Complete Atopia Chronicles

by Matthew Mather

  Ms. Parnassus smiled at the both of us.

  “Isn’t that right, Jimmy?” Mother added, turning to me, flashing her teeth. “You don’t want to Misbehave do you?”

  I sat terrified beside her, a shell hiding inside a shell. I didn’t want to do anything to anger her, and I desperately didn’t want to be snatched off to Misbehave, so I shook my head and smiled bravely, holding back tears.

  “He’s a bright child,” said Ms. Parnassus. “He scores extremely high in the gaming systems, but he seems to have a hard time socializing.”

  I’d never really gotten on well with the other kids in the Schoolyard, the education portal world balanced halfway between real and synthetic where pssi-kids played growing up. I was extremely shy, and mostly played by myself, but Bob and Sid sometimes managed to drag me into the occasional game of flitter tag with the rest of the kids.

  Without escape to my own private worlds, and restricted to the Schoolyard, I found it extremely difficult to focus my mind.

  “And he’s a little devil to keep on hand,” added Ms. Parnassus, “he slips and slides away if you don’t watch him every second!”

  “That he is,” agreed Mother, nodding, “and that he does.”

  “His mind seems to be always somewhere else,” continued Ms. Parnassus. “It’s very hard to keep him focused.”

  “Oh, he’s just always been that way, haven’t you Jimmy?”

  Mother fluffed my hair. I was terrified.

  “Does he have any special things that you do together? Stuff that just you and him do when you play?”

  “Oh, you and your daddy play, don’t you Jimmy?” laughed my mother gaily, smiling at me cruelly.

  “That’s nice,” said Ms. Parnassus, “is there anything he’s particularly good at when you play together?”

  “The little rascal is very good at hiding,” admitted Mother, crinkling her nose at me, showing her teeth.

  “Oh, like hide and seek?” asked Ms. Parnassus enthusiastically.

  “Something like that.”

  It was funny, my mother being so cruel and yet so honest in front of her. If there was any game that I was good at, it was hide and seek.

  I was the master of hiding in plain sight.

  18

  Identity: Patricia Killiam

  OF ALL THE illusions our minds used to support their ephemeral frameworks, time was certainly the most contradictory; both incontrovertible and yet intangible.

  Time’s arrow was just a slide down entropy hill, as the universe tended towards its finale of disorderly conduct. At the end of entropy was the end of change, and thus the end of time, and apparently I was about to cease changing myself.

  “I’m sorry Patricia,” said my doctor. We were disembodied, floating in black space between millions of phosphorescent dots that brightly raced to and fro, spreading out through the root systems of my basal ganglia. The doctor and I were examining my brain.

  “So there’s nothing more we can do?” I asked.

  “We can’t push this any further with the technology we have. I’m afraid things have suddenly taken a turn for the worse,” he explained. “There are some experimental treatments we can try, but we can’t promise anything.”

  I watched the dots of light racing around, trying to fully make the leap of understanding that I was watching myself from inside myself.

  The doctor was at a loss to explain what was happening, but I had a growing suspicion I knew what it could be. If I was right, I wasn’t sure I wanted to stop it.

  “Well, please do what you can, doctor.” An illusion perhaps, but time still stubbornly seemed to end for those of us witnessing its chimera in action. “I just need a little more time.”

  “Don’t we all,” replied the doctor, watching the neon pulses of my nervous system race around us, “don’t we all.”

  §

  Floating up at the edge of space, we watched the two converging hurricanes swirling ominously in three dimensions below us. We had almost all of Command and Security up there with us, watching the storms below us as we ran the simulations. They were building in intensity now, past Category 4, and like two enormous threshing wheels they threatened to pin and crush Atopia against the West Coast.

  We were still holding our own as we backed away, but we’d almost run out of room. The way they were gaining strength it was obvious we were going to end up taking some damage, the only question was how much.

