“I will always love you.”
I blew at a dandelion and watched its fluff scatter into the clear blue sky. The wind caught the tiny seeds and carried them up and away. I laughed.
“No matter where the winds carry me, I will always find my way back to you.”
“And I to you,” said the boy, his face close now, his hot breath on my cheeks.
Sunlight streamed down upon us, filling the field where we lay with gentle warmth. I brushed a lock of hair from my eyes and looked down at an ant in the grass. It was trying to get back towards its nest, pulling on some bit of food, struggling with a prize far too large for it to carry.
“Never leave me.”
“I will never leave you,” he promised.
A silence descended, and then a low droning began. The boy looked up, craning his neck to see above the stone pile fence beside us. With a terrible growl a Luftwaffe squadron roared overhead, barely skimming the treetops. I screamed, and the boy jumped up.
He looked down at me. I nodded, and with a grim look he ran off, glancing just once over his shoulder to me before disappearing through the gate.
“I will never leave you,” I whispered back.
Identity: Jimmy Jones
My eyes teared up trying to look forward into the wind while the airboat tore across the top of the kelp forests. I begged my dad to take me out to work on the water almost every day, which frustrated Mother to no end. He just thought his sweet little boy wanted to be with his daddy, but really, I wanted to be away from her.
Still, it was beautiful on the water.
“Amazing out here, right Jimmy?” my dad yelled over the roar of the airboat engine. We were skimming over the top of the kelp, gently skipping across the ocean swells.
“Look!” exclaimed my dad, pointing towards something in the water. He swerved the airboat and I looked down.
Dozens of sea otters had tied themselves up in a raft amid the floating kelp, chattering at us angrily as we passed. I saw a few heads pop up and down in the water around us and I let myself flitter out into their little bodies, watching myself watching them.
“They hang around near the floating reef systems!” he shouted over the noise. “They love it out here!”
We began to slow as we neared the edge of the forest and the kelp stalks became sparser. I was sitting on my dad’s knee, wearing little red shorts, a striped t-shirt and a Yankees baseball cap. My dad held me tightly against him with both arms, his warm hands on the flesh of my thighs, steering the boat with his phantom hands.
Unlike Mother, as soon as they’d arrived here my dad had worked hard at stretching his neural plasticity and early on had learned the trick of phantom limbs.
Today we were fishing with the dolphins and my dad knew it was my favorite. My smile would spread as we sped across the kelp, the wind and sun in my face, free like a bird. We didn’t really fish, but mostly just directed them using pssi control. At that early stage in the project we still needed help from the dolphins to herd the fish, and for me this was the best part of fishing-speaking with the dolphins.
“There they are,” said my dad as he cut our engine and our boat settled into the water, gliding to a stop. The open ocean was gentle today but my dad held me tight. Gulls wheeled high in the air behind us, waiting for signs of any fish we’d throw their way.
Off to the side of the boat, fast moving shapes sped towards us from the depths and with a splash about a dozen heads broke the surface. The air filled with the sounds of chattering dolphins.
The pssi system instantly translated for us. Wild dolphins had fairly weak skills at what we would call communication, and the system often had to guess what they meant. These, however, were uplifted Terra Novan dolphins and had a good vocabulary. Right now they were saying hello.
I smiled and waved.
“Hey Billy!” I cried. “Hi Samantha!”
They squeaked their hellos back. My dad let go of me and I rushed to the side to put my hand into the water to pet their snouts. The dolphins radiated affection. They were like the best dog you ever had, but huge and wet and much, much smarter.
The Terra Novan dolphins weren’t really working for us. It was more like they worked with us. They liked the excitement of the place and enjoyed the privileged access to multiverse worlds only possible on Atopia.
Terra Nova was another off-shore colony competing with Atopia. They were rumored to be creating monstrosities, tinkering with life itself, and the bobble-headed Terra Novans who appeared on Atopia from time to time did nothing to help with this image. The dolphins, though, were wonderful.
“Okay, okay everyone,” laughed my dad, “that’s a lot of love. Come on, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
The dolphins shifted their attention away from me and to my dad.
“Today we’re going to be harvesting sardines, so we need you guys to go and corral a few schools into the tanker over there,” he explained, pointing to a ship floating a few hundred feet away. “Could someone go get me a sample?”
Samantha, my favorite, squawked and dove down into the depths.
“Okay people,” my dad continued, “let’s get this show on the road!”
The dolphins chattered their goodbyes and shot off, except for Samantha who popped back up with a sardine in her mouth.
“Thank you Samantha,” said my dad. He nodded to her and bent over to take the sardine, then turned back to his workstation, knife in hand, to begin the examination. Samantha and I waited, staring at him. He stopped and smiled, shaking his head slightly.
“Okay you two!” he laughed. “Go on and have some fun!”
Clapping my hands with glee, I detached from my body and snapped into Samantha’s, instantly rocketing off into the ocean. It was pure exhilaration as I felt her powerful sinews and muscles forcing us through the frigid waters, chasing her brothers and sisters into the depths.
Running with the dolphins had been the greatest joy of my life.
Identity: Patricia Killiam
Showing up in person for the press may have been a mistake. My God, how my body ached, even with its pain receptors tuned all the way down. I probably hadn’t spent more than a few dozen hours in my own skin in the past year, but who would want to? Under siege by a frightening list of diseases barely held back by the magic of modern medicine, my body was as shrunken as an old pea left out overnight. Nearly a hundred and forty years old and I still wasn’t ready to give up the ghost.
Sighing inwardly, I started up the promo-world.
“Imagine,” said an extremely attractive young woman, or man depending on your preference, “have you ever thought of hiking the Himalayas in the morning and finishing off the day on a beach in the Bahamas?”
She was walking along one of our own beaches, a beautiful stretch of white sand near the Eastern Inlet.
“Pssionics now makes limitless travel possible with zero environmental impact!”
The girl paused to let us think about all the places we wished we could visit.
“You’ll never forget anything again,” she continued, forcing people to remember everything they thought they’d ever forgotten. “And you’ll never again have to argue about who said what!”
I looked out at the reporters, seeing their eyes narrow as they remembered some argument they’d recently had with their spouses.
“Imagine performing more at work while being there less. Want to get in shape? Your new proxxi can take you for a run while you relax by the pool!” she exclaimed, stopping her walk to look directly into the viewer’s eyes.
“Create the reality you need right now with Atopia pssionics. The promise of a better world and the life you’ve always wanted. Join up soon for zero cost!”
A short silence settled while I let it all sink in.
“So, how exactly is pssionics going to make the world a better place?” asked a stick-thin blond from the front row.
I carefully rolled my eyes. I’d never really liked ‘pssionics’-the baggage it carried created a constant battle to separate fact from fiction when talking to reporters, but then again, when had that ever mattered? The blond reporter’s name floated into view in one of my display spaces: Ginny.
“Well Ginny, I prefer to use the term ‘polysynthetic sensory interface’ or just pssi,” I replied, detaching and floating upwards out of my body to get their attention as my proxxi walked my body along beneath my projection. Nobody batted an eye. They weren’t easily impressed anymore.
“We’ve been able to demonstrate here on Atopia that people are as happy-even happier, in fact-with virtual goods as material ones. You just need to make the simulation good enough, real enough.” Everyone nodded as they’d all heard this before.
“I’ll give you an example.” I floated down and snapped back into my body, and a bright red apple popped into existence in my hand. “So here we have an apple, right?”
There was a general murmur of agreement.
“Since pssi also controls my neuromotor system, not only can I see the apple,” I explained as I tossed it into the air and caught it with a satisfying thwap, “but I actually feel like I’m holding it. It feels perfectly real to me.”
“But perhaps even better,” I continued, taking a loud bite, “I can eat it too.”
As I munched away, I could feel its juices running down my chin. It was a good simulation of biting into an apple, but still had room for improvement, I thought as I chewed, contemplating the appleness of my experience.
“The ultimate no calorie snack,” I joked, taking another bite. This got some laughs.
“Seriously, though,” I continued, raising the apple and smiling, “with pssi installed, you can eat and drink whatever you like as much as you like with zero caloric intake-for this afternoon’s activity we’ll be lounging in Pompeii at a Roman feast while your proxxi takes your body to the gym.” This earned some more hushed laughter.
“Describe a proxxi again?” asked Ginny, cocking her head and fishing for a sound bite. I obliged.
“Proxxi are biological-digital symbiotes that attach to your neural system, sharing all your memories and sensory data as well as control of your motor system.”
The proxxi program was my life’s work in creating the basis for synthetic intelligence. Where previous research had tried to create artificial intelligence in a kind of vacuum by itself, my contribution had been to understand that a body and mind didn’t exist separately but could only exist together.
We’d started by creating synthetic learning systems attached to virtual bodies in virtual worlds that gradually became intelligent by feeling their way through their environments. The proxxi program had taken this one step further when we’d integrated them intimately into peoples’ lives, to share in their day to day experiences.
They were still artificial intelligences, but ones that now shared our physical reality to seamlessly bridge the gap between the worlds of humans and machines.
