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// Chapter 6: Shocking Developments 
// Story: The Exchange Program 
// by Sozmioi 
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Shankar vaulted down onto the tracks and pulled Lyra off the third rail. "What the hell were you doing?"

"I'm fine! The amulets protected me and I got all charged up!"

"We'll talk in a minute. Get off the tracks."

He made a step for her with his hands and I gave her a hand up. Once she was up, Shankar vaulted up with a great deal more agility than I'd suspected he had.

I nervously eyed the gathering crowd. Wishing to avoid entanglements with the authorities, I ushered the other two off towards another set of lines. Once we were well clear, I took Lyra by the shoulder and declared, "If that hadn't worked, Rhiannon would be dead right now."

"Dead?" Lyra exclaimed. "But it's just electricity!"

"And around here, electricity can kill you."

Indignantly, she said, "Shoot, if lightning can kill you, what else can?"

"Lots of things. Some of the most relevant? Infectious disease - wash your hands after handling anything here. Blood loss, so try to avoid profuse bleeding. Blunt trauma like, say, being hit by a train, but it doesn't need to be that drastic. Falling down the stairs can be enough, or even less."

Lyra swallowed. "Falling down the stairs? I, uh. I've known pegasi who flew through stone walls and were just stunned. Falling down the stairs might hurt, but it couldn't kill."

"Well, we humans can't take that sort of punishment. Be gentle with this body. And if something stuns you, it might be a concussion, in which case if you get another one within a few weeks, that can kill you, or cause permanent brain damage."

"I could have... I thought when the signs said danger they meant this might hurt a lot. I'm sorry! I'm the worst exchange student ever!" Lyra choked up, and worked her way up to crying. Shankar and I just stood there and let her. No soothing to soften this - it was an important lesson. After twenty seconds, she began squirming. She began trying to unclasp one of the amulets, a necklace. "What was this one for, again? It's running hot."

Her dexterity was terrible - she hadn't a prayer of getting it off without help.

Shankar said, confused. "It didn't have anything to do with shock protection - it's the one that keeps you firmly in that body so nothing knocks you free."

"I did without it before! Get it off me!" She leaned forward and it hung away from her body.

Nodding, he moved in to help her. As he touched it, there was a spark.

They both stood still for a moment. Then she laughed. "Well. Nothing Celestia can't fix, right?" She spoke with an odd tone, voice low.

He said, with no hint of his usual accent, and in a high register, "Yeeah. If she has to come back here again, though, she might just take me home and give up, especially the way I just screwed up. Can we try to fix it ourselves first?"

Based on that, I guessed, "Did you two get switched?"

They nodded. Even though I'd guessed it, I just couldn't come up with a coherent reaction. It was just so unexpected.

Lyra (in Shankar's body) grinned apologetically. "Yeah, so, uh, even with the protection working, that wasn't the best idea after all."

Shankar (in Rhiannon's body, lately occupied by Lyra) touched the necklace hanging from her neck (I am using 'he' and 'she' for Lyra and Shankar respectively since they chose to present as those genders while in those bodies; I am not asserting anything else about how they should be interpreted).

She said, "Guess neither Rhiannon nor Celestia put in a power regulator, so when you gave it a normal amount of juice it kind of went haywire? Dragged you into the body that it was in better contact with, that being mine? It's cooling off now. Maybe that discharged it?" She stood up straight, then bent again - apparently it was still very uncomfortably warm.

Lyra took a deep breath and crossed his arms, over-affecting a strong male presence. "So. Where to next?"

I said, "Maybe the nearest subway track, to repeat the process?" How can they take this so easily? I guess there have been enough swaps flying around that Lyra's used to it by now and Shankar might have been jealous and wanted to get in on it... and as they said, it's hard to imagine them getting stuck like this. Still! 

Shankar said, "I don't trust that amulet to take that abuse again. It was really hot for a bit." she straightened and let it fall against her chest. Then she grabbed the skrunchy from her bag and gathered her hair as if she'd done it every day of her life. "If I keep wearing it, that should revert us as quickly as possible, right? It's dragging Lyra, however slowly, back here."

I offered, "Home, then, to get this sorted out less destructively?"

Shankar said, "We just spent a lot on train tickets to just turn around. I really can't see any way this is going to be permanent, so I'm in no rush. Getting it sorted out by monday morning seems soon enough."

