From one of his five childhoods, Chance remembers his bare feet, wet and shining on the flat white surface just beneath a thin layer of water. Then he looks up at a sky of intense blue, flecked with bright clouds. The sky is reflecting on the sheet of still water below. The sky and mirroring water extend to the horizon.

His patient’s voice interrupts the memory. “Just when you think you’ve hit absolute rock bottom,” his patient Lucky Four says, “you fall again, and farther than you ever thought was even possible. You just keep going.”

“I see,” Chance Three says. He’s having difficulty reviewing Lucky’s test results.

Lucky’s a six, and Chance finally has results for all of Lucky’s six drives. Each of them—except this one, Lucky Four—has the same flulike symptoms and similar microbiome anomalies. After nearly a decade and a half of practice, Chance should recognize Lucky’s condition. But the numbers and symbols aren’t making sense. Chance is having trouble piecing the data together with a narrative that explains them. He stares harder, but the collection of paragraphs, rows, and columns just doesn’t connect.

“Hey,” his patient says, “are you all right?”

“No,” Chance Three says. He’s surprised that Lucky has noticed. Lucky Four has spent every previous moment in Chance’s company describing the slow deterioration of his complex personal life, in obsessive detail. He has been incessant and thoroughly self-involved. Join pathologies can be unpleasant, and the obsessive personal focus is probably a symptom of Lucky’s illness. Lucky’s five other drives may be simultaneously boring five other people.

“I just found out that I’m sick,” Chance Three says—the words dodging his better judgment and speaking themselves. He takes a breath. “Just this minute.”

“You’re sick too?” asks Lucky Four.

“I have cancer,” Chance says. “My Five, my most recent join, does.”

“I see.” Lucky says. “You might need a day or two off.”

It takes Chance a moment to understand what his patient is saying. “Well,” he says at last, “it’s actually terminal. I may need more than that.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that was still a problem. That cancer can be terminal.”

“Yeah, it’s rare. I’m with a doctor right now—”

“Like I am.”

Chance is surprised. “Yes,” he says. The man’s face is guileless. Chance understands what he’s trying to say. Chance needs to focus on his own patient. But he can’t stop thinking about the cancer diagnosis. His arms and legs feel heavy. He wants to sit down, but Lucky Four is watching him expectantly.

Chance says, “My doctor and I are just going over test results—”

“Oh! Just like—”

“Yes,” Chance says, interrupting, and then immediately regretting it. He clears his throat. “That’s right,” he says. “Like you and I should be doing. My doctor is covering options for care. He wants to keep me comfortable.”

“I see. So, same sort of thing here. We’ll be talking about treatment.”

“Yes,” Chance says. “After I’ve had some time to fully review your test results. Excuse me, just a moment. I’m going to step out of the room.”

“Why?”

“I’m not feeling well. Someone will be in soon.”

“Okay. But I think whoever I work with should know my story. It might be important.”

As Lucky Four is speaking, Chance Three turns toward the door—which slides open—and then steps into the hallway. He steps to the side so Lucky can’t see him, and backs against the wall. He puts his hands on his thighs and leans. He’s a broad man, with a substantial presence. If people see him like this, they’ll worry. They’ll ask what’s wrong. He doesn’t want to talk about it.

Chance Three hears the exam-room door slide open. He straightens quickly and walks away from his patient.

Chance Two flicks off her retinal display, even as her broadcast gets its first sympathetic response—a glowing exclamation mark briefly suspended in the sunlight that’s warming the plane’s cockpit. Then there’s only the muted, predictable instrumentation of the airliner’s consoles and the bright fields of cloud they’re flying above.

“I know someone named Cancer,” her copilot, Leap Two, says, “like the crab, though, in the Zodiac.”

Chance is taking a break from flying the plane. After Chance Two told Leap about Chance Five’s cancer, they talked a bit, and then Chance composed the broadcast for friends and family. It has been interesting to note the odd, almost detached sensation of observing each of her five drives—three male and two female—responding to news of the cancer. Chance closes her eyes and settles back in her chair.

“Hey, you want to pay attention to your job there, cowboy?” Leap Two says. The flight AI, Autonomy, is passively monitoring cockpit activity and pilot behavior and will note if a pilot appears to be dozing.

A few months ago, Leap suggested that Chance take a vacation. Leap said, “Get some time on the range.” It was kind of funny at the time but also an odd reference. Since then, Leap’s been calling Chance Two “cowboy.” Chance imagines her own fine, curly blond hair weighted by a big straw cowboy hat that she’d probably have trouble keeping straight on her small head.

Chance Two rubs her forehead. It’s difficult to focus. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” she says.

“Let’s see,” says Leap. “Intro to Atmospheric Aviation, I remember this bit particularly. Paragraph three, ‘The qualified atmospheric aviator understands distraction and boredom as primary enemies of economic prosperity.’ Yes, ‘economic prosperity.’ The world’s economic fate is in your hands. So I’m sorry you’re sick, but suck it up, cowboy, and do your job.”

Chance Two laughs. Chance wonders which of Leap’s other drives looked up the note in their old text. Leap might have just remembered it. Leap is capable of holding long grudges against offensive bits of cultural flotsam.

“Thank you, Mistress Baton,” Chance says, “but at the moment, I’m selfishly thinking about my terminal cancer. Not so much of the world at large.”

That earns a soft chuckle from Leap. Mistress Baton is another bit of cultural flotsam—a reality program that had particularly appalled Leap.

“Okay,” says Leap. “Here’s what you do: read the research, plan, act. Like everything else. And by the way, I really am sorry.”

“Yeah,” Chance says, “okay, thank you. Anyway, I know what to do, ideally. But it’s the damn meat gap. Getting drives to do the things.”

“Yeah,” agrees Leap, and then she makes a smooth transition to salacious. “It’s all about the meat.”

Chance laughs for the sake of the friendship, but her heart really isn’t in it.

Leap Two is doing a quick panel check, flicking through reports on the left-side copilot screen and checking off steps on the right side. As Chance watches, she takes a moment to admire Leap Two—the quiet self-awareness that’s so natural and unself-conscious, the narrow, classically elegant nose, sharp, high cheekbones, and clear light brown eyes.

Most people would probably consider Chance Two attractive, despite the slightly severe cast of her face. Chance Two is average height, forty years old, and in good shape, with pale skin, a narrow forehead, and a strong, high nose.

But Leap Two is something else entirely, a gorgeous statistical anomaly, a physical outlier whose vitality is animated by Leap’s relaxed intelligence. Leap may be vain about Leap Two, but the vanity is justified. Even the grace and physical economy of her arms and hands as she gestures her way through the midflight checklist are almost breathtaking. It’s all rote after so many years, but Chance still enjoys watching Leap Two.

Leap is used to people watching Leap Two. She flicks the displays to the dashboard, then repeats herself, muttering, “It’s always the meat gap.”

Then her head jerks forward and back, and her upper lip rises, showing her two front teeth. It all happens so quickly that Chance isn’t completely sure that Leap actually did anything.

It forces a surprised laugh out of Chance, who asks, “What was that?”

“I said, ‘It’s always the meat gap.’”

“But what was that thing you did? With your head and your teeth.” There’s a long pause. Leap stares at Chance. Then Leap Two’s face hardens.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Leap says.

Chance hesitates. Leap has always been private about her personal business, often marking a topic as “not to be discussed,” as has clearly just happened. But this was a small spasm. Chance saw it. It’ll be on the flight vid. There’s no point denying it happened.

It was like a sneeze. Too insignificant to consider private. But if Leap doesn’t want to talk about it, then it almost becomes interesting.

Chance says, “You had a little . . . it was like you sneezed, or hiccuped.”

“Whatever,” Leap says.

Leap Two settles back into the copilot seat and presses a spot to request coffee.

“What do you mean, ‘whatever’?”

“What are you talking about?” Leap is irritated. She turns to face Chance, unblinking, her eyebrows raised in a challenge.

“What? Don’t give me that look,” says Chance. “I saw—”

“You didn’t see anything,” says Leap Two. She turns back to face the fields of clouds, putting an end to their conversation.

Before joining, Chance Five was an eighteen-year-old named Javier Quispe who had already completed two years of college study. He could play ninety minutes of nonstop football and follow up with a workout. He loved playing in community leagues. He also had a seven-point plan for reintroducing the Andean condor to the wild.

Javier wanted to join despite a fear of losing himself, his individuality, during the procedure. The joins he knew assured him that what he had read was true: each individual’s perspective coheres through the procedure, and every individual in the join is also the joined result. There is only gain, they said, and, with the rich interplay of memories from so many people, a deeper understanding of life’s irreducible mysteries.

His parents used metaphors—it’s like being more attuned to all of who you are, all your different desires and fears; it’s like clearly remembering who you were ten years ago, before events changed you. They said the awareness of being more than one person included a comforting sense of companionship.

Now, as Chance Five changes out of his hospital gown, he touches the short hair at the back of his head and rubs his thumb over the scar where his skull was opened to adjust his caduceus. Chance learned in medical school that the caduceus—or “caddy”—got its name because a member of the original team thought that the scar left after surgery resembled the ancient symbol of a winged staff with entwined snakes. Javier always liked snakes.

As a child, Javier had been envious of everyone, joins and solos, who had a seemingly magical ability to pick data out of the air. He got his first caddy when he was twelve, so he too could connect directly to the biowave network.

When he decided to join, Vitalcorp replaced parts of that original caddy with the components required to connect minds. Then he and Chance Four received complementary adjustments and underwent the rigidly controlled protocol of psychotropic drug therapies. As a result, Javier Quispe ceased being a solo and became Chance. His body became Chance Five.

Chance Five soon began experiencing persistent stomach pain. Chance dismissed the pain at first and only barely modified his regular, arduous workouts. Chance thought it might be an injured rectus abdominus or internal oblique. But the pain intensified. Tests found an aggressive, recently identified strain of cell mutation. Chance’s oncologist has just told him that it’s a cancer that can be triggered, or aggravated, by the join procedure.

If Chance Five dies, then Chance—and therefore Javier Quispe—will live on through other drives in the join. That can continue forever. In a perfect join, human beings lose both their existential sense of isolation and their mortality.

