The Complete Atopia Chronicles

14





Identity: Patricia Killiam



“TEN!...NINE!...EIGHT!...”

I looked out at the packed crowd in the Ballroom, feeling the excitement build, and in the background my splinter network scanned the nearly billion people who had tuned in to witness the launch of Infinixx.

“Aunt Pattie,” said Nancy, turning to look towards me with tears in her eyes, “I’ve decided that I’d like it to be you who throws the switch. All this, everything here is all because of you!”

The crowd continued to roar the countdown, “…six...”

It was her moment to shine, not mine.

“I’d love to sweetheart,” I replied quickly. My physical self was back helping Vince on another goose chase in the grow farms. Even if I’d wanted to, there was no way for me to throw this switch without my body here. “I had a last minute thing come up. You go ahead dear!”

My stomach balled into a knot, realizing something had gone horribly wrong before I even understood what it was. I flipped my pssi into identity mode to reveal a completely empty room. Not a soul was here physically, not even Nancy. I immediately realized the disaster that was about to unfold.

“…five…”

“Okay Jimmy, how about you then?” asked Nancy, still unaware. “Go ahead. I really wanted it to be one of you two.”

She released the switch and encouraged Jimmy to take it.

I tried to unlock the exterior security perimeter to bring a psombie guard into the room, but Nancy and Jimmy had the security keyed into them. I desperately pinged Jimmy for access.

At the same time I had Marie querying the proxxi of all the senior executives up on the stage with us. All of them had last minute plans for not coming physically, including me. They had all hidden their excuses because we’d asked them to come in person, thinking it wouldn’t make a difference. It was exactly what I had thought as well.

“...three...two...”

“I’m really sorry Nance,” replied Jimmy urgently. “I had something too. You go ahead...quick now!”

Jimmy’s face registered his surprise as my access control request hit his networks and he also understood the position we were in.

“...ONE!”

Nancy turned as white as a ghost when she realized what was happening. Her words of seconds ago now echoed in my mind, “All this, everything here is because of you.” An audible ‘snap’ rang out in the air as the Chinese and Indians flipped their own switches at their remote locations.

What was going on? Vince had asked me to come and help him, and to keep it a secret, but his futile pursuits were something I had set him on myself. I hadn’t planned this, and in fact I would have done almost anything to have stopped it from happening.

Already the world press had figured out what was going on. A Times article trumpeting “Infinixx—Everywhere but Nowhere!” was being filtered in to the main Ballroom display.

Lawyers from the Indian and Chinese sides had instantly filed lawsuits against Cognix claiming monumental damages. By now Jimmy had unlocked the exterior security perimeter, and I could see a psombie guard racing towards the stage.

“Forget it,” I heard echo in a distant splinter. It was Nancy speaking, her primary subjective still standing alone on the stage, completely destroyed.

§

Was I a woman who dreamt of being a butterfly, or a butterfly who dreamt she was a woman? The butterfly in me now yearned to escape, and it was getting hard to mask the tiredness.

Immunosuppressant nanobots in my bloodstream had been attacking my own red blood cells after the latest round of genetic modification therapy, so I was now anemic, or something like this, my doctors were telling me. Running away from one tiger, and leaping towards another.

In another splinter, right at the same time as the Infinixx launch was unfolding, I’d been holding a different press conference. The disaster had already sparked a destructive media tsunami, and I could see the smiles start spreading across the reporters’ faces while their incoming messages pinged and they looked up at me on the stage.

“In short,” I listened to myself saying to the reporters, “for things to remain the way they are, things must change.”

A few sniggers followed that comment, but these were obviously related to the Infinixx mess and nothing clever I was saying.

“Okay, next question,” I said quickly, wanting to get this over with. Only a small part of my consciousness was there, most of the rest of me was trying to calm Kesselring. We’d had the whole world tuned in for the launch. He was furious.

“The responsibility for Infinixx is yours,” fumed Kesselring. “This has injected serious uncertainty vectors into our phutures. Who knows what the ramifications could be. I’m going to have to remove you from the media circuit. The Killiam name is a joke now.”

“That’s fine with me,” I snorted. I’d been tired of the media road show for a long time already. He was posturing about the long range phutures, but I knew he was really annoyed about the declining price of the Cognix stock offering.

“The main timeline is holding steady,” I added after giving him a moment to stew. “It’s nothing to get excited about.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Nothing to get excited about? If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that you were behind this.”

“Why would I sabotage my own niece’s project?” I replied, rolling my eyes.

“You don’t think this looks suspicious? You turning around at the last minute, in fact, everyone turning away in the last seconds, even Nancy herself?”

He stood and stared at me. I looked away.

“I had to. Vince asked me for help. Do you think I could ignore him? After what we’ve done? Perhaps this was just a coincidence.”

“A coincidence?” snorted Kesselring. “You expect me to believe that?”

Shaking my head I quietly replied, “No, I guess that stretches believability.”

“It must be the Terra Novans somehow,” he said after a pause, shaking his head and looking off into space. “You realize we’re going to have to remove Nancy as the head of Infinixx.”

