Leaning forward in my chair, I focused my mind on several key events unfolding in the worlds my consciousness was spread out into, all the while fine tuning the parameters of some phuturecasts that tied them all together. A high-dimensional correlation matrix floated through my display spaces, and I watched it growing, pulsing, and fading as predictions grew or fell in their interconnectedness.
“So what do you think?” I asked.
“You know what I think,” responded Cunard, my proxxi, and I did.
While we were talking, I was holding forth on dozens of splintered conversations in other virtual worlds while keeping an eye on reports coming in from a platoon of sub-proxxi and bots out collecting and spreading data with trusted, and not trusted, parties. I could sense a coalescing cascade in the mood of billions of humans, as well as subtle shifts in the goings on in the billions more worlds in which they wandered.
The timing felt about right.
Distributing my consciousness this wide and thin was tiring, and I’d been at it constantly for nearly forty hours straight, even while arguing with Willy. An aching pressure had built up behind my eyeballs. The Sleep-Over tabs worked great up to a point, but I was feeling sluggish after a long week.
I sensed it was just beginning to pay off, as I could feel the ebb and flow of the world’s opinion around the Infinixx project. Just a little more certainty was all I needed, so I gritted my teeth, rubbed my many eyeballs, and focused inward and back outward.
“Nancy!” someone called out, intentionally overriding my sensory dataflow using an emergency channel. The interruption jolted me, and my conscious webwork partially collapsed. It was David, of course, which I realized after a split second of hang time. I sighed but smiled as his face floated into view.
“C’mon, Nance, come to Davey-boy. Enough is enough.” He was smiling, too, but I could see concern worrying the corners of his mouth.
“Just a little longer. I’m sorry.”
I had a splinter ghosting him, but I’d lost track of it. Visions of him cooking up a storm in the kitchen floated into view as I retrieved that conscious stream. Most of my awareness was still hovering in countless minds and bodies scattered throughout dozens of worlds. I checked the pulsating correlation matrix one last time. Things looked good, and that was good enough for me.
I initiated a wrap to the session, and like a shockwave, streams of information flowed outward from me into my agents across the multiverse. Collapsing my cognitive webwork, it felt like a brick was being lifted off my brain.
The relief was palpable.
“All done, sweetie,” I responded to David. “And I have some wonderful news.”
“And I have some wonderful food getting cold,” he said playfully.
I was more than late for dinner.
With a final flurry of gestures, I released my agents to autopilot and left the rest in the care of Cunard. My workspaces faded out, and the outlines of a dinner setting sharpened into view.
David had chosen a romantic setting. A small fire crackled and popped in a marble fireplace, each side set with a dramatic arrangement of exotic flowers. In fact, the entire living room was decked out in white marble and tropical flowers. Through the open doors, neoclassical columns graced a grand terrace, and a breeze was billowing in through satin curtains. Sea air mixed with burning incense, and I caught a glimpse of what I was sure was the Amalfi coast in the distance.
Italy, of course. I could see where this was going.
Cunard was sitting next to David at the table, and it looked like they’d been playing cards. A bottle of wine languished half-finished. Before I fully clipped back into my body, Cunard took me to one side in a private one-on-one channel.
“I hope you don’t mind, but I dressed you in that little black thing you love so much,” explained Cunard. “It seemed appropriate given his state of mind, and I didn’t want to disturb you.”
I looked down at my body. Sexy, if I did say so myself.
“No, that’s great Cunard. Thank you very much. You can leave us now, and please, pay attention to the correlation matrix and have a talk with the editors at the Financial Times. I left all the notes and instructions.…”
“Go on, girl,” laughed Cunard, “have a nice evening. Stop thinking for once.”
With that, he popped out of view, and I snapped firmly into my body.
The clarity and immediacy of being in only one place after being splintered for so long shocked my proprioceptive sense. I felt like little bits of me wanted to scuttle into the corners to get out of the glare of hard and fast reality, or at least this single point-of-presence.
Blinking, I tried to shake it off.
David was smiling intently at me. With a flick of one of his phantoms, the playing cards disappeared, and the long, polished table went from empty to beautifully set for dinner with gleaming silverware, glowing candles, and embroidered napkins. He reached across to hold my hand.
“Well, look who’s here,” he said, smiling.
“Yes, and look who’s there,” I replied, returning the smile.
He looked like some kind of Italian swashbuckler in tight beige linen pants and a laced white cotton shirt undone almost to the waist. He was tanned, his cheeks dappled with two-day old stubble. I laughed looking at him.
“Okay, stud, give me a minute? I need a glass of wine to begin the unwinding process.”
“Your wish is my command, signorina.”
Grinning, he reached with his other hand for the glass, already filled, and handed it to me.
I let go of his hand to take the glass and brought it to my lips. A well-aged Nebbiolo flooded my mouth, and my body began to relax.
