Infinixx really began as a pssi-kid game we’d invented called flitter tag. In the forested yards of the Schoolyard at recess, we used to have huge games of it, jumping and chasing after each other in what seemed to the adults as completely nonsensical behavior. But to us, it was a highly competitive and structured game.
More than just using pssi to venture off into virtual worlds, as pssi-kids we were the first to really master the art of body snatching—sneaking into each other’s sensory channels and taking control of each other’s bodies.
It wasn’t nearly as dangerous as it sounds. Our proxxies chaperoned sharing bodily control. They would allow a visitor to do what they liked as long as they didn’t hurt our bodies or do something we wouldn’t do or say ourselves. Proxxies also managed the transition, the handing off and receiving of control, so it all went smoothly and safely.
Sometimes it could get confusing, but then that was a part of the fun. If it ever became too much, whenever we were out of body lending it to someone or off in another world, we could always punch the Uncle Button and snap back into ourselves.
So we were never really far from home.
In flitter tag, whoever was “it” would flitter their consciousness from this body to that, trying to reach out and touch someone else as we squealed and shrieked and jumped about from one body to another, randomly forcing resets as we punched our Uncle Buttons. It was incredibly disorienting, completely mad, and absolutely fun, and there was nothing else quite like it when one was growing up as a pssi-kid on Atopia.
What started off as a simple game became ever more complex over time as we began to invent more and more rules. Of course, we played not just in this world, but also by jumping off into the endless multiverse worlds we traveled through. It was during these advanced games of flitter tag that we first began to really experience distributed consciousness, working to keep track of all the new bodies we spawned as we rushed through worlds of fire, water, ice, and skies, inhabiting creatures and bodies and dealing with physics unrecognizable to the experiential space of normal humans.
We didn’t realize what we were doing at the time. It was just natural.
As we grew into teenagers, many of my peers dropped off into what could only be described as self-indulgent gratification. I was the only one to consider the deeper issues of what had happened to us, and to dissect how it had happened.
This was the beginning of Infinixx.
It was Aunt Patricia who’d nurtured my ideas and given them the space and light to grow. Really, she was my great-great-great-aunt, and to everyone else she was the famous Dr. Patricia Killiam, the godmother of synthetic reality and right hand of Kesselring. But to me, she was always just Aunt Patty.
“So you can really hold five conversations at once?” she had asked me at the end of my eventful thirteenth birthday party.
After my naming ceremony, we’d decided to take a walk together in Never Ever Land, across a lavender field amid giant floating daisies. We held hands, Aunt Patty brushing the blushing blooms from our path as we tried to walk just so, in sync, so we wouldn’t float too far up or down but would stay just right. It was a game, as almost all things were.
“I’m doing it right now,” I giggled, breaking away from her and running, rising up above the field as I did, but not too high for the circling Levantours to catch me.
I stopped and turned to watch her coming, sinking slowly back down to meet her. I was also chatting with my friend Kelly in the Great Beyond about boys—about Bob, of course—and also with Willy, about how he managed to control an entire set of soldiers simultaneously in a combat battalion in the midst of a Normandy invasion, as well as trying to console Jimmy after the frightful incident at my party.
“It’s easy, and I can do way more than that. I can do a hundred if I really wanted,” I boasted.
“Come on, Nancy, don’t tease your old auntie, please tell the truth.”
I stared at her and smiled. “You just have to think about it the right way.”
7
Identity: William McIntyre
I sighed, but happily. Sitting belly deep in the water on our boards, a dark mass moved smoothly underneath us. The great white sharks had begun their nightly garbage collection sweep of the undersea ledge. Bob noticed them, too. He smiled.
“This was great,” he beamed. “I’m really glad you made it out today.”
“I said I would, didn’t I?”
“But that doesn’t always mean it’ll happen,” Bob gently chided, still smiling. “At least, not lately.”
The setting sun was painting a picture-perfect end to the day in pink and orange clouds hanging high in the sky. We bobbed around in the water quietly, and then another great white slid silently past. It was time to get in.
“I guess that’s fair,” I replied. “Work has been such a grind lately.”
