The Complete Atopia Chronicles

2



THERE WAS STILL nothing quite like a hot cup of jamoke to get me kick started in the morning. I was back in Command, getting a bright and early start to the day, and going through my homework assignments, coming up to speed on the core synthetic reality platform that everything else depended on.

The pssi—polysynthetic sensory interface—system had originally grown out of research to move artificial limbs, using nanoscale smarticles embedded in the nervous system to sense and modify signals passing through it. Fairly quickly they’d learnt the trick of replaying stored nerve conduction patterns, and creating completely synthetic sensory spaces had followed in short order. In this they’d more than succeeded; to most Atopians, synthetic reality was more real than the real world.

You didn’t need to understand how it worked to use it, though. The proxxi program, a kind of digital alter ego designed to help users navigate pssi space, was almost as amazing as the platform itself. After only a year of using it, my own proxxi, Echo, felt as much a part of me as I was myself. It was impossible to imagine how I’d gotten along before. I clicked over to watch Patricia Killiam in another of her press conferences promoting the upcoming launch.

“Describe a proxxi again?” asked a reporter.

“Proxxi are like biological-digital symbiotes that attach to your neural system, sharing all your memories and sensory data as well as control of your motor system. You could think of them as your digital twin.”

“So why do we need one?”

“That is a very good question,” replied Patricia, smiling approvingly. “Did you know that more peoples’ bodies are injured today while they’re off in virtual worlds and games than in auto and air accidents combined? Proxxi help solve this problem by controlling and protecting your body while you’re away, so to speak…”

The press conference droned on as my own mind wandered off. Despite the endless list of projects to get through, my mind couldn’t help circling back to Cindy and my idea. I clicked off the visual overlay of Patricia’s press conference and focused back on my Command task list as the rest of my staff arrived for the day.

Patricia had just uploaded some of her latest weather forecasts, and we’d been surprised by her predicted upgrading of tropical storm Ignacia out in the North Atlantic. Our own weather systems hadn’t seen this, but as we reviewed her datasets it all suddenly fit together.

It worried me that even with all the technology we had we could miss this, even if it was in another ocean and off our radar screens.

Mother Nature was a far more tangible danger to Atopia than a foreign attack, and we had to do our best to steer clear of Her. Record global temperatures predicted an intense hurricane season, and we were already well into the seasonal dance of steering clear of disturbances coming our way. This usually wasn’t much of a problem out here in the East Pacific off the Baja. Most of the intense hurricanes and cyclones tended to keep to the North Atlantic and Western Pacific basins. Still, Atopia had a draft of more than five hundred feet below the waterline, and the thought of the fusion reactor core down there grinding into a seamount made me sweaty.

“Looks good to me,” I offered, shrugging.

A simulation graphic occupied almost the entire volume of the room, and a grunt from Solomon House was driving our point of view around it with dizzying speed. It was a month-ahead projection of winds, storms, surface and sub–surface ocean currents and temperatures, plotting an optimal course through it all.

Atopia wasn’t really a ship of course, she was a platform, but we could drive her around comfortably at a few miles per hour and more if we really needed. Staying away from bad weather also meant that the beaches were usually sunny, which was a plus even in a place where everyone was off in synthetic space most of the time. Long range future predictions indicated a gathering string of depressions coming our way, so we’d begun backing away north and eastwards towards the distant coast of America.

“Great! Well, that’s it then,” said the grunt, a pssi–kid named Eddy.

He floated in a lotus position in the middle of the display, toying with it. Officially the Command ops team needed my sign off, but they could see my mind was elsewhere. They were just humoring me with their detailed explanations. Eddy rode the disappearing projection like a magic carpet, receding into an infinitesimal point in the middle of the room.

I sighed and rolled my eyes, taking a sip from my coffee. Give me boots in the mud over this any day, but I was there and had to try to wrap my tired head around it.

I summoned up some energy.

“So you think I should bring on Jimmy, huh?” I asked, looking at a note from Patricia Killiam in the report. Her proxxi, a young looking woman named Marie, materialized in front of me, leaning on a railing and stretching her long legs between us.

“Yes, we do, absolutely,” Marie responded. “You know as much as we do that you need all the help you can get in this area.”

“I don’t disagree, it’s just…he’s just a kid.” I knew any objections would be pointless, but thought it worthwhile to at least express my opinion.

Patricia had taken Jimmy under her wing like her own child when his parents had abruptly left Atopia, so beyond his doubtless qualifications there were other factors involved. There were rumors of marriage problems and abuse involving Jimmy which struck a very personal chord. I’d had it rough growing up too.

