like good quality, wood rather than particle board, but not obviously super expensive. No one else was in the room, and he hesitantly called out, “Is anyone home?” No one answered. He wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. He didn’t want anyone looking at him like this, but if someone were home, maybe they could explain what the hell was going on.

He became aware that he was wearing a purse slung over his shoulder. He pulled it off and rummaged through it, finding a Canadian passport and an Ontario driver’s license in the name of “Dakota Severin,” age 32, female. Not that he hadn’t already figured out the last bit.

There was also, in addition to some feminine paraphernalia and necessities he absolutely didn’t want to think about, a minitablet. He hoped it didn’t need a password. He tried the thumbprint sensor and the desktop came up right away.

He had Elise’s phone number memorized because of having to reel it off whenever someone asked for emergency contact numbers for himself or Bryce. He didn’t want to call her because she wouldn’t recognize this woman’s voice, so he typed her number into the addressee field for the text app and said:

“help! I’m in the wrong place AND THE WRONG BODY, how did this even happen? apparently this body belongs to dakota severin, age 32, female! I’m at somebody’s house, probably hers. will message again when I know more.”

He felt like he was on the verge of another panic attack. He needed something to distract him. After taking some slow, deep breaths, he got up and explored the house. He hadn’t gotten farther than looking around the room just beyond the teleportation vestibule before he realized that he hadn’t identified himself in the message. He pulled out the tablet again and sent:

“this is kevin by the way.”

Then he realized that, if this was like some of the fictional teleporter accidents he’d seen on Star Trek, somebody else was probably in his body. Most likely Dakota Severin. He sent a text to his own phone number, telling her who he was and asking her to look around the Customs area for Elise, whose photo she would find on the wallpaper of his phone; her contacts at InstaThere would get this sorted out soon.

He was about to continue exploring the house, but the sight of his slender arm as he sent the text started another panic attack, and he collapsed onto the nearest sofa, curling up and trembling.

A few minutes later, he forced himself to get up and look into the other rooms. He only glanced into the bathroom, not wanting to see Dakota’s face in the mirror yet, but he wasn’t able to avoid the mirrors in the bedroom. Dakota’s body was striking, though not exactly beautiful; her skin was a shade paler than Kevin’s own, and her hair a shade darker. From this outside-ish perspective, her breasts didn’t seem as freakishly big as they did when Kevin looked down, though he figured they were larger than average for a woman of her build — maybe implants, or maybe one of the new treatments for “naturally” growing larger breasts.

The house seemed smaller than he’d expect from someone rich enough to own their own teleport booth, but it had a great view from every window, forests and mountains as far as the eye could see with no other houses in sight. It had a deck that overlooked a small lake. And there was no garage, car, or even a road, only a helipad, which had no helicopter sitting on it — not that he could pilot one if there had been. The only way out was the teleport booth, which he didn’t trust or know how to use, or walking on foot through however many miles of wilderness to the nearest town.

He pulled out the tablet again and found the maps app, then centered on his current location. It showed nothing but a blue patch of lake and a surrounding blank, unlabeled green area. He had to zoom out a lot before he found the nearest town, which was a long, long way to the southeast. He was somewhere in the Canadian Rockies, near the eastern border of Alberta.

Of course it had gotten easier to build in remote areas since teleport booths were developed. You helicoptered in a generator, a satellite dish, and a cargo-sized booth, set them up, and teleported in building materials, laborers, and more fuel for the generator until you had an alternate power source set up. It was still pretty expensive, though. This obviously wasn’t Dakota Severin’s only house, given how small it was and how few clothes she had in her bedroom here — mostly sleepwear and hiking gear, it seemed.

After exiting the maps app, he saw a notifications icon. He hadn’t heard any message pings, but he realized the minitablet had been silenced for some reason. He checked the messages and saw several apparently intended for Dakota, from named people he didn’t know, and three from unknown numbers — two of which he recognized as Elise’s and his own, plus an unfamiliar one.

From his own number he saw this:

“no, I’m not this Dakota person. I’m Amy Jedynak and I was on my way to Hartford for my cousin’s wedding. now I’m stuck in Heathrow for who knows how long, not to mention being a GUY. check the news if you haven’t already.”

From Elise’s number, this:

“I apologise, I am not your friend, I do not know what body or place they are. if you have not seen the news, you may not know that this have happen to many people who teleport in same minute. I treat your friend’s body with utmost respect. let us pray the teleport company fix this soonest.”

And from the unknown number, this:

“to whoever is in my body: you’re not going anywhere until the teleport network is fixed, if you haven’t figured that out already. don’t worry, there should be more than enough food in the pantry to last until then. if it looks like the downtime is going to last more than a couple of weeks, I’ll arrange for a copter to come rescue you. don’t try to impersonate me on social media or you’ll regret it; just relax and enjoy a mountain vacation.”

