The Complete Atopia Chronicles

Identity: Jimmy Jones



“AT EASE SOLDIER.”

I laughed and relaxed my stance. As one of the newest Command officers, I thought I would strut my stuff for Patricia a little. She’d asked me to come to her office, under a tight security blanket to discuss something.

“Jimmy, we’d like to nominate you to the Security Council,” she said quickly, getting to the point. “What do you think?”

I wasn’t that surprised, but I put on a show for her.

“I don’t know what to say,” I replied, shaking my head. “I’m flattered. I mean, of course I would accept, but I’m so young, so inexperienced.”

“Yes, perhaps,” she laughed, “but you are by far our leading expert on conscious security. I know you’re lacking in some areas, and that’s why I want you to stick close to Commander Strong. I think you could learn a lot from him.”

“I can do that.”

“Perfect. Then if we’re agreed, I’ll put the wheels in motion.”

§

Patricia was like the mother I’d always wished for, and in a twist of circumstance, that’s exactly what she’d become. Her love for me was something I wasn’t used to.

I think my own parents must have loved each other, at least at first. They should have just gotten a divorce rather than fight like they did, but Mother always claimed it just wasn’t Christian.

Arriving here from the Bible Belt, my family had a strong religious background and regular church service had figured deeply in my upbringing. In fact, a strong Christian community here on Atopia was one of the reasons my mother had said she’d agreed to come. God and sin had never been far from her wicked tongue.

A strange communion between Christianity and hacker culture had evolved on Atopia—‘hacker’ used here in its nobler and original sense of building or tinkering with code. The Elèutheros community on Atopia believed that hacking was a form of participation in God’s work of creating the universe. This wasn’t quite what my mother had in mind before coming, however, and this had just added to her dissatisfaction after we’d arrived.

Mother had been a very beautiful woman, a real southern belle, but if she saw you looking at her, a nasty comment was never far behind. All that was left of my parents’ relationship by the time I arrived was grinding, co–dependent bitterness that fueled the empty shells of their lives.

I would guess that my parents had always fought, but having me gave them an audience. After arriving on Atopia to birth me, they could have shielded me from their screaming matches by simply leaving a pssi–block on, and my dad often tried to do just that, but Mother wanted me to hear everything.

I remembered one evening in particular. I was sitting in one of my playworlds, stacking blocks with my proxxi Samson into impossibly fantastic structures in the augmented space around us. My dad had been trying to shield me from their arguing by setting up a pssi-block to filter it out of my sensory spaces, but Mother was having none of it.

“So now you want to protect him!” screamed Mother, turning off the pssi–block in the middle of their argument. “That’s a joke, you wanting to protect a child. You’re a sick little worm, Phil.”

Their favorite venue for screaming matches was the Spanish Courtyard world, well constructed and away from the prying eyes and ears of outsiders.

“Would you knock it off?” replied my dad. “I don’t know what you’re going on about. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Oh that’s right, you haven’t done anything!” screeched Mother. Once she got going there was no turning back. “You sure as hell haven’t ever done anything! Why I married you, I have no idea. What a waste of time.”

“I thought we got married because we loved each other,” replied my dad, dejectedly. Fearfully.

“Yeah, well love don’t pay the bills, now does it Phil? Does it Phil?” she demanded.

“No...I mean, so what, we manage.”

“We manage? We manage!?” yelled Mother. She’d been drinking again.

“Yes, we manage,” repeated my dad quietly, not sure what else to say. He wasn’t much good at arguing, or perhaps he’d been the subject of ridicule for so long that he’d just given up.

Mother tried her best to include me in the blame game even at this early point.

“I manage, Phil, it’s me that’s here taking care of that little shit of a son of yours all day while you’re out sunning yourself on the water.”

“Could you not talk like that, Gretchen? He’s listening, you know.”

“Oh, I want him to hear. I want him to hear this, want him to know that the only reason I agreed to have him was so that we could get on this stinking ship. I would never have let a child into this world so close to you otherwise. What would you think of me talking to my church group about what you’d like to do with children?”

“Gretchen, please, you’re drunk. It’s not what you think.”

