“Is all this just about stopping the pssi program so you can position yourselves better?” I asked incredulously.
“Mother, this is not just about the pssi program, not the program by itself,” replied Tyrel, wiping away his tears. “By itself, we would have been happy to evolve together in a symbiotic coexistence under your dominance, but you have unwittingly unleashed a terrible evil into the world that will consume it. We need to destroy Atopia to stop it.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, bewildered. Then a light winked on. “So you admit that you have created these storms to destroy us?”
My mind raced. Had Sintil8 double-crossed me, had I made a fatal mistake in bringing him so close to me? Was he the monster I had unleashed? How had Terra Nova managed to jump so far ahead technologically to be able to control weather like this? How could they possibly think they could get away with destroying us for their own gain?
“Yes, we created these storms, as you say,” Tyrel admitted quietly, “but we cannot explain why. As secure as the steps you took to come here, there is still a connection back through you, and we still don’t have the full picture. We think the key is contained in William McIntyre’s body.”
“Willy?” I asked, remembering the report on Bob’s friend now. I became even more bewildered. “Did you have something to do with Willy’s body disappearing? Why?”
“It was through Wallace that we first understood the potential magnitude of the danger,” admitted Tyrel, “but it was Sintil8 who helped Wallace to disappear from Atopia, using the access keys you granted. Wallace was acting to protect William.”
Things had begun to spin into nonsense. So, Sintil8 had been involved in the disappearances.
“We have no time for this,” I objected furiously, sensing time running out. “We need to make a deal now. You’ve seen the same phutures I have, there is no other solution. We will escape this trap you’ve set, and I want you to be on my side when we do, to help with what I need to get done, to help save yourselves!”
“We have seen the phutures,” agreed Tyrel, “but you didn’t take into account one scenario.”
“And what is that?” I asked impatiently. We’d played out billions of phutures.
“The destruction of Atopia.”
That stopped me in my tracks. It was true—all of our phutures had included Atopia as a component of the solution set. With a sudden lurch, I could feel my own pride and sense of destiny having perhaps blinded me.
“Look,” I said after a moment of reflection, “that may be true, but we’re escaping your trap. I need to make a deal with you now.”
More silence.
“This is a trap of your own making,” replied Tyrel slowly, “and yes, you may escape these storms.”
I nodded, waiting for him to finish.
“But, by my word, before the sun rises tomorrow morning, Atopia will be wiped from the face of this world.”
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.
23
Identity: Jimmy Jones
THIS BETTER WORK. Despite the preparations and simulations, dragging a live fusion reactor with a million lives aboard through the center of two converging hurricanes was enough to make anyone nervous.
Even with the pressure mounting, my mind had been extraordinarily clear this morning. All the confusion I’d suffered through earlier in life now seemed to be clearing, as my mind rang crystal clear with purpose and energy. I’d never felt better in my life.
Kesselring and Cognix had given me tactical command of the operation. My primary subjective was now floating up at the edge of space, watching overlays of the constantly updated simulations. Far below me, the two storm systems were grinding into each other. From this distance, everything seemed to be moving in calm, orderly slow motion, but I had firsthand experience of the violence at sea level from several splinters I had combing the oceans ahead of us at that same moment.
Almost equally important, I had Samson interfacing with the world media as we worked to downplay the situation. The questions and inquiries we were getting were unusually low in volume, and there were nearly no attempts at data incursion into the outer perimeters.
Either we were doing an awfully good job at containing the situation media-wise, or something else was going on, but more important things had my attention.
Since the Infinixx incident, Kesselring had taken Patricia off the media circuit. Her association and relation to Nancy was too much of a distraction. To be honest, I think they didn’t trust her, but neither did they need her anymore.
Where before the emotional media campaign had been centered around confidence and trust in our bid to gain and win regulatory approval, as Hal Granger took over, we had begun centering more on the elevational and inspirational messaging. It was devoid of any real content when looked at in detail, but nobody did anymore.
The hard work of gaining the trust of experts and governments was now complete as Atopia had passed clinical trial certifications in all major jurisdictions. What was left now was simply inspiring the dreams of the masses to desire pssi for themselves.
Hal had begun using me in the media campaigns now instead of Patricia, a poster child for Atopia and the future to come, young and handsome in my pressed military ADF Whites. I’d started to gain my own celebrity status.
