Complete Atopia Chronicles

by Matthew Mather

  Patricia nodded and smiled warmly.

  “You take care of yourself, Vince.”

  With that, she faded away to leave me alone to finish my walk, or at least, alone with my crowd of future selves arrayed around me.

  “It does seem to be getting worse though,” I said to myself glumly when she was gone. I was covering up my issue to the rest of the world as some kind of prank. Most people didn’t seem to think it was very funny, and neither did I.

  I kicked some gravel down the winding path as I passed in front of the Crystal Palace. Watching the cloud of dust I’d created drift and settle, I wondered if it felt any regret as it came back to rest again on the earth.

  6

  “ARE YOU SURE that’s right?”

  I laughed and pulled the girl closer. “Everything is right when I’m with you.”

  She wriggled away, giggling. “Stop it Vince, come on, be serious! Is that the right time?”

  I looked up at the curved clock face. It seemed about right.

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Come on then, we’re going to be late!”

  She pulled me along, and I looked up from the clock at the high vaulted ceiling of New York’s Central Station. This place always inspired a sense of awe in me, or, if not exactly awe, then a deep feeling of history. I felt a certain sense of nostalgia for all the human stories that had passed through this place, or, like me, were dragged through.

  Looking up and around as we wound our way through the hustle and bustle across the white marble floors, my eyes came to rest on the news display at one end. She was looking at it as well.

  “Carrier Groups set to high alert in Straits of Taiwan,” read the rolling display, “China warns of pre-emptive cyber attacks.”

  She let go of me, staring at the news display, and then looked back at me. Her blue eyes shone, twinkling in the station’s lighting. She was so beautiful.

  “Are you sure it’s safe?”

  I looked briefly up at the news again and then back into her eyes.

  “Of course, these things always blow over,” I reassured her.

  “Seriously Vince, you’re the expert. You’re sure, right?”

  She stood stock still, looking into my eyes.

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  She shrugged. “Okay.”

  We began running for the track again, hand in hand. Soon we were on the train, cuddled up together for the evening ride back into Boston, the soft ka-chunk, ka-chunk of the tracks lulling us into a peaceful slumber as the miles rolled away.

  In what seemed like moments later, I awoke with a start, my heart racing. It was dark, much too dark. Somebody was yelling. Sitting upright, I looked out the window into pitch blackness.

  Then the screams and the terrible squeal of metal tearing and gnashing into itself as the train car pitched back and forth. I jammed my feet into the seat into front of me, bracing myself for what was to come, holding onto the girl who clutched desperately back onto me.

  And then the world exploded.

  §

  Sucking in air, I sat bolt upright in bed, looking around, trying to hold onto her, but she was gone. I hadn’t died in that reality, but then, that one was in the past, now an unchangeable part of my timeline. I hadn’t died in the train crash, but she had—Pamela, the love of my young life, back when I was an engineering student at MIT. I calmed my breathing, telling myself that everything was alright, but even now, nearly forty years later, I knew that it wasn’t, and that it never would be.

  It was a perpetually recurring dream, dulled only slightly with time, of that nightmare of a night when I’d lost her. It was during the initial attack that had knocked out the power grids, the first shots of what would become known as 2C, the cyber wars of 2022. What had been intended as a warning shot to disable some regional power systems in Connecticut had cascaded uncontrollably, knocking out power grids all the way down the East Coast in the middle of the winter that year.

  I’d promised her there was nothing to worry about, and it had cost her life. I’d been in the middle of my master’s degree at the MIT Media Lab, an expert in the cyber realm, and Patricia Killiam had been my thesis professor. I’d been studying the use of predictive systems in social networks, a pursuit which became a passion after the accident. If I’d just been able to see the future a little more clearly, been able to know a little more, I could have saved her. At least, that’s what I could never forgive myself for.

  I wiped the sweat off my forehead, rubbing my eyes. Why had she returned to my dreams now? I sighed. It must be the baby shower I was going to later in the day. Family events always made me think of Pamela, of a life I’d lost so long ago, a life I’d filled with senseless fluff but was now defending with everything I had.