“Oh, of course not!” she snorted. “And even then, we’re only here because I’m great-grand–niece to the famous Killiam. Not like you’d be man enough to accomplish anything on your own.”

“We’re doing some amazing stuff here Gretchen, please.”

“Oh really? Is that why you pssi–block me all the time? I can still see you, you know, sneaking around out there.”

“I need to focus on work during the days. I wish you would try to understand. We’ve talked about this. I thought we’d agreed.”

Mother snorted derisively. “Yeah sure, work. I thought we agreed about a lot of stuff, Phil. And you stink like fish, it’s disgusting,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

“Well block it out,” suggested my dad futilely. “That’s what pssi is for. Anyway, of course I smell like fish, I just got back from work. We’ve been analyzing the new stocks. I was trying to take a shower but you stopped me.”

“I stopped you, huh? So it’s me that’s holding you back, right Phil? What a joke! Just block it, that’s your answer to everything, right? Maybe I like to see things for what they are, Phil, like what you are.”

“I’m just trying to do my best, Gretchen.”

“Well obviously your best isn’t good enough,” she spat back. “You are what you are, right Phil?”

“I’m going in the shower,” said my dad as he turned away to finally escape.

Mother waved him off drunkenly and turned her attention to me. Even as a toddler, I cringed in the glare of her disappointment. She snapped into me, looking at the yellow cyber blocks through my own eyes, staring at my own little hands.

“Playing with blocks again, eh stinker?” she laughed. “The other pssi-kids your age are composing operas and you’re obsessed with blocks. You just don’t get on with the other kids, do you? Your cousin Nancy is quite the star, from what I’ve heard. Not you, though, not my little stinker. You’re just as useless as your dad.”

She angrily snapped out of my body, shoving it over as she left. I didn’t understand what she meant by all this, but the words hurt just the same.

Samson was watching all this from a distance. He walked over to help me up, and then sat down with his hand in mine. He summoned up and handed me some more interlocking blocks. We quietly finished building the wall around us, and just sat there dumbly, trying to figure out how to fill in the cracks and make it impenetrable.





Identity: Patricia Killiam



IT WAS BONFIRE night, and excited squeals rose up between the bursts of rockets and bangers. As we walked down the lane, I caught glimpses of children playing in the alleyways, scrambling atop piles of rubbish stacked high on the abandoned bomb sites behind the row houses.

Fireworks whizzed and popped overhead, and coming around a corner we almost ran smack into a little girl running the other way, her eyes fixated on a lit sparkler that she waved back and forth in her tiny outstretched hand.

“Careful now,” I laughed, stooping to catch and stop her before she tripped herself up. She never took her eyes off the sparkler, completely mesmerized. It sputtered out, and the girl looked up at me with eyes wide in wonder. Small, ruddy cheeks glowed warmly above a tightly wrapped scarf. Alan, my walking partner, knelt down on the wet pavement beside us, rummaging around in his pockets.

“Sorry mum! Little rascal got away from me!” called out a large huffing and puffing man, waving towards us, obviously the girl’s father. The already foggy night was now also thick with the acrid smoke of gunpowder, and my watering eyes strained to see the man approaching.

I called back, “Oh, it’s no trouble at all.” The man stopped running, obviously coming from the Lion’s Head, the pub where we were headed.

“Ah ha,” said Alan, having found the prize he’d been searching for. He produced another sparkler from the pocket of his great wool overcoat. He looked towards the little girl. “Would you like this?”

The girl’s eyes widened, and she nodded. Just then the man arrived.

“Oah, that’s very kind of you,” he started to say cheerily, but then his face darkened. “You’re that perfessor, ain’t ya?” He reached down to grab his daughter’s hand.

Alan sighed but said nothing, bowing his head and putting the sparkler back in his pocket.

“And what of it?” I growled at the man, gently releasing the girl.

“You stay away from my Olivia!” he spat back, roughly jerking the little girl away from us. “You stay away, you hear me? Disgusting.”

Turning sharply he walked away, dragging the girl behind him. She continued to watch us intently as she disappeared into the gloom. I sighed and reached down to gently pull Alan back up. He’d visibly crumpled during the exchange.

