SEEKER

SIXTEEN

Time is a river of events, and its current is strong. No sooner does a thing appear in its flow than it is swept away, and another takes its place, until that too is carried from sight.

- Marcus Aurelius,

Meditations I was at Shara’s office next morning to explain what we wanted. The mission reports showed the stars visited by the Wescotts on their various flights. Thanks to the Falcon AI record, we now knew, for each mission, the order in which those visits had occurred. “Alex thinks you might be able to determine whether that sequence coincides with the original proposal.”

“But the proposals have been discarded,” said Shara. “We already went over this.”

“I know,” I said. “But hang on. Before the quantum drive was developed, a Survey ship always computed the shortest total route for a given mission.”

I saw the perplexed look give way to a smile. “Oh,” she said.

“And we know that Wescott was interested in G-type stars near the end of their hydrogen-burning cycle.”

“Okay.”

“We’re pretty sure they found something in one of the systems and deleted that star from the report. They went somewhere else and substituted that for the one that had been in the original proposal. If we can establish which star was deleted-”

“-You’ll know where the Seeker is.”

“Can we do it?”

“Without having the proposal in our hands-”

“Yes.”

“Sure.” Her eyes focused elsewhere. A flock of colbees floated past, riding the wind.

Her AI broke in to inform her of an incoming call.

“Not now,” she said to it. Then: “Chase, let me see what you have.”

I passed the disk over. She put it in the reader and darkened the room. “Can we assume it probably happened during the final mission?”

“That’s a good place to start.”

She directed the AI to bring up a projection of the search area for the 1391-92 flight.

The office vanished, and we were adrift among the stars. “I’ve blanked everything outside the subject area,” the AI said. “There are thirteen hundred eleven stars in the field.” Most were yellow G-types. One, near the bookcase at the far wall, brightened.

“That’s Taio 4776, where they made their first visit.” A line grew out of it and connected to a second star, a half meter away. “Icehouse 27651.” It angled off to a third, near the desk lamp. “Koestler 2294.” And up to a star near the overhead. From there it skimmed along the sofa, touching two more, and turned sharply to cross the room. In the end we were looking at a glowing zigzag. “Distance across the field is thirty-two point four light-years. Total distance covered by the mission is eighty-nine point seven light-years. Ten stars visited.”

“Mark.” Shara was addressing the AI. “Keep this same field. I want you to show us which stars are near the end of their hydrogen-burning cycle. Say, stars in which helium burning would begin during the next half million years. Blank everything else.”

“I will require a moment, Shara.”

“Take your time.”

“Shara,” I said, “wouldn’t someone have had to visit these systems earlier for Adam to know which suns were at the end of the cycle?”

“Not at all. Spectrographic analysis would provide everything he’d need to plan the flight.”

“Ready, ” said Mark.

“Okay.” The stars were beginning to wink out. “Let’s see what we have.”

We were left with about thirty target stars, including the ten visited by the Wescotts.

The track of the Falcon was bright and clear.

“Store the pattern,” she said.

It winked off.

“Okay, Mark. Now I want you to plan a flight to the same ten stars, using minimal total travel time. Start from the same star the Falcon mission used. Taio Whatever.

When you have it, put it up.”

Taio 4776 grew bright, and the line came out of it again, moved to Icehouse, then to the star near the lamp. When it had finished all ten, the zigzag pattern floated in front of us. “Looks like the same one,” I said.

“Let’s find out. Mark, shrink the pattern and let’s see the first one again. Overlay them.”

He moved the patterns until they were side by side. Then he merged them.

Identical.

“Try the previous mission,” I said.

We found it in the 1386-87 flight.

The patterns were almost identical. Again, the mission had visited ten planetary systems. But this time, it had not used the most-fuel-efficient route. The deviation came at the sixth star.

Tinicum 2502.

It wasn’t a major change, but it was enough to tell us something was wrong.

We sat looking at it. Had they remained consistent to the pattern, they would not have gone to Tinicum.

“Okay,” I said. “Which star should they have visited? Which one fits with the rest of the pattern?”

Shara put the question to the AI. “Assume,” she said, “that after Tinicum 2502 they returned to the original track.”

“Here,” said Mark, brightening a nearby star.

Tinicum 2116.

“Brilliant, Shara,” I said.

She smiled. “I have my moments.”