  Perhaps it wasn’t worth it. Why was I even trying? I could perhaps save my own life, but the future of the world? I knew the future, and it wasn’t something I wished I knew. In fact, I’d been trying my best to forget. I laid back down in the bed and put my heart back away, closing my eyes.

  I needed to try and get some sleep.

  7

  WASN’T A BABY shower supposed to come before a baby was born? Anyway, it didn’t really matter. I was here to congratulate the happy couple.

  I’d just materialized in the entertainment metaworld that Commander Strong had created for his family’s coming out party. Well, his sort-of family. Rick waved at me and I smiled and waved back, watching him hand his new simulated baby back to his wife.

  Despite being a big believer in Patricia’s synthetic reality program, I couldn’t help feeling that these ‘proxxid’ simulated babies were slightly creepy, and I’d been hearing dark rumors hinting terrible things Dr. Granger had been using them for.

  I would have avoided coming entirely, but this event had sprung up on my threat radar today. Convincing Rick that this proxxid, and having many more besides, was a good idea would somehow collapse a whole subset of threat vectors coming my way.

  I didn’t like the idea of being so disingenuous, and I’d argued and tried to plan other contingencies all night with Hotstuff, but the alternatives were a lot more dangerous. After a little reflection, though, it didn’t seem a bad thing, and the happy couple seemed to be enjoying it.

  “Congrats Commander!” I exclaimed as Rick neared, outstretching my hand. He shook it firmly, looking a little sheepish, and motioned towards the bar.

  “Thanks, Vince. Oh, and thanks for those flowers the other day, Cindy really loved them.”

  “No problem at all.”

  We’d reached the bar. “So, what’ll it be?” he asked.

  I surveyed the bottles. “Nothing for me, thanks.”

  Right now wasn’t the time for a drink. It would have only been a synthetic drink for me, so I could choose whether to feel intoxicated or not, but the real issue was the interpersonal engagement. Taking a drink would necessitate having a chat, and I felt very uncomfortable about having to lie to my friend.

  I shrugged weakly.

  “You sure?” he asked, dropping some ice cubes into a cut glass tumbler and topping it off with a more than generous dose of whiskey.

  “Yeah, I’m just kind of busy.”

  I was struggling with what needed to come next. Rick fidgeted in front of me, taking a big gulp from his drink and smiling awkwardly.

  “This thing, it’s just a little game,” he laughed, misinterpreting my discomfort as mockery. Knocking back another big swig from his drink he shook his head, looking towards his wife holding their proxxid. “I’m just doing it to keep her happy, you know how it is.”

  The time had come.

  “No, no, absolutely this is the best thing,” I said enthusiastically, “you need to do this. This is the way of the future!” I clapped Rick on the back to emphasize the point.

  He snorted and took another big swig of his drink, his face brightening.

  “I mean it, Rick, you should have as many simulated babies as you can before going on to the
real thing.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I do my friend, I do.” I put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it encouragingly. I felt terrible. I had to get out of there as quickly as possible. “Listen, I have to get going, though. Sorry. Give Cindy a kiss for me, okay?”

  “I will.” He nodded, smiling.

  I hesitated. Maybe I shouldn’t do this. Perhaps I should just come clean, see if he could help me with my problem.

  “Go on,” laughed Rick, “get going!”

  As much as I was struggling with lying to Rick, there was nothing I could do. I nodded goodbye and faded away from the sensory space of his party.

  §

  I needed a little break to think about things, so decided on a walk in one of my private spaces. I materialized walking along a dusty path next to the Crystal Mountain in the middle of the Sahara desert in Egypt, near the border of Libya.

  This place held a mystical, almost magnetic, attraction to me, a massive single quartzite crystal that rose up hundreds of feet out of the barren, limestone landscape surrounding it. I’d recently installed my own private sensor network here, in secret, as the open wikiworld version lacked the resolution to really experience it, to enjoy the nuances and stark beauty of the place. It allowed me a place to wander truly alone; to enjoy some peace for short stretches in my newly frightening personal reality.

