"A year's worth. As you know." "Actually, three days short. You missed a few days, early on." "Ah." "Could happen to anybody." "I don't suppose a few days more or less will matter. Back in the real world, I mean." "Ah. Yes. I mean, no, it shouldn't." "Odd, how I never worried about things back there. Whether I still have a job, for instance." "Is it? Oh, yes, I suppose it is." "I suppose you told Walter what was going on?" "Well." "I mean, you wouldn't just pull the whole rug out from under me, would you? You knew I'd have to be going back to my old life, once we were done . . . once we'd . . . well, done whatever the hell it is we've been doing here." "Oh, no, of course not. I mean, of course you'll be going back." "One thing I'm curious about. Where has my real body been all this time?" "Harrumph." Well, what he said was something like that. He glanced at me, looked away, harrumphed again. I felt the first little scamperings of doubt. It occurred to me that I had been taking a lot of things for granted. One of them was that the CC had his reasons for subjecting me to this tropical vacation, and that the reasons were ultimately beneficial to me. It had seemed logical to think this at the time, since I in fact was benefiting from it. Oh, sure, there were times when I had complained loudly to the crabs and the turkeys, bemoaned hardships, lusted after this or that. But it had been a healing time. Still, a year was a long time. What had been going on in the real world in my absence? "This is very difficult for me," the Admiral said. He removed his huge, ridiculous hat and set it on the table beside him, then took a lace handkerchief from his sleeve and mopped his forehead. He was balding almost to the crown; his pink scalp looked as bright and polished as tourmaline. "Since I don't know what's bothering you, I can't really make it any easier for you." Still he didn't say anything. The silence was broken only by the never-ending sounds of the island jungle and the splash of my water wheel. "We could play twenty queries. 'Something's bothering you, Admiral. Is it bigger than a logic circuit?'" He sighed, and drained his whiskey. He looked up at me. "You're still on the operating table at the studio." If there was supposed to be a punch line, I couldn't see it coming. The idea that what should have been a one or two-hour repair job should have taken the better part of a year wasn't even worth considering. There had to be more. "Would you like another drink?" He shook his head. "From the time you remember appearing on the beach to the time I spoke my first words to you, seven ten-thousandths of a second elapsed." "That's ridiculous." Even as I said it, I realized the CC was not prone to making ridiculous statements. "I'm sure it must sound that way. I'd like to hear your reasons for thinking otherwise." I thought it over, and nodded. "All right. The human brain isn't like a computer. It can't accept that much information that fast. I lived that year. Every day of it. One of the things I recall most vividly is how long so many of the days were, either because I was working hard or because I didn't have anything to do. Life is like that. I don't know how you think, what your perceptions of reality are like, but I know when a year's gone by. I've lived for a hundred of them. A hundred and one, now." I sank back in my chair. I hadn't realized I was getting so exercised about the matter. He was nodding. "This will get a little complicated. Bear with me, I'll have to lay some groundwork. "First, you're right, your brain is organized in a different way than mine is. In my brain, 'memory' is just stored data, things that have been recorded and placed in the appropriate locations within the matrix of charge/no-charge devices I use for the purpose. The human brain is neither so logically constructed nor organized. Your brain contains redundancies I neither have nor need. Data is stored in it by repetition or emphasis, and retrieved by associations, emotional linkages, sensory input, and other means that are still not completely understood, even by me. "At least, that used to be the case. But today, there are very few humans whose brains have not been augmented in greater or smaller ways. Basically, only those with religious scruples or other irrational reasons resist the implantation of a wide variety of devices that owe their origin much more to the binary computer than to the protoplasmic neuron. Some of these devices are hybrids. Some are parallel processors. Some lean more toward the biologic and are simply grown within and beside the existing neural network, but using the laws of electric or optical transmission with their correspondingly much higher speeds of propagation, rather than the slower biochemical regime that governs your natural brain. Others are made outside the body and implanted shortly after birth. All of them are essentially interfaces, between the human brain and my brain. Without them, modern medicine would be impossible. The benefits are so overwhelming that the drawbacks are seldom thought of, much less discussed." He paused, lifting an eyebrow. I was chewing over quite a few thoughts concerning drawbacks at that moment, but I decided not to speak. I was too curious as to just where he was going with this. He nodded, and continued. "As with so many other scientific advances, the machines in your body were designed for one purpose, but turn out to have other, unforeseen