My father spent the next three hours explaining the mechanics of my own existence.
The crystal contained more than just data. It held a complete neural map of Kaelen Leone's consciousness at the moment of transfer, preserved like a fly in amber across dimensional barriers. The entity had provided this template along with instructions for integration, instructions that my father had followed with the desperate faith of a man gambling everything on a single roll of the dice.
"The transfer itself was simple," Kenji said, spreading papers across the table between us. "The hard part was ensuring survival. Most consciousness transplants fail because the host brain rejects the foreign architecture. Like an organ transplant without immunosuppressants. The mind attacks itself."
"But you found a workaround."
