Here's the thing about braining: it didn't turn out to be the godsend that it was cracked up to be.

There were two major unanticipated obstacles in the technology's development. At least two. Two that we know about.

The first stems from the incredibly complicated symbiosis between brain and body. Science had been so gung ho about the brain's miraculous plasticity for so long that the brain and body's delicate interdependence came as kind of a shock. More than a shock, really, it was a disappointment that took some getting used to. I imagine that the original plan had been to train a few archetypal professionals and then brain them into thousands of different shells. It would have been a convenient way to populate the new colonies. Starter kits, more or less.

Unless the duo is a perfect match, though, the bodies simply reject the brains. Or visa versa, I guess, depending on how you think about it. The people wake up, alright, but they're jarred something fierce. They've got motor-skill issues and identity problems. They're overtly nostalgic, distracted and dreamy, out of place and paranoid, antsy and confused. Most end up killing themselves or harming those around them.

The readjustment camps were a stain in the history books. The psychiatric wards that processed all those fouled re-writes acquired a gruesome, shuddering reverence that was creeping into violent games and popular media before the victims had been in therapy a decade. The state stations ran all kinds of upbeat stories acclaiming the breakthroughs the doctors were making, but they never once aired an interview with any of the hospital's patients. The recruiters all say those first subjects were heroes, that they made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of progress. Of course, that's pretty hard to swallow. Animating people into a nightmarish schizophrenia and then corralling them into a government health facility is nobody's idea of progress.

The second issue is that writing a brain to disk is by no means non-invasive. The radiation that's necessary to record all the nuances of the neural net irreversibly fries the subject's brain during the copy. They're a vegetable afterwards. Disposing of the body is as simple as unplugging it from life support. And once the subject's saved to disk, or put on the hard, they need a perfect replica of their original body in order to be brained back into life successfully. If the brain and body don't match, then comes the crippling dementia - or jarring - that plagued the technology's early days.

So now instead of farming host bodies on the colony planets and just beaming them the brains of fresh university graduates, they've got to call ahead and order the appropriate meat. The DNA code has to be beamed over the worm-wire and the body's got to be grown, aged and conditioned to match the subject's at the time of the copy. The whole thing has turned into a form of mass transportation where it was originally intended - according to some - as a means of mass production. To give credit where it's due, though, I do suppose it's better than sending multi-generation colony vessels on the two hundred year journey to the outer reaches. But regardless of how you spin it, getting folks here on earth to volunteer for colony jobs is still one hell of a chore.

Apparently my engineering degree is in high demand in the outer reaches. That's what the recruiter told me. My family will be well taken care of, according to him. They'll receive a more-than-generous monthly stipend for the six years I'm in, the likes of which I could never bring in otherwise. And, of course, I'll be making a great living for myself on the colony planets. That, and paying an invaluable service to the world government. It's a win-win situation. If I play my cards right, I could retire at thirty-five.

It's still a weird concept. During the month-long preparation course I couldn't get over the fact that the trainer kept saying things like "you'll need to know this," and "you'll need to do that."

"You?" I thought. "Me?"

"It creeps me out how you keep saying 'you this' and 'you that'," I finally admitted.

"What do you mean?" The trainer asked, genuinely bewildered. "What else would I say?"

"Well, I mean, it won't really be 'me' in the outer reaches, right? More like a copy or something. I don't know. It's hard to put the words on it right."

"Who does the self belong to?" He retorted with a hint of irritation. "Itself, of course. You'll be you the same way you're you now. What's so hard to understand? Same memories, same life, same body, same you. You'll write letters to your wife and she'll write back. When your tour is over, you'll be home to kiss your kids. What do you mean it's not really you?"

Maybe I was reassured. Maybe I was embarrassed to be talked down to (a little harshly, honestly) in front of the whole class. I don't know, but I guess I took him at his word.

Here's the thing, though. Sitting here in the copy tube, staring up at my convex reflection on the reader's metallic surface, I'm kind of getting cold feet. The bumbling hum of the machine warming up is throbbing in my ears, and all of the sudden I feel like maybe I had a legitimate point that day in class.

"Who am I?" might be a hairy philosophical question. And sure, I guess it can be approached from all kinds of different angles.

But right now, the answer seems pretty clear: I'm the guy that's about to get a brain-frying dose of radiation. And that guy that'll be writing letters to my wife and kissing my kids? Well, I'm not really sure who the hell he is.