I took her to lunch. It seemed the least I could do. We went to the Hillside, got a table by a window, ordered drinks, and sat back to talk about lost interstellars.

“Tinicum’s planetary system will probably have a diameter of about eight billion klicks,” she said. “But the sun’s gravitational influence will reach out several times that far. If the Seeker ’s orbiting one of the planets, you should have no trouble finding it.”

“But if it’s in solar orbit-”

“-You’re going to want to pack a few meals.”

Yeah. That was the next order of business. It would take the Belle-Marie, which had only basic navigation equipment to conduct the search, a long time. Maybe years.

“Can Survey help?”

“I can let you have a piece of hardware, a telescope, that should move things along nicely.”

“Shara,” I said, “you’re a warm, wonderful human being.”

“Right. What do I get in return?”

“I’ll pay for lunch.”

“You’re already paying for lunch.”

“Oh.” I thought about it. “You want to come along? Be there when we find it?”

She made a face as if I’d just offered a plate of chopped squid. “I don’t think so. I know it’s historically big stuff, but I’m just not an enthusiast. Not enough to spend that much time on shipboard. You’ll probably be out there a month or two.”

The food came. Sandwiches and drinks. There was a guy at a window table trying to catch Shara’s eye. She seemed not to have noticed. “When you find it,” she said, “you publicly share credit with Survey-”

“Done.”

“-And agree to give us access to the discovery. Which is to say you and your boss don’t strip the ship before we get there.”

“We’ll want to take some stuff. Just a bit.”

“Keep it modest. Can you do that?”

“Of course.”

She looked at me. “I mean it, Chase.”

“I know. It won’t be a problem,” I said.

“Okay.” She tried her drink, but her mind was elsewhere. “The truth about Survey,” she said after a hesitation, “what we don’t admit publicly, is that our prime interest is finding another civilization. That’s not official, of course. Officially, we want to inventory what’s out there. Each system goes into the catalog. Physical details about suns and worlds. Characteristics and arrangements of the planets in each system. Any odd features, and so on.

“But the people in the ships know that most of the information they bring back goes into File and Forget. I mean, who really cares about the surface temperature of one more gas giant?”

“So you’re telling me-?”

“-Inspection of gas giants is generally done at long range and tends to be hit-and-run.

Ditto, worlds too close in, or too far out. The ships are required to survey everything in the system, but we generally will not go in close. You know that. You used to work for us. That means, if the Seeker is orbiting a planet, the planet would most likely be in the biozone. So you want to start there.”

“We don’t even know for sure it’s in the system.”

“That’s what makes it a challenge.” She took the first bite out of her sandwich. “Good stuff,” she said. “I love this place.”

“Tell me about the telescope.”

“Okay, we’ll need to coordinate getting it for you.” She spotted the flirt and looked bored. “When are you leaving?”

When I got back to the office, I reported the conversation to Alex, who pumped a fist in the air. “I believe we’re in business,” he said.

I also told him about Windy’s call.

“Ollie Bolton.” He made a face. “Why am I not surprised?”

“I don’t think there’s much we can do. Short of physical assault.”

“I don’t, either.”

“You don’t seem all that annoyed.”

“It’s part of the business,” he said. “We got outsmarted.”

“It’s not part of the business. It’s bribery.”

“Let’s not worry about it for the moment, Chase. We have bigger things to think about.”

The Belle-Marie didn’t have a mount for the telescope, so there was a delay of several days while a cradle was prepared and installed on the hull.

While that was going forward, Alex tried to check on Josh Corbin, the man who’d visited Delia and questioned her about the Seeker. But we got no useful information beyond what we already knew: He was an occasional consultant for Bolton.

Meanwhile a package arrived for me at the office. It carried a greeting card: Chase, I’ve never forgotten you. Letting you get away was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.

I’ll call this evening. Jerry.

There had been a Jerry Unterkefler in my life a few years back, but he hadn’t struck me as the passionate type.

Last year, during the Polaris business, when several attempts were made on our lives, we bumped up to class-A security coverage. I was about to open the package when it paid off. Jacob told me to put it down, gently, warn Alex, and for both of us to get out of the house.

We stood on the lawn an hour later while police carried the box off. “Clearance nanos,” Fenn told us. “They’d have turned the house into a park with three stone benches in about four minutes’ time.” He looked at me. “ You’d have been one of the benches.”

That was unsettling.

