Jaenne lowered herself out of the stratosphere onto Mycroft-4’s sundeck, twisted the control buckle of her anti-gravity belt to Off, sat down in the other auto-massage lounge chair, tapped her drink order into the armrest control pad, and said, “Hi.”

Mycroft-4 grunted noncommittally, not taking his eyes off the blue-black horizon where the sun would set in several hours. The chairs stepped closer together in a smooth motion neither person noticed.

“Are you still depressed?” Jaenne asked as a tall bamboo glass materialized in her chair’s cup holder, complete with paper umbrella and pineapple garnish.

“I guess so,” Mycroft-4 admitted.

“Good. I came over here to cheer you up. I’m glad to see I didn’t waste a trip.” Her lips sought out the straw, made contact. After a sip that burned her throat just the way she liked it, she continued. “What do you want to do today?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on! We have to do something. This is our last break before finals. You want to be happy and relaxed for your final education implants, don’t you? I know! Let’s go flying!”

“I don’t feel like it.”

“Sure you do! I’ll even let you pick: Jet pack, anti-grav belt, hover-surfboard, anything you want. We can race down the city-stem to cloud level and back up again. Loser has to give me a back rub.”

Mycroft-4 chuckled. “We don’t have to race for that. I’ll give you one now.”

“Okay!” Jaenne stripped off her shirt and flopped over on her stomach, almost faster than her chair could flatten itself out. Mycroft’s chair, meanwhile, retracted its leg support and pitched him forward to a sitting position, then sidled over to afford him the easiest reach to Jaenne’s bare back. He reached out and placed the palms of both hands in the small of her back.

She jumped. “Jeez! Have you been juggling solidified nitrogen again?”

Mycroft-4 blew into his cupped hands, then rubbed them together. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay. My Uncle Rafell went into cryostasis for five years once, until the doctors could figure out how to remove an alien symbiote disguised as a brain tumor. After he came out, his core temperature never got over 362 Kelvin. If I can hug him every year at the family reunion, I can stand your hands on my back for a while.” Jaenne covered one hand with the other, then perched her chin on top of the pile. Her wavy blonde hair bobbed back and forth randomly as she chair-danced to the music being projected at her from deckside.

“That’s an interesting pattern you’re wearing,” Mycroft-4 commented.

Jaenne raised herself up onto her hands and knees and looked down at her chest. “Do you like it? You don’t think scales are too passe’?”

“Iridescent blue ones, no.”

Jaenne sat up, interrupting her backrub so that Mycroft could get a closer look. “The left one is just makeup, so I could get an idea what it would look like.” She gestured to the other side. “This one I had done with gene therapy. Those are real scales I grew myself. It’ll wear off in a month if I don’t get the booster. You like?” she asked, shaking her shoulders provocatively.

“It’s nice, I suppose.”

“As long as we’re talking about this, let me ask your opinion. With this look,” she started, indicating her body, “Which hairstyle looks best? I’m going to a party later.” Jaenne put her hand up to her ear and squeezed her earring. Her hair immediately gathered itself up and formed a beehive on the top of her head. “This?” She squeezed again, and her hair shortened and thickened into a precise pageboy. “Or this?” Another squeeze, and her hair was long and straight and hung down her back to her waist. Jaenne ran through two dozen more styles and six different colors, leaving each one on only long enough for Mycroft-4 to see them and for the nano-stylists to recharge. Mycroft didn’t have a particular reaction to any of them.

Eventually Jaenne gave up. “You are just no fun today. What is--Hey! Isn’t this the week your brother heads off on that deep-space voyage to the far side of the galaxy?”

“Yeah, He leaves--” The patio door shimmered out of existence in front of Mycroft-4 to let his older brother step outside. “Well, I’ll let him tell you. Hiya, Trey.”

“Hey, Quad. Hey, Quad’s friend.” Mycroft-3 was the spitting image of Mycroft-4, only two years older. “You busy?”