Ginny screwed up her face and asked, “And why would we want to attach something to our neural systems?”
“And just why wouldn’t you want to get attached to me?” asked Marie, my own proxxi, materializing to walk beside me. She smiled at everyone.
This earned a round of laughs. With the flick of a phantom I removed the apple from existence, my taste buds going blank as it flashed away. The hair on the back of my neck had begun to stand up which meant the slingshot test must be about to start. I’d better wrap this up.
“Everyone,” I announced, reaching out to encircle the group of reporters with my phantoms, “if you’ll allow me, I’d like to take whoever is coming up to watch the test firing of the slingshot.”
We’d ensured almost everyone had signed up for a front row seat to the demonstration. We needed to show we weren’t just serious about cyber, but also had a committed kinetic program.
“To finally answer your original question Ginny,” I said as I grabbed them all and we shot through the ceiling of the conference room, accelerating up into space and earning a few gasps, “pssi will change the world by beginning to move it from the destructive downward spiral of material consumption and into the clean world of synthetic consumption. It’s about the only viable solution we have left with nearly ten billion people all struggling for their own piece of the material dream.”
I slowed and stabilized our flight path, bringing us to a stop about ninety thousand feet up. Dispersing the reporters’ subjective points of view across a wide radius surrounding the target zone, I motioned down at the oceans below and then towards the rising sun on the horizon.
“The fact that we have to face is that the eco-crunch is destroying the planet while the fight over dwindling resources is fueling the Weather Wars, and pssi is the solution that will bring us all back from the brink!”
On cue, the slingshot began to fill the space around us with an ear-splitting roar and fiery inferno. I left the reporters’ visual subjectives in the thick of it while retreating to view from a distance, backing away several miles, and then several more. What had seemed so awe inspiring moments ago now appeared as just a bright smudge in the sky, and miles below shimmered the green dot of Atopia.
My mind clouded with sudden doubt. Who were we to think we could change the world, to think that we could bend reality? Just a pinpoint of green floating in the oceans, on a planet that was just a tiny speck adrift in a vast cosmos of unending universes. Are we fooling ourselves?
Our imagined power dwindled to nothing when viewed with a little perspective, dwarfed by unseen forces operating on much larger scales. Just then I was enveloped in a fast moving cloud, and, as if responding to my thoughts, a strong wind sprang up. The thunderstorm was coming.
I’d better get down and talk with Rick.
The blaze of the slingshot test was still dissipating on the main display in the middle of the Atopia Defence Command center. I lit up a smoke as I arrived, gently fading my image in next to Commander Rick Strong, my own pick as head of our newly formed Atopian Defence Forces.
He’d had an exemplary career in the US Marines, demonstrating repeated bravery rescuing men under his command. His first deployment had been in Nanda Devi, in the terrible fighting over dams high in the Himalayas that had sparked the Weather Wars. His psych profile indicated latent post-traumatic stress disorder, but just enough to make him think twice before starting a fight. With the fearsome weapons we’d installed on Atopia, I didn’t want some trigger-happy wingnut’s finger over the button if things got hairy.
A battle-hardened veteran, Rick brought a direct, and sometimes violent, experience of the realities from the outside world that helped ground the team here. We were masters of synthetic reality, but I had a feeling our created realities could be blinding us to the real dangers out there. Rick was the perfect antidote.
Kesselring, the CEO of Cognix and main benefactor behind Atopia, had been the first to begin speaking about the need to have defensive weapons. To begin with, the suggestion had seemed completely antiethical to the cause, Atopia having been born from a free-minded spirit to escape the cluttered corner the rest of the world had led itself into. I’d been against it to begin with, but as time wore on, I began to get the feeling that we may need them before all this was over.
“Finished playtime yet Rick?” I asked, shifting my hips from one side to the other and taking a drag from my smoke. I could feel the sense of safety that these weapons instilled in him. Perhaps he had a point.
In all cases, I wanted him to feel safe. I knew that one of his main reasons for coming here was to try and rescue his relationship with his estranged wife, Cindy, and I sincerely wanted him to succeed and raise a family here.
“Yeah, I think that about does it.”
“Good, because I think you scared the heck out of the wildlife I’ve managed to nurture on this tin can,” I said with a laugh, “and the tourists want to go back in the water-not that you didn’t put on a good show for them. That was quite the shock and awe campaign.”
“You gotta wake up the neighbors from time to time,” he laughed.
We’d purposely removed any reality filtering of the weapons test to measure the cognitive impact they would have on people. The response had more than exceeded the threshold for emotional deterrence that we’d needed for the project-just another success notched up on our path forward.
“Well, that’s your job, Rick, to help scare the world into respecting us. Mine is to scare the world into saving itself.”
I said this without humor, and Rick looked at me, nodding at my seriousness.
“Anyway, good work.”
A small pause while we looked at each other.
“Did you see that thunderstorm coming in?” he asked, and I nodded. “We’ve been tracking that depression for weeks, but we can’t avoid them all. Anyway, it’ll water your plants up top.”
He smiled. I smiled back.
“Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?” I suggested. I knew his wife was having a hard time adjusting to life here and missed her family. It was more than that, though, her depression being a chronic condition that stemmed from her relationship with Rick. It was something I thought we could help fix.
People reacted differently to the sudden immersion into limitless synthetic reality when they arrived here for the first time. Most adjusted quickly and within a short time they’d usually be off creating their little own nooks and crannies of reality that suited them. Some had a more difficult time, but I had a feeling Cindy would come around soon.
“That’s actually a great idea,” answered Rick after a moment, busy adjusting the control systems for the slingshot shutdown. He looked towards me. “So you really think that thing is a good idea?”
He was talking about the proxxids, simulated babies that Cognix was encouraging couples to try before the ‘real’ thing. It would help Cindy get acclimatized to pssi, but in general it wasn’t something I was comfortable with. In this case, however, it seemed like a good idea; putting a toe in the water first, so to speak.
“Yes,” I replied, shrugging, “why not?”
With that I looked over and smiled at Jimmy, and with the smallest of waves goodbye, clicked out of the Command sensory spaces.
Identity: Jimmy Jones
I smiled and nodded my goodbye to Patricia as she faded out of Command.
“I think that’s a good idea, Commander,” I said once she was completely gone. “I mean about going to see your wife. I can handle the rest of this.”
Rick looked over from the slingshot controls at me, smiled, and began nodding. Standing up from his workstation, he shifted the controls to me, and then walked over.
“Thanks Jimmy, I really appreciate it. You and Patricia have a pretty special bond, don’t you?”
I smiled.
“We do,” I agreed while I focused on some security protocols that had been breached during the weapons test. Somebody had been poking around up there in the UAV that had been destroyed during the test. Odd.
“It hasn’t been easy moving here,” he continued. “At least, it hasn’t been easy for Cindy.”
I filed the security breach report away to have a look at later, and looked up at the Commander.
“I can’t imagine how much of a change it must be for her,” I replied, “or for you, for that matter.”
Rick nodded, and then pulled a security blanket down around us. The other Command staff looked up from their workstations, wondering what was going on.
“Confidentially, son, I’ve heard that you had it pretty rough growing up here.”
I shrugged. He put his hand on my shoulder.
“If you ever need anyone to talk to,” he said softly, “I had it rough growing up too.”
“Thanks…” I replied uncertainly, surprised at this sudden intimacy.
“I’m just saying, any time, and of course, entirely confidential.”
“I appreciate that Commander,” I answered more confidently. “And I will, but I’m fine.”
I pulled down the security blanket, feeling self-conscious with all the rest of the staff there.
“Why don’t you get on to seeing your wife?”
He smiled. “I will. You just remember, anytime, right?”
“Right.” I smiled back at him.
“See you later, Jimmy.”
While Atopia was marketed as this amazing place, and the tabloid worlds were constantly spinning stories about the fantastic pssi-kids that grew up here, my own parents fighting had made my experience on Atopia a special sort of hell I had to drag myself through. Now I had the perspective to view it, even appreciate it, as a part of the fire that had forged me, but back then, pssi could be cruel.
I remembered it all.
“Look,” said my mother, back when I was an infant, soon after they’d first arrived on Atopia, “look at him, so cute. I think he just shat himself again, and he’s looking around wondering what the bad smell is.”
She was laughing at a shared rendering of my inVerse. She even tried sharing the smell with the guests. I wasn’t even a year old, and Mother was at it again, and drunk of course.
“Look, look, smell that?” she laughed. “Can you believe something so small and useless could make a smell so bad?”
As children, we had no right to privacy from our parents. Mother was always criticizing everything I did, in minute detail, and in excruciatingly public fashion.
My parents had been having another couple over for coffee, and Mother had turned our cramped apartment into a synthetic space projection that was decked out like a Spanish palace for the evening. We were sitting in the middle of an open courtyard, under a deep blue sky, surrounded by a three story terracotta palazzo, the walls decorated with intricate murals inlaid with tiny blue, white and gold tiles.
