“Thank God you didn’t have to do that,” Wilson said.

“Before we arrived, I thought I might ask Ambassador Abumwe if she’d like a drink,” Lowen said. “But I don’t really get the sense she’s the sort to appreciate a good buttering up.”

“I think you’ve accurately assessed the ambassador,” Wilson said.

“You, on the other hand,” Lowen said, pointing at Wilson.

“I am all about the buttering, Dr. Lowen,” Wilson assured her.

“Wonderful,” Lowen said. “First stop, the crawl space you folks laughingly call officers berths on this ship. Second stop, officers lounge. Hopefully, it is larger.”

*   *   *

The officers lounge was larger, but not by much.

“Does the Colonial Union have something against personal space?” Lowen asked, hoisting the Laphroaig onto the very small table. The officers lounge was empty, except for Lowen, Wilson and the Laphroaig.

“It’s an old ship,” Wilson explained while selecting a pair of cups from the lounge’s cupboard. “In the old days, people were smaller and appreciated a good snuggle.”

“I am suspicious of the veracity of your statement,” Lowen said.

“That’s probably wise,” Wilson said. He came over to the table and set down the cups. They made a clickas they connected with the table.

Lowen, puzzled, reached for one of the cups. “Magnetic,” she said, lifting the cup.

“Yes,” Wilson said. “The artificial gravity doesn’t frequently cut out, but when it does it’s nice not to have cups floating about randomly.”

“What about the stuff in the cups?” Lowen asked. “What happens to that?”

“It gets slurped frantically,” Wilson said, picking up his own cup and waggling it in front of Lowen. Lowen eyed Wilson sardonically, opened the Laphroaig, tipped in a finger and a half and gave herself an equal amount. “To artificial gravity,” she said, in a toast.

“To artificial gravity,” Wilson said.

They drank.

*   *   *

Drink two, some minutes later:

“So, is it easy?” Lowen said.

“Is what easy?” Wilson asked.

Lowen waved at Wilson’s body. “Being green.”

“I can’t believe you just went there,” Wilson said.

“I know,” Lowen said. “Jim Henson and several generations of his descendants are now rolling in their graves, many dozens of light-years away.”

“It isa funny joke,” Wilson said. “Or at least was, the first six hundred times I heard it.”

“It’s a serious question, though!” Lowen said. “I’m asking from a place of medical curiosity, you know. I want to know if all those so-called improvements they give you Colonial Defense Forces soldiers are actually all that.”

“Well, start with this,” Wilson said. “How old do I look to you?”

Lowen looked. “I don’t know, maybe twenty-two? Twenty-five, tops? You being green messes with my age sense. A lot younger than me, and I’m thirty-five. But you’re not younger than me, are you?”

“I’m ninety,” Wilson said.

“Get out,” Lowen said.

“More or less,” Wilson said. “You’re out here long enough and you eventually lose track unless you check. It’s because as long as you’re CDF, you don’t actually age.”

“How is that even possible?” Lowen said. “Entropy still works out here, right? Physics hasn’t totally broken down?”

Wilson extended an arm. “You’re engaging in the pathetic fallacy,” he said. “Just because I look like a human being doesn’t mean I am. This body has more genetic material that’s not strictly human than it does material that is human. And it heavily integrates machines as well. My blood is actually a bunch of nanobots in a fluid. I am and every other CDF soldier is a genetically-modified cyborg.”

“But you’re still you,right?” Lowen asked. “You’re still the same personyou were when you left Earth. Still the same consciousness.”

“That’s a question of some contention among us soldiers,” Wilson said, setting his arm back down. “When you transfer over to the new body, the machine that does the transfer makes it at least seem like for an instant you’re in two bodies at once. It feelslike you as a person make the transfer. But I think it’s equally possible that what happens is that memories are transferred over to a brain specially prepared for them, it wakes up, and there’s just enough cross talk between the two separate brains to give the illusionof a transfer before the old one shuts down.”

“In which case, you’re actually dead,” Lowen said. “The realyou. And this you is a fake.”

“Right.” Wilson took another sip of his drink. “Mind you, the CDF could show you graphs and charts that show that actual consciousness transfer happens. But I think this is one of those things you can’t reallymodel from the outside. I have to accept the possibility that I could be a fake Harry Wilson.”

“And this doesn’t bother you,” Lowen said.

“In a metaphysical sense, sure,” Wilson said. “But in a day-to-day sense, I don’t think about it much. On the inside, it sure feelslike I’ve been around for ninety years, and ultimately this version of me likes being alive. So.”

“Wow, this conversation went places I wasn’t expecting it to go,” Lowen said.

“If you think that’s weird, wait until I tell you that thanks to the mechanics of the skip drive, you’re in an entirely different universe and will never see your friends and family again,” Wilson said.

“Wait, what?” Lowen said.

Wilson motioned to the Laphroaig bottle. “Better pour yourself another drink,” he said.

*   *   *

Drink four, sometime later:

“You know what the Colonial Union’s problem is, don’t you?” Lowen asked.

“There’s just one problem?” Wilson responded.

“It’s arrogance!” Lowen said, ignoring Wilson’s question. “What sort of government decides that the smart thing to do, the prudent thing to do, the wisething to do, is to keep an entire planet in an arrested state of development, just to use it to farm colonists and soldiers?”

“If you’re expecting me to act as defense for the Colonial Union’s practices, it’s going to be a very short debate,” Wilson said.

“And not just any planet,” Lowen said, ignoring Wilson again. Wilson smiled; clearly Lowen was self-winding when she was tipsy. “But Earth! I mean, seriously, are you fucking kidding me? The cradle of human life in the universe, the place from which we all spring, our home planet, for crying out loud. And a couple hundred years ago some pricks on Phoenix thought, Hey, screw them. Honestly, what did you thinkwas going to happen when we found out how badly you’ve been messing with us? And for how long?”

“I reiterate my comment that if you’re expecting me to defend the Colonial Union, you’re going to be sorely disappointed,” Wilson said.

“But you’re one of them!” Lowen said. “You know how they think, at least, right? So what were they thinking?”

“I think they were thinking that they would never have to deal with the Earth finding out anything,” Wilson said. “And for the sake of accuracy, the Colonial Union diddo a very fine job of keeping the Earth in the dark for a couple of centuries. If it hadn’t tried to kill off a friend of mine, and his entire family, andhis colony, for the purposes of political expediency, they’d probably still be getting away with it.”

“Hold on,” Lowen said. “You know John Perry?”

“We left Earth on the same boat,” Wilson said. “We were part of the same group of friends. We called ourselves the Old Farts. There were seven of us then. There’s three of us now. Me, John and Jesse Gonzales.”

“Where is she?” Lowen asked.

“She’s on the colony of Erie,” Wilson said. “She and I were together for a while, but she eventually wanted to leave the CDF and I didn’t. She married a guy on Erie and has twin daughters now. She’s happy.”

“But all the rest are dead,” Lowen said.

“They told us when we joined that three-quarters of us would be dead in ten years,” Wilson said. He was lost in thought for a moment, then looked up at Lowen and smiled. “So strictly on a percentage basis, the Old Farts beat the odds.” He drank.