As we’d neared the American coast, they’d scrambled their own defensive systems and Atopia was now being orbited by squadrons of ageing F35s and swarms of aerial drones. Naval forces had scrambled out their bases in San Diego and were hanging back at the edges of the storms. We just didn’t have the maneuvering speed of a regular ship, otherwise we wouldn’t be stuck.
Several of my splinters were overseeing the constant chatter with the American security forces and other floating platforms and seasteads, but again, these were strangely subdued. We’d just received confirmation of authorization to power up our weapons systems with barely an argument. I put it down to their trust in our program, as well as the close relations I’d built up through Rick with General McInnis.
Despite the awesome power in the slingshot batteries, to channel the energy from our fusion reactor into the atmosphere, we still only had a narrow window of opportunity to make my plan work, otherwise we would be scooped up into one or other of the storms and mercilessly thrashed against the coast.
As a precaution, we were going to power up every other weapons system we had, including the mass driver and rail guns, just in case we needed to throw more at it.
The point of no return was fast approaching. I was jacked up, quickening my mind as I reached outwards into the hyperspaces around Atopia, but I figured I could use a little more chemical help. I let my pituitary glands squeeze off some more cortisol and adrenalin into my bloodstream and immediately felt my phantoms begin to jitter ever so slightly, my blood pressure rising and cheeks flushing.
24
Identity: Bobby Baxter
OUR MIND WAS flooded with images, millions of impressions and ideas, of experiences and worlds. Slowly, an impression began to form, a hint of something that didn’t fit.
A vision of my brother Dean and I, when we were kids, floated into my mind. We’d always been pushing our own limits and testing the boundaries of our parents’ patience, and one day we’d decided that we were going to sail over a thousand miles through the open ocean to America, all by ourselves. We were barely ten at the time.
After weeks of planning we’d managed to sneak off, hiding our tracks. We’d almost driven our parents sick with worry when we’d gone missing the first day. By the time we were far enough off to escape interference, we’d announced to everyone the adventure we’d embarked upon. We would have made it, except that halfway there, after a week at sea, our smarticles reserves had begun to deplete. Physically we were perfect, and the weather had been good, but the itchy, desperate feeling of our smarticle supply running low had convinced us to turn around.
My mind hovered back onto Atopia itself, to the million and more Atopians packed in below decks, waiting for the coming hurricanes. Thousands of tourists had been shipped off in a matter of hours when the order had come through, yet none, not even one, of the native Atopians had opted to leave. Even in the face of potential destruction they stayed, wrapped in the warm embrace of pssi. They were afraid of leaving, but why?
I’d only been out about an hour when it finally dawned on me.
It was so obvious it was shocking,
and yet so close that it had been impossible to see the forest for the trees. In fact, none of the trees even wanted to see it, never mind the animals in the forest who were lustily eyeing the leaves and branches.
“Sid, I have it, I know what’s going on!” I shot up out of the water in my eureka moment.
Snapping back into my body, I began collapsing the millions of nodes of my collective mind with Nancy. She gasped, our minds and nervous systems shredding apart, and sat up with me. Her breathing was hard and ragged, and she gripped me tightly. I held back onto her.
“And?!” yelled Sid. The gang was all sitting around the tub Nancy and I were in.
“Don’t keep us waiting, son!” added Vicious.
I shook my head.
“Sorry, I can’t tell you yet. I need to talk to Patricia first. This doesn’t make sense. Or maybe it does. I don’t know. I thought I knew her better than this.”
“Aw, come on man!” yelled Vicious. “You can’t be serious!”
“Just let me talk to Patricia first, please, okay?” I asked. “Please, just a tiny bit more patience.”
Wide eyed and on the edge of their seats, they all stared at me in disbelief. Giving Nancy a kiss, I immediately flitted out, sending a high priority request into Patricia’s networks. What was she thinking?
§
Patricia accepted my ping on the first bounce and opened her sensory channels to me. I appeared in her private wood paneled office, sitting in one of her attending chairs. She was sitting across from me behind her desk, and looked like she’d been expecting me.
I just blurted it out. “I know what you’re doing!”
It was foolhardy, perhaps even dangerous, to drop this bomb, but I felt like I knew Patricia. This made it all the more perplexing.
“You’re trying to kill Vince,” I added breathlessly. “The pssi weapons programs, I know about all of it. Are you behind all these disappearances as well, did you steal Willy’s body? Did you sabotage Infinixx? Why are you doing this?”
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