The Complete Atopia Chronicles

5



TODAY CINDY HAD transported our family into a Norman Rockwell–like setting. We were outside, sitting together at an old weather beaten oak table at the edge of an apple orchard, behind a vintage white washed cottage, complete with peeling paint outside and a musty interior full of yellowing family photographs on mantelpieces.

It was warm, hot even, as the sun lazily set under a cloudless blue sky. We were on Martha’s Vineyard in a circa 1940s wikiworld. The fading day had a languid, easy going feel to it, which was nice after a hectic day of chasing down cyber threats. Sea air rustled in through tall unkempt grasses atop sand dunes lining the nearby beaches.

Like getting a new fix, our first baby girl proxxid had injected new life into our relationship, and the days and weeks had passed with a sense of rejuvenated expectations. Jimmy and Echo had sensed what was going on, and the pair of them had volunteered to take on a lot of my Command functions, giving me the time to work things out with Cindy.

The highlight of each day had become a ritualized homecoming to explore a new metaworld that Cindy would create for us, and, of course, to play with the latest proxxid. As time went on, we’d progressed, one by one, through Brianna, our first girl proxxid, and then Georgina, Paul, Pauli and eventually to our new favorite, Little Ricky-Two.

“Adriana was right,” commented Cindy, looking down into Little Ricky-Two’s face, “blue eyes are the best. Just like Little Ricky’s.”

“Huh?”

I was deep into a Phuture News report predicting a flare-up in the Weather Wars. I flicked away tabloid splinters that tried to correlate this to some paranormal reports. Of course, a lot of people were tracking events in the Weather Wars, and with so many people getting advance notice of events on this scale, there was a good chance the event wouldn’t happen.

As I was thinking this, the new news reported that the offensive had been delayed, and was just as quickly canceled. Suddenly, a report came in that a tactical nuclear weapon would be launched against a target in Kashmir, but this was quickly aborted at the last instant. All sides were already at the negotiating table.

Accurate futuring technology had begun to bring out random behavior—being predictable meant everyone could see you coming, so being unpredictable and random had its advantages, but usually at the expense of lacking a certain strategic intent.

The irony of how ‘knowing the future’ made things less predictable didn’t escape me, but the serious strategists said that this perception was just the result of our primary subjectives being stuck in one timeline at a time. I sighed.

At the same time, Hurricane Ignacia had shifted directions entirely, and looked like it would slam into Costa Rica and could cross over from the Caribbean and into the Eastern Pacific. It had grown into a monster category four. We were already backpedaling away from Hurricane Newton, a steady category two as it wound its way up the coast of Mexico, and were suddenly faced with two major hurricanes in our oceanic basin with several other depressions already spinning up in the background. Not unprecedented, but certainly unusual.

A mosquito hovered uncertainly before me and I swatted it away, shaking my head.

“Remember the original Little Ricky’s eyes?” repeated Cindy. “I replayed them in Little Ricky-Two’s features. I just love them.”

She choked up as she said this, even though it had been more than six weeks since we’d discontinued the original Little Ricky proxxid. Sensing tears coming, I snapped out of Phuture News and focused my attention on Cindy.

“Oh, yes, of course,” I replied.

One of our favorite activities was to discuss and compare features of each proxxid. I thought I’d try launching into this to avert whatever was happening and focus her in the moment.

“I really like the cheekbone structure of Little Ricky-Two,” I suggested helpfully.

Cindy went completely still. In the sudden silence, I could hear the wooden grandfather clock in the main hallway of the cottage slowly ticking through the seconds. Something was terribly wrong, but I couldn’t understand what it was. Cindy stared down into Little Ricky-Two’s face. She seemed about to cry.

“Me too,” replied Cindy, catching herself, still staring into the proxxid’s face. With a deep breath, she recovered from whatever it was.

“Who’s my cute little baby boy?” Cindy whispered at Little Ricky-Two, shaking him softly and then squeezing him into her body. He burbled with delight, and cuddled his head into her as she held him.

“Are you okay?” I asked Cindy.

“Yes, of course,” she replied unconvincingly. Shrugging and smiling, she held the synthetic baby ever tighter.

A cicada’s whine played high in the distance, and I squinted into the sunlight slanting through the apple trees and watched her doting over the proxxid. This was all very nice, but my uneasiness was wearing my patience thin. I’d been more than ready to move onto the real thing for a while.

I held up one hand to shield my eyes from the sun and asked, “How about we step this one quickly through his age profiles, maybe see what he’d be like at five years old tomorrow?”