Chance faces the prospect of dying and surviving his own death. “Volatile emotional response with significant drive variability” is how Chance might characterize his reaction to Chance Five’s diagnosis, if this were research.

•

Chance One, trim and naturally charismatic, is possessed of innate self-assurance that inspires confidence in others. He works as a data scientist at a public-private cooperative. When he told his supervisor about the cancer, she was surprised. She asked—though he was certain she already knew—how long he’d had his fifth drive.

“About six months,” Chance One had said. And then Chance had to worry about embarrassing himself by crying. That level of instability was very surprising in Chance One.

His supervisor nodded and said, “I see. I’m so sorry.” But there was a different message in her look. She was thinking, It’s better that it’s the new drive.

And maybe it is better. Chance Five is a student, just starting out. Losing him might be less disruptive. No one would say something like that, of course.

•

Before joining, Chance Two was quick-witted, opinionated, and given to crafting exceptionally well-reasoned arguments for preserving the status quo. Chance Two continues to give an impression of reserve and matter-of-fact competence. She’s an airline pilot with a specialty in long-haul atmospheric aviation and has been the least affected of Chance’s drives.

•

Chance Three is currently splashing his face with water from a cold tap in a hospital restroom. His straight black hair lies neatly flat on his squarish head. He is a large man, and though he appears stolid, he is the most emotionally responsive of Chance’s drives and often has powerful, sometimes-distracting, reactions to trauma.

Chance Three is a specialist in the quantum personality matrix—a “join doctor.” It’s a job that requires presence and empathy. Chance is having trouble focusing, and Chance Three has evaded his patient.

•

When she is awake, Chance Four is about motion and precision. A short (close to the Earth), thirty-eight-year-old woman who is fast and light on her feet. The fact that Chance Four is currently sleeping is helping Chance deal with the traumatic news.

•

The year before he joined, Chance Five and a girl named Shawna flew a pod over the salt flats to a place that Nana called llanura de las bestias. The plain of the beasts. Beside scattered steel beams and shattered pyramids of yellow, crusted soil lay rotted, riveted husks—the loosely articulated bodies of ancient locomotives.

“I love it here,” Shawna said, one hand against a pitted gray-and-orange plate. “This is everything that came before. But we’re so lucky. We can live forever now.”

And then in cool shadows, he reached for Shawna’s warmth, her soft skin, her breath on his neck and cheek.

And in the heat after, he felt a leaden pull into the drifting world, where long molten channels creep through their fiery beds, where blast furnaces roar, and there is the deafening whine of disks biting steel and a flaring out of burning swarf.

Chance Two and Leap Two trained together—flexorology, mechanics, aerodynamics, flight systems administration, electromagnetism, macro-meteorology. Chance tended to score just above Leap in their coursework and has always enjoyed a slight professional edge.

When they were in school together, Leap still had only two drives, but Chance rarely saw Leap One. Leap would say that Leap One was an introvert. Chance knew what Leap meant—one of the nice things about having multiple bodies is the ability to devote different bodies to different temperaments.

Since then, Leap has grown to a four, and Chance has spent at least some time with each of Leap’s drives. Chance One even had a short fling with Leap Two. (And Chance can still distract any drive by picturing her naked.)

A couple of years ago, Leap declined a promotion in order to keep flying with Chance. Chance had been pressing Leap’s case to their boss when Leap, in direct contradiction to years of moaning over meals and margaritas, turned the opportunity down. Leap said she just wanted to keep flying with Chance. The routes they traveled were better, she said, and she was set in her ways. Chance was touched, and a little puzzled. Then their boss transferred into low-orbit freight hauling, and they haven’t talked about it since. Leap is like that sometimes—contrary. For the last month or so, Leap has also been gloomy, but whenever Chance tries to find out why, Leap shakes it off and perks up.

The flight they’re on today is a low ten-percenter, with no real weather. The Great Central storm has been subdued for over a week—retracted into a core lightning maze that crouches over the hardball, the charred, lightning-grooved ruin of what was once about ten thousand square miles of prairie.

In an era of megastorms and sudden formations, Chance and Leap—as pilot and copilot—are responsible for rerouting the airliner toward lesser weather while balancing increased distance with schedule requirements. But the flight automation is pretty good at avoiding the worst surprises that storms generate, and the planes are highly instrumented and closely monitored. Having a crew on board provides a safety in case of network flakiness and helps to calm customers, but they spend most of their time reviewing reports from the various flight systems. They aren’t usually needed to fly the plane. Except, as the saying goes, when they are.

About an hour after the first one, Leap does it again, the tic. They’re beginning the pre-descent review when Chance Two happens to glance over just as Leap Two spasms in the same way. Only this time, her shoulders hump up as well.

Chance Two stares, but Leap gives no indication that she’s aware it happened. It wasn’t a sneeze and was definitely bigger than a hiccup.

Afterward and without any preamble, as Leap Two is reading her screen intently, she says she’s sorry. If Leap is sorry there must be something to be sorry for. Chance examines a chart that maps actual humidity to expected humidity over the last half hour and projects forward for the next thirty minutes to landing. She says to Leap, “Do you want to talk about it?”

When she says it, she has her back to Leap Two, but she knows that Leap has stopped moving. Chance continues the protocol.

After a few moments, Leap Two says, “You only have one drive dreaming?”

What does Chance’s dreaming drive have to do with anything? It’s strange, alien, for Chance to feel this uncomfortable while talking with Leap.

“Yeah,” she says.

“You’ve got terminal cancer,” Leap says. “That has to be stressing you out. Maybe you’re not as rested as you could be. You’ve been working a lot of hours.”

This is not the conversation Chance wants to have with Leap. Now that the illness is a reality, and Leap knows, Chance wants to talk about the stress after the preliminary diagnosis, about premonitions of disaster. Chance wants to tell Leap about her anger and about wanting to distrust the data, about suddenly becoming furious with a saltshaker because high-sodium diets are associated with poor stress management. In fact, she took the saltshaker with her during her commute this morning and then felt absurd, holding it white knuckled before stuffing it into a public waste processor.

Leap says, “Have you thought about putting a second drive into storage for a while?”

Of course Chance has thought about it. And this is what Chance needs—a review of the data, a consideration of options, an analysis of possible outcomes. But Leap’s voice is wrong. What should sound sympathetic is anything but.

Chance doesn’t look at Leap. She focuses on her job.

Leap Two says, in an irritated tone that’s almost threatening, “Should I be worried about you?”

“You’d think this stuff would get easier,” Chance Three grumbles, not sure and not caring what he really means by “this stuff.”

When Chance Three finished his sixteen-hour shift at Shine University’s Join Praxis Center, he ended up here, at Whatever You Want, the restaurant and bar across the street from the hospital. Bottles behind the well-stocked bar diffract an occasional sparkle. The walnut furniture is dinged and comfortably worn. Weak parabolas of blue- and red-tinged light hover around glow bulbs shaped to imitate twentieth-century lamps.

Chance looks at a small drop of condensation on his glass and at the bent image within it. He’s thinking about Chance Three’s parents, Angela and Sarawut. Chance Three was an only child. His parents married late in life, and he was born to them late. He now believes that having a child was an early attempt by his parents to bridge their differences. But they fought ferociously throughout his childhood, shouting terrible things at each other, whatever might wound. Throwing things. Chance wished for different parents.

And then, right after he graduated from high school, they joined, becoming Ultimate. The parents who had raised him both remained and disappeared. Ultimate was a calm, realistic, grounded, and loving individual. Ultimate was magnificent. It was very weird. Chance had to think of the two of them differently, as one person. His imagination balked at it. He did learn to see them both in Ultimate, but they were healed and happy. Ultimate never joined again, and now Ultimate is gone.

A few feet from Chance Three, the bartender is leaning back against a heavy shelf, arms crossed. The waitress is sitting to Chance’s left. The two of them are a join named Apple. There’s only one other customer in the bar, so Apple has been killing time with Chance.

A big chunk of human mental resources are mapped to facial recognition, the subtle detection and decoding of emotion. What Apple is doing right now, watching Chance Three from two perspectives and integrating impressions, is referred to as “triangulating” or “reading through.” Practically, it means that it would be very difficult for Chance Three to successfully lie to Apple.

It’s uncomfortable to be the focus of both of their attention.

“I’ve just found out I’m sick,” Chance says.

“Oh?” says the waitress, Apple One. “Nothing contagious, I hope.”

“Not contagious, but possibly terminal,” says Chance.

“Ouch. That’s too bad,” says Apple One. “Hey, at least you’re not solo.”

It’s a defensive response and almost shockingly uncharitable. As Chance has discovered, joins want to believe that because they can defeat mortality, the loss of a single drive is easily managed.

The truth is more complicated. Some of Chance’s patients have years of phantom pains and phantom experiences—hunger, excitement, even visions—that seem to come from drives that have died. Drive death can be so traumatic that fringe groups like the Safe Hemlock Society advocate “practice dying” and stage elaborate “mortality events.” The Safe Hemlock Society actually teaches that the only way joins can embrace their true, immortal nature is to experience the traumatic death of a drive.

“Part of me was solo until last year,” Chance says. “Part of me is scared.”

“That’s the luckiest part,” says Apple Two, the bartender.

Which is true. If the cancer had struck earlier, Chance Five wouldn’t have joined and might have really been killed by it. Dead dead. Then again, this particular cancer is more common and more dangerous among joins. Maybe, if he hadn’t become Chance Five, Javier would have remained healthy.

Chance Three says, “I know,” but says it grimly. It’s hard to be self-pitying when people consider you privileged.

“You’d be about two-thirds of the way to a complete join, wouldn’t you, if the drive were to die in six more months?” asks the bartender, Apple Two. He’s referring to common wisdom that says psyches integrate quickly, but drives take about eighteen months.

Chance Three is feeling buzzed and is exhausted from his shift, but Chance’s mind is mostly clear. “Up until last year,” Chance says, “for part of me, that drive was everything, literally. For the rest of me, well, I’m a five. I’m going to be a four again.”

“How long were you a four, before this join?” asks the waitress.

“Fifteen years.”

“Well, that is sad,” she says.

