Matthew Mather's Compendium

by Matthew Mather

  My face flushed. How could I have forgotten my own office address? I needed a drink. The cab immediately accelerated and merged into traffic. Sitting back I took some deep breaths, trying to loosen up the tightness in my chest while we sped off.

  2

  CAREFULLY TAKING ONE bright paper napkin from the black conference room table, I wiped off a residue of sweat from the nape of my neck. I was nervous. Patricia Killiam, the famous godmother of synthetic reality, had decided to personally attend the marketing meeting we had planned today, or at least her bio-simulation proxxi had.

  This was much the same thing to Atopians.

  I’d had to rush to get there, sprinting the last yards from the elevators, but I’d made it just in time. They’d immediately jumped me into my presentation to the Cognix people. My pitch was a mess –– the incident with the robot and my blank-out in the cab had really thrown me—and my timing was off. The new Cognix account was the biggest to ever come through our office, and I’d been named as the lead for closing the deal. Other people were always taking credit for my work, and winning this would enable me to finally take center stage.

  The pressure was intense.

  Well, at least my part was done. I sat back and watched my colleague Bertram finish the presentation.

  I was thinking of my fight with Alex. With him, it was always about spending time with his family, his brothers and sisters, but they were always judging me. It was a constant source of friction between us, made worse when he kept insisting that it was just my own insecurities. He wanted kids, but I had no idea how anyone could want to bring a child into this world. It was falling apart.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an incoming email from the Washington Heights orphanage I was working with. Maybe I couldn’t understand how anyone would want to bring a child into this world, but that didn’t mean I didn’t care. Everyone here thought I was cold and hard, but I understood what it was like to be left alone. I didn’t want anyone else in the office to know about my charity work, to see some weakness, so I erased the message before anyone else could see it.

  I looked back up at Bertram. After the endless overtime I’d put into this account, I couldn’t believe my boss had almost given Bertram the lead on closing it. Floppy mop of brown hair, pantomiming away in that ridiculous multi-phasic suit, laughing at his own jokes. Judging from the way everyone was reacting to his pitch, however, whatever he was doing was working. I could almost feel my career slipping away.

  I needed a smoke.

  Maybe I was getting too old for this. Kids nowadays had AIs running around doing most of their jobs for them. I had a hard time keeping up with it all. Thinking about kids made me think about Alex again. Had I made a terrible mistake? My stomach lurched.

  “Cognix, making tomorrow your today!” gushed Bertram as he finished up, sweeping his hand into the distance with a flourish.

  There was a smattering of applause.

  Wait a minute. That's my tagline. What was he doing presenting that today? I was supposed to be using it tomorrow. I thought we’d agreed.

  My boss glanced at me. “Something wrong, Olympia?” The epitome of middle-management, Roger always had a coffee cup in hand and a seemingly unending supply of ill-fitting suits and cheap ties. “Do you have anything to add?” Roger asked again, lifting his coffee to take a sip. Everyone turned to look at me.

  My God, it’s stuffy in here.

  “I, uh, I...” I stammered, but I couldn’t get anything out.

  It seemed as if all the air in the room evacuated, and a crushing pain tightened my chest like a vise. Wrenching myself up from the table I fled through the door in search of air.

  “Someone call a doctor!” I heard Roger yelling behind me. My vision faded as blackness descended.

  3

  “NOTHING MORE THAN a simple panic attack.” The doctor’s bald pate reflected the overhead panel lighting like a shimmering, sweaty halo above his radiantly clean lab coat. A stethoscope hung uselessly around his neck. He leaned forward over his veneer-mahogany desk and clasped his hands, bringing them up to support his chin in what I assumed was his thoughtful pose. “Are you still smoking?”

  A stupid question.

  “Yes, but I stay fit.”

  He nodded slowly and looked at his notes, sensing this was a fight he didn’t want to get into. “This could be fixable via medication—”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m on a strict, organic farmaceutical diet,” I hotly interrupted. “I need to limit the medications.”

  Something about him reminded me of the endless string of men my mother had dated after she’d driven my father off. My parents’ relationship had been doomed from the start.—trying to mix a Greek and a Scot was a surefire recipe for disaster.

  The doctor stared at me for a moment, considering what to say next. “Stress and anxiety are the big killers these days. You really need to take care of this.”

  They’d had me as an excuse to try and justify their relationship, an excuse that hadn’t worked despite their best attempts to argue and fight their way through it. In the process, neither of them had paid much attention to me. I’d taken my mother’s name, Onassis, as an adult. It was the only thing I wanted from her anymore.

  “Olympia, are you all right?” The doctor’d noticed my attention wandering.

  “Yes, yes.” I just wanted to get out of there. “But there must be something else. What about more nanobots?”

  “Those still use medications,” he explained. “Mostly they’re just delivery systems.”

  “So I have to figure this out myself,” I declared, rolling my eyes. “Meditation, relaxation...” What a load of bullshit, I didn’t need to add.

  “That would probably work best in the long term, but I’m not so sure in your case.”

  “So what are you suggesting?” Why couldn't he just fix me up so I could get on with my life? It seemed it was me who had to come up with all the solutions.

