Complete Atopia Chronicles

All that neo-hippie stuff that Atopia floated on in the waters of the world media didn’t mean that a lot of nasty people out there weren’t eyeing this little piece of heaven with very bad things in mind. Atopia was out in international waters, and as one of the first floating sovereign city-states, it had to be able to protect itself from all comers. At some point the Atopian masters of synthetic reality had to bow to where the rubber met the road in the dirty, physical world, and that was where I came in.

Atopia was closely allied with America, its original flag before independence, but America had enough trouble taking care of its shrinking sphere of influence. I should know after spending the best part of my career in the thick of the first Weather War skirmishes.

What had begun with China diverting water from rivers flowing out of the Himalayas had quickly turned the roof of the world into a global hot spot, but their double punch of seeding clouds to drop their rain before reaching India was what had really tipped the bucket. The combination had driven crop failures, mass starvations, and a nasty confrontation between the newly muscular superpowers.

While the initial conflict was long over, regional wars over a growing variety of resource depletions had continued to expand and had engulfed most of Asia. Of course, the world teetering on the brink of destruction was nothing new.

And now I was in the center of the cyber universe.

So the best and brightest of the world had begun emigrating to build the new New World, the Bensalem group of seasteads of which Atopia was the crown jewel. Atopia was supposed to be-was marketed as-this shining beacon of libertarian ideals. She was the largest of a collection of platforms in the Pacific off California, a kind of new Silicon Valley that would solve the world’s problems with technological wizardry.

Come to the offshore colonies, they said, for the security, fresh air, good food, the sun, the sea and first dibs on the latest and greatest in cyber gadgets. Come to escape the crowding, the pollution, the strife and conflict-and that, brother, was the truth. So the rich came here and to other places like this, while the rest of humanity watched us needily and greedily.

It was my job to protect them; the rich folks of Atopia, of course, not the masses of the rest of humanity.

I laughed to myself; tough guy, huh? Who was I kidding? I was a washed-up basket case who could hardly manage a night of sleep without waking up in a terrified sweat half the time. The only reason I was here was to try and make an attempt at reviving my relationship with my wife, Cindy. Without Cindy, I would be off in some sweaty corner of the world acting out a kind of ‘heart of darkness’ finale to my life in a psychotic blaze of glory.

Maybe that was a little dramatic. I’d probably be off soaking my sorrows in a bottle while desk jockeying in Washington-that sounded a little more likely. I smiled and began to run through the slingshot shutdown checklist, but then paused as I felt the old guilt begin to bleed out around the edges of my life again.

“Want me to pick up some flowers for her from Vince?” asked Echo. He always knew what I was thinking, especially when I was thinking about her.

“Yeah, that’s a great idea,” I responded without looking away from what I was doing. Noticing a breach report from Jimmy I added, “And could you look into what made that UAV malfunction? The damn thing circled back and burned up in the blaze. What the hell was it doing up there anyway?” I shook my head.

Echo nodded that he’d take care of it as he silently walked off. He was good at taking orders.

The excitement of the slingshot test hadn’t yet faded and I felt an energetic flow carrying me down the hallways back home. The flowers Echo had gotten from Vince were perfect. Flowers were always a sure bet for making a woman feel special, weren’t they?

“Hi, sweetie! I’m home!”

I proudly held the bouquet of real flowers in front of me as I walked through the door. I’d snuck along the corridors as I’d arrived with them, trying to avoid the prying eyes and bad graces of our neighbors who would have seen the wasteful gift in my hands.

Cindy looked at the flowers less than enthusiastically as I entered.

She hadn’t even bothered to shower today and sat in a dreary heap on the couch, bags under her eyes, watching a dimstim projection. A large head floated in the middle of our living room, contorting itself in the middle of a joke while a laugh track droned on in the background. Cindy wasn’t smiling, though, her face just dully reflecting light from the display.

It was going to be another one of those kinds of evenings.

“Rick, you didn’t need to buy flowers,” she immediately complained. “What are the neighbors going to think?”

“Sorry, sweetie.” I felt like I was always being sorry these days.

Walking in, I could see it was Dr. Hal Granger’s EmoShow floating in the display space in the middle of the room.