I was playing between potted ferns next to a small pool filled with colorful Koi fish. A fountain bubbled water into the pond, sprayed from the penis of a cherubic statue of a small boy. Dragonflies buzzed at the water’s edge, holding my attention as I reached towards them.
I still hadn’t learnt to walk yet, so I sat on my haunches in my own excrement, eyes on the dragonflies, curiously sniffing the air around me.
“Don’t you think you should change him?” asked Steve uncomfortably. He worked in the aquaponics group with my dad, and they spent a lot of time together, both at work and off hours. It was a source of friction between my parents.
“It’s all that fish protein in his little diet,” continued Mother. “Phil seems to think it will help his brain development and help him grow big and strong. So far, it just doesn’t seem to be working.”
She laughed again, louder this time, shrugging her shoulders. The guests didn’t share her sense of humor, but politely tried to smile and nod just the same.
Mother finished laughing at her own joke.
“Yolanda!” she yelled unnecessarily. “Could you change Jim, please?”
Mother smiled at my guests as her image flickered just a little. She detached and her proxxi, Yolanda took over control of her physical body. The pssi functioned less than flawlessly at this prototype stage, years ago, and the net effect was that Mother seemed to remain in place while Yolanda materialized into view and morphed away with her body to stand up.
Yolanda smiled at the guests, and then walked over to pick me up, holding me tenderly, and then disappeared into a side room to change me.
“Isn’t it just the best thing?” Mother gushed to the guests, referring to the pssi which was still a new toy to them back then. This was the first time Steve, and his wife Arlene, had done a social call with my parents. Our family didn’t have many guests over. We weren’t what you’d call popular.
“I was skeptical at first, when Patricia Killiam, my great aunt,” she emphasized, stopping for effect, “offered us a berth, but really, it has made my life so relaxing.” She smiled.
“It is amazing,” agreed Steve, happy to have gotten off the topic of nappies. “It’s completely changed our lives as well. All the build-up wasn’t just hype.” He nodded and looked around the room.
“Absolutely,” agreed Mother, “I mean, who would have thought? I modeled my proxxi after my own nanny from when I was growing up. I feel so at home now. Little Jimmy here has hardly put a dent in my lifestyle.”
“We’re still learning new ways to use it too,” added Steve’s wife, trying to add something to the conversation. “It is nice to take the time to have real face time with people, though. Synthetics do lack a certain…something.”
Everyone around the table nodded, except Mother who just crinkled her nose a little. An uncomfortable silence settled.
“Well!” exclaimed Mother, breaking the silence. “Who would have imagined that we’d end up in the most technologically advanced place on earth, and I’d be a fishmonger’s wife!” She tittered, looking towards my father. He just stared down into his coffee.
“Gretchen, we manage the aquaculture program, we’re not exactly fishmongers,” my father sighed, stealing a tiny hateful glance her way, but smiling broadly to the guests.
Steve nodded and added, “Yeah, and we farm kelp too!”
Mother smiled her tight lipped smile that I was all too familiar with.
“That’s nice. Call it what you like,” she declared. “We’re here and that’s all that matters!”
Yolanda walked back in and offered me to Mother, who took me on her knee and smiled into my little face.
“How’s my little stinker?” she laughed, shaking me more than lightly.
Identity: Patricia Killiam
“There’s something very odd about this latest string of disappearances,” I stated, getting to my point of calling this private meeting with Kesselring, the CEO and owner of Cognix Corporation.
The rash of people disappearing into the multiverse and leaving their bodies behind had gotten worse. It was now even common, but after an initial alarm by friends and family we’d usually find them burrowed deep in some hedonistic fantasy world. Lately, though, cases were sprouting up where we hadn’t been able to find them.
“Do you think that bastard Sintil8 could have anything to do with it?” Kesselring asked. “He’d love to find a way to derail the program. Are you keeping an eye on him?”
“More or less.” I had my own private discussion going on with Sintil8, nothing I wanted Kesselring to know about. Looking at him, I could see he didn’t suspect anything. “Anyway, these new disappearances are different. Their brains are highly stimulated, a sensory overload we don’t understand.”
I took a deep breath and shifted in my seat, drumming my fingers against the conference room table.
The same privacy laws I’d been instrumental in creating now meant that we couldn’t dig any deeper into peoples’ minds without their consent. After the mess of the Cyber Wars, I’d forced Cognix to build ironclad privacy systems into pssi from the ground up to protect the rights of users. Root pssi control was like having access to the soul of a person and was the fundamental building block everything else branched out from.
“We need to figure out what on earth is going on.”
Kesselring sighed.
“I don’t disagree, Pat, but a few people off pleasuring themselves in the multiverse isn’t enough to delay the entire program. This is a massive undertaking we have put in motion.”
The global marketing program to launch pssi commercially was easily one of the biggest promotional campaigns of all time, at least by a private corporation-if this label could really be applied to us anymore.
I considered this for a moment while I watched the glittering cover of the security blanket that had fallen around us when he arrived. Even with security built-in from the ground up, if you wanted to be really sure you were safe from prying eyes, it was best to use a blanket. The one surrounding us now was Kesselring’s personal, impenetrable shield that had an odd and shifting color that was similar to the indistinct bluishness of water in a glacial run-off stream. Maybe that was why it felt so cold to me.
“Do you think the Terra Novans are involved somehow?” I asked.
“They would love to put a stick in our spokes,” he snarled back. “Anyway, I have someone looking into it. We have to be extremely vigilant from this point onwards, Patricia.”
I watched him carefully, wondering how vigilant he was being about me.
“You’ve probably heard, but Rick has agreed with us to nominate Jimmy to the Security Council,” I said. “If anyone can ferret out what is going on, he can.”
I was still rooting for Jimmy even if he didn’t need it anymore.
When Jimmy’s parents had left I had taken him under my wing. He was now my star pupil, along with Nancy of course. In my long life I’d never had any children of my own, and these two were as close as I’d come.
His mother, my great-grand-niece, had abandoned him here, and I blamed myself for not intervening sooner in that domestic situation. In the end, Jimmy had been the one to pay the price, but he was beginning to blossom now. I couldn’t have been more proud.
Kesselring eyed me, sensing my protectiveness.
“Yes, Jimmy is an excellent choice,” agreed Kesselring. “In fact, he’s the one I have helping me out.”
I raised my eyebrows. I hadn’t known Jimmy was working directly for Kesselring on anything.
“What are they up to?” I mused under my breath, thinking about the Terra Novans, but now thinking about Kesselring as well.
“I don’t know,” replied Kesselring, not catching my full meaning, “but this just reinforces my point of view that we need to push ahead as quickly as possible. As you said yourself, we need to maximize the network effects of the product introduction…”
“Yes, yes,” I completed the sentence for him, “to gain the highest saturation throughout the population as quickly as possible.”
I paused and stared directly into his eyes.
“So we’re going to be giving it away for free?”
He smiled. “Of course.”
“And it doesn’t worry you that we’re not telling people the full story?”
“Of course it worries me,” he said looking down at the floor, “but again, what choice do we have?”
He looked up from the floor and into my eyes. “We need to make sure we stabilize this timeline as best we can.”
As we approached the point of no return, all the careful planning and clever analyses suddenly had the feeling of blind faith, and I’d had faith shot out of my skies early in life.
“Patricia,” he said, watching me intently, “the lives of billions rest in our hands. We cannot fail.”
He was right. What we were doing couldn’t be worse than letting billions of people die.
Could it?
Identity: Jimmy Jones
“At ease soldier.”
I laughed and relaxed my stance. As one of the newest Command officers, I thought I would strut my stuff for Patricia a little. She’d asked me to come to her office, under a tight security blanket to discuss something.
“Jimmy, we’d like to nominate you to the Security Council,” she said quickly, getting to the point. “What do you think?”
I wasn’t that surprised, but I put on a show for her.
“I don’t know what to say,” I replied, shaking my head. “I’m flattered. I mean, of course I would accept, but I’m so young, so inexperienced.”
“Yes, perhaps,” she laughed, “but you are by far our leading expert on conscious security. I know you’re lacking in some areas, and that’s why I want you to stick close to Commander Strong. I think you could learn a lot from him.”
“I can do that.”
“Perfect. Then if we’re agreed, I’ll put the wheels in motion.”
§
Patricia was like the mother I’d always wished for, and in a twist of circumstance, that’s exactly what she’d become. Her love for me was something I wasn’t used to.
I think my own parents must have loved each other, at least at first. They should have just gotten a divorce rather than fight like they did, but Mother always claimed it just wasn’t Christian.
Arriving here from the Bible Belt, my family had a strong religious background and regular church service had figured deeply in my upbringing. In fact, a strong Christian community here on Atopia was one of the reasons my mother had said she’d agreed to come. God and sin had never been far from her wicked tongue.
A strange communion between Christianity and hacker culture had evolved on Atopia-‘hacker’ used here in its nobler and original sense of building or tinkering with code. The Eleutheros community on Atopia believed that hacking was a form of participation in God’s work of creating the universe. This wasn’t quite what my mother had in mind before coming, however, and this had just added to her dissatisfaction after we’d arrived.
