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Timothy looked in the rear-view mirror. The police high beams reflected off it and highlighted a rectangle of yellow light around Timothy's eyes. He squinted. He saw Tricia and the Jetta continue driving past him. She turned to look at him as she passed.

The police officer got out of his cruiser and walked, heels crunching gravel, to Timothy's window. ‘License and registration, please.'

Timothy smiled gamely. He tried to keep his mouth closed, to prevent the tell-tale odor of Scotch from leaving his car. He leaned over, popped the glove compartment. He took out the registration and handed it to the police officer.

‘License please?'

Timothy reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. His fingers flipped through a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills. He thought about it, weighed the probabilities. Cash had worked that night at the opera, years ago, when he was caught speeding on highway 101.

His index finger rested on the dirty, oddly consoling texture of the bills. He recalled the conversation with his wife in bed the previous night, when he had promised her that he had changed. The old Timothy would have grabbed the thick wad of hundreds, waved it at the cop, comforted by the knowledge that money always let him buy his way out of trouble. But what would the new Timothy do? He was half surprised to see his own index finger leave the bills and skip to the wallet pocket where he kept his license. He watched himself remove it and hand it to the police officer, then he shut the wallet tightly, with the hundreds trapped inside.

‘He all right?' the officer asked. It took a moment for Timothy to realize he was talking about the Kid, who lay sprawled across the back seat of the car, snoring. His feet were stuffed into the back window.

‘He had a little too much to drink,' Timothy said. ‘I'm designated
driver tonight. Just trying to get him home safe. Right down the road.'

‘You been drinking?' the officer asked.

Timothy thought about this. It must have been obvious to the policeman – the smell on his breath. Maybe he was slurring his words. ‘A lot less than him,' Timothy said. ‘Just trying to do the right thing and make sure he doesn't get himself killed.'

The policeman looked at Timothy's driver's license, then at Timothy. He handed the license back.

Timothy took it and glanced at the photograph. It had been taken only two years ago, but he was surprised by how young he appeared. He looked at himself in the rear-view mirror. There were bags under his eyes, and his skin was pale in the police high beams. His hair was grayer now. He looked tired.

‘Okay,' the policeman said. ‘Take him to his home. When you get there, sit down for an hour or two, until you can drive safely. If I see you on the way back, you're going to spend the night with me.'

‘Okay, Officer.'

When he arrived at the 3600 Sand Hill Road office complex, the parking lot was deserted except for Tricia, sitting in the Kid's Jetta, waiting for him.

He pulled into the space beside her and got out of the car.

‘You made it,' she said. ‘Any problem?'

‘Nothing I couldn't talk my way out of,' he said. ‘Help me get him out of the car.' They pulled the Kid out of the BMW, feet first, and sat him gently on the pavement. Each grabbed an arm, and lifted him to his feet.

‘You okay, Kid?' Timothy said.

The Kid moaned.

‘Okay,' Timothy said. ‘Let's go.'

They carried him up three flights of stairs to Ho's office. When they knocked on the door, the doctor answered immediately. ‘You're late,' he said, and looked at his watch.

‘Sorry, Doc.' Timothy and Ho carried the Kid down the corridor, into Laboratory #1, and stretched him out on the floor. Timothy was out of breath.

Dr. Ho walked to his computer terminal and typed something. In the back of the room, the hundreds of computer fans hummed.

‘All right,' Dr. Ho said. He walked to the laboratory island in the center of the room, lifted a hypodermic needle, held it up to the light, tapped it. ‘Are you ready, Mr. Van Bender? This is a sedative. It will help you sleep during the backup procedure. The procedure itself will be painless.'

‘Where do we do it?' Timothy asked.

Ho gestured to the door at the back of the room marked ‘Keep Out.' It led to Laboratory #2.

‘Can I see the equipment?' Timothy asked.

‘Sorry, Mr. Van Bender,' Dr. Ho said. ‘These are the rules. No one sees the lab or the equipment. Not even the patients on whom I perform the procedure. Your wife wasn't awake, either.'

Tricia said, ‘That's true, Timothy.'

Timothy regarded the doctor suspiciously.

