2
Identity: Patricia Killiam
Showing up in person for the press was a mistake.
My God, how my body ached, even with its pain receptors tuned all the way down. I hadn’t spent more than a few dozen hours in my own skin in the past year, but who would want to? Under siege by a frightening list of diseases barely held back by the magic of modern medicine, my body was as shrunken as an old pea left out overnight. Nearly 140 years old, but I still wasn’t ready to give up the ghost.
Sighing inwardly, I nodded at Olympia, our media rep in New York, indicating it was time to start up the promo-world for the reporters. The event was being held on Atopia, but the reports were from New York, so we had Olympia running the show. She was attending remotely, and I’d expected to see a static-image display of her avatar in my display-space, but instead, she appeared as a perfectly rendered pssi-projection.
I didn’t know Olympia had our pssi installed in her nervous system. When did that happen?
The promo-world expanded to engulf our senses, and an attractive young woman appeared, walking along a beautiful stretch of Atopian beachfront near the Eastern Inlet. “Imagine,” she said, “have you ever thought of hiking the Himalayas in the morning and finishing off the day on a beach in the Bahamas?”
I’d watched this advertisement a million times. While it played, I disengaged and opened a private communications channel with Antonia, the senior partner at Olympia’s company and an old, dear friend.
“Thank you so much for this new contract,” Antonia said the moment I opened the channel.
“You don’t need to thank me, your firm is simply the best qualified.” I paused. “How is your father?”
“He’s well. He was asking about you last night.” She smiled warmly. “And how are you feeling? Is the new gene therapy working?”
“I’m feeling great,” I lied and left it at that.
Antonia looked at me and seemed about to say something, but then stopped herself.
“Did your father decide whether he’s coming?” I’d invited him to attend the big launch. He’d helped me in founding the pssi program but had left after disagreements with Kesselring.
She looked away and shook her head. “I’m sorry, but…I’ll try talking to him.”
“Please do.”
Antonia looked back at me. “I will, I promise.”
The ad finished playing, and with a nod I closed the communications channel to Antonia and returned my attention to the reporters.
“So how exactly is pssionics going to make the world a better place?” asked a stick-thin blond, Ginny, from the front row.
I carefully rolled my eyes. I’d never liked the term “pssionics”—the baggage it carried created a constant battle to separate fact from fiction when talking to reporters.
Then again, when has that ever mattered?
“Well, Ginny, I prefer to use the term ‘polysynthetic sensory interface,’ or just pssi.” I detached and floated upward out of my body to get their attention, but nobody batted an eye, so I left my proxxi, Marie, to finish the presentation for me.
The proxxi program represented my life’s work in creating the basis for synthetic intelligence. Where previous research had tried to create artificial intelligence in a kind of vacuum by itself, my contribution had been to understand that a body and mind didn’t exist separately, but could only exist together.
We’d started by creating synthetic learning systems attached to virtual bodies in virtual worlds that gradually became intelligent by feeling their way through their environments. The proxxi program had taken this one step further when we’d integrated them intimately into people’s lives, to share in their day-to-day experiences. They were still artificial intelligences, but now they shared our physical reality to seamlessly bridge the gap between the worlds of humans and machines.
Marie kept talking with the reporters, and I’d retreated to watch from the back of the room when the hair on the back of my neck stood up. The slingshot test must be about to start. I had to wrap this up, so I transitioned back into control of my body.
“Everyone!” I announced, reaching out to encircle the group of reporters with my phantoms. “If you’ll allow me, I’d like to take whoever is coming up to watch the test firing of the slingshot.”
We’d ensured almost everyone had signed up for a front row seat to the demonstration. We needed to show we weren’t just serious about cyber, but also had a committed kinetic program.
“To answer Ginny’s original question,” I said as I grabbed them all and we shot through the ceiling of the conference room, accelerating up into space and earning a few gasps, “pssi will change the world by beginning to move it from the destructive downward spiral of material consumption and into the clean world of synthetic consumption.”
I slowed and stabilized our flight path, bringing us to a stop about ninety thousand feet up. Dispersing the reporters’ subjective points of view across a wide radius surrounding the target zone, I motioned down at the oceans below and then toward the sun rising on the horizon.
“Ten billion people all fighting for their piece of the material dream is destroying the planet, and pssi is the solution that will bring us back from the brink!”
