Krakatoa was gone. Everything was gone. There were new reefs thrusting up, black and stinking of sea bottom. There were black clouds of volcanic smoke and dust rumbling with thunder and lightning. I was in shock for five days, which might have been five eternities, until I was picked up by a Dutch freighter. They were sore as hell about the disaster, which had delayed them by three days and acted as though it were all my fault, like I’d been playing with matches. That’s the history of my death and the miracle that saved me. That’s what turned me into a Molecular Man.

Now the hell of it is that it’s pretty tough to arrange a volcano or a Black Death or a Hairy Mastodon when you want to recruit a man into immortality, and it’s even tougher staging a miraculous save from the catastrophe. I’m pretty good at cruel killing but when it comes to the rescue I keep failing no matter how carefully I prepare. I did succeed with Sequoya, but I have to be honest and admit that the miracle was an accident.

Jacy is always pained when I call it a miracle. He spent a few months with me in Mexifornia and when I repeated my theory about what happened to the Group (the hell of longevity is that you get garrulous and repetitious) he said, “No. Miracles are the constituent elements in the divine revelation, deeds which display the divine character and purpose.”

“Yes, yes, I know, Jace, and what could be the divine purpose in keeping the likes of me alive forever? All right, I’m the product of nineteenth-century rationalism. Would you buy a rare coincidence of improbability and biochemistry?”

“You sound like Spinoza, Guig.”

“Now that’s a compliment. You ever meet him, Jace?”