Ho said, ‘It's up to you, Mr. Van Bender. We can do the procedure, or not.'

Timothy thought about it. Was there even a choice? He couldn't continue living as Timothy Van Bender. He had gotten this far. Now, all he needed was to exert his will. That was all that was required: sheer will. ‘Okay,' Timothy said.

Dr. Ho approached with the needle. ‘Are you ready?'

Timothy turned to Tricia. ‘I love you, Katherine.'

She kissed him. ‘I love you, too.' Then, brightly: ‘Nothing to worry about. I'll see you when you wake up … Jay.'

He smiled. He would need to get used to that. When he woke up, he would be Jay Strauss, the Kid. At least, one of him would be. The one that was destined to continue living. ‘Okay,' he said. ‘Let's go.'

He rolled up his shirt sleeve and held out his arm. The doctor wrapped a rubber tourniquet around his forearm. ‘Make a fist, please.' Ho rubbed the vein in his arm. Timothy turned to look at Tricia and felt the needle go in, and then the warmth of the injection.

‘There,' Ho said. ‘You'll start to feel very relaxed now.'

Timothy did.

‘Come,' Ho said. ‘Have a seat.' The doctor led him to a plastic chair near the computer monitor. Timothy sat down. He was going to ask for a glass of water. But before the words could come out, he went to sleep.

48

When he woke, he was seated in the same chair. Ho was standing over him, saying, ‘Mr. Van Bender? Mr. Van Bender?'

Timothy's eyes fluttered open. He was still groggy from the sedative. He knew something momentous was happening, but couldn't quite remember what. He looked around the room, at the racks of computers – hundreds of them – and at the plasma computer monitor in front of him, filled with an endless string of binary digits scrolling off the screen.

‘It's done, Mr. Van Bender. The backup procedure was a success. An identical copy was restored into the new vessel.'

Timothy remembered now. The Kid. He was to become the Kid. He looked down at his clothes, and at his body. He was wearing the same chinos and a white button-down shirt that he had worn to dinner. He looked at his arm – the graying hair on his forearm poked out from his sleeve.

‘But I'm still—'

‘You are Timothy Van Bender. The Timothy Van Bender whose line will not continue.'

Timothy looked around the room. Rows of computers hummed. ‘Where's Katherine? Where's—'

‘They left for the airport. They said it was important for them to catch a plane. They said you'd know what that meant, and that you would understand.'

Now it was coming back to him. He was the unfortunate Timothy Van Bender. There was another one, the lucky one, who was driving to San Francisco Airport with his wife. Timothy looked at his watch. It was five minutes before ten o'clock. Tricia and the Kid – or rather, Katherine and Timothy – would be boarding their flight soon, and would be taking off on the red-eye for New York.

‘Do you remember what you have to do now, Mr. Van Bender?'

Ho peered at him through his tiny spectacles. He looked sad, as if he regretted this part of the Plan.

‘I know,' Timothy said. ‘I need to end this line.'

‘The sooner you do it,' Ho said, ‘the easier it will be. Remember, you are alive somewhere else at this moment, living in another body, driving in a car with your wife.'

‘I know,' Timothy said.

‘I'm going to give you something,' Ho said. ‘A sedative. It won't put you to sleep, but it should make things … easier.' He produced another hypodermic needle and held it, needle side up, near his face.

Timothy was groggy already, and so didn't protest. Ho took his arm and rolled up his sleeve. Again Timothy felt a pinch, and then heat, as the injection spurted into his vein.

‘Can you get up?' Ho asked.

Timothy tried. He pushed up from the seat and stood, shaky, off-balance.

‘You know what you have to do now, Mr. Van Bender?'

Timothy nodded. He knew. He looked around the room one last time – at the computers, at the monitor, at the door marked Keep Out. He knew he would never return here. ‘I know,' he said.

He stumbled out of the lab.

He drove back on Sand Hill, toward Palo Alto. He half expected to see red and blue police lights behind him, to be pulled over by the same officer and have to explain that, in addition to a Scotch, he was now under the influence of a mild intravenous sedative. But the lights never appeared and so he continued driving, careful to keep the speedometer needle at thirty-five.