A very long time ago, joins decided that when they had a choice, sympathy from the opposite gender was more emphatic. Now, it’s almost etiquette. With the right intonation that choice can also carry a distinct kind of irony. Though it’s sometimes hard to detect, Chance thinks he may have just heard it. Chance isn’t sure whether Apple believes what she said, doesn’t believe it, or both.

“There’s not full physical integration yet.” Chance is annoyed by Apple’s callousness. “Okay, right now this is me, but I—the man who was my Five—am still afraid of dying.”

The waitress sighs. This time her empathy does seem real. “You kind of won’t,” she offers.

“Another whiskey! Something cheap!” the other customer calls with gusto from several tables away.

“So that guy’s fucking awesome,” Apple Two says under his breath as Apple One gets up, grabs a bottle, and walks toward the guy.

The bartender gives the other customer a quick wave and a nod. Then he explains to Chance, “He’s a nine. Was a ten.”

Chance feels a small charge of interest—this is someone who’s recently lost a drive?

The bartender waits a moment, watching the waitress and customer, then continues, “He says he wants to run down to a two or three. Then he’ll build it back up. He likes to kill them slowly, with alcohol poisoning.”

“What?” Chance says. “That’s horrible!”

Apple raises a finger to his lips—Chance’s reaction was too loud. Chance borrows a few more cycles from his sleeping drives, becoming more present with Chance Three, less drunk.

“And if he even got to two or three,” Chance says, trying to hold down his volume, “and then he added, how could he be sure he’d still want to do it, to go down again?”

Apple leans his palms against the bar. He doesn’t respond but instead watches Chance, challenging him to come up with the answer.

“He’s not joining kids?” Chance asks with a touch of disgust.

The bartender’s eyes close briefly, and he shakes his head ever so slightly.

“He’s using a fixative?” Chance’s voice rises a little in disbelief.

“He’s hitting on me right now,” says bartender Apple, and nods toward the guy. Chance turns around. Apple, the waitress, is leaning against the table and laughing with the guy. She’s good looking—curvy, with brown hair; although her short costumey skirt and matching black-and-yellow-striped blouse look a bit silly. But the customer is even better looking—six-foot-four-ish, broad shouldered, chiseled jaw, blond close-cropped hair, narrow, smiling eyes. His face is flush with drink.

Then Apple Two says in a hushed voice, “I don’t really know, but that’s what I think, a fixative.”

“Really?” is all Chance can say.

“That guy’s two of the original thousand,” Apple Two continues, keeping his voice low. “A married couple. Says he was close friends with Music, but, you know . . .” Apple folds his arms again and leans back against the shelf.

Apple Two is short and slightly heavyset, with dark sideburns shaved into a circle on each cheek. The left half of his head is shaved bald. The hair on the right half is about an inch long. He looks more like a solo from some sort of resistance cell than a bartender working near the core of a spire community. He speaks slowly. Despite the sarcasm, he seems like he might not have a sense of humor.

“The two of them were both pretty well off before joining,” Apple continues, his voice measured, to carry to Chance but not far beyond. “They put everything into Vitalcorp, in the early days. And won the lottery of five hundred to boot. Sold the last of their stock—most of it—a few years ago. That guy’s very rich.”

Chance does a quick estimate. Everyone knows the approximate number. After Vitalcorp finished the trial of one thousand and released Join to the general public, its stock rose so fast it threatened to break the market. Vitalcorp was a capital hurricane, sucking in investment dollars like a megastorm sucks in small towns.

And Join actually did break the government. Things like Social Security numbers and biometric security all assumed a person had only one body. Lots of programs got snarled up—should all of a join’s drives get benefits or only one? It was clear that regulators had let Join come to market too early, but the genie was out of the bottle. The government needed the money Vitalcorp was making in order to address the issues Join caused.

In the end, the government froze the stock and seized the company. The joke was they merged. To avoid the catastrophe of a complete divestiture, shares continued to pay a sizable dividend until about ten years ago, when plans were announced to retire Vitalcorp equity, and the dividend started a phased decline. The bottom line was that each dollar invested before the trial of one thousand realized a very, very large return.

Chance’s drink is empty. He pushes it forward. Apple is watching Apple One and the other patron closely. He steps up, finds the bottle, and refills Chance’s tequila without really taking his eyes off them.

“What, ah, you said he was a nine?” Chance is confused briefly as a drunk spike inhibits the join. He has an attack of nausea and headache, and then he’s okay again.

“Yeah. Soon to be an eight,” says Apple, distracted by watching them. “Says he was a fifteen once. Now he’s going back down. Wants to make it to two.”

“What’s his name? Would I recognize it?”

“No, I don’t think so. Says he’s one of the ones that didn’t look for press. Says a lot didn’t. Says the ones that didn’t were safer, during that first round of backlash.”

“Do you believe him?” Chance sips his refilled drink.

Apple finally looks at Chance. “Yeah, I do,” he says.

“Fixative,” says Chance, speculatively.

“You’re a join doctor?” Apple asks.

Chance Three raises his glass in acknowledgment and takes another sip.

“How would you get to someone like that, to test them?” asks Apple.

“Well, you’d have to do it when he came in for something else. He probably has his own doctors, though. And, yeah, fixative does work. One prejoin personality gets a distinct advantage, but it’s not like the pulp vids and Civ News, and it doesn’t have a clear physical signature like, say, a meme virus. Fixative is more . . . flexible. He’d have good lawyers too, so you couldn’t prove it in court. But it’s very dangerous,” Chance says. “Why do you believe him?”

Apple’s gaze is steady and unblinking. “That guy is an asshole,” he says. “A real asshole. Right now, he’s telling me how he’d like to kill me. Both of me. He’s telling me how.”

Chance looks over his shoulder, and the guy glances up at them. The guy catches Chance’s eye and smiles, then refocuses his attention on the waitress, Apple One. The guy is starting to look pretty sloppy.

Apple Two says, “A while ago, I saw him drink a drive to death. Over a couple of months. At first I didn’t know what he was doing. He flirted a little. He’s a big tipper. Anyway, it gets pretty clear pretty fast that he’s going to drink hard when he comes in. I felt like shit some nights, serving him. One night, he says, ‘Hey, don’t feel bad. This is what I do.’ ‘What?’ I ask. He says, ‘I kill drives.’ He says, ‘I do it in different ways. I’m drinking this one to death because it can be slow.’ He says, ‘I want to feel it.’”

Apple shakes his head. “I should have cut him off.”

Apple has a glass of water under the bar. He takes a drink. Chance can hear waitress Apple and the customer laughing.

“I’ve seen solos try to drink themselves to death,” Apple Two continues. “And the thing is, it’s hard for them. They lose their nerve. That guy just drank right through, like it was a show. He passes out. I’m calling the ER. So I cut him off. Maybe a week later, he comes in with a different drive. Healthy, happy. Shows me a Civ News story. His other drive’s dead of alcohol poisoning. Says he owes me. Says he appreciates it must have been hard for me. That was years ago. Then maybe a week ago, that drive comes in.”

“But he sounds unstable. Killing drives . . . Why hasn’t the Directorate picked him up?”

“Exactly,” says Apple. He turns his back on Chance, lifts his bar rag, and drops it on a shelf. He says, “He hasn’t been picked up. That’s why I believe him.”

Chance Three’s heart starts beating fast. Sweat starts on his upper lip. He wipes it away with the back of his hand and tries to calm his breathing. Chance’s mind is mostly clear, but the drive has been touched by panic. The alcohol doesn’t help.

His drink is empty. He should get up and go home.

Chance Three motions to Apple to refill his glass. He throws back his newly poured shot. A moment later, the bartender has gone somewhere. Chance stands, wobbling a bit.

He walks to the other guy’s table. Bumps into a chair, overcompensates, and stumbles. Steadies himself. He sticks out his hand. “Chance,” he says.

The guy doesn’t move. “Rope,” he says.

Rope watches him for a moment, then asks, “You wan’ a last drink?”

“Last drink?” Chance asks quickly.

Rope gives him an odd look. Explains, “They’re gonna close.”

“Oh! No, no, I’ve really had plenty.” Chance feels stupid standing. He pulls out the chair opposite Rope and sits down.

“I’ma haf one more.” Rope lifts a hand to signal Apple One.

She walks over with a bottle and refills his shot glass. “Last call,” she says. Rope makes an effort to waggle his index finger at her.

Rope is slumped in his chair. His arms are dead weights, one resting on the table, one limp at his side. His mouth is hanging open slightly. His eyes—though deeply bloodshot—look clear. The drive is nearly unconscious, but the person within it is alert.

“Can hol’ ma liquor,” Rope says. The mouth on the handsome drive smiles. “Sorry, I’ll do betta wif my speech.” Rope is putting more effort into working the drunken drive.

“I don’t mind,” Chance says.

“No.” Rope laughs, speaking slowly, enunciating. “Don’ imagine you do. Apple jus’ told you more than she should haf about me, din’t she?”

Chance Three nods.

“Don’t worry about it,” Rope says, with increasing clarity, his body still slumped and unmoving. “Really.”

Chance says, “Apple said you were two of the original one thousand.” Rope’s eyes move slowly in agreement. Chance continues, “It sounds as though you . . . have a lot of experience with . . .” Chance can’t finish the sentence.

“With what?” Rope asks. In join lore there’s a phenomenon commonly referred to as “possession.” It’s meant to describe exactly this. Rope is alert, energized, unfazed by the alcohol, but the drive is a mess.

“What do I haf experience with?” Rope asks again, slowly, and Chance hears keen interest in the voice.

Chance leans forward. “One of my drives has cancer, end stage,” he says. “I think the prognosis is maybe three or four months.”

Rope says nothing. Chance watches him. Rope’s eyes close. Eventually, Chance sighs and begins to get up.

“Ahm sorry. This drive’s cooked. Meet me here, tomorra, nine a.m.,” Rope says. He tips forward and then falls onto the table. He knocks his empty shot glass over, and it spins off the side of the table, raps on the wood floor, and rolls. A trickle of blood spills from Rope’s mouth.

Both the Apples arrive at Chance’s left. “Leave him,” says bartender Apple. “I’ll clean him up in a few minutes.” Waitress Apple raises her eyebrows expectantly, as if saying, Now would be a good time to leave.