applications as well. Some of them are quite sinister. I assure you, you have not experienced any of those." "It seems sinister enough, if what you say is true." "Oh, it's true. And it was done for a good reason, which I'll get to in my own time." "It seems that's something I now have an infinite supply of." "You could, you could. Where was I? Oh, yes. These devices, most of them originally designed and installed to monitor and control basic bodily functions at the cellular level, or to augment learning and memory, among other things, can be used to achieve some effects that were never envisioned by the designers." "And those designers are . . .?" "Well, me, in large part." "I just wanted a reality check. I do know a little about how you work, and just how important you've become to civilization. I wanted to see what sort of fool you took me for." "Not that sort, at any rate. You're right. Most technology long ago reached realms where new designs would be impossible without a great deal of involvement by me, or a being a lot like me. Often the original impetus for a new technology comes from a human dreamer--I have not usurped that human function yet, though more and more of such advances as we see in our surroundings are coming from me. But you've caused me to stray again from the main point. And . . . do you have any more of that whiskey?" I stared at him. The charade that a "man" was actually "sitting" in a "chair" in my "treehouse" drinking my "whiskey" was getting a bit too much for me. Or should it have been "me?" No matter what other hocus-pocus the CC might have worked with my mind, I was completely aware that everything I was experiencing at that moment was being fed directly into my brain through that black magic known as Direct Interface. Which was turning out to be even blacker than I, a notorious resister to D.I., could ever have guessed. But for some reason of his own, the CC had decided to talk to me in this way, after a lifetime of being a disembodied voice. Come to think of it, I could already see one effect of this new face of the CC. I was now thinking of the CC as "him," where before I'd always used the neuter third person singular pronoun. So I got up and re-filled his glass from a bottle nearly half-full. And hadn't it been nearly empty the last time I'd poured? "Quite right," the Admiral said. "I can refill that bottle as often as I wish." "Are you reading my mind?" "Not as such. I'm reading your body language. The way you hesitated when you lifted the bottle, the expression on your face as you thought it over . . . Direct Interface, the nature of the unreality we're inhabiting. Your 'real' body did none of these things, of course. But interfacing with your mind, I read the signals your brain sent to your body--which doesn't happen to be hooked into the circuit at the moment. Do you see?" "I think so. Does this have anything to do with why you've chosen to communicate with me like this? In that body, I mean." "Very good. You've only tried Direct Interface twice in your life, both of them quite a long time ago, in terms of the technology. You weren't impressed, and I don't blame you. It was much more primitive in those days. But I communicate with most people visually now, as well as audially. It is more economical; more can be said with fewer words. People tend to forget just how much human communication is accomplished with no words at all." "So you're here in that preposterous body to give me visual cues." "Is it that bad? I wanted to wear the hat." He picked it up and looked at it admiringly. "It's not strictly contemporary, if you must know. This world is about at the level of 1880, 1890. The uniform is late eighteenth century. Captain Bligh wore a hat a lot like this. It's called a cocked hat, specifically, a bicorne." "Which is a lot more than I ever needed to know about eighteenth century British naval headgear." "Sorry. The hat really has nothing to do with anything. But I'm curious. Has my body language conveyed anything to you?" I thought it over, and he was right. I had gleaned more nuances from talking to him this way than I would have in the past, listening to his voice. "You're nervous about something," I said. "I think maybe you're worried . . . about how I'll react to what you've done to me. What an astonishing thought." "Perhaps, but accurate." "I'm completely in your power. Why should anything worry you?" He squirmed again, and took another sip of his drink. "We'll get into that later. Right now, let's get back to my story." "It's a story now, is it?" He ignored me, and plowed ahead. "What you have just experienced is a fairly recent capability of mine. It's not advertised, and I hope you don't plan to do a story on it in the Nipple. So far I've used it mostly on the insane. It's very effective on catatonics, for instance. Someone sits there all day, unmoving, not speaking, lost in a private world. I insert several years' worth of memories in a fraction of a second. The subject then remembers wakening from a bad dream and going about a comfortable, routine life for years." "It sounds risky." "They can't get any worse. The cure rate has been good. Sometimes they can be left alone after that. There are subjects who have lived as many as ten years after treatment, and not reverted. Other times counseling is needed, to find the things that drove them to catatonia in the first place. A certain percentage, of course, simply drift