For over a billion years, Alvin, the human race has lived in this city. Since the Galactic Empire fell, and the Invaders . went back to the stars, this has been our world. Outside the walls of Diaspar, there is nothing except the desert of which our legends speak.

«We know little about our primitive ancestors, except that they were very short-lived beings and that, strange though it seems, they could reproduce themselves without the aid of memory units or matter organizers. In a complex and apparently uncontrollable process, the key patterns of each human being were preserved in microscopic cell structures actually created inside the body. If you are interested, the biologists can tell you more about it, but the method is of no great importance since it was abandoned at the dawn of history.

«A human being, like any other object, is defined by its structure-its pattern. The pattern of a man, and still more the pattern which specifies a man’s mind, is incredibly complex. Yet Nature was able to pack that pattern into a tiny cell, too small for the eye to see.

«What Nature can do, Man can do also, in his own way.» We do not know how long the task took. A million years, perhaps-but what is that? In the end our ancestors learned how to analyze and store the information that would define any specific human being-and to use that information to re-create the original, as you have just created that couch.

«I know that such things interest you, Alvin, but I cannot tell you exactly how it is done. The way in which information is stored is of no importance; all that matters is the information itself. It may be in the form of written words on paper, n of varying magnetic fields, or patterns of electric charge. Men a have used all these methods of storage, and many others. Suffice to say that long ago they were able to store themselvesor, to be more precise, the disembodied patterns from which they could be called back into existence.