The day after Chance Five turned six years old, he was part of a crowd of children pouring down narrow steps and into the wide world outside their green school bus. In Chance’s memory, the children fan out into a crisp, bright morning. The shadows of Chance’s playmates are stark black silhouettes stenciled onto the white plain of Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. The plain stretches without variation from a southern scoop-mining operation toward the hazy northern outlines of low and distant peaks.

“The culpeo,” Nana says, “is a fox who lives in the mountains close by, but no dogs or foxes or wolves can live on the salt plains.” She is smiling at Alain, comforting him with this confirmation that the salt plains are unlikely to shelter wild dogs. Alain is Chance’s best friend and was bitten by a dog last year. He has a scar on his left hand, between his fingers.

Chance and Alain have talked about joining when they get old enough and then living together forever. Nana says good friends make good joins. But when he’s fifteen, Alain will move away, and he and Chance will lose touch.

Chance watches his shadow and raises a leg up to his side. His shadow moves as if it’s a giant. He stomps his yellow Soxters down onto the salt and then grinds them to make the crunching louder. “Arh! Arh! Arh!” he says. His shadow is enormous and manic. Alain is laughing at it.

Nana says, “Chance has a giant!” And here memory works its magic. Chance’s name at this time was Javier. Nana’s actual words, if she did say something like this, had to have been “Javier has a giant!” But Javier has joined with Chance, so Javier is Chance. Chance’s memory readjusts the name.

There’s delight in Nana’s voice. Chance is as big and confident as his shadow. “Arh! Arh! Arh!” he yells, and raises his fists from his sides. His shadow becomes a cleanly etched, tall, and thin giant throwing a tantrum on the flat ground. Other children have noticed and are pointing. Some are laughing, and a couple are imitating him, making their own madly dancing giants. Chance loves the crisp air against his cheek, the smell of salt, and the laughter of the other children.

“Chance, look at me!” someone calls, but he’s busy now rocking side to side and making his long shadow tip swiftly back and forth. He moves his arms so the shadow has long snaky arms. “Chance, look at me!” Someone else calls. Then other kids are calling, “Chance!” “Chance!” But he keeps imagining his shadow getting bigger and bigger.

A few kids are pulling and pushing on his shoulders, and their shadows merge with his. Others notice and start to merge their shadows with his on purpose, and suddenly there’s a long shadow mass quivering at the edges, and kids are pushing and laughing and everyone’s calling his name, “Chance!” “Chance!”

On the ride back to the mining base, Nana sits next to him. She smells clean, and he scooches over on the bus seat to be closer to her parka. He leans against her, and she puts her arm over his shoulder and smiles down at him. All the Nanas are kind and always smiling, but he likes this one best because of her face. One of the other kids from a couple of seats back says, “Chance, I liked your giant.” Chance is proud. He made something special that the other children remember. He grins and pushes his face into Nana’s parka.

Another Nana is walking down the aisle of the bus making sure everyone is belted in. Another is driving. Another is sitting in the back of the bus playing patty-cake with a girl named Lucita, whom everyone likes. The seven Nanas are all the same person. They care for all the children of the other joins who live on the mining base.

When they first met, Javier was impressed by Chance’s design—the complementary skills of Chance’s four drives. Chance One was a researcher, with specialties in risk analysis and macro-weather modeling. With the advent of megastorms and sudden storms, weather modeling became a prestige profession, responsible for saving lives and guiding economic activity. Chance had a reputation for being very good at it.

As an airline pilot, Chance Two was in another profession whose status was rising as the weather worsened. Even with the aid of advanced AI, Chance’s specialty was viewed as critical infrastructure—a challenging and highly technical career.

But the clincher was Chance Three, an actual join doctor. Short of a Vitalcorp executive, a join doctor was the single most useful profession to take on.

Chance Four, short and sinewy, with long dark hair, was handy, mechanical, and martial—a valuable balancing influence. She was also good looking. He didn’t want his attraction to her to influence his decision, but it was hard to discount.

As Chance, Javier would gain all of those professions. If he chose one of them for Chance Five, he’d start with years of practice and expertise. Or he could add something new to the join.

And Chance’s attention flattered Javier. Five is regarded as a significant number for a join, because it’s the next step after the so-called middle-class join. Joins often start with a solo couple in love, a “honeymoon join.” As the drives age and the join becomes more comfortable financially, it begins to worry about losing a drive. Because young solos can be wary of joining with mature drives, the next step often combines two honeymoon joins, an older and a younger. The younger join gains financial stability; the older adds an increment to its life span.

Licensing fees increase with each active drive. The fees get so high that going from two to four can mean several years of paying down a large loan. The term “middle-class join” is meant to recall paying on a mortgage. When a join finally can go from four to five, choosing the fifth is considered its first truly free decision. Chance’s choice of Javier as number five validated years of hard work.

After Javier had joined, Chance felt the experience of each of the five drives, including the new one, with equal intimacy. It would have been strange to keep the name Javier, a name that fit only one life’s experience. The joined individual preferred to be called Chance.

Chance owns the fourth and fifth floors of a spire at the edge of the Pine, a two-square-mile park in the center of New Denver. Chance’s spire is one of several in a large community. The spires are widely spaced, and the land between is filled by “greensward,” unmanicured brush crisscrossed by narrow footpaths. Rare surface roads slice through the greensward like unwelcome discipline.

Elliptical at its base, with slightly wider lower levels tapering asymmetrically toward narrow heights, Chance’s spire looks almost like an enormous blade of grass. Planted balconies that include a pod-docking space skirt most of its levels.

The front of Chance’s dining room is a curved picture window, with a view of the park’s forest canopy. The rear of the room transitions to an open kitchen. Light mellowed by high clouds soaks into the browns and mottled grays, filling the room with a composed and casual warmth.

After his night in the bar, Chance Three has had four hours of fretful sleep, a glass of orange juice, and a glass of tomato juice. He is now in the shower.

Chance One and Chance Four are fixing breakfast in the kitchen, their two bodies moving with an efficient and complementary calm, a choreography of shared intention. Of Chance’s drives, One and Four have the most disparate histories.

Chance One is forty years old and a hair under six feet tall. His parents were Reform Individualists, committed to life as solos. As a teen, Chance One was sensitive to how unusual that made them within their social circle.

Chance One came to believe that his parents’ determined intellectual independence was linked to the fact that they were a black couple in professional settings where they were considered minorities. When he felt his own life being pressured by that aspect of his identity, he cast about for alternatives. At the time, he was also in love with Chance Two. Joining preserved his identity and gave him others.

Chance knows those parents struggled with feelings of abandonment when he joined, though they never said as much. Chance wishes they had been more accepting of life’s potential.

Chance Four, on the other hand, was always expected to join. She was a child of the erroneously named and mostly abandoned “cloning” movement. She’s not a true clone but rather the result of an early, successful attempt at human genetic engineering. Her genes were contributed by more than two people.

Physically, she’s the healthiest of all of Chance’s drives, with seemingly inexhaustible energy, flawless brown skin, and long, straight black hair. Her agility and swift reflexes have earned Chance a string of Jai Kido championships in her weight class.

She’s also a carpenter, crafting modern, custom furniture from heirloom materials. A recent issue of InSpire Sense, A Magazine of Modern Living, featured an extended holographic exploration of her work.

After his shower, Chance Three walks behind Four and massages her sore shoulder for a few moments. The sex between Three and Four this morning evoked memories of their year together as Solace, a join of two. Then they tweaked Four’s shoulder, reinflaming a minor sparring injury.

Chance Three is wearing gray slacks and a thin green sweater, though the day is warm and the house is comfortable. He runs a little colder than the other drives. He also smells a bit musty to the others, but when he’s alone Chance can’t detect his body odor. He’s warm from his shower and lightheaded.

He’ll go to the morning meeting with Rope. It might have made sense for Four to go, but Rope has probably looked Chance up online. Chance doesn’t want to risk an implied insult by arriving with a drive Rope hasn’t met. Chance Four will stay close and do whatever research is needed. If Rope does actually get unpleasant, she can help save the day.

While Chance Three digs into breakfast, Chance focuses attention on One and Four. One and Four both have great mouths with complementary taste maps. They’re eating eggs with avocado and Sriracha (spicy food tastes better to the two of them than it does to the others), along with fried bread and dark-chocolate chia-seed butter. Chance likes to synchro-eat with them, chewing and swallowing in tandem.

Chance Five is out walking in the Pine, after which he’ll return to sleep. Because of the cancer, Chance has suspended his studies at the university and is keeping Five to a very minimal routine: meals, walking, sleeping, exercise, some socializing at the Spares Club—mostly pool and cards.

Despite the stress from Five’s diagnosis, the morning has started in one of those floating periods of satisfaction and easy tranquillity. All of Chance’s drives are smiling—even Two, who’s in flight with Leap. It’s nice to look around the dining room and see smiling faces.

The path Five is following skirts a gully. A jogger, also smiling serenely at some internal prompting, runs by, and Five notices her long legs in black spandex. Chance Five and Chance Three are both a little aroused. On the airplane, those sensations prompt Chance Two to tell Leap how beautiful the park is this morning. Leap flicks an index finger through the air (Chance imagines her advancing a diodrama on her retinal screen) and says, “Mind on your job, cowboy.” Leap is also happy this morning.

Without distracting Chance Two, Chance moves the left index finger of every other drive onto the same drive’s right radial vein. Five’s pulse won’t sync because he’s walking, but Chance still feels the profound percussive echo inside Five’s body as the other three hearts start to synchronize their beats. The combined rhythm of the others highlights Five’s pulse, making it easier to hear against the sounds of the morning walk—the slow breeze through aspen and pine, the crunch of Five’s feet on gravel, the crinkling of his windbreaker, the ringing of a birdcall.

Soon, Five’s pulse is a lightly driving tympanic time-and-a-half beat above the structuring bass of the other three hearts that are beating together. For a brief time, Chance falls into something of a trance, maintaining just enough awareness to keep connected to Chance Two’s routine.

It’s that entrancing, peaceful sensation that explains why Chance barely gets out of the house in time to make the meeting with Rope. Chance Three and Chance Four fly off in different pods.

One and Five are going back to sleep.

