The Complete Atopia Chronicles

7



FLOATING UP AT THE EDGE of space, my dad had asked us to get together as a family to see firsthand what was happening. We watched the two converging hurricanes swirling ominously in three dimensions below us. They had suddenly strengthened in the past day, both past category four now, and like two enormous threshing wheels, they now threatened to pin Atopia against the West Coast of America.

Atopia was still holding its own as we backed away, but we were now running out of room and the phuturecasts didn’t see any way around them. Surface evacuation had just been ordered. Jimmy was right in the thick of the emergency preparations.

Dread filled me realizing the impregnable fortress of Atopia was somehow threatened.

Flitting back to our family habitat to get ready, I clipped back into my body. After a rushed inventory assessment with my proxxi Robert, it seemed I really didn’t need to bring much, so, with some time to spare, I let my mind slip backwards and away, to an early inVerse memory of my family I liked to escape to in times of stress.

§

Blinking in the sunshine, I could feel sand trapped wetly in the crack of my ass. At the time I was having too much fun to notice it as my brother chased me around the beach on his pudgy little legs. We’d just turned four, and I’d just passed the point where my parents had allowed my proxxi, Robert, to fully take over my body, but he hadn’t yet progressed there yet.

Despite being twins, my brother had always lagged behind me.

So as he chased me around the beach, squealing with excitement and waving his bright orange plastic digger, just before he could touch me I would flit out to another spot nearby, disappearing suddenly from in front of him to reappear a few feet away. He hooted with delight each time I did it, and I would stick out my tongue and waggle my hands, thumbs in my ears, and raspberry him. With squeaks of glee, he would change directions and run at my new spot.

I was laughing and laughing.

My mum and dad were sitting together on a beach blanket, my dad’s arm around her and mum with her great big sunglasses on, laughing with us. My mum was almost crying she laughed so hard, pressing her face into my dad’s chest, and this just egged me on as I flittered willy-nilly around the beach, taunting my baby brother.

I hadn’t seen mum laugh in years, and neither my dad for that matter. Quitting the inVerse, I wiped the tears from my eyes.

§

InVersing, going back to relive your own personal universe of stored sensory memories, was a dangerous thing if you let it get its tentacles into you. When you were happy, it didn’t matter, you never seemed to bother with it, but when you felt sad or frightened, sliding back into the past and becoming a person you once were, happy and carefree, was about as addictive as something could get.

ReVersing was worse still, going back and reliving the past, but running new wikiworld simulations from a decision point you’d made, and changing that decision to enable a new world to evolve and spin on from that point—a simulation of how the world could have been, not how it was.

Perhaps these weren’t just simulations, but portals into alternate realities that branched off from our own timeline. Windows into life as it could have been, as it actually was somewhere else. It was hard to tear yourself away when it was something, or someone, you desperately missed.

Many people I knew spent more time inVersing and reVersing, or as glassy eyed emo-porners, than they did living their lives in the present. Dr. Hal Granger said on his EmoShow that going back and reliving the past helped us grow emotionally, helped us to find resolution and happiness—I wasn’t so sure.

What my family had done, though, was much worse. It had made a certain desperate sense at the time as we’d tried to deal with our grief, as I’d tried to deal with mine. In fact, the whole thing had been my idea, and it was an idea I was regretting more than I could bear any longer.

Morning had broken in wet smudges while I thought about all this. I was sitting on the covered deck of our island habitat watching the huge swells generated by the coming storms gathering and slapping together like drunken sailors. Ragged, scudding clouds hung under an ominous and luminous sky. The air was calm and proverbially quiet.

Waves were coming from every direction, sometimes breaking, sometimes wobbling together and rising up to double their height before awkwardly falling back over. It was a chaotic and frightening scene, churning up the kelp forests as they sheared away beyond the perimeter.

Even the ocean was confused today.

A steaming cup of coffee, hot and thick enough to stand a spoon in, warmed my hands as I cupped them together. I could feel the heat and strength of the coffee seeping into my veins like a caffeine-pumping life support system. Watching the churning watery tumult, my surfer mind tried to force order from the chaos, tried to find a pattern from here to safety.

I flitted out of my body and into the local wikiworld, to a point about fifty feet off the deck right in front of me, and watched me watching the waves. Robert, my proxxi, took a sip of coffee for me and waved at me. I just stared back.

Our habitat looked small and vulnerable from here against the backdrop of the ocean. Dark, evil looking clouds were stealing quickly across the horizon, piling up in the sky in an enormous approaching wall. Swinging my gaze around to look inwards to Atopia, it looked muted and under threat as the roiling clouds and seas reflected dully off its glassine towers.

