Blue Skies (Atopia Chronicles)

by Matthew Mather

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “No problem at all. In fact, we want to use all of the materials you created. Great work!”

  “Well, good then,” I replied carefully, softening up my seated posture.

  “But...”

  “But what?”

  “We’ve made, ah, our client wants…” Roger coughed and wiped a hand across his face. “We want Bertram to head the account. You’ll be working underneath him on this. I’d like you to show him the ropes, you know, you’re the expert.”

  He smiled at me weakly while Bertram beamed enthusiastically. Worm. I smiled as I mentally uncapped the pot simmering inside me, feeling it boil over to explode through my temples.

  “Are you out of your mind?” I yelled back at them both. “There is no way that I’m going to train this little shit-eating monkey to do my job!”

  Bertram shifted back in his chair, enjoying the spectacle, his grin floating disconnectedly in my red-shifted vision. My chest tightened like a vise as I attempted to let go another salvo. I gripped the table with white knuckles, my vision swimming.

  “Does this have anything to do with me not wanting to use that kid Jimmy instead of Patricia?”

  “Nothing like that,” said Bertram, smiling. I didn’t believe him.

  “Olympia, look, I understand how you feel,” pleaded my boss, “but you could learn a lot from Bertram, too. Look how calm and collected he is.” He looked back at Bertram. “There is no rush on this, why don’t you take next week off, paid leave, and think about everything?”

  I stared down at the table, trying to get a grip. Maybe that wasn’t a bad idea. I could use the time to plan out a strategy of how to undermine these idiots. Maybe it was best to nurse my wounds.

  “Fine,” I grumbled under my breath, letting the prospect of vengeance cool my soul. “Glad we won the contract, sir. I could actually use a little time off.”

  “See,” said Roger, brightening up, “now that’s the spirit. Take as much time as you need, Olympia, we need you here in top shape. This will be a big job.”

  Yes, I thought, this will be a big job.

  §

  Taking off early, I got home quickly and was well through a second bottle of wine and curled up on my couch with Mr. Tweedles when night began to fall. An unusually early snow had started outside, and I watched squalls of snowflakes begin sweeping by in the streets outside through my large bay window.

  After polishing off the first bottle, I was having a hard time concentrating on a new romance novel I’d started. My mind was constantly shifting back to plotting the downfall of Bertram.

  Mr. Tweedles started purring and rubbing up against me. I’d been enjoying cuddling with him, but he’d rolled over onto his back, inviting me to scratch his tummy. I kicked him off the couch.

  Sighing, I picked up two sleeping pills from a drawer in my coffee table, and taking a deep breath, I washed them down with a mouthful of wine. Lighting up my last cigarette for the night, I called Kenny.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied instantly, appearing with a careful smile in my primary display space. I bet he'd heard about my little incident with Roger and Bertram. I bet I'd been the talk of the office.

  I’d show them.

  “Kenny, look, could you set my pssi to filter out anything that I find annoying until you hear different from me?” If I have some time off, I reasoned, I might as well try to depressurize and make the most of the tools at my disposal.

  “Sure,” he replied. “I guess I could do that.”

  “I’ll just ping you if I need anything, okay?”

  “Sounds good, no problem,” he responded, and then added, “and hey, enjoy the time off, okay, boss?”

  I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic and I felt annoyed. Without another word, I clicked him out of my sensory spaces and got up off the couch, realized I was drunker than I thought, and wandered into my bedroom to collapse on the bed.

  Chapter 9

  OH, MY HEAD hurts.

  I groggily lifted it off the sheets and waited while my blurry vision adjusted to the semidarkness of my bedroom. It was still early. Wait a minute, it’s Saturday. I didn't need to go to work. Memories seeped into my brain, and I realized I had a pass from work the whole week, perhaps longer. Flopping my head back onto my pillow, I called out weakly for Mr. Tweedles.

  “Hey, kitty kitty.”

  He didn’t appear. That’s odd. Ah, well. I conked back out.

  What seemed like moments later, bright light was streaming in through the window. It must have been fully morning. My head ached dully, so I flopped out of bed and made for the kitchen to get a glass of water.

  Mr. Tweedles was still nowhere to be seen. Had I let him out last night? I didn’t usually, since he was a house cat, but I had been a little drunk.

  Downing a tall glass of cold water, I immediately felt refreshed, thinking I should go for a run. That’d burn off some stress and get the gears going. There was nothing like a good run to fire up the imagination, and my mind was already cycling with ways to get back at Bertram.

