The Complete Atopia Chronicles

11





Identity: Jimmy Jones



“WHERE DID THE idea for your distributed consciousness technology come from?”

The question wasn’t directed at me. Some of the reporters laughed, and Nancy smiled. They’d all heard this before. The question was another opportunity for a sound bite, and Nancy launched into it with a smile.

In the days and weeks after the announcement of the Infinixx launch date, Nancy’s star had risen dramatically. The press couldn’t get enough of her. I’d been asked to help out, and I had splinters strung out in a seemingly endless stream of press events across the multiverse.

As I disengaged my primary subjective from the splinter covering this event I let my mind wander off. Nancy was still talking about how it had all come from the childhood game flitter tag that we used to play. She was gushing on and on, and it was beginning to annoy me.

Flitter tag may have been the king of pssi-kid games, but my favorite had always been rag–dolling. It had been my own personal addition to our repertoire.

One day, Ms. Parnassus, our human teacher back at the pssi-kid Academy, had asked each of us to come and demonstrate a special trick or skill. Each child had gotten up in turn to show off something they could do. One inflated into a balloon and floated up to bounce around on the ceiling. Nancy showed off holding a dozen conversations at once with everyone around the classroom. Bob of course took us surfing, and then my turn had come.

“Come on Jimmy,” our teacher encouraged, “show everyone what you showed me.”

She gently rotated me into the center of everyone’s attentional matrix. I nervously looked at my classmates—an arrayed collection of fantastical little creatures floating impatiently around in my display spaces.

Fidgeting, I looked down at my feet. They uncontrollably spawned into writhing tentacles that nervously knotted together like cave eels trying to escape sudden sunlight.

Giggles erupted.

“Go ahead,” said Ms. Parnassus, nodding and smiling, prodding me on. She collapsed everyone’s skins into my identity space, morphing us into a shared reality of children standing around the Schoolyard playground, with me at the center. I was now dressed in gray flannel shorts, with a matching sweater and shirt with a little red clip–on tie.

More giggles. Mother had insisted on this ridiculous outfit for my primary identity.

Oak trees arched between the swing sets and jungle gyms of the Schoolyard, reaching high above us like a leafy green cathedral beneath a perfectly blue sky.

“Come on Jimmy, they’ll love it, trust me,” said Ms. Parnassus. I nodded, and set up my trick.

“Everyone, detach and snap into Jimmy. Now hurry up!” she clapped.

There were a few groans, and I could tell the rest of the kids had little hope of anything fun coming from quiet, awkward Jimmy. Still, I felt them all clicking obediently into my conscious perimeter.

I unlocked my pssi–channels, and then felt them all crowding inside me, feeling what I felt, seeing what I saw. The sensation was ticklish as all of them squirmed impatiently inside me, waiting for something to happen.

Not many people had ever ghosted me before that, and I wasn’t popular at flitter tag. Practically the only people that had been inside me before that had been my parents, and then usually only to terrorize me. But that day was different, a shared experience rather than an intrusion. Despite myself, I tingled warmly and smiled.

“See Jimmy, isn’t that nice?” said Ms. Parnassus, noticing me smiling. “Now come on Jimmy, show them what you showed me.”

Screwing up my courage, I took a deep breath and dove down into my body, shrinking, dragging them with me. I could hear their giggles back behind my mind. Down, down we dove, into the tiniest of spaces inside me, past bone and blood, squeezing down past the granular limit of pssi–tech. I stopped for a moment, and then, holding my breath, pushed the limit further.

I squeezed our consciousnesses down to the molecular level, and then stopped inside one of my living cell nuclei to watch a newly hatched protein unfold. The kids were silent, suddenly engrossed. Then I shot back outwards, upwards through my veins. I stopped again, the powerful thump of my heart filling our sensory space. I snapped our tactile arrays to the outside of my aorta, and we felt our skins expanding, contracting, my lifeblood flowing through us.

“Cool!” exclaimed Bob, followed quickly by a chorus of, “Show me how! Show me!”

Ms. Parnassus smiled, watching the kids all snap back into themselves and run to mob me in the middle of the Schoolyard.

Flitter tag was the undeniable king of games at the pssi-kid Academy, but for a while, rag dolling became all the rage as I taught them to open up individual body parts and snap people into them. And then to move the body around, each person controlling only their part, the net effect much like a drunken sailor trying to get home. For a short time in my childhood I had been popular.

This was the start of my journey into the security of conscious systems.