Complete Atopia Chronicles

by Matthew Mather

  Nicky looked over, her eyes flashing at me. I imagined knives shooting forth from her, pinning me helplessly and gorily to the wall before a crushing shockwave of disappointment finished me off in a splatter of social distortion. The ferocity of the image forced me to click my pssi back on, and the hubbub and space of party re-saturated my senses.

  Luckily, what I’d felt before was in fact the MDMA, so I now felt much happier about everything on the whole.

  Of course, by that point, Nicky was completely pissed. She grabbed me by the arm to pull me around the corner and into the hallway where we could be alone. Well, sort of alone. My dimstim stats instantly shot up as the social cloud sensed my mood and the fight coming on.

  “You know Bob,” hissed Nicky, “we just don’t communicate. I thought you said you wanted to come here and now you’re embarrassing me. Can I ask you a question? Are you stoned again? Can you shut off your fucking dimstim for a minute please?”

  “That’s two questions,” I shrugged, “and no to both of them. Sweetie, my dimstim is my work, my bread and butter, and good or bad I can’t just shut it off.”

  I tried to smile winningly at her.

  She stared at me in silence.

  “Okay, yes, I am a little stoned,” I admitted.

  She rolled her eyes. “And how can you call that stupid dimstim work? And this thing with your brother…”

  I shrugged again, but then dialed up a Dragon skin with a phantom when she wasn’t looking.

  “Hey, my dimstim is how we met. Don’t knock it. And don’t bring my brother into this!”

  Narrowing my eyes, I added, “At least I work.”

  She’d annoyed me now, so I was purposely pushing Nicky’s ‘piss me off’ button. This was going to be good. She didn’t like being reminded she was daddy’s little girl.

  “Bob, all you do is sit around all day playing games or simulating vacation time for a bunch of meta–perves,” she snarled as her voice gathered momentum and the Dragon skin began to take hold. Her eyes flashed at me while her face and upper body began to morph into a cartoonish and slightly frightening form in my display space.

  “Well, I mean, I make my own money,” I pointed out, shaking my head.

  At that moment, I couldn’t help letting out an enormous yawn right in her face, which really set her off. What had I taken? It couldn’t have been the Ecstasy, that didn’t usually make me yawn. Or wait, did I take some mushrooms before as well? That must be it. Or was it acid? Was I candy flipping or hippy flipping? I frowned, trying to remember.

  “Let me FINISH!” she barked at me, barely managing to contain herself.

  The Dragon skin was working itself up nicely now. Her eyes bulged out and her neck elongated and sprouted a row of ridges, while her skin took on a distinctly scaly texture.

  “Bob, the only reason your stupid dimstim makes any money at all is because I let you have sex with me on it, I swear to God I have no idea what I was thinking…”

  I began to shrink a little from the Dragon but couldn’t help goading her.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, all my success is only due to the fabulous Nicky.”

  Holy shit. The Dragon skin was amazingly frightening when you were stoned. I shook my head and couldn’t help laughing.

  “STOP cutting me off!” she screamed.

  She always had quite the temper. Her eyes had now bulged outwards into huge melon sized orbs with slatted cat pupils, and her head was bobbing back and forth on a neck that issued forth and grew from her blouse while a great gray, pimpled snout sprouted from where her nose had been.

  Fangs menaced. Smoke began to curl from nostrils. Fireballs issued from her mouth. I cowered, giggling.

  “Do you have that goddamn Dragon skin on? Jesus Bob!”

  With that she turned tail, literally, and angrily stomped past me to storm out of the party. She left little burning patches behind her in the carpet.

  “Nice Bob.”

  It was Sid. He’d been ghosting the dimstim version of events, and now stood leaning on the wall of the hallway. I guess he’d already been killed in the battle I’d been watching. He laughed and shook his head.

  “I’m not sure that’s the way to hold down a relationship.”

  “Ah, she wasn’t for me. Anyway, she’s the one that chased me down.”

  “Women, they always think they can change you, huh?”

