The Complete Atopia Chronicles

5



“A GREAT EVIL will consume you all!” spat the deranged man from between tangled, yellowing teeth, his mottled face barely restraining a threatened apoplectic fit, as he balanced precariously atop an upturned four-gallon paint can.

Wheezing asthmatically, his eyes rolled up towards the damp skies before returning to earth and hunting through the crowd. His glassy gaze swung around to lock onto me, and I stared back. He trembled slightly, his already distended pupils widening as he peered into me.

“A great evil is already consuming you, sir,” he whispered, directly addressing me as I passed, and then screeched to the crowd, pointing at me, “A GREAT EVIL is upon us!”

I shivered and looked away, but nobody paid much attention.

It was early morning and I was off on another one of my walks to try and clear my mind, today through Hyde Park in London, and I was just passing Speakers’ Corner near Marble Arch. The steady thrum of the automated passenger traffic hummed in the background while the electric crackle of London City center hung just past the peripheries of my senses.

Early morning for me, but it was already well past midday here, halfway around the world from Atopia. The usual collection of crackpots and doomsayers had already installed themselves for the afternoon tourist crowds. I usually enjoyed standing and watching, listening to the passionate ramblings of the desperate men and women on their soapboxes, exhorting us to save ourselves. But today it felt wrong, or perhaps worse, it felt right.

Hunching inwards, I kept my eyes to the ground and wound my way through the crowd, making my escape towards the sanctuary of the park.

Even here in my virtual presence, I had to keep up my guard, a point-of-presence being a potential point of entry into my networks. I had a whole sentry system of future selves walking through the park in the immediate future ahead of me. Threading my way through the periphery of the crowd, my splintered ghosts walked seconds and minutes ahead of me, testing the informational flow through this path and that, dropping data honey pots here and there to pick up straggling invaders, testing for the safest narrow corridor into my future. Salvation for me was threading the eye of a needle, and it felt as if my hands were tied behind my back, or as if my limbs had been amputated.

Taking some deep breaths, I tried to relax.

The sun was bravely fighting its way through the wet skies, and small collections of people had begun to install themselves on the low-slung green and white striped loungers scattered across the grassy expanse at my end of the park. I was heading directly towards the Constabulary near the eastern end of the Serpentine. On my rambles through Hyde Park I always ran a historical skin so that I could enjoy the Crystal Palace of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and I could see its roof gleaming past a copse of trees in the distance.

It seemed I’d developed a thing for Crystal Palaces.

Right at that moment, however, that same reality overlay was projecting the Tyburn gallows next to a gaggle of old ladies who’d slumped into their loungers in the middle of the field. An execution was in progress, or at least a hanging. The ashen corpse of Oliver Cromwell spun slowly in the breeze, much to the delight of the crowd collected for the spectacle that had ushered London into 1661.

“Old Crommie is dancing the Tyburn jig!” leered an impish woman whose ghost, soiled in sodden rags and rotten teeth, appeared faintly near me amid that long ago crowd.

No matter which way I turned, death seemed to surround me. Quickly I cropped the reality skin into a narrow window of time around the present and 1851, and the crowd and execution dropped away.

Visions of the trail around the Serpentine pond floated into my consciousness as my splinters walked ahead of me, and I collapsed my probable paths to head towards Kensington Road and the entrance of the Crystal Palace, towards the quiet cool of the ancient oaks that stood there, quietly marking their own way through time.

Patricia Killiam had asked to speak with me today. Walking across the edge of the park I summoned up a media feed of her in another of her endless string of press conferences. As an early supporter of much of the deep technology behind the Phuture News Network, Patricia and I had become quite close over the years. In the overlaid visual display, a reporter was just asking her a question.

“Isn’t the world population stable now, even declining?” asked the reporter. “Shouldn’t that help calm the resource shortages?”

“The core problem isn’t population,” explained Patricia, “but that everyone wants to live lives of material luxury. Supporting ten billion middle class citizens on planet Earth was never going to work, and the only solution is to create a simulated reality that is good enough to satisfy our material cravings.”

