The Federation laboratory stood in contrast to the modern buildings that surrounded it, a low gray sprawl of utilitarian construction anchored among the shining façades of new office towers.

That was one thing he had in common with the place, he thought, making his way to the door at the front of the building. He was something of an anachronism himself, a walking monument to the values and aesthetics of a previous era. He had lived through that era, and not many people could say that anymore. In those days it had been easier to find places like this one, when they could still depend on a regular source of patients like himself. Now that the need for their services had dropped to virtually nothing, they had become a rarity. This one, on Fifth Jerusalem, was among the last that still received government funding--probably just enough to cover its operating expenses, judging by the condition of the waiting room, which looked as if it hadn't seen a renovation in decades. The lab was a time capsule, generically familiar in the way every other one like it had been.

He approached the front desk, where the receptionist, a woman in a plain-looking uniform with Federation government insignia, proceeded to ignore him from behind a bank of wavering holographic screens. The nearest screen displayed some database program that he could tell was at least ten years obsolete from the interface. When she didn't look up after a minute or two, he cleared his throat and changed his stance slightly, and the noise of shifting weights in his legs finally caught her attention.

She blinked at him through the flickering panes of data with mild annoyance, as if his arrival had distracted her from more important matters. "You have an appointment?" Before he could answer, she typed something into a keypad behind the desk and pulled up a file on one of the screens. "Ziggurat Industries Type 8, currently registered to the Kukai Foundation?"

"That's correct." There was no one else in the waiting room; quite possibly his appointment had been the only one scheduled for today.

"Just a moment." The receptionist turned away and spent the next several minutes in what must have been a long-running battle against the ancient database software. Ziggy began to feel awkward standing there and wondered if he should go and sit down on the other side of the room, but he figured it wouldn't be worth the trouble if she called him back right away, so he stayed where he was.

He would have welcomed the chance to sit down, to rest for even a moment, if he had thought it would make any difference. He was tired--not just with day-to-day exhaustion, although the work he did for the Kukai Foundation kept him busy lately. It was more than that, a fatigue that persisted after he slept at night, the chill of mortality creeping up inside him again. He supposed it was the same feeling everyone had eventually, if they lived long enough, but not everyone got to experience it more than once. He didn't consider it a privilege. Every time his life came close to ending, it had been prolonged by artificial means, the inevitable pushed back another decade or so. Until recently, he had hoped this time would be the last.

Because of his legal status as property of the Federation government, he had to comply with certain regulations to ensure that he remained in sound physical and mental condition, sufficient to carry out his assigned functions. In the past the laws had required him to undergo routine life extension along with his regular maintenance, but those laws had been deleted from the books several years ago, swept out in the same wave of reforms that had marked the end of the Life Recycling Act, and for the first time since then, he had the chance to decline the procedure.

He glanced back at the receptionist, her head bowed amid the cluster of screens. If he walked away now, she might not even notice he had gone. The thought of having that choice, of having any choice at all, was so unfamiliar to him it still came as a shock. He had spent the last hundred years following orders, and that was what he was used to. He did not question, he did not hesitate, and above all, he did not refuse: those were the conditions of his existence, and when he was brought back to life he had come to accept them even before he accepted the altered structure of his body. He had learned the rules before he relearned how to walk. He hadn't had a choice then, and it would take more than a change in the laws to convince him that he had one now.

But that wasn't the only reason why he was here, or so he told himself; it wasn't just force of habit or a stubborn sense of necessity or even what remained of his instinct for self-preservation. If it were up to him, he might have refused the operation this time, but he had more than just himself to consider now. That was the problem with having a choice: whatever he decided, he wouldn't be the only one affected.

"So you're definitely going through with it?" Juli had said a few months earlier, as they stood by the gate at the space port terminal on Second Miltia. MOMO waited a few steps behind, just out of earshot. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure. It's already been arranged through the Foundation. They'll be covering the expenses, so ...."

"I see. And is that what you want?"

At first he didn't understand what she was asking; it was not a question he often got invited to answer. He considered the safest possible response. "I want what's best for you and MOMO. If either of you should require my assistance at any time--"

"Oh, forget it. That's not what I asked you. Just think about it, all right? I'm sure you'll come up with something."

He nodded, not wanting to argue.

"Well then." Juli reached up, brushed her fingers lightly against the side of his face as if pushing aside an invisible curtain. Then she turned away abruptly, without saying goodbye. MOMO recognized this as a sign that they had finished their conversation, and she rushed back and embraced him one last time.

"I'm going to miss you," she said, her voice strained with the effort not to cry in front of him. "Will you come back to visit us sometimes?"

"As often as I can." He stepped back at arms' length and bent down to look her in the eyes, and it struck him that he had forgot, until now, what it felt like to miss someone--not in the distant, resigned way of longing for someone he knew he would never see again, but with the understanding that she would be just out of reach for a while, separated from him by a finite distance in space. He couldn't decide if this was better or worse.

A few minutes later he was boarding the Elsa for the return trip to the Foundation, and he watched as Second Miltia shrank to a cloudy hemisphere and then to a pinpoint lost among other stars before the iridescent fog of hyperspace closed around the ship.

During the next few months Juli had called several times to discuss the details of the operation, and when it turned out that the only facility that still offered life extension was on Fifth Jerusalem, she had scheduled the appointment for him and arranged with the Foundation for temporary leave from his assignment there. The news of his impending visit delighted MOMO, and whenever Juli called, MOMO begged for a chance to speak to him afterward. When she ran out of things to talk about, she wished him good night and let Juli have a word with him privately.

