Forty nine - EARTH (DIVIDED)

The village blacksmith waited for the farmer to inspect the newly healed metal, accepted payment with a courtly bow, and watched the tractor growl away. Ancient though the equipment was, the blacksmith was even older, and more machine than man.

Marcus Doug Douglas had played many roles throughout his long and rather productive life, including those of son, brother, husband, father, uncle, friend, industrialist, politician, strategist, artist, and for the last six decades, village blacksmith.

His biological body had died years before, which explained why, with the notable exempting of his brain and some spinal cord, the rest of Doug Douglas was synthetic. Nor was this the first such body. After being forced to occupy a blue eyed monstrosity immediately after his "death", the businessman had commissioned bodies that looked a lot like the original had. Pleasant but portly. His Asian-Parsian ancestors would have been proud. 

Not only of the body in which he had chosen to d