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from space. We have much finer control, much better understanding of the systems, than was ever possible before. Most people didn't notice a thing."
    "But . . . Jessie, but why? I'm only one person. Even the whole station is only sixty people. Why should something as . . . as big as what you've become care about something so small?"
    "It's exactly because I've become so big. I'm everyone now, and so I love everyone. I want to share with you what I've become." She leaned in close. "It's because I love you, Jeff."
    "I . . . I love you too, Jessie. But I can't let go of me."
    "You don't have to. I'm still me, at the same time I'm everyone else. It's hard to believe, I know, but you'll understand once you've joined us." And then she gave me a little wink. I touched the button.
    And it was all true.

    * * *
    Afterword by David D. Levine
    I've been working in the computer security industry for the past five years, but the genesis of this story goes back to the "Morris worm," the first Internet worm, which struck in 1988. The Morris worm propagated rapidly across the net, clogging networks and crashing systems left and right, and system administrators worldwide had to choose between cutting off their net access in an attempt to keep their local networks clean (though it may have already been too late) and remaining online to get the latest news and information about fighting the worm. There were as yet no antimalware programs, and some feared this worm would be the death of the nascent Internet.
    My company weathered the storm by virtue of using nonstandard computers, but it was a scary time, and I filed the idea away for future use. Now, at last, here is the story based on that idea.

    REUNION
    Mark L. Van Name

    With this story we change gears and come back to Earth, to a world that's just a little ahead of ours and to one long night and a single man struggling to find himself in a hostile environment many of us have experienced firsthand: a high-school reunion.
    The walls of Tom's apartment glittered with pictures of parties he had never attended. Posters, magazine pages, and glossy group photos filled every blank spot. People smiled and laughed all around the room. In New Orleans revelers at Mardi Gras smiled and crowded together and spilled their drinks. In Colorado Springs whole families screamed in happy terror as ghouls jumped from hiding places on the Air Force Academy's Halloween trail. In San Antonio men and women packed shoulder to shoulder and back to front craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the first float of the Fiesta parade on the river. Scattered among the other pictures, at least a few on every wall, were photos of reunions: reunions of high-school and college classes, of families, of fraternities and sororities, of military regiments and baseball teams, of survivors of plane crashes and train wrecks.
    Tom took his wallet from the dresser and checked its contents. He had everything he needed: money, driver's license, credit cards.
    His license marked him as thirty-eight. He knew he was six months old. He remembered his high school, sitting in the back of physics class and making jokes about Mr. Dunlop, the bald teacher with the unfortunate namesake tire of fat around his waist. He also knew he had not gone to school. He remembered his parents, the way they never quite seemed to see him, to focus on him, even when they were talking to him. He knew he had never been born.
    Most of all, Tom knew he was not human, and that he was not supposed to know he was not human. It had come to him in his sleep on the seventh night of his life. He had awakened, shaking, at 3:47 a.m., with the knowledge that he was not human. He remembered the time glowing red on the clock on his night stand. The knowledge had not come as a dream, not as a garish image fading as the unconscious surrenders the brain to the waking mind, but as an absolute certainty, knowledge as sure and deep and built-in as the way he knew how to run, the way