Complete Atopia Chronicles (50 page)

“They’re waiting,” Marie replied, and then waited, looking at me. Seconds ticked by.

“Okay, let’s do this.”

We exploded upwards out of my office, squeezing through a tight communication channel in the perimeter, and then dispersed, clipping and mixing our sensory packets around the globe to re–materialize in a large, warmly lit room with wooden walls that arched gracefully in vertical panels that intertwined and spiraled together to form the ceiling.

On closer inspection, the walls weren’t paneled, but were actually living tree trunks that grew perfectly and tightly together. The place glowed with a light that seemed to emanate from nowhere, and I was seated beside Marie at a large stone table.

Across from us sat the Elders of Terra Nova. In the middle of them sat my old student, Mohesha. She nodded at me, smiling, and I smiled back. I felt some of my distrust begin to melt away.

The senior Terra Novan Elder, Tyrel, began to speak.

“Patricia, it is with great respect and gratitude that we accept you here in our lodge today,” said Tyrel. “We know you are here at great personal risk.”

It hardly mattered anymore, my days were numbered, was what I wanted to say. At this point I just wanted things to be right, to do the right thing.

“I am also honored,” I replied, nodding deeply. “I come here today to negotiate a peace.”

Tyrel watched me without emotion.

“We have great respect for you, Patricia, you are the mother of all of this,” he said, sweeping his hand around the table, “of all Terra Nova, and more, of all synthetic intelligences and worlds.”

“Thank you, but I’m not here to collect praise.”

“You have been used, deceived, and you have even deceived yourself!” cut in my old student Mohesha. Her dark, African features glowed in the soft lighting.

“I’m not here out of desperation,” I explained. “We are beating this trap you have set for us. I am here simply because I want the same things as you.”

Silence.

“Even if we wanted to, and we do, we could not help you,” replied Tyrel.

“But you must see the same things I do,” I continued. “You must see the destruction coming. I know we’ve been hiding some of the details. But the pssi program is the only solution.”

Tyrel and the rest of the Elders watched me sadly.

“Chasing happiness by giving people anything they want has never been the path to fulfillment,” said one of the other Elders after a pause. “Satisfying every material and sensual pleasure will not lead to peace.”

“But surely you have seen what I have seen!” I shouted, slapping the table. “You have to stop what you are doing. It will only lead to your own destruction!”

Dead silence. Absolutely no reaction.

“I am going to expose what we’ve been hiding, after we escape this trap of yours, I will go to the media,” I explained. “I’ve been planning it through Sintil8. It will slow the release and we can collaborate.”

“We know about Sintil8,” replied Tyrel sadly, “we know what you’ve been planning with him.”

“Well what do you want then? Is it money you want?” I demanded. “A share of the profits?”

“How far you have fallen,” said Tyrel sadly after a moment, shaking his head. Tears came to his eyes. “You cannot stop anymore what you have created.”

“Is all this just about stopping the pssi program so you can position yourselves better?” I asked incredulously.

“Mother, this is not just about the pssi program, not the program by itself,” replied Tyrel, wiping away his tears. “By itself, we would have been happy to evolve together in a symbiotic coexistence under your dominance, but you have unwittingly unleashed a terrible evil into the world that will consume it. We need to destroy Atopia to stop it.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, bewildered. Then a light winked on. “So you admit that you have created these storms to destroy us?”

My mind raced. Had Sintil8 double-crossed me, had I made a fatal mistake in bringing him so close to me? Was he the monster I had unleashed? How had Terra Nova managed to jump so far ahead technologically to be able to control weather like this? How could they possibly think they could get away with destroying us for their own gain?

“Yes, we created these storms, as you say,” Tyrel admitted quietly, “but we cannot explain why. As secure as the steps you took to come here, there is still a connection back through you, and we still don’t have the full picture. We think the key is contained in William McIntyre’s body.”

“Willy?” I asked, remembering the report on Bob’s friend now. I became even more bewildered. “Did you have something to do with Willy’s body disappearing? Why?”

