If she were less kind she might also point out that her synapses don’t have to slog through a century’s worth of accumulated toxins, so she is in fact at the same time older and younger than I am, both of those in the positive senses.

Of course there are things she can never know, because of the things that she could never do. I wouldn’t trade.

Website

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Also by Joe Haldeman

Forever War

1. The Forever War (1974)

2. Forever Peace (1997)

3. Forever Free (1999)

Worlds

1. Worlds: A Novel of the Near Future (1981)

2. Worlds Apart (1983)

3. Worlds Enough and Time (1992)

Marsbound

1. Marsbound (2008)

2. Starbound (2010)

3. Earthbound (forthcoming)

Novels

Mindbridge (1976)

Tool of the Trade (1987)

The Long Habit of Living (1989) (aka Buying Time)

The Hemingway Hoax (1990)

The Coming (2000)

Guardian (2002)

Camouflage (2004)

Old Twentieth (2005)

The Accidental Time Machine (2007)

Collections

All My Sins Remembered (1977)

Infinite Dreams (1978)

Dealing in Futures (1985)

Dedication

These three books are for Gay.

EPILOGUE

PRIME

O’Hara lived for another fourteen Earth years (thirty-one, Epsilon) after this entry, and they were reasonably happy and fruitful years, even after Charlee died. She wrote another volume of autobiography that was popular on several worlds, and for eleven years did an almost daily nostalgia-and-advice column called “Ask O’Hara,” which became a series of books.

It’s ironic that after her death, the income from her publications was willed to Skepsis, an organization devoted to debunking the supernatural—ironic because those same writings formed the basis for what has to be called a religion, Modern Numinism, that is still thriving, no longer modern, after two thousand years. It has several hundred million adherents, less than half of them human.

(Numinism is the reason that I myself faded into cyberspace a thousand years ago, and will disappear again as soon as this story is told. Adherents called me the “discarnation” of O’Hara and took up all my time with silly and embarrassing questions and demands.)

She might not have been too uncomfortable with Numinism, since it doesn’t require belief in gods, or even in her, though it accepts some things as transcendental, including certain aspects of her memory.

Not that she is worshipped, or considered infallible. She was wrong about fundamental things, though Numinists disagree over which things they were, which seems to make for a healthy religion. No one has yet been burned at the stake over a question of doctrine.

Along with everyone else during her lifetime, she was wrong about the basic nature of the eveloi. She had an inkling of the truth when she wrote this: