I woke up in my spare body.

I’m not used to waking up at all. I don’t sleep, after all. I’m a mech.

Mechs are machine people. We’re logical by design. So I did what any logical person would do: I panicked.

I fumbled at the hatch in front of me. My metallo-ceramic fingers rattled clumsily against the latch but it obligingly hissed open. Through the opening I saw the blandly reassuring shapes of Kestrel’s creche bay. The other mech creches were inactive, but those designed for biologicals were busy. We don’t need much more than a secure closet for storing a spare body, but biologicals have to be reconstructed from the molecules up. Their creches are big, complicated, wet-chemistry affairs.

I pushed over to the rack and floated, looking at the telltales. Jaemon Rayleigh was in process, and his brother the Captain, and Able Spacer Zang.

Jaemon Rayleigh, Esgar Rayleigh, Erszbet Zang, and me. That was an ominous assortment. The last I thing I remembered I had taken a scan then headed down to Cargo Bay Two to meet with those very same people. We’d been expecting a visitor.

Of course your last scan is always what you remember when you’re reconstructed. Anything that happened after the scan was wiped out when you were killed.

“Kestrel,” I said.

“Yes, Dear,” said the ship. She always talked to us like that—as if she was our den mother.

“What happened?”

“We were attacked,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Attacked?” I said. “We’re docked at Solomon. He’s a dreadnought. What could attack us here?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m just waking up myself and piecing things together.”

“Waking up?” I said.

“Yes, Dear. Something knocked me out.”

“Knocked you out? How?”

“My guess would be an electromagnetic pulse.”

“You’re shielded,” I said.

“Perhaps it was a protocol weapon. Or perhaps a very big pulse. Solomon’s pier seems to have been affected.”

“You mean our berth?” I said.

“No, Dear. The whole pier.”

I thought it over. I felt odd. Understanding was slow in coming.

“I woke up in a creche,” I said.

“Yes, I know,” she said. “Your previous body is in Cargo Bay Two. It’s been badly abused.”

I wished I had the knack of swearing. Instead I allowed myself a brief burst of static.

“Next you’re going to tell me that the Captain’s in there, too,” I said. “And Jaemon and Zang.”

“Yes, Dear. And our visitor, Director Harken.”

“And they’re all dead,” I said.

“Of course,” Kestrel said. “You saw the creches.”

“Yes,” I said. “I did.”

I pushed myself over to the nearest one. Jaemon Rayleigh was in it, or anyway something that would soon be Jaemon Rayleigh.

We take immortality for granted. People live as long as they care to, as long as they protect themselves against accident by taking regular scans.

Now three people close to me were dead. For the hours it would take to rebuild them from their archives they were lost to me.

History isn’t one of my interests, but on this occasion I found myself musing about the distant past. Once upon a time death had been final. In those distant days a dead friend was lost forever. What was that like for those left behind? What was it like for anyone? At any moment a random event might take a treasured friend from you forever.

Were the reconstructed really the same as the people who were archived? Were they just copies? Someone had asked me that once. I had argued that the question was meaningless, that there was no real difference. A little later he himself had been reconstructed. Later we had laughed together about his nervous questions.

Now three good friends of mine were being reconstructed before my eyes. Those unanswerable questions preyed on my mind.

I laid a hand on Jaemon’s creche and watched the telltales track his progress.