I fixed him with a doleful glare. “I’ll decide that,” I said. He stepped aside.
“I’ll tag along, then,” he said. “Just in case.”
I pinged my Whuffie. I was up a couple percentiles—sympathy Whuffie—but it was falling: Dan and Lil were radiating disapproval. Screw ’em.
I got into my runabout and Dan scrambled for the passenger door as I put it in gear and sped out.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Dan said as I nearly rolled the runabout taking the corner at the end of our cul-de-sac.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I said. “I’m as good as new.”
“Funny choice of words,” he said. “Some would say that you were new.”
I groaned. “Not this argument again,” I said. “I feel like me and no one else is making that claim. Who cares if I’ve been restored from a backup?”
“All I’m saying is, there’s a difference between you and an exact copy of you, isn’t there?”
I knew what he was doing, distracting me with one of our old fights, but I couldn’t resist the bait, and as I marshalled my arguments, it actually helped calm me down some. Dan was that kind of friend, a person who knew you better than you knew yourself. “So you’re saying that if you were obliterated and then recreated, atom-for-atom, that you wouldn’t be you anymore?”