David wagged a finger in the air. “Did you check your inVerse? Vince and Patricia both dropped in with urgent requests when you were busy. Vince had some odd requests…Anyway, I dropped it with Cunard, and Patricia wanted to speak to you about an announcement?”
“David,” I said excitedly, “it’s time. The timing is perfect for putting Infinixx on the stock markets.”
I knew he was in the mood for love, but I couldn’t help myself. I was practically bursting at the seams. One of the reasons I was with David was that he had a seemingly infinite patience with me, and I abused it all too often. Guiltily, I wondered if perhaps he could sense our relationship was living on borrowed time and made allowances he shouldn’t to try to keep it going.
The gleam in his eye diminished, but still he responded enthusiastically, “Wow! Are you sure? You’re going before the commercial launch of pssi? Can you do that?”
“I’ve checked and rechecked everything. We can only win if we go now. When Cognix goes ahead with pssi, we’ll get a double-bump up the hill. Jimmy’s been helping me out. I need to chat with Patricia quickly though, is that okay?”
David nodded glumly as he stared down at the place settings. I squeezed his hand and pinged Patricia. Her head appeared a moment later, floating in one of my display spaces, and she pulled me into her reality. Out of the corner of one multiplexed eye, I could see David sulking and taking a sip of his wine. He got up to add more logs to the fire.
“So you’re sure you want to go ahead with this?” Patricia asked immediately.
“Absolutely!” I cried, before noticing where I was.
Everyone in the pub turned and looked at me. I’d materialized sitting on what appeared to be a small, worn-out church pew tucked in the corner of an old English pub. The crowd turned back to what they’d been doing and the hubbub returned.
“Good. I’ll press ahead on my side then. You’re keeping on top of the New York trials?”
“Yes, Aunt Patricia.” I always felt like a child with her. “Of course I am.”
I smiled at Alan, one of Patricia’s old mentors, who was sitting across from me. He nodded back.
“Perfect. I’ll start a campaign with the board.”
I was hardly able to contain my excitement, but I was nervous as well. I realized that this was actually going to happen, that all my dreams were coming true. But there’d been another reason I’d asked to speak with her.
Squinting I took a deep breath, not sure how to bring this up.
“There’s something else?” asked Patricia, sensing me hesitating.
I let it out. “What’s going on with Uncle Vince?”
Reports were flooding in constantly about him cheating death, along with rumors of him selling off chunks of his vast, if haphazard, empire. He wasn’t my real uncle, but I’d known him all my life. He was a close friend of Patricia—she’d been his thesis advisor at MIT nearly fifty years ago, and they’d worked together and stayed in touch ever since.
It was Patricia’s turn to sigh, her face clouding up. I thought she was about to share some terrible secret with me, but she just said, “Nothing is going on with Vince, nothing at all.”
“What do you mean?” Whatever was happening certainly didn’t count as nothing.
“He’s just fooling around.” Aunt Patty shrugged, but her eyes said more.
“Okay…if you say so.” I paused, leaving some room for her to add something, but she didn’t. “Just tell me what I need to do to help with the board.”
“I will. Speaking of the board, will we be seeing you at the Foreign Banquet tomorrow evening?”
“Of course I’ll be there.”
Aunt Patty hesitated. “Dr. Baxter said he might bring Bob along.…” She let the words hang in the air.
“I think I’m going solo,” I replied with a smile. “It’s an official function, and those bore David to death.”
“I just thought I’d mention it.” Patricia smiled back. “Now you get back to your evening!”
My excitement bubbled back up as she faded away.
“That’s fantastic, Nance, that’s really good news,” said David on my return to dinner. He was tentative now, hovering, but his love for me shone in his eyes. Try as I might, though, my heart could never quite return it.
“Come here, my big, bad boy,” I said lustily, trying to hide my uncertainty.
I grabbed his hand and pulled him across the side of the table toward me. He took my cue and met my lips with his in a strong, firm kiss, opening my mouth and meeting my tongue. I could feel one of his hands sliding down my back, gripping me, pulling me further into him, pressing our bodies together.
We both flittered for a stimswitch almost at the same time, and I laughed, my mouth pressed against his, as my point-of-view switched into his and I felt the strength and urgency in his body. I found myself staring into my own eyes, with him staring back out from them into me, our senses shimmering back and forth like two mirrors reflecting an image endlessly into each other.
“What about dinner?” I asked breathlessly as our bodies rocked together, sliding to the floor while we pulled off our clothes.
“This is dinner,” he gasped back.
He phase-locked our stimswitch so we simultaneously ghosted each other. I was him and he was me, our sensory channels overlaid into and onto each other as we began our lovemaking. While most of me was there, perhaps the most important part of me wasn’t.
But if you can’t be with the one you love, then you love the one you’re with.
Or at least you do your best.