In Laboratory 3, eleven reclining chairs stand in a half circle, and in each chair a committee member lies asleep, a white helmet fitted snugly over their head. Their hands rest on their chests. Their breathing is slow and even. A technician moves along the row, checking the readings on each monitor, and the room is so quiet that the machines' hum sounds like weather.

Alexei Finch lies in the fourth chair. His body is here.

He is not.

He stands at a podium in a courthouse that does not exist. The Simulacrum built it for him from polished wood and white marble, with tall windows on every side that stream in sunlight no one in Paraville has felt on their skin in years. The light falls across the benches where the committee's avatars sit in rows. They look like themselves, or clo...

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