“It was through Wallace that we first understood the potential magnitude of the danger,” admitted Tyrel, “but it was Sintil8 who helped Wallace to disappear from Atopia, using the access keys you granted. Wallace was acting to protect William.”

Things had begun to spin into nonsense. So, Sintil8 had been involved in the disappearances.

“We have no time for this,” I objected furiously, sensing time running out. “We need to make a deal now. You’ve seen the same phutures I have, there is no other solution. We will escape this trap you’ve set, and I want you to be on my side when we do, to help with what I need to get done, to help save yourselves!”

“We have seen the phutures,” agreed Tyrel, “but you didn’t take into account one scenario.”

“And what is that?” I asked impatiently. We’d played out billions of phutures.

“The destruction of Atopia.”

That stopped me in my tracks. It was true—all of our phutures had included Atopia as a component of the solution set. With a sudden lurch, I could feel my own pride and sense of destiny having perhaps blinded me.

“Look,” I said after a moment of reflection, “that may be true, but we’re escaping your trap. I need to make a deal with you now.”

More silence.

“This is a trap of your own making,” replied Tyrel slowly, “and yes, you may escape these storms.”

I nodded, waiting for him to finish.

“But, by my word, before the sun rises tomorrow morning, Atopia will be wiped from the face of this world.”

22

Identity: Bobby Baxter

SMILING
AT
NANCY, I stuffed some more pasta into my face.

“Think of it like we’re about to run a marathon,” I explained. “We need to do some carb loading and build up our smarticle reservoirs. Keep eating!”

We’d both been storing far more than the usual load of smarticles that we naturally absorbed from the Atopian environment, far beyond even our own high tolerances.

Nancy nodded and continued to eat methodically, looking down into her plate. It had been a long time since I’d been this physically close to her, and a lot of memories were flooding back. With an effort I kept my mind from splintering and scuttling off into the past.

“I just don’t like that we’re hiding this from Pat,” she said looking down into her pasta. “Do you really think she’s hiding something?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, “but we need to keep all our options open. You understand?”

She nodded. “But why tell Jimmy then?”

“Just a hunch I have,” I replied, not able to explain much more than that. “Knowing he knows what we’re doing enables us to watch him watching us, if that makes any sense.”

“Plus, we won’t set off his alarms when we’re scanning the Atopian infrastructure,” added Sid.

Nancy shrugged.

“Makes sense I guess.”

Willy, Sid, Vicious, Robert, Vince and Hotstuff were all sitting at the table together with us in a dingy little cafeteria in a deep, dark forgotten corner of the Atopian service infrastructure below Purgatory.

We were as close as we could get to the routing core of the pssi network, and for what I wanted to do, reducing distance latency to the core would help minimize transactional delays and give us an edge over any self-correcting algorithmic blind spots that may be installed within it. We were going to plug in as directly as we could and watch for anomalies.

“Go over the plan again with me?” asked Nancy as she carefully considered the noodles before her. She took another mouthful.

“Your mind is still the best neuroplatically formatted of anyone on Atopia to handle wide area splintering,” I started to explain.

“Yeah,” added Vicious, “it’s like you can be everywhere at once.”

Nancy sighed. “Yes, everywhere but the place I should have been.”

She looked directly into my eyes and my heart jumped up through my throat.

“Nancy, we need your head in on this or not at all,” I replied softly, my heart beating quickly. “Are you up for this?”

I needed to know. This wasn’t going to be easy.

“Yes, I’m in Bob, you’ve just surprised me is all.” She looked up at me and held my gaze steadily.

“I do like to be full of surprises,” I said as I smiled at her warmly. “Good. So Sid is making some changes to my water sense so that it settles around information eddies regarding Atopia.”

“Right,” she said, “so you can feel out ideas in the multiverse about Atopia.”

“Exactly. So here’s what we’re going to try. You and I are going to composite, and then recombine via your Infinixx tethers to push my water-sense into thousands of composite splinters that we then push into every nook and cranny of the multiverse.”

I looked at Nancy and she nodded her understanding.