On cue, the slingshot began to fill the space around us with a growing roar and fiery inferno. I left the reporters’ visual subjectives in the thick of it while retreating to view from a distance, backing away several miles, and then several more. What had seemed so awe inspiring moments ago now appeared as just a bright smudge in the sky, and miles below shimmered the green dot of Atopia.
My mind clouded with doubt.
Can I really bend reality to my desire?
Atopia was just a pinpoint of green floating in the oceans on a planet that was just a tiny speck adrift in a vast cosmos of unending universes.
Am I fooling myself?
Our imagined power dwindled to nothing when viewed with a little perspective, dwarfed by unseen forces operating on much larger scales. Just then, I was enveloped in a fast-moving cloud, and, as if responding to my thoughts, a strong wind sprang up. The thunderstorm was coming.
I’d better get down and talk with Rick.
Leaving a splinter to manage saying good-bye to the reporters, I disengaged and pinged Commander Strong. The blaze of the slingshot test was still dissipating on the main display in the middle of the command center as I arrived. I lit up a smoke, gently inserting my presence next to Rick. He was my own pick as head of our newly formed Atopian Defense Forces.
During an exemplary career in the US Marines, Strong had demonstrated repeated bravery by rescuing men under his command. His first deployment had been in Nanda Devi in the terrible fighting over Himalayan dams that had sparked the Weather Wars. Though his psych profile indicated latent post-traumatic stress disorder, it was only enough to make him think twice before starting a fight. With the fearsome weapons we’d installed on Atopia, I didn’t want some trigger-happy wingnut’s finger over the button if things got hairy.
Kesselring, the CEO of Cognix and main benefactor behind Atopia, had been the first to begin speaking about the need to have defensive weapons. Initially, the suggestion seemed completely antithetical to the libertarian ideals Atopia was founded upon. I’d been against it at first, but as time wore on, I could see what Kesselring was thinking.
A battle-hardened veteran, Rick brought a direct, and sometimes violent, experience of the realities from the outside world that helped ground the team here. We were masters of synthetic reality, but I had a feeling our created realities could be blinding us to the real dangers out there. Rick was the perfect antidote.
“Finished playtime yet, Rick?” I asked, shifting my hips and taking a drag from my smoke. Rick did like his toys.
I wanted him to feel safe. I knew that one of his main reasons for coming here was to rescue his relationship with his estranged wife, Cindy. I sincerely wanted him to succeed and raise a family here, especially after the hard time he’d had growing up. During the interview process we’d gotten to know each other quite well.
“Yeah, I think that about does it.”
“Good, because you scared the heck out of what wildlife I’ve managed to nurture on this tin can,” I said. “And the tourists want to go back in the water—not that you didn’t put on a good show. That was quite the shock and awe campaign.”
“You gotta wake up the neighbors from time to time,” he laughed.
We’d purposely removed any reality filtering of the weapons test to measure the cognitive impact they would have on people. The response had more than exceeded the threshold for emotional deterrence that we’d needed for the project.
“That’s your job, Rick, to help scare the world into respecting us. Mine is to help scare it into saving itself. Good work.”
“Did you see that thunderstorm coming in?” he asked. I nodded. “We’ve been tracking that depression for weeks, but we can’t avoid them all. Anyway, it’ll water your plants up top.”
He smiled. I smiled back.
“Why don’t you take the rest of the day off ?” I suggested.
His wife was having a hard time adjusting to life here. People reacted differently to sudden immersion in limitless synthetic reality when they arrived on Atopia for the first time. Most adjusted quickly, in a short order creating their own little nooks and crannies of reality that suited them, but some had a more difficult time.
Yet it wasn’t just that.
At the core of it, Cindy’s chronic depression stemmed from the nature of her relationship with Rick. It was something I thought we could help fix.
“Actually, that would be great. You wouldn’t mind?” he answered, busy adjusting the control systems for the slingshot shutdown. He looked toward me. “So you really think that whole sim kid thing might be a good idea?”
He was talking about the proxxids, simulated babies that Cognix encouraged couples to try before the “real” thing. It might help Cindy get acclimatized to pssi, but in general it wasn’t something I was comfortable with.
“Yes,” I replied slowly, “if you’re careful.”
Rick looked satisfied with my answer. “Maybe I’ll speak to her then. I’ll see you later.”
With a nod to Jimmy, I clicked out of the Command sensory spaces.