Tommy smiled with a set of perfect, of course, teeth. “The trouble with you, Bill, is that you’re in my office. Your flesh is stinking up the place. Get out.” “Tommy, stand up and defend yourself.” Tommy not only stood up but he slapped down my special one-two punch like an Oreus Bug-eater spanking flies. Then he threw me out. This was getting not only monotonous but kind of painful. Now both hands ached, and I bled from minor lacerations I won’t identify. * * * * * I got pretty interested watching them put my first proxy together that afternoon. It was much more complicated than I had thought. Only the skeletal structure was inanimate when brought into short-wave rapport. There was a heart and a regular bloodstream. They explained that a nervous system operates under more influences than afferent and efferent control impulses, and in order to give sensation and emotional reaction they had to include synthetic glands to release real secretions like adrenalin. Hence, they needed a bloodstream, which distributed the various juices and produced authentic reactions and adjustments to the emotional stimuli of the real body and the environmental conditions of the proxy. It wasn’t a bad experience at all. They even warmed the mud for the moulage cast, and it felt kind of good mushing around in it until I got told to lie still. The first proof of the matrix showed every mole and hair on me, even the tiny insect scars I collected on Venus. I was sitting there admiring the finished product--it’s a funny sensation getting the first good look at the back of your neck--when a guy stepped up with a short-handled hammer and potted my poor proxy on the forehead. The damned indelible red star! It reminded me of certain aspects of second-hand living that had slipped my mind. This ghoulish feeling got even stronger that night when I lay down in my new apartment, in my new cell, in my new coffin. Following directions, I had locked the door from the inside, stripped, sterilized the cell and pulled the transparent coffin lid down over me. The two levers jutted conveniently by my hand. I pushed the first one and had to close my eyes against the sharp H-light. A warm draft of sweetish gas drifted in, smelling like grass right after it’s cut. The deadly silence and this smell reminded me of a cemetery. I noted my heart slow down, then I didn’t seem to need such deep breaths. This was approaching the state of semi-suspended animation they had explained would lengthen a man’s life span almost indefinitely.