What Makes You... You?
It sounds like a simple question.
You look down at your body and think, "That's me."
You look in a mirror, "That's me too."
For Todd Hershel, it's not that simple.
After an accident left him crushed from the shoulders down, his brain on life support, he was the perfect subject for the experiment he was involved in, putting a human brain in a fully prosthetic body. The problem? All three previous patients had gone insane. Todd was the cybernetic engineer trying to fix things. "Fortunately," for Todd, his colleagues came up with something they hoped would save both his life and his sanity. Transplanting his brain into a brain-dead body. However, in a time when organ and even limb transplants came from lab grown cloned tissues, the list of potential donors is incredibly small. A suitable body could be grown in the lab, but that would take years. The body they had was a neo-person. A member of an animalistic slave race created to do... unpleasant work. An anthropomorphic cat person. A body full of a soldier's reflexes and enhanced senses. Oh, this new body also happened to be female. Todd looks down at this body and can't recognize anything.
Todd's first look in a mirror makes him faint.
Cognito Ergo Sum?
I think, therefore I am.
Will that be enough for Todd? To know that the one doing the thinking is him, even when nothing else is what it used to be.
Even when the new body's reflexes accidentally hurt someone?
Even when the new body's hormones make him question his gender identity?
Even when
she
starts questioning her sexual orientation?
Even when Todd is haunted by the body's previous owner? Some people aren't happy about Todd. Having a human brain in a neo-person's body affects societies views on these slave species. Will Todd's human brain save her when some of them become violent or will the ghost inside have to do it?
If Your Brain is in a New Body, Whose Soul Do You Have?