  They’d quickly shipped off almost all of the tourists via the passenger cannon, but it would be impossible to get everyone off Atopia if the worst happened. Honestly, nobody even seemed to want to leave.

  “We absolutely need to order an evacuation of the outer habitats,” I observed.

  Everyone looked towards me. I’d been cut off from the Command communications and control network, but I was still a part of the Board. I had a right to be there.

  “At the speed we’ve been moving, the kelp forests are already beginning to shear off,” I added. “No matter which way this goes, we’re going to lose most of it.”

  This had serious implications. The kelp forests were the foundation of our ecosystem, and it was no good looking to America for help if we ran out of food for our million plus inhabitants.

  The last time California had sustained a direct hit had been over a hundred years ago, with the hurricane of 1939 that had slammed into Los Angeles. This time, it would be two at once, and of far greater magnitude. On top of this, tropical storm John, thought to be dead weeks ago, had somehow regained strength and was now reversing direction towards us.

  “Whoever’s responsible is going to pay for this act of war,” growled Kesselring, pointing an accusing finger down at the storms below. “It has to be Terra Nova!”

  “We don’t know that for certain,” I pointed out, but this was the wrong thing to say.

  “Not for certain? Who else could it be?” raged Kesselring. “A bioengineered organism seeded across two oceans, quietly and busily sucking up the sun’s energy and swimming about to pump up and guide these storm systems. Who the hell else could pull this off?”

  “Right now what is more important is surviving this,” said Jimmy, redirecting Kesselring’s focus. “These organisms were planted years ago. We’ve put in place detection systems to stop this from ever happening again, but for now we just need to deal with it.”

  Kesselring seemed to relax listening to Jimmy.

  “So what’s the worst case situation?” asked Kesselring, calmly now. “Give me the worst case scenario. I want to know how bad this can get so we can plan around it.”

  I was about to speak up when Jimmy waved me off.

  “The worst case is that Atopia will be run aground on the continental shelf just south of Los Angeles. There may be some sustained damage to the outer habitats, but the structure will be more than strong enough to withstand the storms. The fusion core should remain stable, although some of Atopia’s data systems will probably go offline.”

  I shook my head. “The worst scenario, Jimmy, is that these progress to Category 5 and beyond and crush us between them. Atopia would sustain major damage and our data systems will definitely go offline. The fusion core should remain stable though, and I doubt we’d sink.”

  “Should remain stable? Doubt we’d sink? That’s supposed to be comforting?” Kesselring fumed. “So even at best we’ll end up beached in American territorial waters? This is a fucking disaster. We need to find a way out of this.”

  “Should we plan on delaying the release?” I asked in a careful voice.

  “No,” replied Jimmy, raising some eyebrows. My question had been addressed to Kesselring.

  “The one thing we have going for us right now is that the world still sees us in control,” continued Jimmy. “The public doesn’t perceive Atopia as being in any danger, even with these storms, so the pssi release schedule isn’t in any danger. If we begin delaying the release, we’ll open up a can of worms that will spill out uncontrollably, and who knows what e
lse Terra Nova has planned.”

  “Exactly, we have no idea what whoever planned this has in store,” I argued. “We need to initiate contingency plans immediately!”

  “No, let’s not go down that path yet,” replied Jimmy calmly. “Give me six hours to assemble a special team and I’ll figure a path through this. We will not give up this easily.”

  “My vote is with Jim,” said Hal immediately, looking towards Kesselring.

  Jimmy looked up and around at the assembled Council members one by one, earning a nod from each.

  §

  As the Security Council meeting broke up, I materialized back in my office under an extremely heavy security blanket. Marie was there waiting for me.

  “So it seems that we may yet be doomed to relive the past,” she said as I arrived. “Atopia, the island-city of the future, filled with magical beasts and people, may slip beneath the waves—legend passing into legend.”

  I sighed.

  “We have to slow down the release,” I said flatly, “or at least stop it for now.”