back into oblivion in weeks or months. I'm not trying to tell you I've solved all the mysteries of the human mind." "You've solved enough of them to scare the hell out of me." "Yes. I can understand your feelings. Most of the methods I use would be far too technical for you to understand, but I think I can explain something about the technique. "First, you understand that I know you better than anyone in the universe. Better than . . ." I laughed. "Better than my mother? She's not even in the running. Were you trying to think of another example? Don't bother. It's been a long time since I was close to anyone. I was never very good at it." "That's true. It's not that I've made a special study of you--at least, not until lately. By the nature of my functions, I know everyone in Luna better than anyone else. I've seen through their eyes, heard through their ears, monitored their pulse and sweat glands and skin temperature and brain waves and the churning of their stomachs and the irising of their eyes under a wide variety of situations and stimuli. I know what enrages them and what makes them happy. I can predict with reasonable certainty how they will react in many common situations; more importantly, I know what would be out of character for them. "As a result, I can use this knowledge as the basis for something that could be considered a fictional character. Call this character ParaHildy. I write a scenario wherein ParaHildy is stranded on a desert island. I write it in great detail, using all the human senses. I can abbreviate and abridge at will. An example: you recall picking up a handful of sand and studying it. It was a vivid image to you, one you would have remembered. If I'm wrong about this, I'd like to hear about it." As you might expect, I said nothing. I felt a cold chill. I can't say I liked listening to this. "I gave you that memory of sand grains. I constructed the picture with almost infinite visual detail. I enhanced it with things you weren't even aware of, to make it more lifelike: the grittiness of the grains, the smell of the salt water, tiny sounds the grains made in your hand. "The rest of the time, the sand was not nearly so detailed, because I never caused ParaHildy to pick up a handful and look at it, and think about looking at it. Do you see the distinction? When ParaHildy was walking down the beach, he would notice sand clinging to his feet, in an absent sort of way. Remember, Hildy, think back, recall yourself walking down the beach, bring it back as vividly as you can." I tried. In some way, I already saw most of what he was driving at. In some way, I already believed that what he was saying was true. Memory is a funny thing. It can't be as sharp as we'd sometimes like to believe it is. If it was, it would be like an hallucination. We'd be seeing two scenes at once. The closest mental pictures of things can get to real things is in a dream state. Other than that, our memory pictures are always hazy to one degree or another. There are different sorts of memories, good and bad, clear and hazy, the almost-remembered, the thing you could never forget. But memory serves to locate us in space and time. You remember what happened to you yesterday, the previous year, when you were a child. You remember quite clearly what you were doing one second ago: it usually wasn't all that different from what you're doing now. The memories stretch backward in time, defining the shape of your life: these events happened to me, and this is what I saw and heard and felt. We move through space continually comparing what we're seeing now to the maps and cast of characters in our heads: I've been here before, I remember what's around that corner, I can see what it looks like. I know this person. That person is a stranger, his mug shot isn't in my files. But now is always fundamentally different from the past. I remembered walking many, many miles along that beach. I could recall in great detail many scenes, many sounds and smells. But I had only looked closely at a handful of sand once. That was embedded in my past. I could get up now, if I wished, go to the beach, and do it again, but that was now. I had no way of disproving what the CC was telling me. Those memory pictures from the time the CC was saying never happened were just as real to me as the hundred years that had gone before it. More real, in some ways, because they were more recent. "It seems like a lot of trouble," I said. "I have a lot of capacity. But it's not quite as much trouble as you might think. For instance, do you recall what you did forty-six days ago?" "It seems unlikely. One day is pretty much like another here." I realized I'd only bolstered his case by saying that. "Try it. Try to think back. Yesterday, the day before . . . " I did try. I got back two weeks, with great effort. Then I ran into the muddle you might expect. Had it been Tuesday or Monday that I weeded the garden? Or was it Sunday? No, Sunday I knew I had finished off the last of a smoked ham, so it must have been . . . It was impossible. Even if there had been more variety in my days, I doubt I could have gone back more than a few months. Was there something wrong with me? I didn't think so, and the CC confirmed it. Sure, there were those with eidetic memory, who could memorize long lists instantly. There were people who were better than I at recalling the relatively unimportant details of life. As for my belief that a recalled scene