“Sid will amplify this and cross-connect our network into the billions of private Phuture News feeds that Vince will open up to us. I’ll be waiting to feel for waves of information that flow out, and then ride the interesting ones in.”

“You sure you’re ready to open up all these personal phuturecasts to us?” I asked Vince, giving him another opportunity to back out. “The lawsuits could be the end of you.”

He just laughed, “The end of me doesn’t scare me much anymore. Look, it can’t get any worse than it is. I want to find some answers.”

“Okay then,” I replied, “just making sure.”

Vince looked ready for action. “Heck, opening up all these private phutures could even kill the whole Phuture News organization… I think I could be ready for a fresh start.”

During the last half hour he’d already had to flit out three times to save his life, but he looked the most awake and alive of all of us. It was true what they said—if you needed something done, ask someone with nothing to do and it takes forever, but ask a busy person and it gets done right away. Vince was the busiest person I knew, and he got things done in a flash.

Nancy looked up at me. “What you’re proposing could kill you, you know.”

“Don’t be silly,” I smiled. “Anyway, it’s less dangerous than surfing.”

“When you surf you don’t purposely cook your brain,” she replied. “Are you’re sure you want to do this?”

I took a deep breath. “Anything to get naked with you.”

She laughed. “All you had to do was ask, Bob.”

“Yeah, well, I like special occasions…”

“Okay lovebirds,” said Vicious, breaking the spell, “time to take a cold shower.”

Off to one corner of the room we’d filled a bathtub with ice and water. As I quickened my mind by orders of magnitude, we needed a way to cool me off as directly as possible, and Nancy had to be right there with me to reduce distance delays between our coupled nervous systems.

Quickening a composite together like this would be tricky, and to achieve the best possible chances at cognitive coherence we needed to be as close together as physically possible. I was going to be taking the brunt of the quickening intensity, and to heat sink off the energy generated the easiest solution was to immerse our bodies in freezing cold water.

“Ready?” I asked Nancy.

She nodded and began to physically undress, although she remained modestly clothed in her pssi projection. I did the same and walked over to the tub of cold water with her, the two of us hand in hand and surrounded silently by the rest of our gang.

“Good luck,” said Vince, squeezing both of our hands, stepping back.

I looked into Nancy’s eyes and saw her quivering.

“I love you Nance.” I leaned in to kiss her. “Don’t worry.”

As we stepped into the cold water, I gently felt her out with my phantoms, and she responded to me, welcoming me in the myriad hyperspaces where we connected. Our synthetic bodies locked together around us like the wings of angels, enclosing us in a protective, otherworldly cocoon.

Finally we stepped physically together, embracing as we lowered ourselves down into the frigid water. Cradling her head below mine, I initiated the compositing sequence, and the hundreds of billions of neurons in my nervous system began fusing with hers. Our minds and bodies began to flow together and into each other.

“Just breathe slowly, in and out,” I gently told her, “and on each breath out we’ll push the quickening a little more.”

Closing my eyes, I let my mind and body merge with Nancy’s, and then felt her pushing me out, splintering me further and further, spreading us out across the multiverse. Our minds and bodies began quickening, and an ocean of information flowed into me as I settled back to sense the ebb and flow of anything to do with Atopia.

I relaxed into our new self, letting Nancy spread us further. With each breath I kept increasing the pace of quickening and pushing our hived mind out further and further, compressing and stretching ever outwards in waves.

With a final deep breath, we breached an invisible wall somewhere in the universal consciousness and our minds exploded. Time stopped, ceasing to exist. We became the alpha, the omega, and everything else in between.

23

Identity: Jimmy Jones

THIS BETTER WORK.
Despite the preparations and simulations, dragging a live fusion reactor with a million lives aboard through the center of two converging hurricanes was enough to make anyone nervous.

Even with the pressure mounting, my mind had been extraordinarily clear this morning. All the confusion I’d suffered through earlier in life now seemed to be clearing, as my mind rang crystal clear with purpose and energy. I’d never felt better in my life.