Complete Atopia Chronicles

“On that note, your old student Mohesha from Terra Nova called again,” explained Marie. “She wants to set up a talk. It sounded very urgent. In fact, more than urgent.”

I decided to shift back into a much younger version of myself, and was now dressed in a short black skirt and cream silk chemise while a sub-proxxi of Marie walked my real body home from the Solomon House. I sighed and looked down admiringly at my legs, reaching down to straighten my skirt, sliding a hand along my thigh as I did. I trembled slightly at my own touch.

“No, it’s too dangerous to talk with the Terra Novans right now,” I replied.

“But not too dangerous to be talking with gangsters who’ve been trying to infiltrate Cognix?”

I stared at Marie. Of course she knew what I was thinking.

“Sintil8 doesn’t really want to stop what we’re doing, he just wants his cut,” I replied. Criminals were reliable in their predictability and motivations, if nothing else. “He has the kind of backdoor connections and freedom to operate that may yield us some answers.”

The problem wasn’t just my suspicions about Kesselring or our disagreements anymore. The huge depression we’d been tracking up the Eastern Pacific had transitioned from tropical storm status into full blown Hurricane Newton, and Hurricane Ignacia was spinning up into a monster Category 4 out in the North Atlantic. The way these storm systems were behaving had gone from being simply unusual to downright suspicious.

By my calculations, these weren’t natural storms anymore.

Taking a good long pull on the whiskey, I straightened up and looked Marie in the eye.

“Set up the meeting with Sintil8.”

9

Identity: Jimmy Jones

“I’M SORRY JIMMY, but that Patricia Killiam. Where does she get off talking about happiness? I’m really concerned about her.”

“No need to apologize Dr. Granger,” I replied. “I’m worried about her too. She just hasn’t been herself lately.”

We were taking an aimless wander through a few floors of the hydroponic farms, on our way back from Kesselring’s office after the Board meeting.  Kesselring kept his offices perched at the very apex of the connecting structures on the top floors of the vertical farming complex.  Even the master of synthetic reality liked to keep his specific reality above the riff–raff.

Over a hundred floors up, I enjoyed the views down on Atopia from here—the green forests capped by crescents of white beaches and the frothy breakwaters beyond.  Through the phase shifted glass walls, the sea still managed to glitter under a cloudless blue sky. The humid and organic, if not earthy, smell of the grow farms reminded me of the days I used to spend out on the kelp forests with my dad as a child.

“I’m getting tired of her routine as the famous mother of synthetic reality,” continued Dr. Hal Granger. “Sure, fluidic and crystallized intelligence are important, but isn’t synthetic emotional and social intelligence the key to all this?”

We’d all heard this speech before, repeated endlessly on his EmoShow, and now that I was on the Council, I was being given the treat of getting to hear it in person as well. Dr. Granger’s claim to fame was as the creator of the technology that could pick apart and decipher emotions, and you could be sure he wouldn’t ever let you forget it. I tried not to roll my eyes.

“What was more important to understand?” he asked angrily while we walked through the hydroponics. “What someone says, or the emotional reason behind why they said it? Who knows more about happiness than me?”

“I’d say they’re both just as important,” I replied. Dr. Granger had used his growing fame to secure the position as head psychologist on Atopia. No matter what one thought of him, it was best to tread a careful line.

He stopped walking and turned to look at me.

“Exactly.”

One of the grow farm staff walked by and gave Dr. Granger a curt, respectful nod. His office was a few floors down from here, far away from the other senior staff, which was unusual. Observing him on our walk I think I knew why.

As we were walking, Dr. Granger had been watching the blank faces of the psombie inmates, and each of the staff had almost stood at attention while we passed. It was a structured and controlled environment, one that made him feel both powerful and safe. And important.

Most of the psombies here were people incarcerated for crimes, their minds and proxxi disconnected from their bodies as they waited out their sentences in multiverse prisonworlds. Even in paradise, we needed correctional services. Their bodies were consigned to community work around Atopia in the interim, safely guided by automated psombie minders.

While most of the psombies here were inmates, an increasing number were people who donated their bodies for community work while they flitted off amusing themselves in the multiverse. These people judged their bodies without enough value to even warrant leaving their proxxi to inhabit them.

“We’d better start a new special file on Patricia,” he said after a pause.