3
Growing up on Atopia was great and all, but for me, pssi was only good for two things: playing the gameworlds and getting stoned. Oh, and I guess it was cool for surfing, too, so three things. Or, actually four—it was also great for hiding the fact that I was stoned.
Still buzzing from my excursion into Humungous Fungus, I had Robert filtering my body movements and speech so that I appeared perfectly normal, or at least close to normal. Robert tended to overdo it in these situations, and if he wasn’t my proxxi, I’d swear he did it on purpose.
Coming out onto the sun deck of our habitat overlooking the ocean, Robert nimbly handled seating me at the place opposite my dad. Martin was sitting to my left, my mom to my right, and sitting behind my mom on a chair was a guy wearing a toga and weather-beaten leather thongs.
It was a beautiful morning, and a slight breeze was just offsetting the unseasonably hot weather we’d been having. Gulls squawked in the distance over the kelp forests while waves swept calmly past on their way into Atopia.
My dad scrutinized me as I sat down. “The least you could have done was be on time for your brother’s birthday breakfast.”
Although we’d only been born minutes apart, I’d been born at 11:58 pm and my brother the next day—so technically, our birthdays were on different days. I’d already suffered through a birthday dinner the night before with everyone.
Martin glanced at me from across the table. He knew I’d been out partying all night. I smiled back at him apologetically.
“And your food is cold already,” my father added.
Robert was filtering my speech, so when I responded, So is your heart, to my dad’s predictable dig, it came out of my mouth as, “Yes, sir. Very sorry for being late.”
This, of course, didn’t sound at all like anything I’d say, and immediately got me in trouble.
“Are you stoned again?”
Robert did a pretty good job of having my face feign surprise. I just giggled away, safely detached inside my head.
“No, sir,” responded Robert. He used my voice while I sub-vocalized to Sid who was ghosting in on this. “Wouldn’t you be with a family like this?” Sid snorted.
My dad leaned over and looked deep into my eyes. I burst out laughing on the inside while Robert covered for me.
“Dad, come on, I didn’t sleep well last night, okay?”
Good one, Robert. That was true. I was out getting high all night and hadn’t slept a wink. My dad narrowed one eye, then just shook his head and went back to buttering his toast.
“Anyway, Jimmy isn’t even here yet,” I pointed out. “Why are you giving me so much trouble?”
“Jimmy has important things he’s taking care of.”
Unlike some of the people at this table, he didn’t need to add. It was like Jimmy was more of a son to him than his own sons were. It was always Jimmy did this, and Jimmy did that, and I was more than tired of it. I sighed and angrily shook my head.
“Bob,” complained my dad, “you’re twenty-one years old. When are you going to find some direction? You need to move on, son. You should have been here to see the slingshot test fire with us. We were all here. Jimmy was right there in the control room with Commander Strong.”
Here we go again. Robert deleted the expletives when he responded for me.
“I did watch the slingshots,” Robert replied for me truthfully, “and I am doing something with my life. I have one of the top-rated dimstims in all of Atopia.”
It was true.
I was a professional vacationer, and thousands of people at a time paid to stimswitch into me when I was out surfing. It was great money, and when pssi was released into the rest of the world, I was going to be huge.
My dad wasn’t impressed at my entrepreneurial ambitions, however. “You have such an opportunity, Bob. What’s happening here is a once-in-a-lifetime event, and you’re right in the middle of it.”
That’s the problem right there, I thought.
“I’m also one of the best surfers in the world,” I pointed out, something any parent would be proud of. My imagined ranking wasn’t entirely fair, since the rest of the world’s surfers didn’t have pssi—yet—but it wasn’t nothing.
My dad shrugged this off as well. “You were one of the very first pssi-kids. You were top in your class at the Solomon House Academy before you dropped out,” he began to sermonize, wagging his butter knife at me. “Patricia Killiam was just asking me the other day about you, saying how impressed she was with your work when you were a Class I Freshman. She said there could still be a place at the Solomon House for you.”
He raised his eyebrows as the knife came to rest pointing directly at me. My dad was the director of public relations for the entire pssi project, so it wasn’t just me he was chatting up about all this.
I groaned and rolled my eyes, clicking off my proxxi filter. I’ll handle this myself, but I slurred out half the words. “A lot of stuff has happened shince then, wooden you say?”
My dad sighed and looked skyward. “Yes it has.” He motioned with the knife across the other side of the table. “And look how well Martin is doing.”
Martin smiled at me weakly, not wanting to get involved.
“Yeah, look at him,” I shot back, narrowing my eyes at both of them. “Martin and all of you are just the picture of shuper-booper family togatherness. And quit talking about Jimmy all the time, we’re your real sons.”
I aimed for thick sarcasm, emphasizing “real,” but I wasn’t sure if my enunciation was clear enough to convey it beneath the drugs. What had I taken again?
“Bob, honey, don’t be so mad. It’s your brother’s birthday today, let’s please be nice,” came my mom’s quavering voice. “Forgiveness is the key to life. Forgive yourself, son.”
I sighed. It looked like this was going to be a tag team event. The guy in the toga and sandals behind my mum began to lean forward as if he were about to add something. Before he could, I waved one finger at him. “Nodda word from you, ’kay?”
I was as patient as the next guy, but my mom having her personal Jesus following her around like a puppy dog so that she could chat to him all the time was getting on my nerves. It wouldn’t be so bad if her Jesus just sat there and spoke when spoken to, but he was always jumping into conversations, sharing his wisdom.
“Mom,” I asked, turning to her and tuning my proxxi filter back up so I’d stop slurring, “what do I have to forgive myself for?”
“I don’t know, son. You have to figure that out for yourself,” she replied softly, in the way that only mothers can. “I know you can, you have special abilities.”
My dad rolled his eyes, shaking his head at the three of us. He didn’t like it when she started talking like this.
Our family had something of an unusual history filled with flashes of brilliance and corners of darkness. My great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side had been something of a nut. He claimed to have been able to speak with the dead and move objects with his mind. It was something my dad was ashamed of.
My grandfather—my mother’s father—was almost as bad, and my dad could barely stand speaking to him. The family lunacy tended to skip a generation. My dad was just waiting for me to start hearing voices, and I couldn’t blame him for worrying about me using drugs.
“There is evil in the world, son,” added Jesus for good measure.
I shot him my own evil glance. “Only the evil that we make,” I replied, feeling defeated.
“Yes, the evil that we make.”
That stopped everyone in their tracks. I sat back in my chair and rubbed my eyes, fighting frustration on the one hand and a general sense of not being sure what was happening on the other.
Maybe I should try a different tack. “Look, all this stuff is great, but technology can make you stupid, you know?” My addled brain was trying to find some way out of these woods that I’d wandered into. All four of them stared at me. “Like a generation ago, Eskimos didn’t even have a word for ‘lost,’ and now without GPS they can barely find their way out of a frozen paper bag.”
“I believe they’re called Inuit,” suggested Martin.
I looked at him hopelessly.
“That’s not the point. I’m stuck in this thing, and I love all you guys,” I said, really thinking I love most of you guys. “I have a kind of a love-hate relationship with pssi right now, and I just want to use this stuff the way I want to. Okay, Dad?”
My dad shrugged, giving up. “Sure. Whatever you think is best.” He clearly didn’t think it was best.
“Just leave me to do stuff, the way I want, in the time I want.” I grabbed some croissants and a glass of orange juice. “Great talk. I’m going surfing. Is that okay with everyone?”