The Complete Atopia Chronicles

13





Identity: William McIntyre



THE POLICE STATION loomed before me at the base of the vertical farming complex, and I was gingerly making my way towards it.

The Boulevard was the only real street we had, a wide pedestrian thoroughfare that crossed from the eastern to western inlets, crossing between the four gleaming vertical farm towers that center–pinned the island of Atopia.

Glamorous palms lined both sides of the street, bordering the tourist shops, restaurants, and bars whose terraces spilled out into the kaleidoscopic melee between. Even with the storms threatening and the evacuations announced, the atmosphere was still carefree and festive—at least for now.

It had been ages since I’d been above, and I hadn’t been to these parts since I was a tween. I blinked in the sunshine and confusion around me and tried to think my way through what was happening.

I felt so alone and exposed. Here I was, stuck in the middle of something clearly illegal, but what else could I do? I looked up at the towers and imagined myself as one of the psombies inside. Out of options, I just shrugged and opened the police station doors.

Cool, administrative air swept over me and the clerk at the desk, an attractive young woman, smiled at me synthetically.

“Can I help you, sir?” she asked, as sweet as a police officer could be.

“Yes, I’d like to file a missing person report,” I replied, walking towards her as calmly as I could.

Her face registered just the proper amount of seriousness before she queried, “And who is the missing person, sir?”

I paused for a moment.

“Me,” I answered.

§

After reporting my body missing to the police, the first person I turned to was Bob. It was funny how quickly you could go from feeling powerful and invincible to suddenly needing the protective embrace of friends. At least, I hoped they were still my friends.

“Hey there stranger, you take a wrong turn somewhere?” joked Bob as I appeared in one of his regular beach bar haunts. Even with the storm warnings, he was still surfing every day. Taking a swig of his beer, he waggled it towards me, asking if I wanted one. I shook my head.

“So what can I help you with?”

I sighed, casting a thick security blanket around us. We were immediately surrounded by its glittering and softly undulating shell. Bob raised his eyebrows, but just shrugged and took another swig.

“Now you have my interest,” he ventured, and then screwed his eyebrows together as seriously as he could manage. “Are you okay, bud?”

I sighed heavily. “I’ll just lay it out.”

I paused for a moment and we stared at each other.

“I’ve lost my body.”

Another pause while Bob considered what I’d just said.

“What do you mean—you’ve lost your body? Does this have anything to do with what happened at Infinixx?”

“No, I don’t think so. I mean, not really, but sort of,” I replied, tripping over my own words. I took a deep breath. “I can’t find my body. Wally, or someone—I’m assuming it’s Wally—has stolen it.”

Bob began to smile, raising his eyebrows. “Come on, whatever game you’re playing, I’m in.”

His smile slowly disappeared while he studied the serious look on my face.

“Have you been to the police?” he asked, now concerned.

“Yeah I’ve just been there. Only now, not only can I not find my body, but I’ve been charged with a felony crime and I’m under arrest.”

I didn’t mention that I was also under investigation for my trades in Infinixx stock.

“So how come you’re here? Did you post bail?”

“No. It’s complicated.”

“I’d say so.”

I leaned my head back and rubbed my eyes, shaking my head.

“I think we’d better get Sid in here,” suggested Bob.

I sighed.

“Yeah I guess we better,” I reluctantly replied. Bob’s face slackened for an instant as he detached and then was quickly back. Sid and Vicious immediately materialized on barstools inside the security blanket perimeter.

Even before he’d fully appeared, Vicious looked down his nose at me and declared, “Oooh, so the high and mighty has stooped to mix with the lower downs, eh?”

“Knock it off!” snapped Bob. “This is serious. Sid, you had a chance just now to look at Willy’s situation?”

Sid stood the best chance of anyone at figuring out what was going on. We waited a moment while Sid reviewed the scenarios.

“Let me make sure I have this straight,” replied Sid, all business now.

“So, you reprogrammed rules in the Atopian perimeter to allow an outgoing connection to Terra Nova. Then you logged your consciousness network into a secure Terra Novan account, anonymized your signal and sent multiple connections back into Atopia to create the effect of multiple personalities accessing the network?”

