A brilliant scientist invents new technologies that allow him to steal his mom's body and her youth to enjoy all the pleasures of her life in The Replacement, only available on Body Swap Stories or Smashwords.

Trenton is a brilliant scientist who has invented two groundbreaking technologies. The first is a time machine that can send his mind back into the past to inhabit a younger version of himself. But going back in time creates a new branch of reality, making it impossible to predict future events. Trenton's second technology allows him to hijack people's thoughts and place his mind in their body.

Rather than change the world, Trenton uses his inventions to change himself. He's always been jealous of his gorgeous, pampered mother. She never had time for him despite her vast wealth. With his new inventions he steals her body and then propels his mind back into his mom's youth to steal her life as well. Now it's his body. His life. And he's going to enjoy every sensual moment of it.

Prologue

The time machine was a mess of wires and microchips and blinking lights. A curved piece of smooth metal slightly higher than a man arced around a small platform, where the subject would stand. Tonight, that subject was Trenton.

Trenton was alone in his lab the first time he travelled back in time. No one else knew about the time machine. The other labs in the building carried on with their own paths of research, unaware of what Trenton was doing in the top secret facility at the end of the hall. He was the only one allowed to go in and out.

His theories were sound. It was impossible to transfer matter back in time. According to his calculations it would require more energy than existed in the entire universe. But information could be transferred. Information weighed nothing and could be encoded in quantum tangles. If one could convert their thoughts to an informational energy cloud, those thoughts could be propelled back in time to one’s earlier mind. That was the rub. One could only travel as far back in time as one had been alive, the traveler’s thoughts transferred into their younger body. It wouldn’t do any good to travel back to when one was a baby, unable to talk or communicate but knowing everything they knew from the future.

There was also no way back to the present as far as Trenton knew. Apart from living each day.

His experiment that night was a simple one. He programmed the machine to take him back in time ten minutes. If that short leap worked then a longer one should as well. The additional energy required for a longer trip would be trivial.

Trenton stepped into time machine and disappeared. In a blink he was on the other side of the lab on the stool he’d been sitting on just ten minutes ago. He grabbed the desk to steady himself from the vertigo that gripped him. When he’d recovered, he looked at the clock on his computer. Exactly ten minutes into the past and in his ten-minute-younger self! Trenton laughed and clapped his hands, spinning around on the stool. He’d broken quantum physics yet again.

Already his past had been altered, for he certainly hadn’t grabbed the desk like this the first time around. It suggested that jumping back into the past created a parallel universe, which would make it impossible to predict the future the farther back one traveled. Each little change in the past would magnify with time until the original present was unrecognizable.

It worked! But who could he tell? This could be earth shattering. He thought about going back in time and fixing his own mistakes or, better yet, never making them in the first instance. But the only way back to the present was to live each day. He shivered at the thought of being a grad student again. Working his way up the ranks. Begging his parents for money. They had so much of it but barely gave a thought to Trenton and his needs. Still, he needn’t go back that far to be successful.

His next experiment took him back in time a week. He came to sitting in his office. His young assistant, Gemma, sat on the other side of his desk, looking at him expectantly.

“I’ve…lost my train of thought,” he said.

Gemma looked down at her notes. “You were talking about your mom’s gala?”

Right. Another damn gala. His mom seemed to give charity to everyone except to him. The first time around had been a disaster. He’d gotten drunk and then into a yelling match with his mom in front of everyone. Embarrassing. This time would be different.

“I’m not going to that damn thing,” he said.

When Gemma left Trenton turned his attention to his computer. Last week had seen a sudden rise in a tech stock that came out of nowhere. Now he was back before that rise. He bought as much stock as he could.

The time machine wasn’t yet finished, but finishing now would be quicker. It was a simple matter of remembering what he’d done before. He whistled to himself as he made his way down to his secure lab and set to work.