He glanced at the clock in the dashboard. It was ten minutes past ten o'clock. At that moment, the Kid – or rather, the other Timothy Van Bender – was flying on an airplane with Tricia Fountain, who was, in fact, his wife Katherine. It boggled his mind. He felt dizzy. Maybe it was the drug Ho gave him. He
found it hard to concentrate, to focus on the events of the evening. There was something bothering him, some doubt gnawing at his gut – and it took him a moment to realize that it was, in fact, fear. He was afraid of what he had to do next.

He understood what Ho meant when he said that the sooner he did it, the easier it would be. Every minute he spent alive, in his old body, made him grow further apart from the other Timothy Van Bender. If he ended it now – by driving into a telephone pole at sixty miles an hour, say, or by pulling into his garage and letting his BMW engine idle – he would exist independently only for a few minutes. He could comfort himself by knowing that his existence as a being that was separate from the other Timothy Van Bender was limited – limited only to a car ride down Sand Hill Road – a ride that was essentially meaningless, a ride he had taken a thousand times before.

But the longer he waited, the more distance would open up between himself and the other Timothy – the Kid Timothy. He would have more experiences, like the smell of jasmine rolling down the foothills and pouring through the car vents, and more thoughts, like the one he was having now. It was as if they had been standing beside each other – he and the other Timothy – and then the earth opened and a chasm split the ground between them, and grew wider, and carried them further apart, into their own worlds. The longer he waited, the further away he would be carried, the more he would live independently. The longer he waited, the harder it would be.

He was going to head home, and just do it – just pull into the garage, and close the garage door behind him, and let the car run, and fall peacefully asleep – but then he rolled down his window and he smelled the warm night air, and he decided, what the hell, why not have one more drink?

So he stopped in downtown Palo Alto, across from the train station, and parked alongside the Old Tavern. It was a place he liked to go because they kept it dark, and they let you smoke, and it smelled like cigars.

He left the BMW without locking it, figuring that, if it was
stolen, then so be it, and he walked ten feet from his car into the tavern.

It was Wednesday-night dead, with a smattering of people – some college students, and a few businessmen in tight, itchy suits, looking around for girls that were not there. Timothy walked to the bar and ordered a Scotch. One more for the road. The very long road.

‘Here you go, buddy,' the bartender said. He was an old man, balding, with a goiter on his head. He slid a glass of neat Scotch to Timothy. Timothy took a seat.

There was a sudden increase in crowd noise – some kids behind him were laughing too hard at a joke, and clapping their hands in drunken approval. Timothy tried to ignore it and concentrate instead on what was important – his Scotch. He picked it up and took a sip, and it warmed his throat and tasted astringent, and he thought, My last Scotch. That is good.

He did not doubt that he would be able to do it, to finish the Plan that he had set in motion days ago. He knew that he – sitting alone in a bar – was the only loose end, the only thing standing between Timothy Van Bender and success. Within hours, the lucky Timothy Van Bender would arrive in New York with Tricia Fountain, and he knew exactly where they would go next – because it was where
he
would go – to the Four Seasons on 57th Street in Manhattan, and they would check in, and maybe head to the bar for a nightcap, and then, finally, go up to bed, and fall asleep in the cold clean sheets, in each other's arms. A week or two later, when the excitement in Palo Alto died down, Jay Strauss would return to the Bay Area, and would head straight for the Union Bank on University Avenue, and would withdraw four million dollars from the POD account, and then begin his new life. He would not be haunted by the federal government, or by lawsuits from angry investors, or by a Palo Alto policeman trying to pin a murder on him, or by Tricia's old boyfriend with steel-toed boots.

He would simply live his life, alongside the wife he had known for twenty years and, together, they would have their second chance.

He finished his Scotch and put the glass down on the bar. He felt good now, and tired, and a bit dizzy. The bartender said, ‘Another?' and Timothy shook his head no. He would end things here, with the last taste on his lips a good one, and an easy warmth in his belly.

The bartender nodded, and handed him a check. He took out his wallet and put a hundred-dollar bill on the bar. Why not? he thought.