Today is the day.
Mom told me about the Symbiote a week ago, while handing me a text-chip on all the legal crap I'll need to know for the rest of my life. A whole 3 Terabytes of solid text files worth of legal documents, contracts, laws, treaties, as well as moral codes that various countries or organizations have imposed on those of us who have symbiotes.
Some things are obvious, like being legally responsible for any act performed by the symbiote. Some are not so obvious, like the requirement of most churches that the symbiotes must remain outside of the sanctuaries of their temples. The only exception to this is the Jewish Reform Synagogues, in which the symbiotes are encouraged, not mandated, to take active roles in the temple. Their belief is that because the symbiote is still the person, then they can divide their time between the temple, and their daily lives to better help their communities.
There are also some basic general things, like the symbiote is a living body, and needs food just like the real one does, and although it is genetically engineered, it still has sweat glands, reproductive organs, and the like, its literally another body.
About half a gigabyte worth of the documentations are the legal equivalent of 'cover your ass' documents; stating that if something is found wrong with the symbiote medically, the organization who made it can only be liable if the end user can prove that the condition existed before it was activated.
There were also several treaties that stated whenever heads of state met together, their symbiotes would be the ones in the same room rather than their actual bodies; for security purposes, of course.
Reading that much information in the short amount of time before my visit to the hospital to activate the one designed for me, really gave me a headache. I am still seeing floating words in my dreams because of it.
In a few hours time, when I am legally declared an adult, my symbiote will be activated; however I will be in surgery, getting the control chip implanted so that my brain waves will control it as well.
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[a few hours later]
"Doctor, are you sure you lost it?"
"Yes; because there wasn't ever a connection between her, and her symbiote, she will be able to connect to a different one in due time; but her memory chips are reading that she connected to one, but there is no response to hers."
"Doctor, the eyes are twitching, we have a response." a nurse behind me calls out.
"What?" I turn around in time to see the symbiote next to my patient open her eyes, and I dash to her side. "Can you tell me your name?" I say quickly, while checking her pupil dilation response. She answers quickly, and all noise in the room stops with her response, the name is not the name of the patient in the bed next to her; but rather the one in the room next door.
"Noel Jude Lavender."
the nurse who noticed the eyes twitching ran out of the room and I saw her figure run through the hall toward the Lavender room. A few seconds later, she comes back, still running.
"Sir, its confirmed; its a sym-switch. The first one in three hundred years."
"Maggie, its worse than that." I look at her, then pull her outside the door, waiting for it to close. "its a lot worse than just a sym-switch. This is a first even among them. This is the first time that the switch occurred with people of differing genders, let alone social classes."
"what does social class have to do with it?" Maggie obviously understood the first problem, but wasn't told who the patient in my room was.
"Maggie. That girl, she is the next Empress; the patient today was Natillia De Caledon." at saying the public name of the girl on the table, Maggie paled. Finally understanding just how bad this was.
We now had two hours before the hosts woke up from the anesthesia; and no way to revert the signals. They were, now, permanently stuck with each other's symbiotes.
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My mind had been awake for a while, the doctors had been doing tests on the sym, and had moved me and a girl into the same room. She was cute, but I couldn't get over the idea that I had seen her before, but that would be impossible. I would never forget meeting someone like her.
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They showed her to my sym, and had me watch her bed being placed in the room with me, saying that they did it so that I wouldn't be startled when my host body woke up. There was a curtain in the hallway blocking my view further down, and they told me that her sym was on the other side of the curtain, so that I wouldn't try to peek.
I was relegated to a wheel chair for the time being, and was taken to a room with a bunch of equipment, and the lady in the room started having me move the sym, and do simple exercises while still in the chair, I was then pushed back to the room, and put behind the curtain. I heard them rolling the other sym out, and twenty minutes later, they came back.
About that time, the anesthesia wore off, and I began to stir. A minute or two later, I heard the blankets move across the room from me, and glanced up, the beauty was awake as well.
