Not that Evy or anyone else had much time for fun these days. The loss of nearly all literature doesn’t loom large for a person who, for instance, requires complex medication to stay alive, and finds that all records pertaining to drug therapy have been destroyed. The loss of agricultural records was much more dangerous than it would have been on Earth; the failure of a crop could mean the loss of a species; the loss of a species could upset the entire delicate biome.

Almost everybody’s past disappeared, in terms of the maze of documents that map a citizen’s progress from conception to the recycle chute. Of course for every person who mourned losing pictures of a loved one, or records of outstanding academic achievement, there was someone else more than happy for the opportunity to rewrite the sordid details of his or her life’s record. The small police force was working overtime compiling an unofficial and legally useless litany of nasty things that people remembered about other people.

In the first week, 239 people, most of them over a hundred years old, died from loss of medical records. Evy was doing a double shift, twenty hours, in the Emergency Room, and most of the problems were stress-related. At the current rate of consumption, they had about a three-week supply of tranquilizers and four weeks of antidepressants. By then perhaps the chemical engineers would have deciphered enough texts to be able to manufacture new ones. Or maybe the civil engineers would be able to cover all the walls with rubber.

The same peculiarity of storage that spared A Matter of Time, a Matter of Space and its cousins also spared me. If I were in passive storage like the other personality overlays—the ones that are actually going to be used—I would have had only a ten percent chance of survival. But I’m in an active part of Newhome’s cyberspace, like the kinetic novels, and so was untouched by the sabotage program.

My backups were destroyed. My immortality. Of course I’ve made new ones, but for a moment I almost ceased to exist.

I know as much about death as O’Hara does, but until a few days ago I didn’t really know anything, because it was not something that could happen to me. It is a strange feeling.

10

DIDN’T SHE RAMBLE?

5 October 98 [17 Chang 293]—Evy brought me a dozen double-strength tranquilizer pills. I told her I didn’t need them, but she said keep them anyhow. They might be in short supply soon.