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Immediately, the doctor’s proxy hovered in the air a few feet away and said, “Good evening, Mr. Malley. Dr. Roth has retired for the day, but perhaps I can be of help.”

The proxy was a head-and-shoulder projection that faithfully reproduced the doctor’s good looks, her brown eyes and high cheekbones. But unlike the good doctor, the proxy wore makeup: eyeliner, mascara, and bright lipstick. This had always puzzled Ben, and he wondered what sly message it was supposed to convey. He said, “What is my wife doing home?”

“Against advisement, Mrs. Malley checked herself out of the clinic this morning.”

“Why wasn’t I informed?”

“But you were.”

“I was? Please excuse me a moment.” Ben froze the doctor’s proxy and said, “Daily duty, front and center.” His own proxy, the one he had cast upon arriving at the office that morning, appeared hovering next to Dr. Roth’s. Ben preferred a head shot only for his proxy, slightly larger than actual size to make it subtly imposing. “Why didn’t you inform me of Annie’s change of status?”

“Didn’t seem like an emergency,” said his proxy, “at least in the light of our contract talks.”

“Yah, yah, okay. Anything else?” said Ben.

“Naw, slow day. Appointments with Jackson, Wells, and the Columbine. It’s all on the calendar.”

“Fine, delete you.”

The projection ceased.

“Shall I have the doctor call you in the morning?” said the Roth proxy when Ben reanimated it. “Or perhaps you’d like me to summon her right now?”

“Is she at dinner?”

“At the moment, yes.”

“Naw, don’t bother her. Tomorrow will be soon enough. I suppose.”

After he dismissed the proxy, Ben poured himself another drink. “In the next ten seconds,” he told the house, “cast me a special duty proxy.” He sipped his scotch and thought about finding another clinic for Anne as soon as possible and one — for the love of god—that was a little more responsible about letting crazy people come and go as they pleased. There was a chime, and the new proxy appeared. “You know what I want?” Ben asked it. It nodded. “Good. Go.” The proxy vanished, leaving behind Ben’s sig in bright letters floating in the air and dissolving as they drifted to the floor.

Ben trudged up the narrow staircase to the second floor, stopping on each step to sip his drink and scowl at the musty old photographs and daguerreotypes in oval frames mounted on the wall. Anne’s progenitors. On the landing, the locked media room door yielded to his voice. Anne sat spreadlegged, naked, on pillows on the floor. “Oh, hi, honey,” she said. “You’re in time to watch.”

“Fan-tastic,” he said, and sat in his armchair, the only modern chair in the house. “What are we watching?” There was another Anne in the room, a sim of a young Anne standing on a dais wearing a graduate’s cap and gown and fidgeting with a bound diploma. This, no doubt, was a sim cast the day Anne graduated from Bryn Mawr summa cum laude. That was four years before he’d first met her. “Hi,” he said to the sim, “I’m Ben, your eventual spouse.”

“You know, I kinda figured that out,” the girl said, and smiled shyly, exactly as he remembered Anne smiling when Cathy first introduced them. The girl’s beauty was so fresh and familiar—and so totally absent in his own Anne — that Ben felt a pang of loss. He looked at his wife on the floor. Her red hair, once so fussy neat, was ragged, dull, dirty, and short. Her skin was yellowish and puffy, and there was a slight reddening around her eyes, like a raccoon mask. These were harmless side effects of the medication, or so Dr. Roth had assured him. Anne scratched ceaselessly at her arms, legs, and crotch, and, even from a distance, smelled of stale piss. Ben knew better than to mention her nakedness to her, for that would only exacerbate things and prolong the display. “So,” he repeated, “what are we watching?”

The girl sim said, “Housecleaning.” She appeared at once both triumphant and terrified, as any graduate might, and Ben would have traded the real Anne for her in