“Bad day at the office?”

Mark looked up to see Liz smiling at him through the open window. He grinned ruefully back at his beautiful wife—another of his daily worries was that she wouldn’t be there for him when he got home.

“Is that what it looks like?”

She reached in and touched his hand. “I’ve seen happier-looking suicide cases.”

“Sorry I’m late, work screwed up.” He realized she was almost never home late from work. Was that due to experience? He hated reminding himself of her sophistication, the kind that could only be acquired over decades, the years he hadn’t lived yet.

“Come on,” she said, and opened the Summer’s door. “You need a drink. And Marty’s here.”

“Yeah, I see that.” He gestured at the Caddy.

She frowned in concern as he climbed out of the car. “You all right, baby?”

“I think the interface at the office is giving me a headache again. That or the whole goddamn OCtattoo is crashing.”

“Mark, you have to complain. You can’t come home every day with a headache that gives you cold sweats. If the system’s wrong, they have to repair it.”

“Okay. Right. I’ll talk to the supervisor.” She didn’t understand how it was at work right now. If he kicked up a fuss he’d probably wind up getting shitlisted. Don’t be so damn paranoid, he told himself. But it was hard.

His father was on the patio decking that ran along the side of the pool, sitting on a sunlounger. Marty Vernon was a hundred eighty, and eight months out of his latest rejuvenation. Physically, he looked like Mark’s younger brother. Not yet old enough to develop the thick neck and creased cheeks that was the Vernon family trait.

“Mark! Hi, son, you look like shit, come and have a beer.” Marty pulled a bottle out of the cooler sheath. His voice was high and excitable.

“Dad!” Barry, aged five, was waving frantically from the pool. “Dad, I can reach the bottom now. Watch!” He sucked in a huge breath, and ducked his head under the surface, paddling desperately. Mark waved back at his son’s splashing feet. Liz dumped little Sandy into his arms. A wet smile beamed out from the thick folds of fabric. He smiled back, and kissed her. Tiny hands wiggled about happily. “Has she had her bottle?”

“Twenty minutes ago,” Liz assured him.

“Oh.” He rather liked that chore. They’d collected Sandy from the clinic seven months ago, and that was after the stress-hell that was raising hyperactive Barry. The kids had the best genes they could afford, with Liz paying considerably more of the modification mortgage than he did. It always surprised him how much of a comfort the kids were, and how much stability they brought to his life. Liz just said: “I told you so,” every time he mentioned it. Having a family was a huge strain on both their finances, especially renting the womb tank for nine months. But although she’d gone through the whole traditional wedding ceremony with him, Liz flatly refused to have a pregnancy. “I did enough of that last time around,” she insisted. So the womb tank it was.

Mark sat on the spare sunlounger, with Sandy cradled carefully in one arm. He took the beer bottle in his free hand. Barry broke surface with a victorious yell and a lot of splashing.

“Well done, kid,” Marty shouted. “Here, go fetch this.” He chucked a dollar coin into the pool. Barry whooped, and dived down after it.

“I don’t want him worn out,” Liz admonished. “He’ll get all tempered up when he needs to go to bed.”

“Give the kid a break,” Marty complained. “He’s having a ball. And your pool’s only—what—a meter deep. That’s not going to tire him out.”

“One point five.” Mark gulped down some of the beer. It was an imported brand he didn’t recognize. He sighed and settled back into the sunlounger. That was when he noticed the girl sitting in the chair behind Marty. She was wearing a bikini top and some tight shorts, showing off a trim, tanned teenage body. “Hi, I’m Amanda.”

“Oh, hi.” Mark couldn’t help the glance he gave his father.

“My new girl,” Marty crowed loudly. His arm went around her, and she giggled.

“Great,” Mark said. “So how long have you two, er…”

“Ten days,” Marty said gleefully. “But mostly ten nights.”

Amanda giggled again.

Mark’s smile was fixed. He knew what was coming now.

“We met up in the Silent World down at New Frisco Bay. Turns out we had a lot of things in common, and… hey!”

One thing in common,Mark corrected silently and sullenly. He couldn’t believe his father had done this. Silent World was a Commonwealth-wide franchise. It was the club that all the newly rejuvenated visited. Frequently, in the first few months after leaving the clinic. They went for just one thing: sex. It didn’t matter with whom, just someone equally horny from their beautiful, youthful new body’s deluge of hormones. There was only one rule, whatever happened inside, stayed inside. You could fuck your worst enemy, or your ex, or your ex’s younger sibling or parent, or the most glamorous unisphere celeb—it didn’t matter, because it didn’t count back outside the doors, it didn’t get mentioned, it simply never happened. And Marty had gone and brought her to a family evening.

David turned up ten minutes later, Liz’s forty-five-year-old son, an accountant working in AEC’s export credit division. Then there was Kyle, Mark’s older brother (by a hundred fifteen years), and Antonio, his boyfriend; Joanne, one of Liz’s mother’s great-granddaughters. Finally, Carys Panther arrived, Marty’s older sister, driving up in a Merc coupe and wearing a thousand-dollar “casual” dress from Jacvins. Mark was glad she had found the time to come; Carys was the one multi-lifer apart from Liz who always made him feel comfortable. She was also the most glamorous person he knew. When she did work, Carys designed dramas that were occasionally made into TSIs by various media conglomerates. They tended to be pretty raunchy.

As Regulus fell toward the horizon, they ordered Barry out of the pool and fired up the barbecue grill. Carys accepted a glass of white wine from the maidbot and fussed over Barry, helping him dry himself. Barry responded with true puppy-love devotion, showing her his new collection of dead nipbugs; he really adored his aunt Carys.

Mark stood beside the barbecue, turning the burgers and sausages himself. The gardenbot had an attachment for it, but he never did trust an array’s judgment when it came to cooking.

“You should cut some of these damn eucalyptus trees back,” Marty told him, standing at his shoulder. “That solarbrick isn’t getting enough sun on it during the day, look. It should be a lot hotter than that.”

Mark looked down at the thick slab below the barbecue’s grill, which was glowing a weak cherry-pink. Little flames flared briefly as the meat dripped juices down through the grill. “Looks fine to me, and it’s hot enough.”

“It won’t last, I’ve got experience with these things.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Marty,” Kyle called out. “Sit down and leave the kid alone, for Christ’s sake.”

Every time his relatives came around the same thing happened. A lot of the time, Mark felt as if he were a child allowed to listen to adult conversation, laughing when the others did and not understanding why.

“Just trying to help,” Marty grumbled as he backed off.

“Next family evening is around at my place,” David announced. “I thought we could have it on the eighteenth, that’s when we play our next cup round.”

“I’m on for that,” Marty said. “You know I nearly had a trial once, when I was first-life eighteen. Newby City.”

“Wrong,” Carys said. “You are a trial, Marty, not you had a trial.”

Marty made a gesture, to which she laughingly covered Barry’s eyes.

“I can’t believe we’ve got this far,” Kyle said. “We only need, what? A win and a draw to go through to the second round.”

“We’ll get the win against Sterling, no problem,” David said. “But we’ll be struggling to get a draw against Teleba, they’re football mad.”