[ WP ] In the future , technology exists to transfer one person 's conciousness to another body , giving identity theft a whole new meaning . Write about the identity black market .

`` They *stole* him. They stole my *son*.'' 
 
 `` Ma'am, please calm down. We have every single officer out there looking for hi-'' 
 
 The middle aged woman slammed her fists down on my desk. I reached for my taser, but stopped short when she collapsed and started sobbing. 
 
 `` You do n't *get it*, do you!?'' she cried out between tears. `` Do you really think you're looking for'him'? Do you really think you're looking for a ***body***!?'' 
 
 It was true. With the invention of the Consciousness Transferal Network ( CTN ), Internet crime had taken a very dark turn. Identity theft was a much larger issue when you could steal more than a social security number. 
 
 It started as a cosmetic upgrade for the rich; We had made leaps and bounds in the development of synthetic bodies over the last century. At the start of the 21st century we could replace 80 % of a human with synthetic parts, 40 years later we could replace 100 %, and we were starting to make synthetic organs that worked better than the original ones. Many diseases and cancers were made redundant once the synthetics became more affordable. Got lung cancer? Just replace your lungs. Certainly a lot easier than chemo. For the rich and elderly, many replaced their whole bodies via CTN in order to extend their lives as long as possible. 
 
 From there, some video game genius created a'synthetic arena', where you could CTN your consciousness into a colourfully painted synthetic and fight someone else's synthetic in a boxing ring. It quickly became the new esport and was televised internationally. 
 
 Then the man-in-the-middle attacks started. Popular pro-gamers in the synthetics arenas were being kidnapped mid-stream. No one knew where they were going, the world's best networks specialists had been attempting to track them for months, but the CTN files were always moved to offline storage. That was the type of case I was dealing with. This woman's 19 year-old boy had been taken in a man-in-the-middle attack as he was logging in from home for a competition. He engaged the CTN transfer with his body safely in stasis, then that was the last anyone heard of him. 
 
 `` My condolences, ma'am,'' I managed. `` I can only assure you that we're doing everything we can. If you could please bring his computer to our lab we might be able to identify how it happened.'' 
 
 At the very least, in these types of crimes the victim was always'alive' so long as their CTN data existed, so hope to find them okay would never die. I'm never sure if sitting on a memory card in some thief's locker somewhere really counts as'living' though. 
 
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 I love this prompt, it has so much potential!
