A Game of Perfection

Original title: Le Jeu de la perfection (1996).

Although the Terrans have been settled on Virginia for two centuries, the indigenous animals still flee from them as if they had the plague. So how come Eric and his friends, in their small travelling circus, are able to put on extraordinary shows with kitdogs, scent-birds and even unicorns? What is their secret?

Old Simon Rossem does know: he's been protecting these children of the mutation he has himself undergone with his family – a long time ago. For Simon is living his second life, and soon his third. Each time he dies, he seems to come back, a young man in an apparently old body. Was he really dead? Or is he indeed ressuscitated, and if so, by who?

As the "new ones" try to take hold of their future by proclaiming Virginia's independence, Simon turns to the past : the reason for his puzzling longevity, and for all the other mutations that keep on developing on Virginia, might be found in the memory plates of the Ancients, the mysteriously disappeared natives of the planet.

But at the Ancient game of Perfection, who wins, and who loses?