Horror built up in him with each successive message. Everyone who’d teleported within the same minute...? Then Elise and Bryce were almost certainly lost somewhere in the wrong bodies, and someone else was in Bryce’s, too. Someone who wouldn’t know how to do Bryce’s treatments or when to take his meds. Bryce’s health would probably take a sharp downturn by the time he got his body back unless Kevin or Elise could get in touch with whoever was in Bryce’s body and tell them about Bryce’s medical regimen.

That was assuming they would ever get back to their own bodies. But he couldn’t think about that, or he’d start panicking again.

He called Bryce’s phone and didn’t get a response; it went to voicemail after a handful of rings. He then sent a text message, but to be on the safe side, he also sent additional messages to the people in his own and Elise’s bodies, telling them to look at Bryce’s contact photo and then look around the customs area to find the person in his body, and please tell them to get in touch with him via Dakota’s number.

After that, he was too anxious about waiting for the call to pay full attention as he looked for news about the disaster. Not much was known yet, but thousands of people all over the world were stranded in the wrong bodies, often in the wrong country, and InstaThere had shut down their teleport network in response. That meant that a lot more people, not just those in the wrong bodies, might be stranded with no way to get home if the shutdown lasted very long. People who’d teleported moderate distances for the sake of convenience could fly home when they’d finished their vacation or business trip, but there hadn’t been any intercontinental flights in years, not since teleportation became cheaper than long-distance plane tickets, and it would take time for the airlines to gear up and start running them again if the cause of the mixup couldn’t be identified and fixed quickly. As for getting people back in their right bodies... who knew how long that might take.

He watched a couple more videos from other news networks that didn’t tell him anything new, then read some articles, one of which quoted Elise’s boss as saying, basically, they didn’t know why this had happened but they were confident of figuring it out soon. Kevin would feel a little more confident about that if Elise were in the lab helping them.

Finally, a notification ping sounded, and Kevin checked messages. It was from the person in his old body, Amy something.

“finally found the person in your son’s body hiding in the ladies’ room. unfortunately he or she doesn’t speak English. trying to find an interpreter. also looking for the luggage you mention, it wasn’t with him. can you describe it in more detail?”

Kevin swore. If the person in Bryce’s body had panicked and run to the restroom to look over their new body, abandoning his backpack and suitcase... or if they had been stolen from him in the chaos that had probably followed the arrival of a wave of body-shuffled people... even if they established communication, that person would have a hard time following Bryce’s medical regimen without any of his equipment or medicine. Kevin wrote back, describing Bryce’s backpack and suitcase.

About then, the original Dakota started sending him a long series of messages instructing him about her own self-care regimen. He skimmed them over. Nothing as health-critical as Bryce’s treatments, but he’d try to follow it and return Dakota’s skin, hair and... female parts... in the same condition he’d found them. He was a little vague about how fast a woman would get an infection if her vagina wasn’t cleaned properly every day; surely not as fast as Bryce would get sick if he ignored all his treatments, but he wasn’t taking the risk. Still... he’d put most of that off until tomorrow. Hopefully this would all be fixed by then.

He’d been ignoring Dakota’s body as much as possible, but by this point it was insisting that its bladder needed to be emptied, and he couldn’t put it off any longer. He took care of that business as quickly as he could, not looking down at Dakota’s body more than he had to. Feeling restless, he paced around the house for a while, obsessively checking messages and news and not finding anything new. Finally, he decided to go for a slightly longer walk. He wouldn’t go far from the house and whatever infrastructure was allowing this little minitablet to function like a satellite phone in the wilderness, but he wanted to get outside. And he’d already seen Dakota’s crotch and thighs naked, so changing into other clothes without stripping out of underwear wouldn’t be any worse violation of her privacy. He’d have to do worse to follow her self-care regimen if he stayed here for a day or more.

He changed from the shopping outfit into hiking clothes and boots and walked out onto the deck, then down the stairs to the helipad and a small yard with wildflowers and other presumably native ground cover, getting his first look at the house from the outside. It was only a little bigger than his and Elise’s house back in Atlanta, with plain-looking wood siding that blended into the environment pretty well, and the sort of steeply peaked roof he’d seen on his travels up north, lined with solar panels on the south side, and with a high windmill built into the north side. He hadn’t seen the machinery or control room for the windmill in his explorations, though he hadn’t yet thoroughly examined every room. Probably something he’d assumed led to a closet actually connected to the windmill?

He walked around the house on all sides and along the lake for a little distance before heading back to the house, uncertain what the range of reception was. As he was heading back, he got a message from Amy in his body:

“okay, we found your son’s luggage and it seems to have all the medical stuff still in it. still waiting for the interpreter to get here.”

