“Yes I did. So that when I needed you, you’d want to be my volunteer. But don’t worry…you’re not going to die, Peter. Well, not physically anyway, and not just yet a while. For just like Smiler here, you’re going to carry on.”
“But no anger, eh? No human emotions? No…revenge? OK, so let me go free to live out what days I’ve got left.”
“No anger, no revenge, no emotions—just need. I can’t let you go! But let me explain myself. Do you know what happens when you find a potato sprouting in your vegetable rack and you plant it in the garden? That’s right, you get lots of new potatoes! Well, I’m something like that. I’m putting out lots of new potatoes, lots of new me. All of the time. And the thing is this: when you dig up those potatoes and your fork goes through the old one, what do you find? Just a wrinkled, pulpy old sack of a thing all ready to collapse in upon itself, with nothing of goodness left in it—pretty much like what’s left of Smiler here. So…if I want to keep growing potatoes, why, I just have to keep planting them! Do you see?”
“Jesus! Jesus!”
“It’s nothing personal, Peter. It’s need, that’s all…No, don’t stand up, just sit there and I’ll do the rest. And you can stop biting down on that clever tooth of yours, because it isn’t poison any more, just salt. And if you don’t like what’s happening to Smiler right now, that’s OK—just turn your face away…
“…There, that was pretty easy, now wasn’t it?
“All you people out there, that’s how it is. So get used to it. As for the new boundaries: there aren’t any.
This is Big “C,” signing off.”