Bartender Apple is sitting on a stool in back of the bar when Chance Three enters. Across a pony wall, the restaurant has a weekend crowd bustling in for breakfast. Waitress Apple isn’t around. A short, bald drive with a pleasant, relaxed demeanor rises from conversation at the bar with Apple and walks toward the door. “Glad you could make it,” he says. “Rope Three.” He extends his hand, and Chance shakes it. He appears to be in his midsixties, wearing a loose gray cardigan, tan slacks, and loafers.

“I guess your other drive is probably—” Chance begins.

“Knocked out,” Rope finishes the thought. His smile is avuncular. His eyes crinkle in a friendly way. “How’s this one doing?” he asks, meaning Chance Three.

“All right,” Chance says. “I was moving slowly this morning, though.”

“I bet. You want to step into the restaurant?”

“Sure. I’ll have coffee.”

“Oh, you already ate?”

Leap Two does that twitch thing. They’ve completed their ascent, and Chance Two just notices it from the corner of her eye. She says, “You did it again.” They hit an air pocket, and the plane shudders.

“Start a vid if you’re so excited,” Leap says, deadpan.

“Look,” Chance says, “I don’t know what it is. But I’m seeing something real. You know I’m a doctor, right? Does it happen to your other drives too, or is it just this one.”

“I think you’re maybe stressed by the cancer,” Leap says. “As a doctor, you know the odds of that too. I bet you’re outlying right now, running all five drives and not getting enough rest. I’m gonna be completely straight with you, Chance.” Leap stops watching her instruments and turns to Chance. She’s calm, her voice even, concerned. “I don’t have a tic, or whatever it is you think you’ve seen. I’d know if I did. I’d have seen it in a mirror. I’d have felt it. I’d have knocked something over.”

When she’s annoyed, Leap is always willing to say whatever she thinks will give her space. It’s ludicrous to suggest that Chance’s sick drive is creating perceptual distortion in Chance’s join. There are documented cases, but that’s an absurdly rare syndrome that requires real weakness in the rest of the join.

“If you’re implying what I think you’re implying, then I’m fine,” Chance says. “I’m only running three right now. The sick one’s down. And my One.”

“Not enough,” says Leap. A smile is teasing the corners of her mouth.

Chance can’t help but laugh. “Jeez. I’m the doctor,” she says.

“I’m an EMT,” says Leap.

“In an ER,” says Chance.

“You should be careful,” Leap says. “You’re experiencing a trauma.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Chance says. “I can’t rest all my other drives. I have things to do.”

“Nothing that important,” Leap says.

“So now we’re talking about me.”

“Yes. But like I’m saying, I’m pretty sure that’s what we’ve been doing all along.”

“Yeah, I ate, that’s why I’m a little late.” Chance knows his Three drive just showed a hint of guilt, which is fine. Three felt stretched and dried this morning and needed the food when he got it.

Rope looks thoughtful. “We could walk,” he offers.

“No, no, I could use another cup of coffee. You probably haven’t eaten.”

“No, I haven’t.” Rope smiles. Chance motions toward the restaurant, and they start walking.

As they cross into the restaurant with Rope in front, a big man walks with them, walking beside Chance. He’s about as tall as the drive Chance met last night but broader in the shoulders.

Rope stops for a moment and turns to face Chance. The big man stops as well. “That’s me,” Rope says, indicating the other man. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“No, not at all,” says Chance, suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. This additional Rope is wearing charcoal slacks, a white dress shirt. He looks like a bodybuilder. The aisle through the bar is not wide. The new Rope drops back, and Chance is now walking between Rope’s drives.

“This is my Fourteen,” says the big Rope, from behind Chance.

Chance Four is sitting in a closed pod near a reflecting pool, a couple of minutes from the restaurant. She’s found Rope online and is stepping through public records for his drives, trying to calculate the number of people who joined to create Rope. Twelve of them are documented, but there are current references to him being a nine. The few older references she finds set him at different numbers, up to eighteen, and there doesn’t seem to be a pattern to the numbers. Sometimes, he’s mentioned as a nine, maybe a month later a fourteen, then a three. It’s very strange, and there isn’t any explanation of how he might be adding or subtracting drives.

But there is an article from several years ago about a drive’s death from alcohol poisoning. The article notes Rope’s “tragic history,” explaining that this is the third of Rope’s drives to die over a very short period.

There’s a little information about Rope Fourteen, the big drive who just sat down to breakfast with Chance. The drive was a feral. “Feral” is a term applied mostly to solos in communities that reject Join, but it also sometimes means people who are ideologically against it. Rope Fourteen grew up outside of civilization. He was living near the lava plains in eastern Washington when he joined. He’s got security training but doesn’t have a job.

Rope Three, on the other hand, is a city administrator and the oldest remaining drive in the join. A very well preserved ninety-one years old. Rope has apparently scrubbed his data stream. Rope Three’s daily activities are locked up, and what Civ News can be found about him is pretty generic.

Both Ropes are on one side of a restaurant booth; Chance Three is on the other. Rope Fourteen is saying, “As you may be aware by now, Fourteen was feral. It’s very rare and potentially dangerous to join a feral. I include a few. So I guess I’m a little feral myself now.” Fourteen and Three both produce an identical, toothy smile. Nothing friendly about it.

“I’ve read the literature,” Chance responds. (Chance Four is now doing a quick review of the join literature for feral solos.)

Chance Three says, “With multiple feral joins, there’s a significantly elevated risk of—”

“Yes,” Rope Fourteen cuts him off. “Whatever your Four is reading right now, I’ve already read it. I did the risk analysis. I found mitigations. I did the joins. They were without ill effect.” The Ropes smile again.

Chance is surprised. “How did you know it was my Four?”

“I’m something of a network geek.”

Chance leans back. Rope includes the accumulated experience of—if Civ News is to be believed—a staggering number of individuals, up to twenty-five. Chance is one of those who believe that very large joins can be at risk of acquiring an arrogance so potent and overweening that it becomes their dominant trait. It’s far more likely when a join is composed of similar individuals, though. Rope doesn’t strike Chance as overly arrogant, but ignoring the warnings of good research is definitely a negative indication.

“I found mitigations,” Rope Three continues, “that are not in the literature.”

“Do you mean you’re,” Chance says, “experimenting on yourself? What sort of mitigations?”

This time, only Rope Three smiles. He says, “Why did you come over and talk with me last night?”

Chance says, “Well, what sort of mitigations are you using? You know this kind of thing is right in my professional wheelhouse.”

“Yes,” Rope Three says. “You’re a join doctor. I thought mentioning that might get your attention. I’ll tell you soon. But I know you’re unlikely to believe that what I’m practicing, my techniques, actually work. You’ll think, If they’re effective, why aren’t they documented? Right? So I promise I’ll tell you what they are. But before that, I think we should learn a little more about each other. Why did you come over to talk to me last night? You have a new drive that’s terminally ill. I think you said it was cancer, is that right?”

“Yes,” says Chance.

“Fourteen will order for us. You want a doppio and a turmeric bear claw?”

Chance’s biopage notes those as favorites. Rope has done his research.

“Thanks,” Chance says. “Okay. Well, my Five’s a student. My name was Javier, before joining.”

And Chance suddenly remembers playing the hologame Fatal Ride with his best friend, Alain, in the old apartment that smelled of mildew. Alain was ruthless, an invaluable ally until the critical moment. Then he did whatever was needed to win.

“My parents were a honeymoon join,” Chance says. “Both professionals. We lived in the Andes. My Five is superb. Ninety-five plus in four intelligence dimensions, athletic, a sweet temperament. We joined about six months ago.”

“Congratulations,” Rope Three says.

“Thank you.”

“And you’re concerned about trauma, when the drive dies?” Rope Three asks.

“Yes.”

“You’re a doctor. You know that you’re at a fragile time.”

“Yes.”

“And why did you want to talk with me?”

“You have . . .” Chance hesitates. There’s something sharp in Rope Three’s look. Rope Fourteen is listening, impassive, and Chance feels certain that he’s received a warning of some kind. But Rope Fourteen has said nothing, and Rope Three is still smiling. Chance thinks about Leap telling him that he is off; that he is hallucinating.

“You have firsthand experience with drives who’ve died,” he says.

“I do,” says Rope Three. “And some who died very shortly after the join.”

“That’s why I came over to talk with you last night,” Chance says.

Rope Three’s smile is warm, comforting. “You want to know what it’s like to die,” he says.

“Yes, for a drive to die.”

“Yes,” says Rope Three. “Of course, your new Five will not die. He’s joined. He’s part of you now. But his old body”—Rope Three shrugs—“it doesn’t matter, does it? As a doctor you know that. You’re going to be fine. Yes, it isn’t fully integrated yet. Yes, it doesn’t feel fully independent, as your other drives do. But you’re aware that your anxiety is from the drive’s body intelligence. You don’t fully understand the drive yet. You’re not fully abstracted from it. So you fear something will be lost.”

“Yes,” says Chance. “That’s how I feel.”

“It’s unnerving to fear death. Our relationship with death is complicated.”

“Yes.”

“Now it’s almost as if you’ve forgotten it,” says Rope Three.

Rope Fourteen says, “But it hasn’t forgotten you.”

Chance is surprised by the switch to Rope Fourteen. Fourteen’s voice is measured, deliberate. “In my home,” he says, “the unenlightened see joining as a kind of predation. The consumption of a soul by a demon. They can’t imagine the continued existence of every individual in a join. Joining can be a very difficult topic for ferals. Many of them—in the context of their religious dogma—believe true mortality should be preserved.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that,” says Chance.

“But, of course, that’s foolish,” says Rope Three. “An opinion rooted in ignorance.”

“Still,” begins Rope Fourteen.

“I, personally, do have a problem—” continues Rope Three.

“With our immortality.” Rope Fourteen finishes the thought. Smoothly switching drives in midsentence can seem showy. It’s difficult to match intonation and inflection, to make the sentence sound as though it’s being spoken naturally, but Rope does it effortlessly, in a way that adds emphasis but seems perfectly natural.

“The problem that I have, at its core, its fundamental essence, isn’t with me,” Rope Three says. “It’s not about my existence.”

“It’s with you,” says Rope Fourteen. “The ‘other.’”

