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{{trope}}
{{quote|"The point is, if we can store music on a compact disc, why can't we store a man's intelligence and personality on one? So, I have the engineers figuring that one out now. "|'''[[Portal 2
Artificial intelligence is hard. Why reinvent the wheel, when you've got plenty of humans walking around? Who will miss one, right?
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== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Galaxy Express 999]]'' has a couple of instances of a gigantic supercomputer being used to simulate the brain of a deceased human. Whether the series' main antagonists, the "Machine-Humans", also qualify or are simply disembodied human brains inhabiting robotic shells is not made clear.
* ''[[Ghost in
** Interestingly, ''[[Ghost in
** In one of the ''Stand Alone Complex'' episodes this golden rule gets oddly broken, when a disappointed indie movie director makes a perfect movie inside his [[Brain In
** The second feature film, ''Innocence'', features a multitude of ghost-dubbed dolls manipulated for the purpose of freeing the enslaved children used to dub them. It raises the question of whether, being imparted with some aspect of human consciousness, the dubbed dolls cannot be considered alive, and thus victims themselves in the film's violent plot.
* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'s'' EVA units and the MAGI supercomputer are borderline examples. More like "[[Soul Jar|Soul Uploading]]" tho'.
* In ''[[Gundam SEED Astray]]'', Lowe gains possession of a strange module from a [[God Guise|worshipper of George Glenn]], the so-called "First Coordinator". This black box just happens to contain ''Glenn's [[Brain In
* In the manga ''GUNNM'' (''[[Battle Angel Alita]]'') {{spoiler|this is used as important final plot twist in the last episodes, when the mad doctor Desty Nova reveals that his organic brain was abducted and replaced with a biochip with his personal memories implanted. He found it years ago and became literally mad}}. In ''Last Order'' this practice appears to be diffused in some contexts (i.e. Zekka had practised it on himself {{spoiler|but also the main character "herself" becomes an unknowning example of this case; new revelations are follwed by "''[[What Measure Is A Man]]''" stuff}}). However, the sequel is stuffed with many other examples of futuristical or bizarre [[Weird Science]]. We have also the {{spoiler|[[Cloning Blues]] of Desty Nova}}.
* In one ''[[
* A variation on this is Yuzuki from ''[[
* ''[[Kaiba]]'' explores the idea of digitizing one's memories/souls to achieve immortality and looks at the potential side effects of such technology such as the increasing gap between the rich and poor, the casual way people might just delete the memory chips of their loved ones to make more space for other people, and how quickly people can throw away their bodies to swap for new ones.
* ''[[
** Mic Sounders Boom Robo was uploaded from Stallion White; this is why Mic was able to System Change to protect Stallion's sister Swan before his limiters were removed. No one's sure where the Cosmo Robo personality actually came from; maybe that's that that's what a young Super-AI actually acts like.
** Pei La Cain and Palus Abel, two of the villains from ''FINAL'', are supposedly based on the actual masters of the Green and Red Planets. Given that three of GGG's units are children, biologically or metaphorically, of Cain or Abel, including [[The Hero|Guy himself]], this results in brief angst. [[Determinator|Very brief]].
* Done in ''[[Blue Drop]]: Tenshi no Bokura'', to the main character's best friend. To avoid spoilers, lets just say that it [[Squick|ends]] [[Tear Jerker|badly]] [[World Half Empty|for]] ''[[World Half Empty|anyone]]'' [[World Half Empty|involved]]. [[Nightmare Fuel|Reader included]].
* In ''[[
* ''[[Mobile Suit Gundam 00]]'':
** Innovators have the ability to transfer their consciousness to Veda after {{spoiler|their deaths}} Used primarily by Ribbons {{spoiler|and Tieria Erde}} to {{spoiler|cheat death}}.
