The Complete Atopia Chronicles

4



MAYBE THESE PROXXIDS had been a bad idea. While everything had started off great a few weeks ago, Cindy had continued to insist on the full treatment. This was my idea, she liked to remind me as she gently prodded me to get up and coddle our screaming baby at all hours of the night. I hadn’t slept properly in weeks.

It’d been a long and difficult day as I’d tried to get on top of the blended threats that were testing our defenses. Cyber attacks were constantly probing our perimeter, searching for vulnerabilities and weaknesses. They’d also just upgraded the large depression moving up the coast of Central America in the Eastern Pacific into tropical storm Newton, and another depression was fast following behind.

I had a pile more work to try and get done, but at the same time I wanted to spend quality time with Cindy and the boys. In the end, I’d come home as early as I could, but I regretted it as I stepped across the threshold into our space.

My home was a pigsty of toys, but then again my ‘home’ hadn’t resembled our old apartment in weeks. Today Cindy had turned it into a kind of suburban estate somewhere in Connecticut, complete with an enormous backyard with a trampoline and swimming pool. I guessed that it reminded her of where she grew up.

About half a dozen sim–kids were over to play with Little Ricky, and they were all screaming and running past me as I came in the door.

“Hey Dad!” squealed out Little Ricky as he flew past, chasing the others into the living room.

It was amazing how fast they grew up. I mean, really amazing. Proxxids were designed to give you the full spectrum of how your kids would look and act, and we had them aging at an exponential pace, so while Ricky had aged one year during the first month we had him, during the next three weeks he had aged five more years.

It was hard to keep in mind they were just simulations, and they didn’t seem to notice because of the built-in cognitive blind spots. Most people just stepped them through a few target ages to get the general idea, but Cindy seemed to be enjoying the whole, painful process.

“Hey Ricky,” I called back.

Despite my grumpiness I couldn’t help smiling at the glee on his face. At that point a big black Labrador appeared, scuttling around the same corner the kids had appeared from, the last in the chase pack. It shot by behind my legs and into the living room to set off a new round of excited screams. I raised my eyebrows.

“Biffy is the newest addition to the family,” declared Cindy proudly.

She was sitting at the dining room table and feeding little Derek, our second proxxid. She’d seen me eyeing the dog.

“Biffy huh? I thought Derek was the newest addition to the family.”

“That was so last week, honey.”

She hardly looked up at me. I thought she was joking, but she didn’t crack a smile.

Derek dribbled carrot baby food down his chin as Cindy tried to spoon it in. He looked up at me, let go a big squeak, and pounded his rattle on the tray holding the food, sending thick orange splatters up around the room and onto Cindy. She patiently smiled in a motherly way and kept trying to spoon it in.

“Well, it’s nice to see how their personalities would react with animals, no?” she asked, wiping carrot puree from her hair with the back of one hand. “Isn’t this what we’re trying to do, to try out different things?”

“Yeah, you’re right.” I shrugged.

I had to admit, my plan seemed to be working.

Since we’d had the proxxids in our lives, Cindy had begun using her pssi more and more. To begin with, she had just added some rooms to our place, and then she’d begun changing the configuration of our home and location more elaborately to suit her needs. It was something new almost every day, and it wasn’t unwillingly like before. She was taking to it as a part of her day to day life.

Not only that, but I had to admit she looked great at it. She was sticking with the whole nine yards of the proxxid experience, feeding and changing them, bringing simulated kids over for playtime, everything. It really did seem to suit her.

“So what do you think of brown eyes?” she asked while I admired her mothering skills.

She picked up Derek and sat him on her lap, looking into his face. I walked over to the both of them.

“I like brown too,” I replied looking down into Derek’s eyes.

I still found it a little unnerving how real these kids seemed, and maybe that was part of the reason for my own frayed nerves. Not sleeping in more than a week wasn’t helping either.

While Cindy had taken to the full blown experience, I was having a hard time balancing it with all my other responsibilities. Cindy was also interrupting me a dozen times a day to tell me about something one of them did and explain how great it was and how it related to this or that genetic expression.

“You seem to like everything, Rick,” she said, gently putting Derek down.

“Go on and play with your brother,” she told him, and he squeaked and began wriggling across the floor to the living room. She turned back to me.

“Rick, you’re the one who wanted to do this,” she sternly observed. “I just want you to participate a little more.”

Annoyed, I began to stammer, “I am…I mean I’m trying...” but I was cut short by a rising cacophony of shrieks.

The boys appeared from the living room and began running around the dining room table we were sitting at, laughing and chasing a flock of tiny flying dragons. I stopped, scratching the stubble on my neck irritably, waiting for them to disappear again.

“Do we really need to have a half a dozen simulated brats running around?” I demanded louder than I intended, my frustration mounting.

On the walk over here, I had decided to tell Cindy that I was ready to have real kids, and I was annoyed to have these things running around me screaming at such an important moment.

Her eyes flashed angrily at me, and then she turned to the kids.

“Boys, boys, we’re trying to talk here,” she said softly, shooing the flock of dragons back towards the living room. “Please.”

