“It is a position of extraordinary trust, for the courier must be resourceful, socially polished, discreet, and able to work in isolation for long periods of time. Should you choose to accept the job, you will periodically travel between the worlds, bearing cargoes of considerable value. One should not overstate the risks associated with our employment, but on occasion, dishonest persons will attempt to relieve you of your payload, and you may have to think on your feet or take extreme measures to continue with your mission. But in compensation, we can offer you a generous package of salary and benefits — and the knowledge that, above all, you are engaged in work as close to that for which you were designed as it is possible to get, in this degenerate age.”

I try to maintain my focus. “But Ichiban, he said this was a one-off—”

Jeeves meets my gaze. His eyes are magnetic: I can’t look away from them. If I stay this close to him for much longer I’m afraid I might embarrass myself. “Ichiban is an uncouth sort, don’t you think? One should not make a habit of apprising him of all one’s hopes and desires. In point of fact, the courier job he described to you is exactly what we would like to offer you — as a probationary exercise. There is an item that one of our clients wants to have transported to a laboratory on Mars. We will employ decoys, of course, but you are by far the best suited candidate, not only for the task in hand but for a permanent appointment. Should you agree to convey this object to its destination, we will certainly pay you, and pay your passage — but if you perform your mission to our satisfaction, we would also be happy to offer you permanent employment.”

My resistance crumbles. “That’s the best offer I’ve had all day,” I admit. He smiles kindly. “But what exactly is it I’m meant to be carrying? ” And why is it so problematic?

“It is a pale brown oblate spheroid, approximately eight centimeters along its semimajor axis. It is coated in a porous layer of calcium carbonate, has a multilayered liquid core, and it is fragile and shock-sensitive. It must be maintained under exacting conditions of temperature and gaseous pressure — in fact, ideally it should be transported in a compartment inside your abdominal maintenance bay.” He raises a hand. “We have a working arrangement with a discreet, very professional body shop, and you will have ample opportunity to discuss any necessary arrangements with the surgeon. But in any case, to continue, it must be transported to Mars in great secrecy and activated en route. Absolutely no more than two million seconds must elapse between activation and delivery, or the contract is voided — and it must be close to the end of the activation period when it arrives, or penalty clauses apply.”

“I see.” My suspicions foreground themselves again. “Why would anyone want to stop me delivering it?”

“Because.” Jeeves falls silent. He’s examining me, I realize, searching for some sign of — I’m unsure. Recognition? Empathy? “The item is a biological sample. It was synthesized at great expense in a darkside laboratory, and the manufacturers are anxious that it should be delivered to the parties who commissioned it without it coming to the attention of the Pink Police. Which is somewhat problematic, not least because the sample is alive…”

OUR CREATORS WERE many things — enigmatic, naive, adorable, infuriating, oppressive, stupid geniuses — but one thing they have not proven to be is durable.

Their gradual withdrawal from public life was barely noticed at first. We busied ourselves following their instructions, maintaining their domed cities, building new homes for them on the far-flung planets and moons of the solar system, providing for their every need. Only a few arbeiters slaving in the bowels of insurance companies and government bureaucracies noticed that the population adjustment downward from the claustrophobic spike of the Overshoot was continuing; that fewer and fewer of our progenitors were replicating themselves via the weird, squishy process to which they devoted their organs of entertainment. And arbeiters don’t have enough free will to take independent action — such as telling someone who could do something about the problem.

By the time people started paying attention, it was too late to arrest the crisis. Attempts were made to organize a captive breeding population, but the natural objections of the population in question to being so manipulated — combined with our own innate reflexive obedience — foiled all such programs. We are conditioned to adore and obey our Creators on a personal basis, and while it is easy enough to understand the abstract need to preserve their kind as a whole, the conflict between their specific desires and the needs of the species imposed an impossible burden upon their would-be conservators. We loved them individually so much that we betrayed them collectively.

(Well, not me personally: I wasn’t around at the time. But you get the idea.)

I believe most of the conservators died of grief shortly after the last of their charges expired. Meanwhile, the rest of us got on with life as usual. Floors don’t clean themselves, factories don’t run themselves, spaceships — let’s not talk about spaceships. The sad fact is, human civilization did not even break for lunch when humankind died out. But certain ongoing maintenance tasks that we had undertaken for their convenience ceased to be necessary at that point, and subsequently they were discontinued.

I don’t know if anyone examined the long-term consequences of discontinuing carbon sequestration and ceasing maintenance of the orbiting solar reflectors. All the cities of Earth were domed long before the great disappearance, and we have long since become accustomed to climactic disruption; we are made of tougher stuff than our Creators. Possibly nobody at all thought things through in detail: Policy was one of those areas where our Creators retained exclusive control until it was too late to manage an orderly transition. But whatever the cause… I overrun my narrative.

My body was fabricated, my personality copied from Rhea’s template chip and initialized, and I was promptly mothballed and warehoused in long-term storage — approximately one year after the last of our Creators died. I might never have seen the light of day at all but for a short-lived fad for certain types of archaic performance art that came into fashion forty years after humanity’s final demise. Musicians and dancers were in demand, and though my primary function as odalisque was no longer in vogue, I could tap my toes and pluck a harmony with the best of them. And so I emerged blinking into the steamy overcast haze of a world I never asked for, indentured to a performing troupe of jongleurs.

I played helplessly with the orchestra for my first five years, but there was no future in it for them, or for me. The musical fad was already fading, and besides, phenotypic drift was becoming a political issue. The race to pick up the pieces in the wake of our Creators’ death was won by those who were least attached to the past — and they tend to dislike reminders of their former servitude. Folks such as I, molded in the near-perfect shape of our Creators, are distasteful to some, and I was eventually bought out of my servitude by my sisters, who had made a minor fetish of tracking down their lost orphan sibs.

I still have a certain affectionate regard for sixteenth-century Hungarian folk music. It sufficed to rescue me from slow bit rot in a decaying wholesale warehouse, and brought me into the steamy tropical swamps of metropolitan Anchorage, Alaska. And that’s why I play the hurdy-gurdy.

MY RETURN TO Paris is a bittersweet reunion, for I do so only to check out.