** More than that, {{spoiler|Innovades are essentially [[A Is]] - "Bio-Terminals" - stored within Veda, of varying levels of complexity. An Innovade is dumped into a cloned host body, capable of interfacing with Veda and other Innovades, as a type of artificial Innovator, though they seem incapable of interfacing with actual humans like true Innovators can. In the clearest example, artificial Gundam Meister #874, Hanayo, starts off as being depicted as a hologram, then shifts into a nanomachine body, then is forced into a Haro.}}
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** Ultron himself is [[Ret Conned]] as having originated with a botched download by mentally-unstable Henry Pym's all-too-flawed engrams.
* In the Marvel/Epic comic ''Dreadstar'', one of the themes is that the main heroes fight against a tyrannical government, only to {{spoiler|find out [[Meet the New Boss|the new government isn't much better]]}}. Willow, one of the main characters, {{spoiler|uploads herself to take over the new government's main computer}}.
* In the original ''[[
* In ''[[Transmetropolitan]]'', people can destructively vacate their bodies, using their chemical energy to bootstrap a cloud of [[Nanomachines]] that then houses their consciousness. This being ''Transmet'', they've formed their own weird subculture.
* Adam Warren's version of the ''[[
* ''[[Iron Man]]'':
** Tony Stark being the tech geek he is, he couldn't resist the temptation to make a back-up of his brain on a portable hard drive. Came in handy after he ended up wiping his mind at the end of the ''Worlds Most Wanted'' arc.
** The stand-alone comic book ''Hypervelocity'' is entirely about Tony Stark 2.0, a digital version of himself that occupies his suit. As the comic progresses, he slowly gets corrupted by a rogue virus girl program.
* The [[Ultimate Universe]] [[Continuity Reboot]] of [[Paperinik New Adventures]] had this trope when {{spoiler|Lyonard [[Punny Name|D'Aq]] uploaded his brain as a side result of him exploring a virtual world}}. Then this trope became a [[Chekhov's Gun]] when {{spoiler|after Lyonard got [[Killed Off for Real]] (or, more precisely, got [[One-Winged Angel|devolved into the monstrous Lyozard]] ''and then'' got killed off) [[Back From the Dead|and Uno downloaded the data version of his brain into a (superpowered, of course) bionic body]].}}
* This happened to Cliff Steele (Robotman) in [[Grant Morrison]]'s [[
* The Battlestar Galactica comic 'The Final Five'has this as the origin of the Thirteenth Tribe. Originally, they were members of the other 12 tribes but after uploading their consciousnesses into new cybernetic bodies were treated as a new group. This includes the idea that the Thirteenth Tribe have committed some kind of 'sin', apparently borne out by the intervention of supernatural/sufficiently advanced beings.
* [[Savage Dragon]] featured a number of characters with [[Power Armor]] who had previously downloaded their brainwaves into the suit, allowing them to continue fighting long after death.
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== Films -- Live-Action ==
* ''[[Avatar (
* In ''[[Batman and Robin (
* [[Epileptic Trees|Possibly]] Jarvis in the ''[[Iron Man (
* ''[[Film/The Sixth Day|The Sixth Day]]'' features a way of making copies of a person mind that can be uploaded into clone bodies. Unfortunately as uploading is often done after death you get memories of dying.
* ''[[Star Trek: The Motion Picture
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* In [[Tad Williams]]' ''[[Otherland]]'' series, the villains plan to upload their minds to the Otherland network (and commit suicide to avoid duplication problems). It fails; however, {{spoiler|Orlando}} finds himself uploaded to the network after {{spoiler|his apparent death}}, and it eventually transpires that the version of {{spoiler|Paul Jonas}} who's been appearing throughout the series is an upload; after {{spoiler|his}} [[Heroic Sacrifice]], the main characters meet his physical counterpart. {{spoiler|Mr. Sellars does this in the end, too.}}
* The central premise of the [[Altered Carbon|Takeshi Kovacs novels]] (''Altered Carbon'', ''Broken Angels'', and ''Woken Furies'') by Richard Morgan is that computer technology has advanced to the point where everyone has their brain backed up on cortical stacks and most any middle class consumer can afford a new body after a while (mortgages and re-sleeving insurance policies are common making the price an apparent contrast with that of a house), creating effective immortality open to the mass market. Bodies are referred to as "sleeves" and society as a whole doesn't value life as much since you only suffer 'Real Death' if your cortical stack is destroyed -- and cortical stacks are heavily armored. They can be destroyed, but it takes a good deal of effort to do so. Anything short of massive firepower, enormously high temperatures or {{spoiler|nanomachine-induced disintegration}} won't so much as scratch them. Cortical stacks commonly survive incidents of incredible violence that leave the bodies [[Ludicrous Gibs|scattered over several square metres]].