Mother had been a very beautiful woman, a real southern belle, but if she saw you looking at her, a nasty comment was never far behind. All that was left of my parents’ relationship by the time I arrived was grinding, co-dependent bitterness that fueled the empty shells of their lives.
I would guess that my parents had always fought, but having me gave them an audience. After arriving on Atopia to birth me, they could have shielded me from their screaming matches by simply leaving a pssi-block on, and my dad often tried to do just that, but Mother wanted me to hear everything.
I remembered one evening in particular. I was sitting in one of my playworlds, stacking blocks with my proxxi Samson into impossibly fantastic structures in the augmented space around us. My dad had been trying to shield me from their arguing by setting up a pssi-block to filter it out of my sensory spaces, but Mother was having none of it.
“So now you want to protect him!” screamed Mother, turning off the pssi-block in the middle of their argument. “That’s a joke, you wanting to protect a child. You’re a sick little worm, Phil.”
Their favorite venue for screaming matches was the Spanish Courtyard world, well constructed and away from the prying eyes and ears of outsiders.
“Would you knock it off?” replied my dad. “I don’t know what you’re going on about. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Oh that’s right, you haven’t done anything!” screeched Mother. Once she got going there was no turning back. “You sure as hell haven’t ever done anything! Why I married you, I have no idea. What a waste of time.”
“I thought we got married because we loved each other,” replied my dad, dejectedly. Fearfully.
“Yeah, well love don’t pay the bills, now does it Phil? Does it Phil?” she demanded.
“No…I mean, so what, we manage.”
“We manage? We manage!?” yelled Mother. She’d been drinking again.
“Yes, we manage,” repeated my dad quietly, not sure what else to say. He wasn’t much good at arguing, or perhaps he’d been the subject of ridicule for so long that he’d just given up.
Mother tried her best to include me in the blame game even at this early point.
“I manage, Phil, it’s me that’s here taking care of that little shit of a son of yours all day while you’re out sunning yourself on the water.”
“Could you not talk like that, Gretchen? He’s listening, you know.”
“Oh, I want him to hear. I want him to hear this, want him to know that the only reason I agreed to have him was so that we could get on this stinking ship. I would never have let a child into this world so close to you otherwise. What would you think of me talking to my church group about what you’d like to do with children?”
“Gretchen, please, you’re drunk. It’s not what you think.”
“Oh, of course not!” she snorted. “And even then, we’re only here because I’m great-grand-niece to the famous Killiam. Not like you’d be man enough to accomplish anything on your own.”
“We’re doing some amazing stuff here Gretchen, please.”
“Oh really? Is that why you pssi-block me all the time? I can still see you, you know, sneaking around out there.”
“I need to focus on work during the days. I wish you would try to understand. We’ve talked about this. I thought we’d agreed.”
Mother snorted derisively. “Yeah sure, work. I thought we agreed about a lot of stuff, Phil. And you stink like fish, it’s disgusting,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
“Well block it out,” suggested my dad futilely. “That’s what pssi is for. Anyway, of course I smell like fish, I just got back from work. We’ve been analyzing the new stocks. I was trying to take a shower but you stopped me.”
“I stopped you, huh? So it’s me that’s holding you back, right Phil? What a joke! Just block it, that’s your answer to everything, right? Maybe I like to see things for what they are, Phil, like what you are.”
“I’m just trying to do my best, Gretchen.”
“Well obviously your best isn’t good enough,” she spat back. “You are what you are, right Phil?”
“I’m going in the shower,” said my dad as he turned away to finally escape.
Mother waved him off drunkenly and turned her attention to me. Even as a toddler, I cringed in the glare of her disappointment. She snapped into me, looking at the yellow cyber blocks through my own eyes, staring at my own little hands.
“Playing with blocks again, eh stinker?” she laughed. “The other pssi-kids your age are composing operas and you’re obsessed with blocks. You just don’t get on with the other kids, do you? Your cousin Nancy is quite the star, from what I’ve heard. Not you, though, not my little stinker. You’re just as useless as your dad.”
She angrily snapped out of my body, shoving it over as she left. I didn’t understand what she meant by all this, but the words hurt just the same.
Samson was watching all this from a distance. He walked over to help me up, and then sat down with his hand in mine. He summoned up and handed me some more interlocking blocks. We quietly finished building the wall around us, and just sat there dumbly, trying to figure out how to fill in the cracks and make it impenetrable.
Identity: Patricia Killiam
It was bonfire night, and excited squeals rose up between the bursts of rockets and bangers. As we walked down the lane, I caught glimpses of children playing in the alleyways, scrambling atop piles of rubbish stacked high on the abandoned bomb sites behind the row houses.
Fireworks whizzed and popped overhead, and coming around a corner we almost ran smack into a little girl running the other way, her eyes fixated on a lit sparkler that she waved back and forth in her tiny outstretched hand.
“Careful now,” I laughed, stooping to catch and stop her before she tripped herself up. She never took her eyes off the sparkler, completely mesmerized. It sputtered out, and the girl looked up at me with eyes wide in wonder. Small, ruddy cheeks glowed warmly above a tightly wrapped scarf. Alan, my walking partner, knelt down on the wet pavement beside us, rummaging around in his pockets.
“Sorry mum! Little rascal got away from me!” called out a large huffing and puffing man, waving towards us, obviously the girl’s father. The already foggy night was now also thick with the acrid smoke of gunpowder, and my watering eyes strained to see the man approaching.
I called back, “Oh, it’s no trouble at all.” The man stopped running, obviously coming from the Lion’s Head, the pub where we were headed.
“Ah ha,” said Alan, having found the prize he’d been searching for. He produced another sparkler from the pocket of his great wool overcoat. He looked towards the little girl. “Would you like this?”
The girl’s eyes widened, and she nodded. Just then the man arrived.
“Oah, that’s very kind of you,” he started to say cheerily, but then his face darkened. “You’re that perfessor, ain’t ya?” He reached down to grab his daughter’s hand.
Alan sighed but said nothing, bowing his head and putting the sparkler back in his pocket.
“And what of it?” I growled at the man, gently releasing the girl.
“You stay away from my Olivia!” he spat back, roughly jerking the little girl away from us. “You stay away, you hear me? Disgusting.”
Turning sharply he walked away, dragging the girl behind him. She continued to watch us intently as she disappeared into the gloom. I sighed and reached down to gently pull Alan back up. He’d visibly crumpled during the exchange.
“Don’t pay any attention to them,” I said softly, pulling him in the opposite direction, away from the Lion’s Head. “What do you say we have a drink at the Green Man instead?”
“Yes, I suppose,” he replied distantly.
It was the spring of 1953, although spring in Manchester wasn’t much different than most of the rest of the year. While even the Blitz hadn’t been able to displace my mother and father from London during the War, the Great Smog of ’52 had been the last straw to encourage them to take the family north that year.
The smog hadn’t been the only reason, however. My parents had used the Big Smoke as their own smoke screen to accompany me to my new school. I’d just been accepted as the first female faculty member of the new Computer Laboratory of Manchester University, and there’d been a terrible row when my father had refused to allow me to leave and live on my own. When Gran’s asthma had practically killed her in the intense smog just before Christmas, it had given my dad the perfect opportunity to make everyone happy.
My sisters had all been married off by then, and despite an endless procession of suitors provided by Mother, I’d remained steadfast and aloof, and alone. I just wasn’t interested. Only one passion burned in my soul.
“Come on Alan, snap out of it. Don’t listen to that small minded lout,” I laughed, pulling him into me and giving him a little kiss. He smiled sadly and we began walking off towards the Green Man. “Tell me again why it’s different.”
“We’re just speaking about two completely different things,” he replied finally, his mind snapping back to our discussion. “My idea is that if you speak to something inside a black box, and everyone agrees that it responds to them just as a human would, then the only conclusion is that something intelligent and aware, human or otherwise, is inside.”
“Then why not an equivalent test for reality?”
“So you’re suggesting that if, somehow, we could present a simulated reality to humans…”
“…to a conscious observer…” I interjected.
“…to a conscious observer,” he continued with a nod, “if that conscious observer couldn’t distinguish the difference between the simulated and the real world, then the simulated reality becomes an actual reality in some way?”
“Yes, exactly!” I exclaimed. “That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”
He shook his head.
“Why not? Doesn’t it make a certain sense when all of modern physics requires a conscious observer to make it work for some reason?”
“You can’t just create something from nothing,” he said after some contemplation.
“Why not?”
“And just responding ‘why not’ does not constitute a defense, my dear,” he laughed.
We’d arrived at the pub and we stopped outside. With one hand he combed back his hair, parting it neatly to one side, and smiled at me with a soft look in his eyes. Even at 41 years of age, he still had a boyish charm, perhaps aided by ears that stuck out just a little too far. I laughed back, looking at him.
“What about the Big Bang then? That’s a whole universe from nothing!” I retorted. I had a steady stream of correspondence going on with some colleagues at Cambridge. They had just minted the idea.
“Ah yes, my bright little flower, you are clever aren’t you?”
“I am,” I giggled. “Come on, let’s get that drink.”
