The Complete Atopia Chronicles

22





Identity: Bobby Baxter



SMILING AT NANCY, I stuffed some more pasta into my face.

“Think of it like we’re about to run a marathon,” I explained. “We need to do some carb loading and build up our smarticle reservoirs. Keep eating!”

We’d both been storing far more than the usual load of smarticles that we naturally absorbed from the Atopian environment, far beyond even our own high tolerances.

Nancy nodded and continued to eat methodically, looking down into her plate. It had been a long time since I’d been this physically close to her, and a lot of memories were flooding back. With an effort I kept my mind from splintering and scuttling off into the past.

“I just don’t like that we’re hiding this from Pat,” she said looking down into her pasta. “Do you really think she’s hiding something?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, “but we need to keep all our options open. You understand?”

She nodded. “But why tell Jimmy then?”

“Just a hunch I have,” I replied, not able to explain much more than that. “Knowing he knows what we’re doing enables us to watch him watching us, if that makes any sense.”

“Plus, we won’t set off his alarms when we’re scanning the Atopian infrastructure,” added Sid.

Nancy shrugged.

“Makes sense I guess.”

Willy, Sid, Vicious, Robert, Vince and Hotstuff were all sitting at the table together with us in a dingy little cafeteria in a deep, dark forgotten corner of the Atopian service infrastructure below Purgatory.

We were as close as we could get to the routing core of the pssi network, and for what I wanted to do, reducing distance latency to the core would help minimize transactional delays and give us an edge over any self-correcting algorithmic blind spots that may be installed within it. We were going to plug in as directly as we could and watch for anomalies.

“Go over the plan again with me?” asked Nancy as she carefully considered the noodles before her. She took another mouthful.

“Your mind is still the best neuroplatically formatted of anyone on Atopia to handle wide area splintering,” I started to explain.

“Yeah,” added Vicious, “it’s like you can be everywhere at once.”

Nancy sighed. “Yes, everywhere but the place I should have been.”

She looked directly into my eyes and my heart jumped up through my throat.

“Nancy, we need your head in on this or not at all,” I replied softly, my heart beating quickly. “Are you up for this?”

I needed to know. This wasn’t going to be easy.

“Yes, I’m in Bob, you’ve just surprised me is all.” She looked up at me and held my gaze steadily.

“I do like to be full of surprises,” I said as I smiled at her warmly. “Good. So Sid is making some changes to my water sense so that it settles around information eddies regarding Atopia.”

“Right,” she said, “so you can feel out ideas in the multiverse about Atopia.”

“Exactly. So here’s what we’re going to try. You and I are going to composite, and then recombine via your Infinixx tethers to push my water-sense into thousands of composite splinters that we then push into every nook and cranny of the multiverse.”

I looked at Nancy and she nodded her understanding.

“Sid will amplify this and cross-connect our network into the billions of private Phuture News feeds that Vince will open up to us. I’ll be waiting to feel for waves of information that flow out, and then ride the interesting ones in.”

“You sure you’re ready to open up all these personal phuturecasts to us?” I asked Vince, giving him another opportunity to back out. “The lawsuits could be the end of you.”

He just laughed, “The end of me doesn’t scare me much anymore. Look, it can’t get any worse than it is. I want to find some answers.”

“Okay then,” I replied, “just making sure.”

Vince looked ready for action. “Heck, opening up all these private phutures could even kill the whole Phuture News organization… I think I could be ready for a fresh start.”

During the last half hour he’d already had to flit out three times to save his life, but he looked the most awake and alive of all of us. It was true what they said—if you needed something done, ask someone with nothing to do and it takes forever, but ask a busy person and it gets done right away. Vince was the busiest person I knew, and he got things done in a flash.

Nancy looked up at me. “What you’re proposing could kill you, you know.”

“Don’t be silly,” I smiled. “Anyway, it’s less dangerous than surfing.”

“When you surf you don’t purposely cook your brain,” she replied. “Are you’re sure you want to do this?”

I took a deep breath. “Anything to get naked with you.”

She laughed. “All you had to do was ask, Bob.”

“Yeah, well, I like special occasions…”

“Okay lovebirds,” said Vicious, breaking the spell, “time to take a cold shower.”

Off to one corner of the room we’d filled a bathtub with ice and water. As I quickened my mind by orders of magnitude, we needed a way to cool me off as directly as possible, and Nancy had to be right there with me to reduce distance delays between our coupled nervous systems.

Quickening a composite together like this would be tricky, and to achieve the best possible chances at cognitive coherence we needed to be as close together as physically possible. I was going to be taking the brunt of the quickening intensity, and to heat sink off the energy generated the easiest solution was to immerse our bodies in freezing cold water.

“Ready?” I asked Nancy.

She nodded and began to physically undress, although she remained modestly clothed in her pssi projection. I did the same and walked over to the tub of cold water with her, the two of us hand in hand and surrounded silently by the rest of our gang.

“Good luck,” said Vince, squeezing both of our hands, stepping back.

I looked into Nancy’s eyes and saw her quivering.

“I love you Nance.” I leaned in to kiss her. “Don’t worry.”

As we stepped into the cold water, I gently felt her out with my phantoms, and she responded to me, welcoming me in the myriad hyperspaces where we connected. Our synthetic bodies locked together around us like the wings of angels, enclosing us in a protective, otherworldly cocoon.

Finally we stepped physically together, embracing as we lowered ourselves down into the frigid water. Cradling her head below mine, I initiated the compositing sequence, and the hundreds of billions of neurons in my nervous system began fusing with hers. Our minds and bodies began to flow together and into each other.

“Just breathe slowly, in and out,” I gently told her, “and on each breath out we’ll push the quickening a little more.”

Closing my eyes, I let my mind and body merge with Nancy’s, and then felt her pushing me out, splintering me further and further, spreading us out across the multiverse. Our minds and bodies began quickening, and an ocean of information flowed into me as I settled back to sense the ebb and flow of anything to do with Atopia.

I relaxed into our new self, letting Nancy spread us further. With each breath I kept increasing the pace of quickening and pushing our hived mind out further and further, compressing and stretching ever outwards in waves.

With a final deep breath, we breached an invisible wall somewhere in the universal consciousness and our minds exploded. Time stopped, ceasing to exist. We became the alpha, the omega, and everything else in between.