When I wasn’t looking, they’d all skinned themselves up as miniature purple tyrannosaurs, and were affecting puzzled little dinosaur expressions looking at the two of us. Little Ricky, the eldest, could take a hint, though, and quickly turned to lead the pack squealing back into the other room.

Cindy smiled and turned back to me.

“Did you see that? How he took the lead?” she pointed out. “We need to see how Little Ricky socializes, don’t we? I mean we picked a specific set of genes regarding his personality, and I for one want to see what this really means. Expression markers on a piece of paper are one thing, but...” The noise level in the next room exploded in screeches again, cutting her off.

I shrugged with wide eyes.

“Can’t we just turn the simulation off for a minute?”

I was getting a headache.

“You can’t just turn kids off, can you Rick?”

“No, but we can sure as heck turn these ones off.”

Echo materialized in my display space beside her, sensing something imminent. Cindy turned to him angrily.

“You mind your own business, mister!” she spat at him, wagging a finger in his direction. If a proxxi could be taken aback, he was, and rapidly dematerialized.

She turned back to me and added, “See Rick, this is just what I was talking about. If you find Ricky too rambunctious, maybe we should select for more introverted character traits. A part of this process is understanding how they will affect us and our relationship.”

I could see her point, but I already had a head of steam brewing.

“Look, I don’t want to have an introvert as a son. I had something important to tell you this evening...”

“And I had something important too, Rick,” she gushed out breathlessly before I could continue. “I want another proxxid.”

I was stunned. In another week or two Little Ricky would be ten years old, Derek would be heading into the terrible twos and now she wanted another one?

“We’re getting rid of these ones, though, right?” I asked incredulously.

“Getting rid of them?”

The whites of her eyes grew and she worked into a panic.

“We haven’t even gotten started with them. So you want to stop halfway through and call this whole thing a waste of time? Call my effort a waste of time?”

“Waste of time? I’ll tell you what a waste of time is, Cindy. I’m trying to make sure this tin can we’re floating in isn’t sabotaged or wrecked by some storm, and I’m strung out on Sleep–Overs from waking up to rock these stupid simulated babies to sleep every night!”

I hadn’t noticed that I’d started yelling, and suddenly everything was very quiet. The boys had circled back into the dining room, and the tiny dinosaurs were staring at me, tears welling in their little carnivorous eyes.

Derek started crying.

Cindy looked up at me and said quietly, “I just wanted to try having a little girl proxxid, to see what that was like.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose between my index and forefinger, my eyes tightly closed.

“I’m going to go back to work for a while, okay? I really have some stuff I need to get done. We’ll talk later. I’m sorry.”

Cindy tried to reach for me, but I shrugged her off and walked quickly back out the door.

§

Even with a full moon, it was almost pitch black under the dense tropical canopy. I’d just about worked myself up into a full sprint, dodging and weaving between the tree trunks.

Pssi was many things, but it was something else at night. The pitch darkness to my unaided eyes was overlaid with infrared and enhanced color images, so I could make my way easily even in the blackness. While I was primarily in charge of the run, Echo was subtly shifting my foot placements and balance here and there, and ducking my head slightly every now and then to adjust my trajectory through the jungle maze as I shot through it.

Echo had also networked in a few wild horses to stampede through the underbrush with us, and some monkeys swung hooting overhead. The net effect was a mad, euphoric rush through the undergrowth. It was the best way I knew to burn off steam.

The argument with Cindy had reminded me of how my parents had fought, and those bad memories jumped back into my mind. At first I’d gone back to the office to burrow into a pile of work, and Echo had said nothing, just working with me on the files. I’d really just wanted to tell her I was ready, but then that had happened. It felt like some kind of sign. I fought off the feeling.

Maybe that was what the proxxids were designed for, to help test you. If so, they were working.

My cheekbone bounced off something as I ricocheted off to one side and then cart wheeled into a thicket of palmettos. Wetness spread across my face. The hoard around me stopped, dousing the rampage in a sudden stillness.

“Maybe you should let me do more of the night driving,” said Echo. He waited for me to pick myself up.

I must have hit a tree branch. Ouch. The animals quietly dispersed, sensing an end to our fun.

“Naw, I like to keep myself as in touch with my body as I can, you know that.”

The more you used a proxxi to guide your body, the more you stood to lose neural cohesion, and that led down a slippery slope. I needed to be in total control of my body. When we used pssi prototypes in simulated combat training, I always made it a point to keep myself and my team in perfect neural coherence between our simulated and real bodies. Pssi was great for adjusting your aim or getting through trauma, but for the day to day stuff I still believed in plain old wetware as much as possible.

“For a guy who likes to keep in touch with his body, you sure can’t feel a thing,” commented Echo, standing beside me. “That’s going to leave a mark in the morning.”

I had my incoming neural pain network tuned down so low I had almost no sensation, at least none of the pain coming from my nervous system. My heart ached something terrible, but there wasn’t much I could do about that.

The perception of emotional pain was a funny thing. The more you tried to push it out, the more it seemed to dig itself in.