We wandered in under the bowing doorframe, across worn granite flagstone floors and into the warm bustle of the dimly lit pub.
“The usual, Mr. Turing?” asked the bartender brightly as we arrived at the bar. He nodded at her.
“Two of those,” I added.
For one luminous yet terribly short year, I had the great privilege of having Mr. Alan Turing, the father of all computer science and artificial intelligence, as my PhD professor. His own hardship had been my gain.
After convictions for homosexual acts, still a criminal offence in England of 1950’s, he’d been ostracized by his faculty and the academic world. Even most of his graduate students had abandoned him, and it was the only reason someone of his stature and position would have accepted a female student at the time.
In the end, I had almost an entire year of Alan to myself, an incredible experience that would inspire and shape my thinking for the rest of my life. Sadly, though, Alan had taken his own life at the end of that year, and the world was a lesser place without him.
“All right then,” said Alan after a pause, “I’ll allow that. Explain to me exactly what you’re thinking then.”
The bartender had returned with our pints of cider. After digging into his pockets again, Alan came up with a handful of change that he left on the counter, mumbling his thanks while we collected our drinks. We made our way off to a quiet part of the pub, near a fireplace that glowed warmly with coals of coke.
“All realities are not created equal,” I explained as we decided on a small wooden table tucked into the corner. The benches around it had obviously been recycled, or stolen, from a local parish church somewhere. Mismatched and threadbare carpets covered floorboards that creaked as we sat down in the pews. “If there is only one observer of a universe, then that reality is weak.”
“And the more observers that share a reality, the stronger it becomes?” he continued for me.
“Exactly!”
I’d been very excited that night, filled with visions of ideas newly inspired by Alan.
Just then a ping arrived from Nancy. Its loud chime drowned out the background noise of the pub.
“Go ahead and answer,” encouraged Alan, picking up his glass of cider to take a sip.
This wasn’t a memory, but a painstakingly reconstructed world that I’d created. I liked to venture off into it from time to time, to sit and chat with my mentor of so long ago, and replay conversations we’d had, or at least, what I thought I remembered of them.
I authorized Nancy for access to this sensory space, and she faded into view, sitting on a pew just across from us.
“So you’re sure you want to go ahead with this?” I asked immediately.
Nancy had been pressing me to go ahead with the launch of the Infinixx distributed consciousness project, ahead of the launch of pssi by Cognix. It had actually been my idea. If it worked, it would thrust Nancy into the spotlight and bring her own star onto the world stage just as mine was fading. She could continue my work. I knew she had the inner strength to make sure that whatever happened would be for the right reasons.
“Absolutely!”
“Okay, good. I will press on ahead on my side, then. You’re keeping on top of the New York trials?”
“Yes, Aunt Killiam,” she responded sheepishly. She would always be a child to me. “Of course I am.”
“Okay,” I replied, nodding, “perfect. I’ll start a campaign with the Board then.”
She looked ready to burst, yet her eyes clouded over.
“There’s something else?” I asked.
She sighed. “What’s going on with Uncle Vince?”
The reports of his future deaths had been clogging the prediction networks for the past few days. Guilt gripped me. I’d managed to insert some clues, however, deep in the patterns we had chasing him down. He would be off around the world hunting down these clues in ancient religious texts. A goose chase, but I had to keep him busy. In the end it might even do him some good.
“Nothing is going on with Vince, nothing at all.”
“What do you mean?” She didn’t look convinced.
“He’s just, well, he’s just fooling around.”
I shrugged and looked towards Alan, who shrugged as well.
“Okay,” she replied hesitantly, “if you say so. Just tell me what I need to do to help with the Board.”
“I will. Speaking of the Board, will we be seeing you at the Foreign Banquet tomorrow evening?”
“Yes, I’ll be there.”
I hesitated. “Dr. Baxter said he may bring Bob along…” I didn’t finish the sentence, looking at her. I really wanted to find a way to bring her and Bob back together, but I’d never worn cupid’s hat comfortably.
“I think I’m going solo anyway,” she replied with a smile. “It’s an official function, and those bore David to death.”
“I just thought I’d mention it.” I smiled back. Maybe I was better at this than I thought. “Now you get back to your evening!”
She nodded and squealed as she faded away.
“A beautiful child,” observed Alan, smiling at me. “One thing though…”
“About Nancy?” I asked.
“No, about what we were talking about.”
I nodded. “Yes?”
“In these created realities, what controls the underlying conditions that make the reality possible?”
I considered this for a moment.
“Just the observing entity.”
“And what happens if an organism escapes into the reality that it creates?”
“I don’t follow.” Now it was my turn to be confused. At the time, I hadn’t understood that it could be possible, but then, Alan had always had a gift for seeing further than anyone else.
“What I mean is, organisms are constrained by the physics of this reality, but what if they can create their own realities and escape into them?” He let the words hang in the air.
Alan had also been the founder of mathematical biology and studied its relationship to morphogenesis, the processes that caused organisms to develop their shape.
“If you change the body, Patricia, you also change the mind.”
I sat staring at him, letting the words settle.
“What could an animal become if it were completely unfettered by any physical constraints?” he continued, staring directly into my eyes. “If it were able to drag other observers into these created realities of yours, against their control?”
This century old question now hung ominously in my mind.
Identity: Jimmy Jones
The Flitterati were already mingling with the foreign diplomats and other people of importance that had arrived for the annual Foreign Banquet. The event was being held up on the very top of the Solomon House complex, atop the farming towers in the Ballroom.
The setting sun refracted through the crystalline walls, casting prismatic rays across the crowd as everyone milled about, and strains of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons floated across it all from a string quartet, playing in the landing of the curved marble entryway. Motes of dust danced in the straining rays of light. They were probably smarticles.
I had Samson, my proxxi, walk my body over while finishing some last minute work at Command.
Many of the world’s leaders were in attendance today, reflecting the growing international significance of Atopia. It was an important opportunity for us to show off on the world stage, and Kesselring had left detailed instructions for all of the Council and Board members, including that we all show up in the flesh to minimize confusion on the part of our guests.
Someone grabbed my arm as I began to descend the entry staircase.
“Congratulations Jimmy!” said an excited Nancy Killiam, resplendent in a shimmering gown of what looked like liquid helium flowing around her in silvery wisps. She pulled me close to kiss my cheek, the liquid helium flowing silently around me. She put her arm in mine.
“Thanks,” I replied. My nomination to the Security Council, by far the youngest ever, had earned me the invitation tonight. I still felt a little embarrassed at all the attention, so I quickly switched gears. “On the contrary, it should be me who is congratulating you!”
Patricia had given me a little heads up on the push to move Infinixx up on the Cognix agenda. Now it was her turn to appear embarrassed.
“No congratulations yet, Jimmy,” she whispered conspiratorially. “That’s supposed to be a secret!”
“No secrets from me,” I whispered back, winking. “I may be able to help out, actually.”
Nancy looked at me, about to ask, when I shook my head. “I can’t say now.”
We finished descending the staircase together, arm in arm. Reaching the landing, someone called out her name, and she looked away towards them, and then back at me. I smiled and nodded her leave to go. With a whoosh the silvery helium flowing around me disappeared and followed her off into the crowd. I certainly felt her go.
“Drink sir?” asked a waiter who had swept up silently beside me carrying a golden tray full of champagne flutes. I reached out and took a glass.
I watched Nancy greeting our fellow pssi-kids. This was definitely our time to shine, and shine we did in our glittery and fanciful skins. I watched some of the visitors watching them with wonder, still adjusting to the trial pssi system everyone who came to Atopia had installed. It was a great marketing stunt.
Any technology sufficiently advanced to someone unfamiliar with it, had all the appearances of magic, and this place definitely held a mystical air to our visitors.
Kesselring had left a long and detailed set of instructions about who he wanted me to introduce myself to and chat with. Looking around the ballroom, their names and identities popped up and splintered in my display spaces, and their bodies glowed in faint outlines, allowing me to pick them out from the crowd.
Many were my counterparts in armed and security forces, and many of these from the Indian and Chinese contingents, who were here in force today. Atopia was viewed as a neutral territory for these warring sides. Even more important, what we were doing here was viewed by both sides as an indispensible part of their economic and technological future.
I sighed, straightened out my new ADF Whites, and wound my way into the crowd.
The event was beginning to wind down. My last discussion had been most interesting, as I’d managed to bring together some senior cyber security people from both the Indian and Chinese sides at the same time. I was quite certain it wasn’t my diplomatic skills, but more a desire not to be left out on any details. They were as hungry as the rest of the world for pssi.
Just then I felt someone poke me with a phantom. It was Commander Rick Strong, standing not ten feet from where I was. His phantoms dragged me over to him.
“General, Mrs. McInnis, I’d like to introduce you to one of our rising young stars, Mr. Jim Jones,” he announced as I arrived. I stood straight up at attention and bowed to take Mrs. McInnis’ hand, then turned to give the General a firm handshake.
“The pleasure is mine,” I announced to them both.
