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.These sites made no real sense to him: he guessed that whatever they were in the cyberverse was beyond the conceptualisation of the human mind; his consciousness processed what he saw and interpreted it in symbols of what it understood, much as an animal might view the human world.And then he found a site that did make sense to him, and more: it was a site he knew he would come back to, given the opportunity.It was simply a long, low, white-walled room, containing a table and perhaps twenty men and women seated around it.Lew Kramer was present, listening to a grey-haired man talk about productivity and development targets.He had happened upon the Mantoni VR conferencing centre.He listened in for an hour.They seemed to be worried about a group calling itself the Methuselah Project, though who these people were and what threat they represented to the Mantoni organisation, Barney was unsure.The people around the table were discussing the means by which they might find out more about the Project.He was about to leave when the grey-haired man turned to Lew Kramer.‘And how’s the e-identity download progressing, Lew?’‘The NCI and the donor somaform are ready and waiting, sir.We’ll be initiating the download procedure this afternoon.’‘No snags? Everything going down smooth?’‘Everything’s AOK, sir.’‘Very good.Keep me informed.’Barney would have smiled to himself, had he had the means to do so.He wondered if, once back out in the real world, Lew would allow him the use of a jellytank.The opportunity to eavesdrop on such conferences was too good to miss.Now he stood on the wet sand and stared out to sea, waiting for the download procedure to begin.He wondered if the transition would be instantaneous: one second he would be standing here in paradise, and the next inhabiting the NCI in the head of an animated corpse.He wondered how long the rehabilitation might take, if he would have to suffer weeks or months of physical pain as he learned to control the donor body.He wished the bastards would just leave him alone to roam the cyberverse.But what choice did he have in the matter? He was, after all, their property now.‘Barney, good to see you again!’Lew Kramer had materialised five metres up the beach, waving.‘Lew, when’s the great switcheroo scheduled to take place?’‘That’s why I’m here, Barney.We’re initiating the procedure in about fifteen minutes.I thought I’d better come and give you advance warning.Thought you might want to say goodbye.’ He gestured towards the villa.‘Thanks,’ he said.But no thanks, he thought.He looked up the beach, avoiding eye contact with Kramer.‘You know, in a way I’ll be sorry to leave this place.I’ll be able to come back, won’t I?’Lew nodded.‘You’ll have your own tank, Barney.I’ll see to that.’Barney looked at the exec.‘How much freedom will I have, Lew? I mean, will I be allowed out without a chaperone?’Lew shrugged uneasily.‘I don’t know quite how we stand on that one, Barney.But I can assure you that you’ll be well looked after.You’ll want for nothing.’‘But I’ll still be a prisoner, right? After all, I’m the property of the Mantoni organisation now, aren’t I?’Lew eyed him.‘Look at it this way, Barney.If we hadn’t copied you back then, you wouldn’t be here.You’d be dead—’‘Correction, Lew,’ Barney interrupted.‘I wouldn’t be dead.The real Barney Kluger is the poor schmuck who’s dead.I’m just his copy, remember?’‘The fact remains - thanks to the Mantoni organisation, you exist to experience all this.’Barney shook his head.He tried to look into himself and determine how he felt about that.Would he rather not exist, or did he gain something from the experience of being - what could he call it? - of being e-live?He felt nothing.He could enjoy nothing.They had robbed him of his emotions.or rather they had made an emotionless copy of his original, which had felt emotion.He neither wanted to die nor to live.He would exist, recording what he experienced, until he ceased to exist.He felt no fear of the end, merely occasional intellectual curiosity as to what might come before it.Perhaps that was what gave him the impetus to look ahead, a curiosity about what was happening to him.‘So how will it be, Lew? The transition? What can I expect?’‘Quick and painless, as all the best surgeons say.’ Lew smiled.‘We’ll actually be putting you into a quiescent state until the period of transfer is completed.’Barney smiled.He liked that.Quiescent state.‘So I’ll suddenly wake up in my new flesh suit? I can’t wait.’Lew smiled, unsure.‘Right.Okay, so I’ll leave you to it, Barney.It’ll be about ten minutes from now.’‘See you then, Lew,’ Barney said, as the exec touched the quit decal on the back of his hand and dematerialised in an instant.For what felt like a long time Barney sat on the beach and stared at the crushed sapphire effect of the breaking waves, waiting for the commencement of his new life.Then, the bright scene of the sunlit beach was ripped away from him.He experienced a sudden sensation of falling through darkness, of existing through a timeless duration, which he recalled from the time when the technicians had originally copied him.He opened his eyes.He was lying in bed.He felt his body, much as he had been aware of his virtual body what seemed like seconds earlier.There was no pain, no discomfort even.He blinked, staring up at a white-painted ceiling.In fact, he had no way of distinguishing this, his real somatic existence in the real world, from his e-existence in virtual reality.He looked around him.He was in what looked like a small hospital room, though surrounded by banks of computers and casually dressed techs.Lew Kramer stood at the end of the bed, smiling at him - identical to the Lew who had paid him courtesy calls in paradise.He attempted to sit up, and to his surprise managed to do so with no ill-effect.He nodded to Lew.‘You boys certainly know how to do a good job.’He swung his legs from the bed, and then for the first time noticed his new body.He looked down on well-muscled legs, tanned forearms.He seemed to be younger than the original, real Barney Kluger - younger even than he had been in virtual reality.This body seemed to be about thirty-five, leaner and fitter than his original.He turned his right hand, clenched it into a fist.He felt muscles and sinews working, stretching.He looked at Lew.‘I thought I’d be hospitalised for weeks before I could control this thing.’Lew smiled.‘We’ve had the body slaved to a functioning program in the NCI for months, Barney.Today it was only a matter of downloading you into the NCI.’ He looked around at the techs in the room.‘And that seems to have been achieved successfully.Well done.’Barney reached up, touched something trailing from the back of his head.A hank of leads and wires fell down his back like dreadlocks.He traced them to a cold arrangement of metal spars implanted in his skull.The NCI, evidently.The leads trailed across the bed and connected him to the com-system.A dozen techs monitored the screens and read-outs.‘How long have I been out, Lew?’ he asked
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