Complete Atopia Chronicles (35 page)

Identity: Nancy Killiam

“I FEEL SO CLOUDY.”

It was an expression pssi–kids used and one I knew Aunt Patricia had a hard time understanding. It was a feeling we got when we couldn’t understand our own splinters and it felt like our conscious minds were spread outwards from a single point to become an indistinct smudge in time and space. I knew she didn’t quite understand, but I had no other way of explaining how I felt.

We were walking through the Lollipop Forest under a beautiful night sky, lit by a bright, chocolate chip moon with twinkling gumdrop stars. 

“Why didn’t you tell me you wouldn’t be there?” I asked Aunt Patricia, finally letting myself ask the question. I didn’t like the idea of blame, but I had to know.

She sighed. “I was there dear, at least my primary subjective was, but I thought that you were the one throwing the switch. We all did.”

“But I checked with you not minutes before and your body was on the way to the Ballroom, what changed?”

Patricia looked up at the gumdrop stars. “Something with Uncle Vince came up.”

I angrily kicked at some lollipop sprouts.

“I’m so stupid.”

Everyone had had some last minute excuse, but in the end, it was my responsibility. It wasn’t like I couldn’t have seen it. Everyone’s physical metatags had properly indicated they were somewhere else, but I’d stopped paying attention to these a long time ago.

“You shouldn’t be beating yourself up so much,” Aunt Pattie said soothingly. “You’ve done a wonderful thing for the world.”

“Yeah—I’ve given them something to never stop laughing at,” I sulked.

The lollipop trees rattled softly as they jostled and bumped on their spindly stalks. Aunt Pattie had suggested coming here for a walk, just like we used to do when I was just a little splinter winky, but the place had lost its magic.

To try and cheer me up, she’d first tried taking me on a walk topside with Teddyskins, a reality skin that turned everyone around you into cute pink teddy bears.  It’d been one of my favorites as a child, but I wasn’t a child anymore. Now all these worlds and spaces felt contrived and creepy.

“Don’t be silly,” she said softly, taking my hand pulling my head into her. She always gave herself an ample bosom, with a sturdy frame, in these childhood worlds.

My tears started again.

“You took the first step in bringing distributed consciousness to the world,” she tried to say encouragingly. “You’re still so young. Your whole life is ahead of you.”

I’d begun crying again in great heaving sobs. She let me cry a while, smothered in her chest.

“Have you talked to David?” she asked between my sobs.

“No, that’s over,” I choked out. “David was the reason I stayed at home physically for the launch. I felt so bad for always being away. We had a huge fight afterwards over it. It wasn’t his fault, but anyway, he and I were never really right.”

“I know, I know,” she responded soothingly. “What about Bob? Did you try him?”

I just shook my head as tears streamed down my face. “He dropped me a splinter, but he’s so stoned all the time. What’s the point?”

Aunt Pattie looked at me tenderly and dried my tears, and we continued to walk a while longer, stepping gently through the lollipops.

“I guess he just needs more time to heal as well.”

15

Identity: William McIntyre

“WELL YOU JUST bloody well better figure out a way to fix it, my friend,” threatened Vicious, right up in Jimmy’s face.

Jimmy just laughed and walked through Vicious to pick up a file he was working on. Vicious sputtered indignantly.

We didn’t exactly make a very threatening package—the four stooges. I got the feeling that Jimmy had accepted to speak with us only as a courtesy to Bob. He didn’t really seem surprised or even to care. Then again, with the storms and him being newly appointed to the Security Council, he had a lot more important things on his plate right now.

“Look, I appreciate your situation, and I honestly feel for you,” Jimmy said after a moment, looking up from the file at me with disinterest, and then looking back to Bob and Sid. “I can’t do anything right now. I’m spread incredibly thin as it is. I just showed Willy where the tools were and, okay, sure I described how he could exploit some vulnerabilities, but so what?”

“Come on Jimmy, this is your fault, you can do better than that,” urged Bob. “We’ve got a real problem here, Willy is in serious trouble.”

