A person in a sort of well-tailored red bathrobe came into the room. He was tall and thin and pale, and his face was smiling shyly. His hair was blond and straight and came down nearly to his waist. Or maybe it was a she. But then the person spoke and the voice was male. “How are you nowadays?” The man was smiling at him more broadly now.

“I’m okay,” Arthur said. “But where am I? And who?” He held up his dark brown arm. “In this… body?”

The other man looked pleased. “It’s artful,” he said.

Arthur stared at him. “Artful?”

The man looked embarrassed. Then he said, “Artificial.”

“Artificial?”

“Your body,” the man said, with more confidence. “It is artificial now.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Arthur said. And then, “I liked the other one well enough.”

The man smiled sweetly. “Long dead,” he said. “And rotten.”

“Jesus Christ,” Arthur said. “Jesus Christ.”

***

He slept after that and the next day the long-haired man was there when he awoke. Arthur assumed that a day had passed because the man’s bathrobe was yellow this time. Arthur had a question ready. “Where did this body come from?”

The man smiled at him with encouragement. “Cleveland.”

He hadn’t been ready for that. He felt he might never be ready for whatever this childlike and epicene person might tell him. “Did you grow this body in Cleveland, or something?”

“Or something is correct. We made you first in Cleveland in bodily form before we grew you big in here. The mind was poured into you. Poured into your pretty and always body.” The man looked at him quizzically. “Bodies not made in Cleveland in your time?”

“In my time?”

“In your time of the world. When you was alive and well and running around.”

Arthur continued to stare. “Is this the future?” he said.

The man shook his head. “It’s only nowadays,” he said. “Like always.” Then he smiled. “And you was born in the twenty-second century anno domini, in crowded times and places?”

Arthur let out a heavy sigh. Then he said, “Can you get me a drink? With whiskey or gin? Ethyl alcohol?”

The man did not seem to understand.

“An intoxicating drink.”

The man smiled again. “I understand that thing. And yes, I will.” He turned to leave the room. “Not the twenty-second century anno domini?”

“The twentieth,” Arthur said in a voice near a whisper. Finally it was all coming down on him. “What century is this?”

The man turned and smiled at him before he left the room. “The forty-seventh,” he said. “Anno domini.”

***

The drink turned out to be a sort of screwdriver—spiked orange juice. It was in a simple glass that did not look at all futuristic. After Arthur drank it, he said, “How did I get here? In this body from… from Cleveland?”

“Refrigerator,” the man said. “We found a refrigerator, all wrapped and sealed underground where a city was. With a tape of you inside. Under rubble. From time so far and distant long agone so hard to tell.”