“Damn,” a voice said. “I’m still alive.”

“Who is that?” Ritchie Castleman asked.

“It’s me, Moses Grelich,” a voice inside him said.

Grelich? Ritchie had heard that name somewhere before. Then he remembered. Grelich was the body he had bought to live his new life in.

Grelich said, “I was supposed to be dead. They promised me I’d be dead.”

“That’s right,” Ritchie said. “I remember now. You sold your body to me. And I was supposed to have bare-bones possession of it.”

“But I am still in it. It’s still my body.”

“I don’t think so,” Ritchie said. “Even if you are still in it, you sold it to me. It’s my body now.”

“So OK, it’s your body. Consider me your guide.”

“I don’t want a guide,” Ritchie said. “I bought a body, and I want to be alone in it.”

“Who could blame you?” Grelich said. “Some schlemiel in the lab must have muffed it. I’m still here.”

“Get out!”

“Calm yourself, boychick. I got no place to go.”

“Can’t you just... stand outside?”

“Like a ghost? Sorry, Herbie, I don’t know how to do that.”

“My name is Ritchie.”

“I know, but you’re more of a Herbie type.”

Ritchie let that one go. He muttered, “I need to get this mess straightened out. There’s got to be someone in charge around here.”

“I doubt it,” Grelich said. “This looks like a rich man’s apartment to me.”

“Where? I can’t see a thing. My God, I’m in darkness!”

“Don’t get so excited. I seem to still be in charge of the sensory apparatus. Go ahead, take a look. I turn the vision over to you.”

The scene suddenly opened up to Ritchie’s senses. He was lying in bed, in his bright, high-rise apartment on Central Park West. It was daylight. Sunlight was pouring in the window. Across the room he could see his mechanical exercise horse. The Chagall print still dominated one wall.