  Night was falling, spreading its indigo carpet across the sky to reveal the cathedral of stars that shone only in the deepest of deserts. The perpetual wind here, the Sirocco, whistled softly, carrying with it the sand that over the aeons had etched the limestone bedrock into fantastical forms that sprang up out of the desert floor like giant gnomes and mushrooms, lending the lifeless place an interior life of its own.

  Massive sand dunes sat hunched in the distance, slowly sailing their lonely courses across the bare bedrock, their hulks propelled by the same unrelenting wind that shaped this place. As they moved, they swallowed everything in their paths, but, just as inevitably as they consumed, they would eventually release as they moved on. You just had to stand still long enough, exist long enough, to be released.

  I stepped slowly between the ghostly sandstone figures that towered above me, frozen in time in their mad dance together. The Crystal Mountain glowed in an ethereal purple above it all, its interior lit by a million tiny points of starlight.

  It was a strange thing not being able to see my future hanging there in front of me. I mean, I could see my phutures, sense the nearness of their reality in the splinters of my distributed consciousness spreading out ahead of me, but now they all terminated abruptly. The fingers of time I’d carefully nurtured over the years had now been painfully amputated.

  Where before the future had flowed straight ahead of me, like a train running to known destinations where I could just switch stations on a whim as the rails flowed past. Now all tracks ahead ended in flames. A suffocating fire enveloped me, the future choking the lifeblood out of my present. I felt trapped in the moment.

  “Hotstuff, could you pop in for a sec?”

  Hotstuff, my proxxi, obediently materialized next to me. In sharp contrast to the dreamlike landscape I had lost myself in, her vitality and energy sizzled into this space. She was looking extremely sharp in tight, striped riding pants and boots with a low cut, high necked red jacket. Her long blond hair fell in waves down her back and across her shoulders.

  Some people liked to create some sort of alter ego as their proxxi, which was all fine for them. I preferred to have an attractive woman as my personal assistant. Plus I liked the idea of a woman driving my body around when I wasn’t in it.

  “So did you hear what Patricia said the other day?” I asked as she appeared, trying not to dwell on the implications of me enjoying having a woman enter my body when I was away.

  “What, that stuff about being concerned about you?”

  “No, not that,” I snorted. “That you’re my airbag.”

  I felt suddenly better, more protected, sensing the physicality of Hotstuff being near in this reality.

  Hotstuff rolled her eyes and laughed, “If anyone here’s an airbag, boss, it’d have to be you.”

  I laughed back, but then sighed heavily. I nervously fidgeted my phantoms limbs.

  “Stop that,” she commanded.

  She’d stopped walking herself, looking up to consider one of the limestone figures. It had a distinctly phallic shape. She turned and winked at me.

  “Stop it,” she repeated softly.

  “Stop what?”

  I’d begun a nervous drum beat with the phantom limb that controlled my future social connectivity.

  “Stop playing with your phantoms,” laughed Hotstuff, continuing to walk on, “you’re going to grow hair on them. Seriously, stop it. You’re jiggling your phutures back and forth, muddying up your timeline. Stay focused.”

  I stopped and relaxed my phantoms, releasing them back to her. I sighed again. We’d reached a natural stone archway at the end of the limestone menagerie, on an outcropping above a steep drop to the plateau below. Sitting down together on the edge of the cliff, we looked down at the sand dunes spreading out into the distance, disappearing into the gathering gloom.

  “Do you think someone is phuture spoofing me?”

  Phuture spoofing was growing into a major business as hacking spilled into the worlds of tomorrow and phuture crackers began engineering their own timelines.

  “Boss, we’ve been over this a hundred times, and I don’t see how someone could be phuture spoofing you,” replied Hotstuff. “In all cases, I’ve had specialized agents rooting through the Phuture News system and sniffers floating at choke points throughout the open multiverse, and nothing suspicious to report. To manage it on this scale, they’d need almost the same computing infrastructure as the Phuture News Network itself.”

