He did not, of course, have time to reply to any of his mail, but no one who knew him even slightly would be expecting a rapid response. His meal was whole diet manna, as uncomplicated as possible, but he followed it with hot black coffee, as authentic in taste and texture as his dispensary could contrive.

While he drank the coffee he reflected that although his lifestyle might have appeared frugal to anyone who had cause to consult the record stored by the mechanical eyes which had him under observation, they would have been wrong.

“Only those with extensive experience of the unreal,” he murmured, “can properly appreciate the real.” It was one of his favorite aphorisms; he could no longer remember from whom he had stolen it.

“That’s not what most people say,” the beautiful woman had observed when he had quoted the saw on the occasion of their first meeting. “Some reckon that the near perfection of virtual reality can only devalue actual experience, by proving that it is—at least in principle, and nowadays very nearly in practice—reducible to a mere string of ones and zeroes.” “That’s absurd,” Paul had told her. “Even if one were to ignore the hardware whose structures are animated by the digital programs, it’s as grossly misleading to think of the programs merely as a string of ones and zeroes as it is to think of living organisms merely as a string of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts threaded on a DNA strand. In any case, how can it be a devaluation to know that everything, in the ultimate analysis, can be reduced to the pure and absolute beauty of abstract information?” The beautiful woman had been as deeply impressed by his eloquence as she was by his originality. There had been a spark between them from the very first moment: a spark that was emotional as well as intellectual. The fact that he was a hundred and ninety-four years old while she could hardly be more than twenty—twenty-five at the most—was no barrier to empathy. On the contrary: the difference between them actually increased the quality of their relationship by marking out complementary roles. She had so much to learn, and he so much to teach. She had such bright eyes, such fabulous hair… and he had such a wealth of experience, such a wonderful elasticity of mind.

“The professions of information technology have generated many derisory nicknames over the centuries,” Paul had explained to his new lover when she wondered aloud whether she ought to follow a career trajectory in Webwork, “but those of us who have a true vocation learn to bear them all with pride. I’ve never been ashamed to be a chipmonk, or a bytebinder, or a cyberspider. I’ve devoted my life to the expansion of the Web and its capabilities. It is, after all, the mind of the race. In my youth I found it tattered and torn, ripped apart by the Crash, and in my middle years I had to fight with all my might to preserve its scaffolding from the vandalistic activities of the new barbarians—but in the end, I saw the triumph of the New Order and felt free to move on to further fields, searching for the road that would lead to the ultimate upload. That’s the way to true immortality, after all. No matter what the so-called New Human Race is capable of, it can only be emortal; if we’re to look beyond the very possibility of death, it’s to the Web that we must look in the first instance, because it’s the Web that will ultimately be fused with the Universal Machine, the architect of the omega point. It’s a pity that so many of the people whose souls are inextricably caught in the embrace of the Web feel compelled to belittle it with their talk, even while they enjoy the wonderful privileges of its caresses, but it seems to be human nature to take the best things in life for granted.” “Rumor has it,” she had told him while inspecting his cradle and his collection of uncommon suitskins, “that the most realistic VEs of all don’t require a suitskin. The illusion is produced entirely by internal nanotech while the dreamer lies unconscious in a kind of susan. It’s said that the suite was never put on the market because the illusions were too convincing for some of its users.” “Actually, the system in question was made commercially available for a while,” Paul had been able to tell her, “but it was withdrawn after the first half-dozen shock-induced fatalities. An overreaction, in my opinion, but typical of the way the World Government works, always turning panic into legislation. All that was required was a slight tightening of the IT safety net, but the vidveg never see that, and democracy gives the vidveg the right of campaign. I’ve used the relevant IT myself, but work on the software stopped when the scandal forced the product off the market, and the existing VEs aren’t nearly as sophisticated as the best of those designed to run on equipment like mine. If the MegaMall ever puts it back on the market I’d certainly consider adapting my own work to that kind of system, but it would involve some heavy and exceedingly laborious work.

I’m probably too old for that kind of project.” “I doubt that,” she had said, with a brilliant smile. “You’ve worn better than any other two-hundred-year-old man I know.” He hadn’t even bothered to point out that he was still six years short of his second century.

By the time the door chime sounded, Paul was entirely ready to receive his visitor. He felt perfectly at home in his flesh, and perfectly at home in his apartment “Why thank you,” he said as she offered him a bouquet of golden flowers. “I think I have a vase, somewhere. Are they Wildes or Czastkas?” “Wildes,” she told him. “His latest release.” “Of course—I should have known. The style’s unmistakable. Czastkas always look so lackluster, so very natural— although I suppose we’ll have to give up calling things natural, now that the adjective’s been turned into a noun by the new emortals.” Paul did have a vase, although it wasn’t easy to find. He was not a man who liked clutter, and he kept the great majority of his possessions neatly and efficiently stored away. “My memory isn’t what it used to be,” he explained while he searched for it.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You can set them in the wall if you have the right kind of plumbing.” “I don’t,” he replied, still searching. “In my day, picture windows and virtual murals were all the rage. Nobody wanted creepers and daisy chains covering their interior walls—even daisy chains designed by Oscar Wilde or Walter Czastka. I was at university with Czastka, you know. He was so intense in those days—so full of plans and schemes. A little bit crazy, but only in a good way. He was an explorer uienj like me. Sometimes I wonder where all his daring went. I haven’t spoken to him for decades, but he’d become exceedingly dull even then.” “It really doesn’t matter about the vase,” the woman told him anxiously.

“It’s here somewhere,” he said. “I really ought to remember where I keep it. I might have thirty or forty years in me yet, if only I can keep my mind alive and alert. My brain might be a thing of thread and patches, but as long as I can keep the forces of fossilization at bay I can keep the neural pathways intact.

As long as I can look after my mind…” Paul realized that he was rambling. He shut up, wondering whether he could find an opportunity to ask her whether or not she was a Natural, engineered for such longevity that she might not ever need “rejuvenation.” If so, her mind might have a thousand years to grow and learn, to refine itself by the selection of forgetfulness. He wondered whether it would really be indelicate simply to ask her—but he decided against it, for the moment. She was authentically young; that was what mattered. What would become of her in two or five hundred years was surely none of his concern.

“The apartment sloth will know where it is,” he told her while he continued to move hither and yon uncertainly, “but if I ask it, I’ll be giving in to erosion.