Complete Atopia Chronicles (47 page)

“Exactly, we have no idea what whoever planned this has in store,” I argued. “We need to initiate contingency plans immediately!”

“No, let’s not go down that path yet,” replied Jimmy calmly. “Give me six hours to assemble a special team and I’ll figure a path through this. We will not give up this easily.”

“My vote is with Jim,” said Hal immediately, looking towards Kesselring.

Jimmy looked up and around at the assembled Council members one by one, earning a nod from each.

§

As the Security Council meeting broke up, I materialized back in my office under an extremely heavy security blanket. Marie was there waiting for me.

“So it seems that we may yet be doomed to relive the past,” she said as I arrived. “Atopia, the island-city of the future, filled with magical beasts and people, may slip beneath the waves—legend passing into legend.”

I sighed.

“We have to slow down the release,” I said flatly, “or at least stop it for now.”

Things were moving so fast now that the phutures had completely destabilized. Everyone’s resolve to keep the program on track despite the mounting risks had been the last straw to force me into unilateral action. Things were out of control. I could see I would be alone in this.

“Give Sintil8 our authentication key to initiate,” I informed Marie. The pssi program would suffer in the short term, but it needed to be done.

“And did you set-up the meeting with the Terra Novans?” I asked. The time had come to lay all our cards on the table, for everyone’s benefit.

Marie nodded. If ever a proxxi could look nervous, she did now.

“We’re going to get to the bottom of this. I’m going to slow things down,” I added, trying to console Marie, or perhaps myself. “Something is happening with Jimmy I don’t understand, like someone else is controlling him.”

That thought floated quietly for a few moments.

“Well, no time like the present,” I said with a sigh, breaking the silence.

I pinged an urgent request for Jimmy to come down to my office in his first subjective. Marie made her own subjective scarce.

Leaning back in my chair, I tried to think of the right way to bring up a new and troubling discovery.

A moment later Jimmy appeared in one of my attending chairs, looking slightly annoyed. This was the new Jimmy of late, and I felt distinctly uncomfortable again.

“Patricia, I’ve got a lot on my plate right now,” he said impatiently. “What’s up that’s so important?”

I looked towards the ceiling, and then back at Jimmy, watching him carefully.

“Jimmy, I’ve been trying to locate your parents, but I can’t seem to find them anywhere out there.”

Jimmy looked at me and shrugged.

“I have no idea where they are. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t care less.”

“So you have no idea?” I asked again.

I’d taken a huge chance at the meeting by secretly installing invasive pssi–probes into the smarticle cloud during the session to get a bead on whether people were lying or telling the truth. As far as my probes could tell, so far Jimmy had been telling the truth, and he continued to.

“Nope. The last I heard, they were back in Louisiana, did you send some bots to track around down there?”

“Yes. Yes, I did try that. In fact, I’ve tried everything I can think of to locate them,” I answered, nodding.

Jimmy’s face darkened.

“Just like you can’t find the dolphins, right Patricia?”

Where was this coming from?

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “What dolphins?”

Years ago there had been an unresolved security incident that had been the beginning of the end of civil relations with Terra Nova. One of the outcomes had been the revocation of the work permits for the uplifted dolphins. We’d had to send them all back to Terra Nova, but they’d been all happy and healthy. I’d even checked in on the beautiful creatures myself after they’d been sent home.

Looking at him, I realized something was very wrong.

19

Identity: Jimmy Jones

I HELD PATRICIA’S gaze firmly, feeling anger begin to boil in me. Right now I just didn’t have time for this. I still felt a lot of affection for her, after all she had done for me, but it was hard to forgive her for the death of my beloved Samantha.

“Look, I don’t have any answers for you,” I replied with finality. Shaking my head impatiently, I clicked off my primary and left a splinter to continue chatting with her so I could get back to figuring out these storms.

I honestly didn’t know where my parents were. We hadn’t kept in touch after they’d left Atopia, or abandoned me here was more accurate. I was only fourteen at the time, but Patricia had already begun to take me under her wing by then. When they’d left so abruptly, she’d swooped in like a savior angel, pulling me in tight.