“That’s an understatement,” laughed Jimmy, putting down the file. “Look, I’m really sorry about what happened. I was only trying to help Willy, to give him what he wanted.”

“Only to get what
you
wanted,” emphasized Sid.

Jimmy shrugged. “Aren’t friends supposed to help each other out?” He looked directly at Bob. “I mean, did you help him out? Did you even know how much financial trouble he was in?”

Bob looked away.

“I didn’t think so,” continued Jimmy. “Too caught up in getting stoned and partying with these idiots.” He motioned towards Sid and Vicious with a nod of his head, still looking at Bob. “Too busy having a good time to even pay attention to your family, which includes me now, if you haven’t forgotten.”

“Of course not,” said Bob quietly.

“You think I’m being uncaring?” Jimmy looked around at us all. “Have you seen the way Bob treats Martin?”

Nobody said anything, but the words almost physically impacted Bob. He rocked back on his feet a little.

“We all have problems, Bob,” added Jimmy, looking straight into Bob’s face now. “We all have our pain to deal with. You don’t think I’ve had it hard? I’m dealing with it, trying to become a part of the solution, taking responsibility. Going and laying blame everywhere else isn’t going to solve anything.”

This was starting to get personal.

“Look, this is my own fault okay?” I interjected, waving my hands in the air and stepping between Bob and Jimmy. “We’re not trying to lay blame, I’m just looking for a little help.”

Jimmy shook his head.

“I can’t help you, the situation you’ve created is beyond me right now.”

Bob and I both nodded, but Sid wasn’t buying it.

“Well then maybe we should go and speak with police about your part in this,” he suggested, trying his best to appear intimidating, but it just wasn’t him.

“And maybe I should tell those same police about some of the viral skins you’ve been letting loose in the cyber ecosystem,” replied Jimmy. “I’ve been watching you, my friend.”

“So what if he has?” bluffed Bob, now defending Sid. “Willy’s problem goes way beyond any nuisance Sid’s toys create.”

“Well maybe yes, but maybe no,” replied Jimmy in a threatening tone.

“What do you mean by that?” asked Bob.

“Go ahead and tell the police that I was involved,” replied Jimmy, ignoring Bob’s question, “but I’m the one on the Security Council, and it’s my job to know about the leaks, which I’ve since fixed by the way. And any chats I had with Willy were under tight security blankets, so it would be my word against his.” Jimmy let this settle awhile before adding, “Quite frankly, Willy being plugged through the perimeter and into Terra Nova, and us not being able to close the connection due to some legal nonsense, is a big problem.”

“So what? You’d just cut him off?” demanded Bob. “Where would he end up?”

“I don’t know, but definitely not here. Somewhere in the open multiverse I would guess.”

This was tantamount to exile, and brought cold stares from Bob and Sid. I felt like I was going to throw up.

“Look. I just showed him the tools he asked about. Willy’s a big boy. He’s the one who did it.”

Stony silence.

“Boys, look, I really have to go. We’ll talk later, okay?”

And he closed the connection.

16

Identity: William McIntyre

AFTER
THE
CONFRONTATION with Jimmy, the whole gang had dove into my problem, trying to figure out what had happened.

I poked the embers of the dying fire, watching them dance.

The carpet of stars hung back above us like it did before, that day long ago when we were last camping at this spot. An owl hooted softly in the darkness. Bob sat with a beer balanced back on his knee, half illuminated by the fire, grinning at me.

“I told you everything would be fine, Willy,” Bob pointed out with his empty beer can.

I continued to stare into the fire, lost in my own thoughts.

What was it, I wondered, about the embers of a fire that so mesmerized me? I imagined the heat of the sun, warming green leaves of long ago, the leaves soaking up the sunshine, slowly converting this into the lignin and biomass of the tree trunk. Then today, after being stored for decades, that same captured sunshine was radiating back out as heat energy when we burned the wood, heating my hands and face as I watched in silent wonder.
Thank you, tree, for giving your body to me.

Since my own consciousness hadn’t winked out, we had to assume that my body was alive and healthy somewhere out there.