  He took a deep breath. “I think we have something perfect for you, but I’ve been weighing the options.”

  “So?”

  I shook my head and waited for his inspiration. He struck another irritatingly thoughtful pose.

  “Stress and anxiety are deeply rooted problems in society,” he replied calmly. “While they respond to drugs, these don’t correct the underlying issues. Medical science has found ways to fix most major diseases, but the mind is a tricky thing…”

  “So what are you saying?”

  He adjusted himself in his seat.

  “There’s a new synthetic reality system that we’ve been testing with select clients,” he began, raising his hands to fend off my objections. “Before you say anything, there are no implants, nothing surgical anyway. You’ve already used the delivery nanobots, and this is just one step further.”

  I wagged my head slightly. “Okay...”

  “All you do is swallow a pill with a glass of water. Nanoscale devices in the pill called ‘smarticles’ diffuse through your body and attach themselves to your neural system. They’re able to modify signals flowing through your neurons—”

  My attention began to wander and the doctor could see it. I hated technical mumbo-jumbo.

  He stopped and looked at me before continuing, “If you ever decide you don’t like or want it anymore, a simple verbal command deactivates the whole thing and it washes back out of your system and is excreted. It’s as simple as that.”

  He smiled, but now I smiled back. I suddenly realized what it was he was describing.

  “And this has been tested?” I asked.

  This must be the new Atopian Cognix system we were pitching at the office. It wasn’t on the market yet, but I knew they were doing highly restricted trials. I brightened up. It looked like someone on top had given me the nod. Maybe I would win the account after all.

  “The system has been in clinical trials for years now and is fairly well understood. I can’t give you
the brand name, but that shouldn’t make any difference. Does it?”

  I was sure he knew I knew what he was talking about, but he had to go through the motions anyway. I played along, knowing that all this would be reviewed by someone at Cognix as soon as I gave my consent.

  “No, not really, but if you say it’ll help,” I replied, trying to conceal my glee. I wondered if he would be feeding me any of my own marketing spiel.

  “One of the major causes of stress and anxiety is advertising.” He paused, knowing I was an advertising executive. “My recommendation is that you should use this system to remove advertising from your environment for a time; see how you feel.”

  “Sure, that sounds like a good idea.”

  He seemed unsure whether I was being sarcastic or not, but he could sense my mood lightening. “Should I write you a prescription?”

  “So I’ll have complete control over it?”

  “Of course.”

  A pause while we looked at each other.

  “Are you ready?”

  “What, now?”

  “If you’re ready...”

  Another pause, and then I slowly nodded. The mobile, still in my ear, chimed softly as it received the electronic prescription from the doctor’s automated assistant.

  The doctor stood, holding an unpretentious package in one hand, and then turned to pick up a bottle of water from a cabinet behind his desk. He walked over and stood in front of me, leaned back on his desk, and handed me the paper cup and a small white tablet.

  “Just swallow this. It includes a sedative to help keep you immobile during the initial data-gathering session.”

  I took the pill and cup from him. He looked me directly in the eye.

  “Olympia, do you give your consent to give your personal data to the program?”

  I nodded again.

  “This includes background personal data, you understand?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “We won’t be able to activate it today. You’ll have to come back later in the week, but we can install it now,” he said.

  I studied the pill briefly, then popped it into my mouth and washed it down, then handed the empty cup back to him.

  “Follow me.” He stood up and led me out of his office and into a smaller room containing a human-shaped pod. It looked like one of those old tanning beds. “You’ll need to completely undress.”

  I lazily complied. The sedative was already taking hold and my brain had started swimming peacefully. I lay down in the pod, and the slightly gooey gel inside it conformed around my body.

  “Now just relax.” He lowered the top of the enclosure.

  It suctioned onto me, completely enveloping my body. In a dream-like state I felt tiny fingers probing and tickling me, lights and patterns flashing in my eyes and sounds like some kind of hearing test. My muscles twitched as small electric shocks raced back and forth across my body. Sweet and salty liquids washed through my mouth as my nostrils filled with acrid smoke, and the whole thing cycled from hot to cold and back again.

  I quickly fell asleep and dreamt of flying above fields of golden daisies with sunshine filling a perfect golden sky. I dreamt of babies with blue eyes, alive but never living, their blue eyes filling blue seas with blue pain.

  4

  “OLYMPIA…”

  “OLYMPIA,” CAME the voice again.

  I was floating, peacefully alone, and some pestering thing had broken the tranquility. My brain tried to ignore it, but…

  “Olympia?”

  I reluctantly opened my eyes to find an angel hovering above me, an angel that strangely reminded me of my cat, Mr. Tweedles. No wait, not an angel, it was a nurse. That’s right. A few days ago I’d installed that system, and I was back at the doctor’s office getting it activated. They’d sedated me again. Closing my eyes, I brought up a hand to rub them, and then opened them and sighed irritably.

  “Yes?”

  “Seems like someone needs a little more sleepy time,” laughed the nurse. “Come on, I’ll get you up and dressed.”

  I propped myself up on my elbows and frowned at her. “How long was I out?”

