Steve kept on seeing the ad pop up wherever he went on the Internet: "ELSE". That was all it said, in big silver capital letters on a black background, with no indication of what "ELSE" could possibly be. Steve's curiosity was piqued, though, and after maybe the tenth time seeing the ad he finally caved in and clicked on it.
The website (which of course had "ELSE" as a banner at the top), seemed slick and well-designed, and it was full of pictures of people, of all ages, races, genders, shapes, sizes, and styles. Scrolling over them brought up the name and location--"Connor Anderson, 23," or, "Anita Vasquez, 32". A dating website, it looked like? Except--"Johnny Parker, 14,"--some of the pictures were of kids or teenagers. Not that they were explicit or anything, but Steve was still a little creeped out. But his curiosity got the better of him once again and he scrolled down through the pictures until he finally reached a blurb: "Welcome to ELSE, the Internet's premiere life marketplace! With our advanced transferal technology, a new life is just a click away! Be somebody ELSE!"
What the hell? Switching lives? This had to be some sort of joke, or scam, or porn. Still, Steve was intrigued. The idea of switching lives with someone else had always interested him. It wasn't that his own life was so terrible or anything, he just found the idea of becoming another person in body and mind really attractive. Well, obviously that was impossible, but maybe he could have some fun with this website. He clicked on Connor Anderson's picture and was taken to some sort of profile page that seemed to contain every possible detail of Connor's life--height, weight, hair and eye color, IQ, job, income, education, personality, likes and dislikes, address, musculature, and even, bizarrely, his penis size (which happened to be moderately impressive). At the very top, there was a big button saying "Be Connor Anderson!", but it was grayed out, and under it there was a link saying, "To live this life, please register an ELSE Account."
Alright, he'd bite. It didn't seem to cost anything, so Steve registered an account, a very lengthy process since the application asked him to provide all the same information that was apparently on all the other profiles. He felt some trepidation about sharing all his personal information (especially his own penis size, which happened to be moderately unimpressive), but for some strange reason he trusted the site, as long as it didn't ask for any credit card numbers. It wasn't like there was anything particularly interesting or attention-worthy about the personal information about a slightly nerdy and awkward but generally unremarkable 18-year-old high school senior. There was a very long and complicated-looking terms and conditions section, which Steve skipped and accepted without reading, and then he got taken to yet another screen.
"Welcome to ELSE, Steve! By default, lives are sorted by age and gender--" The screen had a blue column representing males and a pink column representing females, both split into different boxes for different age groups--"but you can also sort them by any other category. For legal reasons, all lives will be in your home country unless you specifically opt into the International Lives. Try out our new Historical Lives* and Animal Lives**!" Those boxes were there too; the asterisks led to even more disclaimers, which Steve also neglected to read. Thinking about it for a few minutes, Steve finally decided to click on the link that said...