“Right.”

“And now your body appears to have left Atopia entirely, without your knowledge, and you can’t contact Wally.”

“Right.”

“And the Terra Novans have absolutely refused to divulge or break the anonymous connection or relay any of the originating account details, and the connection has been paid up fully one hundred years in advance for service.”

“Yeah,” I agreed quietly, sighing.

After a pause, Bob looked at me and tried to summarize, “So, your body is out there somewhere. You’re doing all your thinking in your lost brain, and it’s communicating with you here into your virtual body, but Wally is driving your body around out there and won’t communicate back.”

“That seems to be about it.”

“That’s an interesting pickle, my friend,” offered Vicious.

“So what, has Wally gone nuts? Can’t we just locate and shut him down in the multiverse somehow?” asked Bob.

“No,” answered Sid. “A proxxi isn’t the same as other synthetic beings. He doesn’t exist in the multiverse proper. He exists as a biological-digital symbiote, embedded in Willy’s body. He controls Willy’s body when Willy’s mind is away, and can venture out into the multiverse from there, but if he’s routed through an anonymizer in Terra Nova, then we won’t be able to track him down easily.”

“And my Uncle Button doesn’t work,” I added. “It was never designed to be filtered back this way.”

“So I ask again—has Wally gone nuts?” repeated Bob.

“Well, it’s not as simple as that,” I admitted. “I actually told Wally to take emergency action if it looked like there was trouble. Illegally breaching the Atopia perimeter is a serious offence.”

“So you told Wally to do this?” laughed Sid, rolling his eyes.

“You’re like a bloody one man Zionista, mate!” cut in Vicious. “One man, displaced from his body, wandering the multiverse, hoping to get back to his stolen homeland...”

“Knock it off, please,” I complained. “I didn’t tell Wally to do this. I told him that if it looked like we were in trouble, to take whatever action he deemed necessary to make sure we were okay.”

“And how on Earth did you ignore him when whatever obviously went down, went down?” asked Sid incredulously.

“Ah,” I took in a deep breath, “well, you see, with this new set-up, my mind was shattered into hundreds of splinters and fed through the anonymizer, and sometimes it wasn’t possible for Wally to get my attention. That’s why I made it clear to him to take immediate action right away, without me, if he deemed it necessary.”

“Oh he seems to have taken action alright,” Vicious observed, clearly enjoying himself.

“Enough!” exclaimed Bob. “Enough already. Vicious, you’ve had your fun, and Willy here has been a bit difficult lately, but he’s in trouble and needs our help. Right now.”

I choked back tears, feeling naked and adrift, and not deserving of the loyalty Bob was giving me after the way I’d been treating him lately.

“Sorry, right mate,” mumbled Sid and Vicious.

“Wally, one question,” asked Sid, perking up, the gears of his brain turning now.

“Uh huh?”

“So you’re arrested and charged and convicted, right?”

I nodded. For straightforward crimes it didn’t take a long time—synthetic lawyers and judges weighed in and contested cases within minutes.

“But you’re still with us. So they can’t get your body, but why can’t they restrict your virtual self?”

“The anonymizer randomly logs into Atopia repeatedly if its signal gets restricted. Since my login carries an authenticated Atopian citizen tag, and since it was deemed unconstitutional to restrict access to Atopia for a citizen, they can’t block my access here, but then they can’t contain me either.”

Vicious brightened up visibly at that. “Ah hah, a loophole. So they can’t stop you being here, but they can’t arrest you or stop you either. That makes you one very interesting person to know, my friend.”

I could see where he was going with this.

“Yes, Vicious, but I’m not about to test anyone’s patience on the matter.”

“Still,” he added, shrugging, “but you’re here aren’t you? Why didn’t you voluntarily stay in detention?”

I shrugged back. “Would you, if you’d lost your body? I need to figure out what is going on.”

Bob looked at me.

“How did you figure out how to do all this? It seems a little beyond your area of expertise.”

“Jimmy helped me.”

We all looked at each other.