  “I guess.”

  A pause while we looked at each other.

  “Ready for some skin shopping?” I asked. I needed to get out of there.

  “We’re going skin shopping?”

  “Yes, my friend, I have decided my repertoire of skins now needs refreshing.”

  As great as it was, the Dragon was getting old, plus it would be sad to use the Dragon on any girl after Nicky. I needed a new mythical creature with which to annoy the next woman in my life. I had a feeling Nicky wasn’t coming back into the fold anytime soon.

  Sid just shrugged. “Sure. Why not.”

  I sent an apology note about my little spat with Nicky to Rick and Cindy as we flitted out, and heard Sid asking, “What skins did you have in mind?” as we transitioned.

  We appeared in what, for all intents and purposes, looked like a shoe store in 1920’s London, somewhere off Saville Row. Little boxes, whose covers danced with images and logos, lined the walls and aisles, and a smarmy synthetic salesman glided up to us.

  “What can I do for you boys?” he asked, smiling.

  “I don’t know, not sure,” I responded, not sure, plus high. “What have you got that’s new?”

  He looked us up and down.

  “You looking to skin up or skin out?”

  “Either way, or both, just show us anything new,” replied Sid. Seeing my eyes swimming, he added, “And hurry up please.”

  “Hmmm,” noted the salesthing as he put one hand to his chin. With the other he began swiping the wall, and the little boxes swept left and right and up and down at a blurring pace.

  “We’ve got some new designer skins that do a great job of making everyone look good naked,” he began.

  Both Sid and I rolled out eyes.

  “Yeah you’re right, boring. How about this—more subtle—we’ve got some nice intelligence skins that make you look and act smarter.”

  “Thanks buddy,” I replied, frowning, “what are you getting at?”

  “Nothing, I’m just…okay then, look, we have some great new skins of Asia. The Snow Leopard, for instance…that’s all the rage now.”

  “Naw, no animal stuff.”

  “How about something more clever then? We have some that read your cognitive profile and make subtle changes to your wife or girlfriend to make them…”

  Sid cut him off, “No wife or girlfriend stuff please.”

  Sid looked at me and shook his head.

  Smarmy the salesman tapped his finger to his mouth as he simulated thinking. “Okay boys, I have something really special, and it’s our new top seller.”

  My interest piqued. “Go on, my smarmy friend.”

  “We call it HappyTime—it’s a reality skin that makes subtle adjustments when you talk to or interact with people you know. It is guaranteed to help you lead a happier and stress free life.”

  “Sounds good,” said Sid, “so what does it do?”

  “Well, it makes slight changes in your perception so that you get the impression that you’re better off than your friends and family, diminishing the effects the further they are from you personally.”

  Sid smiled. “So how does that work?”

  “Well it doesn’t actually change anything, it just gives you the sense that your friend isn’t as happy with his new relationship as he really could be, or modifies how much you hear him telling you he makes at his new job,” it explained. “Little things so that you still get the gist, but modified so you feel like you’re doing better than they are.”

  “And it works?”

  “It works like a charm, proven by extensive research
. You will lead a happier life, my friend, guaranteed or your money back.”

  “Hey Sid,” I asked Sid.

  “Yeah.”

  “Am I actually getting paid big money for surfing and boozing all day while you slave away as a programmer at Solomon House?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, cool, I thought maybe I had HappyTime on already and I’d forgotten.”

  “Fuck off, Bob.”

  6

  THE GLARE OFF the hood of the ’67 Mustang made me squint, and the sweat beading down from my forehead stung my eyes as I tried to wipe it away. The police were just beyond the barricade, less than two hundred feet away, and I could hear them nervously loading their weapons and talking in short, staccato bursts into their walkie–talkies.

  Waves of heat rose up from the tarmac that was melting into the soles of my Converse. Hot rubber mixed with the smell of burnt gunpowder and equal parts fear and body odor. Body odor.

  Subtext Bob to Sid: Could you please dial down the BO, I’m choking over here.