She didn’t say anything.

“Then maybe as a twenty-something the day after?”

Cindy shot me a hateful look and tightly cradled Little Ricky-Two.

“No, we don’t need to do that. I already have a pretty good idea.”

Feeling irritated, I looked down to inspect some crab grass sprouting desperately out from under one of the feet of the table. A breeze rippled the struggling blades of grass as I watched, bringing with it the moldering decay of spoiled apples out in the yard. I looked back up at Cindy, straining my eyes against the setting sun.

“What do you mean, you have a good idea?” I asked. “We only let the first Little Ricky develop to about five, and Derek was just a baby when we terminated. Don’t you want to see what they’ll be like when they’re older?”

“Rick, you just know these things when you’re a mother.”

She sighed.

“You can look at the simulations of them older if you like, but I don’t need to.”

She held Little Ricky-Two up in front of her and began cooing softly at him.

The discussion was apparently over. I felt both uncomfortable and annoyed. Little Ricky-Two was wearing tiny stone washed denim dungarees and a checked red shirt, just how we used to dress up the original Little Ricky.

“Isn’t that what the proxxids are for?” I asked her, my frustration beginning to mount.

“Honey,” she answered, still staring at Little Ricky-two, “I don’t want to argue with you, okay? It’s just not something I want to do.”

I sat for a moment, quietly putting my emotions in order before responding while I watched her nuzzling the proxxid some more.

“Cindy, please, put Little Ricky-Two down for a second.”

“Okay, Mr. Big Ricky,” she replied finally. She turned and sat the baby on her lap, cradling him defensively. Looking up at me, she was about to say something but I cut her off.

“Can we turn this simulation off for a minute?” I asked. “I’m really not comfortable here anymore.”

Hurt blossomed in her eyes and she seemed to resist for a moment, glancing back and forth at the cottage and then at me. She hesitated. Sensing my aggravation, the apple orchard and cottage faded away.

She still sat holding Little Ricky-Two in her arms and on her lap, but we were sitting back at our own dining room table in real space. Behind her, light danced down from the kelp forests, illuminating a school of angel fish that were swimming past the window walls of our apartment.

I leaned forward towards her and put one hand on her knee and said, “Cindy, I love you honey.”

“And I love you too.”

She took my cue to hold my hand in hers, but she held tightly onto the proxxid with her other arm.

“I know this was all my idea,” I explained, “and I’ve enjoyed it, and I think we’ve learnt a lot, but I think this is enough, don’t you? It’s time to get onto the real thing, don’t you think?”

I waited, expecting the worst.

She just smiled. “Yes, I think you’re right. This is enough.”

“Really?” I was surprised. “So we can move onto the real thing?”

She smiled back at me and bounced Little Ricky-Two on her knee.

“Well, give me a little time to myself, no?”

§

As suddenly as it had started, it was over.

The next day I came home from work and there were no more proxxids. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me. We were child free for the first time in months, like we were proxxid empty-nesters. It was a shock to my system to begin with—coming home to find only Cindy waiting for me, with no new proxxid to play with.

In retrospect, I’d actually enjoyed the process of picking out the perfect baby for us. Putting it all behind us felt like we’d crossed an important threshold, and I looked forward to having a real baby.

Most important, the experience seemed to have recreated Cindy. She was happy to simply be alive, and the clouds of her chronic depression had lifted. I figured it was the prospect of finally having a child together, the whole process we’d been through. Each day I would return from work and she was energized and refreshed, and we would enjoy long lovemaking sessions more often than not.

It was after one of those sessions, lying amid the mess of sheets and pillows, that I asked her, “Cindy, don’t you want to get pregnant, get off the birth control? I mean, we could be making our baby right now.”

“Silly,” she replied, poking my nose playfully with one finger, “just give me some time. I’m really enjoying myself right now.”

I couldn’t argue with that. She was being terrific.

“I don’t want to do it artificially,” I continued dreamily. “I’d prefer that we inseminate ourselves, or rather, I inseminate you.”

She giggled and I scooped her up into my arms.

“Is that good enough for you?” I teased.

“Sure is, Commander Ricky.”

“Hey, let’s stay in bed and splinter into the Infinixx launch party tonight,” I said, smiling at her. “No fixing your hair, no nothing. We can just stay here and cuddle and project ourselves there, all spiffed up. What do you think?”

She giggled again. “Like I said, I’m good with that, Commander.”