We both leaned forward and began a lazy paddle back to the beach.
“I’m sure. At least you look more relaxed today.”
After my talk with Jimmy, I could finally see a way out, perhaps even the means to really break through.
Bob, slightly ahead, grinned over his shoulder at me.
“See you on the beach!” he called out as he abruptly turned. I was wondering what the hell he was smiling about when my board angled up, spilling me forward. In my daydreaming, I’d lost track of my water-sense.
“Thanks a—” was all I managed to get out before I swallowed a big mouthful of saltwater, tumbling as a large wave broke over me.
The surfing had been legendary. Huge storms out in the Pacific were generating monster swells, and we spent the afternoon riding twenty-footers to the delight of the crowds watching from the beach.
Bob picked up a few female tourists to take out tandem surfing, a sport he’d almost single-handedly resuscitated. We’d only just managed to disentangle ourselves from them by the end of the day, after I’d made it clear I wanted to make it a boys’ night out.
Darkness had fallen as we sat at a tiki-hut beach bar under an awning of palms fringing the beach’s powdery sands. Bob and Sid were already stoned, and I was well into my sixth beer, a large mouthful of which I had just lost in a sputter of laughter.
An elderly woman, a tourist, was walking past us as we slouched on our stools against the bar. Her breasts undulated back and forth near her knees, complemented by a grotesquely protruding rear end, both spilling out of her modest bikini as they swung back and forth in a counterbalancing rhythm.
Sid had started up a new reality skin he’d created called Droopy. It magnified the physical characteristics of women we looked at, scaled by the intensity of their attention toward us. He’d just pointed out this new victim, who was making her way toward the bar, and she gave us such a scowl that her tits had literally mushroomed out of her chest to bounce off the beach.
“Sid, you’re killing me!” I choked out, wiping spittle from my mouth.
Desperately, I tried to avert my eyes from the woman’s suspicious glare. Her irritation made things that much worse, and she was practically engulfed by her now gargantuan distended mammary glands as she slowly dragged her expanding bottom through the sand.
“It’s the blob!” screeched Vicious, pointing with eyes wide in mock fear. “Run! Run away now!”
To make his point, Vicious ran helter-skelter into the jungle behind the bar.
Doubling over, I howled with laughter. The swollen, rolling subject of our consideration turned sharply on her heel and was slugging off through the sand away from us, apparently no longer in need of a drink. As she retreated, she slowly returned to normal proportions.
“Oh,” I gasped, rubbing the tears from my eyes and giggling. “We should do this more often.”
“We do this every day, son. What you mean is you should do this more often,” pointed out Vicious, peering out carefully from the bushes at our retreating victim.
He was right.
“William!” Someone screeched into my emergency audio channel. It was Brigitte.
Wally materialized beside me. “You’d better take this right away, she’s pissed.”
He took control of my body, and I detached quickly to respond to her.
“Yes, my splinter-winky?” I answered, my face radiating innocence as I dropped into my workspace to take the call. She stood scowling in front of me.
“William, I’m working late finishing some interviews, and all of a sudden, my interviewee’s breasts start swelling and spilling out onto the table, which is totally distracting and embarrassing.”
Oh shoot, I’d forgotten that we were sharing realities.
“Ah geez, sorry about that, I was just having a little fun with the boys.…”
“You’re drunk,” she stated incriminatingly, “and you guys are pigs.”
“Come on…”
“Cochon!” she added, shaking her head.
“I’m only sharing realities because you asked. This isn’t a big deal.”
“Willy,” she said softly, then paused, looking at the floor.
I waited.
“I’ve barely seen you in weeks, months even,” she continued, “and you can’t even take the time to have breakfast with me, and here you are…ah…?a fait rien.”
I switched off my end of the shared reality, frustrated.
I hadn’t seen the boys in weeks, and I’d been doing my best to spend any spare time I had with Brigitte. It wasn’t my fault I needed to focus more and more on my moonlighting work. After Nancy restricted my splinter limit, my bank account had quickly been turning into a blank account.
I felt trapped.
We fell into a mutually accusatory silence.
“Willy, I think we need to talk,” she said, studying my face.