  Sid looked over and cracked a smile as he peeled his back harder against the side of the car. He had his sunglasses on and was soaked in sweat too, but looking cool as a cucumber and totally in his element. Sid’s grin widened as he pulled out a ridiculously oversized handgun he had somehow hidden in the small of his back.

  “So what do you think, should we make a run for it?” I asked breathlessly.

  “Hell yeah, little buddy,” came the reply as he magically produced a second cannon from somewhere on his person. “I’ll just crawl into the back and you squirm into the driver seat and get us going. We gotta meet up with the boys to have any chance at busting out of this one!”

  “Okay, then, let’s do this.”

  A voice came over a loudspeaker from the roadblock, down between the derelict buildings and burnt out car shells up ahead. “Come on out with your hands up, we don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  Rolling my eyes, I complained to Sid, who was already crawling cat–like into the back seat, “Can’t they come up with anything better than that?”

  I immediately filed a request for snappier dialogue and then stowed my own anemic feeling .357 Magnum into the breast pocket of my leather jacket. I reached for the door handle and squeaked the passenger side door open, sliding in chest down across the stick shift, humping my body across. A bullet ricocheted off the concrete.

  “Hold your fire!” came the voice on the loudspeaker again. “Come on out boys, we can still do this the easy way!”

  “Bob,” Sid whispered urgently, “are you ready to go yet?”

  I rotated my body around, reaching down to test the pedals with one foot as I hunched over to put the key in.

  “You betcha, let’s hit it!” I replied.

  With surging excitement I turned the ignition to fire up the five hundred horses under the hood. Pushing down the clutch, I jammed it into first and without looking over the dash, released it and hit the accelerator. The unbridled power of the engine surged us forward and we began peeling out in a cloud of vaporized rubber and exhaust.

  I swerved wildly, trying to maintain some kind of control. The bullets started flying and I could feel them impacting the car, punching through the windshield, shattering the glass onto me. Sid was on his back, kicking upwards with his feet, trying to knock out the sunroof.

  We were rapidly accelerating and I needed to risk it, so I peeked over the dash through the destroyed windshield. I saw an officer walk out and crouch in the middle of the street, hoisting something onto his shoulder.

  “Sid!” I yelled. “Rocket launcher!”

  “On it!” he screamed back over the roar of the engine.

  I punched it into third. With a final grunt Sid kicked out the sunroof, and it went spinning out and away into space above us. In the same fluid motion he popped up through the open roof with a lunatic grin. Swinging out both of his cartoonishly outsized weapons, he began blasting away. Peeking out over dash again, I saw the head of the cop holding the rocket launcher explode in a mist of red spray.

  The rest of them ducked for cover.

  The bullets were coming fast as we neared point of impact with the barricade. Sid rotated his body backwards, jamming his back into the edge of the sunroof and bracing his legs underneath. He leaned out flat on the roof of the car, pointing both guns to each side. As we smashed through the barricade, Sid let go with a terrific volley of fire that took out four LAPD officers in explosions of blood and guts, as they looked up with surprise from their hiding places.

  With a second crunching impact, we cleared the last of the cruisers, swerving hard to avoid as much of the blow as possible. I heard Sid grunt in pain, but then he lifted himself back up and swiveled around to face the gauntlet ahead of us.

  Dozens of cop cruisers were parked on either side of the street, and they were taking dead aim at us. I gunned us into fourth and slid as low as I could in the seat, reaching to take out my own feeble weapon, hoping for the best.

  The metallic tang of blood seeped into my mouth, and I looked down to see I was bleeding profusely. I’d been hit, but the shock of the fight was staving off the pain, at least for now. This gameworld didn’t allow tuning down your pain receptors—you had to deal with it. This was going to get messy.

  Suddenly, one of the cop cruisers to our right exploded and lifted into the air, tumbling slowly back to earth in a fiery arc. Several cops ran out screaming in flames, wildly shooting their weapons. Sid picked them off quickly as another cruiser exploded and incoming automatic weapons fire began raining down on the police. They all turned to look up the street.

