Complete Atopia Chronicles (38 page)

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 Elèutheros 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.