Complete Atopia Chronicles (40 page)

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 13
birthday 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.