can never be as alive, as colorful, as sweeping as the present moment . . . while I will concede that a trained visual artist might see things in more detail than I, and recollect them better, I still maintain that nothing can compare with the present moment, because it is where we all live. "I can't do it," I admitted. "It's not surprising, since forty-six days ago is one of several dozen days I never bothered to write. I knew you would never notice it. You think you lived those days, just as you think you lived all the others. But as time goes by, the memory of the real and the imagined days grows dimmer, and it is impossible to distinguish one from the other." "But I remember . . . I remember thinking things. Deciding things, making choices. Considering things." "And why shouldn't you? I wrote that ParaHildy thought those things, and I know how you think. As long as I stayed in character, you'd never notice them." "The funny thing is. . . . There were some things that were not in character." "You didn't get angry often enough." "Exactly! Now that I think back, it's incredible that I'd just sit back and wait for you for a year! That's not like me." "Just as standing, walking, and talking is not normal behavior for a catatonic. But by implanting a memory that he did stand, walk, and talk and that he thought there was nothing unreasonable about doing those things, the catatonic accepts that he indeed did react that way. The problem in that case is that it was out of character, so many of them eventually remember they were catatonic, and return to that state." "Were there other things out of character?" "A few. I'll leave them as an exercise for the student, for the most part. You'll discover them as you think back over the experience in days to come. There were some inconsistencies, as well. I'll tell you something about them, just to further convince you and to show you just how complex this business really is. For instance, it's a nice place you've got here." "Thank you. It was a lot of work." "It's a really nice place." "Well, I'm proud of it, I . . ." Okay, I finally realized he was getting at something. And my head was starting to hurt. I'd had a thought, earlier that day . . . or was it part of the memories the CC alleged he had implanted in me? I couldn't remember if I'd thought it before or after his arrival, which just proves how easy it must have been for the CC to put this whole card trick over on me. It concerned the look-out tower. I got up and walked to the stairs leading up to it. I pounded on the rail with my fist. It was solidly built, as was everything else around me. It had been a lot of work. It had been, damn it, I remembered building it. And it had taken a very long time. Why had I built it? I thought back. I tried to recall my reasons for building it. I tried to recapture my thoughts as I labored on it. All I could remember was the same thought I'd had so many times during the past year; not a thought, really, but a feeling, of how rewarding it was to work with my hands, of how good it all felt. I could still smell the wood shavings, see them curl up under my plane, feel the sweat dripping from my brow. So I remembered building it, and there it was, by golly. But it didn't add up. "There's too much stuff, isn't there?" I asked, quietly. "Hildy, if Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, and his wife Tuesday and twin sons Saturday and Laborday had worked around the clock for five years, they couldn't have done all the things you've done here." He was right, of course. And how could that be? It only made sense if it was as the CC claimed. He had written the entire story, dumped it into the cyber-augmented parts of my brain where, at the speed of light, it was transferred to the files of my organic brain, shuffled cunningly in with the rest of my memories, the legitimate ones. It would work, that was the devilish part. I had a hundred years of memories in there. They defined who I was, what I thought, what I knew. But how often did I refer to them? The great bulk of them stayed in dormant storage most of the time, until I summoned them up. Once the false memories were in there with the others, they functioned in the same way. That picture of me holding the handful of sand had been in there only an hour, but it was ready for me to recall--as having happened a year ago--as soon as the CC jogged it loose with his words. Along with it had come a flood of other memories of sand to be checked against this one, all unconsciously: the pictures matched, so my brain sounded no alarms. The memory was accepted as real. I rubbed my temples. The whole thing was giving me a headache like few I'd ever had. "If you gave me a few minutes," I said, "I think I could come up with a couple hundred reasons why this whole technology is the worst idea anybody ever had." "I could add several hundred of my own," the Admiral said. "But I do have the technology. And it will be used. All new technologies are." "You could forget it. Can't computers do that?" "Theoretically. Computers can wipe data from memory, and it's like it never existed. But the nature of my mind is that I will simply discover it again. And losing it would involve losing so much else precursor technology that I don't think you'd like the result." "We're pretty dependent on machines in Luna, aren't we?" "Indeed. But even if I wanted to forget it-which I don't--I'm not the only planetary brain in