“Don’t pay any attention to them,” I said softly, pulling him in the opposite direction, away from the Lion’s Head. “What do you say we have a drink at the Green Man instead?”

“Yes, I suppose,” he replied distantly.

It was the spring of 1953, although spring in Manchester wasn’t much different than most of the rest of the year. While even the Blitz hadn’t been able to displace my mother and father from London during the War, the Great Smog of ’52 had been the last straw to encourage them to take the family north that year.

The smog hadn’t been the only reason, however. My parents had used the Big Smoke as their own smoke screen to accompany me to my new school. I’d just been accepted as the first female faculty member of the new Computer Laboratory of Manchester University, and there’d been a terrible row when my father had refused to allow me to leave and live on my own. When Gran’s asthma had practically killed her in the intense smog just before Christmas, it had given my dad the perfect opportunity to make everyone happy.

My sisters had all been married off by then, and despite an endless procession of suitors provided by Mother, I’d remained steadfast and aloof, and alone. I just wasn’t interested. Only one passion burned in my soul.

“Come on Alan, snap out of it. Don’t listen to that small minded lout,” I laughed, pulling him into me and giving him a little kiss. He smiled sadly and we began walking off towards the Green Man. “Tell me again why it’s different.”

“We’re just speaking about two completely different things,” he replied finally, his mind snapping back to our discussion. “My idea is that if you speak to something inside a black box, and everyone agrees that it responds to them just as a human would, then the only conclusion is that something intelligent and aware, human or otherwise, is inside.”

“Then why not an equivalent test for reality?”

“So you’re suggesting that if, somehow, we could present a simulated reality to humans...”

“...to a conscious observer…” I interjected.

“...to a conscious observer,” he continued with a nod, “if that conscious observer couldn’t distinguish the difference between the simulated and the real world, then the simulated reality becomes an actual reality in some way?”

“Yes, exactly!” I exclaimed. “That’s exactly what I’m suggesting.”

He shook his head.

“Why not? Doesn’t it make a certain sense when all of modern physics requires a conscious observer to make it work for some reason?”

“You can’t just create something from nothing,” he said after some contemplation.

“Why not?”

“And just responding ‘why not’ does not constitute a defense, my dear,” he laughed.

We’d arrived at the pub and we stopped outside. With one hand he combed back his hair, parting it neatly to one side, and smiled at me with a soft look in his eyes. Even at 41 years of age, he still had a boyish charm, perhaps aided by ears that stuck out just a little too far. I laughed back, looking at him.

“What about the Big Bang then? That’s a whole universe from nothing!” I retorted. I had a steady stream of correspondence going on with some colleagues at Cambridge. They had just minted the idea.

“Ah yes, my bright little flower, you are clever aren’t you?”

“I am,” I giggled. “Come on, let’s get that drink.”

We wandered in under the bowing doorframe, across worn granite flagstone floors and into the warm bustle of the dimly lit pub.

“The usual, Mr. Turing?” asked the bartender brightly as we arrived at the bar. He nodded at her.

“Two of those,” I added.

For one luminous yet terribly short year, I had the great privilege of having Mr. Alan Turing, the father of all computer science and artificial intelligence, as my PhD professor. His own hardship had been my gain.

After convictions for homosexual acts, still a criminal offence in England of 1950’s, he’d been ostracized by his faculty and the academic world. Even most of his graduate students had abandoned him, and it was the only reason someone of his stature and position would have accepted a female student at the time.

In the end, I had almost an entire year of Alan to myself, an incredible experience that would inspire and shape my thinking for the rest of my life. Sadly, though, Alan had taken his own life at the end of that year, and the world was a lesser place without him.

“All right then,” said Alan after a pause, “I’ll allow that. Explain to me exactly what you’re thinking then.”

The bartender had returned with our pints of cider. After digging into his pockets again, Alan came up with a handful of change that he left on the counter, mumbling his thanks while we collected our drinks. We made our way off to a quiet part of the pub, near a fireplace that glowed warmly with coals of coke.