  Walking into my bedroom, I put on some cool-weather sports gear. Moments later, I was bounding down my front steps and off jogging down my street. I drank in the cool autumn air, enjoying the crisp bite of the year’s first frost burning off in the early sunshine.

  I admired the scenery, completely devoid of any ads, the streets sparkling and walls scrubbed clean, with no vagrants to spoil the view or inspire guilt. It was perfect. I jogged along Seventy-Fifth towards Central Park.

  Gradually, I began to get the feeling something was wrong.

  There was a complete lack of other people on the streets, or even in cars. It was early morning on the weekend, but even so. As I made it to the corner of the park, I decided I’d better check in with Kenny to make sure my pssi was working properly.

  “Kenny!” I demanded. “Kenny, could you check the pssi system for me?”

  No response. I slowed up my jog, suddenly nervous. Maybe he was hungover, too.

  “Kenny!” I yelled out again, stopping and waiting for him to appear.

  “Kenny!” I yelled, and then screamed, “Kenny!!”

  My voice echoed back from the empty space of the park.

  There were no sounds at all except for seagulls squawking in the distance. Panicking, I turned around and began to sprint as fast as I could back to my apartment, calling out people’s names.

  “Pssi interface!” I screeched as I ran.

  No response.

  “Dr. Simmons!” I pleaded, but there was no answer.

  Maybe the pssi is broken—I’ll try my mobile. I burst through my front door, grabbed my purse and rummaged around in it for my mobile. I popped it in my ear and began trying more people. Still nothing.

  Alarm settled into my gut and I fled back outside in a panic, purse in hand.

  Cars lined the street, but no one drove them—there were no people anywhere, and no Mr. Tweedles. How was it possible I could be walking right down the middle of Seventy-Fifth Street and not see anyone, anywhere?

  My mind raced. I’d told Kenny to set the system to erase anything I found annoying. I’d given him root executive control—and I certainly found Kenny annoying, as well as my doctor.

  My God, what have I done?

  I ran down the street, tears streaming down my face and my chest burning. My office, I thought. Someone would be there even on the weekend. They would see me, they could fix this. My legs tired, and I slowed to a walk, calming down. This is ridiculous. Don’t panic. Stay calm, I told myself.

  Eventually, I rounded the last block before my building, and turning the corner, I thought of all the ways I was going to laugh this off with everyone. Then my heart fell through my stomach. My office tower was gone, replaced by some other morphed amalgamation that looked similar but dissimilar at the same time.

  I began to weep, waving my arms around. Of course I’d found work annoying. In fact, I found almost everything and eve
ryone annoying.

  “Please, someone help me! I’m stuck in the pssi! Please someone help me!” I cried out into the empty streets, utterly alone in one of the world’s most densely populated cities.

  I let out a slow moan of dread.

  Chapter 10

  AT FIRST I’D wandered through the empty streets of New York. In desperation, I took the New York Passenger Cannon, operating perfectly to timetable but empty of passengers, to San Francisco. Arrival there made things worse, however, as it was as empty as New York.

  For the first few days, I’d tried to remember the deactivation gesture that Kenny had attempted to show me—the hardwired failsafe—but I hadn’t been paying attention. What was the sequence; what was the motion?

  Wandering around, I pulled and scraped at my chest, twisting and turning and muttering random words, hoping that something would deactivate it. But nothing changed. With a mounting sense of horror, I slowly realized that perhaps I was the only person left—the last person on Earth, or at least the last person on whatever version of the Earth I’d led myself onto.

  I stopped at the end of the pier at Fisherman’s Wharf. This place was usually packed with tourists, but, of course, it was desolately empty.

  Opening my purse, I stared at the pack of cigarettes inside. It had become endless. No matter how many cigarettes I took from it, the next time I opened my purse, it was full once more. I’d even tried throwing it away in a fit of frustration, but there it was again the next time I felt an urge coming on. Shaking my head, I pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

  I’d explored everywhere, tried everything. I didn’t need to bring any luggage with me for traveling as I could just pick up clothes, any clothes I wanted, right off the racks in empty department stores.

  Restaurants were always open. At first I tried going into buffets, and row upon row of fresh, steaming food would always be waiting for me. After a little while I’d discovered that if I had an urge for anything, I could just enter a restaurant, and magically, the meal I wanted would be there, ready for me to sit down and eat alone.

  All of the mediaworlds were still broadcasting, but the news was filled with stories about families, about happy reunions and lost children that had been found. I often spent my afternoons sitting alone in cinemas, watching endless reruns of old romance films.

