A shimmer formed on the table, and a tortoiseshell cat appeared. Spike had been my cat when I was in university. She had been my only company through many long hours of study and homework, and it had been a very, very hard day when I’d had to have her put down. One of the many pluses of being an immortal, disembodied interstellar vessel was that I could bring Spike back, even if only in VR.