“You have imitation meat on Mars, don’t you?” Kite asked.

“It isn’t so authentic,” I said. “It doesn’t smell like this.”

“Blame the drive for history,” Shrug said. “Nothing immoral about imitation. It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t waste, it teaches us what New York used to be like…”

“I don’t think Casseia’s enjoying her lox,” Kite said, smiling sympathetically. My heart sank in hopeless attraction, simply looking at his face.

“Maybe it’s turned,” I said.

“It does taste rank,” Kite said. “Maybe it’s the fake preservatives. Things don’t turn any more.”

“Right,” I said, embarrassed at my inability to enjoy the treat. “Tailored bacteria. Eat only what they’re meant to.”

“The Earth,” Shrug said portentously, “is a vast zoo.”

They fell to discussing whether “zoo” was the right word. They settled on “garden.”

“Do you have many murders on Mars?” Shrug asked.

“A few. Not a lot,” I answered.

“Shrug’s fascinated by violent crime,” Orianna said.

“I’d love to defend a genuine murderer. They’re so rare now… Ten murders in New York last year.”

“Among fifty million citizens,” Kite said, shaking his head. “That’s what therapy has done to us. Maybe we don’t care enough to kill any more.”

Orianna made a tight-lipped blat.

“No, really,” Kite said. “Shrug says he’d love to defend a murder case. A real one. But he’ll probably never see one. A murder. It chills the blood just to say the word.”

“So what’s passion like on Mars?” Shrug asked. “Murderous?”

I laughed. “The last murder I heard about, a wife killed her husband on an isolated station. Their family — their Binding Multiple — had suffered pernicious exhaustion — ”

“Love the words!” Shrug said.

“Of funds. They were left alone at the station without a status inquiry for a year. The BM was fined, but couldn’t pay its fine. It’s pretty unusual,” I concluded. ‘’We therapy disturbed people, too.“

“Ah, but is murder a disturbance!” Kite asked, straining to be provocative.

“You’d think so if you were the victim,” I said.

“Too much health, too much vigor — too few dark corners,” Kite said sadly. “What is there left to write about? Our best LitVids and sims use untherapied characters. But how do we write about our real lives, what we know? I’d like to make sims, but sanity is really limiting.”

“He’s opening his soul to you,” Orianna said. “He doesn’t tell people that unless he likes them.”

“There’s plenty of story in conflicts between healthy folks,” I suggested. “Political disagreements. Planning decisions.”

Kite shook his head sadly. “Hardly takes us to the meaning of existence. Hardly stretches us to the breaking point. You want to live that kind of life?”

I didn’t know how to answer. “That’s what I’m doing now,” I finally replied.

“Up your scale,” Shrug advised Kite. “She’s right. The clash of organizations, governments. Still possible. GEWA against GSHA. Might make a bestseller.”

“They’re even taking that away from us,” Kite said. “No wars, nothing but economic frictions behind closed doors. Nothing to make the heart pound.”

“Kite is a Romantic,” Orianna said.

That seemed to genuinely irritate him. “Not at all,” he said. “The Romantics wanted to destroy themselves.”

“Spoken like a true child of our time,” Shrug said. “Kite pushes healthy as they come. Passion — life to the limit — but no risk, please.”

Kite grinned. “I never met a passion I didn’t like,” he said. “I just don’t want to be owned by one.”

An actor portraying a waiter took my dish away.

The Omphalos stood on five hectares at the southern end of Manhattan , near Battery Park. It looked immensely strong, a cube surrounded by smaller cubes, all gleaming white with gold trim.

At the gate, on the very edge of the compound, Orianna presented her palm and answered a few questions posed by a blank-faced security arbeiter. A human guard met us, took us into an adjoining room, sat behind a desk, and asked our reasons for taking the tour.

“I’d like to talk in private with a resident,” Orianna said. I looked at her in surprise; this had not been her stated purpose earlier.

“I’ll need your true names and affiliations even to apply for a clearance,” he said.

“That leaves us out,” Shrug said. Kite nodded agreement. “We’ll wait outside.” Orianna said we wouldn’t be more than an hour or two. An arbeiter escorted them to the front gate.

The guard quickly checked our public ratings for security violations and mental status. “You’re Martian,” he said, glancing at me. “Not using a Vernor.”

I admitted that I was.

“Terries trying to impress you?” the guard asked, glancing pointedly at Orianna.

“Are you Martian?” I asked him.

“No. I’d like to go there some day.” He referred to his slate and nodded approval. “I have your CV and pictures from a hundred different LitVid sources… You’re a celebrity. Everything clears. Welcome to Omphalos Six, your first glimpse of Heaven. Please stay with your assigned guide.”

“What are your connections, besides your father owning shares?” I asked Orianna as an arbeiter took us through an underground tunnel to the main cube.

“I have a reservation for when I turn two centuries,” Orianna said. “I don’t know if I’ll use it. I might just die instead…” She grinned at me. “Easy to say now. I might go Eloi and end up on Mars or in the Belt… Who knows what things will be like then?“

“Who are we going to talk to?” I asked.

“A friend.” She held her finger to her lips. “The Eye is watching.”

“What’s that?”

“The Omphalos thinker. Very high-level. Not at all like Alice , believe me — the best Earth can produce.”

I quelled my impulse to defend Alice . No doubt Orianna was right.

The interior of the building was equally impressive. An atrium rose twenty meters above a short walkway. The walkway ended on an elevator shaft that rose to the apex of the atrium, and sank below us through a glittering black pool. Nano stone walls, floors isolated from the walls by several dozen centimeters, sprung-shocked and field-loaded to withstand external stress — and damage repair stations in each corner. Conservative and solid.

“Above us are the apartments,” Orianna said. “About ten thousand occupants. One hundred apartments are full-size, for those folks who want to log in and out every few weeks. The uncommitted, you might say. The rest are cubicles for warm sleep.”

“They spend their time dreaming?”

“Custom sims and remote sensing. Omphalos has androids and arbeiters all over the Earth with human-resolution senses. Omphalos can access any of them at any time, and there you are — they are. The occupants can be anywhere they want. Some of the arbeiters can project full images of the occupant, fake you’re talking to someone in person. If you just want to retire and relax, Omphalos employs the very finest sim designers. Overdrive arts and lit fantasies.”

From my reading, and from Orianna’s description on Tuamotu, I knew that most of Omphalos’s residents stayed in long-term warm sleep, their bodies bathed in medical nano. Technically speaking, they were not Eloi — they could not walk around, occupy a new citizen’s space or employment opportunities — but their projected life spans were unknown. Omphalos served as refuge for the very wealthy and very powerful who did not want to be voided to the Belt or Mars, yet wanted to live longer. Medical treatment that cleansed and purified and exercised and toned and kept body and mind healthy and fit — medical treatment unending — slipped through a legal loophole.

This Omphalos, and the forty-two structures like it around the world, were not beloved by the general population. But they had woven their legal protections deep into the Earth’s governments.

“Why wouldn’t you want to come here? The guard called it Heaven.”