  Something had to be wrong with the pssi system. Weren’t the smarticles supposed to wash out of my system by themselves eventually? Somebody out there would figure it out, somebody would save me, and then just as suddenly as it had started—it would be over.

  Perhaps I’d been upset with everyone, angry at the world, but I wasn’t anymore. Beyond terrified of being alone, I just desperately wanted to see someone, anyone.

  Chapter 11

  WAS IT WEEKS or months?

  It was hard to tell. My psyche was ungluing itself as my conviction that somebody out there would notice my absence slipped.

  How long could this last? My thoughts kept returning to my own marketing campaigns, to pssi’s main selling feature of dramatically stretching the human lifespan. Was it possible that I could be left wandering alone for years or decades? Or even longer?

  My mind frantically circled around and around the thought, unable to fathom it, clawing desperately at the edges of this prison without walls. I suspected that the system wouldn’t even let me kill myself. There was no escape.

  Today I wandered around Madrid through Beun Retiro Park. It was as empty of people as everywhere else my lonely travels had taken me. I walked between rows of skeleton trees, across carpets of golden leaves that they’d shed like tears just for me. It was a beautiful day under a perfect sky as winter settled in.

  At least, it would have been beautiful if there’d been anybody else there but me, by myself.

  I thought a lot about Mr. Tweedles. Everywhere I went, I kept imagining I saw him, just up ahead, just passing a lamppost. I’d feel him brushing up against my leg, and then wake up, realizing I was still stuck in this nightmare. I think he’d been about the only creature who’d ever loved me. I hoped someone was taking care of him.

  My life hadn’t ended, but without anyone else, it had ceased to have any meaning.

  Stopping next to the Crystal Palace in the middle of the park, I opened my purse to take out another of the endless cigarettes. I lit up, then bent down to pick up one of the golden leaves from the gravel path. I studied it carefully and began to laugh, and then to cry.

  It was so peaceful there. It was what I’d always wanted, just to be left alone, and I only had myself to blame, or to thank.

  My sobs of laughter rang out through the empty morning sunshine, under a faultless, empty blue sky.

  ***

  THANKS FOR READING

  This is the first of six interweaving tales in the world of Atopia. You can get the rest of this story in the The Atopia Chronicles.

  You can also read a prequel to Atopia in the best-selling novel CyberStorm.

  AND PLEASE

  Leave a review! As an indie author, it really helps me!

  Chapter - Book Extras

  If you’d like more information about the world of Atopia, discussions on the technology and more, come and visit my blog

  www.matthewmather.com

  ***

  You can visit a beta version of the future prediction service, Phuture News, right now at

  www.phuturenews.com

  ***

  I love to hear from readers! To get on my mailing list for beta reading and free copies of short stories, or just chat email me at

  matthew.mather@phuturenews.com

  ***

  About the Author

  Matthew started out his career working at the McGill Center for Intelligent Machines, going on to be a founder one of the world’s first multisensory interface companies, Immersion, that became the world leader in its field. His latest project, MindHabits, was a major award-winning brain training videogame that was translated into a dozen languages and distributed worldwide. In between he has worked on innovations in everything from computational nanotechnology and weather prediction systems to genomics, social intelligence research and most recently cybersecurity.

  Matthew’s writing credits include the novellas Blue Skies, Childplay, Brothers Blind, Timedrops, and Neverywhere, all a part of the best selling Atopia series. He lives in Montreal, Canada with his bright and beautiful girlfriend Julie and their three dogs and a cat.

 

  Chapter - Acknowledgements

  I’d like to thank my editors, Eddie Mumford and Andrew Kozloski, who both worked many late evenings and with wandering discussions and ideas.

  A special thanks to the many people who helped me make this possible, including Robert Megeney, Danny Grant, Dave Sachs, Quito Galiana, Nancy Zadler, Yulya Faibusovitch, Paul Warne, Garnet Alexander, Andrea Rabinovitch, Mary Lim, Eric Montcalm, Miriam Aczem, Alex Moon, Myleen Sjodin, Vaseem, and Brendan O’Malley.

  An extra special thanks goes out to Mr. John Jarrett, who lives somewhere out near Perth in the Land Down Under, who in addition to beta reading also created the graphic for the Atopia logo!

  And of course, I’d like to thank my mother and father, Julie and David Mather, and last but most definitely not least, Julie Ruthven, for putting up with all the late nights and missed walks with the dogs.