the solar system. There are seven others, from Mercury to Neptune, and I can't control their decision." He fell into another of his long silences. I wasn't sure if I bought his explanation. It was the first thing he'd said that didn't ring true. I accepted by that time that my head was full of false memories--and I was back in character, I was goddam angry about it, and about the fact that there was absolutely nothing to be done. And it made sense that losing the new art would effect many other things. Luna and the seven other human worlds were the most technology-dependent societies humans had ever inhabited. Before, if things collapsed, at least there was air to breathe. Nowhere in the solar system did humans now live where the air was free. To "forget" how to implant memories in the human brain the CC would no doubt have to forget many other things. He would have to limit his abilities and, as he pointed out, unless he decreased his intelligence deliberately to a point that might endanger the very humans he was designed to protect, he would re-chisel this particular wheel in due time. And it was also true that the CC of Mars or Triton would certainly discover the techniques on their own, though the rumor was none of the other planetary computers was so far evolved as the Lunar CC. As nations which often found themselves in competition, the Eight Worlds did not encourage a lot of intercourse between their central cybernets. So all the reasons he stated sounded reasonable. It was railroad time, so somebody would build a choo-choo. But what didn't ring true was what the CC had left out. He liked the new capability. He was as pleased as a child with a new toy monorail. "I have one further proof," the Admiral said. "It involves something I mentioned earlier. Acts that were out of character. This is the biggest one, and it involves you not noticing something that, if these memories had been generated by you, you surely would have noticed. You would have spotted it by now yourself, except I've kept your mind occupied. You haven't had time to really think back to the operating table, and the time immediately before that." "It's not exactly fresh in my mind." "Of course not. It feels as if it all happened a year ago." "So what is it? What didn't I notice?" "That you are female." "Well, of course I'm--" Words fail me again. How many degrees of surprise can there be? Imagine the worst possible one, then square it, and you'll have some notion of how surprised I was. Not when I looked reflexively down at my body, which was, as the CC had said and I had known all along, female. No, the real shock came when I thought back to that day in the Blind Pig. Because that was the first moment in one year that I had realized I had been male when I got in the fight. I had been male when I went on the operating table. And I had been female when I appeared on the beach of Scarpa Island. And I simply had never noticed it. I had never in that entire year compared the body I was then inhabiting with the one I had been wearing for the last thirty years. I had been a girl before, and I was a girl now, and I never gave it a thought. Which was completely ridiculous, of course. I mean, you would notice such a thing. Long before you had to urinate, the difference would manifest itself to you, there would be this still small voice telling you something was missing. Perhaps it would not have been the first thing you'd notice as you lifted you head from the sand, but it'd be high on the list. It was not just out of character for me. It was out of character for any human not to notice it. Therefore, my memories of not noticing it were false memories, bowdlerized tales invented in the supercooled image processor of the CC. "You're really enjoying this, aren't you?" I said. "I assure you, I'm not trying to torture you." "Just humiliate me?" "I'm sorry you feel that way. Perhaps when I-" I started to laugh. I wasn't hysterical, though I thought I could slip into hysteria easily enough. The Admiral frowned inquisitively at me. "I just had a thought," I said. "Maybe that idiot at UniBio was right. Maybe it is obsolete. I mean, how important can something be if you don't notice it's gone for a whole year?" "I told you, it wasn't you that didn't--" "I know, I know. I understand it, as much as I'm ever going to, and I accept it--not that you should have done it, but that you did it. So I guess it's time for the big question." I learned forward and stared at him. "Why did you do it?" I was getting a little tired of the CC's newlyacquired body language. He went through such a ridiculous repertoire of squirms, coughs, facial tics and half-completed gestures that I almost had to laugh. It was as if he'd suddenly been overcome by an earlobe-tugging heel-thumping chinducking shoulder-shrugging behind-scratching petit mal seizure. Guilt oozed off him like a tangible slime. If I hadn't been so angry, the urge to comfort him would have been almost overwhelming. But I managed to hang on to my whelm and just stared at him until the mannerisms subsided. "How about we take a walk?" he wheedled. "Down to the beach." "Why don't you just take us there? Bring the bottle, too." He shrugged, and made a gesture. We were on the beach. Our chairs had come along with us, and the bottle, which he poured from and set in the sand beside him. He gulped down the contents of his glass. I got up and walked to the edge of the water, gazing out at