“Who’d want you guys dead?” he asked.

We had no idea who would go so far as to try to kill us. We spent an hour with him, answering questions, trying to zero in on suspects. We told him about the Seeker, and about Josh Corbin. And about Ollie Bolton.

“You think Bolton’s behind this?”

Alex said he didn’t know. I’m no fan of Bolton’s, but I couldn’t believe he’d try to kill anyone. “How would you get your hands on these things?” I asked. “On the nanos?”

“We’re looking into it. They’re designed for industrial use. Not hard to get.

Unfortunately.”

That night they located Jerry Unterkefler and hauled him downtown for an interview.

Actually, it was good to see him again. But I knew he wasn’t behind it.

Fenn called to warn us to be careful, take no chances, and not to hesitate to let him know if we felt threatened.

Truth was, we already felt threatened, and we were glad another flight on the BelleMarie was coming up.

Two guys from Tech Support attached the telescope, which they called a Martin, after Chris Martin, who is believed to be the first to use this specific type. Back in ancient times. They connected it to the ship’s AI, ran a couple of tests, and told us we were all set.

This time, of course, Alex was coming. We logged in for a morning departure, but couldn’t get rooms at either of the Skydeck hotels the night before, so we were forced to sleep on board. We had dinner at Karl’s, a sedate Dellacondan restaurant. It’s Alex’s favorite at Skydeck. Whenever we’re there, he tries to schedule time to eat at Karl’s. Afterward, he returned to the ship, while I went looking for a party. I found one, and didn’t get back to the Belle-Marie until we were within a couple hours of launch. Not that it mattered. Once we were away from the station, we’d need nine hours to build up a charge, so I’d have plenty of time to sleep. Alex was up when I got there, and he looked at me disapprovingly. But he didn’t say anything.

I’d given Belle the target information before we’d gone to dinner. Belle ’s maximum range on a single jump was just under a thousand light-years. Tinicum 2116, our destination, was sixteen hundred. So we’d have to stop and recharge. The entire voyage, from departure at Skydeck until our arrival in the vicinity of the target system, would take just under nineteen hours. As opposed to the six weeks the Falcon would have needed.

I showered and changed and was back in my seat when the fifteen-minute readysignal came in from ops. The magnetic clamps took hold and moved us into the queue.

There was a passenger ship in front of us, capacity about thirty. People on vacation, maybe. I watched it launch. Then it was our turn.

Alex was in the right-hand seat. He’d been unusually quiet, and as we moved forward during those last seconds before departure, his eyes were on me. “You sure you’re awake?” he asked.

On the way out to our jump point, we ran an action sim and played some chess. I’m not really competitive with him. That’s probably good, because he takes the game seriously. We also enjoyed the theatrical release of the musical Second Time Around.

By late afternoon, ship’s time, the quantum drive was fully charged. So we made the first jump. It’s actually a bit easier on the system not to go maximum range. In this case, with a target sixteen hundred light-years out, I just divided it in half.

We came out in the middle of nowhere, of course, in the deeps between the stars.

I started to recharge and told Alex we’d be ready to go at about 0200 hours. Not the best timing in the world.

I suppose if we’d thought we would be able to make the second jump and immediately home in on the Seeker, we’d have been up and ready to go. But it was going to be a long process and we knew it. So we decided to push the jump back, get a decent night’s sleep, and bump forward to Tinicum in the morning.

Alex settled in after dinner to watch a panel of experts argue politics. (We’d brought a few chips with us to supplement the ship’s library.) I entertained myself with the VR for a while, one of those interplanetary travel experiences where you sit in your chair and sail through the rings of a gas giant while a voice-over tells you how they formed and why they look the way they do. I descended into a nova, which was somehow less unsettling than dropping into the atmosphere of Neptune. The narrator thought it a gorgeous world. That told me he’d never been there. Actually, I hadn’t either, but I’ve seen places like it, and when you look at them, up close, believe me, you’re not thinking esthetics.

I read for an hour and fell asleep about midnight, after telling Belle not to wake me.

“When we’ve finished recharging,” I told her, “I don’t need to know about it.”

“Okay, Chase,” she said. She’d appeared beside me looking about twenty years old, demure, attractive, and sporting a pair of wings.

“Going somewhere?” I asked.

She smiled. “I always thought people look more exotic with flyware.”

