"So... I'm dead, then."

I swallowed hard, or at least I tried to. It felt like swallowing, but I could still tell it wasn't real. There was nothing to swallow, and no throat to swallow with! Oh, my God! I'm a hologram!

"Don't panic, buddy; we got you. You're safe in our computer banks. Nothing... uh, nothing can go wrong." He was a pudgy, harmless-looking little guy with thick black plastic frames on his glasses and a dirty face streaked with sweat. His voice was unpleasantly nasal, but it was also calm, almost a monotone. The panic faded and anger took over.

"Nothing else, you mean," I snapped. Being dead is quite bad enough for one day, thank you, and I told him as much.

"Yeah, but there's nothing to worry about," he said earnestly. "Nobody's going to hurt you or anything; we don't do that sort of thing. Besides, it's perfectly safe; we've done this dozens of times." He started going on about server space, security protocols, and emergency generators. He was really passionate about his subject, so I let him keep talking while I tried to remember...

"Dammit, how did I die?" I demanded. "Last thing I remember is getting in an elevator at the office."

"Police are still... uh, still working on it. They subpoenaed some of your memories before we brought you online. You should be missing about a day or so." He blinked, peering at me through badly smeared lenses.

"That means they're investigating. Tells me someone murdered me, and they took away my memory of it." I looked at the little fellow and said, as clearly as I could manage, "You can probably understand why I'd be a little irate about that."

"Oh, sure," he said. "Perfectly natural. But they're the police. There's nothing we can do about it, so..."

"So why bring me back at all?" I interrupted. "Or, better, why not wait until you could bring all of me back, and not just all-but-the-last-day me? What's going on?"

"Oh, that!" He sat down on his wheeled office chair and scooted across the room to type at a terminal. A few moments passed, and then he answered. "Looks like your employers wanted some information from you first -- some passwords, information on current accounts, that sort of thing."

I shook my head, or what passed for one. "Not likely. That's my entire leverage for staying employed; my inside knowledge is what earns me the big bucks. Hell, for all I know, they might have killed me themselves to try to get out of our contract. Until I know for sure where I stand... Hmm." I eyed the pudgy guy suspiciously. "Who is it you work for, anyway?"

"Continental Insurance."

"Ah! Thought so! My revival policy is through Providential. Your outfit is a subsidiary of one of our clients."

"That's true," he said absently. He was fiddling with some knobs and typing. There were desks and chairs enough for a dozen people, but he was handling all the controls himself.

"What right have you got to bring me back?" I demanded. He looked at me and blinked again; I wished I was corporeal, if only to lend him a handkerchief for those glasses.

"Oh, I... uh, I don't know about any of that stuff. All I do is follow orders; you'd have to ask someone in Legal. But not right now; first, let me make a couple of quick adjustments... There we are. Now how do you feel?"

There was no transition. Suddenly, I felt... exactly like the last time I went to the dentist; that was it. "Like you just dosed me with nitrous. Did you?"

He grinned at me. "Neat, isn't it? Just like the real thing. I know because it's your own memory of the anaesthesia that I used for the model. You think you might cooperate now?"

"Sure," I said, enjoying the buzz. A tiny voice in the back of my mind was yelling at me, but it didn't seem important right now. "Happy to help. You should really clean your glasses, you know."

"Oh! Thanks! I'm always forgetting," he said. He took them off and wiped them on his lab coat, smearing the grease around a bit before putting them back on and blinking at me. "Now, about those passwords..."