3
Identity: William McIntyre
“It is in our interest to work together and find a way to shape our differences,” droned the Chinese Minister of State. Sure, I thought, in exactly the same way that you’ve shaped all previous differences—in your favor.
The splinter covering the latest round of peace talks between China and India didn’t need to send in very much new information, the tone and character of the meeting having been pretty much the same as every other one in the recent past: nothing positive, and very predictable. Then again, for business purposes, predictability was everything. I pulled the splinter back for more important work elsewhere.
I quickly assimilated that thin conscious stream, then turned my mind to an exploration hike that another of my splinters was on in the Brazilian rain forest.
The wikiworld displayed vast tracts of remote farmland belonging to Greengenics outside of Manos, all sown with a complex matrix of genetically modified plants that was supposed to mimic the biodiversity of the forest surrounding it. I wasn’t buying their story and suspected they were strip-farming the area. I’d hired a local guide to walk in and snoop for me, and this splinter was ghosting in through the guide’s contact-lens display.
Pulling back the last of the dense foliage before the edge of the farm area, we peered in, and my suspicions were confirmed. Long rows of bioengineered farmaceuticals stretched out into the distance. Greengenics was falsifying its wikiworld feeds. This splinter of information at the edges of my attention shattered into a dozen others that went off and used the information to my advantage—shorting the Greengenics stock, buying their competitors stock, alerting authorities of falsified filings, and pinging media outlets with anonymous tips about a possible story.
The Shanghai market was about to close its morning session when disaster hit.
“What?”
“Pull out of the short positions right away,” warned Willy. “I’ve already done as much as I can.”
Visions of the peace talks closing splintered into my mind. Interest rates were supposed to be trending a full point lower, but a last-second and unexpected announcement between the Chinese and Indians regarding a joint farmaceutical project had injected some uncertainty into the market, pushing expected rates higher. Worse, the Greengenics facility was named as their secret collaboration, sending the stock of this small company soaring. This unexpected twist shot everything out of alignment.
“Put in sell orders!” I yelled into my dozen splinters.
A bell chimed, signaling the close of Shanghai. Within seconds, the secondary and aftermarkets kicked in, but by the time we’d managed to unravel my positions, I’d chalked up a huge loss.
I was too highly leveraged, trying to be too clever.
Hovering over the small metaworld that was my financial control center, I closed my eyes and sighed. I needed more splinters to cover more things at the same time. All I’d been able to scrounge up were fifteen of them, and half were prototypes that were getting called back for updates and re-initializations all the time. A growing headache pounded behind my eyes, and I focused inward and back outward, preparing myself for the rest of the night’s work.
The day ended in near financial disaster. Almost everything that could go wrong had. Even though I hadn’t said anything, Brigitte could sense my mood, and she’d prepared a special night for us. She’d taken the time to personally reserve a little patch of sidewalk on the side of the Grand Canal in Venice.
The spot was undeniably romantic: a candle set in a green wine bottle atop a red-checked tablecloth; the gentle slap of the Adriatic against the canal walls; the twinkling lights of Venezia under a rising full moon. The strains of an accordion played somewhere nearby, the notes floating together with the smells of fresh-cut herbs, tomatoes, and seafood.
“Brigitte, this is beautiful,” I marveled as I arrived, dropping most of my webwork of splinters behind. Stepping into this reality, I sat down opposite her. I tried to relax and let my foul mood evaporate into the warm night air.
I was still stewing over a heated argument I’d had with Nancy earlier regarding my splintering limit. I’d tried to explain to her what a difficult spot I was in, but it hadn’t mattered.
Atopia was supposed to be this shining beacon of libertarian ideals, when in actuality it was just another country club for rich snobs like the Killiams. She had no idea what it was like for a family like mine here.
Almost every American had lost someone in the the first major cyberattacks nearly forty years ago, but our family had been particularly hard hit. We came from working-class roots in South Boston, and life had always been a struggle. But when the first strikes had hit in the middle of a cold snap at Christmas and triggered massive infrastructure failures, something not easy had turned into something terrifyingly deadly. When the power came back on over a month later, we’d lost nine of our family to the cold, starvation, and riots.
Suspicion of technology had driven my grandfather literally into the hills. But hiding from the modern world made for a hard life, and my father hadn’t been able to adjust. A huge fight had erupted when my dad had announced plans to move to Atopia to start anew and break with the neo-Luddite community founded by my grandfather in the foothills of Montana.
It had been a big gamble, a gamble for a different life for my mother and me, and it was one that had cut my dad off from the rest of our family. Now I felt that the burden to make good had fallen on my shoulders.
While my dad and I had managed the transition, my mother hadn’t been able to cope, and after a few years, she’d returned home to the commune. I remembered being furious at her, and I’d barely spoken to her afterward.
I wasn’t mad at her anymore, but the commune forbade modern communication technology—so if I wanted to speak to her, I needed to physically go there. I’d been planning a trip to see her for years, but I always seemed to find excuses for not going. A trip on foot into the mountains wasn’t something I was comfortable with, but it was more than that. I wanted to make good first, to prove that my dad had been right, and that she’d made the right decision in leaving me with him.
“William?” said Brigitte, catching my attention.
She was dressed up for our evening, her hair falling in waves over her shoulders, clothed in a glittering black slip that left little to the imagination. Her perfume was powerfully seductive, undoubtedly working some pssi magic—it zeroed my focus in on her. I collapsed the rest of my conscious splinters into the here and now, and centered my full attention on her soft brown eyes.
She deserves better. I would do better.
“Yes?”
“Are you here with me now?” she asked.
“I’m sorry,” I sighed. “It’s just… it’s complicated.”
She watched me quietly. “Not everything needs to be complicated.” She moved her hand down to my cheek, then pulled my chin up so I was looking directly into her eyes. “Come on, let’s eat.”
Waiters immediately floated around us with plates of food.
“I want to apologize for giving you a hard time,” she said, leaning over to kiss my forehead.
I’d almost forgotten about all that. “No worries, pumpkin,” I replied, my mental fog lifting. “It’s me who should be apologizing.”
She smiled at me and reached over to hold my hand.
“Enough apologizing, cheri,” she said tenderly. “First we eat, and then off to bed.”
Her smile turned seductive.
My stomach growled. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. Hungry and horny, I thought as I looked at her, and I could see she wanted to make me a happy man. Life didn’t get much better than this. I smiled and dug into dinner.
Perhaps my situation wasn’t as bad as I thought.