Kevin breathed a sigh of relief, then winced at what that did to Dakota’s chest. He walked for a few more minutes before getting hungry and returning to the house for something to eat.

There wasn’t actually a lot of variety of food in the kitchen. Most of it was non-perishable staple goods, large bags of dried rice, beans, and pasta, and cans of vegetables, soups, and pre-cooked meat. There were no bread, eggs, or fresh vegetables — which would make sense if Dakota (and the rest of her family, if she had any) only spent time here sporadically. If they were rich enough to have multiple houses and teleport booths, they might have a chef, and the chef could bring them most of their meals here while they were in residence, reserving the food in the pantry for emergencies that could prevent them from teleporting out.

There was an extensive spice rack, though, and he added some cayenne pepper and a dash of garlic powder to the can of beef and vegetable soup he heated up. While he ate, Dakota’s phone rang with a call from someone named “Harper,” which he ignored, and a couple of minutes later, an unknown number. Reflecting on the irony of the situation, which had him ignoring calls from identified people (Dakota’s friends) and taking calls from unknown numbers, who might be people he knew, he answered.

“Hi?” said a tentative voice, a woman he didn’t recognize. “Is this Kevin Eldridge?”

“It’s me,” Kevin said, feeling self-conscious at trying out Dakota’s voice for the first time. It was high compared to his natural bass, but lower-pitched than most women’s voices. Probably a low alto if he had to guess, though hearing it from inside the head was undoubtedly making it sound lower than it really was. “I know I sound different —”

“Oh God, you do! I’m Elise, I wound up in Guarulhos, Brazil. Where are you? I just talked to the person in your body, and they gave me this number — they said they’d been working on helping the person in Bryce’s body get started on his meds and treatments —”

“Yeah, once I found out it happened to everyone and not just me, I started trying to get in touch with them. It’s a mess; did they tell you the person in Bryce’s body can’t speak English?”

“Yeah. He said they were trying to get an interpreter. Shouldn’t take too long around an airport. Have you heard anything from Bryce?”

“No, and I’m pretty worried. I’m doing okay, kind of isolated, but safe. I wound up in this rich lady’s summer cabin in the Canadian Rockies —”

“No way!”

“Sure enough,” and he described his situation briefly.

She told him how she’d ended up in the body of someone whose phone battery was dead. The intercity bus station where she’d arrived didn’t have many places to plug in a phone charger, and when she did get it charged, she’d at first had trouble figuring out the Portuguese-language interface on the woman’s phone. When she’d tried calling Kevin or whoever had his phone and body, she got busy signals the first couple of times, and Bryce’s phone kept ringing with no answer.

“We’d better ask Amy or the guy in your body to check Bryce’s phone for messages,” Kevin said. “There could be something from our Bryce saying where he is.”

“Yeah. I’ve been trying to check Bryce’s social media, but I’m having trouble with the Portuguese apps on this phone. The basic phone call interface is about all I’ve figured out so far.”

“I should have thought of that. I’ll do that as soon as we hang up.”

“Do that. I’ll call you back after I get some things straightened out here. I hear in some places the authorities are sorting out temporary housing for people stranded in the wrong bodies, but Guarulhos doesn’t have that busy a teleport station and I was apparently one of only three people teleporting in during the critical time window. Once we figure out Bryce is okay, I’m going to call my boss again — I talked to her briefly earlier — and see what I can do remotely to help fix this.”

“Good. I’ll talk to you soon.”

He hung up, logged out of Dakota’s social media apps, and logged in to his own accounts. He soon found two near-identical messages from Bryce on both accounts; one said this:

“So I’m an old Asian guy now, and my joints hurt, but I can breathe better than before, so that’s a plus. This guy’s ID, if I can figure it out right (the numbers are the only part I can read, and I’m guessing on which is the birthdate) says he’s 49, older than you and Mom. I’m in some city in China I’ve never heard of. It took a few minutes to find somebody who speaks English well enough for me to understand them. Anyway, Mei, the lady who speaks English, says they’ll find me a place to stay until InstaThere fixes the teleport network. Where are you? And what are you? I hear half of the people got turned into the opposite sex, which is freaky but kind of neat, I guess? Did you get that?”

Kevin sighed in relief, fired off a text to the phone of the woman whose body Elise was now in, and then replied to Bryce, telling him about his and Elise’s situations and the person they didn’t know much about yet who was in Bryce’s own body.

I have a spooky new novelette, "A Girl, a House and a Secret", available in epub and pdf formats from itch.io. You can buy it by itself, but you would get more value for your money if you buy it as part of the Secret Transfic Autumn Anthology.

Chapters of Wings will continue to be posted on Friday evenings while I post chapters of "Misteleported" on Tuesday evenings or Wednesday mornings.