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he turns, he sees that one of the ghost pods has split lengthwise across its white mushroomlike crown, spilling a trickle of leftover construction fluid and a completely hairless, slightly bemused-looking Anglo male who wears an expression of profound surprise.
"I can't find my implants," the Anglo male says, shaking his head. "But I'm really here, aren't I? Incarnate?" He glances round at the other pods. "This isn't a sim."
Sirhan sighs - another exile - and sends forth a daemon to interrogate the ghost pod's abstract interface. It doesn't tell him much - unlike most of the resurrectees, this one seems to be undocumented. "You've been dead. Now you're alive. I suppose that means you're now almost as real as I am. What else do you need to know?"
"When is -" The newcomer stops. "Can you direct me to the processing center?" he asks carefully. "I'm disoriented."
Sirhan is surprised - most immigrants take a lot longer to figure that out. "Did you die recently?" he asks.
"I'm not sure I died at all." The newcomer rubs his bald head, looking puzzled. "Hey, no jacks!" He shrugs, exasperated. "Look, the processing center ..?"
"Over there." Sirhan gestures at the monumental mass of the Boston Museum of Science (shipped all the way from Earth a couple of decades ago to save it from the demolition of the inner system). "My mother runs it." He smiles thinly.
"Your mother -" the newly resurrected immigrant stares at him intensely, then blinks. "Holy shit." He takes a step toward Sirhan. "It is you -"
Sirhan recoils and snaps his fingers. The thin trail of vaporous cloud that has been following him all this time, shielding his shaven pate from the diffuse red glow of the swarming shells of orbital nanocomputers that have replaced the inner planets, extrudes a staff of hazy blue mist that stretches down from the air and slams together in his hand like a quarterstaff spun from bubbles. "Are you threatening me, sir?" he asks, deceptively mildly.
"I -" The newcomer sto