The Complete Atopia Chronicles

2



I CHECKED OUT the news Bob had sent me as I returned to the top deck of my habitat. There’d been a rash of UFO sightings in the Midwest last night, and he knew I was something of a paranormal fan boy. Today, though, more important things were on the agenda.

I strode back and forth like a caged animal, my mind racing, and then stood still as I made a decision, looking out towards the breaking waves.

“Ready for business?” demanded Hotstuff.

She was sitting and waiting for me on a stool at the deck bar, drinking a latte and going over the morning’s business news, impatiently tapping her high heels against the polished blue marble floor. Behind her, my carefully curated collection of some of the world’s rarest whiskeys and cognacs sparkled invitingly in the midmorning sunshine. It was about the time I’d usually be waking up, but I’d already been up since dawn.

“Do we have to?” I asked uselessly, thinking of how a little taste of the Aberlour would be nice.

“Some kind of action is required,” she observed. “Even inaction is an action, and perhaps the only kind of action you seem to enjoy lately.”

Hotstuff raised her eyebrows in disdain while she scanned the European financial reports.

“Okay then, summon the council,” I sighed, scratching my stubble.

Portals to my homeworld opened up off the deck, and I walked into our main conference room, shifting my attire into a navy sport coat with a stiff collared, open necked white shirt. Hotstuff strode in behind me, her braided bun of hair and short skirted business suit radiating efficiency and purpose.

One by one my councilors materialized around the long cherry wood conference table that glistened under the bioluminescent ceiling. About half of them appeared dull eyed, awakening to instantly patch in from whatever time zone they were in for this surprise meeting. The other half weren’t humans, but our trusted synthetics, and they appeared brightly and cheerfully, their smiles following me around the room towards the head of the table.

Then again, perhaps I had them mixed up, the dull eyed ones now looking like my synthetics. I had a hard time telling the difference anymore.

Everyone around the table, however, was most definitely female, and not just your run-of-the-mill varietals, but, like Hotstuff, more like a twelve year old boy’s fantasy. They posed casually but intently around the table as if a fashion shoot could be announced at any instant, with the long conference table springing into action as a catwalk.

My calling a sudden meeting like this was unusual, to say the least, and they all watched me cautiously. Information packets were dispersed and appeared on the table in front of them as I sat down.

“No need for pleasantries.” This wasn’t a social call after all. “Just have a look at your instructions. We’re going to be liquidating everything.”

A pause while they assimilated the data downloads.

“Questions?”

“No questions regarding the details, sir,” chimed one of them, Alessandria. “But, it may help to understand the motivation. Some of the assets you are seeking to liquidate, are, um, well, they’re not what you want people to know you’re in a hurry to sell.”

The motivation, now that was a good question. There were only two things I really knew; first, that I had no idea what I was trying to escape from, just that whatever it was, it was trying to kill me, and second, just sharing the idea that something was trying to hunt me down made my situation even more dangerous. To minimize risk I had to pretend nothing was happening.

“No reason,” I replied as casually as I could, “just the whim of a bored trillionaire. I don’t want to raise suspicion, so keep this on the down low, right?”

Perhaps this was the wrong choice of words.

“On the down low?” demanded Roxanne carefully, my resource manager for the Asia Pacific region. “You want me to just dump all the yachts, the islands, the racetracks…?”

“Yes.”

I said this with a twinge of remorse. The baubles of Indigo Entertainment, my latest and ill-fated attempt at a new foray into the business world, still held some sparkle in my eye. While I could lay claim to being super-wealthy, I couldn’t say the same about being super-intelligent.

Success in the business world was more about luck, and luck was hard to replicate. My luck had been helped along by a team of incredibly smart people, and born from a single-minded obsession with the future, or perhaps, just one future in particular.

“Don’t go out and dump it,” added Hotstuff. “Don’t attract attention, be subtle, go out there and do what we pay you for. Anyway, most of the Indigo Entertainment stuff is a waste of time.” Hotstuff looked towards me. I shrugged. “I don’t think we’ll need to explain ourselves very much.”

Roxanne considered this, shifting around in her chair.

“I may have someone who could be interested,” she said after a moment.

Then the paranoia set in. Perhaps liquidation was what whoever who was messing with me wanted, and was it possible that Roxanne was in on the fix? I looked carefully at her. Hotstuff sensed what I was thinking and headed me off before I could say anything.

“Very good,” Hotstuff replied to Roxanne. “Get to work then. Any more questions?”

Nobody objected, and one by one, just as they’d appeared, my councilors faded from the conference room.

When they’d all gone, Hotstuff looked towards me sympathetically.

“You’re going to need to trust your team,” she said slowly. After a pause she added, “You’re going to need to trust me.”

Visions of Kurt Gödel, the famous Austrian mathematician, sprang to mind. Suffering from deep paranoia, he’d only accepted food prepared by his wife to eat. When she fell ill one day and was sent to hospital, he refused to eat food given to him by anyone else. He died of starvation just shortly before his wife had returned.

“I just hope nothing happens to you,” I replied. “I’m not sure I could starve myself.”

While proxxi had full access to our memories and sensory systems and could usually guess what we were thinking, they couldn’t read our minds. Not yet, anyway. Hotstuff gave me a funny look.

I shrugged and smiled.