Complete Atopia Chronicles

I had to get Nancy out of there. It was too dangerous to let her know what she was facing, so we couldn’t tell her about Jimmy. I shuddered to think what he could be capable of.

“I suppose it all depends on how you look at it,” continued Sid, “maybe it’s not so bad.”

I shook my head at him incredulously.

“Well I mean you and Nancy, together being able to see everything.”

“Yes…?”

“You’re like the omniscient being who walks on water, searching for the body of man to save the soul of mankind from eternal suffering.”

“Squaring off against what seems to be the devil, no less,” chipped in Vicious. “I mean, it’s all been done before mate, and so far so good!”

“Tell me that doesn’t sound biblical,” suggested Sid, now transformed into a talking burning bush sporting two stone tablets with our names inscribed on them.

“Well,” I replied, my mood lightening, “I bet Christ’s disciples didn’t include a punk rocker.”

I cast a sideways glance at Vicious and smiled.

“Oooh,” replied Vicious, returning my grin, “but I’ve heard that Judas Priest weren’t far off mate.”

I laughed. “I’m going to be careful of you, then.”

“And the whole key to this is in my body?” said Willy, shaking his head. “Wally must have left us some clues. We just need to look.”

“Brings a whole new meaning to ‘Where’s Waldo’ dunnit?” laughed Vicious, unable to contain himself. This brought laughs from everyone, including Willy’s splinter.

Smiling, I looked at all of them one by one, looking to me for leadership.

“I’m sure this wasn’t what the prophets had in mind when they imagined the Second Coming,” I joked grimly, “but we’ve got no choice.”

“Moscow huh?” asked Hotsuff, looking at Brigitte and Bardot and then down to inspect her camping short shorts. “I’m going to need a whole new wardrobe.”

“Yeah, sure,” I replied. I looked around at our little gang. “I think we’re going to need a lot of things.”

The trail to Willy’s body began and ended with Sintil8, who’d now totally disappeared off the grid.

Terra Nova was almost hermetically blockaded, both in the physical and cyber realms, so there was no help there, but since Willy’s mind was still with us, his body was still alive out there somewhere.

The thought of tracking down a gangster like Sintil8 frightened me, but then, our choices had boiled down to the lesser of two rather nasty evils. The only clue we had was Sintil8’s real name, Sergei Mikhailov, which Patricia had managed to dig up.

Clouds of smarticles released in San Francisco yesterday had begun to float in on the breeze, even up here, and I could feel small channels and rivulets of information begin to flow, connecting me to the multiverse. As refreshing as it felt to my metasenses, it now took on a darkly ominous feel as well.

“Let’s get a move on people,” I said as my phantoms shivered. “I think it’s best that we stay away from major cities as much as possible.”

“That’s not where I think I am anyway,” added Willy for good measure.

The four of us with physical bodies shouldered our backpacks of gear and checked around the campsite for anything left behind. I kicked some dirt onto the smoldering remains of the fire.

Stopping for moment, we all smiled at each other, and then started out on the path that led into the great Redwood forest and beyond.