Nate wakes up on a Saturday morning, sun shining in his window. He stretches and yawns. Yesterday had been his 18th birthday and he looked with a smile at the new computer he'd gotten as a gift. He realizes that he has the entire house almost to himself today, since his brother was at a wrestling camp and his mom and sister had gone one a girl's trip. Only his dad was supposed to be home.
Getting out of bed, he walks sleepily out to the kitchen where he pours himself a bowl of cereal. The house is pretty quiet and Nate takes a moment to relax. Suddenly, there's a large bang from downstairs and his dad comes running up. His dad grabs the keys off the counter, then stops and looks at Nate.
"I'm running to work, I'm not sure how long I'll be. Maybe a few hours. Maybe sooner. See you soon," he says before dashing off.
Nate stares after his father, confused for a moment before shrugging it off. His father works as an inventor for some big tech company and he'd been really involved in a project recently. Nate finishes his breakfast and walks back to his room and then notices the door to the basement is open. This is where his dad has been doing all his tech work and no one had been allowed down there, not even Nate's mom. Only Dad and some of the people from his company.
Naturally curious, Nate gave in to his urge and stepped down into the room. He peeked in and turned on the light to illuminate the unfinished basement his dad used as a workshop. The room was dominated by a big machine made of two large tubes, each with a metal chair in the middle. The door on each pod was open, and a control panel in the middle was lit up. His dad, obviously excited about something working, had run off. There was a booklet next to the control panel that read "Operation Manual v.1" that Nate picked up. He skimmed a few pages, seeing a lot of technical jargon, but a lot of phrases that stood out said things like "Full Body Transfer," "Individual Attribute Exchange" and other strange things. He set it down where it had been, doing his best to make it look like he had never touched it.
His dad's laptop was on screen and showed some experiment records and simulation results. Nate saw two of his dad's coworkers step into the pods in the videos and then step out, and freak out. They were pointing at each other and dad was excited, but then the two started to feel sick before being rushed into the pods again. After light flashed from them, the two came out, seeming to feel much better. They discussed what had happened as the recording ended. In another video, the same two assistants stepped into the pods and after a different flash, the doors opened. Nate gasped as he saw that the heads of the two had been exchanged, somehow one was on the other's body. Nate saw other videos on the side that said "Age Exchange Experiment" "Age Alteration Experiment" and even more videos below that that Nate didn't want to spend time watching right now.
Nate looked in awe at the machine and examined the control panel. The possibilities were endless! At the moment, the display read "System Ready."