The Complete Atopia Chronicles

3



GROWING UP ON Atopia was great and all, but for me, pssi—the poly-synthetic sensory interface—was only good for two things; playing the gameworlds and getting stoned. Oh, and I guess it was cool for surfing too, so three things. Or, actually four. It was great for hiding the fact that I was stoned.

I was still buzzing from my excursion into Humungous Fungus, but I had Robert, my proxxi who controlled my body while I was out of it, filtering my movements and speech so that I appeared perfectly normal, or at least close to normal. Robert tended to overdo it in these situations, and if he wasn’t my proxxi I’d swear he did it on purpose.

As I came out onto the sun deck of our habitat overlooking the ocean, Robert nimbly handled seating me at the place open opposite my Dad. Martin was sitting to my left and my mum to my right, and sitting behind my mum was a guy dressed up in a toga with weather beaten leather thongs on his feet.

It was a beautiful morning, with a slight breeze just offsetting the unseasonably hot weather we’d been having lately. Gulls squawked in the distance over the kelp forests while waves swept calmly past on their way into Atopia.

My dad scrutinized me as I sat down.

“Bob, the least you could have done was be on time for your brother’s birthday breakfast.”

Martin smiled at me weakly from across the table. He knew I’d been out partying all night, and I felt suddenly bad. I smiled back at him and shrugged apologetically.

“And your food is cold already,” added my Dad.

Robert was filtering my speech, so when I responded, “So is your heart,” in response to my dad’s predictable dig, it came out of my mouth as, “Yes, sir. Very sorry for being late.”

This, of course, sounding like nothing I’d say, immediately got me in trouble.

“Are you stoned again?”

Robert did a pretty good job of having my face feign surprise. I just giggled away, safely detached inside my head.

“No sir,” responded Robert using my voice, while I sub–vocalized to Sid who was ghosting in on this, “Wouldn’t you be with a family like this?” Sid laughed too.

My dad leaned over and looked deep into my eyes. I burst out laughing on the inside while Robert covered for me.

“Dad, come on, I just didn’t sleep well last night, okay?”

Good one, Robert. That was true. I was out getting high all night and hadn’t slept a wink. My dad narrowed one eye and then just shook his head, straightening up and going back to buttering his toast.

“Anyway, Jimmy isn’t even here yet,” I pointed out, “why are you giving me so much trouble?”

“Jimmy has important things he needs to be taking care of right now.”

Unlike some of the people at this table, he didn’t need to add. It was like Jimmy was more of a son to him than his own sons were. It was always Jimmy did this and Jimmy did that, and I was getting more than tired of it. I sighed and angrily shook my head. It looked like it was going to be another one of those conversations.

“Bob,” complained my dad, “you’re twenty one years old. When are you going to find some direction in your life? You need to move on, son. You should have been here to see the slingshot test fire with us. We were all here. Jimmy was right there in the control room with Commander Strong.”

Here we go again. Robert deleted my expletives when he responded for me.

“Dad, I did watch the slingshots,” Robert replied for me, truthfully, “and I am doing something with my life. I have one of the top rated dimstims out there.”

It was true.

I was a professional vacationer, and thousands of people at a time paid money to stimswitch into me when I was out surfing. It was great money, and when pssi was released into the rest of the world I was going to be huge.

My dad wasn’t impressed at my entrepreneurial ambitions, however, and just ignored what we’d said.

“You have such an opportunity, Bob. What is happening here is a once–in–a–lifetime event and you’re right in the middle of it.”

That’s the problem right there, I thought, but this wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“I’m also one of the best surfers in the world,” I pointed out, something I figured any parent should be proud of. My imagined ranking wasn’t entirely fair since the rest of the world’s surfers didn’t have pssi, yet, which justified my obsessive need to be out there all the time.

My dad continued his ignoring game.

“You were one of the very first pssi–kids. You were top in your class at the Solomon House Academy before you dropped out,” he began to sermonize, wagging his toast–buttering knife at me. “Patricia Killiam was just asking me the other day about you, saying how impressed she was with your work when you were a Class I Freshman. She said there could still be a place at the Solomon House for you.”