I didn’t know how to answer that. “Don’t call me,” I said, “unless there’s a problem.”

But it didn’t do any good. When a recharge is complete, it produces a slight modification in the sound of the engines, and I’m constitutionally unable to sleep through it.

We made the second jump, as planned, as soon as we were both up and awake. Lights flashed, then went green. My insides churned a bit. They do that sometimes during the transition phase. We had a sun this time, and Belle identified it as Tinicum 2116.

This was the system the Falcon should have visited but, if you believed their report, had not.

“We are three point one AU’s out from the central luminary,” said Belle. “Half that distance from the biozone.”

“Okay. Let’s start the long-range scan. We need to see what the planetary system looks like.”

“Adjusting course,” Belle said. “Inbound.”

“And let’s put the Martin to work. See if anything out there looks like a derelict.”

The technology for the Martin was simple enough. It used a three-meter telescope to survey squares of sky ten degrees on a side. It did one square every minute in ultraviolet through mid infrared, and recorded the results. Thus the entire sky was imaged in six hours, at which point the process started again.

That allowed us to build a catalog of all moving objects, planets, moons, asteroids, you name it. The object we were looking for would have a reflective hull. Which meant a high albedo. If it was really out there, we expected to be able to pinpoint it within a few days.

I invited Alex to punch the button to activate the system, but he declined. “You’ve done all the brute work in this operation so far, Chase,” he said. “You do it.”

So I did. Lamps flashed, and Belle showed up wearing khakis and a safari hat.

“Search is under way,” she said.

I tied the Martin into the navigational display so we could watch. Alex stayed awhile, got bored, went back to the common room.

During the next few hours, our long-range scan spotted a gas giant ten AUs out from the sun, and another at fourteen. That was it for the day. Alex was visibly disappointed, but I reminded him there’s a lot of space in a solar system and you can’t expect to find everything right away.

I spent most of that first day on the bridge, watching the sun grow as we drew closer.

Alex drifted between his quarters and the common room, mostly leafing through inventories of antiquities available on the market. After dinner, he joined me up front, as if that would prompt Belle to a greater sense of urgency.

“Belle,” he said, “can’t we see anything yet?”

“It’s too soon, Alex.”

“How much time do we need to spot a planet?”

“Maybe another day or so.”

He looked at me. “I don’t suppose we’ve found anything with the Martin?”

“No,” I said. “When we do, you’ll be first to know.”

“I can’t believe it takes the Survey ships this long to figure out what’s in a planetary system.”

“We’re not really equipped to do a planetary search,” I said. “Our gear is designed to find small targets that reflect a lot of light. Derelicts or docking stations or whatever.

Long-range scan is okay, but we would have been better off with something more specialized.”

“Why didn’t you get something more specialized for this part of the work? I mean, we have the Martin to hunt for the Seeker. Why not get something that finds worlds?”

“I don’t know,” I said, trying to keep the edge out of my voice. “I was thinking about the derelict, and I guess I never gave much consideration to trying to map a solar system.”

“Well,” Alex said, “no harm done, I guess. Whatever’s out here, we’ll find.” He looked dispirited, and it seemed to be more than simply having to wait around.

“You all right?” I asked.

“I’m fine.” He looked away from me.

“Something’s bothering you.”

“No,” he said. “Not really.”

He’d expected we were going to ride in and, within the first few minutes, spot a classK, a world with liquid water and gravity levels that people would find comfortable.

When it didn’t happen, he began to suspect it wasn’t going to be there.

We were not really looking for an ancient wreck. He wanted Margolia.

“You don’t find these things right away, Alex,” I said. “Have a little patience.”

He sighed. “Chances are, if there were a class-K world in the biozone, we’d have seen it by now, right?”

I couldn’t lie to him. “Probably. But let’s just relax.”

He shrugged. “I’m always relaxed,” he said. “They don’t make them any more relaxed than I am.”

On the fourth day insystem, Belle reported another hit. “It’s a terrestrial,” she said.

“We didn’t see it earlier because it was on the other side of the sun.”

“Where’s it located?” asked Alex.

“In the biozone.”

Bingo. He jumped out of his chair and squeezed my arm. “Let’s hope.” He peered out the viewport. “Is it visible?”

Belle pointed out a dim star.

“Let’s go take a look.”

Belle acknowledged, and we changed course. We’d need another ten hours or so to recharge, after which we could jump in close.