“You’re one of those pssi-kids, right?” asked Mrs. McInnis.
I laughed. “Yes ma’am, one of those.”
“Could you show me something?”
She obviously wanted some kind of carnival trick, and I could see the Commander was about to excuse me when I took a step back, bowing to Mrs. McInnis, and then theatrically flourished one hand forward to produce a bouquet of red roses and pink lilies. I handed them to her gracefully.
She put one hand to her chest. “Oh my goodness,” she declared, her eyes wide.
“Take them,” I offered, “they’re real, or at least, they’ll feel that way to you.”
Mrs. McInnis tentatively reached out the hand from her chest and gripped the bouquet at its base, the flowers gently swaying as she took them. She leaned in and smelled them.
“They smell absolutely gorgeous!” she exclaimed, her nose in a lily.
“And,” I announced, waving my hand and snapping my fingers, “presto!”
The flowers disappeared in a flash and a dove fluttered away from where they had been. Flying upwards towards the ceiling of the crystal enclosure. It left a few feathers behind in its desperate flight. We all turned to watch it fly away. Mrs. McInnis beamed at me.
“Jimmy is my newest addition to the Security Council,” laughed Rick, raising an eyebrow back at the General.
“Well, he certainly has a flair with people,” replied the General. He smiled at me.
“That is absolutely the truth,” added Mrs. McInnis. At that moment, someone leaned in to touch her arm, obviously an old friend.
“Oh Margie! Did you see that?” she said as she turned away, and then peeled off from us. “Excuse me, gentlemen.”
We all nodded politely as she left. General McInnis, I could see from research notes that floated into a splinter from Samson, had been Rick’s commanding officer on two tours of duty back in Nanda Devi.
“Proxxids may seem odd, sir, but my parents fought so much,” said Rick after a pause, apparently getting back to the topic they’d been talking about before I’d arrived. “I’m just trying to be careful.”
“Could have fooled me,” laughed the General, “that third tour you signed up for was some heavy duty. That didn’t strike me as the plan of a man being careful.”
“Well I mean…”
“I know what you mean, son. Look, I don’t blame you, running away out here. Heck, getting overrun by a squad of five hundred pound steroid-raging Silverbacks in full battle armor would be enough to make anyone wet their pants.”
Rick straightened up. “With all due respect, sir, I’ve never run away from anything.”
“Well maybe you haven’t. Then again, maybe you have,” the General stated evenly. He then turned to size me up. I returned his gaze steadily. “Young man, what do you think of these proxxids?”
“I think what Commander Strong is doing is absolutely the best thing,” I replied without hesitation. “We test most things in life before we dive in, why not test how we’d like our children to be?”
The General looked unconvinced, so I added, “There’s no harm in it, and I think he should try it out until he feels comfortable.”
Rick looked at me appreciatively.
The General considered this, and then turned to look at Rick.
“Coming out here seems a perfect way to start over, Rick. Just really get started is all I’m saying, don’t pretend, son. All this gimmickry can’t replace the real thing.” He stood and stared at the Commander for a moment before adding, “Don’t spend too much time trying to test out life, just live it. Having a child may help bring some meaning to your relationship.”
I watched both of them intently.
“Anyway,” said the General, clapping Rick on the shoulder, “I’m just calling it how I see it. I know you must have a lot of glad-handing to do here, son, I’ll let you get on your way.”
With that he turned away to find his wife.
“Jimmy, nice to meet you, and Rick, all the best,” said the General as he left, giving us the tiniest of salutes.
“Very nice to meet you too, sir,” I said to the retreating General, earning me a nod as he wound his way out through the crowd towards his wife.
I could see how deeply this issue with Rick’s wife was affecting him, and I was studying Commander Strong when the General spoke about Nanda Devi. I could taste an edge of fear. Of weakness.
“You look just scrumptious!”
I spun on my heels, champagne in hand, to find a stunning brunette staring at me, her long, wavy hair falling in tresses over tanned shoulders. A gossamer dress in abstract floral patterns fluttered around her like leaves in a nubile cyclone, barely obscuring an athletic frame underneath. She laughed nervously, watching me smiling at her. What a beautiful and familiar smile, I thought to myself, sizing her up as my gaze came around.
Commander Strong grinned at the two of us, taking a long second look at the brunette.
“Well, I think I’ll leave you to it, I’ve got to go and talk to some people still.” With a wink my way, he was off.
“Those ADF Whites sure look good on you, Jimmy,” continued the brunette, glancing at the departing Rick and then returning her smile to me. She obviously knew me, but seemed edgy.
I definitely knew her too, but couldn’t quite place her. I was suppressing my pssi memory, determined to work on exercising my own mind’s memory systems. Lately, I could feel a deep welling of energy seeping outwards from within me the more time I spent in my own skin.
Most pssi-kids hardly spent any time at all in their own bodies as they spread their splintered minds across the multiverse. This led to a loss of neural cohesion between their minds and bodies, but they didn’t care. I did. It was almost touching to see this girl had come in her own body, even if she was probably just making a show of it.
But what was her name? It was the first time I’d worn the ADF Whites, and I had to admit, they fit just perfectly. I guess there really was nothing like champagne and a man in uniform to get a girl all weak kneed. I smiled as the light dawned.
“Cynthia!” I exclaimed. “It’s been a long time.”
“Yeah, I know. I haven’t seen you since, well, since Nancy’s 13birthday party…” she trailed off, looking embarrassed.
I let the uncomfortable silence settle for a moment. I liked the way it made her look vulnerable.
“Hey, we were kids,” I said finally, letting her off the hook. “I was a bit of an awkward kid. You, you were…”
“I was awful.”
“I was going to say beautiful. Come on, you weren’t awful. It was a weird situation.”
“I was. Jimmy, I didn’t get a chance to ever apologize for that. I’m really sorry.”
“Hey, it helped focus me at the time, and look where that got me,” I said, sweeping my arm towards all the important looking dignitaries. “I should be thanking you.”
“No, I don’t think you should be thanking me.”
She shook her head, looking down, but then looking back up at me.
“Just look at you now, Mr. Jimmy Jones,” she laughed, looking back up and admiring me in full. “You sure have changed.”
“Oh,” I said, “you have no idea.” She really did have no idea.
We stared at each other, tingling in the electricity of what may come next.
“So, you call that an apology?” I asked, drawing her in. “That just now?”
“Yes,” she laughed, “yes, it was, Jimmy.”
“I think maybe I need a longer apology-over dinner.”
She smiled. “That sounds like a great idea. When?”
“No time like the present,” I replied with a wink. Things were done here.
She leaned into me to give me a kiss.
“Sounds perfect.”
Something inside me growled, and I took her hand, leading her towards the exit.
Identity: Patricia Killiam
“Are you sure?”
Atopia wasn’t just about perfecting synthetic reality. Technologies we’d developed here also enabled us to lead the cutting edge in many other fields. As senior researcher, my own pet project was the deep neutrino array.
We’d seeded the Pacific Ocean basin with a carpet of modified smarticles to act as a vast sensor mote network of photoreceptors, searching out the blackness of the depths for flashes of Cherenkov radiation that signaled the passing of neutrinos-the Pacific Ocean Neutrino Detector. The POND was our part of the quest to verify predictions of neutrinos from parallel universes passing through our own.
“Well, the signal is there.”
“Don’t release any results yet. Run all the tests again and see if the result stays,” I said slowly. “Not a word to anyone, you understand?”
Neutrinos were maddeningly difficult to work with. Even with a planetary-scale telescope like the POND, it wouldn’t have been the first time an experiment with them had gone wrong.
My researcher nodded earnestly, keeping her eyes on me. In all cases, I’d better keep an agent watching her. The slightest leak to the press, of something of this magnitude, would be sure to destabilize the timelines we were trying to follow.
“Are you sure this isn’t coming from a terrestrial source?”
“We’re sure Dr. Killiam.”
“Just don’t tell anyone,” I repeated. “Keep this absolutely secret to us three.”
“Not even Kesselring?”
“Especially not Kesselring.”
How could it be possible that this was happening now?
I sighed and nodded, about to let my primary subjective leave this space, when the researcher grabbed my arm.
“One more thing,” she said nervously.
“Yes?”
I waited, watching fear creep into her eyes.
“We applied the full battery of translation and communication memes to the signal to see if we could decipher anything…”
“And?”
“Well, we can’t extract anything really clear.”
“Out with it,” I encouraged gently.
“Well, it seems to be some kind of a warning…”
I was sitting in on another of the interminable Board meetings, but at least I had something I wanted to accomplish at this one.
We were in the Solomon House conference room for a working session on marketing materials for the pssi launch, this one focusing on stress. One of the items I’d managed to get on the agenda was pushing Infinixx forward on the release schedule, so Nancy was there with me to help make the case.
Jimmy was there as well, now a part of the Security Council, sitting beside Nancy.
We were about to start watching the advertising video, but so far all we’d been doing was listening to a monologue by Dr. Hal Granger about his happiness index and how it was the core measurement around which the whole pssi program was based.