He raised his eyebrows impressively as the knife came to rest pointing directly at me. My dad was the director of public relations for the entire pssi project, so it wasn’t just me he was chatting up about all this.

I groaned and rolled my eyes as I clicked off my proxxi filter. I’d handle this myself.

“A lot of stuff has happened shince then, wooden you say?”

I slurred out half the words. This got my Dad’s head shaking again and he looked skyward.

“Yes,” he responded, looking at me and then to Martin, “and look how well Martin is doing.”

He motioned with the knife across to the other side of the table. Martin smiled at me weakly, not wanting to get involved.

“Yeah, look at him,” I shot back, narrowing my eyes at both of them. “Martin and all of you are just the picture of shuper–booper family togatherness. And quit talking about Jimmy all the time, we’re your real sons.”

I aimed for thick sarcasm, emphasizing ‘real’, but I wasn’t sure if my enunciation was clear enough to convey it beneath the drugs. What had I taken again?

“Bob, honey, don’t be so mad. It’s his birthday today, let’s please be nice,” came my mum’s quavering voice. “Forgiveness is the key to life. Forgive yourself, son.”

I sighed. It looked like this was going to be a tag team event. I could see the guy behind my mum in the toga and sandals begin to lean forward as if to add something, but I leaned his way and angrily waved my finger at him to cut short whatever was coming from that corner.

“Not a word from you, okay?” I spat at him.

I was as patient as the next guy, but my mum having her personal Jesus following her around like a puppy dog, so that she could chat to him all the time, was getting on my nerves. It wasn’t so bad if her Jesus just sat there and spoke when spoken to, but it really drove me nuts when he started jumping into conversations.

“Mum,” I asked, turning to her, “what do I have to forgive myself for?”

“I don’t know, son. You have to figure that out for yourself,” she replied softly, in the way that only mothers can. “I know you can son, you have special abilities.”

My dad rolled his eyes, shaking his head at the three of us. He didn’t like it when mum started talking like this.

Our family had something of an unusual history, filled with flashes of brilliance and corners of darkness. My great-great-grandfather had been something of a nut. He claimed to have been able to speak with the dead and move objects with his mind. It was something my dad was ashamed of.

My grandfather had been almost as bad, and he and my father had stopped speaking a long time ago when my father had left New York to accept a job on the Washington beltway. The lunacy tended to skip a generation. My dad was just waiting for me to starting hear voices, and I honestly couldn’t blame him for worrying about me using drugs.

“There is evil in the world, son,” added Jesus for good measure.

I shot him my own evil glance.

“Only the evil that we make,” I replied, feeling suddenly defeated.

“Yes, the evil that we make.”

That stopped everyone in their tracks. I sat back in my chair and rubbed my eyes, fighting frustration on the one hand and a general sense of not being sure what was happening on the other. Maybe I could try a different tack.

“Look, all this stuff is great, but technology can make you stupid, you know?”

My addled brain was trying to find some way out of these woods I’d wandered it into. All four of them stared at me.

“Like a generation ago, Eskimos didn’t even have a word for ‘lost,’ and now without GPS they can barely find their way out of a frozen paper bag.”

“I believe they’re called Inuit,” suggested Martin. I looked at him hopelessly.

“That’s not the point. Look, I’m stuck in this thing, and I love all you guys,” I said, really thinking that I love most of you guys. “I have kind of a love–hate relationship with pssi right now and I want to use this stuff the way I want to. Okay, dad?”

My dad just shrugged.

“Okay, Bob. Whatever you think is best.”

He clearly didn’t think it was best.

“Just leave me to do stuff the way I want, in the time I want,” I said, grabbing some croissants and a glass of orange juice. “Anyway this was great. I’m going surfing. Is that okay with everyone?”

I was going to check on Vince to see if he wanted to go surfing.

Vince was the man.