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sure that not one iota of his memory would be lost. Now it was boring, almost juvenile. Key thought. Do you have your own Captain Aardvark secret decoder ring? Be the first on your block. The only thing Barth had been the first on his block to do was reach puberty. He had also been the first on his block to reach one hundred fifty kilos.
    How many times have I been here? he wondered as the tingling in his scalp began. This is the eighth time. Eight times, and my fortune is larger than ever, the kind of wealth that takes on a life on its own. I can keep this up forever , he thought, with relish. Forever at the supper table with neither worries nor restraints. “It’s dangerous to gain so much weight,” Lynette had said. “Heart attacks, you know.” But the only things that Barth worried about were hemorrhoids and impotence. The former was a nuisance, but the latter made life unbearable and drove him back to Anderson.
    Key thought. What else? Lynette, standing naked on the edge of the cliff with the wind blowing. She was courting death, and he admired her for it, almost hoped that she would find it. She despised safety precautions. Like clothing, they were restrictions to be cast aside. She had once talked him into playing tag with her on a construction site, racing along the girders in the darkness,
until the police came and made them leave. That had been when Barth was still thin from his last time at Anderson’s. But it was not Lynette on the girders that he held in his mind. It was Lynette, fragile and beautiful Lynette, daring the wind to snatch her from the cliff and break up her body on the rocks by the river.
    Even that, Barth thought, would be a kind of pleasure. A new kind of pleasure, to taste a grief so magnificently, so admirably earned.
    And then the tingling in his head stopped. Anderson came back in.
    â€œAlready?” Barth asked.
    â€œWe’ve streamlined the process.” Anderson carefully peeled the cap from Barth’s head, helped the immense man lift himself from the couch.
    â€œI can’t understand why it’s illegal,” Barth said. “Such a simple thing.”
    â€œOh, there are reasons. Population control, that sort of thing. This is a kind of immortality, you know. But it’s mostly the repugnance most people feel. They can’t face the thought. You’re a man of rare courage.”
    But it was not courage, Barth knew. It was pleasure. He eagerly anticipated seeing, and they did not make him wait.
    â€œMr. Barth, meet Mr. Barth.”
    It nearly broke his heart to see his own body young and strong and beautiful again, as it never had been the first time through his life. It was unquestionably himself, however, that they led into the room. Except that the belly was firm, the thighs well muscled but slender enough that they did not meet, even at the crotch. They brought him in naked, of course. Barth insisted on it.
    He tried to remember the last time. Then he had been the one coming from the learning room, emerging to see the immense fat man that all his memories told
him was himself. Barth remembered that it had been a double pleasure, to see the mountain he had made of himself, yet to view it from inside this beautiful young body.
    â€œCome here,” Barth said, his own voice arousing echoes of the last time, when it had been the other Barth who had said it. And just as that other had done the last time, he touched the naked young Barth, stroked the smooth and lovely skin, and finally embraced him.
    And the young Barth embraced him back, for that was the way of it. No one loved Barth as much as Barth did, thin or fat, young or old. Life was a celebration of Barth; the sight of himself was his strongest nostalgia.
    â€œWhat did I think of?” Barth asked.
    The young Barth smiled into his eyes. “Lynette,” he said. “Naked on a cliff. The wind blowing. And the thought of her thrown to her death.”
    â€œWill you go