Anti-man

this one with you and let them kill him. They'll think they have finished off the menace of the Android-Who-Wouldn't-Take-Orders. That will give me time enough."
        I stood, looking at the android who would die, the part of Him that was to be sacrificed. "One thing," I said.
        "What is that, Jacob?" He could read my mind and find out, but He was being polite and letting me have my speeches.
        "What will we do for room? You'll not only be making Man nearly immortal, but you'll be flooding the world with replicas of yourself, with Doppelgängers. Where will we put everyone?"
        "With his entire intellect at hand, with all of his brain open to use, Man will move out into the stars, Jacob. There are no limits any longer. There is more than enough room, Jacob. I saw to that."
        "You saw to it?"
        "When I formed it, Jacob. When I created the universe."
        I choked, almost fell. The new android gripped me and grinned His old grin. I looked back to the blob of tissue pulsing before me. "You are trying to say that-"
        "You had no idea how unusual my flesh was, did you, Jacob? It's the flesh, Jacob. Sorry to break it to you so suddenly, but-as you know-there is so very little time. The soldiers are almost at the front door, by the way. You had better get my other self upstairs and let them kill him. I won't let them do anything to you, Jacob. As soon as things are straightened out here, I'll send one of my selves to you. I'll always be with you."
        I turned and started up the stairs behind the android. My mind was spinning wildly, unable to settle on any orderly thought progression.
        "And Jacob," He said behind me. I turned. "Man will not be nearly immortal. He will be completely immortal. The time has come. There will soon be an end to death."
        We went upstairs into the living room. We walked to the door and threw it open, stepping onto the porch overlooking all that grand scenery. He walked down the steps into the snow, His arms outstretched, and they shot Him. Half a dozen marksmen opened fire. He jerked spasmodically, danced across the white carpet, and crashed to His face, blood pouring out of His body in twenty different places.
        I raised my hands and stepped outside. It was Him they wanted to kill. They would take me prisoner and decide my fate later. Two WA policemen flanked me, cuffed my hands together, and led me across the frozen earth toward the copter on the far hill.
        It was not snowing at all now. The wind had ceased to blow.
        Once, I looked back at the bloody corpse. He had said there would soon be an end to death. I realized that this could not be called death. Not really. They had merely shot a husk. He lived on in the amoeboid flesh in the old ice cellar. And there would be thousands of other husks shortly. He was with us at last. He. And, of course, His name had always been spelled with a capital letter. He… Man was moving out. Man was immortal. The mystery of His flesh wrapped us like a blanket and carried us into the New World.

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    TWO: The enemy is self…

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    X
        
        New York City is a weird conglomeration of old, new and experimental that staggers the mind of anyone who has not lived in a city its size. Harboring approximately eighty-five million souls, it is the second largest metropolis in the world. Size alone would be enough to awe men from urban areas (which comprise sixty percent of North America) where only a few hundred thousand live in small communities, for his neighborhood still supports individual houses (though even there they are beginning to dwindle in number), still has streets open to the air and paved of concrete and macadam, still permits automobiles on roads other than the mammoth freeways. New York City, of course, has none of these things.
        All of New York City's inhabitants live in high-rise apartment buildings, some as long as three and four blocks, the newest ones towering to two-hundred stories in some places. You can get a one-bedroom apartment or anything up to eight bedrooms, living room, dining room, two dens, playroom, reception room, two kitchens, and a library. These last suites are few and far between, for even in our Great Democracy, there are just not that many citizens able to shell out four thousand poscreds a month for a place to live. And to buy it-make certain you've just hit the first new oil well in the last ten years, have found a