The Vessel

The old man studied the photographs spread across the mahogany table. Faces. Young faces. All of them bearing his features from decades past. The cheekbones. The pale eyes. The particular set of the jaw.

His scientists had been thorough. Twenty years of careful breeding. Selecting for bone structure. For blood type. For the precise architecture of cranium and spine.

The neural pathways can be mapped, the doctor said. Every memory. Every synapse. The consciousness itself.

The old man touched his temple where the skin had grown thin as parchment. Inside, the tumor pressed against ancient thoughts. Against the weight of years and accumulated power.

How long? he asked.

Six months. Perhaps less.

He nodded and chose a photograph. A boy of sixteen with his own face staring back across the years. Perfect symmetry. Perfect match. The ultimate succession plan.

Begin the preparation, he said.

In the white rooms they would open the boy’s skull like a flower. Map every neuron. Every electrical whisper. Then the careful work would begin. The downloading. The uploading. The transfer of one mind into another.

The boy would wake with an old man’s memories. An old man’s hungers. An old man’s accumulated cruelties wearing a young man’s face.

And he would rule for another lifetime. And another. Each vessel lasting decades before the next harvesting.

The photographs scattered as he swept them into a drawer. All save one. His own face at sixteen, unconcerned by what it would become.