* ''The Footprints of God'' by Greg Iles has memory uploading using a super MRI to scan the brain, and uploading the resulting model into a computer. The uploaded person is fully connected to the Internet, and able to learn things in seconds. The person being uploaded is a billionaire with a [[A God Am I|god complex]]. [[Humanity
* In John DeChancie's ''Skyway'' series, the protagonist's father has his mind preserved by [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]] and acts as the AI for his truck. Later he's given a pseudo-organic body by other even Sufficiently More Advanced Aliens.
* ''Fool's War'' by Sarah Zettel ''appears'' to have brain uploading technology. {{spoiler|1=In actuality, it just has AIs who've figured out how to ''download'' themselves into human bodies -- the uploading process doesn't work on anyone who started their life as human.}}
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* ''[[The Adoration of Jenna Fox]]'' by Mary Pearson. {{spoiler|Jenna Fox wakes up after being in a coma and finds out she is only a clone of herself.}}
* A destructive variation happens to the main character of ''Loop'', by Koji Suzuki, where he volunteers to messily get himself uploaded to a virtual reality to [[It Makes Sense in Context|save the world from super-cancer]]
* The [[Strugatsky Brothers]]' ''[[Noon:
* This becomes the plot point in the ''[[Starcraft]]'' [[Expanded Universe]] ''Dark Templar Trilogy'', where a Protoss female named Zamara copies her consciousness into the brain of Jake Ramsey, a human archaeologist. While she is able to communicate with him and grant him some of her [[Psychic Powers]], the process will ultimately kill Jake. They travel to a Dark Templar world where priests record memories of still-living Protoss onto [[Green Rocks|Khaydarin crystals]]. This is different from what is done by the Khala-worshiping Protoss, who have specialized individuals known as Preservers, who store entire consciousnesses (not just memories) in their heads, "uploaded" through the [[Hive Mind]] at the moment of death. Zamara is the last Preserver. The goal is to put Zamara's consciousness onto one such crystal. Unfortunately, Zamara realizes that the Dark Templar only copy ''memories'', not entire individuals. However, the unusually large crystal they use not only manages to contain the entire consciousness of a Preserver but also that of a [[Eldritch Abomination|Dark Archon]] who threatens to destroy everything.
* In the ''[[
* In [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s Future History series, specifically ''[[Time Enough for Love]]'' and its sequels, this capability is identified as part of the [[Fountain of Youth|medical rejuvenation technology]] used in cases of extreme physical deterioration, wherein a human being's brain is scanned and uploaded to a computer while a new one is cloned; said clone then has the saved brain downloaded back into it. The same technology is used in reverse when the computer Minerva decides to [[Pinocchio Syndrome|become human]] -- she creates a [[Mix-and-Match Man|composite]] [[Wetware Body|clone body]] and downloads herself into it once it's mature.
* While not computerized, Characters in the ''Skulldugery Pleasant'' Universe can sleep for three nights with a gemstone called an echo stone beside them, and thereby imprinting it with there personality and memeorys. It then generates a hologram which can also talk, but is still imaterial. The stone needs to b recharged by putting it in it's cradle, which takes about a year.
* Max Barry's ''Machine Man'' has the main character, Dr. Charles Neumann, {{spoiler|eventually end up as this.}}
* Discussed in ''The Biology of [[
== Live-Action TV ==
* The entire concept of ''[[Dollhouse]]'' is based on this trope.
* In the ''[[Star Trek:
* In ''[[Star Trek:
** In the episode "The Schizoid Man", Dr. Ira Graves uploads his brain into Data, essentially possessing him; at the end he {{spoiler|moves into the ''Enterprise'''s computer, where his knowledge exists but he has no conscious awareness}}. [[And I Must Scream|We hope]].