“In the beginning,” Rope Three says, “when Join was first introduced, and for a long time after, I assumed we’d all join. That we’d all become one single individual. Can you imagine that? No more other. No more competition. The largest category of risk for our species—the risk of competitive self-destruction—effectively zeroed out.”

The waitress arrives, not Apple One but a tall, fair-skinned woman with short dark hair and straight bangs. Chance doesn’t recognize her. He guesses that Rope Fourteen has used his retinal screens to order on the net. But the waitress doesn’t ask who wanted what. She sets the plates down—an omelet in front of Rope Fourteen, fruit and yogurt for Rope Three, the turmeric bear claw for Chance. Chance gets the doppio; Rope Fourteen has drip coffee; Rope Three has green tea.

“Anything else?” the waitress asks Chance.

“No, thank you,” he says.

Chance lifts his doppio, blows on it to cool it. Takes a sip. Rope Three nods at him and has a bit of the fruit and yogurt, blueberries and chunks of strawberry. He apparently enjoys it. He has another bite and smiles at Chance.

Chance takes a second drink of his doppio. He has an incipient perception that something significant has happened. He doesn’t speak. He tries to clear his mind, to coax it forward.

Rope Three leans toward him, across the table. “But in the last couple of decades”—he picks up the thread of his earlier thought—“the science has really started clearing up, hasn’t it? So we know there’s no conceivable way to do a completely safe join above one hundred. In fact, with our current understanding we can really only manage about twenty safely.” He sits back and sips his tea. Chance’s doppio is delicious. Rope Fourteen has already finished half his omelet. He doesn’t appear to be listening.

“So there will always be an other,” Rope Three says. “That is my problem. That is why I am disappointed.” He draws the last word out slowly, then says, “I am moved to change the situation.”

The avuncular smile again. “I sound like a diodrama villain, don’t I?” he asks.

Chance is surprised by the question. “Why a villain?”

“Well, obviously . . .” It’s Rope Fourteen who replies, his mouth full. He swallows his bite of omelet. “I like to kill drives.” His gaze is hungry.

Chance is not hungry and is regretting the meeting. “I think this is more than I was expecting,” he says.

“Very likely,” says Rope Three.

“I don’t know where you’re going with this,” Chance says. “I just wanted to ask about—my situation.”

“Yes, I guessed that, Chance,” says Rope Three. “And so I put together a demonstration that I hope will help you.”

As he had the night before, Chance feels the prickling of fear. Something about Rope is broken. Chance has seen pathological joins. He’s treated a few. Chance says, “Apple told me you might have used a fixative.”

Both Ropes regard him placidly. Rope Three says, “That would be illegal. And dangerous. If Apple said that, she shouldn’t have.”

“I didn’t believe it when she said it.”

“Thank you,” say both Ropes, in unison.

“But I do think something is going on with you.”

“Oh,” says Rope Three, amused. “You want to treat me?”

Chance takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I think meeting you here may have been a mistake. I’m going to leave.” But he doesn’t move. It’s not the fear, exactly. It’s something closer to curiosity, but of a strange, riveting variety, almost like weight in his limbs. As if it’s becoming difficult to move.

“Please,” Rope Three extends a hand. Chance watches it move toward him. “I’m sorry. I just think it’s important that we be honest with each other. I don’t think what I said should surprise you. Apple told you about me, didn’t she? I kill my drives. But don’t worry, it’s perfectly okay.”

That’s not what the literature says, but Chance nods anyway, though it’s difficult.

“You might not have completely believed what Apple told you,” Rope Fourteen says, “but it’s true. There’s more to it, though. I’m very well connected. I have friends on Vitalcorp’s board. So I don’t worry about Vitalcorp, about the Directorate.” He waits for a response. Chance nods.

“You’re concerned that the fear of your Five dying may destabilize your join,” Rope Three says. “Maybe start a pathological depression. But that’s not all. There are things you haven’t told anyone. You’ve been working your other drives hard recently, skipping sleep. You decided a few years ago to join with a few younger drives. But you haven’t been doing a good job of saving money to make that happen, have you? So, instead, you’ve been working harder. Taking extra shifts. You’re taking risks. You’ve fatigued your drives. You’ve been stressing yourself so much that you’re not thinking clearly. And now you’re sick, which makes it worse. Right, Chance?”

Rope Fourteen says, “Go ahead, Chance. Tell me the truth. That’s what we’re doing here, having a heart-to-heart, remember?”

On the airplane, Chance and Leap have flown into a gust of ferocious turbulence. They’re both focused on their displays. Leap is quickly sifting through metrics. Autonomy, the guidance system, is making suggestions.

“Chance,” Leap calls.

They’re hitting air pockets, and the cockpit is noisy. Atmospheric particulate levels are showing a dramatic shift, and a cold front they’ve been tracking is shifting in their direction. They’re definitely heading into a storm, but it’s spinning up more quickly than it should be. They’re also getting unusual electromagnetic readings. Things just don’t look right. They need a new plan, a new route.

“Whadda you think?” Leap’s been asking about an alternate route suggested on the shared display. Autonomy is waiting for approval. “Are we gonna take it? C’mon, cowboy!”

Chance isn’t doing what she should be doing. She’s not splitting her attention effectively. Something is wrong in the restaurant. Chance Three’s perceptions aren’t right. All of Chance is focused on Chance Three. In her pod by the reflecting pool, Chance Four is completely still, her dark eyes unfocused.

The plane rocks. Leap shouts, “Dammit, do something!” But Chance doesn’t respond.

Autonomy says, “The cockpit stress level is above the recommended threshold. Both drives present appear potentially compromised. Protocol S-Nine, initiated.”

“Fuck that,” Leap says. “I’m overriding.” She does. Chance doesn’t respond to the urgent request for confirmation. It subsides. Leap’s the captain now. She growls, “Goddammit, Chance! Shit. I’m not having an S-Nine on my record.”

Chance notices her display changing as Leap accepts a new, less-volatile route through the storm. The plane banks starboard, drops suddenly through an air pocket, shudders massively. Chance bounces against her restraints. There are loud banging noises. Starboard, a twister might actually be forming.

Flustered, Chance loosens up. Joins express themselves through drives in much the same way that solos express themselves using their limbs, their bodies. And, like limbs, in familiar situations drives may operate without much conscious oversight. An analogy is often made to a “flow” state, in which solos perform practiced activities with a speed that doesn’t allow for conscious interference. A person running multiple drives can put distance between the awareness of the join and one or more drives, allowing the drives to run semiautonomously, in a join-specific analog of a flow state.

Faced with two situations that require urgent attention, Chance does this reflexively, focusing awareness and jumping back and forth in bursts between Chance Two, in the airplane, and Chance Three, in the restaurant, leaving Chance Four in a kind of trance and Chance One and Five asleep.

Chance Three’s body is stiff. His jaw aches. Chance says, “Yes, I’ve been overtaxing my drives. I suppose you guessed all that. I don’t know how else you could know. I’m not proud of it. I’m not a risker. But I have been working hard. I want new drives.”

“I’m very glad you admitted that,” Rope Three says. “You’re doing well. You’ve done us both a great favor by being honest. It means we can move together to the next stage. Now, you’re a doctor. The next stage is the very beginning of a process that could result in you contributing to the greatest breakthrough in join science since the trial of one thousand.”

Chance shakes Chance Three’s head, to clear it. Chance is having trouble processing all that Rope is saying. Rope Three leans forward. He is earnest, sincere, his elbows going up on the table, his hands gesturing as Rope Fourteen leans back to make room for him.

“Some interesting things are going to happen now, Chance,” he says. “You should prepare yourself. Before these things begin, I have to warn you. You’ll want to contact the authorities. Your Four is positioned to do just that. But don’t do it. If you do, things will go badly for you. Believe me, I wouldn’t be doing this in public if I wasn’t sure that the authorities weren’t a threat to me and that I am in complete control of this situation.”

Chance Three aches. The drive’s muscles seem to be almost glitching, seizing up and then releasing rather than moving smoothly. Chance is focusing on clarifying his connection with the drive.

Rope Three says, “First, I think we should talk about the waitress.”

The waitress is suddenly there, beside the table, standing next to Chance. Chance Three turns to his left to look up at her. She says, “I think you almost caught on. I left a few small clues. This is my Twenty-One.” Rope Three sits back in his chair.

The waitress, Rope Twenty-One, continues, “I’ve poisoned your coffee. Your Three drive is going to die. You want to play the game, Chance, the real game, for unlimited stakes. This is the ante.”

“And to prove that I’m in the game too,” says Rope Three.

Rope Fourteen says, “I’ve killed my Twenty-One.”

Through the rising aches, Chance sees now that the waitress also seems to be in pain. She’s grimacing; she’s resisting it, concentrating, but her eyes are beginning to cloud. Chance realizes that Chance Three can’t move. The drive is somehow stuck. Chance begins pushing every cycle at it that can be mustered, but the limbs won’t move. The chest is freezing up. Chance can’t make Chance Three breathe.

Rope Fourteen says, “How am I going to do it? Well, I’m going to tell them that your number Three is my number Nineteen. I have a reputation for drive failures, so, in the early going I’ll insist that this was just two more failures. That invention will be uncovered quickly, but that’s okay. Its real purpose is to take advantage of some ambiguity in the laws around killing a drive. There are some suicide laws they interact with poorly. It’s a trick I’ve used before. Complicated, but the result is that the story will give me a helpful legal standing. And I have friends who will adequately obfuscate a couple of records. This incident will annoy my attorneys, but that should be the only blowback. And, of course, I lose my Twenty-One.”

As if on cue, the waitress falls. Her head smacks the table—a wet crunching sound—on her way down.

“A paralytic poison,” says Rope Three. “She had more than you did. I cannot describe to you what this feels like.” He’s quiet. Rope Fourteen’s face is composed. His eyes are closed, as if he’s meditating. Rope Three says, “But, fortunately, you’re going to see for yourself.”

Chance is struggling against a tide of panic.

“This is what you want to know isn’t it?” says Rope Three. “I’m glad you were honest. You’ll recognize that I’m doing you a favor. Your experience won’t be as rich as mine. I’ve had a lot of practice. I usually prefer a slower death, but I’m much better now at staying with the drive as it dies. Ah! Her heart just stopped.” Both Rope Three and Rope Fourteen are staring at Chance.

