The Complete Atopia Chronicles

16





Identity: Patricia Killiam



IT HAD TAKEN me two full days to recover, and in that time, a world already spinning out of control had suddenly taken an even steeper descent into chaos.

We’d started hardening Atopia for the now inevitable collision with the storms, and an escalation process was being discussed regarding possible evacuations. The rate of unexplained disappearances was spiking again, and in the midst of all this, I received a ping that Rick’s wife had committed some kind of reality suicide.

It seemed she hadn’t been terminating the proxxids. It wasn’t hard to guess what had happened.

“How is your wife doing, Rick?”

It was the end of a long day for everyone as we’d begun planning for possible disaster, but longest of all for Rick. I was at a loss for words. Reality suicide was a new phenomenon, deeply tied into the way pssi interacted with our unconscious minds, and just one more thing we didn’t understand properly yet.

I’d asked for this emergency meeting with Rick because my communication network with Command had suddenly been shut off, and nobody was responding to me.

“It’s hard to tell,” he replied unsteadily. “I mean, she looks fine. She looks like she’s asleep. I wish…”

“I don’t think blaming yourself is going to help,” I offered. “Anyway, we haven’t managed to crack the security blankets covering the worlds she was in before this happened, so we really don’t know what the full story is yet.”

Rick wiped his face with the back of one hand and stared down at the floor. We were sitting in my mahogany walled office. Pictures of ancient, four-masted sailing ships lined the walls.

“We know enough of the story to know how we got here,” he said with a dead voice, on the edge of tears. Then his mood shifted abruptly.

“This is your fault Patricia. You recommended using the proxxids,” he spat out venomously, looking up at me with menacing eyes. “You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?”

I recoiled slightly. This was a combat soldier after all.

“I don’t think laying blame is constructive at this point,” I began to say. I hadn’t exactly recommended them.

“We’re all just lab rats to you, aren’t we?” he growled, venting his anger. “I know what you let people do with proxxids—I’ve looked into the whole thing in more detail—it’s disgusting. You disgust me.” His breathing was ragged now. “You have no idea what you’re doing here, what you’re doing to people, do you? We’re just guinea pigs to you.”

He gathered himself and looked down at the floor, containing his emotions. I didn’t know what to say.

“Rick I’m sorry…”

“Sorry just isn’t good enough. Time for experimentation and best efforts is over,” he stated flatly. He stood up.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Getting away from these storms, we’ll be taking control from here on. This is now a military matter.”

He shook his head, averting my eyes, and without another word flitted off to disappear out of my office and back to Command, not even leaving a polite splinter behind.

I was stunned.

The storms had continued to defy phuturecasts and we were running out of room to back away from them. It was obvious something was directing them, but despite swarming the seas with smarticles and drones and everything else we could throw at it, we couldn’t even begin to stop them or understand how it was happening.

Usually two storm systems of this magnitude, in one oceanic basin, tended to dissipate, one into the other, but these two were pumping each other up and expanding.

It was unlikely that we’d sustain core structural damage even in a direct hit by either or both of them, but that was making the sorts of assumptions that trapped us here in the first place.

Now I understood why my communications had been cut off. Rick was formally taking control and declaring an emergency. All civil power was now in the hands of ADF Command.

“Marie, could you splinter me that latest report?”

I reached down to smooth out a wrinkle in my skirt, trying to regain my composure. Marie looked up at me from some files she was studying from the chair she was sitting in at the side of my office.

“We’ve had something of a breakthrough,” she responded excitedly. “The high surface temperatures seem to be caused by migrations of dinoflagellate blooms. Someone out there has been planning this for a long time.”

She splintered me all the data sheets before continuing.

“It looks like they seeded the ocean surface with iron dust to grow some bioengineered plankton and they’re now directing huge swarms of the little creatures, basically sucking energy from one part of the ocean and into another. Definitely bioengineered and directed.”

“Can we stop it? Can we find out who’s doing it?” I asked. She shook her head. “Was Sintil8 able to find anything for us?”

“He was some help,” she replied with a nod. “What we’re looking at could be a new addition to the Weather Wars arsenal.”

I sighed. Directed cyclone warfare could add a whole new wonderful chapter to the ongoing book of human conflict. Of course, weather had always been a decisive factor in war.

My personal favorite, a story my father had told me as a child, had been the defeat of the Spanish Armada by England five hundred years ago. The British victory had less to do with the genius of Sir Francis Drake than simply a week of wind that had pinned the Armada against the French side of the English Channel. The wind had held the Spanish in place, giving the British ‘weather gage’ to float fire ships into the hapless Spaniards, destroying the fleet before it even had a chance to attack.

The defeat of the Armada had halted the Habsburg invasion of land forces, at that moment poised to cross over from the Netherlands. The direction of wind for a few short days had dictated the outcome of the next five hundred years of global geopolitics, even the rise of America itself as a superpower.

What we faced now was far more than simply a wind in the wrong direction.

“We can’t fire weapons at blooms of microorganisms, nor at hurricanes,” added Marie. “We’re just going to have to stay out of their way as much as possible. If you want more of a run down, you’re better off speaking with Jimmy.”

Even that was going to be difficult now, given the state Rick was in. And the list of possible suspects behind these storms was worryingly thin.

“Or perhaps Bob?” I suggested, thinking about who may be able to provide some fresh insight. “He has a curious relationship with directing little creatures like you’re describing. Why don’t you talk with him?”

Marie nodded. “I’ll see if I can get some input from him.”

She paused.

“What?” I asked. I could see she had something else on her mind.

“It’s strange,” Marie answered. “Yes, we can see how they’re doing it, but the numbers don’t quite add up. Even with what we’ve discovered, they shouldn’t be able to direct weather as severe as this.”

I didn’t understand. “Could you be more precise?”

“It just doesn’t add up,” was all she could say, shaking her head.

“It sure doesn’t.”

Too many things were unexplained, too many loose ends were accumulating, and Rick was right—we didn’t know what we were doing anymore. I was going to have to stop this freight train, even if it meant risking everything.

“Well, keep on it,” I told her. “I’m going to see about talking with Jimmy.”

I sent him an emergency ping. I needed to collect as much information as I could.

To my surprise, Jimmy accepted right away, and my office faded out as my primary subjective was channeled into a private deprivation space, surrounded by a heavy security blanket. Jimmy wasn’t there, but his communication network was open to me.

I felt ill at ease.

“Jimmy,” I called out into the dimensionless emptiness, “what can you tell me?”