** There's also something of a debate (albeit one with -arguably- a life on the line) in the episode "Measure of a Man" wherein Commander Maddox proposes an experiment that basically involves taking Data apart to see what makes him tick. His only reassurance that Data himself will be preserved by this is the fact that he is able to download all of Data's memories and experiences into a computer and reupload them when his body is reassembled (that's assuming he CAN actually reassemble him.) Data argues that only the events and recollections themselves will be preserved and the "essence" of the events and situations will be lost, therefore so will he; because ''[[
* In the ''[[Star Trek: Voyager
* In ''[[Doctor Who]]'':
** In the new-series two-parter "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead", the computer at the heart of the titular library is an uploaded version of a young girl who had a terminal illness. She's also capable of storing and running the personalities of anyone else who tries to teleport while in the library, as well as anyone who dies in the library while wearing neural relay.
** In the original series, the Time Lord Matrix was a supercomputer that contained the recorded ''memories'' of all the past presidents of Gallifrey, but apparently not their complete personalities.
* This is what makes the Cylons of ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined]]'' functionally immortal. Their memories and consciousness are stored upon their death and then downloaded to identical bodies, {{spoiler|until the Resurrection Hub is destroyed.}} It's also their origin, by way of [[Replacement Goldfish]]. {{spoiler|Maybe. It seems a bit more complicated than that.}}
* Turns up in, of all places, ''[[
* ''[[Overdrawn
* A similar plot happens in an episode of ''Amazing Stories'' called "The Eternal Mind".
* How the titular character of ''[[Max Headroom]]'' came to be. The same process is brought up in one episode as a way to save the life of a terminally ill millionaire. Though Max and his "original" coexist and interact regularly, the implications of having multiple copies of the same personality around are discussed very little.
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== Videogames ==
* MegaMan.EXE in ''[[
* AIs in the ''[[Halo]]'' universe are created by this method. Though this process kills the brain being uploaded, as a result only one (known) AI is based on a living person's mind, Cortana. She was created by flash cloning Dr. Halsey's brain and inducing the memories into the disembodied organ. It took several tries, and for some reason, the resulting file can't be copied.
** Additionally, this was made part of a law against self-cloning due to the above, but since Halsey was a [[Government Conspiracy|Section 3 ONI scientist]], it's very likely that not only would she not be tried, but [[Wild Mass Guessing|also have technology that would create a perfect clone of herself to create Cortana with by harvesting its brain and then disposing of the brainless corpse.]]
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* The AI that comes with the ship [[The Federation]] loaned Samus in ''[[Metroid]] Fusion'' is one of these. {{spoiler|Because of his similar personality to an old commanding officer of hers, Samus dubs him Adam. She later realizes that it actually ''is'' said officer, uploaded to AI, when he says something to her that [[As You Wish|only he would say]].}} Brain uploading is commonly used in the Federation to preserve the minds of politicians, military leaders and other important people. It would seem that the uploading is only done when the person is dead or dying, but considering that he died under unrelated circumstances ({{spoiler|namely in the huge, fiery explosion of a lab full of invincible Metroids jettisoned into space}}), this is almost certainly to avoid the complications of having armies of duplicates running around rather than for any reason inherent to the process.
* ''[[Hostile Waters]]'' had this, with "soulcatcher chips"; it was apparently inspired by ''Rogue Trooper''. They were said to the copies of the minds of dead soldiers in AI form. Though they could be duplicated you were not allowed to, because it had been found that if two copies of the same personality became aware of each other each would consider the other an impostor and they would fight to their destruction.