It all seemed so easy. But, of course, there was a problem. The stock that he’d bought flatlined. A week after he bought it, when it was supposed to be sky high, nothing happened. Had he changed things when he’d purchased the stock? Maybe edged out another investor that would have demanded something? Or was this a case of the butterfly effect, where one simple change to the past had rapidly unfolding consequences?

It was as if an alternate universe had split off from the one he’d known. Whatever the answer, it meant time travel wasn’t as simple as going back into time and knowing what would happen so he could make his future better. He would be just as in the dark as anyone else about the future.

This would need some thought as to how best to use it. This experiment would remain hidden for now while Trenton thought of the proper way to take advantage of it.

1

Trenton had tried and failed to get his mom’s attention and approval ever since he was a kid. Now with his own laboratory at just twenty-two-years-old, he was eager to welcome both his parents and show them around for the first time. They’d begrudgingly given him a small scrap of seed money and he’d had to scrape and beg for more funders but at last he succeeded.

His mom, Katherine, had always been self-centered and more interested in her appearance and financial situation than with her only son. Surely, his name on a state-of-the-art lab would impress her. Or at least hold her attention momentarily.

From his second floor window Trenton kept glancing down towards the front entrance for any sign of his dad’s cherry-red McFarlane. No surprise that his parents were late. He paced nervously across the plush carpet of his large office, one hand running through his thick, bristly beard. Trenton stopped to straighten up his diploma, which hung on the far wall amidst the awards and honors he’d received in the fields of medicine and physics. His reflection glared back at him from the glass, his dark, messy eyebrows hanging over large eyes made owl-like by his thick glasses.

A reflection of sunlight thrown across the wall from outside caught his eye and he looked out the window to see his dad’s sports car passing the security gate and winding up to the lab. Trenton yanked his white lab coat off his seat and threw it on as he quickly made his way out of the office.

“They’re here,” he said to Gemma. “How do I look?”

She straightened his collar and then stepped back. “You look good.”

He nodded and she followed him down the stairs to the foyer. They arrived just as Katherine pushed open the glass and steel doors, waltzing in as if she owned the place. Trenton’s dad, Raph, followed behind.

“Trenton, how are you?” She said, taking his hand and giving him two air kisses and making the sweet floral scent he’d always associated with her fill his nose. The kisses were a pretentious European gesture she’d picked up on her last trip to Spain

Katherine looked good enough to eat. Perfectly made up with her wavy blonde hair up in an intricate bun. She wore a trendy but casual red sundress with a yellow throw draped casually about her neck. The dress shimmered as she moved, the silky fabric hinting at the elegant body beneath. The dress was cut quite low, revealing her ample cleavage. An expensive purse hung gracefully from one shoulder.  All in all, it made Trenton’s clothes seem rather shabby, despite his crisp light blue collared shirt and stark white lab coat. His mom always did that, lighting up a room and stealing all the attention.

Raph clasped his son in a too-hard handshake and clapped him on the back. Trenton’s parents were only touchy-feely with each other.  To everyone else, himself included, they seemed formal almost to the point of iciness.

Trenton got his looks from his father. A rugged masculinity at odds with his scientific brain. He was big and bulky but strangely dexterous, even with his stubby fingers. Maybe he got his dexterity from his mom because he certainly didn’t get much else. She was slender, with a soft face and plump lips, the picture of feminine perfection. Her looks and her demeanor made getting her way seem effortless. Trenton desperately wished he had what she had.

“Welcome to my lab,” Trenton said, gesturing expansively around the foyer.

“It’s quite cold in here, isn’t it?” Katherine said, rubbing her arms.

“I’ll get your coat from the car,” Raph offered.

“No, I’ll just be cold,” Katherine insisted, every the martyr.

“Nonsense,” Raph said, turning and striding back to the car.

Trenton sighed. Leave it to his mom to criticize him and make everything about her. Trenton began to introduce her to his assistant.

“Mom, this is—”

“One second,” Katherine said, pulling her phone out of her purse and rapidly typing something. She puffed air from her cheeks and sighed. “Sorry, my astrologist just cancelled. Give me a second.”

“He should have known that would happen,” Trenton joked.

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