The Chinese representatives were dialed in today, as they had some special concerns about how we would be positioning ourselves. They were politely nodding as they listened to Hal, but he was getting on my nerves, again.
Synthetic reality wasn’t the only thing pssi was useful for. Flooding neural systems with smarticles had made it possible to actively regulate ion flow along axons, helping us stop and even rehabilitate neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s. Alzheimer’s had been a big win for us nearly twenty years ago, and was now a disease of the past, at least for those with money.
Much of the construction of Atopia had been funded by revenues Cognix had derived from these medical breakthroughs, but stress was something different.
After conquering, or at least taming, most of the major diseases, stress was now the biggest killer out there. It had many sources. Sometimes it was just the grind of our environment-noise, pollution, light, advertising, change-but mostly it was the sense of losing control, of not being where we thought we should be or who we should be with. Finding ways to deal with memories under-laid almost all of the solutions.
The human mind had an endless capacity for suspending disbelief, and we’d found this was an effective vector in the fight against stress and anxiety. Some said we were just teaching people to fool themselves, but then again, when were people ever not fooling themselves?
I sighed. Of course, all we could do was supply the tool. How people decided to use it was entirely up to them, despite all the recommendations I could make.
Finally, Hal finished his rambling presentation, and the advertisement started.
“Have you ever wished you were free from the constant bombardment of advertising? Pssionics now makes it possible!” said the extremely attractive young thing featured in our commercial. “Saving the world from the eco-crunch is going to be the best thing you’ve ever done for yourself!”
The meeting was being conducted in Mandarin, but our pssi seamlessly reconstructed everything in whatever language we preferred, even visually translating culturally distinct body language and facial expressions.
Fifty years ago, they’d been predicting we’d all be speaking Chinese by now, but, in the end, the ultimate lingua franca was the machine metadata that intermediated it all-everyone spoke whatever they wanted, and the machines translated for us. Language was just more road kill left behind on our headlong race ahead.
As the advertisement droned on, I couldn’t help feeling some mounting disgust with the way it focused on happiness. Sure it was important, but what exactly was happiness? What we were pushing wasn’t exactly what we were pitching. Soon enough, the ad finished and faded away into the familiar rotating Trident of Atopia.
“So what do you think?” asked our marketing coordinator, Deanna. Still staring at the rotating Trident, my mind was now wandering off into thoughts about the POND results and some odd features of the storm systems coming up the coast at us.
“I liked it,” responded Dr. Hal Granger, nodding ingratiatingly towards our Chinese guests. “I think I’m going to make some slight changes to the empathic feedback.”
“Sounds good,” said Kesselring, here in his first subjective for once. “As I was saying before, all the psychological, neurological and, well, all test results have been compiled and everything is looking good.”
He smiled an unbecoming grin at me. There was a smattering of applause around the table. I raised my eyebrows, but said nothing.
“Patricia?” asked Kesselring, “Anything to add?”
“I liked it, looked wonderful to me,” I said sarcastically. “Who could possibly resist a pitch like that?”
Kesselring’s lips pressed tightly together. “I assume you have something more to say?” he asked.
I paused, struggling, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Look, I’ve got some issues with how this ‘happiness index’ has become such a central barometer of what we’re doing.” I probably shouldn’t have baited Hal, and I was treading on thin ice with the Chinese delegation dialed in today, but the urge was too strong.
“Isn’t happiness the central, single most important thing in a person’s life?” rejoined Hal, assuming a defensive posture.
As he turned to face me, his skin began sporting that revolting smile he loved to use on his EmoShow. To me he looked like a weasel on Prozac. His program was becoming ever more popular as it traded off the Cognix brand, but I had no idea what people saw in him. His ego had long since outstripped his talents.
“I wouldn’t argue with you Hal,” I replied, holding up my hands in mock defense, “but this is supposed to be a serious medical evaluation, not a popularity contest. And knowing about happiness is different than actually creating it.”
“Patricia,” Hal responded in a measured tone, as if I were a guest on his show, “I think you have some issues going on here, some issues beyond this discussion.”
“Don’t try to deflect this,” I snapped.
“Okay fine,” he laughed. Now he was the one with his hands up in mock defense. “I’m just saying maybe you should have a look at your own happiness indices before you go knocking the program.”
He looked at me with raised eyebrows and tried to convey his simple, dishonest frankness to everyone in the room.
“I am happy!” I shot back before I realized what I was doing, my voice louder than intended. I closed my eyes and shook it off, taking a deep breath. Little bastard.
The room fell quiet.
Kesselring rolled his eyes slightly and smiled towards our Chinese guests.
“Let’s move onto the next topic, shall we?” he asked around the table, and everyone nodded. “So, you all have the information about pushing the Infinixx launch ahead of the pssi launch. Who would like to open the discussion?”
“Give me one good reason we should let this happen,” immediately fumed Dr. David Baxter.
“David, you’ve seen all the phutures Nancy has presented. Almost every scenario comes out pushing the Cognix stock higher as we establish this with early adopters,” I countered. “You’re just annoyed because it’s not under your thumb.”
“That has nothing to do with it,” replied Dr. Baxter, and a tumult of angry voices and arguments began while Kesselring sat quietly and watched the whole thing, sighing. After a few minutes of this, it seemed we were at a stalemate when Jimmy spoke up.
“Okay everyone, I will give you one very good reason,” he shouted out. He stood up, raising his hands to quiet everyone. I could see him wink at Nancy.
“I’ve managed to secure an agreement with both India and China to launch simultaneously with us.” Even as he said it, the Chinese representatives began nodding their understanding and agreement.
Gasps issued forth around the table. Details of the negotiations sprang into everyone’s workspaces the moment Jimmy spoke and we all dropped off a splinter to have a look. Having India and China agree to a simultaneous launch wouldn’t just be a commercial coup, but a major political one for Atopia as well.
“How in the world?” said Dr. Baxter, his voice trailing off while his mind assimilated the back-story.
“You’re giving up a lot here,” said Kesselring. “A lot, but I can see the balancing act and the payoff. I like it. Are there any objections?”
Kesselring looked automatically towards Dr. Granger, who looked like he was about to say something, but then just shrugged and shook his head, looking towards Jimmy. Kesselring looked towards Jimmy as well and smiled, nodding his congratulations.
“I assume you’re good with this Nancy?” asked Kesselring, looking back towards her.
Kesselring looked directly at me. “I’m ready to make this happen, but I need one thing from you.”
“Yes?” I had a feeling I knew what was coming next.
“I need you to put this Synthetic Beings Charter of Rights on the shelf until after the commercial launch of pssi.”
I sighed and looked at the ceiling. He knew exactly how to exact his price for this.
“Yes, I can do that. But it will be at the top of my agenda as soon as we launch.”
Kesselring smiled. “Then we’re all agreed.”
Approving murmurs began to circulate. I reached out and held Nancy’s hand in mine, and smiled at both her and Jimmy. I was so proud.
“So, are we a ‘go’ for a worldwide press release?” sighed a resigned Dr. Baxter. He was Bob’s father. Talk about an apple falling far from the tree.
“Yes,” replied Kesselring, “assuming this is acceptable with our Chinese delegates?”
He looked towards them. They all nodded curtly in unison. I wondered if they realized that nationality was another idea that pssi was about to render irrelevant. Or perhaps, more to the point, a good chunk of the world was about to become de-facto Atopian citizens.
“Yes, let’s go ahead with the release. We are about to make history, ladies and gentlemen.”
“Imagine, a trillion dollar IPO,” I heard Hal muttering under his breath as he reviewed the launch details, stars gleaming in his beady eyes.
Getting up to leave, I said goodbye to both Jimmy and Nancy on private channels. I nodded politely to the Chinese guests, then to Kesselring and the rest of the Board. I even nodded to Hal, thanking him for not interfering in the Infinixx proposal.
The black granite and glass of the conference room melted into the deep mahoganies of my private office. I was making for the bar. A nice scotch on the rocks was just the thing I needed.
Marie was sitting against my office desk, her long shapely legs crossed in front of her as she leaned against it, propped up by her arms. Cigarette smoke was rising slowly around her, and she took one more puff and put it out in the crystal ashtray on the desk. She leaned forward and stood and walked towards me, waving me off. She’d get the drink.
“I know Hal is a pain, Pat, but you shouldn’t let him get to you,” she said finally, plucking my favorite scotch bottle from the collection. A glass appeared in her hand and ice cubes chinked softly together as she poured the whiskey over them.
“It’s not that, Marie. I need to find out what Kesselring is hiding from me,” I replied. “Shifting Infinixx up on the release schedule was just too easy. Hal folded without even a peep.”
Marie raised her eyebrows. “Sometimes things just make sense, even to Hal.”
“Maybe, but Kesselring didn’t even seem surprised. I have the feeling something else is going on, and I need someone with, well, special skills to have a look at this from the outside.”
“On that note, your old student Mohesha from Terra Nova called again,” explained Marie. “She wants to set up a talk. It sounded very urgent. In fact, more than urgent.”