“It has an atmosphere,” she said. “Equatorial diameter thirteen thousand kilometers.

Distance from the sun one hundred forty-two million.”

“Beautiful,” said Alex. “It’s another Rimway.”

“No evidence of a satellite.”

“What about radio transmissions?” he asked. “Are we picking up anything?”

“Negative radio,” said Belle. “But it’s quite far.”

Nothing was going to dim his mood. “It’s asking too much to expect them to be alive after all this time.”

I agreed with that. “Don’t expect a miracle,” I said. I was getting a bad feeling.

“I am able to detect the presence of oceans.”

“Good!” Alex leaned forward like a racing hound.

“I have a question,” I said.

“Fire away.”

“If that’s really Margolia, why didn’t the Wescotts say something? They were here what, in 1386? Maybe ’87? The proposals would have been destroyed by 1390 at the latest. But as late as 1395 they were still keeping quiet.”

“There would have been some suspicions,” he said.

“So what? They’d have to take the chance and come forward at some point.”

He shook his head. “Maybe they were just giving it more time.”

“Alex,” I said, “don’t get your hopes up.”

It wasn’t like him to get carried away like that. But the potential was so enormous, he simply couldn’t contain himself. And I’m not talking about money. Beneath the hardbitten profit-and-loss attitude, Alex was a romantic. And this was the ultimate romantic possibility.

We were still feeling the glow when, a few hours later, Belle said, quietly, “Looks like bad news.”

A pall fell over the bridge. “What is it, Belle?” I asked.

“The world is not suitable for settlement. Probably not even for human life.”

Alex made a sound deep in his throat. “I thought you said it was in the biozone, Belle?” he said.

“It’s moving away from the sun.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Alex.

“It’s in a highly elliptical orbit. I can’t give you the exact numbers yet, but I estimate it goes out as far as four hundred million kilometers.”

“That would make for a cold winter,” I said.

“And it approaches to within forty million. There’s a possible error of ten percent, but at those ranges it wouldn’t matter.”

“I guess not,” said Alex.

“When it reaches perihelion, the planet’s equatorial regions will get fourteen times more sunlight per square centimeter than Rimway does.”

“What happens to the oceans when it gets well out in its orbit?”

“Not enough data yet.”

The world was wrapped in white cumulus. The oceans covered more than half the globe. And the landmasses were green.

“Axial inclination,” said Belle, “ten degrees.”

She confirmed that there was no moon.

“It must boil over at forty million klicks,” said Alex.

“As it approaches perihelion, Alex, it accelerates. It would be moving very swiftly during the period when it is receiving maximum radiation.”

“Bat out of hell,” Alex said.

“Oh, yes. Most decidedly. When it is farthest away, it moves much more slowly. This world spends most of its time in deep winter.”

“But wouldn’t the oceans dry up and disappear, Belle?” he asked. “With this kind of orbit?”

“I don’t have relevant data,” she said. “I can tell you, however, that their presence provides some protection from the heat during the summer.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“When the world passes close to the sun, there’s substantial evaporation. Sea level may drop by thirty meters during the process. The vapor fills the skies with what you’re looking at now: optically opaque thunderstorm clouds, which would block much of the incoming radiation.”

The sensors were able to penetrate the thick atmosphere, and we got pictures. River valleys. Vast gorges. And snowcapped mountains.

“I suspect the oceans are losing water,” I said. “A few million years of this, and they’ll probably be gone.”

“There appear to be large life-forms in the water,” said Belle.

“Don’t they freeze?” asked Alex. “What kind of year does it have?”

“It is approximately twenty-one and a half standard months in length. For nine months, the temperatures are actually tolerable. Even comfortable. During the coldest six months, the oceans will freeze down somewhat. To what depth I have no way of determining. Possibly as much as a hundred meters. That would insulate them against excessive heat loss.”

“And provide a way for sea life to survive.”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell what kind of life it is?”

“No. I can discern movement, but I have no details yet.”

There was no sign of habitation. No indication anyone had ever set foot on the world.

The land was covered with vegetation. Jungles, it looked like. We saw no large land animals. No animals of any size, in fact.

We slipped into low orbit, and Alex stared down at the world. From that altitude, it appeared warm and pleasant, an idyllic place, ideal for settlement.