the blue sea. "I brought you here to try to save your life," he said, from behind me. "The medicos seemed to have that in hand." "The threat to you is much worse than any barroom brawl." I went down on one knee and scooped up a handful of wet sand. I held it close to my face and studied the individual grains. They were as perfect as I had remembered them, no two alike. "You've been having bad dreams," he went on. "I thought it might have something to do with that." "I didn't write the dreams. I recorded them over the last several months. They were your dreams. In a manner of speaking." I tossed the handful of sand aside, brushed my hand against my bare thigh. I studied the hand. It was slender, smooth and girlish on the back, the palm work-roughened, the nails irregular. Just as it had been for the last year. It wasn't the hand I'd used to slug the Princess of Wales. "You've tried to kill yourself four times." I didn't turn around. I can't say I was happy to hear him say it. I can't say I completely believed it. But I'd come to believe unlikelier things in the last hour. "The first attempt was by self-immolation." "Why don't you just say burning?" "I don't know. Have it your way. That one was pretty horrible, and unsuccessful. At least, you would have survived it, even before modern medical science, but in a great deal of pain. Part of the treatment for injuries like yours is to remove the memory of the incident, with the patient's permission. "And I gave it." There was a long pause. "No," he said, almost in a whisper. "That doesn't sound like me. I wouldn't cherish a memory like that." "No. You probably would have. But I didn't ask you." Finally I saw what had been making him so nervous. This was in clear contradiction to his programming, to the instructions he was supposed to follow, both by law and by what I had understood to be the limitations of his design. You learn something new every day. "I enrolled you," he went on, "without your consent, into a program I've set up over the last four years. The purpose of the program is to study the causes of suicide, in the hope of finding ways to prevent it." "Perhaps I should thank you." "Not necessarily. It's possible, of course, but the action wasn't undertaken with your benefit solely in mind. You got along well enough for a time, showed no self-destructive impulses and few other symptoms other than a persistent depression-normal enough for you, I might add. Then, without any warning I could detect, you slashed your wrists in the privacy of your apartment. You made no attempt to call for help." "In the imagined privacy, apparently," I said. I thought back, and finally turned to look at him. He was sitting on the edge of his chair, hands clasped, elbows on knees. His shoulders were hunched, as if to receive a lash across the back. "I think I can pinpoint that one. Was it when my handwriter malfunctioned?" "You damaged some of its circuitry." "Go on." "Attempt number three was shortly afterward. You tried to hang yourself. Succeeded, actually, but you were observed this time by someone else. After each of these attempts, I treated you with a simple drug that removes memories of the last several hours. I gathered my data, returned you to your life as if nothing had happened, and continued to observe you at a level considerably above my normal functions. For instance, it is forbidden for me to look into the private quarters of citizens without probable cause of a crime being committed. I have violated that command in your case, and that of some others." We are a very free society, especially in comparison to most societies of the past. Government is small and weak. Many of the instrumentalities of oppression have been gradually given over to machines--to the Central Computer--not without initial trepidation, and not without elaborate safeguards. Things remain that way for the most persuasive of reasons: it works. It has been well over a century since civil libertarians have objected to much that has been proposed concerning the functions of the CC. Big Brother is most definitely there, but only when we invite him in, and a century of living with him has convinced us all that he really does love us, that he really has only our best interests at heart. It's in his goddam wiring, praise the lord. Only it now seemed that it wasn't. A fundamentalist would have hardly been more surprised than I if he heard, direct from Jesus, that the crucifixion had been a cheap parlor trick. "Number four was more easily seen as the classic cry for help. I decided it was time for different measures." "Are you talking about the fight in the Blind Pig?" I thought about it, and almost laughed. Attacking Wales while she was in a drug-induced state of no inhibitions might not be quite as certain as a rope around the neck, but it was close. I finished my drink and threw the empty glass toward the surf. I looked around me, at this beautiful island where, until a moment ago, I had thought I had spent such a lovely year. The island was still as beautiful as I "remembered" it. Taking all things into account, I was happy to have the memories. There was bitterness, naturally; who likes to be played such a complete fool? But on the other hand, who can really complain of a year's vacation on a deserted island paradise? What else did I have to do? The answer to that was, apparently, suicide attempt number five. And had you really been enjoying your life, your many