"I doubt either of you can go home to your parents like you are, so where will you be staying tonight?"

She grinned beseechingly. "Your place? I can text them."

I sighed. That would be going a bit out of order, relationship-wise, but these were exceptional circumstances. "Fine. Off to wherever we want to go!" Which museum would be most likely to have one of those highly charged plates you touch so your hair goes up? Seems like the best bet - get them on that and most likely there we go, and there's no danger. The Franklin Institute has one for sure, but that's in Philadelphia. We can go tomorrow, if we don't overload on science museums today.

Lyra said, "Well? I'd like something... exciting. And not just tall buildings."

I offered, "Intrepid, then? It's a museum of a warship. And fast airplanes and helicopters, and maybe rockets."

"Perfect."

Shankar's phone began ringing, which confused Lyra, as it was in his pocket. He eventually pulled it and handed it to me. I passed it to Shankar, and she said, "Hello. Oh, hi, Jack. Yeah. NYC. Oh! Funny about that. We were heading to the Intrepid. Ohkay, I guess we can do that. I'll run it by the others." To us, "How's sushi sound for lunch, at 1? Okay. Let me get that address down..." She pulled out Rhiannon's pad and pencil, and took down the address. "If something comes up I'll call you back in advance. Hope to see you." She hung up and yukked, "He didn't notice a teeny change in my voice!"

I turned to Lyra. "So. The Intrepid. Do you have... okay, you knew what a warship is, so you at least know what wars are."

She nodded.

"So, some background. About seventy years ago, we had the largest war we've ever had."

"We've had some big ones. In the last war with the griffons, over six thousand died."

I did a bit of quick division with round numbers. "This war lasted around six years, and the average death toll was over ten thousand a day."

Lyra blinked and gibbered.

Shankar frowned and opened her mouth as if to correct me, but closed it again. "Wow. That's... right, if you count the holocaust and the purges."

Lyra pursed his lips and said, "Please tell me that a year is a couple days long." The absurdity of the question and the fervor with which he asked it got Shankar and me laughing pretty hard - but briefly. Shankar told him, and he winced. "What is wrong with you? That's... in the millions! Lots of millions!"

I said, "Well, how things got that bad is a long story. I was only really taught American history, and as far as we're concerned we just looked across the Atlantic ocean in 1914 or so and realized things were getting really messed up in Europe, and things go from there." I thought for a moment. "Things calmed down a lot once we got superweapons a thousandth as effective as what Celestia has."

Lyra looked at me oddly for a moment, then considered. "I guess she does. We don't normally think of it that way."

"I am fairly confident that the leaders of the nations near Equestria do."

Lyra squinted. "Can we do something else?"

"Sure. Art museum sound good?"

He nodded absently. "Sweet Molestia. Dozens of millions?"

"Old and conventional, or new and weird?"

He looked at me, uncomprehending. I decided on a little downtime in Central Park to start off; I began maneuvering them down to an appropriate track, and got us on the front of a 1 train. Lyra numbly looked out the front window and into the driver's booth.

Shankar reached out to Lyra and whispered, "There were a few billion people even then. Anything big that happens affects a lot of people. We can't even understand it ourselves. Science fiction authors throw around thousands when they mean millions, or millions when they mean billions - or in some cases of far future stuff, even trillions."

Lyra nodded.

I coughed. "Not to disrespect the dead, but I think we could all use a little distraction from that line of thought." I leaned forward. "You said 'Sweet Molestia'. That sounds amusing."

Lyra squinted and put a closed fist up against his face. Then, a moment later, spread the fingers, producing a facepalm. He grunted out a laugh. "Yeah, I guess. So, there's this book. It's been in the school for hundreds of years. Everypony knows about it. If you're perverted at all, you know how to find it. If you're perverted enough, you add to it."

Lyra stopped; I prodded, "And in it, Celestia has developed a slight flaw in her character?"

He nodded. "I think you get the idea. Well, I guess so. I haven't read... much. It's not very good. Well, some of it isn't very good. Legend has it that Princess Celestia found it, and returned it to its spot the next evening with improved grammar and spelling, and a new chapter."

We got off at 79th street and headed towards the park. The art museum was on the other side, but I'd thought it would be nicer to walk than wait for a connection. Of course, we came to the Museum of Natural History before even hitting the park. And once we'd seen that, there was really no way we weren't going in.