  “Hmm...” she considered. “About two hours I’d say. Everything seems to be working perfectly. In fact we just activated the system. Your proxxi will explain everything to you once you get home. I would have woken you sooner, but you seemed so peaceful.”

  Shaking my head, I swung my legs off the side of the pod as I sat up, pushing off her attempts to help me. “I can take it from here, thank you very much.”

  She looked at me and narrowed her eyes, but then her smile returned and she turned to go. “I’m going to bring you in to speak to the doctor before you leave—he needs to have a final word,” she said on her way out and closed the door behind her.

  After a minute or two I finished getting dressed and opened the door to walk into the hallway. The nurse watched me carefully from a distance, studying me. I stopped at the doctor’s office and half-hung my head inside.

  “How do you feel?” he asked immediately, looking up from some paperwork. “Please, come in.”

  “No, no, I’m fine. I mean, I just want to get going. I’ve got things to do. So just tell me quick, what do I need to know?”

  He paused. “You have a very powerful new tool at your disposal. Be careful with it, and don’t activate any of the distributed consciousness features yet.”

  “Distributed consciousness,” I snorted, looking back towards the nurse who’d positioned herself behind me in the hallway. “Where do they get these ideas?”

  “If you want to talk with me,” the doctor continued patiently, “just say my name anytime of the day or night and you will be instantly patched through to me.”

  “Great,” I replied impatiently. “Got it.”

  “When you get home today, just say ‘pssi instructions’ and you will get all the information you need from your new proxxi.”

  “Perfect.” I felt almost cheerful, sensing an imminent exit. “I’ll be in touch.”

  With the tiniest of waves I bid him good-bye, and marched off down the hallway and out the door, purposely ignoring the nurse who watched me the whole way out.

  The air outside was crisp and fresh, and for the first time in ages I felt a surge of optimism. I should walk home—I could use a breath of fresh air.

  I stopped to light a cigarette.

  I’d decided that I hadn’t made a mistake with Alex. I needed to be alone for a while. Anyway, he never supported or defended me. My whole life it had always been up to me to stick up for myself.

  Fall was in full swing, and the leaves on the trees lining the streets were turning beautiful shades of crimson and yellow. The air had a refreshing edge. I strode energetically along the sidewalks, enjoying myself, looking at everything around me.

  I didn’t feel any different, and a part of me doubted that whatever they had done would work as well as it was billed—despite the fact that I was personally marketing it. The crowds on the Upper East Side were dense but navigable, with billboards and holograms cluttering the view, but it still made for a nice walk. Eventually, I arrived at the personal oasis of my brownstone walk-up.

  Mr. Tweedles sprang at me the moment I opened the door and began purring loudly as he rubbed himself against my pant leg. I closed the door and emptied my pockets. The cat had been my friend Mary’s idea. To provide some companionship, she’d said. I shooed him away, hating the thought of all the hair he was depositing on me with each purring caress.

  Immediately, I made for the bottle of wine on my kitchen counter and poured myself a glass. Collapsing onto my couch, I drank a big mouthful and savored the taste of the earthy Tempranillo. Rummaging around in my purse, I found the last cigarette in my pack. With all this technological wizardry, you’d think they could invent a realistic endless cigarette—those e-cigarettes were just so unsatisfying. I crumpled up the empty cardboard packaging and threw it onto the t
able.

  Might as well get it over with. “Pssi instructions,” I called out, lighting up my smoke.

  “System activated,” I heard from a voice that seemed to be inside my head. “I will now appear on the chair beside you. Please do not be alarmed.”

  With that, something materialized beside me sitting on my matching armchair, something that looked sort of like me. In fact, it looked exactly like me.

  “I am your new polysynthetic sensory interface—or pssi—proxxi,” it said. “I will now explain the system features to you. You can stop me at any time.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” I objected, waving my smoke in front of me, “hold on a sec.”

  I wanted to get Kenny from work in on this. I fumbled around in my purse for my mobile.

  “You don’t need your mobile anymore,” suggested my new proxxi, seeming to know what I was thinking. That stopped me in my tracks.

  “Kenny?” I called out tentatively, and his projection instantly appeared floating in the middle of my living room. Always dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, with eternally messy hair, Kenny constantly frustrated my requests for more formal office attire. He was dedicated, however, and a consummate nerd when it came to technology, so I put up with him.

  “Yes, boss?” he asked, his eyes growing wide behind his square-rimmed glasses. “Whoa, you got some kind of fancy lens display system going on?”

  I’d tripped his geek-chic alarm.

  “Yeah, Kenny, great, just get over it, okay? Please listen to what, this, ah, woman is saying,” I said, pointing towards my new proxxi. “Pssi interface, or proxxi, or whatever, please continue.”

  Kenny’s eyes grew wide as the proxxi began describing the system controls. I just sat back and enjoyed one glass of wine and then another. Presently, the proxxi faded away and I turned to Kenny to finish up.

  “I hate dealing with all this technical stuff,” I complained. “Can I give you root access to my system and you handle the settings and dealing with this proxxi? I don’t want to have anything to do with it, and quite frankly I find it, or her, or whatever, disturbing.”