From this perspective, the huge incoming swells were rising up towards the beach, almost completely obscuring it as they surged and broke on their ride around Atopia. Instead of their usual rhythmic thumping, the waves were breaking at different points, choppy, bewildered.

Massive clouds of spray were sent booming upwards from the collapsing waves, hanging the beaches in veils of misty white fog. As I watched, a sharp wind began to blow and gain in strength within seconds, snapping the flags to attention on top of our habitat.

The storms were upon us.

Clipping fully back into my body, I quit my procrastinating and began to scan a list of what needed to get finished for the evacuation, sipping my coffee, luxuriating in its hotness.

“Bob, do you have a minute?” asked Martin, pinging me on a dedicated family channel. I’d turned off all the other channels, even my dimstim, as I tried, for once, to focus on the here and now.

I looked at the list again before I answered, “Yeah sure, come meet me in my room.”

I could at least start to organize my stuff while we talked. I crossed the deck and made for the lower levels, dropping down a set of stairs and opening the door to my room. It was dark inside with the shades drawn. I didn’t come in here much these days. Accessing the room controls, I faded the glass walls to transparency while at the same time opening some vents to let some fresh air in. The fusty, closed-in smell of the room almost instantly gave way to fresh ocean air. I heard a knock.

“Come on in,” I called out.

Martin materialized near the couch set against the glass wall to the open ocean. His eyes were downcast, and he fidgeted the fabric on his pant leg as he flopped himself down onto the couch. He looked worried, which was unusual for Martin.

“What’s up, bud?”

“Bob, so, I was looking at the evacuation manifest, and, well, I’m not on it. I tried pinging dad about it but he’s ignoring me for some reason. Could you try to reach him? Do you know why?”

The words froze me in my tracks. Of course the evacuation list was an ADF function, and not a part of the Solomon House research project. Their personnel manifests would be different. Dad must be off splintered in a dozen places fighting for control of the public relations situation, trying to put a positive spin on Atopia being crushed by the two giant storms.

I shrugged and lied, “I have no idea, Martin. Anyway, who cares, let’s just get a move on, huh?”

Martin didn’t move or say a word. He just sat and wrung his hands, cracking his fingers, looking even more worried. He looked about to cry.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I snapped.

“Martin, look,” I said, gathering my thoughts. I’d been thinking about doing this for a long while now, and I let some anger swell my courage. “I don’t know the best way to say this, but...”

Still I hesitated.

“Yes Bob?” he pleaded with perfectly unaware eyes.

“Martin, look...” I repeated.

He looked at me.

“You know you’re dead, right? At least some part of you must know this…” I trailed off, now suddenly unsure where to go.

There was silence, anxious silence, before his angry response. “Bob, are you stoned again?”

“Martin, I’m not stoned, and I’m not upset.” I was shaking my head, trying to find a way through this. “Actually, yes I am angry and upset, but not at you. I don’t know.”

If I didn’t get this out now, he would just forget. They had a cognitive blind spot working on his memories and perception, sort of like if you were walking in the desert and there was a hovercraft following a dozen paces behind you that dusted away your footprints as you walked, so there were a few steps behind you that you could see, but beyond that there remained just a general impression of where you had been, or more appropriately, who you had been.

“What, that I’m dead? Very funny a*shole. You’re messed up, man, stop with the drugs, Bob. They’re screwing with your head. Just tell dad to get me on the evacuation list. I’m outta here.”

He got up and made to leave.

“Don’t leave Martin. This is important, and I’m not kidding and I’m not stoned.”

I moved all my phantoms to block his paths outwards into the multiverse, and pulled a heavy glittering security blanket down around us at the same time.

“Look at you! This isn’t even that much of a shock. If someone told me I was dead I’d laugh at them, but you’re getting defensive.”

“I’m not dead, Bob. I’m right here, talking to you,” said Martin, smiling awkwardly. He wasn’t telling me as much as asking me.

“Martin, don’t you find it at all odd that everyone else here has a proxxi but you?”

“I have a proxxi—Dean.”

“Uh huh. And when was the last time you were in your physical body?”

“I don’t know, it’s been a while,” he replied, shrugging as he cocked his head upwards. “What about that time that you and I went surfing and you crashed into that...”

“That was seven years ago, Martin, seven years…”

He just shrugged again and added more angrily, “So what? Maybe I’ve been detached for a while, but that doesn’t prove anything. I know lots of people who hardly spend any time at all in their bodies.”

He shook his head aggressively.

Meanwhile, my own frustration was mounting and boiling over. I could feel my cheeks flushing hot. I had to blame someone.