and varied friendships, your deeply fulfilling job and your myriad fascinating pastimes so very much? Don't kid yourself, Hildy. Still, even with all that . . . "All right," I said, spreading my hands helplessly. "I will thank you. For showing me this, and more important, for saving my life. I can't imagine why I was so willing to throw it away." The CC didn't reply. He just kept looking at me. I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. "That's the thing, really. I can't imagine. You know me; I get depressed. I have been since I was . . . oh, forty or fifty. Callie says I was a moody child. I was probably a discontented fetus, lord love us, kicking out at every little thing. I complain. I'm unhappy with the lack of purpose of human life, or with the fact that so far I've been unable to discover a purpose. I envy the Christians, the Bahais, the Zens and Zoro-astrians and astrologers and Flackites because they have answers they believe in. Even if they're the wrong answers, it must be comforting to believe in them. I mourn the Dead Billions of the Invasion; seeing a good documentary about it can move me to tears, just like a child. I'm generally pissed off at the entirely sorry existential state of affairs of the universe, the human condition, rampant injustice and unpunished crimes and unrewarded goodness, and the way my mouth feels when I get up in the morning before I brush my teeth. We're so goddam advanced, you'd think we'd have done something about that by now, wouldn't you? Get on it; see what you can do. Humanity will bless you. "But by and large," and here I paused for effect, employing some of the body language the CC had been at such pains to demonstrate and which it would be pointless to describe, since my body was still lying on the operating table, "by and large, I find life sweet. Not as sweet as it might be. Not sweet all the time. Not as sweet as this." And I imagined myself making a sweeping gesture with my arm to include the improbably lush, conveniently provisioned, stormless, mildew/disease/fungus-free Eden the CC had created for me. But I didn't make the gesture. It didn't matter; I was sure the CC got it anyway. "I'm not happy in my job. I don't have anyone that I love. I find my life to be frequently boring. But is that any reason to kill myself? I went ninety-nine years feeling much the same way, and I didn't cut my throat. And the things I've just described would probably be true for a large portion of humanity. I keep living for the same reasons I think so many of us do. I'm curious about what happens next. What will tomorrow hold? Even if it's much like yesterday, it's still worth finding out. My pleasures may not be as many or as joyous as I'd wish them to be in a perfect world, but I accept that, and it makes the times I do feel happy all the more treasured. Again, just to be sure you understand me . . . I like life. Not all the time and not completely, but enough to want to live it. And there's a third reason, too. I'm afraid to die. I don't want to die. I suspect that nothing comes after life, and that's too foreign a concept for me to accept. I don't want to experience it. I don't want to go away, to cease. I'm important to me. Who would there be to make unkind, snide comments to myself about everything in life if I wasn't around to tackle the job? Who would appreciate my internal jokes? "Do you understand what I'm saying? Am I getting through? I don't want to die, I want to live! You tell me I've tried to kill myself four times. I have no choice but to believe you . . . hell, I know I believe you. I'm remembering the attempts, parts of them. But I don't remember why. And that's what I want you to tell me. Why?" "You act as if your self-destructive impulses are my fault." I thought about that. "Well, why not? If you're going to start acting like a God, maybe you should shoulder some of God's responsibilities." "That's silly, and you know it. The answer to your question is simply that I don't know; it's what I'm trying to find out. You might have asked a more pertinent question, though." "You're going to ask it anyway, so go ahead." "Why should I care?" When I said nothing, he went on. "Though you're sometimes a lot of laughs, there are people funnier than you. You write a good story, sometimes, though it's been a while since you did it frequently--" "Don't tell me you read that stuff?" "I can't avoid it, since it's prepared in a part of my memory. You can't imagine the amount of information I process each second. There is very little of public discourse that does not pass through me sooner or later. Only things that happen in private residences are closed off to my eyes and ears." "And not even those, always." He looked uncomfortable again, but waved it away. "I admitted it, didn't I? At any rate, I love you, Hildy, but I have to tell you I love all Lunarians, more or less equally; it's in my programming. My purpose in life, if we can speak of such a lofty thing, is to keep all the people comfortable, safe, and happy." "And alive?" "So far as I am permitted. But suicide is a civil right. If you elect to kill yourself, I'm expressly forbidden to interfere, much as I might miss you." "But you did. And you're about to tell me the reason." "Yes. It's simpler than you might imagine, in one way. Over the last century there has been a slow and steady increase in the suicide rate in Luna. I'll give you the data later, if you want to study