"MOMO seems to be doing well," he had said on one such occasion. "I'm glad."

"I am too. I was afraid she wouldn't like living here, but she keeps telling me how much she loves her new home." She laughed then, with a note of bitterness, as if she had said something ironic. "That's what she calls it--'home'. You know, I've lived here for years and I've never thought of it that way. It's just a place I go to sleep when I'm not working. It's strange, isn't it? When you're alone, you don't even notice how alone you are until you're not anymore. And then you wonder how you could have lived that way for so long without realizing it."

Because he couldn't think of an appropriate response, he said nothing.

"Sorry, you must have other things to do. I'm probably wasting your time." She looked up at him from the screen, a faint, frail smile on her lips. "I'll see you in a week, then?"

"Yes."

"Take care," she said, and the screen went blank.

A week later he had arrived here on his own, following Juli's directions to the maintenance lab. She had promised to meet him there in a few hours, after she left work; the operation, which required intricate and extensive nanosurgery to reverse the deterioration of his remaining organic parts, would take at least that long.

At the front desk, the receptionist glared back up at him, looking surprised and, if possible, more annoyed than before to find him still waiting there. "Go ahead inside. Room 017."

"Thank you," he said, but she had already started typing again.

∞

He awoke staring at a stained grey ceiling, with no memory of his surroundings or of the last several hours, though he could tell from his internal clock how much time had passed. His limbs, when he recovered awareness of them, felt rigid and heavy, but he managed to turn his head in the direction of the only other presence his sensors detected in the room.

She must have come here directly from the office; she sat in one of two chairs along the wall, still wearing her overcoat. In her lap she held a connection gear, and a small holographic screen hovered in front of her face, displaying an official-looking document. She had been reading with a frown of concentration scoring a deep line between her eyebrows, and she didn't notice he was awake until she glanced up from the screen a few minutes later.

"The operation went well, in case you were wondering," she said. The screen above the connection gear flickered as she put it aside. "You'll have to come back for a follow-up in a few weeks, but so far the results look good. About seventy percent of your organic tissue was successfully repaired." The words were as neutral and clinical as the equipment in this room, but she seemed embarrassed to say them, as if she had brought up something awkward and intimate. "Ah ... so how are you feeling?"

He lifted his right arm off the side of the bed, clenched and unclenched his fingers a few times. The joints felt stiff and numb, and invisible needles bristled in his arm when he moved. He closed his hand into a fist and let it fall back to his side. "... I'll be all right."

"I'm sure you will." She had watched with barely concealed amusement as he tried out his arm, and he could hear it in her voice when she spoke. "Would you like to come back with me now, or would you rather stay here for a while longer? They said the recovery time might vary, so you can rest for as long as you need to."

"What is your recommendation?"

Juli shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not you."

He stared up at the ceiling again, and after a moment attempted to raise himself from the maintenance bed, which had been set back to a nearly horizontal position. Despite the resistance in his organic parts, his synthetics appeared to be functioning normally, and he managed to stand without too much difficulty. "If you don't mind, I'd rather not stay here any longer than necessary."

"I understand." She laughed dryly and stood up. "I can't say I blame you. Well, let's get out of here."

On the way out, Juli signed some forms and arranged to have a copy of the bill sent to the Foundation, and then she took out her connection gear and called MOMO. "We're just leaving now."

"Great!" said MOMO. "I'll start getting dinner ready. Did it go okay?"

"Yes, I think so. He's awake now, and there weren't any problems with the surgery. You can ask him about it later."

A screen in one corner of the waiting area silently replayed footage of a Gnosis attack that had occurred a few days ago. The video sequence looped after a few minutes and then abruptly cut off, replaced by the image of a newscaster delivering a wordless commentary against a chart tracking the locations of previous attacks. Ziggy stood watching the broadcast until Juli came up behind him and touched his arm--startling him, although he didn't let it show.

"Ready to go?" she said. "I thought you didn't want to wait."

"Ah, right." The news channel had switched back to showing the attack footage, and he turned away from the screen. It seemed indecent to keep watching the same scene over and over again, like forcing those involved to relive their last moments, even though he knew their suffering was over.

They went out to Juli's car in silence, and when they had driven some distance from the lab she said, "It's depressing, isn't it?"

"Hmm?" He had been staring out the front window since the ride started, and now he looked over at her as if shaken out of a trance. The setting sun cast a coppery glow on her face and hands, reminding him of the first time they had spoken alone in the orbital tower, more than a year ago. Somehow it seemed longer after everything that had happened.

"The news. Just imagine having to argue about it all day under the pretense of getting something done." She sighed, narrowing her eyes against the sunset glare. "The Subcommittee's been in hysterics ever since the latest attacks started. We've turned the data inside-out looking for clues, and no one has the slightest idea what's stirred them up this time, let alone what to do about it."

"It sounds exhausting."

"An understatement," said Juli, and they were both quiet again as the highway streamed past the windows and a stain of red light soaked through the clouds around the sun. For some reason the color of the sky made him uncomfortable, reminded him of the dreams he'd been having lately. He closed his eyes, resisting the inclination to fall asleep, although he still felt dull from the sedatives they'd given him at the lab.

It was dark by the time they pulled up to the apartment complex. Juli stopped the car and got out and waited for him to do the same.

"Welcome home," she said, smiling ironically at her own joke.