“It’s my apartment,” Ritchie said. “I guess they put me back here after the operation. Shouldn’t there be a nurse?”

“A nurse! The boychick wants a nurse!”

“It’s just that I’ve been through a considerable operation.”

“And I haven’t?”

“It’s not the same thing. You’re supposed to be dead. You don’t need a nurse. Just a disposal service.”

“That’s a hell of a thing to say.”

Ritchie was a little ashamed of what he had just said. But this was a new situation for him. Just yesterday he had opted for the newly developed choice of putting his mind into a new body. This had become necessary when his congenital heart defect suddenly started acting up. There had been no time to lose. He had gone to Mind Movers Technology Company, and found that they had one body he could take over immediately. Moses Grelich had decided to opt for self-obliteration, to sell his body, and to leave his money to Israel.

Yesterday the operation had taken place.

The doorbell rang. Ritchie slipped on a bathrobe and slippers and went to answer it, thinking maybe it was the nurse the Company should have sent in the first place.

He opened the door. Standing there was a tall, skinny old lady, her dark hair pulled back and tied in a messy bun. She was wearing a plain cloth coat. She carried her purse in one hand, a white paper bag in the other. There was something about her... Ritchie thought she must once have been a beauty.

“Is Moses here?” she asked timidly. “They gave me this address for him at Mind Movers.”

Ritchie felt like one of those guys in a fable. Since Grelich had taken over the body, Ritchie could see and hear, and sometimes even speak, but he had no control over anything else. And no body sensations. When the body walked, Ritchie had the sensation that he was floating about six feet above the ground.

“I’m here!” Grelitch said out of Ritchie’s mouth.