  Things were moving so fast now that the phutures had completely destabilized. Everyone’s resolve to keep the program on track despite the mounting risks had been the last straw to force me into unilateral action. Things were out of control. I could see I would be alone in this.

  “Give Sintil8 our authentication key to initiate,” I informed Marie. The pssi program would suffer in the short term, but it needed to be done.

  “And did you set-up the meeting with the Terra Novans?” I asked. The time had come to lay all our cards on the table, for everyone’s benefit.

  Marie nodded. If ever a proxxi could look nervous, she did now.

  “We’re going to get to the bottom of this. I’m going to slow things down,” I added, trying to console Marie, or perhaps myself. “Something is happening with Jimmy I don’t understand, like someone else is controlling him.”

  That thought floated quietly for a few moments.

  “Well, no time like the present,” I said with a sigh, breaking the silence.

  I pinged an urgent request for Jimmy to come down to my office in his first subjective. Marie made her own subjective scarce.

  Leaning back in my chair, I tried to think of the right way to bring up a new and troubling discovery.

  A moment later Jimmy appeared in one of my attending chairs, looking slightly annoyed. This was the new Jimmy of late, and I felt distinctly uncomfortable again.

  “Patricia, I’ve got a lot on my plate right now,” he said impatiently. “What’s up that’s so important?”

  I looked towards the ceiling, and then back at Jimmy, watching him carefully.

  “Jimmy, I’ve been trying to locate your parents, but I can’t seem to find them anywhere out there.”

  Jimmy looked at me and shrugged.

  “I have no idea where they are. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t care less.”

  “So you have no idea?” I asked again.

  I’d taken a huge chance at the meeting by secretly installing invasive pssi–probes into the smarticle cloud during the session to get a bead on whether people were lying or telling the truth. As far as my probes could tell, so far Jimmy had been telling the truth, and he continued to.

  “Nope. The last I heard, they were back in Louisiana, did you send some bots to track around down there?”

  “Yes. Yes, I did try that. In fact, I’ve tried everything I can think of to locate them,” I answered, nodding.

  Jimmy’s face darkened.

  “Just like you can’t find the dolphins, right Patricia?”

  Where was this coming from?

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “What dolphins?”

  Years ago there had been an unresolved security incident that had been the beginning of the end of civil relations with Terra Nova. One of the outcomes had been the revocation of the work permits for the uplifted dolphins. We’d had to send them all back to Terra Nova, but they’d been all happy and healthy. I’d even checked in on the beautiful creatures myself after they’d been sent home.

  Looking at him, I realized something was very wrong.

  19

  Identity: Jimmy Jones

  I HELD PATRICIA’S gaze firmly, feeling anger begin to boil in me. Right now I just didn’t have time for this. I still felt a lot of affection for her, after all she had done for me, but it was hard to forgive her for the death of my beloved Samantha.

  “Look, I don’t have any answers for you,” I replied with finality. Shaking my head impatiently, I clicked off my primary and left a splinter to continue chatting with her so I could get back to figuring out these storms.

  I honestly didn’t know where my parents were. We hadn’t kept in touch after they’d left Atopia, or abandoned me here was more accurate. I was only fourteen at the time, but Patricia had already begun to take me under her wing by then. When they’d left so abruptly, she’d swooped in like a savior angel, pulling me in tight.

  I felt bad about being so short with Patricia, but lately, I hadn’t had any time. To be honest, I’d found that talking to her had started to annoy me as I discovered the hypocrisies surrounding her. I felt like her loyalty to the cause, her own cause, just wasn’t there anymore.

  On the other hand, if it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t even be where I was. I remembered clearly the moment when Patricia had first come into my life. Almost involuntarily, a splinter wandered off back into my inVerse to experience the moment again, perhaps to try and rebuild my bond with Patricia as I felt it slipping.

