Laura frowned. "You don't really believe in that crap."

He shrugged. "No. Seeing your O.P. it's a fad. Like folks used to see UFO's, you know? Some weirdo in Oregon says he had an encounter with his personal archetype. Pretty soon, everybody and his brother's having visions. Mass hysteria, collective unconscious or some such. Stupid. But modern at least. It's very new-millennium." He seemed obscurely pleased.

"It's mystic bullshit," Laura told him. "If it was really your Optimal Self, you should have been building something, right? Not beachcombing for Nirvana."

David looked sheepish. "It was just a dream. Remember that documentary last Friday? The guy who saw his O.P. walking down the street, wearing his clothes, using his charge card? I got a long way to go just yet. ",He looked down at her ankle and started. "What'd you do to your leg?"

She looked at it. "I tripped over a piece of hurricane junk.

Buried in the sand. A VCR, actually." Loretta woke up, her tiny face stretching in a mighty toothless yawn.

"Really? Must have been there since the big one of '02.

Twenty years! Christ, you could get tetanus." He handed her the baby and fetched a first-aid kit from the bathroom. On the way back he touched a console button. One of the flat display screens on the wall flared into life.

David sat on the floor with limber grace and put Laura's foot in his lap. He unlaced her shoe and glanced at its readout. "That's pretty rotten time. You must have been limping, babe."

He peeled off her sock. Laura held the wriggling baby to her shoulder and stared at the screen, distracting herself as

David dabbed at her raw skin.