“Not really,” Mycroft-4 said.

“Hmph! Well, if that’s how you feel,” Jaenne whined playfully, sat up, and redressed herself.

“You know what I meant. Strikes, we were just talking about when you leave for your final training and mission briefings.”

“Let’s see, Balls,” Mycroft-3 paused to look at the subcutaneous display implant on his left wrist. “My shuttle leaves for Luna Station Omicron in 15 hours and 28 minutes. In the next two weeks I will learn everything I need to navigate in both normal and hyperspaces of up to seven dimensions, and to maintain and repair the ship. I’ll learn twelve alien languages, both written and spoken--where applicable--for those species we’re likely to meet on the way. Once we’re ready, the three of us will head out to Jupiter to pick up our ship, and then we’ll be on our way.”

“Wow,” said Jaenne, impressed. “You get to go to Omicron? I hear they’ve got the largest flight cavern on the whole Moon.”

“That’s true,” agreed Mycroft-3. “I probably won’t be awake long enough to try it, though, what with all my studies. Anyway, I didn’t come out here to talk about myself. This is my last night on Earth for the next year or so, and I’m in the mood to go out and see some of it. Either of you interested?”

“What’d you have in mind?” Jaenne asked. Mycroft-4 failed to summon up any enthusiasm.

“I dunno. Maybe we could teleport over to Old Peking or New London and see the sights. Who wants moo shoo pork and chips for dinner? Or else we could go take the hovercar tour of the Previously Extinct Animal Preserve in the Sahara Wildlife Refuge. Or anything else you want. I just feel this need to say goodbye to everything before I leave.”

“You don’t mean...” Jaenne said, suddenly and briefly serious.

“Oh, no, nothing like that. My psychic advisor and the insurance company’s chrono-snooper both show that we’ll get back just fine. No, I just want to do something real, let off some superheated water vapor. This is my last day off until I get back. So, what do you say? You guys up for anything?”

Jaenne jumped out of her seat. “You bet!” Mycroft-4 sat still, looking more depressed than ever.

Mycroft-3 sat down next to his youthful duplicate, threw an arm around his shoulder, and said, “Come on, little brother, cheer up! I know you’re going to miss me. I’ll miss you too. But you’ll still have Ace and Deuce around to keep you in line. Plus, I recorded my psyche profile into the holo-caster. If you want to talk or anything, just activate my avatar. It’ll be like I never left.”

Mycroft-4 shrugged off his brother’s arm and walked over to the railing. He stared down past the lip of the city platform, through the light cloud cover below, to the green fields of meticulously recovered grassland. His eyes floated toward the horizon, where he could barely make out the rim of the ancient blast crater from a forgotten war. “I got my occupation profile yesterday,” he said softly.

Jaenne perked up, almost a neurochemical impossibility. “So did I! The computers say I should make it my life goal to marry someone rich. What did yours say, Mike-4? You could get lucky. Not organ donor, I hope. Is that why you’re upset? Are you going to be an organ donor?”

“No, not organ donor.”

“Well,” Mycroft-3 asked, “Is it something you don’t want to do? You don’t have to do the job they pick if it won’t make you happy.”

“No. I agree with the computer. I want to do the job they tell me I would be best at and happiest doing. I want it more than anything.”

“Then what’s the problem already?” Jaenne insisted.

Mycroft-4 faced the other two. He looked at his best friend, the girl with genetically pliable breasts and remote-controlled hair who always outran him when racing through the sky. He looked at his brother, his older co-cloned self, a man who was about to spend the next few years of his life in space, exploring the wonders of the universe and dealing with numerous alien cultures, while a computerized duplicate of his mind stayed home to keep his family company. He looked at his home, perched atop a three-mile high pedestal, where his every want and whim was taken care of by automated machinery almost before he could think of it. He remembered the wonders of the world, the miracles that modern science and technology had wrought, the convenience, the luxury.

A tear streaked down his cheek. “I want to write science fiction.”