8
An investigation uncovered that Cindy hadn’t been terminating our proxxids. Instead, she’d been secreting them away, one by one, in her own private metaworlds. As she’d become more pssi aware, she started constructing ever more elaborate worlds. She hid them deeper and deeper away from me, using private networks and security blankets to cover her tracks and protect her ever-growing family.
It wasn’t all that hard, and I hadn’t really been paying attention. Her mood had been so great at the time that I hadn’t dug too deeply into what she was up to when I was away.
All the questions she had been asking about the lifespan of the proxxids floated into sharp detail in my mind. She’d begun demanding more and more flexibility for each of them as we’d spawned them. I’d always refused, wanting to keep their terms as short as possible to try and move the process along.
Since they used a recombination of our DNA, using our individual legal copyrights, both of us had to agree on the format of the proxxid before spawning. Once their processes had been started, they could only be changed by resetting the system, effectively terminating that instance. So she hadn’t been able to modify them without destroying them.
Despite the mounting emergency facing Atopia, I could hardly muster the energy to spend any time at Command, especially after Jimmy had cracked into her private worlds and delivered copies to me.
Jimmy and Echo could handle what was going on as well as I could. Atopia would push through the storms, and even if it didn’t, what would it matter to me? I was busy fighting for my own peace of mind amid the wreckage of what had once been my life.
There were security controls in place to protect against certain psychological dangers involved in using proxxids, but Cindy had overridden the controls using my own security clearance. A desperate mother could find a way around any obstacle that threatened her children.
As I accessed the copies of the worlds she’d created, I began a bizarre journey, watching them all grow up together in that little white-washed cottage on Martha’s Vineyard I had once visited with her. It was like watching an ancient rerun of a television show about country living, complete with sheets flapping like white flags surrendering yesteryear on the clothesline out back.
I spent my days sitting and watching little Ricky, Derek, Brianna, Georgina, Paul, Pauli, and Ricky-Two playing together, growing up together, and living out their lives. I smiled as I watched them, remembering them all as babies in my arms.
The simulation mechanics of the proxxids, which I’d forced upon Cindy, created surreally accelerated lifespans where they’d aged from babies into old men and women in varying spans of up to three months—a crazy, nonlinear time warp.
They didn’t seem to notice anything odd was happening due to the cognitive blind spot built into them; or maybe because, as children living the only lives they ever knew, they couldn’t have imagined anything different. It was impossible to know.
She had only brought me there that one time. As it turned out, it was just after they’d had the first Ricky’s funeral. The illicit gang of proxxid children, my children, were all hiding upstairs when I’d arrived that afternoon at the cottage. They were on the strictest of instructions to remain quiet. Most of them were still small children at that point.
I replayed that scene over and over again, standing with them in the darkened upstairs room as they giggled and hid, looking down at Cindy and me talking in the yard. I think she’d been on the verge of telling me and was planning on bringing them all out as a big surprise.
Ricky’s funeral had been an emotional tidal wave for her, and she’d been trying her best to reach out to me, but I hadn’t let her. She’d wanted my help to somehow extend their lives, but I had shut her down before she’d even been able to ask.
My anger had cut her short, as it always had.
I found myself going back and replaying, over and over again, one scene in particular, just before the first Ricky’s death. He’d been a wizened old man at that point, bent over and leaning on his cane as he came out onto the back porch of the cottage, the door squeaking on its hinges as he exited. Two of the girls came running past him as he closed the door, Georgina squealing as she was chased by Brianna.
Ricky wobbled unsteadily as they flew past, but he smiled at them. I smiled at them, too.
“Come sit down, Ricky,” said Cindy, getting up from the great old oak table we had sat at together not so very long ago.
Time was a funny thing—even as I traveled through it freely back and forth to view what had happened, it was frozen now, my life as immobile as an insect caught in amber.
As I replayed the scene, sitting with them at the table, a wasp buzzed by angrily on its way to a nest under the eaves. Cindy took Ricky by the arm, carefully easing him into his seat and sitting down across from him, her hands on his hands across the table, looking into his eyes.
“I don’t know how much longer this old body is going to last, mother,” Ricky said, matter-of-factly. Tears spilled down Cindy’s face.
“Don’t cry, mother. What’s there to be sad about? It’s a beautiful day.” He rocked his old head back to look up at the perfect blue sky and smiled. “What a beautiful day to be alive.”