“He’s a kid that knows more about conscious boundary security systems than you and the whole rest of your team,” she argued, and then added, “and pretty much more than anyone else for that matter. We have to stay on top of the threat posed by Terra Nova.”

Her eyes narrowed.

Personally I didn’t go for all this stuff about Terra Nova. They didn’t pose any tactical threat to Atopia, but they sure were worked up about it. On the outside, Atopia and Terra Nova were more or less viewed as two sides to the same coin, but the rivalry between these competing colonies was whipping up into a fervor. I wasn’t sure it was for the best.

“Yeah, you’re right,” was all I could think to say at that point. “Hey, this tub is your party. If you want some kid with peach fuzz for whiskers on the Security Council, it’s all good with me.”

“Jimmy is a special kid, Rick,” she mused. “Anyway, he’s our pick.”

She said this with some finality. I let it settle.

“Good enough for me, then.” I grinned.

“Good.”

She smiled winningly at me and faded away.

§

It’d been a long day, and I’d been mulling over my idea for Cindy the whole time. Standing alone in the featureless tubular corridor outside our apartment, I hesitated. Was it really what I wanted?

Our door slid open as I strode in.

“Hey honey, I’m home!” I yelled out as enthusiastically as I could muster, and then stopped and tried to make sense of what appeared in front of me.

Our apartment was gone. Well, not exactly gone, but replaced by a pssi projection.

Marbled columns rose around a sunken living area in the middle of the room, surrounded by a raised terrace, and there was a feast waiting on a low table with red and gold pillows littered around it. Incense filled the room and two hand servants quietly and quickly moved in towards me and bowed. A gentle wind blew in through billowing silk curtains, revealing the jumbled and exotic skyline of Mumbai framed in the distance.

Cindy swept in through one of the doorways to the side.

“Isn’t it just dreamy?” she exclaimed, running to jump at me. She was wearing a tight wrap around skirt with an almost transparent sheer red kurta on top. Draping her arms around me she kissed me wetly. “Thanks for those flowers yesterday—that was really sweet of you.”

“Looks fantastic,” I said encouragingly from beneath her kiss, bemused at the scene and her enthusiasm.

She took my hand and squealed, “Come on, let’s eat!” as she pulled me around the side of the room and down to the stairs to the table.

It was a very low table, the kind you had to sit at on the floor and squeeze your legs underneath, and she pulled me down onto the pillows and blankets at its side, kissing me again. Reaching over she pulled a bunch of grapes off the table and began feeding them to me one at a time.

“So how was work today?” she asked, popping a grape into my mouth.

I laughed and ate the offering.

“Long,” I replied, “but we’ve decided to nominate Jimmy to the Security Council as a specialist in conscious boundary systems. He’ll be a big help.”

“Jimmy—Bob’s brother Jimmy?” she asked.

“Yeah, that’s right, well sort-of brother anyway.”

I frowned. For brothers, adopted or not, Jimmy and Bob sure didn’t seem to talk much. Of course, I hardly spoke to my own brothers much either.

We pulled some pillows up around us, and the sun began to set as we chatted. This was the first time I could remember feeling totally at ease with Cindy in a long time. It was nice. Finally, perhaps things were turning around.

When I was about stuffed, she surprised me again.

“So Mr. Rick Strong, who would you like me to be tonight?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” she said, casting her eyes down, and then looking back up at me as she bit her tongue between her teeth and smiled.

Yes, I knew what she meant.

“Would you like me to skin up too?”

I smiled playfully at her.

“Sure...” she giggled like a schoolgirl, “you go first.”

She had unbuttoned my shirt and was rubbing my chest, playing with one of my nipples. We hadn’t made love in months. She nudged me with a phantom for a stimshare and I quickly accepted, watching her shiver as my sensory input filled her. I hadn’t expected this when I walked in the door.

“No, you first, who would you like me to be?” I asked.

This wasn’t the kind of stuff I really went for, but I was happy to experiment a little. She looked at me shyly, and then looked away, embarrassed.

“Well, that Spanish guy in the crime dramas, you know, Julio...”

“Sure, sure...I know him,” I said, laughing. “Are you sure?”

She nodded.

Echo had already sent me the copyright release in an overlay the moment she uttered the words. Looking at the rates, I could see that skin time in this Julio guy was expensive. He must be popular with the ladies.

What the heck. I punched the ‘buy’ and ‘skin’ buttons simultaneously with a phantom and detached out of myself to look down at some Spanish guy sitting on the pillows, cuddling with my wife. It was hard to get used to this stuff, I thought, shaking my head, and then snapped back into my body.

“So what do you think?” I asked.

I sat up a little and put myself on display, raising my eyebrows and winking at her.

“Very sexy, Mr. Commander,” she laughed, “now it’s your turn.”