* ''[[Sid
* ''[[Portal (
** GLaDOS claims to have a backup of Chell on file, which she later claims to delete. Of course, {{spoiler|she is a [[Unreliable Narrator|lying liar who tends to lie]].}}
** Cave Johnson really ''did'' back himself up, as revealed in his casting call, as well as the ARG leading up to ''[[
** In ''[[
*** In the PeTI DLC, it turns out that in an [[Alternate Universe]] Cave {{spoiler|succeeded in uploading himself. He quickly goes insane from boredom, and decides he needs to kill everyone so he can ascend to Olympus like Hercules}}. When Cave Prime hears this, he decides to cancel research into [[Brain Uploading]], strongly suggesting "Earth 1" is not the same universe the main story takes place in.
* In the ''[[Black Market (
* ''[[Ace Combat 3 Electrosphere]]'' had this with "sublimation", the act of uploading your mind inside a computer. Among other things, Ouroboros is a secret faction hell-bent on sublimating all the people in the world, and Fiona is unable to forgive her sister Cinthia after she tells Fiona she wants to sublimate her mind. (Don't panic if you don't know that: all that stuff is exclusive from the Japanese original; the American release had [[Macekre|this engaging storyline replaced]] with a generic [[AI Is a Crapshoot]] plot).
* The Doctor, a [[Playful Hacker]] of ''[[City of Heroes]]'' is revealed to be one of these, and created an easily produced process to upload personalities. Oddly enough for the genre, it didn't destroy her original mind or body; [[Mega Corp|Crey]] took care of that some time after she had already gone on the net. She's treated as a [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|human]], although she does recognize that she's not one any longer. ''[[City of Heroes]]'' also features this trope's inversion : Paragon Protectors are revealed to run on home-built personalities downloaded into clone bodies, using the same underlying technology and copied on a massive scale. [[Cloning Blues|They're fairly expendable]], in a world where normal clones or uploaded personalities are treated fairly well, but [[Mega Corp|Crey]] does tend to harvest the original copies for those personalities from the rotting corpses of dead heroes and rip out whatever higher brain functionality is left before slapping the Paragon Protector together.
* Occurs at the end of ''[[Space Quest]] 4'', when [[Big Bad]] former-"human" AI Vohaul not only uploads Roger's son's mind to a disk (1.44mb! Who knew the mind was so... compressable?), but then uploads his own mind to Roger's son. Roger then has to defeat Vohaul by putting his son's mind back in place, and transferring Vohaul's mind to the computer just seconds before a system format.
* In ''[[Jak and Daxter|Jak 3]]'', Vin ({{spoiler|who had died in the previous game}}) is discovered to have uploaded his mind into a computer. This is treated as if he were the same person {{spoiler|and had never died at all}}.
* [[Wild Mass Guessing|One theory as to]] what happened to Dr. Light between the original ''[[Mega Man (
* ''[[
* Orthopox from ''[[Destroy All Humans!]]'' does this when {{spoiler|he gets destroyed with the mothership during a nuclear attack staged by the KGB.}}
* The opening cinematic of ''[[Cortex Command]]'' shows a person's mind being uploaded into a [[Brain In
* ''[[Starship Titanic]]'': all the robots on board have these have copied human minds courtesy of 'personality transfers'. It's like blood donation in America, which means you get lots of people who really shouldn't be donating.
* In ''[[Defense Grid the Awakening]]'', the general who won the war against the aliens 1000 years ago had his brain uploaded in case they came back, which they have. He usually plays the part of the [[Exposition Fairy]], but he can't seem to get raspberries off his mind.
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* In ''[[Starsiege]]'', this is how the Immortal Brotherhood came to be; individuals who were part of the Lazarus Project team, or who were exceptionally loyal to Emperor-to-be Solomon Petresun, were transferred into biomechanoid brains which could then be transplanted from body to body. Since the brains have their own power supply and were extremely durable, the immortal could be killed without actually dying... however, the nature of the brain/body interface could cause severe personality shifts from one 'lifetime' to the next. [[Big Bad|Prometheus]], the [[AI Is a Crapshoot|Cybrid]] who invented the technique, later used it to create infiltration units as weapons against its creators.
* In ''[[Perfect Dark]]'', Dr. Carroll uploads his personality into a "sapient" (floating laptop-looking thing) before his death.
