A while back, I think in response to a post about free will, Jerry said something about the possibility of self-consciousness being an illusion.

That comment has stuck in my head like a grain of sand since then, and I've been rolling it around, trying to accrete a story around it.

It's interesting, and since so many SF-literate folks read my blog (thank you), I was wondering if they'd seen the notion in fiction before. Won't stop me from working on the story, but I'm curious.

This question has been asked in SF before: What if you're not who you think you are?

Several dozen times by Phil Dick, but most recently in movies like The Matrix. What if you were an actor in a movie, or a character in a book? What if you were a brain in a jar? What if you were part of an elaborate power grid that fuels AIs?

But I wonder if the question has been posed this way: What if you're not a "you"?

That is, what if you think you're an individual, but you are, in fact, not?

There are several interesting tangents to travel along here, and I'm already outlining one of them in my head, but I thought it would be interesting to see what others thought.