"It's unlikely.  Your heart is intact, your brain is not badly damaged, but the rest of your injuries are comparable to stepping on a land mine.  You'd never walk again, and you'd be in great pain.  You would come to wish you had not survived."

"How can you tell that?"

The CC said nothing, and I was left to ponder.  That usually doesn't do much good, where the CC is concerned.

We all deal with the CC a thousand times a day, but almost all of that is with one of its sub-programs, on a completely impersonal level.  But apart from the routine transactions of living, it also generates a distinct personality for every citizen of Luna, and is always there ready to offer advice, counsel, or a shoulder to cry on.  When I was young I spoke to the CC extensively.  He is every child's ideal imaginary playmate.  But as we grow older and make more real, less tractable and entirely more willful and frustrating relationships, contacts with the CC tend to fall off.  With adolescence and the discovery that, in spite of their shortcomings, other people have a lot more to offer than the CC ever will, we cut our ties even further until the CC is just a very intelligent, unobtrusive servant, there to ease us through the practical difficulties of life.

But the CC had now intruded, twice.  I found myself wondering, as I seldom had in the past, what was on its mind.

"I guess I've been pretty foolish," I ventured.

"Perhaps I should call Walter, tell him to tear up the front page."

"All right.  So it isn't news.  So I've had things on my mind."

"I was hoping you'd like to talk about that."

"Maybe we ought to talk about what you said before."

"Concerning your hypothetical suffering had you incurred these injuries in, say, 1950?"

"Concerning your statement that I might prefer being dead."

"It was merely an hypothesis.  I observe how little anyone today is equipped to tolerate pain, having never experienced an appreciable amount of it.  I note that even the people on Old Earth, who were no strangers to it, often preferred death to pain.  I conclude that many people today would not hold life so dear as to endure constant, unrelenting agony."

"So it was just a general observation."

"Naturally."

I didn't believe that, but there was no point in saying so.  The CC would get to the point in its own way, in its own time.  I watched the crawling lines on the machine and waited.

"I notice you're not taking notes concerning this experience.  In fact, you've taken very few notes lately about anything."

"Watching me, are you?"

"When I've nothing better to do."