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By Root 1430 0

is all over,” Lowenthal said to the still-invisible Wilde, “you can write a book about it—and then we’ll see how many of the world’s busy citizens have the time and inclination to download it to their screens.” “Soon,” said Wilde, “all the world’s children will have the time—and I hope that they will also have the inclination. I suspect that their fascination with the artistry of death will be all the greater because death will be, for them, a matter of aesthetic choice. When everyone has the opportunity to extend life indefinitely, the determination to cling onto it for the sake of stubbornness alone will inevitably come to seem absurd. Some will choose to die; those who do not will feel obliged to make something of their lives. I hope, Michael, that you will take your place in the latter company.” By the time he had finished his speech, Wilde had slipped into the seat behind Lowenthal—the one which the man from the MegaMall had occupied the previous evening. Glancing back and forth from one to the other, Charlotte decided that although there was nothing to choose between them on the grounds of physical perfection, Wilde had emerged more rapidly from sleep to claim the fullest advantage of his brightness and beauty. The authentically young man who now sat beside her was still afflicted by the temporary stigmata of frustration and mental weariness.

“You seem to have slept well, Oscar,” Charlotte said.

“I usually do, my dear,” he said. “You’ll probably find, as you get older—especially at those times when you replenish your youth without losing the wisdom of maturity—that deep sleep will come more easily.” “We’ve all had the biofeedback training,” Lowenthal said dismissively. “We all know the drill.” Charlotte felt a sudden surge of anxiety about the appearance of her own face.

She altered the lateral viewport to full reflection and studied her lax features and bleary eyes with considerable alarm. The face she wore was not entirely the gift of nature; she had had all the conventional manipulations in infancy, but she had always refused to be excessively pernickety about matters of beauty, preferring to retain a hint of naturalness on the grounds that it gave her character and individuality. Oscar Wilde had all of that and phenomenal beauty, and he was a hundred and thirty-three years old. Somehow, it didn’t seem quite fair. She worked her facial muscles feverishly, recalling the elementary exercises that everyone learned at school and almost everyone neglected thereafter. Then she straightened her hair.

Oscar Wilde looked politely away as she did so, tutting over the condition of the fading green carnation which still protruded from the false collar of his suitskin.

As Charlotte took stock of the reward of her efforts she noticed the faint wrinkles which were just becoming apparent in the corners of her eyes. She knew that they could be removed easily enough by the most elementary tissue manipulation, and she would not have given them a second thought two days before, but now they served as a reminder of the biological clock that was ticking away inside her: the clock that would need to be reset when she was eighty or ninety years old, and again when she turned a hundred and fifty… and then would wind down forever, because her brain would be unable to renew itself a third time without wiping clean the mind within.

For Michael Lowenthal, she knew, it would be different. No one, least of all Lowenthal himself, knew as yet exactly how different it would be, but there was reason to believe that he might live for three or four hundred years without needing any kind of nanotech restructuring, and reason to hope that he might go on for a further half-millennium, and on and on… Barring accidents, suicide, and murder.

But who would be the suicides and murderers, in a world of beautiful ancients? Who would kill or choose to die, if they could live forever? “The mind is its own place,” Charlotte quoted silently, “and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” She passed a hand across her face, as if to wipe away