“I don’t know. I said that, and something went wrong. I don’t know.”

He shook his head. “Maybe it’s these new bodies,” he said. “Maybe we’ll have to just get used to them.”

She shook her head and said nothing.

***

He did not see her for several days and was relieved not to. He spent the time easily enough—when he was not troubled by thinking about her—finishing his chess set, exercising lightly, and wandering through the building where he lived.

On the third day Ben and another man whose only English was the word “Hello” took him to the far end of the building to a laboratory. There were four large tanks, coffin-like and bright green, lined up along one wall. Ben walked over to the second of these from the left, set his long-fingered hand on its lid, and said, “This is where we grew your self for years.”

Arthur walked over to it and Ben lifted the hinged lid for him. Inside it was like a large, green bathtub, with about half a dozen little metal pipes entering it on one side. “How long was I in this thing?” he asked.

“Three years,” Ben said. “No way to go faster.”

“Was it difficult to play the tape into… into me?”

Ben smiled and shook his head. “Oh, yes,” he said. “We did it wrong two times. First we had the body wrong and next the tape. But then we got you always right and here you stand.” Then he looked at the other man with him, who was apparently some kind of technician, and the other nodded toward Ben with a faint smile.

Arthur started to pursue this but Ben, abruptly for him, turned and walked over to one of the consoles and took from an otherwise empty shelf a box about the size of a candy box, walked back to Arthur and handed it to him. “Here is your soul,” he said, softly.

Arthur took the box in both hands. “My tape?” he said.

“Of course,” Ben said. “Your ancient tape. Your soul.”

Arthur opened the box with care. Inside was a full plastic reel with a label that read “Advent Corporation. Boston, Mass.” And under that someone had written with a ballpoint pen, “Arthur Franks.”

***