  Willy and Martin were hanging off a cherry red GTO, blazing away at the cops with automatic weapons. Vicious was reloading what looked like a rocket launcher of his own. They waved at us merrily with their free hands. I gunned us into fifth and sat up higher in the driver seat, leaning forward to pull some of the remains of the smashed windshield out of the way.

  It was all about style points from here and Sid did a beautiful job double fisting shots off both sides of the car, blowing away police officers one after the other with geometric precision as he looked skywards and let loose with a deranged cackle.

  Our audience had spiked way up. As one of the best crews in the world at this game, we had over four million people tuned in to watch our escape scene today, and Sid was determined to put on a good performance for our fans.

  Passing the last of the cruisers, he dragged a grenade out, pulled the pin with his teeth and sent it sailing right into the open driver side window. It exploded with a satisfying crunch and a few uniformed body parts bounced off a nearby chain link fence.

  I congratulated him, “Nice work, Sid!”

  Martin, Vicious and Willy had peeled off to follow closely behind in their GTO, and the low throaty growl of both engines mixed together in a bone shaking symphony. By now they would have put a general call out to all the special weapons squads, so we’d have hundreds of them chasing us down as we tried to leave the city.

  Our gameworld audience had spiked to over six million and was climbing fast. This was going to be a great show.

  “You hit?” asked Sid. He climbed down out of the sunroof.

  “Yeah,” I replied, putting a hand under my shirt, wincing. My finger found a small hole on the side of my ribcage. “Not too bad. A through and through I think, but it would help if you wrapped me up. You hit?”

  “Ah, I think my ear got blown off,” he said, holding one hand to a bloody mess on the side of his head as he doubled over in pain, “but the real problem is a gut shot.”

  “Bad?”

  It looked bad.

  “It hurts like hell but it’ll bleed out slow, I should live for another couple of hours.”

  Ah, not so bad then. I smiled. Maybe we’d make it out of Los Angeles after all.

  As we sped up the street, I could see something walk into our way.

  A pedestrian? Not cops, anyway. It was someone in a green suit, hunch
ed over, and then there were more of them, blocking the road. Cars lined both sides of the street so I couldn’t swerve off, and I could hear growing sirens in the distance with flashing lights coming at us from all angles. Up ahead it had all the appearances of a herd of little green men now, completely blocking the road.

  What the hell?

  I jammed on the breaks and we skidded, squealing to a halt as we ploughed into the first couple of greenies, bumping over them messily amid roars of pain. The other car skidded to a stop behind us.

  Furious, I flew open my driver side door as we stopped, weapon in hand, to confront whatever was going down here. Sid popped back out of the sunroof, grimacing, with both cannons out aiming front and center.

  A short, stocky green man with pointy ears and a broad forehead, wearing spiked shoulder pads and holding an enormous axe, ambled up to me.

  “What are you doing?” I asked him.

  I could see he had some vampires with him too.

  “We are against the discrimination shown to the Bangladeshi.”

  “What?” Then it dawned on me.

  “Sid!” I yelled. “Sid, did you set the authenticated login to this world when you created it?”

  Silence. Except for the growing whine of the approaching sirens.

  “Sid?!” I asked again, looking back at him.

  “Ah shoot,” he replied, wincing in pain. He looked down at the blood that was oozing from his gut wound. “I forgot.”

  Dejectedly he banged both of his weapons down on the roof of the car.

  These were obviously Comment Trolls. Without authenticated login, people could just connect into this world anonymously, which was fine if you just wanted to watch, but anonymity tended to bring out the worst in people.

  With the massive audience we’d accumulated for this game, and with the login anonymous, we’d just attracted the mother lode of Comment Trolls. Hundreds of them were now blocking the road. They’d use the opportunity to broadcast their opinions, whether they had anything to do with this world or not.

  “I’m sorry dude,” continued Sid, waving a gun in the air. “I was just so busy. My mother was over, I had a splinter set this world up…”