* A real [[Tear Jerker]] example in ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' which has David Archer, whose mind was uploaded so he could control an army of [[Mecha
** The fluff for ''[[Mass Effect]]'' series also contains some interesting trivia on "brain" uploading: essentially, a true intelligence, be it natural or artificial, can only "run" on a quantum computing core, and while it is possibly to copy the ''data'' that constitutes it to as many cores as you wish, each copy would be a different "individual" rather than a carbon copy, thanks to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that plays a major part in quantum computing. The geth, however, explicitly violate this principle, being sentient ''programs'' that may transfer themselves into different hardware at will.
* [[Mass Effect 3]] has {{spoiler|Shepard perform this in order to take over the Reapers in the "control" ending.}}
* In ''[[Infinite Space]]'', the [[Hive Mind|NOS Command System]] owned by Zenitorians allows one to transfer his/her consciousness to a spare body, as shown by Rubriko.
* Throughout most of the ''[[
* ''[[Glowgrass]]'' contains an example where it is used to discover part of an ancient culture.
* Prometheus in ''[[Conduit 2]]'', due to events in the last game.
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** After the event with the ZODIACs ends, the scientist that developed the technique (whose daughter was one of those uploaded) eventually uploads himself to the orbital fortress "The Adjucator" after he finds out that the government, whom he considers to have become corrupt, is planning on using his technique to strengthen themselves.
* In ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]: Peace Walker'', a somewhat less biological, more behaviourally-based attempt is used to create Peace Walker's AI, a somewhat [[Came Back Wrong|distorted]] version of [[Lady of War|The Boss's]] consciousness.
* At the end of the ''[[Marathon
* In ''[[Sword of the Stars]] 2'', you can preserve admirals' expertise by converting them into expert systems.
* Your entire crew in ''[[
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* In ''[[Unity]]'', the main character's neural patterns had been uploaded into a powerful computer. {{spoiler|This simulation eventually (and accidentally) takes over the ship - for the better.}}
* In ''[[Bob and George]]'', the Marverick virus is a digital copy of Dr. Wily's soul, corrupting and reprograming Reploids just as Wily did to robots.
* In ''[[
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* In ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'', [[A Is]] work much the same way as they do in the Halo universe--they are created from a real person's brain, and you can make an AI of a still-living person by cloning their brain and whatnot. In Reconstruction, it's revealed that {{spoiler|all of the [[A Is]] that had been met up to that point weren't actually full [[A Is]]; instead, they were "fragments" created from torturing a single original full AI (the Alpha). Church is actually what's left of the Alpha. Similarly, Tex is sort of a side effect of the Alpha's creation, based off of the Director's extremely strong memories of the original Allison. It's never quite clear what happened to the original Allison to make the memories so strong, but Church's feelings toward Tex imply that it was the Director's girlfriend or wife who died}}. In season 9, we actually get a chance to see {{spoiler|a full AI for once--the original Alpha shows up very briefly in a prequel segment}}.
* In the [[Whateley Universe]], one of the supervillains--The Palm--is doing the ''reverse''. He's downloading copies of his AI self into the brains of (probably) already-dead human bodies, with [[Body Horror]] results. (Of course, as far as we know he started out as a human being -- Dr. Abel Palm -- who left his body behind to convincingly fake his death, so depending on just how successful he was he may ''also'' be a straight example of the trope.)
* In ''[[
* Ubiquitous in ''[[Orions Arm|Orion's Arm]]''. Entities that keep upgrading their minds will usually have to upload into a more advanced housing several times.
* In the [[Star Army]] universe, the Yamatai Star Empire makes use of extensive "soul transfer" to the point where the vast majority of their population has transferred into optimized, customizable android bodies. Citizens' right to backups is legally ensured and their data is legally protected. Tampering with "soul data" means a permanent death penalty to the perpetrator and all his/her backup files.
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== Western Animation ==
* In ''[[
* The title characters of ''[[The Venture Brothers]]'' had their minds uploaded by Doctor Venture because they're death-prone and he keeps a stock of clones ready to replace them. That... sounds really bad on paper
** Oh, it sounds really bad on the show, too, and that's not lost on those around Rusty.
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