1. The Thin Man
The thin man with the close-cropped hair was already on the park's running track when Delia arrived for her Sunday morning exercise. She'd seen him once or twice before, arriving or leaving as she departed or arrived, but this was the first time that they'd been on the track at the same time, and only now did she realize quite how fast he was. She thought of herself as one of the better runners in that strictly casual setting, but he lapped her twice as she ran her customary two kilometers.
Not that she resented this, she decided, as it meant that she twice had a good view of him from behind. He was wearing one of those new microtech running suits -- one of the skin-tight things, doubtless loaded with sophisticated medical monitoring gadgets -- and she decided that his ass, while as free of excess fat as the rest of him, was perfectly proportioned and well worth watching.
Then, her distance done, she flopped onto one of the benches in the middle of the loop of the track, and paused to breathe and take in the sun and the birdsong. The thin man finished soon afterward, and chose to sit on the other end of the same bench. At least he had the grace to look winded, she noticed.
"You're fast," she said sociably along the length of the bench. "You compete somewhere or something?"
He glanced round, seeming surprised to be addressed. "No," he said, "just doctor's orders."
"Oh, hey. You've been ill?"
"You could say that. Now, they're telling me I need to build up my stamina again."
"But you're better now, I hope?"
"Yes -- fine, thanks. Well, the hospital still gets to run a few tests, but those are all saying that there's no problem. I'm back where I should be -- but the exercise helps."
"Glad to hear it. You do look good on it. I'm Delia, by the way."
"Thanks. I'm Edgar." Delia reflected that she didn't know any Edgars. Perhaps it was a traditional name in his family.
They chatted for a while about running times and schedules, and then, during a pause in the conversation, Delia squinted along the length of the bench at her new acquaintance, suddenly remembering, first, how she'd had a thing about skinny athletic men in her teenage years, and second, how many weeks it had been since she'd found the time and opportunity to get laid. She decided that today, she was feeling adventurous and not like delaying anything.
"Hey," she said, "are you doing much this morning?"
Edgar looked startled for a moment, and then thoughtful. "No," he said, "I'm not due for the next checkup until five. Why?"
Delia smiled. "I just wondered if you'd like to come back to my place," she said.
For a moment, Edgar looked startled, even shocked. But then he smiled broadly. "Sure," he said, "why not?"
***
Delia definitely felt curious about the undefined illness which had put Edgar in hospital and which now required continuing tests even though he was clearly well, but asking outright, when he kept skirting round the subject, seemed impolite. In fact, Edgar said little on the short walk back to Delia's apartment, and his few attempts at smalltalk all involved new exercise technologies and running schedules. Delia might have begun to find him boring, except that she noticed that he kept darting glances at her legs or her chest, and she realized that he was gabbling. He was actually nervous! Once she understood that, she began to feel smug; it seemed that her rather blatant offer of sex had produced a dramatic effect on this man.
As soon as they entered her apartment, Delia threw her arms around Edgar and pushed her tongue into his mouth. He responded with more excitement, and she felt an instant, promising bulge at his crotch. It suddenly seemed like things might even be going too fast for her to fully enjoy the experience, so she stepped back a pace, smiled, and drew him by one hand into her bedroom, kicking off her running shoes as she went through the door. Edgar did likewise, and then she guided him to the bed, where they knelt facing each other.
Delia unfastened her shirt and cast it aside, revealing her running bra (not very erotic, damn it, but she didn't plan for it to be a problem for very long), and then helped Edgar remove the top section of his running suit. (He was actually shaking now.) He was wearing a lightweight under-vest, and she was pleased to notice the low rectangular bulge of a medical implant system on his shoulder, the display showing through the usual patch of transparent synthetic skin. On routine habit, she reached up and gave it the standard three quick taps with a fingernail, causing it to display his
general public status message. She was expecting the standard No-Transmissible-Diseases text, but instead something unfamiliar scrolled across the display. She frowned, and leaned forward to read it.
Then she gasped, and pulled back. Edgar looked puzzled, but then he realized what she had been doing and seemed almost to fold in on himself, looking crestfallen.
"You're... You're Restarted!" Delia blurted out.
Edgar nodded. "I thought -- I hoped that you might have guessed," he muttered. "I look it."
"How was I supposed to know how Restarted look! It's hardly common!"
"Oh yes." Edgar seemed genuinely taken aback by that thought. "With all the privacy laws these days, you don't see people who are fresh out of the process on the news, do you? Well, this is it."
Delia stared at him. "How old are you?" she demanded.
"Ninety-three." Edgar admitted. "I had my birthday while I was unconscious -- while they were rebuilding my body. But that's just... I'm told that this body is about how I was when I was twenty-five or so. But there's a lot of variation in specific aspects."
"Sod specific aspects!
Ninety-bloody-three?
" Delia continued to stare. "I'm twenty-six! I'm young enough to be your granddaughter!"
"Actually, so far as I remember, all my grand-kids are older than that."
"
So far as you remember?
What does that mean?"
"It means that my memory is a bit patchy. Don't you know anything about the Restart treatment?"
"Not much... It all seems a bit weird to me, and I haven't paid much attention."
"Well, it's like this. You can't rebuild the body without rebuilding the brain. Whatever we like to think, they're all tied together. But if you rebuild the brain, you tend to wipe a lot of memories. Memories are much the same as damage, so far as the treatment is concerned. That's one reason why they only take people who can't be helped any other way, who are on the way out -- younger people have too much to lose. Most of us are more or less Alzheimer's cases, truth be told. I was getting pretty hazy before they treated me. I'm still piecing my life back together."
"Jesus, this is too weird." Delia realized that she had her arms folded tight across her breasts. Edgar turned away from her and sat on the edge of the bed, looking away from her face.
