The others silently gathered around the first tank with mouths agape. The child’s head was immobilized as if prepared for stereo tactic brain surgery. His eyes were held open with lid retractors, and the eyes themselves were fixated with limbal sutures. From a gunlike apparatus, beams of light were directed through the side of the transparent tank and into each of the child’s pupils. The beams flickered with a rapid, alternating frequency.

“What’s happening here?” Perry asked. It looked like torture.

“It’s perfectly safe and painless,” Arak said. He joined the group and motioned for Suzanne to do likewise.

“The kid looks like he’s being shot with an arcade gun,” Michael said.

“From your violent culture I can understand why that would be your assumption,” Arak said. “But it couldn’t be further from the truth. To extend the previous analogy about downloading that I used at the death center, this child is merely receiving the download of a mindprint from an individual whose essence had been stored in Central Information. What you are seeing here is the recall procedure.”

Suzanne advanced slowly with a hand over her mouth. She felt like a child at a scary movie: afraid to watch but unable to take her eyes away. Gazing at the immobilized toddler she shuddered. For her, the image was the embodiment of biotechnology gone amuck.

“As you saw at the death center,” Arak continued, “it only takes seconds to extract the mindprint. But implanting it is another matter. We have to rely on a primitive technique using low-energy laser since no one has ever come up with a better access route than the retina. Of course, the retinal route makes sense since the retina is embryonically an out-pocketing of the brain. The process works, but it’s not fast. In fact, it can take up to thirty days.”

“Jeez!” Richard commented. “The poor kid has to be strung up like that for a month?”

“Believe me, there is no suffering involved,” Arak said.

“What about the child’s own essence?” Suzanne asked.

“We’re giving him his essence as we speak,” Arak said, “along with an extraordinary fund of knowledge and experience.” He smiled proudly.

Suzanne nodded, but not in agreement. She saw the process as pure exploitation. For her it was a kind of parasitism, attaching an old soul to an innocent newborn. The mindprint was abducting the infant’s body.

“Arak! Hurry!” Sufa called insistently from a doorway at the opposite end of the room. “You’re missing the event!”

“Come on!” Arak urged to the group. “This is important for you to see. It’s the finished product.”

Suzanne was happy to break off from the disquieting image of the fixated child. She hurried after Arak, purposefully avoiding looking into any of the other tanks. Donald, Richard, and Michael lingered, mesmerized by the sight. Michael lifted his finger and reached out with the intention of interrupting the laser beam. Donald batted his hand away.

“Don’t screw around, sailor!” Donald growled.

“Yeah,” Richard said, “the kid might miss his piano lessons.” He laughed.

“This is freakin’ weird,” Michael said. He walked around the tank to see if he could see into the barrel of the laser gun.

“Well, look on the bright side,” Richard said. “It’s a lot easier than going to school. If it doesn’t hurt nothing, like Arak says, I would have gone for it. Hell, I hated school.”

Donald looked at Richard scornfully. “As if I couldn’t have guessed.”

“Come on!” Arak called back to the three men from the distant doorway. “You need to see this.”

The three men hurried after their hosts. In the next room they found Arak, Sufa, Suzanne, and Perry standing around a satin-upholstered area at the base of a stainless steel slide. The slide came out of the wall; its upper end was closed off by double swinging doors. Sitting in the center of the cushioned depression was a darling four-year-old girl already dressed in the typical Interterran manner. It was apparent she’d recently arrived by sliding down the slide. A number of worker clones were in attendance.

“Welcome, gentlemen,” Arak said to Donald and the divers. He pointed to the little girl. “Meet Barlot.”

“Hey, sugarplum,” Richard said in squeaky, babylike voice. He reached out to pinch the girl’s cheek.

“Please,” Barlot said as she ducked Richard’s hand. “It’s better not to touch me for fifteen or twenty minutes since I’ve just come out of the dryer. The nerves in my integument need a chance to adapt to the gaseous environment.”

Richard recoiled.

“These three men are also newly arrived earth surface visitors,” Arak said as he gestured toward Donald, Richard, and Michael.

“My word,” Barlot said. “Isn’t this an occasion! Five surface visitors at the same time. I’m happy to be so honored on my emergence day.”

“We were just welcoming Barlot back to the physical world,” Arak explained.

Barlot nodded. “And it’s wonderful to be back.” She examined her tiny hands, turning them over and then stretching them out. She then glanced at her legs and her feet. She wiggled her toes. “Looks like a good body,” she added. “At least so far.” She giggled.

“I think it looks like a superb body,” Sufa said. “And such beautiful blue eyes. Did you have blue eyes last body?”

“No, but I did the body before that,” Barlot said. “I like variation. Sometimes I allow the eye color to be selected randomly.”

“How do you feel?” Suzanne asked. She knew it was a stupid question, but under the circumstances she couldn’t think of anything else to ask. She was distracted by the marked contrast between the puerile voice and the adult syntax.

“Mainly, I’m hungry,” Barlot said. “And impatient. I’m looking forward to getting home.”

“How long have you been in storage?” Perry asked. “If that’s the right word.”

“We call it being in memory,” Barlot said. “And I’m assuming it was about six years. That was the advertised waiting time when I was extracted. But to me, it seems like it was overnight. When we’re in memory our essences are not programmed to record time.”

“Do your eyes hurt?” Suzanne asked.

“Not in the slightest,” Barlot said. “I suppose you’re referring to the flamelike scleral hemorrhages I undoubtedly have.”

“I am,” Suzanne admitted. The whites of both Barlot’s eyes were fire engine red.

“That’s from the limbal fixation sutures,” Barlot said. “They were probably just removed.”

“Do you remember being in the fish tank?” Michael asked.

Barlot laughed. “I’ve never heard the implant tank referred to as a fish tank. But to answer your question, no! My first conscious memory in this body, and in all previous bodies for that matter, was waking up on the conveyer belt in the dryer.”

“Is the experience of extraction, memory, and recall at all stressful?” Suzanne asked.

Barlot thought for a moment before responding. “No,” she said finally. “The only stressful part is that now I have to wait until puberty to have any real fun.” She laughed, as did Arak, Sufa, Richard, and Michael.

“This is our home,” Sufa said from a hovering air taxi as the exit door materialized. She pointed to a structure similar to the cottages at the visitors’ palace minus the large lawns. It was clustered Levittown-style with hundreds of others just like it. “Arak and I thought it would be instructive for you to experience how we live and perhaps have a bite to eat. Are you all too tired or would you like to come inside for a visit?”

“I could eat,” Richard said eagerly.

“I would love to see your home,” Suzanne said. “It’s very hospitable of you.”

“I’m honored,” Perry said.

Donald merely nodded.

“I’m starved,” Michael said.

“Then it’s decided,” Sufa said. She and Arak climbed from the hovercraft and motioned for the others to follow.

Similar to the quarters at the visitors’ center, the interior was uniformly white-white marble with white fabric and lots of mirrors. Also the main room opened to the outdoors with a pool extending from the inside to the outside. The place was sparsely furnished. Several large holographic displays like those the group had seen in the decon quarters were the only decoration.