“All realities are not created equal,” I explained as we decided on a small wooden table tucked into the corner. The benches around it had obviously been recycled, or stolen, from a local parish church somewhere. Mismatched and threadbare carpets covered floorboards that creaked as we sat down in the pews. “If there is only one observer of a universe, then that reality is weak.”

“And the more observers that share a reality, the stronger it becomes?” he continued for me.

“Exactly!”

I’d been very excited that night, filled with visions of ideas newly inspired by Alan.

Just then a ping arrived from Nancy. Its loud chime drowned out the background noise of the pub.

“Go ahead and answer,” encouraged Alan, picking up his glass of cider to take a sip.

This wasn’t a memory, but a painstakingly reconstructed world that I’d created. I liked to venture off into it from time to time, to sit and chat with my mentor of so long ago, and replay conversations we’d had, or at least, what I thought I remembered of them.

I authorized Nancy for access to this sensory space, and she faded into view, sitting on a pew just across from us.

“So you’re sure you want to go ahead with this?” I asked immediately.

Nancy had been pressing me to go ahead with the launch of the Infinixx distributed consciousness project, ahead of the launch of pssi by Cognix. It had actually been my idea. If it worked, it would thrust Nancy into the spotlight and bring her own star onto the world stage just as mine was fading. She could continue my work. I knew she had the inner strength to make sure that whatever happened would be for the right reasons.

“Absolutely!”

“Okay, good. I will press on ahead on my side, then. You’re keeping on top of the New York trials?”

“Yes, Aunt Killiam,” she responded sheepishly. She would always be a child to me. “Of course I am.”

“Okay,” I replied, nodding, “perfect. I’ll start a campaign with the Board then.”

She looked ready to burst, yet her eyes clouded over.

“There’s something else?” I asked.

She sighed. “What’s going on with Uncle Vince?”

The reports of his future deaths had been clogging the prediction networks for the past few days. Guilt gripped me. I’d managed to insert some clues, however, deep in the patterns we had chasing him down. He would be off around the world hunting down these clues in ancient religious texts. A goose chase, but I had to keep him busy. In the end it might even do him some good.

“Nothing is going on with Vince, nothing at all.”

“What do you mean?” She didn’t look convinced.

“He’s just, well, he’s just fooling around.”

I shrugged and looked towards Alan, who shrugged as well.

“Okay,” she replied hesitantly, “if you say so. Just tell me what I need to do to help with the Board.”

“I will. Speaking of the Board, will we be seeing you at the Foreign Banquet tomorrow evening?”

“Yes, I’ll be there.”

I hesitated. “Dr. Baxter said he may bring Bob along…” I didn’t finish the sentence, looking at her. I really wanted to find a way to bring her and Bob back together, but I’d never worn cupid’s hat comfortably.

“I think I’m going solo anyway,” she replied with a smile. “It’s an official function, and those bore David to death.”

“I just thought I’d mention it.” I smiled back. Maybe I was better at this than I thought. “Now you get back to your evening!”

She nodded and squealed as she faded away.

“A beautiful child,” observed Alan, smiling at me. “One thing though...”

“About Nancy?” I asked.

“No, about what we were talking about.”

I nodded. “Yes?”

“In these created realities, what controls the underlying conditions that make the reality possible?”

I considered this for a moment.

“Just the observing entity.”

“And what happens if an organism escapes into the reality that it creates?”

“I don’t follow.” Now it was my turn to be confused. At the time, I hadn’t understood that it could be possible, but then, Alan had always had a gift for seeing further than anyone else.

“What I mean is, organisms are constrained by the physics of this reality, but what if they can create their own realities and escape into them?” He let the words hang in the air.

Alan had also been the founder of mathematical biology and studied its relationship to morphogenesis, the processes that caused organisms to develop their shape.

“If you change the body, Patricia, you also change the mind.”

I sat staring at him, letting the words settle.

“What could an animal become if it were completely unfettered by any physical constraints?” he continued, staring directly into my eyes. “If it were able to drag other observers into these created realities of yours, against their control?”

This century old question now hung ominously in my mind.