So we spent the rest of the morning there. Lyra had many of the obvious questions about evolution, dinosaurs vs dragons, Heliocentrism, etc.. Surrounded by so many things and explanations, we didn't even get any juicy tidbits about Equestria. It was a good choice in the end, even if Shankar and I didn't get much out of it.

We weren't really done when it was time to go meet Jack, but Lyra was feeling pretty overwhelmed so we left anyway. Hopping back on the 1, we went down to Canal street. Lyra was very thoughtful along the way, blinking and staring out the front window again - though now just in contemplation rather than distress.

"Not bad for a morning's introduction to our world, I think." Shankar put out her hand for me to take, and I accepted it.

I looked at Shankar. I couldn't really tell just by looking that she wasn't Rhiannon. "What are we going to do about you?"

She shrugged. "Is there a problem? I wasn't going to make a move on you today or tomorrow anyway."

Really? You were going to let us get through a third and maybe fourth date without even a kiss?

Then she amended, "At least, nothing we can't do as we are."

Urk. "If you're not thinking of our holding hands, forget about it."

She blinked and grinned. "Look, I'm going to make my big move!" She shifted from a mitten grip on my hand to entwined fingers.

Lyra seemed transfixed, "That's so... intimate. It's like a miniature full-embraced tangle of limbs."

When you put it that way... I tensed and began to pull away, but Shankar held me - gently, calmly, not so hard I couldn't get free if I were to actually seriously try, but enough that I recognized that she wasn't simply letting go. Shankar replied to Lyra, "For now... no, it's not like that. We can let it mean that later, maybe."

Lyra experimentally crossed and uncrossed his fingers until it was time to get off. On the other side of the exit stile, I sought out Shankar's hand again and crossed fingers. "I think... it's one thing to do it walking, and another to seek it out when it's less natural."

Shankar nodded, saying, "Walking along like this, you could do it with either of us and it'd be fine. Sitting, that's another thing altogether."

Lyra came up alongside me and twitched his arm. "Then may I?"

Before I could accept, I had to drop Shankar's hand and grab Lyra full-force because he'd tripped on the stairs. Once he was back on his feet, he groaned, shook his head, and gratefully accepted both of our hands (mitten-style).

And that was how we approached Jack.

"Hey! How are things? How's your first day?"

He had been addressing Shankar with that, obviously. He replied, "We had a minor body-swapping accident. Lyra and I switched places."

Jack nodded sagely. "There was a whole amulet to prevent that. Did it come off somehow?"

We headed into the sushi bar and were seated in a booth, me facing Shankar along the wall, with Jack to my right facing Lyra.

Lyra explained in simple words what had happened, then, "We think it went haywire after being overcharged, and grabbed onto Shankar or something."

"And she's still holding it? Have you tried trading?"

"Ah, no!" At that, Shankar unclasped it, passed it left, to Lyra. For the moment they were both touching it, they both winced with surprise if not pain.

Lyra left it in her hands and objected, "That felt a bit like the transfer. I think it'll work. Can we... wait? I'm not done here."

Shankar took it back. "Yeah, I understand. We can try later."

I groaned. "Sweet Molestia, are you holding off for what I'm thinking you are?"

Shankar smirked a classic Rhiannon smirk. "Something dirty? You suggested it, not me. On my end, I don't think I'll be doing anything. But he certainly has my permission."

Lyra shook his head. "No. Actually, the other way around."

"What?" the three of us said as one.

"It was really overwhelming being in her body. Lots of wants and needs all the time. Here, it's barely noticeable."

"Reeeally?" said Shankar. "Because I'm hardly feeling anything, here. A whole lot less than before."

Lyra scowled at her. "That doesn't make any sense." Shankar just shrugged.

We got the menus. Shankar asked for her phone, and pulled up some notes. Jack asked, "What's that?"

Shankar was busy comparing, so I answered, "The first time we really noticed each other, actually, was in a sushi place with a bunch of shared friends, and he was taking notes on the sushi. Everyone else was making fun of him for being pretentious about his thoughts, as if he was imagining himself a food critic. But he just wanted to know what the heck to order next time, and I got that. Well, it's next time."

I'd seen Shankar and Lyra whispering through that; they got up. Shankar said, "BRB. Gotta go teach him how to wash his hands."

Once we'd all gone and returned, we all got to teach Lyra how to use chopsticks.

In retrospect, maybe sushi wasn't the best idea.