I felt bad about being so short with Patricia, but lately, I hadn’t had any time. To be honest, I’d found that talking to her had started to annoy me as I discovered the hypocrisies surrounding her. I felt like her loyalty to the cause, her own cause, just wasn’t there anymore.

On the other hand, if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t even be where I was. I remembered clearly the moment when Patricia had first come into my life. Almost involuntarily, a splinter wandered off back into my inVerse to experience the moment again, perhaps to try and rebuild my bond with Patricia as I felt it slipping.

§

Soon after my fourth birthday, Patricia had dropped in for a visit with my parents. Nancy Killiam and I were distant cousins, but our side of the family was where the dark horses ran. Patricia had seen an opportunity to bring us back into the fold when Atopia was being planned, and had extended a generous offer to my parents, Gretchen and Phil, to come on board the project.

It hadn’t exactly worked out as my family had hoped, or at least as my mother had hoped. She’d assumed that we’d be going for a drive down entitlement road. In reality, we’d ended up in a cramped three room cell near the bottom of the Atopian seascraper complex, hundreds of feet below the waterline.

Patricia’s visit that day had been both rare and uncomfortable.

“We’ve been following Jim lately,” said Patricia back then, accepting a hot cup of coffee from my mother’s proxxi, “and your boy is showing some really amazing talents.”

Mother just grimaced. “You’re sure you have the right Jimmy? Little stinker here is only good at hiding from mummy, aren’t you?”

Patricia watched Mother carefully.

“Yes, he is extremely good at hiding and evading. He manages to slip through some of our tightest security fences like a little fish wriggling through our fingers.” Patricia smiled as she said this.

“Yes, a little fish!” exclaimed Mother, ruffling my hair, holding me beside her and trying to exude loving motherhoodness. I flinched like a hand shy puppy.

“Gretchen, there’s something else.”

“Yes? What is it, Patricia? Nothing serious I hope.”

“Well, at Jimmy’s last checkup, his nociceptive pathways are showing some very unusual activity. We’d like to add his data feed to the child monitoring network, is that okay with you?”

“His what?” asked my mother irritably.

“His pain receptors, the neural pathways from his pain receptors.”

“And what’s unusual about them?” demanded Mother.

“It’s unusual is all. It’s like they’re in some kind of disarray. He doesn’t complain of any unusual pain does he?”

“No, of course not, do you Jimmy?” Mother asked, her smile menacing me.

Wide eyed, I shook my head.

“Okay then, good. So can we add him to the monitoring system?”

Silence.

“Patricia, we’ve been over this a thousand times before with the Solomon House staff. We have our right to privacy. This is my family, and I’m happy to be here, but there are limits!” Mother cried out, overreacting theatrically.

Despite the histrionics, she had a valid point. Atopia was founded on strict liberal principles, and with the advent of pssi, stringent security requirements had been baked into the foundations of law and electronic systems governing it.

Individuals, and by extension families, had an absolute right to their privacy, unless there was some good reason otherwise.

“Is there anything wrong with Jimmy?” asked Mother. “Is he healthy?”

Patricia sighed. “He is perfectly healthy. His mind is distracted and there is some unusual neurological activity, but physically, he’s perfect.”

“Well then...”

Patricia thought for a moment, and then stood and walked to our side of the table and sat down on the couch next to us. She put her arm around me.

“Well then, I’d like to take a more active role in Jim’s development, if that’s okay with you. As a teacher, if you see what I mean. I don’t want to intrude on your mothering, of course.”

Mother eyed her for a moment, weighing the situation.

“Oh don’t be silly, that would be an honor, of course,” she replied brightly after a moment. “Wouldn’t it Jimmy?”

Mother told me more than asked me, her eyes locking onto mine.

I just sat dumbly between the two of them, unable to say anything, cringing, thinking that Patricia was about to become part and parcel of some new awfulness in my little life. Fearful of what horrors awaited me, I dug in deeper and deeper, building my shell.