“Ahh...how about that Phuture News Network celebrity girl?”

“What?” she exclaimed, laughing and punching me gently in the shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah, that girl...you know the one.”

I laughed awkwardly. The Phuture News girl’s large breasts were about all that came to mind on such short notice.

“Okay,” she agreed, grinning shyly. “If that’s what you’d like.”

As I watched, holding her, she morphed into the Phuture News girl. With particular fascination, I watched her breasts swell under the transparent fabric of the kurta. She looked up at me bashfully.

Maybe I could get used to this.

A rush of animal desire coursed through me. I lifted the kurta, revealing her swollen breasts whose nipples popped to attention like little soldiers. I took one of them into my mouth, rolling it around with my tongue, hearing my wife softly moan as I scooped her into my arms.

Yeah, I could definitely get used to this.

§

Afterwards we were lying in the jumble of pillows beside the table, back in our own skins. Cindy was lying curled up beside me with one of my arms wrapped around her, and my brain was lazily tingling and thinking about how best to bring up my idea. She was trying, so maybe it was time for me to try too.

Baby steps, baby steps. I smiled at that thought.

Cindy gently twitched against me, dropping off to sleep, and then she twitched harder, and then again. Wait, was that a sob?

“Cindy?” I said gently, my brow furrowing and my brain fighting back from the fog it had drifted off into.

“Cindy?” I asked again, more urgently.

She turned to me, slowly, her eyes wet above cheeks streaked with tears. She wiped the tears away with the back of one hand, looking down and away from me.

“Honey, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know...”

“Come on, what’s wrong?”

She sighed and looked at me, shrugging her shoulders and hunching inwards as if to protect herself.

“I just didn’t like that, Rick,” she said softly. “The way you looked at me, you were happy I was someone else.”

The fog around my brain quickly evaporated, sensing imminent danger.

“Honey, that’s not true at all,” I said, knowing this was only half true. I raised myself up on one elbow to look down at her. “I was only doing it because you wanted to.”

That was true enough.

“I was only doing it because I thought that’s what you wanted,” she declared, wiping away another tear. “I want to make you happy, Rick. I know I haven’t been great to be around lately.”

“Aw, honey,” I replied, searching for the right way out of this, “look, I love you, and you’re the only person I want to be with.”

This was absolutely the truth.

“If anything, it’s me that wants to make you happy. I want to make us work again. It’s my fault, all this, I mean, you know what I mean.”

The guilt spilled back out and my emotions welled up. I knew she could see it.

“I love you too,” she replied simply. “I’m just not comfortable with all this pssi stuff. I am trying though.”

This suddenly seemed like the right time.

“Look, I’ve been thinking.”

“Uh huh,” she sniffled.

I took a deep breath.

“Like I said, I’m not sure if we’re ready for kids just yet, but maybe we are. Maybe we could take a half step, and get you more into the pssi system at the same time.”

“I’m listening,” she said, reaching up to tenderly stroke my chin with one hand.

“What would you think about proxxids?”

She crinkled her nose. “What, those are like little fake simulated kids right?”

“Well, yes and no,” I answered, “I’ve been looking them up and talking to Jimmy and Patricia. I think it could be perfect for us right now.”

Silence settled, and then, “I’m still listening.”

“They’re not just fake kids. They take our actual DNA code and mix it together as if it was a real fertilization, and then simulate the development process to generate what our real little baby would be like if we had one.”

I took a breath, watching her carefully before continuing.

“You can pick traits, of course, like eye color or more subtle stuff if you want, but that’s sort of the point,” I explained. “It’s like trying out a trial version of how your kid will look and behave.”

“Uh huh,” she replied skeptically, “why don’t you just get them to send you a bunch of mock–ups and we can stick them up on the wall and pick a model we like?”

The sarcasm was obvious, but lightened with humor. I could sense the clouds clearing.

“It’s not just that,” I added encouragingly, “these things, you have to take care of them, just like they were real babies...feed them, burp them, put them to sleep. You get the full treatment, and that’s really the point—you can see how your kid will behave at different ages before you have them, to make sure you’ll like what you’re getting.”

“And why would I want to do this?”

“Well, I thought that if we took care of a proxxid for a few weeks or months,” I answered, looking straight into her eyes, “we could see if we liked having a screaming kid around.”

I smiled at her.

“...and then?” she asked, smiling back.

“And then, well, if it felt right, we could have a real child, but we’d get to experiment a little first. What do you think?”

She cuddled into me and looked up into my face.

“Okay Mr. Rick Strong, I’m willing to give it a try.”

Maybe this whole thing would work out, I thought, and a great weight lifted from my chest.