It said nothing for a moment. That moment stretched into a while, and threatened to become a spell.

"You want me to direct interface for some reason," I suggested.

"I think it might be helpful."

"For you or me?"

"Both of us, possibly. There can be a certain therapeutic value in what I intend to show you."

"You think I need that?"

"Judge for yourself. How happy have you been lately?"

"Not very."

"You could try this, then. It can't hurt, and it might help."

So what was I doing at the moment so important that I couldn't take a few minutes off to chin with the CC?

"All right," I said. "I'll interface with you, though I think you really ought to buy me dinner and some flowers first."

"I'll be gentle," the CC promised.

"What do I have to do? You need to plug me in somewhere?"

"Not for years now. I can use my regular connections into your brain. All you need to do is relax a little. Stare into the oscilloscope screen; that could be helpful."

I did, watching the blue lines peak and trough, peak and trough. The screen started to expand, as if I were moving into it. Soon all I could see was one crawling line, which slowed, stopped, became a single bright dot. The dot got brighter. It grew and grew. I felt the heat of it on my face, it was blazing down from a blue tropical sky. There was a moment of vertigo as the world seemed to spin around me-my body staying firmly in place-until I was lying not on my stomach but on my back, and not on the snowy white sheets of the repair shop at North Lunar Filmwerks but on cool wet beach sand, hearing not the soft mutterings of the medicos but the calls of seagulls and the nearby hiss and roar of surf. A wave spent its last energy tickling my feet and washing around my hips. It sucked a little sand out from under me. I lifted my head and saw an endless blue ocean trimmed with white breakers. I got to my feet and turned around, and saw white sandy beach. Beyond it were palm trees, jungle rising away from me to a rocky volcanic peak spouting steam. The realism of the place was astonishing. I knelt and scooped up a handful of sand. No two grains looked alike. No matter how close I brought the sand grains to my eyes, the illusion never broke down and the endless detail extended to deeper and deeper realms. Some sort of fractal magic, I supposed. I walked down the beach for a bit, sometimes turning to watch the cunning way water flowed into my footprints, erasing the edges, swirling, bubbling. I breathed deeply of the saline air. I like this place already. I wondered why the CC had brought me here. I decided it would tell me in its own time, so I walked up the beach and sat under a palm tree to wait for the CC to present itself. I waited for several hours, watching the surf, having to move twice as the sun crept across the sky. I noticed that my skin had reddened in my brief time in the sunlight. I think I drifted off to sleep from time to time, but when you're alone it's hard to be sure. In any event, the CC didn't show. Eventually I got thirsty. I walked down the beach for several kilometers before discovering the outlet of a small stream of fresh water. I noticed the beach kept curving off to the right; probably an island. In time it got dark-very quickly, and one part of my mind concluded this simulacrum that really existed only as a set of equations in the data banks of the CC was intended to be somewhere in the Earthly tropics, near the equator. Not that the information did me any good. It didn't get cold, but I soon found that when you haven't any clothes or bedding, sleep can be a sandy, chilly, thoroughly uncomfortable project.