  §

  Soon after my fourth birthday, Patricia had dropped in for a visit with my parents. Nancy Killiam and I were distant cousins, but our side of the family was where the dark horses ran. Patricia had seen an opportunity to bring us back into the fold when Atopia was being planned, and had extended a generous offer to my parents, Gretchen and Phil, to come on board the project.

  It hadn’t exactly worked out as my family had hoped, or at least as my mother had hoped. She’d assumed that we’d be going for a drive down entitlement road. In reality, we’d ended up in a cramped three room cell near the bottom of the Atopian seascraper complex, hundreds of feet below the waterline.

  Patricia’s visit that day had been both rare and uncomfortable.

  “We’ve been following Jim lately,” said Patricia back then, accepting a hot cup of coffee from my mother’s proxxi, “and your boy is showing some really amazing talents.”

  Mother just grimaced. “You’re sure you have the right Jimmy? Little stinker here is only good at hiding from mummy, aren’t you?”

  Patricia watched Mother carefully.

  “Yes, he is extremely good at hiding and evading. He manages to slip through some of our tightest security fences like a little fish wriggling through our fingers.” Patricia smiled as she said this.

  “Yes, a little fish!” exclaimed Mother, ruffling my hair, holding me beside her and trying to exude loving motherhoodness. I flinched like a hand shy puppy.

  “Gretchen, there’s something else.”

  “Yes? What is it, Patricia? Nothing serious I hope.”

  “Well, at Jimmy’s last checkup, his nociceptive pathways are showing some very unusual activity. We’d like to add his data feed to the child monitoring network, is that okay with you?”

  “His what?” asked my mother irritably.

  “His pain receptors, the neural pathways from his pain receptors.”

  “And what’s unusual about them?” demanded Mother.

  “It’s unusual is all. It’s like they’re in some kind of disarray. He doesn’t complain of any unusual pain does he?”

  “No, of course not, do you Jimmy?” Mother asked, her smile menacing me.

  Wide eyed, I shook my head.

  “Okay then, good. So can we add him to the monitoring system?”

  Silence.

  “Patricia, we’ve been over this a thousand times before with the Solomon House staff. We have our right
to privacy. This is my family, and I’m happy to be here, but there are limits!” Mother cried out, overreacting theatrically.

  Despite the histrionics, she had a valid point. Atopia was founded on strict liberal principles, and with the advent of pssi, stringent security requirements had been baked into the foundations of law and electronic systems governing it.

  Individuals, and by extension families, had an absolute right to their privacy, unless there was some good reason otherwise.

  “Is there anything wrong with Jimmy?” asked Mother. “Is he healthy?”

  Patricia sighed. “He is perfectly healthy. His mind is distracted and there is some unusual neurological activity, but physically, he’s perfect.”

  “Well then…”

  Patricia thought for a moment, and then stood and walked to our side of the table and sat down on the couch next to us. She put her arm around me.

  “Well then, I’d like to take a more active role in Jim’s development, if that’s okay with you. As a teacher, if you see what I mean. I don’t want to intrude on your mothering, of course.”

  Mother eyed her for a moment, weighing the situation.

  “Oh don’t be silly, that would be an honor, of course,” she replied brightly after a moment. “Wouldn’t it Jimmy?”

  Mother told me more than asked me, her eyes locking onto mine.

  I just sat dumbly between the two of them, unable to say anything, cringing, thinking that Patricia was about to become part and parcel of some new awfulness in my little life. Fearful of what horrors awaited me, I dug in deeper and deeper, building my shell.

  As Patricia got up and left, I slipped off quickly away to hide, sliding away into tiny worlds within tiny worlds.

  Mother gave chase, eventually finding and cornering me in the Little Great Little, past fields of glowing jellies, under a thunderfall whose white sensory noise I often hid behind.

  “I know you hide here, little worm,” said Mother, her voice oozing venom. “Don’t think I don’t know where you go.”

  Then she appeared, finding me cowering in a corner. Hate distorted her features here, her skin flaking red and crimson and her hands turning into fearsome claws that she gripped and squeezed me with.