[ WP ] Everyone inexplicably woke up in the body of another person

At first, the Great Reshuffling was quite perplexing. Some people ended up far better off, some people far worse. Close knit tribes could suddenly be fractured by great distances, and it was quite alienating on the whole. Many people committed suicide, others engaged in hedonistic sprees, but after the initial shock the greater part of humanity just kept calm and carried on. 
 
 It was a very confusing time for all. The Scientists never discovered how the Great Reshuffling actually occurred, much less why. The *Social* Scientists declared that, by bizarre circumstance alone, we had experienced Rawls' Original Position, for no one had any say in the matter as to whose body they would now come to inhabit. The Social Scientists theorised that humanity would now come to be much more just, much more fair, and that things like tribalism and racism would simply wipe itself away. Unfortunately, it was not so, as we discovered just how shallow we really are: identities were amorphous and it was not uncommon to see a castigated minority reshuffled into the body of a racial majority and continue to enjoy, and maintain, the same system of privilege that had oppressed his former people. 
 
 Lovers could suddenly be brothers and sisters, or vice versa. Families were lucky if they were suddenly scattered across the same town, somewhat lucky if it was the same continent, and if they were plum out of luck they would simply never see each other again. New families arose, but that begat an identity crisis compounded unto infinity. 
 
 What was really interesting was when, by sheer determination and will or by luck and circumstance, that the Reshuffled would be able to figure out where their Original Bodies had gone and met who now inhabited them. Sometimes it was a simple affair: two people who had simply traded lives. Usually, with just a bit of talking, both would come to terms with the permanent change in the state of affairs, and with each other. Friendships formed this way were called `` Empathic Bonds'' by the Social Scientists whereas in common parlance it would be much more intuitive: `` Oh, yeah, that's the guy I switched with.'' Nonetheless, it was a pretty intense experience. The tragedy was that so many of these dyadic Reshuffles never found each other, for as simple as it was for just one of the two to stay put and let the other find them, the immediate instinct was always to go looking for your old body, your old home, what was familiar: what you knew. 
 
 This was only more complicated with triads and tetrads, which were manageable, but when you had hopelessly complicated networks of Reshuffles then the chances of finding who your body belonged to, or finding your own body, would be next to impossible. The Scientists had estimated up to 10,000 people could be linked together in one big Reshuffle-a-roo, but of course, when it came down to it, not enough people actually bothered to find their bodies. Too many people relished the new freedom found. 
 
 It was liberating. All your past burdens, past woes, they were gone. So too did your joys, but then the new burdens and new woes would only crop up if you let them, at least, if you were fortunate in the Reshuffle. Allowed to start afresh, many people decided never to rejoin the world, and to live the rest of their lives as vagabonds, away from the new, evolving society. 
 
 The catastrophic failing of institutions with this splintering of teams was actually, quite underwhelming. Humans are a resourceful lot, and the right person always showed up in the right place at the right time, sometimes it might take over a hundred people to get that person there, but it always happened. 
 
 The toughest aspect was adjusting gender. Many who were caught in the tough circumstance of having to accept this change resisted it, and it brought a lot of psychological torment. Age was difficult too. Young adults finding themselves in the bodies of the senile would quickly perish, while the opposite led to quite interesting behaviours: when they never expected to get to say `` You Only Live Twice'', they were seized with an overwhelming sense of invincibility and recklessness. 
 
 In the end the event went down as just a curious incident in the annals of time, as within a couple of generations things were just as they were: you are you, and I am me. It gave credence to the idea of a transcendent consciousness, that the lines drawn between egos was a fine line *purposefully* drawn, that there's really nothing separating us. It was true before the Great Reshuffling, it was true after the Great Reshuffling and it continued to remain true: 
 
 We are we.