There were a few scattered patches of desert. Otherwise, everywhere we looked on land, we saw only jungle.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “This thing regularly moves within stone-throwing distance of the sun. How does all this stuff survive? Why isn’t it a desert? Why isn’t it just charred rock?”

“The periodic proximity to the sun provides a hot, humid climate. Perfect for jungles.

And as I said, the clouds give it a reasonably effective heat shield.”

Alex had other things on his mind. “Belle, do you see any evidence of construction anywhere? Buildings? Roads? A harbor facility, maybe? Anything like that?”

“Negative. It will take a while to scan the entire planet, of course.”

“Of course.”

“At the moment, temperature in the midlatitudes,” she said, “ranges from twentythree to about fifty degrees Celsius.”

“A bit warm,” said Alex.

“The atmosphere is nitrogen-oxygen-argon. Breathable. Perhaps a trifle oxygen rich.

Air pressure at ground level is probably in the range of a thousand millibars.”

“Like home.”

“I see no reason why not.”

Alex looked at the jungle. “What do you think, Chase?”

“I can’t imagine anyone would want to settle here.”

Belle blinked on. In her elderly librarian/maternal figure persona. Lined face, white hair, reassuring smile. “I’m getting volcanic activity in the southern hemisphere.”

I needed somebody to talk to, so I called up Harry Williams. He appeared in the righthand seat, smiled easily, and said hello. He was a big man, or at least the avatar was big. He looked around the bridge as if he owned it.

“This is a hell of a ship you have,” he said. “I wish we’d had a few of these.”

A white jacket with a high collar contrasted sharply with his dark skin. He was dressed casually, a man who was getting ready to go for a stroll in the park. There was an intensity about this guy that manifested itself in his eyes and the set of his jaw.

Don’t get in his way.

“Where are we?”

“Tinicum 2116.”

“Where?”

No way he could recognize the designation. The catalog system had been changed any number of times. I pointed him to the viewport. “We thought maybe that was Margolia.”

“I don’t know,” he said.

I showed him some of the close-ups. Jungle. And more jungle.

“No,” he said. “That’s not it. Margolia was a summer world. Green and wet with high skies and deep forests and broad oceans.”

“I wish you knew where it was located.”

“So do I.”

“Would you recognize it if you saw it?”

“No. I’ve no data on it.” There was a pained reflection in his eyes. “Why do you think it’s in this system?”

I tried to explain, but he got impatient. Told me to let it go. “Doesn’t matter. That’s not it.” He fell silent for a time. Then: “Margolia, ” he said. “Is that what you call it?

Our world?”

“Yes. I guess we do.”

“We could have done worse. He was a great man. Have you read him?”

“No. Not really.”

“He was a twenty-fifth-century philosopher. And a British prime minister.”

“So what was there about him that appealed to you?”

“He measured everything against reason. No intricate abstractions. No sacred texts.

Accept nothing on authority. As they said in an earlier age, ‘Show me the evidence.’ ”

“That sounds sensible.”

“ ‘Never lose sight of reality. The individual human life span is brief and, in the long view, inconsequential,’ he said. ‘We are children one day and signing out the next.

Therefore, in the brief moment we are allotted, live reasonably, be compassionate, and when your hour comes, accept it without histrionics. Never forget that your handful of hours is a supreme gift. Use them wisely, do not fritter them away, and remember that your life is not an entitlement.

“ ‘Most of all, live free. Free of social and political stricture. If there is such a thing as a soul, these surely are its components.’ ”

“Would Margolis have gone with you?”

“I’ve spoken with his avatar. It was one of the first questions I asked.”

“What was his answer?”

“He said no. Most assuredly not.”

“Did he say why?”

A smile deepened the lines around the corners of his mouth. “He called the plan grandiose.”

“Well,” I said, “there you are.”

The moment stretched into one of those silences where you could hear the murmur of electronics. Finally, I asked whether he had gone on the flight alone. “Or did you have a family?”

“My wife Samantha. And two boys. Harry Jr., and Thomas. Tommy.”

“How long had you been married?” I asked.

“Eight years at the time we left.” His eyes became intense. “I don’t even know what they looked like.”

“There were no pictures?”

“No. Whoever did the reconstruction of my persona either didn’t have a representation, or didn’t think it was important.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. Alex was forever reminding me that avatars have no more feelings than the chair I was sitting in. It’s all an illusion. Just programing.