We’d sent out a veritable private army to try and to find it, using up almost all of the considerable fortune I’d amassed as Atopia’s hottest stock jock in my brief blaze of glory back when I had a body.

The searching had begun within Atopia itself, a thorough physical search using platoons of pssi–minded cockroaches and rented psombies, followed by a full digital scan using a private cloud dustings of smarticles.

We’d quickly expanded the physical search radius into the watery surroundings and into cities directly connected to our passenger cannon.  We sent out and rented time in uncountable bots and synthetics, even human private investigators that scoured this world and the wikiworlds for any hint of my face, my body, in fact any trace of any kind signaling mine or Wally’s presence out there.

We’d found nothing at all.

In the midst of the looming storms, the Atopian foreign office had halfheartedly taken up action against Terra Nova, trying to sue for access to the anonymous connection or to disconnect it, thinking that this would automatically snap me back into my body. Just like Atopia, however, one of Terra Nova’s key industries was acting as a data haven, and this business was protected by the same iron-clad international treaties that protected Atopia.

Terra Nova resisted any action that would weaken the perception of its unconditional stance on secrecy and security of its customers and data. To gain access to the connection, they told us, I would have to log in from my corporal body. With no body, there was no bio-authentication and therefore no access.

At first I was desperate, but bit by bit I gradually came to grips with my situation. Vince had come forward and shared his story with our group, an even more bizarre tale that had left him almost paralyzed. His resolve in dealing with his situation had helped me put mine in perspective.

Sometimes, they said, it took a great loss to realize what was important to you. In my fight to find myself, and in defending me morally, I was humbled by the loyalty and ferocity of my friends and family, even after I’d abandoned them in my own pursuits.

The search had even brought some direction to Bob, shaking him out of the drugged slumber he’d been in for years now, bringing him together with Nancy for the first time in as many years. Vince had put his vast spy network to work on my problem, and Sid and Vicious had worked tirelessly, combing the back ways and alleyways of the Atopian subsystems, trying to figure out how someone had hidden their tracks so well. Even Martin had pitched in.

I poked the coals some more and watched little sparks escape and float back into the sky.

Brigitte and I were back together. She liked to joke that before when we lived together I was never around, so it was like living with a ghost, but now that I was a ghost, it was like I was there with her more than ever. Or something like that. She wasn’t much of a comedian, but she sure was the most beautiful and loving person I’d ever known. I had no idea how I’d let her slip away from me, but I would never let it happen again.

“Alright there William?” asked Vicious, tossing a can into the fire, casting a look my way.

“Yes, Vicious, I am all right, as a matter of fact,” I answered, nodding back. For the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt perfectly at peace.

I felt a stream of air tickling my behind, and I shivered. The wind was still blowing when a promising stock appeared on the radar, and sometimes it blew hard.

Without Wally or access to my body, I couldn’t reset my sensory mapping, so I was fated to forever feel this tickling in my nether regions. Now though, I began to find it reassuring, like rubbing an old scar from an accident you’d survived.

Only one thing felt really absent in my life, and it had the eerie feeling of a missing limb. I looked towards the empty chair we’d set up in honor of our fallen comrade, where Wally used to sit next to me on our trips. I’d set it up beside me this evening, now sitting conspicuously empty.

I went back often and replayed that last talk I’d had with Wally, and watched his face as he spoke. It was hard to say whether Wally had taken off to save me from the police—they did have a trace going on the security breach and would have found us eventually. Maybe he’d seen them coming and had decided to take off. They’d issued a general notice of clemency on my case now, so even if he was trying to save us from jail then, by now he would have known it was safe to return—but he didn’t.

The more I thought about it, the more I became sure that Wally wasn’t trying to save me from jail. Perhaps he was saving me from a much worse fate, perhaps from myself. At the time, I was so busy digging myself into a deep, isolated hole that I may have never returned from it.

In retrospect, I wasn’t finding happiness, but suffocating myself in an impenetrable layer of avarice and pride, trading friendship and love for money and power. Maybe he knew that I’d be better off this way. I was sure that he’d like to return, in fact I knew there was no place that he’d rather be than right here with us now, but he must have felt it was safer this way, for some reason.