“Hey this is what we do in combat training,” I tried to tell him, but he knew me as well as I knew myself.

I tuned my pain receptors back up and felt a flood of pain from my face and ankle. It wasn’t smart to try and walk on a sprained ankle without your pain receptors fired up, not unless you had to.

“We’re not in combat training, soldier,” laughed Echo.

I limped towards the edge of the woods. Echo was walking beside me, and we were just at the edge of the beaches.

“You can’t turn off the pain, and you can’t beat yourself up either,” continued Echo as we reached the sand and walked out onto the empty beach. “You’re not your parents, Rick.”

“I know.”

“I’m not sure that you do, actually.”

A silence settled.

“Nice out here tonight, huh?” I said after a bit, changing the topic.

Echo just looked at me and nodded. “Yeah, it sure is.”

We laid down in the sand, side by side, and looked up at the bright stars hanging silently above us. I tuned the ultraviolet and x–ray spectra into my visual system, and watched the night sky begin to glow in neon blues and ghostly whites above us.

“Beautiful to be alive, isn’t it?” I said to Echo, wondering to myself if I was just trying to run away again.

I hardly noticed that Echo didn’t respond.

§

I stayed out the rest of that evening, not wanting to explain a bloody and bruised face to Cindy in the middle of the night. Dodging responsibility, I had Echo leave her a low priority message that I was sorry, but that everything was fine, and that I’d be staying at the office overnight.

§

The next day was a blur after not sleeping again, so I gobbled more Sleep–Over tabs. On top of everything else, my body was trying to recover from my self–inflicted injuries.

The Command staffers were sympathetically amused at my purple, swollen face. Even though I’d tried to secure a reality filter over the top of it, most of them easily overrode it for a laugh. I was mostly just waiting till the end of the day to speak with Cindy.

“You look the worse for wear,” said Jimmy as we started going over the daily threat reports after lunch. He was smiling.

“Yeah, yeah,” I replied with a grin, “I am supposed to be the fighting part of this unit, remember?”

“Of course, Commander.”

He rolled his eyes, and I looked down, shaking my head.

“Hey, do you want me to finish up with this stuff?” Jimmy offered. “I can see you have a lot on your mind.”

The reports and diagrams floating in the shared display space between us seemed to stretch off into infinite space. Just looking at them made my headache worse.

“Actually, Jimmy, that’d be great.”

“No problem.”

“Rick, why don’t you just take the rest of the day off? I think Jimmy is right, go and take it easy,” Echo added. “I just checked with Cindy, and she’s got some time too.”

I looked up at him suddenly. “You talked to Cindy?”

“Yeah, I sure did,” Echo replied. “She was just checking in on you while you were busy with Jimmy, and she said she had the rest of the day free.”

“Good, thanks guys,” I said, looking at the two of them. “I really appreciate it.”

“Oh, Rick, by the way,” said Jimmy as I began to get up to go. “Your wife asked me to help her with some stuff with your proxxids, you’re okay with all that?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” I said, waving him on, “whatever she needs.”

I forwarded him my proxxid credentials and flitted off to wrap up some details.

§

I opened the door to our apartment after Echo had walked me home, expecting a wave of screaming kids. It was completely quiet, however, and right away that got me worried. Tentatively, I looked around inside and found Cindy sitting on a small couch in the center. Our place was a pristine white, featureless projection, very calm and quiet.

It felt creepy.

“Oh Rick,” she exclaimed as she saw me enter, getting up off the couch and coming to me, “what did you do to yourself? Echo told me you went out last night? This was all my fault...”

“No, no, it’s not your fault. It was my fault.” I held up my hands. “I’m okay, it’s just a big scratch. I was out doing some night drills for work.”

She looked unconvinced.

“About last night Rick, I know you had something important to say...”

“And I still do,” I interrupted, “look, I know it’s been a long time getting here...but...I’m ready now, and I know you are.”

I smiled. She smiled back and wrapped her arms around me, kissing me.

“That’s wonderful news, sweetie.”

She looked happy, but I had expected a little more, so I repeated myself. “I want to have a real baby with you now, you understand?”

She nodded and smiled, “Of course I do, and that’s wonderful news. Well, let’s get it just right, then.”

I took a deep breath, feeling relief wash through my body.

“So, where are the boys then?” I asked, looking around.

“Oh, they’re gone now,” she replied casually, surprising me. As long as she was happy, which she seemed to be, it was fine with me, but I had to admit I felt some sudden pangs of regret.

“But,” she continued, “I do have someone I’d like you to meet.”

A crack appeared in the flat white wall behind the couch, and she led me by the hand towards it as the wall slid open to reveal a room beyond. I could hear a soft gurgling sound. We walked up to the edge of a cradle, and Cindy bent over to pick up a little baby girl lying inside it.

She held her up to me, and I took the baby in my arms.

“Rick, please meet Brianna,” Cindy announced softly.

I looked down into my new baby girl’s face, and she was amazingly beautiful. We could try this out for a while.

Maybe I’d always wanted a baby girl.