Rope Fourteen says, “Yours is about to.”

Broad, identical, senseless grins spread across the faces of both Rope Fourteen and Rope Three. Then Chance Three disconnects.

Chance seizes up. A period of blank unawareness. Of unspecified duration. When the lights come back on, each drive is pulling in a long, gasping breath as if it were rising out of a deep, cold dive.

Simultaneous reengagement with all drives.

Chance One sits bolt upright in bed, his eyes wide. There is tranquil, bright warmth and mellow sunlight through the windows.

Chance Two wakes on the airplane amid the rumbling and pounding of extreme turbulence, the plane shaking and banging, throwing her against her restraints. Blood is running from her nose, over her lips, spotting her blouse. She is groggy.

Leap Two is managing three displays, responding to the crisis and lack of assistance with a practiced and focused precision. Leap, shrugging off the churning and buckling of creation.

Chance Three is gone.

In her pod, Chance Four blinks at the retinal projector, then begins to scan Civ News. Chance has been unaware for a couple of minutes. Police have already started moving to the restaurant. Images of the dead drives have hit local info feeds, including one of Chance Three—openmouthed, slumped across the table with Rope Twenty-One on the floor beside him. Rope Three and Fourteen are nowhere to be seen. A few moments later, an explanatory heading is added, “Join Pioneer Suffers Freak Drive Failures, Details to Follow.”

Chance Five’s drug-induced hibernation wears thin. His eyes startle open. He also draws a shuddering, gasping breath. His eyes remain wide for a few moments. Then he breathes deeply and slowly relapses into slumber.

Within all this, Chance is struggling against a rapid flood of sensations and impressions, unable to fully process, to select relevance and filter the rest; to make sense of everything that’s happening or even some of it.

Chance remembers the face of Rope Twenty-One as she succumbed to the poison, the body struggling to survive but the eyes accepting, the awareness urging the body toward death rather than recoiling with it, rather than fighting against the insult.

And Chance rewinds through the battle with Chance Three’s failing body. A lurking sense of inevitability, as if a face could appear perfectly healthy while fronting a skull that is missing the cup that holds the brain. And Chance fighting to believe the evidence of the face, the story it’s telling, while each new moment advances a complete refutation. A sudden stabbing pain in the knuckles of an index finger. A liquid sensation at Chance Three’s waist. The weight and unforgiving hardness of the drive’s rib cage. The incremental petrification of the drive’s throat. Within an advancing delirium, Chance clings to a single, frightening certainty. Any assertion of health is a fairy tale.

Someone taps on the pod window. Chance Four tears her attention from the trickle of online news reports and is startled by the face of a Rope she knows—the drive who was drinking in the bar the night before. He’s bending toward the pod, motioning for her to open the hatch.

“Home!” she shouts in panic. “Chance, home!”

And the pod slides smoothly away from Rope, who straightens and watches as it slowly begins to ascend toward its vertical-lane height. Rope holds up his left hand as if urging her to wait. Her pod accelerates away, and he’s lost in the receding blur.

Chance changes destinations, heads toward the restaurant where Chance Three died. A comm request from Rope. She blocks it. Another comm request. The block option on the heads-up display appears to be confirming that Rope can’t be trying to communicate with her, that Rope is blocked. But a comm request rings again, a light, upbeat melody. Her small hand twitches as she flicks it to the messaging center. Another comm request from Rope. Chance Four shuts down comms.

She watches spires speed by, then studies the greensward below, the thick brush and trees glistening between spires. In a moment she’s over the broad, straight streets that lead to the front entrance of the Praxis Center. Then she’s descending. Then parked. The left side of the pod retracts, and she sits for a quiet moment, watching a growing hub of activity around the restaurant door.

It occurs to Chance that if comms go back on, Rope will track her drives. Chance One is at the spire apartment, reviewing security video. Nothing untoward is approaching the spire. Chance Two is instructing the airline system to enforce the personal comm block.

Chance Four steps out of the pod. No one pays attention to her as she reaches the group milling about near the restaurant’s entrance. The Join Praxis Center, where Chance works (worked!), is across the street, so emergency personnel are probably already on the scene.

Chance Four shoulders through the crowd toward a drive wearing a red jacket and a Vitalcorp Directorate badge.

“One of the drives who died was me,” she says. “The male.”

The Directorate drive looks her over. His eyes move as he accesses civilization records online.

“You’re disconnected,” he says.

“Yes. My drive was killed by a join named Rope, who I was having lunch with. The other drive who died, the waitress, is his Twenty-One.”

The Directorate drive is impassive. “What’s your name?”

“Chance.”

“Why aren’t you connected, Chance?”

“I’m afraid Rope will track me.”

“Why wouldn’t you just block him?”

“I tried.”

“You’re saying you tried to block Rope, and it didn’t work?” The skepticism in the Directorate drive’s voice is a wind of doubt that blows through Chance, leaving a deeper cold and a greater uncertainty.

“That’s right,” Chance Four says.

“Give me supervision, then turn comms back on,” he says. “I’ve already sent a request.”

Chance hesitates. The Vitalcorp Directorate will require that Chance turn on comms to be authenticated, to prove identity. They’ll believe that they can protect Chance, that their security is sound. But Rope has already shown an ability to override a block. Only civ admin levels have that kind of access. If Rope has civ admin authorization, Rope will be able to watch Chance’s interaction with the Directorate. If Rope is higher than civ admin—Vitalcorp Directorate admin or something else—Rope will have other, secret authorizations, the kind everyone knows exist but that aren’t made public. Turning on comms will make Chance vulnerable.

Usually, each drive has its own physical reactions, but in the face of overwhelming emotion, a physical response can reverberate from a single drive out to others. Adrenaline pulses through Chance Four as she confronts the Directorate drive, and an adrenaline response spreads to Chance One and Two.

Chance Four says, “I think Rope has at least civ admin–level access.”

The Directorate drive’s eyes flicker, and she knows he’s checking on Rope’s clearance levels.

“If we’re both talking about the Rope who just lost two drives in there,” the Directorate drive says, “then that Rope is a private citizen. Well connected, but only high citizen. No civ admin authorization.”

So Chance knows: Rope isn’t listed as having civ admin but can defeat a comm block. That means Rope’s got some other kind of clearance, and unless the Directorate confirms it, Chance can’t trust either the Directorate or the Directorate’s records or both.

Chance asks, “Then how did Rope override my comm block?”

“I’d need to check your comm block to know that.”

“I can’t give you access.” Chance’s frustration breaks into Chance Two’s voice. “He can override.”

It happens quickly—a decision—and then impatience overcomes the Directorate drive’s impassivity.

“I can’t help you,” he says. “Please step back, away from the entrance.”

He motions her backward.

“That was my drive,” she says. Her voice rises and frays.

The Directorate drive shakes his head. “Only two drives dropped. Both belong to Rope. We’re securing this area. Please step away from the entrance.”

She sees the beginnings of the question in his eyes: Is this drive (is she) psychologically fit? She drops back with the crowd.

Leap Two is acting captain. The turbulence has settled; the plane remains in-flight. Chance Two still has backup authorization on critical decisions.

“I lost a drive,” Chance says.

Leap had been reviewing storm-tracking data and forecasts. She sits up straight when Chance says this.

Leap says, “Autonomy, I approve the new course.”

The central screen that Autonomy uses to convey state clears to solid green.

Leap turns her chair to face Chance. “What? What do you mean? The cancer? I thought you still had time—”

A vestige of turbulence rattles the cabin. Chance and Leap both brace. Leap checks her right-side, heads-up display, then turns back to Chance. The alerts along the cabin window are showing faded yellow, low risk.

Chance Two reaches up to one of the few physical switches in the cabin, an aluminum pin above an engraved aluminum label that reads privacy. Chance switches it toward on. Leap watches with surprise and worry.

Chance speaks slowly, finding a way through the explanation. “No. Not Chance Five. Not the student. He’s still sleeping.” Chance’s voice chokes up, and her eyes water. She continues, “My Three, Leap. I died. My drive is dead.”

“What?”

Chance nods. Leap whispers, “Christ.” Then, coolly, forcefully, asks, “What are you talking about? What happened?”

“He was poisoned. I know who did it.” Chance can’t help it. She cries for a few minutes while Leap watches and the plane rattles occasionally. In the warm bedroom of the house, Chance One is crying as well.

“Poisoned?” Leap finally says. “What do you mean? That doesn’t happen.”

“Poisoned,” Chance confirms.

“But what do you mean? No one can get away with that. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Chance is inconsolable. Says nothing.

“Where are your other drives?” Leap asks. “I can come over with my One or my Three.”

“No,” Chance says. “I’ve got a drive sleeping. I’ll set my One down in a few more minutes. He’s just crying right now. My Four is near the restaurant, where it happened.”

“In New Denver?” Leap asks.

“Yes,” Chance says.

“Does it have something to do with this join named Rope losing two drives?”

Chance knows that at least one of Leap’s other drives has begun scanning Civ News.

“Both of those drives that died weren’t Rope’s,” Chance says. “I mean, I guess I don’t even know if either one of them were Rope’s. One of them was my Three.”

“But Civ News says they’re Rope’s.” Leap Two’s voice makes it clear that Leap is trying to understand. Why would Civ News be inaccurate? “Is that why you flipped the privacy switch?”

“Yes,” Chance says. “I needed to tell you. I might need your help, and I don’t want a record of this.”

Most employees consider the switch a quaint anachronism. If joins want a private conversation, they just connect using other drives. Chance has never used the switch before but appreciates that its continued existence acknowledges the value of a face-to-face conversation with a specific body.

“You can bring a drive to my place, so we can talk,” Leap says. Then, “After what happened earlier this morning . . . with you . . . they’ll want a little detail on why we turned on the switch.”

“I know,” agrees Chance.

“Okay. You want captain back?” Leap asks.

Chance experiences a momentary lightness, a swell of gratitude toward Leap. “No, I don’t. You fly. But thank you.”

“Okay,” says Leap.

Chance turns off the privacy switch. They fly for a while, neither of them talking. Chance doesn’t help and doesn’t pay attention to what Leap is doing. When they’re about an hour from landing, Leap turns on the privacy switch again.