As Patricia got up and left, I slipped off quickly away to hide, sliding away into tiny worlds within tiny worlds.

Mother gave chase, eventually finding and cornering me in the Little Great Little, past fields of glowing jellies, under a thunderfall whose white sensory noise I often hid behind.

“I know you hide here, little worm,” said Mother, her voice oozing venom. “Don’t think I don’t know where you go.”

Then she appeared, finding me cowering in a corner. Hate distorted her features here, her skin flaking red and crimson and her hands turning into fearsome claws that she gripped and squeezed me with.

Pulling down a tight security blanket around us, she squeezed me until I thought I would pop. I squirmed and whimpered.

“Not a word to Aunt Pattie, little worm, do you understand? If you say anything to anyone, I will tell them all about you and your daddy? Do you want that?”

Smiling at me, she laughed from a fanged and fearsome mouth.

“No mummy,” I squealed out, “not a word, of course not.” I began to cry.

“Such a little cry baby,” Mother taunted. “None of this is real.”

She waved her claws around at the purple canyon walls. With that she was gone, popping out of the Little Great Little and into another one of her soapstim fantasies to burrow away from her own pain.

Dad must have known something was going on, because he appeared just after Mother left, looking pale and dejected.

“Don’t say anything about you and me, Jimmy. It’s secret, you know? They would put me away in the farms if you told anyone, Jimmy. Do you want to do that to your dad?”

I shook my head. Samson, who had remained quiet, emerged smoothly from his hiding place in the thunderfall to take my hand, and we sat down together holding hands. I cried. Dad just left us there without saying another word.

My fascination with pain began very early. I can remember the rare moments when we would get passes to go above, and while my parents would sun themselves on the beach, I would hang at the edge of the palms and palmettos nearby.

At the fringes of the dark forest, I would summon little creatures to venture forth into my hands. Taking great care in their delicate capture, I’d stimshare into them to feel their squirming pain as I slowly pulled off their legs, one by one.

When all of their legs were gone, I would gradually squeeze them between my chubby fingers, flitting into them to feel their spasming agony, as I crushed their legless little bodies. Feeling the pain of killing these creatures helped me cleanse my own pain.

And perhaps, I enjoyed it a little too.

20

Identity: Bobby Baxter

“SID!” I YELLED out into our private emergency channels.

“Jesus, Bob, what?” he replied as his reality instantly merged with mine.

I watched him before me, engrossed in some data mining blitz as he searched through reams of multiverse worlds. Even with the storms threatening, he was still on the hunt for Willy’s body, his dozens of phantom hands dancing through the hypercontrol spaces around him.

“You know, if you play with your phantoms too much, you’ll grow hair on the palms of your hands,” I couldn’t help joking as I watched him and Vicious working their magic.

“No more Humungous Fungus this week, I’ve had enough, buddy.” They gave me several fingers. I silently watched them fiddle around some more.

“So what has your hair on fire?” he asked after a pause.

“No more Humungous Fungus for us, I agree,” I replied. “Something is seriously wrong with this place, and we are going to find out what.”

This stopped them in their tracks. Sid looked at me.

“Now you’re finally talking turkey.”

He cracked a smile.

“Sid, drop everything.”

All his phantoms immediately dropped to the ground.

“We’re getting the band back together.”

“Jimmy too?” asked Sid. Vicious was already shaking his head.

“No, I think we’d better let Jimmy sit this one out.”

Jimmy had bigger fish to fry right now. Not only that, but something about him made me very uneasy.

“But I’m going to ping him and tell him that we’re going to mount a search of our own, to try and help figure out the situation. That way we won’t raise any alarms if we scan the perimeter.”

I thought about that for a second.

“Plus, I want him to know what we’re doing.”

I wasn’t sure why. It was just intuition.

“Sure,” said Vicious carefully, “but just don’t tell him too much.”

That wasn’t a problem. I didn’t know too much.

“I think we should get Vince in on this too,” added Sid.

Nodding, I pinged Jimmy and shifted my primary subjective into a tight and secure channel space he immediately opened up to me.