It was probably the millionth time that Patricia had gone through this, and I could see the fatigue in her eyes, even the synthetic ones projected in the mediaworld I was splintering.

“And why is this proxxi thing such a key part of all this?” asked the same reporter.

“Right now, if you go off into an alternate reality,” she explained, “you just sit there like a potato. If something happens to your body in the real world while you’re away, you have no defense. Do you agree?” The reporters nodded.

“Your proxxi controls a dynamic image of your neural wetware so it can control your physical body when you’re away,” she continued. “This way you can seamlessly drop off into any synthetic space any time you like—even in the middle of a conversation your proxxi can finish it for you. It’s like an airbag for your body and mind, except that this airbag can act as your official representative.”

I could see some light bulbs going on in the audience.

“If you don’t want to go to that meeting or work cocktail tonight,” she finished, “just send your proxxi! Why not? It’s your life!”

This earned a big round of applause.

As the press conference split up, Patricia’s main point-of-presence shifted into my reality and she materialized walking in step beside me in the park. Her tired eyes watched me all the way through her transition. I could feel her weariness.

“So what’s all this about you dying today on Phuture News?” she asked as she appeared.

Now I understood why she’d wanted to chat in person. I tensed up.

“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated, old friend,” I replied quickly, shaking my head and smiling.

She raised her eyebrows. “At least you seem to have a sense of humor about it.”

Phuture News had begun publishing stories about the death of its founder today. The mounting density of my termination events had pushed my death into reality for everyone living in the world of tomorrow.

“Anyway, I wanted to check up on you in person,” she continued, “see if you needed anything.”

“Thanks, but don’t worry about me. I’m just fooling around with the system.”

A lie, but I had no choice. In my situation admitting anyone into the circle of trust was extremely dangerous. Expanding the network of people who knew what was happening would spread the probability matrices, and I needed razor sharp phutures to effectively head off the threats.

She watched me curiously, almost sadly.

“Playing? Are you sure? This seems like a funny way to have a laugh.”

“Don’t worry,” I reassured her.

She cocked her eyebrows at me.

“Really, don’t worry, and thanks for taking the time to drop in.”

She didn’t believe me.

By now we had reached the edge of the Serpentine. It was filled with small blue paddle boats being industriously driven around by enthusiastic tourists. Views of Kensington Palace crept over the weeping willows in the distance, and despite the brave advances of the sun, a light rain had begun to fall again.

“Is there, well, is there anything I can help with?” she asked. “You can trust me Vince, tell me what’s happening…”

The walls of my future squeezed ever tighter around me.

“No, like I said, everything is fine,” I reiterated. “And I do trust you Pat. I just still have a hard time believing you work for Kesselring now.”

Kesselring had tried to engineer a hostile take-over of Phuture News many years ago, back when it was a start-up, with plans to strip it down and profiteer from the future. He’d used some aggressive and illegal tactics to try and get what he wanted. Patricia had been on our Board back then, and had fought off Kesselring together with us. I had a hard time understanding how she was on his team now.

“A necessary evil,” replied Patricia. She looked off into the distance, and then looked back at me with world-weary eyes. “You promise to ping me if you need anything. I mean it, if you need anything at all.”

“I will.”

She looked at me silently. We’d known each other a long time.

“I mean it, I will,” I laughed. “I promise. Now go on, I know how busy you are.”

Patricia nodded and smiled warmly.

“You take care of yourself, Vince.”

With that, she faded away to leave me alone to finish my walk, or at least, alone with my crowd of future selves arrayed around me.

“It does seem to be getting worse though,” I said to myself glumly when she was gone. I was covering up my issue to the rest of the world as some kind of prank. Most people didn’t seem to think it was very funny, and neither did I.

I kicked some gravel down the winding path as I passed in front of the Crystal Palace. Watching the cloud of dust I’d created drift and settle, I wondered if it felt any regret as it came back to rest again on the earth.