He shook his head. "It's been ten years, and nothing's changed. What's wrong with you? Do you honestly still believe that you're brave enough -- or crazy enough -- to be your own guinea pig? Do you?"

He paused again, but only for a moment; he didn't expect a reply.

He'd argued long and hard with the first Copy, but after that, he'd never had the stomach for it.

"Well, I've got news for you: You're not."

With his eyes still closed, he gripped the release lever.

I'm nothing: a dream, a soon-to-be-forgotten dream.

His fingernails needed cutting; they dug painfully into the skin of his palm.

Had he never, in a dream, feared the extinction of waking? Maybe he had -- but a dream was not a life. If the only way he could "reclaim" his body, "reclaim" his world, was to wake and forget --

He pulled the lever.

After a few seconds, he emitted a constricted sob -- a sound more of confusion than any kind of emotion -- and opened his eyes.

The lever had come away in his hand.

He stared dumbly at this metaphor for . . . what? A bug in the termination software? Some kind of hardware glitch?

Feeling -- at last -- truly dreamlike, he unstrapped the parachute, and unfastened the neatly packaged bundle.

Inside, there was no illusion of silk, or Kevlar, or whatever else there might plausibly have been. Just a sheet of paper. A note.

Dear Paul,

The night after the scan was completed, I looked back over the whole preparatory stage of the project, and did a great deal of soul-searching. And I came to the conclusion that -- right up to the very last moment -- my attitude had been poisoned with ambivalence.