The Big Idea

I'm still playing hooky from the next installment of my Combat Realism series. Let me float a different story idea instead: Imagine a story setting in which you could assume the body of another person. Any other person, living or dead, complete with their memories. (This post was inspired by a friend's comment a while ago concerning spell check correcting her "I love you" to "I live you"--thanks, Teddi.) Something like my idea has been done in a variety of ways in the past. An original Star Trek episode featured a machine that was able to transfer a woman's inner self, her soul if you will (though the episode didn't use that term) into Captain Kirk's body and vice versa. Later, in the movies, Doctor McCoy carries around Spock's Katra, the Vulcan equivalent to a soul (given to him in a mind-meld) prior to it being returned to a new version of Spock's body. Stories have even featured robot surrogates that a person can project their co