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mates in the elevator with her, a girl and a boy not much older than her. They had smiled at her and given her their interweb addresses, but now they were holding hands and smiling at each other and hadn't said a word to her after the first greetings.
    She turned away from them and the doors and homes. She looked at the softlights through the elevator's outside windows. Moon, one of them was called, she knew from the old articles, and the many little twinkling ones were stars.
    When she stepped out of the elevator, she was faced with new, opaque doors. It was strange after passing through the shared homes. She pressed the button by door 72. "Meliora here."
    "Come in," a reply came in the same male voice that had let her come to this floor via the intercom.
    She entered. She screamed.
    "Nicolas! Nicolas, is this you!? Nicolas, what did they do to you!?"
    The creature with the male voice laughed.
    "I am Nicolas, all right. But I suppose I am not the Nicolas you're looking for."

Nicolas
    Nic
    Old Nic watched the young girl edge back towards the closed door, slowly, tiny step after tiny step, a look of horror on her face. He was used to it. Few people ever came up here any more, but most looked at him just like this, and most ran away. He was a kind man. He opened the door to make it easy for her.
    The girl stared at him. He stared back. She stared yet harder and didn't step back any further. She held his eyes for a long, long time, so long that it could make an old, broken man weep. He didn't weep. He didn't want to frighten her more. He was a few feet away from her, but he could hear her heartbeat.
    He closed the door again. The lights in his home were dim. It was semi-dark now that the bright light was no longer streaming though the outside shared corridor. The girl blinked, then slowly she stepped towards him.
    "Tell me, please," she said. "Tell me the truth. About everything."
    He laughed again.
    "Even I don't know this, child."
    She inclined her head. "I am not a child. I am already an adult."
    "Yeah. Right. And I am Prince Handsome." He pointed towards a sofa and, when she sat, handed her a chocolate. "You seem to need this, child."
    "The FastNutritiousDelicious, Inc. serving device decided that I needed soup."
    "Take a bite, it will do you good." He grinned. "It will make your teeth fall out like mine."
    She looked at the chocolate with suspicion, then, in the same way, at him. "Is this a new wonderful experience, then? I am not sure I would like it. I don't usually like them." She carefully bit off a piece. "It is delicious."
    "It sure is. Don't worry, child." The old man heard his voice grow kinder. "Your teeth won't fall off yet. And if they did, they would fix you up. If you wanted them to. If you were willing to pay the price for our perfect world."
    "What is the price?" The girl looked at him again, and suddenly there was something in her eyes that stopped him from calling her a child again. "For some reason—Nicolas—I know that you're not talking about money. Did you pay the price? Is this why you look like this?"
    "I didn't pay it, Meliora. I didn't—which is why I look like this."
    "You're Nicolas' dad, aren't you?"
    "No. I am Nicolas' granddad."
    The girl's eyes widened. "Dad of the dad or the mom! But how? Nicolas must be seventeen years old. You should have disappeared long ago, when he was two, three at most!"
    The girl stood, rushed towards him—for a moment he expected her to grab him by the elbows and shake him so hard that his arthritis would make him scream. She didn't. Children were polite these days, they didn't touch without permission. People were polite—beautiful and polite. She just stood before him, watching him as if shaking him with her eyes.
    "Did you come back from the City of Death, Granddad Nicolas? Did they take your computer away? Did they close you off into your own mind? Is your body what happens when they do this? Tell me, Granddad Nicolas, is young Nicolas there? Is my dad?