At the same time, I had another splinter who was busy arguing with Hal. It was another battle of the happiness brigade regarding test results from the clinical trials on addiction.

Hal was in the middle of another of his monologues.

“As the world gets more complex, people begin to compensate by looking for escape,” Hal explained as my splinter assimilated into that reality. “Look at the rise in reports of paranormal phenomenon. We know it’s not real, even they know it’s not real, but they need the escape.”

“Okay Hal, I see your point, but just for instance, what about Cody Chavez?” my splinter demanded. We were in Hal’s new space, his office climbing ever higher in the Solomon House complex.

“Cody Chavez is perfectly happy and healthy,” argued Hal. “So he chooses to spend his days with reality skinned up so everyone looks like Elvis and global warming never happened. Cody knows this isn’t real. He’s just suspended disbelief for a while.”

“I think it’s a little more serious than simply suspending disbelief.”

“Cody was suffering from incurable anxiety, directly linked to the intractable problems he saw in the world. So he’s skinned up something to brighten his days, so what?” Hal shrugged and then wagged his finger in the air. “And all without drugs.”

It was just at that point that the Infinixx mess climaxed. I sighed.

“Can we resolve the issue of making the new tests public another time?” I asked.

He shook his head angrily. “Always an excuse with you, isn’t there Pat?”

“It’s just…”

He cut me off. “I know, Infinixx, disaster. The whole world knows, my dear.” He smiled cruelly.

I began to get angry.

“Fine then,” I said, switching gears, “doesn’t it bother you that we seem to be breeding a generation of lazy, self-absorbed sexual deviants with the pssi–kids? Is this where the pursuit of happiness leads us?”

“Deviants?” laughed Hal. “Lazy? Come now, Patricia, listen to yourself! Isn’t this just the same old accusation of parents about ‘kids these days’ down throughout the ages?”

I stopped for a moment and considered this.

“I think maybe you’re just too old,” added Hal with a nasty twinkle in his eye. “These kids do amazing things too, you know.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes. Maybe he was right, but then I knew a few things he didn’t. The weight bore down ever tighter.

“Forget the pssi–kids, then,” I conceded. “What about this disgusting trade in proxxids?”

He arched his eyebrows. “Again, deviants?”

“I, for one, hadn’t planned on starting a whole new industry in sexual tourism for pedophiles,” I complained. “Maybe this was what some of you had in mind, but I find it disgusting.”

“Sexual tourism is a gross exaggeration.”

I said nothing, shaking my head.

“Is it wrong, Patricia?” he countered coolly. “Is it wrong to have computer generated models of naked children if they’re not based on any real, specific child? Nobody is being exploited. It is a critical part of our therapy program for pedophiles.”

“Still…” I replied with revulsion.

“Again, this is just your own prejudice blinding you,” he continued, sensing my growing emotions and throwing them back in my face. “This is just the way they were made. The pedophiles can’t help it. It wasn’t that many generations ago that society reviled homosexuals the same way.”

“It’s not the same thing,” I objected.

“Isn’t it? Isn’t it better for them to come here and release themselves, to find a therapeutic path forward? Technology is leading a cultural advance and bringing this long maligned minority back into the fold.”

“It’s disgusting,” was all I could think to say. “It is absolutely disgusting.”

My mind was past the brink of exhaustion.

This was the path to happiness?

In yet another splinter, Marie and I were studying the fast evolving weather predictions.

Hurricane Ignacia was definitely crossing over from the Caribbean and into the Eastern Pacific to be renamed Olivia. Hurricane Newton, which had been spinning out into the Pacific as we backed away from it towards the coast, had now stopped and even slightly reversed its trajectory.

My projections soon had the Fujiawara effect taking hold to connect the two storm systems, with the center pivot at just the wrong point, preventing Atopia from escaping into the open Pacific between them.

As I discussed the merits of virtual economies with the reporters, defended myself from Kesselring, argued about the nature of happiness with Hal, and considered the hurricanes rushing towards us—I had a nauseating sensation of vertigo.

My visual fields distorted, ballooning outwards, and the hurricanes and reporters shredded into each other. Kesselring’s shocked face watched me blink suddenly out of his reality.

I abruptly collapsed into a deathly quiet, single subjective point of view. Exactly where or why, I had no idea.

Marie, my proxxi, was standing over me, staring into my eyes. Everything was perfectly still. An impossibly long, incredibly thin rope stretched from the infinite blue void above to wrap itself tightly around my waist. I was suspended above a yawning black pit, set in the middle of an endless green field, all under a flawless sky.

“The news isn’t good I’m afraid,” Marie informed me, shaking her head.

Tell me something I didn’t know.

The rope tightened around my waist, slowly choking out my lifeblood. I could feel the tigers charging across the sky towards me, their silent roars ringing in my deaf ears.

Fascinated, I watched as busy and purposeful nanobots ate away at the thin cord holding me suspended in space. Below me, in the blackness of the pit, an unseen monster grunted and slobbered. This can’t last forever, I thought to myself as I drifted in and out of consciousness.

I can’t last forever.