"Good, you are both awake." a doctor's voice boomed through the room before she could say whatever was obviously about to come out of her mouth. "there was a complication with your syms." the doctor started, we both looked at him. "there is no easy way to tell you two this, but your syms, the ones you paid for; didn't connect to you, instead, they connected to the person across the room from you. We call this a sym-switch." as it looked like the girl was going to interrupt, his voice got louder, and his glare more pointed, as though he wouldn't accept being interrupted right now. "as the connections were fully accepted by the symbiote, and full connectivity has been proven, we can not disconnect you from the sym you connected to without also reminding you that we will not be able to attempt to connect you to the sym you paid for." he took a huge breath, and huffed like it was a lot of work off of his shoulders saying that much.
"now for the hard part." he started once again. "you two will need to learn a lot of things, especially about each other over the next two weeks, which is how long you two have to stay here, but if you read even half of the documents given to you, then you already knew that. the reason is;" he turned to her, "your sim is a male, and as such, things such as walking, and hygine issues, will be new experiences for you." he then turned to me, and following the conversation, I could gather what was about to come out of his mouth. "as for you, you will not only have to learn about the medical and hygine aspects of having a female sym, but also eittiquite, and dress. lucky for you, you have the perfect teacher." he said while gesturing to her. "now, I am not allowed to introduce the two of you to each other, as medical regulations prohibit me from doing so. so let me leave you two with this: this is the first sym-switch in three hundred years, and the first one ever where reversed genders were involved, worse yet, the myriad of issues that will come of the nature of this switch." he said while looking at her, I am guessing she knew what he was talking about with this, he finished what he was saying without looking away from her. "as mad as I know I would be in this situation, there isn't anything we can do about it, except to tell you that you need to train this person, so that what he does, doesn't come back on you, getting mad at him for things that aren't his fault aren't going to help him learn what he needs any faster; and your own embarassment of him knowing everything about the female body that was meant to look just like you, isn't going to help either. she is just as much a part of him, as he is of you." and with that, he closed the door as he left the room. leaving the two of us alone, in silence.
"Natillia, my friends call me Tia. since we are going to be spending a lot of time with each other, call me Tia." I could tell she was mad, but at least it didn't seem like it was directed at me.
"ah, I'm Noel." I looked over to the curtain, and wheeled out the sym that I knew I was connected to, and sitting in the chair was a perfect replica of her. it wasn't a lie. I sat and watched as the sym my parents had gotten for me rolled out behind the other curtain.
"At least you aren't ugly." she said somberly. "okay. this is going to be exceptionally embarassing, unless we do something stupid, rash, and immediate." I looked at her, wondering what was going through her mind. her sym undid the straps on the wheel chair holding him in place, and then did the same for mine.
helping me out of the chair, I felt the weight on my chest that must be part of the medical things I needed to learn about.
"if you agree to this, there is no turning back." he said to me.
"I have no idea what you are planning." I said through the sym, playing along with the game she seemed to be playing. as I said that, I watched the figure of myself, get down on one knee, and the girl across the room giggled at my surprise.
"Take me as your wife." the girl said through her giggles.
"Miss, I just met you, I have no idea who you are, and just the fact that you asked is exeptionally flattering."
"so, thats a yes? if you say yes now, then it will be much easier. if you only say yes after figuring out who I am, then I'm afraid I will have to say, publicly, that this conversation never happend, as well as have you locked in a room for the rest of your life." something about the way she said it, made me think that she wouldn't hesitate to do it, and at the same time, the prospect of doing just that was frighting to herself, but her resolve was set.
"Fine. !'ll agree, on one condition." she looked like she was about to explode in anger. "you let me finish school. something about the way you said that tells me that unless I put my foot down about this, it won't happen. I'll commit myself, and my sym to you, for the rest of our lives, as long as I can finish school."
"Deal." she smiled. "My legal name is Natillia Susan Rhodes." I knew that name, "the name I am most known by, however, is Natillia De Caledon."
Shit.
I watched as her sym; my form, walked out of the room, wearing no more than a hospital gown, so I had my sym follow him. he went to the nurse's desk, stated that he wanted the parrents of both people in the room, to come back for a visit. Ten minutes later, there was an uproar in the hospital, as my parrents were told that I was engaged to the Empress-heir, and an even bigger one when her mother, Empress Matilda, brought in a catholic priest to marry us right then.
They didn't even care that the syms got switched, only that they got a cute daughter-in-law.