Complete Atopia Chronicles

She tried to say it whimsically, but I could tell. We’d been together a long while now and I could sense her moods coming like winds approaching high in the treetops.

“Pumpkin,” I said, attempting to deflect the approaching storm, “sweetheart, look, you know I have this big meeting I am trying to prepare for with Nancy.”

“Pumpkin my ass,” she proclaimed, “I bet you and Wally were up picking stocks all night.”

I paused, deciding on my plan of defense; feint or full retreat?

“We were preparing for the meeting,” I stated defensively, “and,” I added quickly, “we did do some stock picks too.”

My job at Infinixx paid alright, but I’d been brought in as an outside contractor and wasn’t on their stock option dream ticket. The real reason I had gunned so hard for the job was that it gave me access to the distributed consciousness platform they were developing. Being able to be in a dozen places at once gave me an edge nobody else had in the market right now, and in the market any edge equaled an opportunity to make money.

Brigitte pouted. A beautiful pout if there ever was one. Her full lips and petite Parisian nose, under a beautiful tangle of laissez–faire auburn hair that women of a lesser pedigree would kill for, gave her an impossibly irresistible look that hovered somewhere between beautiful and beautifully cute. Even when her deep brown eyes flashed angrily at me as they did now, it was hard to resist the urge to simply scoop her up into my arms and kiss her. So I did.

“William,” she laughed in her little French accent, pushing me away. She was laughing, but when she used my full name she always had a serious point to make. I looked at her in my arms. “William, vraiement, money isn’t everything. Look around you, cheri.”

I looked around. We were having breakfast on top of a Scottish Highlands mountain ridge. The small, white table and chairs with us in pajamas, and her in bunny slippers, set against the backdrop of a blossoming sunrise amid rolling fog and boulders and grass and sheep—it was surreal to say the least, but she liked it and that was all that mattered.

“We’re in the most amazing place on earth. We can travel anywhere we want, do almost anything we like. So what if we have a small apartment? Look where we’re having breakfast! What do we need more money for?”

I tried not to roll my eyes. This was well–trodden ground. It would be nice to be able to afford more sub–proxxi; as it was I could hardly afford to have Wally show up at more than one event at a time. It would be nice to be able to afford to expand my Phuture News Network; right now, it was an immense effort just stay ahead of the game. Just accessing the wikiworld at this resolution to have breakfast here cost us dearly, but this wouldn’t cut any ice with her. Everyone else I knew was better off than us, and frankly, it pissed me off.

No end was in sight for paying off the multi–generational mortgage my dad had taken out for my family to get a berth on Atopia. It was a shrewd move on his part, entering the lottery for a spot here—the value of the berth had more than quadrupled since we’d won it. The size of the mortgage, however, was crippling to a regular family like ours, and we struggled under the debt. It didn’t help, of course, that I’d made some bad stock picks of late and was far in the hole.

“You’re right, pumpkin, you’re right,” was all I could think to say.

I could feel my metasenses tingling and that meant a hot stock move. I’d remapped my skin’s tactile array from the nape of my neck and down my back, like a fish’s lateral line sensors, in order to pick up eddy currents in market phuturecasts. I could feel even the slightest pressure trends in the markets tickling across my back, a sure–fire way to get my attention. Right now a stiff wind was buffeting my buttocks as I was buttering my toast.

“I gotta go,” I told her hurriedly, getting up and leaning over to peck her on the cheek. “Something for work. I really have to run. Sorry.”

She rolled her eyes.

I stepped away and bolted upwards through the sky, the world disappearing away below me as I arrived at my workworld. This was my favorite way to get going—it gave me that Superman start for the day.

Wally was already there, and I rapidly turned on, tuned in, and dropped out into the multiverse, splintering my mind to assimilate what was happening. One splinter was already tuned into the press conference my boss, Nancy, had just started, so I let my mind hover over this for a moment.

2

Identity: Nancy Killiam

“ECONOMIC GROWTH IS only possible through enhanced productivity and the clustering of talent,” I roared out to an approving audience.

The world population was declining and fertility rates were collapsing, I didn’t have to add the failing prospects for the Yen and greenback, as bitcoin derivatives gained ground. While declining populations equaled better prospects for the planet, it was bad news for economics, and for once, today was all about business.