She says, “I’m trying to get my head around this. You’re saying this Rope character, someone I don’t know, and that you’ve never talked about, killed your drive. Who is this? How do you know this person? Why would this Rope want to hurt you? I just . . . I don’t get it, Chance. What’s going on?”

Chance has been trying to make sense of what happened but is still numb. Leap watches her but doesn’t speak. It’s clear that neither of them has anything more to say, so Leap switches off privacy again.

Leap swipes open a comm channel. She reports the authorization changes so far and justifies them by describing Chance as physically ill. There’ll be an inquiry, but it’s one of the few reasons that may not carry a penalty. The death of a drive is reason enough for a join to step out of a command role.

Then Leap says, “Autonomy, primary flight assistance required. Leap will continue as copilot. Please confirm.”

Autonomy responds, “Confirmed. Primary flight assistance engaged. Autonomy will pilot flight number B-Two-Ten-CC. Leap is now copilot.”

Leap closes the comm channel, switches privacy back on, then turns to Chance.

Chance knows what Leap wants. She says, “Okay. I’m gonna tell you what happened, but, please, don’t do research as I talk. Rope is . . . informed. I’m afraid Rope will know you and I are friends and may be watching you as well.”

Chance gives Leap a quick summary of the meetings with Rope.

This time, they find each other on the Uyuni salt flat, the group Chance thinks of as Team Teenager. They’ve met before, when all of Chance’s drives are sleeping at the same time. It’s a dry day. A little chilly.

There are five of them—Ashton, Renee, Jake, Shami-8, and Javier—each of the individuals who joined to become Chance, each in late-teenage bodies. Chance is each of them and understands the differences between them, the emotions and beliefs that oppose one another. Chance reconciles them simply by inhabiting them all.

They sit in the stillness of the vast plain. The distant shadows of mountains circle them like curtains of night. Sunlight fills the space around them, and the sky is blue, but it feels as though the sun is down and the lucid world is a lie. They all know this is a dream. On the other side of what they can see, on the other side of the blue sky and the other side of the salt flat beneath them, is the same endless emptiness.

They’re seated around an old picnic table. A salvage from a place once called a state park. The table was a fixture in the home in Indianapolis where Ashton grew up. Ashton became Rocket One and then Chance One.

At first, all five are silent in the face of the change they’ve undergone. Then Shami-8 and Javier start playfully kicking each other under the table.

“You need to stop, now, boy. You’re gonna get yourself in trouble.” Shami-8, who became Chance Four, flashes a perfect, toothy grin. Her wide forehead, narrow chin, dark eyes pinched with mischief—all are familiar, beloved, lit from within by enthusiasm.

“I know your secrets. I know your moves before you move,” Javier says.

She raises an eyebrow. She’s not impressed.

Then she says to the whole group, “Even a sad meeting doesn’t have to start sad, does it?”

Jake, who became Chance Three, says, “I spend years studying join sicknesses, and then my body is killed by a sick join.”

The cold intensifies and all of them move, shifting uncomfortably where they sit. Jake looks down, not meeting the others’ eyes. “I was substantial,” he says. “I liked my body.”

“You had a nice body,” Ashton says, politely.

“Javier is awesome,” Jake says, “but he’s—he may be a short-timer. Javier—I know how painful this is for you.”

“It’s okay. I understand,” says Javier. “I’m sorry about the, my—” He shakes his head, looks out at the plains, which are stark in the reflected light, then continues, “I can’t even say it. I didn’t know I was sick. Man, I worked so hard to stay healthy, to be so fit. I mean, my body is amazing. This is just . . . I don’t know how it happened.”

“A nightmare,” Jake says.

“I’m sorry about that too,” says Javier, quickly. “I mean, Rope.”

There’s a long silence. When a choppy breeze finally passes between them, Renee, the young woman who became Rocket Two, and then Chance Two, says, “We were all going to lose our bodies, sooner or later.”

She tilts her head and regards Ashton, across the table, recalling their long conversations from years ago, their shared speculation on how it might feel to watch centuries pass from within the comfortable security of each other’s company.

“But will I remember me?” Jake asks. “I want to remember myself.”

“You will,” says Renee. “You’ll be here. And that’s what this is, isn’t it? A memory?”

“We should take my body out more. Use it while we can. We should enjoy it!” Javier is forceful. He sits up and looks directly at Shami-8.

“Yeah, that might be nice,” Shami-8 replies.

Ashton says, “We can do what we can, but we’re going to follow the treatment, and our doctor said to let Five rest and use its cycles for other things. Let it relax and try to heal.”

“I just . . . that’s me . . . I want to experience more before I’m history.” Javier scratches the wooden tabletop with a finger.

“Yeah,” says Jake.

“I’m sorry, Jake,” Javier says.

“You know, there’s still hope for Five,” Jake says. “But Javier, you should know what you might feel when your body does die. And the truth is, I don’t feel much different, in a way. I mean, I miss it. It’s painful. But I don’t know how else to say it: I feel okay. That’s not exactly right. I also feel . . . broken. And this is a setback, but I’m no worse than I was, really. That is, no worse than any of you are. And I have you. I don’t feel lost.”

“Thanks.” Javier says, clearly trying to follow Jake and accept what he’s saying. “I don’t know, though. The thought of losing my body hurts. It really hurts.”

“It hurts all of us,” Renee says. The others murmur agreement.

“I know how you all feel,” Javier says, “and you know how I feel. You know it’s not the same.”

Chance is suddenly with them, looking out of the eyes of each person at the table. Chance sees each of them perfectly from the perspective of each of the others. Each body and each face has a different tone, a different emotional shape.

Jake’s loss is a foundation. Javier’s fear builds on that.

The names dissolve as Chance One wakes in New Denver. The names can be so ephemeral. They’re critical before a join, when one name means one awareness riding the current of the present moment. When everything breaks apart, and rebuilds around parallelism and the union of what had been exclusive, names can lose their potency, become labels, become data.

Chance One pulls back a blanket and sheet. Chance Four is sleeping on the other side of the bed. Chance Four’s shoulder is chilled, so he pulls the sheet over it, covering the ends of her dark hair.

He stands. His feet swollen and dull, his skin dark against the cool, honey-colored hardwood. His body unbends slowly as he moves toward the bathroom. His lower back aches.

As Chance One steps into the bathroom and the lights come up, he makes a gesture toward the mirror above the sink to activate its interface. He summons vids of the house perimeter. Nothing worth noting. Perhaps Rope is busy with whatever legal fallout has come from the assault. Chance One taps above his temple to switch on retinal displays, then logs in through the airline account. He sleepily reviews some weather data, brushing fingers against the palm of his left hand to help manage the display as he pees.

He shuffles into the living room and the built-in lights begin to glow. It’s dark out, and the big windows onto the lawn and park reflect the inside of the house. Chance sits on a broad couch and watches the late news on a wall display. He says, “Scan for Rope, please.” His personal agent knows he’s spent some time with a join named Rope, and it knows which Rope, so related stories are prioritized, and he learns immediately that Rope has been arrested.

Civ News only has a few terse reports. The Vitalcorp Directorate is investigating Rope. Questions arising from inconsistencies in Rope’s statements and the statements of other interested parties have led to an inquiry. The Directorate has launched exhaustive autopsies and a full forensic analysis. Rope’s access to the net has been suspended, and the Directorate is in the process of finding and detaining his remaining eight drives. The whereabouts of two of Rope’s drives are currently unknown.

How the hell is Rope hiding drives?

The sheets slide off of Chance Four as she sits up. She rubs her sore shoulder, then walks to a desk in the bedroom. She unfolds a personal display and also starts reviewing news.

Nondestructive truth techniques can be applied to a captive drive to determine the whereabouts of a join’s other drives. Through Chance Three’s work at Shine’s Join Praxis Center, Chance actually pioneered one of them. Chance Four reviews recent literature about drive triangulation, searching for details that might help explain things, while Chance One continues scanning the news. The idea that two of Rope’s drives might be hidden creates a credibility problem with the entire story. The Directorate still hasn’t contacted Chance.

After what’s happened, and the stress of Chance Five’s illness, Chance knows that paranoia is a health risk, but that doesn’t slow the flood of possible scenarios. What if Rope has simply planted this slant on the story to lure Chance back to unrestricted network access? Could Rope be that influential?

The three major news agencies are all covering the story through brief updates. Stories like this are often single sourced, though. Rope wouldn’t necessarily have to influence all three agencies. But Rope would have to influence the Directorate. Rope would have had to use the Vitalcorp Directorate to build the story, and that would be a risky move, even for an executive senator. Which Rope is not.

That morning before sunrise, Chance Two rolls out of bed in a guest room at Leap’s house in the Olympic Archipelago, a bit groggy from the long flight and late landing. The storm they’d flown into was part of what’s beginning to look like a full split of the Great Central megastorm. Its quick formation in a low-probability location is consistent with the other two megastorm splits from the last two decades. The event profile is a very close match to the Bengal megastorm split that ravaged New Dhaka. That storm brought on the worst loss of solo life since the era of coastal flooding drowned the original Dhaka, along with many other major cities.

Chance and Leap had fought through the storm for an hour and then finally gone north to avoid it, dodging spirals from the northeast storm as they went. They had endured hours of rough flying, Chance helping as personal emergencies allowed. It had been a long day.

Chance Two stands and walks heavily to the door. Leap lives on an island in the archipelago. Leap’s house is built in the UMI (Universal Modal Infrastructure) Craftsman style—meant to resemble old homes of the Pacific Northwest, but on the modern service grid and with adaptive nanomaterial. It was Leap One’s childhood home, originally built by Leap One’s mother.

Chance pops the bedroom door open. The hall glows softly so the door to Leap’s room is visible despite the darkness of early morning. Chance stands in front of Leap’s door, waiting for the house to rouse her friend with the customary mild light, warm breeze, and soft tones.

“Chance, what got you up?” Leap One says from behind her, surprising her. Chance turns to face him. Leap One is leaning into the hall from the staircase. He doesn’t have a job, and Leap has him on an alternate schedule. She often keeps him awake while her other drives are asleep.

Chance pads over to the staircase.

Leap One says, “Let’s talk downstairs.”