Det här är "Extra" av Greg Egan.
Historien handlar om en rik man som gör kloner av sig själv. Klonerna matas och utövas så att de kommer att ha perfekta kroppar, men får inte förmåga att utvecklas mentalt.
Keeping a stock of congenitally brain-damaged clones of oneself - in the short term, as organ donors; in the long term (once the techniques were perfected), as the recipients of brain transplants - was not illegal, but nor was it widely accepted. [...] There had been legal challenges, of course, but time and again the highest courts had ruled that Extras were not human beings. Too much cortex was missing; if Extras deserved human rights, so did half the mammalian species on the planet. With a patient, skilled trainer, Extras could learn to run in circles, and to perform the simple, repetitive exercises that kept their muscles in good tone, but that was about the limit.
När den rika mannen blir gammal växlar han sin hjärna till en av klonerna. På detta sätt kommer han att ge sig en ny, frisk kropp. Men han är rädd för att finna att när han vaknar efter transplantationen är han i samma kropp.
When, at last, one arm came under his control, he raised it, with great effort, into his field of view.
It was his arm, his old arm - not the Extra's.
He tried to emit a wail of despair, but nothing came out.
Something must have gone wrong, late in the operation, forcing them to cancel the transplant after they had cut up his brain.
Han har transplanterat sin hjärna, men inte hans själ eller hans minnen.
Of course he was dreaming. What other explanation could there be?
Unless the transplant had gone ahead, after all.
Unless the remnants of his brain in this body retained enough of his memory and personality to make him believe that he, too, was Daniel Gray. Unless the brain function studies that had localised identity had been correct, but incomplete - unless the processes that constituted human self-awareness were redundantly duplicated in the most primitive parts of the brain.
In which case, there were now two Daniel Grays.
Han försöker berätta för operatörerna att det har varit ett misstag, men han finner sig inte i stånd att få ut orden. han inser att han kommer att fångas som en idiot för evigt, medan klonen stjäl sitt liv från honom.
He had given up trying to communicate his plight to the people around him. He knew he would never master speech, and he couldn't even manage to convey meaning in his gestures - the necessary modes of thought were simply no longer available to him, and he could no more plan and execute a simple piece of mime than he could solve the latest problems in grand unified field theory.