  Which would be impossible to hide, she didn’t need to add.

  “So summarize where are we again?” I asked, shaking my head. I leaned back and looked up at the stars.

  “So the good news is that we have made some progress,” she said brightly. “We’ve managed to plot a path to extricate your physical body from Atopia, which has given us a much larger playing field to work with.”

  “Okay, that sounds good,” I replied carefully. “So what’s the bad news?”

  “Well, the system is predicting about seven thousand possible outcomes for your, ah, demise in the next few days or so. Being out in the world has also opened up a lot of new possibilities for whatever is chasing us as well.”

  “So that’s it then, I’m dead?” I stated sarcastically. The stars shone like steely pins, puncturing the night sky around me.

  “No,” she noted, “that is not it. Don’t be so defeatist.”

  I shot her a quizzical glance.

  “You only have about a dozen more things you need to get done personally today so we can head this thing off,” she added. “Tomorrow is another day, just focus on today. Be in the moment.”

  “That’s what you said yesterday,” I complained.

  I could be petulant. It was the last redoubt of the rich and aimless, when faced with hard, honest work. After I’d gotten over the initial shock of almost dying day after day, I’d found the urge to beg off and go surfing almost irresistible, and it was annoying to me that I had to save my own life. This was the sort of stuff I was supposed to pay people for. Strangely, though, I was beginning to settle into it now, even secretly enjoying some of the new activity forced onto me. Of course, I wouldn’t ever admit it.

  Hotstuff gave me a sidelong glance and raised one eyebrow.

  “Hey tough guy, it’s your life. The probability is only about nine in ten you’ll kick the celestial bucket today if you wing it. You could go surfing if you like.”

  I sighed.

  “You know boss, this may not be an entirely bad thing…”

  That stopped me in my tracks. I looked at her.

  “What the hell do you mean by th
at?” I demanded, almost spitting the words out. I was going to point out that proxxi terminated when their owners did, but I held my tongue.

  Hotstuff took a moment to choose her words carefully. “I mean, before, well…”

  “Well what?”

  “Before you were kind of aimless,” she explained. “You’d lost any interest in the future.”

  I pondered for a second. “And you think this is better?”

  “Well at least you’re up in the mornings,” she replied.

  I snorted. “Yeah, to live another day and fight to stay alive.”

  She looked at me, letting me consider what I’d just said. “See what I mean?”

  I sighed. I was frustrated, but not as scared anymore. Perversely, in a way maybe she was right. I was certainly savoring the little moments of time that I could get to myself now.

  “Whatever. Anyway, it’s getting better, right?” I asked hopefully.

  “We’re managing it the best we can.”

  “The best that you can, huh?” I replied dejectedly, looking up at my task list for the day as it appeared in one of my display spaces. Something popped out immediately. “So I need to short the upcoming Cognix stock?”

  “Nobody will know it’s you. Look, I’m setting up defensive perimeters,” explained Hotstuff, “and we’ll drop some intelligent agents into them to look for any cross-phuture scripting. We’ll figure this out, boss, don’t worry.”

  “Don’t worry?” Was she serious?

  “I didn’t want to get your hopes up, but…”

  “But what?”

  “I think we’re starting to see a pattern, hidden deep in the probability matrices that connect together whatever is chasing you. A pattern in the future, but that points somewhere far in the past.”

  Finally. Perhaps some progress.

  “Can you explain a little more?”

  “It would be easier to show you…”

  8

  DAPPLED SUNLIGHT STREAMED down through the jungle canopy high above, illuminating the hard packed earth below; it was casting a patchwork of light and dark that stitched together scenes of smoke rising from cooking fires, laughing children darting between thatched huts, and women sitting and gossiping together as they stripped the white skins off sweet potatoes, carefully wrapping each one in banana leaves and depositing them into a stone-lined pit.