“It’s your goddamn fault he’s gone, Martin,” I screamed at him, finally letting it go. “Every day I have to look at your goddamn shit eating f*cking grinning face and just take it. I just feel like smashing your face in, but what difference would it make?”

I was full on venting now, and the words were coming out before I even knew what I was saying. The whole world shifted red as blood gorged into my veins, and my blood pressure indicator shot off the charts. I took a deep breath and watched it sink back down, trying to calm myself. Screaming wouldn’t accomplish anything.

Martin was silent, pale, his hands shaking a little as he wrung them some more. His voice quavered as he asked, “Bob, what’s wrong with you?”

I was calmer now, and I sighed heavily.

“Martin, it’s not what’s wrong with me. Or maybe it is. I think it’s what’s wrong with this place.”

“You’re not making sense, what are you getting all crazy for?” He was starting to cry now, perched on the edge of the couch.

I took a deep breath.

“Martin, look, my brother, Dean killed himself about six years ago, an intentional drug overdose. Brain dead at first, but they kept his body in stasis, vegetative, but you were still active, his proxxi. You were still attached to him, your proxxi smarticle network intimately wired into his dead body and holding all his memories, his emotions, until we switched off the machines and transferred you entirely into the pssi nervenet.”

My voice cracked as I tried to continue, “It was too much for us. It wrecked our mother, dad as well, and then there you were, but he suddenly wasn’t. Mum took to spending all her time with you, saying how much it helped her. All of us took to spending time wandering back into the inVerse you shared with Dean.”

He looked at me, his world falling away through the floor, trying to make sense of what I was saying.

“What do you mean? I’m your brother!”

“No, no you’re not,” I explained, shaking my head sadly. “We had Dr. Granger install a cognitive blind spot so you couldn’t see what was right front and center, but saw everything around it. One day, we pulled a linchpin somewhere in your mind and then you just thought you were him. We left the blind spot active to sweep away anything that didn’t fit.”

“Bob, Jesus, Bob...” pleaded Martin, tears streaming down his face.

With the anger having blown through, my sails deflated. I suddenly felt very sorry for him. Why was I doing this?

“At the time, I just couldn’t take it, and mum and dad couldn’t either. It was a way of fixing the pain, pretending it didn’t happen. If we just suspended disbelief that little bit more, our own blind spots took over and you became him.”

Watching his face twist up in pain, it was time for me to own up.

“To be honest, Martin, this was mostly my idea to begin with, but now it’s taken on a life of its own, you’ve taken on a life of your own. Now Cognix is using it as another application of pssi.” Never lose a loved one again! “How much will people be willing to pay for that if we can show it works? And it does seem to work, which is the worst of it.”

Martin wiped away his tears with the back of one hand.

“It’s funny, now that you tell me, I can see it all, even remember it all. I guess I always sort of knew it, but I love mum and dad so much...and you too.”

He wiped away more tears.

“But why do you blame me? Why are you so angry at me?”

“What, for impersonating my brother?” I snorted, but immediately regretted it seeing the pain flash in his eyes. I sighed again, letting my last sparks of anger fizzle.

“I think that Dean just felt like you were a better version of him, that mum and dad liked you better, that people were happier when you answered a call than if he did. He was a great guy, not that he didn’t have his issues,” I said smiling sadly. Dean was lazy and irresponsible, amazing and funny. “But he just had so much trouble keeping up with it all.”

“With all what?”

“With his pssi experiment!” I shot back, angry again. “Living in a hundred worlds at once, being here and there and somewhere and someone else all at the same time. Dean just figured, why not, I’ll just remove myself, and you’ll all be able to keep a better version without all the effort.”

I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself.

“In his messed up head he didn’t think he was dying, he figured he was leaving a better version of himself to continue on. That’s what he left in his note, anyway.”

I looked down at the ground, feeling my own tears coming, starting to cry. Why was it I’d been able to be so many things, to be so smart, but I hadn’t been there for him?

Martin looked at me, shaking his head. “But maybe I am him, Bob. I think like him, I look like him, and I remember everything—every memory he ever had.”

“But you’re not him,” I replied, shaking my head.

“So then what makes a person dead?”

A stupid question.

“Dead is dead,” I shot back. “When the doctors say you’re dead.”

“When the heart stops?”

“No, when the brain goes dead, when the memories are lost, the essence of the person…”

“Most of your own memories are in the pssi, Bob, would they be gone if you suddenly were?”

“No…”

“So if a person’s memories aren’t gone, if some essence of them remains, are they truly dead?”

I paused.

“Remember having a bath together in the sink, mum sponging us off and singing in the dark when the first fusion core went offline, remember that?”

