This was how people thought nowadays. It wasn’t only cops, soldiers, and firemen who did everything through telepresence. It had been obvious for a long time that certain activities, such as going to the grocery store for a quart of milk, weren’t worth the effort of leaving the house, parking the car, and waiting in the checkout lane. Buying things online, and having them delivered by drones, was better. Added to this, now that death had been disrupted, was the factor of what had come to be known as “brain safety.” Even in the most prosperous and stable communities, going to the grocery store brought with it a small risk that one might die in a traffic accident en route, and if the accident were of the wrong sort, it might lead to destruction of the brain, barring the victim’s entry into the afterlife. Better to remain indoors and do as much as possible through telepresence. The time saved could perhaps be spent in virtual wanderings around the fascinating geography of the world that Dodge had brought into being, that Pluto had perfected, and that El had taken over. The living stayed home, haunting the world of the dead like ghosts.

During the weeks after her fall, Zula was a little creeped out by just how little it really mattered that she could not walk. It seemed like that ought to be a much bigger deal. But this only went to show how stuck she was in outmoded ways of thinking, born as she was in the days when crutches, wheelchairs, and other such medieval improvisations had still been a thing. Remnants of those days—dilapidated wheelchair ramps and cracked yellow curb cuts—still peppered the streetscape. Having access to a basically infinite amount of money, Zula could get the best assistance robots in the world—contraptions that could pick her up and carry her to the toilet, or hold her up in the shower, whenever she wanted. They could even dress and undress her. Millions must have been spent on the bra-strap-hooking algorithm. Their code libraries knew how to do and undo every type of necklace ever devised by the jewelry industry, how to flush every sort of toilet, and how to fiddle with the knobs on even the most poorly conceived and wretchedly executed shower stall plumbing. Stairs were nothing. While carrying things much heavier than Zula, robots could climb stairs faster than humans could sprint on a level track.