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enjoy them and adults could, too," I said. "Like the
    Harry Potter
stuff."
    "Well, there's no doubt that I owe a lot of my success to J. K. Rowling."
    "Not that your books are anything like hers, but they've got that same broad appeal."
    " '
Finding Nemo
meets
Harry Potter
by way of
Jurassic Park
' — that's what the
New York Times
said back when my first book was published. Anthropomorphic animals: my intelligent dinosaurs seemed to appeal to people the same way those talking fish did."
    "What did you think of the movies they made of your books?"
    "Oh, I loved them," said Karen. "They were fabulous. Fortunately, they made my movies after the
Harry Potter
and
Lord of the Rings
films. It used to be that studios acquired novels just so they could butcher them; the end product was nothing like the original book. But after
Harry Potter
and the Tolkien films, they realized that there was an even bigger market for faithful adaptations. In fact, audiences got angry when a favorite scene was missing, or a memorable line of dialog was changed."
    "I can't believe I'm sitting here talking to the creator of Prince Scales."
    She smiled that lopsided smile again. "Everybody has to be somewhere."
    "So, Prince Scales — he's such a vivid character! Who's he based on?"
    "No one," said Karen. "I made him up."
    I shook my head. "No, no — I mean, who was the inspiration?"
    "Nobody. He's a product of my imagination."
    I nodded knowingly. "Ah, okay. You don't want to say. Afraid he'll sue, eh?"
    The old woman frowned. "No, it's nothing like that. Prince Scales doesn't exist, isn't real, isn't based on anyone real, isn't a portrait or a parody. I just made him up."
    I looked at her, but said nothing.
    "You don't believe me, do you?" Karen asked.
    "I wouldn't say that, but—"
    She shook her head. "People are desperate to believe writers base our characters on real people, that the events in our novels really happened in some disguised way."
    "Ah," I said. "Sorry. I — I guess it's an ego thing. I can't imagine making up a publishable story, so I don't want to believe that others have that capability. Talents like that make the rest of us feel inadequate."
    "No," said Karen. "No, if you don't mind me saying so, it goes deeper than that, I think. Don't you see? The idea that false people can just be manufactured goes to the heart of our religious beliefs. When I say that Prince Scales doesn't really exist, and you've only been fooled into thinking that he does, then I open up the possibility that Moses didn't exist — that some writer just made him up. Or that Mohammed didn't really say and do the things ascribed to him. Or that Jesus is a fictional character, too. The whole of our spiritual existence is based on this unspoken assumption that writers
record
, but they don't fabricate — and that, even if they did, we could tell the difference."
    I looked around the waiting room, here at this place where they mated android bodies with scanned copies of brains. "I'm glad I'm an atheist," I said.

5
    Three more people arrived while we were waiting: others who'd decided to upload.
    But the receptionist called for me first, and I left Karen chatting with her fellow very senior citizens. I followed the receptionist down the brightly lit corridor, enjoying the swaying of her youthful hips, and was taken to an office with walls that looked gray to me — meaning they could have been that color, or green, or magenta.
    "Hello, Jake," said Dr. Porter, rising from his chair. "Good to see you again."
    Andrew Porter was a tall bear of a man, sixty or so, slightly stooped from dealing with a world populated by shorter people. He had squinty eyes, a beard, and hair combed straight back from a high forehead. His kindly face was home to eyebrows that seemed constantly in motion, as if they were working out, in training for the body-hair Olympics.
    "Hello, Dr. Porter," I said. I'd seen him twice before now, on previous visits here, during which I'd undergone