I smiled as tears rolled down my cheeks. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Remember throwing our toys over the deck into the ocean when nobody was watching, getting our proxxi to cover for us, and how angry mum was when we went and hid in one of the shark’s mouths when we went swimming for them?”

“That was your idea,” I laughed, nodding.

“We were quite the gang growing up,” he continued. “Us and our proxxi…Bob and Robert, William and Wallace, Sid and Vicious, Dean and Martin, Nancy and Cunard…”

“Yeah, that was quite the gang.”

“Have you talked to Nancy much lately?” asked Martin softly.

“No, I…” I replied. “No, not since, well, since you…”

“You should talk to her Bob.”

He looked at me steadily for a while.

“Hey, do you remember that night? We were sitting on the guard rails to the passenger cannon entrance. We must have been barely teenagers, and we were drinking beer. You had Robert override the security system and we had the whole place to ourselves. It was just you and me, sitting there.”

He paused for a moment before continuing, “We talked about what we would do together when we were old men. You told me how you were good at almost anything, all you had to do was apply yourself and you could do anything you wanted. I think you were drunk—I think we were drunk.”

“We were,” I whispered between my tears.

“But I remember most of all, I remember thinking how great you were, thinking how I wasn’t that great, how I had so much trouble with everything and wondering why. But most of all I remember thinking how much I loved you, and how proud I was to just be your brother. You were the star of the pssi-kid program back then, even way ahead of Jimmy, I was so proud…”

“Yeah, I remember that night Martin,” I managed to choke out between sobs. I was crying full on now.

“I’m still here, Bob.”

Martin was looking directly into my eyes, his voice soft and full of love.

Have you ever made one of those three-dimensional line drawings of a cube on paper? Two squares offset from each other with a straight line that joined each corresponding corner to make a three-dimensional looking cube? If you stared at it, it seemed that one of the faces was closer to you, but if you concentrated and willed it, suddenly the cube flipped and the other face switched to being closer. As I looked hard at Martin right then, my mind performed a similar flip, and suddenly all I saw was my brother, sitting there in front of me in flesh and blood. A wave of love sprang from my scalp to my fingertips, and I got up to go and sit on the couch with him and hold his hand.

“Dean...Martin...I missed you so much, it’s just this place,” I said, shaking my head and squeezing his hand.

“I’ve missed you too,” replied Martin. “You’ve been so nasty to me these past few years. I always thought you hated me for some reason. It hurt so much, and I had no idea why you acted that way.”

Tears streamed down my face, and Martin reached up to wipe them away. Then he rubbed his hand across his own face. His demeanor changed and he sat bolt upright, taking a deep breath. He reached down to squeeze my hands tightly with both of his.

“Bob, stop with all the drugs, will you? And all these women… it’s not going to change anything. Calm down. Talk to Nancy.”

“You’re right,” was all I could think to say. “I’ll stop, I’ll try...”

“Good,” he said, brightening up. “And Bob, if you really believe all that stuff about gameworlds being real…then Dean is out there somewhere still, and I’m your connection to him.”

“This is all messed up.”

I was staring at the floor now. Nothing made any sense anymore. My whole life I’d felt like I was running away from something, fleeing before some unseen danger.

From now on it would stop. Maybe he was right, maybe I could still find Dean out there. I was right in the middle of one of the most amazing places on earth, where the impossible was becoming possible almost daily. I just needed to apply myself, get out of this daze I’d slid into.

“Bob,” asked Martin.

“Yeah?” I answered.

“Bob, why are you crying?”

Cripes. The blind spot had caught up . I wiped away my tears.

“Nothing, Martin, nothing. I’m just worried about the storms and Nicky dumping me and all that crap,” I lied.

His face brightened up.

“Don’t worry big brother, I’ll take care of you. Anyway, like I was saying, could you get dad to add me to the evacuation list. I don’t know what’s going on there, but I have a lot to do, so I’d appreciate it if you could help me.”

“No worries Martin, consider it done,” I replied with a sigh.

“Cool. Thanks.”

Martin got up off the couch and prepared to leave.

“Martin,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Martin, I haven’t told you something lately.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

I smiled, pausing, and the world clicked back into sense for me.

“Martin, I love you. I love you a lot, and I haven’t told you in a while.”

He looked away quickly, catching his breath. Bringing up a hand to wipe the corner of one eye, he looked back and replied, “I love you too, Bob, that is so good to hear.”

“Okay good—now get!” I laughed.

He laughed back and shook his head as he disappeared.

This place, all of it, felt abruptly wrong. Like a switch being thrown, I suddenly knew something wasn’t right here anymore, and that this same something had swallowed Dean in its path. Blind spots—we all had them. So what was it that they were hiding from us, what was it we weren’t seeing?

I decided I was going to find out.