Next thing I knew I was sleeping on my side. Then I turned over on my back and I thought to myself, How hard is this bed, and the scents I’m picking up, what are they, these noxious chemical scents? I heard the noises of traffic and somewhere very close the sounds of people walking as in a busy street.

My eyes snapped open. I stared up once again at the acoustical-tile ceiling.

I am alive.

Dim electric light softly illuminated the ceiling, and the place where I lay.

I sat up and looked around the room.

Most of the equipment was gone. The other body on the other table was gone. I was alone, seated on a gurney, and I was fully dressed.

The linen shirt was new, the suit jacket was new, and the pants were new, but the spiffily polished black boots were mine. And the rings on my fingers, of course, were mine. My beloved violet-tinted glasses were in my breast pocket.

I felt of my hair; it was as it always was when I awoke, full and long. Yet I felt delicate but hard seams in the flesh of my head. I looked at my hands and then at the rest of myself.

I climbed off the gurney and walked through the scattering of tables and stands and metal cabinets and other seeming debris, and opened the door.

Empty hallway of a modern building, and at the far end a doorway to a busy street. I put on my violet glasses and went out.

It was the Marais—one of the oldest sections of Paris. And it was just after sunset, and all the lights were coming on. I soon found myself walking on one of those very narrow sidewalks so common in old Paris, past a crowded bookstore and a café with steamy windows, past shops, past restaurants, and after a while I was wandering under the vaulted ceilings of an old stone arcade. All around me were mortals, coming and going, ignoring my shocking white skin, or curious wobbly manner, as I struggled to put one foot before the other, following one stone street into another stone street. The crowds grew thicker, and it seemed this was the most vital city in all the world.

The sky was winter white and the air was not so terribly cold.

At last I wandered into a great square with a high triple-decker fountain in the middle of it. But the fountain was turned off. And the snow lay light and fresh and pure over everything, and the leafless trees were glistening with thin ice, ice that might crack into a million splinters if you touched it, and the deep sloping roofs of the mansions all about the square were shining with snow.

I was alone.