I decided to shift back into a much younger version of myself, and was now dressed in a short black skirt and cream silk chemise while a sub-proxxi of Marie walked my real body home from the Solomon House. I sighed and looked down admiringly at my legs, reaching down to straighten my skirt, sliding a hand along my thigh as I did. I trembled slightly at my own touch.
“No, it’s too dangerous to talk with the Terra Novans right now,” I replied.
“But not too dangerous to be talking with gangsters who’ve been trying to infiltrate Cognix?”
I stared at Marie. Of course she knew what I was thinking.
“Sintil8 doesn’t really want to stop what we’re doing, he just wants his cut,” I replied. Criminals were reliable in their predictability and motivations, if nothing else. “He has the kind of backdoor connections and freedom to operate that may yield us some answers.”
The problem wasn’t just my suspicions about Kesselring or our disagreements anymore. The huge depression we’d been tracking up the Eastern Pacific had transitioned from tropical storm status into full blown Hurricane Newton, and Hurricane Ignacia was spinning up into a monster Category 4 out in the North Atlantic. The way these storm systems were behaving had gone from being simply unusual to downright suspicious.
By my calculations, these weren’t natural storms anymore.
Taking a good long pull on the whiskey, I straightened up and looked Marie in the eye.
“Set up the meeting with Sintil8.”
Identity: Jimmy Jones
“I’m sorry Jimmy, but that Patricia Killiam. Where does she get off talking about happiness? I’m really concerned about her.”
“No need to apologize Dr. Granger,” I replied. “I’m worried about her too. She just hasn’t been herself lately.”
We were taking an aimless wander through a few floors of the hydroponic farms, on our way back from Kesselring’s office after the Board meeting. Kesselring kept his offices perched at the very apex of the connecting structures on the top floors of the vertical farming complex. Even the master of synthetic reality liked to keep his specific reality above the riff-raff.
Over a hundred floors up, I enjoyed the views down on Atopia from here-the green forests capped by crescents of white beaches and the frothy breakwaters beyond. Through the phase shifted glass walls, the sea still managed to glitter under a cloudless blue sky. The humid and organic, if not earthy, smell of the grow farms reminded me of the days I used to spend out on the kelp forests with my dad as a child.
“I’m getting tired of her routine as the famous mother of synthetic reality,” continued Dr. Hal Granger. “Sure, fluidic and crystallized intelligence are important, but isn’t synthetic emotional and social intelligence the key to all this?”
We’d all heard this speech before, repeated endlessly on his EmoShow, and now that I was on the Council, I was being given the treat of getting to hear it in person as well. Dr. Granger’s claim to fame was as the creator of the technology that could pick apart and decipher emotions, and you could be sure he wouldn’t ever let you forget it. I tried not to roll my eyes.
“What was more important to understand?” he asked angrily while we walked through the hydroponics. “What someone says, or the emotional reason behind why they said it? Who knows more about happiness than me?”
“I’d say they’re both just as important,” I replied. Dr. Granger had used his growing fame to secure the position as head psychologist on Atopia. No matter what one thought of him, it was best to tread a careful line.
He stopped walking and turned to look at me.
“Exactly.”
One of the grow farm staff walked by and gave Dr. Granger a curt, respectful nod. His office was a few floors down from here, far away from the other senior staff, which was unusual. Observing him on our walk I think I knew why.
As we were walking, Dr. Granger had been watching the blank faces of the psombie inmates, and each of the staff had almost stood at attention while we passed. It was a structured and controlled environment, one that made him feel both powerful and safe. And important.
Most of the psombies here were people incarcerated for crimes, their minds and proxxi disconnected from their bodies as they waited out their sentences in multiverse prisonworlds. Even in paradise, we needed correctional services. Their bodies were consigned to community work around Atopia in the interim, safely guided by automated psombie minders.
While most of the psombies here were inmates, an increasing number were people who donated their bodies for community work while they flitted off amusing themselves in the multiverse. These people judged their bodies without enough value to even warrant leaving their proxxi to inhabit them.
“We’d better start a new special file on Patricia,” he said after a pause.
I shrugged. It wasn’t my place to argue. We continued walking.
“Shimmer!” he called out to his proxxi, who then appeared walking beside us.
Shimmer was a perfectly androgynous creature. As a synthetic being, sex was superfluous in the biological sense, but still critical in others. It was Shimmer’s ability to understand aspects of both sexes, and fluidly understand their emotional dynamics, that had made Dr. Granger famous. It was his lifetime’s work, although most people whispered that it was based on taking credit for his graduate students’ efforts over the years.
“Yes, Dr. Granger?” Shimmer replied. “Do you want me to start a new log entry on Dr. Killiam? Already done, sir.”
“Thank you Shimmer,” replied Dr. Granger, smiling at his proxxi. “Now please, I need to speak with this young gentleman alone.”
“Yes Dr. Granger.”
Shimmer faded away.
Hal turned to look at me while we walked, his hands now clasped behind his back.
“Do you really think it’s possible?” he asked, returning to the reason he had asked me to walk with him today. “I mean, with the technology we have now?”
“Absolutely,” I replied. “The project has been going on for some time, as you well know, in fact using some of your own work. Conscious transference-a lot of people have been working on it. But the trick, of course, is to get it right, for you to stay you, in the process.”
“And if I agree to support you, to support this, you will make sure that I’m the first?”
As good as medical technology was these days there was always the risk of the unexpected, of some accident sending you suddenly into the forever of oblivion. Dr. Granger wasn’t as concerned about his life, however, as much as he was about his fame surviving.
“Yes,” I replied simply. “It will take some time, though, certainly not before the commercial launch of pssi.”
“Good, good,” he said thoughtfully, apparently satisfied. He smiled at the mindless faces of some psombies that we passed.
“You know, Jimmy, you’re always working, you should find yourself a nice girl, find some emotional balance.”
He’d started into his EmoShow routine now, his face now serious and concerned.
He laughed. “I’m sure a good looking young man in your position must have girls throwing themselves at your feet. What I mean is you should find someone special.”
Saying nothing, I just nodded and silently continued on our walk down to his offices. I had found someone special, but I wasn’t going to share that with him.
Susie was a girl I’d had a special attraction to for a long time now. She was a unique soul, her emotions and sensations finely attuned, and I’d always felt like we shared a special bond.
I’d known her as a fellow pssi-kid, but she’d come to my attention again, and become a celebrity in her own right, when as a teen she’d turned herself into a living piece of installation artwork by mapping the emotional and physical state of each of the world’s ten billion souls into her pain system.
She literally felt the pain of the world; a bloated stomach when the Weather Wars flared up again in India, a burning calf for food riots in Rio, a painful pinprick when terrorists blew up a monorail transport in California.
Susie bravely bore the pain of the world like a Mahatma Ghandi of the multiverse, imploring people to stop what they were doing. Her impassioned pleas, featuring her painfully writhing nubile body, had been happily broadcast on obliging, bemused world news networks as the latest and greatest from the magical world of Atopia.
Her star had risen, and in turns had made her the source of both ridicule and inspiration. After a short while, though, the world had gotten bored and gone back to its media mainstay of killing and maiming.
For Susie the project hadn’t been a fad, but her calling in life. Even when the world had turned off, she’d kept going. In the process, she’d gained a small but diehard following of hippie flitterati that protected her from the ridicule of the world, forming an almost impenetrable sphere of free floating flower children that inhabited the metaworlds around her, like petals on a painful daisy.
I’d been trying to get in touch with Susie for a long time, but it was nearly impossible to get through her protective entourage. I needed a way in. My security systems had recently flagged some unusual and illegal splintering activity from my old friend Willy, and it seemed I had found a way.
§
“Well, you’re in tight with Susie,” I explained at a lunch I’d arranged with Willy later in the day.
The light dawned in Willy’s face, realizing what I’d asked him there for. I’d kept the reason for our meeting secret, and upon arrival I had enclosed us in an extremely tight security blanket. I could see his need for money begin to spin the cranks behind his eyes.
“If you help me,” I explained, “maybe I could help you.”
“Sure,” he replied slowly, trying to hide his greed, “and what would you help me with?”
“I could help you,” I answered, “by getting access to higher order splintering.”
“Oh yeah? So, what, like you could double my account settings or something?”
“Much,” I laughed, “much more than that Willy. I could show you how to fix the system to have almost unlimited splintering. You’ll blow everyone else in the market away.”
He glanced at the glittering blue security blanket around us.
“So nobody else can know what we’re talking about, right?”
“Absolutely, Willy. I’m the security expert, remember?”
“Right.”
“So what’s the deal then, Mr. Security?”
“If you can get me a date with Susie, but I mean, really set me up with her, you know?” I paused, waiting for him to acknowledge what I meant. “Then I’ll set you up with what you need.”
“You can really pull it off, with nobody else knowing? No risk?”
“I sure can,” I responded, smiling. “Nobody will ever find out. Let me explain.”
Willy leaned in closer.
“I’ll download a list of vulnerabilities in the Atopian perimeter that you can use to connect with the outside, and then I’ll show you how to anonymize your conscious stream.”
The perplexed look on his face changed and grew into a smile.