Prologue and Chapter 1 Summary

The Prologue is dated June, 2045 and opens as Paul Durham wakes up in his apartment in Sydney, Australia to a pleasant spring day. He thinks about going back to sleep but has a nagging feeling he has done something terrible but cannot recall what it is.

His realization of what he has done hits him with a shock. He is not the flesh-and-blood Paul Durham but a computer program running a scanned copy of his own brain. The program is also running a program that perfectly simulates the environment and gives him a view of the city outside his apartment.

He has copied himself to use as a subject in an experiment, but the feeling of being a copy is too overwhelming. He knows that people who wake up as copies typically react badly, unable to cope with the...