One of the terrors of this era, to people like Halyard, was the suddenness with which life could become physical. Imagine that, because of your economic position, you are safe and serene and almost untethered to the earth. Your body is nothing, really: it’s just the part of you that gets tired at the gym, the part of you that will be shucked into a furnace after your connectome is uploaded. And then, overnight, your body becomes primary again, because your home is flooded or burned or buried or confiscated, and you are plunged into a life of physical degradation, physical constraint, physical danger.