"What did she say?"

"She said these were technicalities. She'd find me again and drag me to the altar like she had before. And she would have, you know. She could be a bear about these things."

Jesse propped herself up on her elbow and looked at me. "I'm sorry she's not here with you, John."

I smiled. "It's all right," I said. "I just miss my wife from time to time, that's all."

"I understand," Jesse said. "I miss my husband, too."

I glanced over to her. "I thought he left you for a younger woman and then got food poisoning."

"He did and he did, and he deserved to vomit his guts out," Jesse said. "I don't miss the man, really. But I miss having a husband. It's nice to have someone you know you're supposed to be with. It's nice to be married."

"It's nice to be married," I agreed.

Jesse snuggled up to me and draped an arm over my chest. "Of course, this is nice, too. It's been a while since I've done this."

"Lie on a floor?"

It was her turn to bop me. "No. Well, yes, actually. But more specifically, lie around after sex. Or have sex, for that matter. You don't want to know how long it's been since I've had it."

"Sure I do."

"Bastard. Eight years."

"No wonder you jumped me the minute you saw me," I said.

"You got that right," Jesse said. "You happened to be very conveniently located."

"Location is everything, that's what my mother always told me."

"You had a strange mother," Jesse said. "Yo, bitch, what time is it?"

"What?" I said.

"I'm talking to the voice in my head," she said.

"Nice name you have for it," I said.

"What did you name yours?"

"Asshole."

Jesse nodded. "Sounds about right. Well, the bitch tells me it's just after 1600. We have two hours until dinner. You know what that means?"

"I don't know. I think four times is my limit, even when I'm young and superimproved."

"Calm yourself. It means we have just enough time for a nap."

"Should I grab a blanket?"

"Don't be silly. Just because I had sex on the carpet doesn't mean I want to sleep on it. You've got an extra bunk. I'm going to use it."

"So I'm going to have to nap alone?"

"I'll make it up to you," Jesse said. "Remind me when I wake up."

I did. She did.

"God damn it," Thomas said as he sat down at the table, carrying a tray so piled with food that it was a miracle he could even lift it. "Aren't we all just too good-looking for words."

He was right. The Old Farts had cleaned up amazingly well. Thomas and Harry and Alan could all have been male models; of the four of us, I was definitely the ugly duckling, and I looked—well, I looked good. As for the women, Jesse was stunning, Susan was even more so, and Maggie frankly looked like a goddess. It actually hurt to look at her.

It hurt to look at all of us. In that good, dizzying sort of way. We all spent a few minutes just staring at each other. And it wasn't just us. As I scanned through the room, I couldn't find a single ugly human in it. It was pleasingly disturbing.

"It's impossible," Harry said, suddenly, to me. I looked over at him. "I looked around, too," he said. "There's no way in hell all the people in this room all looked as good as they do now when they were originally this age."

"Speak for yourself, Harry," Thomas said. "If anything, I do believe I am a shade less attractive than in my salad days."

"You're the same color as a salad these days," Harry said. "And even if we excuse Doubtful Thomas over here—"

"I'm going to cry all the way to a mirror," Thomas said.

"—it's well nigh impossible that everyone is in the same basket. I guarantee you I did not look this good when I was twenty. I was fat. I had massive acne. I was already balding."

"Stop it," Susan said. "I'm getting aroused."

"And I'm trying to eat," said Thomas.

"I can laugh about it now, because I look like this," Harry said, running his hand down his body, as if to present this year's model. "But the new me has very little to do with the old me, I'll tell you that."

"You sound as if it bothers you," Alan said.

"It does, a little," Harry admitted. "I mean, I'll take it. But when someone gives me a gift horse, I look it in the mouth. Why are we so good-looking?"

"Good genes," Alan said.

"Sure," Harry said. "But whose? Ours? Or something that they spliced out of a lab somewhere?"

"We're just all in excellent shape now," Jesse said. "I was telling John that this body is in far better shape than my real one ever was."

Maggie suddenly spoke up. "I say that, too," she said. "I say 'my real body' when I mean 'my old body.' It's as if this body isn't real to me yet."

"It's real enough, sister," Susan said. "You still have to pee with it. I know."

"This from the woman who criticized me for oversharing," Thomas said.

"My point, because I did have one," Jesse said, "is that while they were toning up our bodies, they took some time to tone up the rest of us as well."

"Agreed," Harry said. "But that's not telling us why they did it."

"It's so we bond," Maggie said.

Everyone stared. "Well, look who's coming out of her shell."

"Bite me, Susan." Maggie said. Susan grinned. "Look, it's basic human psychology that we're inclined to like people who we find attractive. Moreover, everyone in this room, even us, are basically strangers to each other, and have few if any ties to bring us together in a short time. Making us all look good to each other is a way to promote bonding, or will be, once we start training."

"I don't see how it's going to help the army if we're all too busy ogling each other to fight," Thomas said.

"It's not about that," Maggie said. "Sexual attraction is just a side issue here. It's a matter of quickly instilling trust and devotion. People instinctively trust and want to help people they find attractive, regardless of sexual desire. It's why newscasters are always attractive. It's why attractive people don't have to work as hard in school."

"But we're all attractive now," I said. "In the land of the incredibly attractive, the merely good-looking could be in trouble."

"And even now, some of us look better than others," Thomas said. "Every time I look at Maggie, I feel like the oxygen is being sucked from the room. No offense, Maggie."

"None taken," Maggie said. "The baseline here isn't each other as we are now, anyway. It's how we all appeared before. In the short term, that's reflexively the baseline we'll use, and a short-term advantage is all they'd be looking for anyway."

"So you're saying that you don't feel oxygen-deprived when you look at me," Susan said to Thomas.

"It's not meant to be an insult," Thomas said.

"I'll remember that when I'm strangling you," Susan said. "Speaking of oxygen-deprived."

"Stop flirting, you two," Alan said, and turned his attention to Maggie. "I think you're right about the attraction thing, but I think you're forgetting the one person we're supposed to be the most attracted to: ourselves. For better or worse, these bodies we're in are still alien to us. I mean, between the fact that I'm green and I've got a computer named 'Dipshit' in my head—" He stopped, and looked at us all. "What did you all name your BrainPals?"

"Asshole," I said.

"Bitch," Jesse said.

"Dickwad," said Thomas.

"Fuckhead," said Harry.

"Satan," said Maggie.

"Sweetie," said Susan. "Apparently, I'm the only one who likes my BrainPal."

"More like you were the only one who wasn't disturbed by having a voice suddenly appear in your skull," Alan said. "But this is my point. Suddenly becoming young and having massive physical and mechanical changes takes a toll on one's psyche. Even if we're glad to be young again—and I know I am—we're still going to be alienated from our new selves. Making us look good to ourselves is one way to help us get 'settled in.'"