just below the skin and those shiny little tabs that looked like pictures of transistors in institutional advertising.

He knelt beside the body and poked into the bleeding, smoldering wreckage.

Yes, it seemed they had to automate and modify the bodies somewhat in resurrection. They couldn't chemically revive the old corpse like pouring water on a wilted geranium.

Or—

Did they use the old bodies at all? What were all those acid baths for if the bodies were used? Didn't the resurrectionists just destroy the old corpses and make androids, synthetic creatures, to take their place?

But it didn't matter. Not a bit.

She had thought she was his wife, sharing her viewpoint down to the finest detail, and he had thought she was his wife.

It was what you thought was real that made it so, not the other way around.

"I've killed my wife!" Linton called, rising from his knees, stretching his hands out to something.

The pain stung him to sleep—a pain in his neck like a needle that left a hole big enough for a camel to pass through and big enough for him to follow the camel in his turn.

He opened his eyes to the doctor's spotless, well-ordered office. The doctor looked down at him consolingly. "You'll have to go back, Mr. Linton. But they'll cure you. You'll be cured of ever thinking your wife was brought back to life and that you killed her all over again."

"Do you really think so, Doctor?" Linton asked hopefully.

 Prev. P 8/8