Complete Atopia Chronicles

“Oh yeah? So, what, like you could double my account settings or something?”

“Much,” I laughed, “much more than that Willy. I could show you how to fix the system to have almost unlimited splintering. You’ll blow everyone else in the market away.”

He glanced at the glittering blue security blanket around us.

“So nobody else can know what we’re talking about, right?”

“Absolutely, Willy. I’m the security expert, remember?”

“Right.”

“So what’s the deal then, Mr. Security?”

“If you can get me a date with Susie, but I mean, really set me up with her, you know?” I paused, waiting for him to acknowledge what I meant. “Then I’ll set you up with what you need.”

“You can really pull it off, with nobody else knowing? No risk?”

“I sure can,” I responded, smiling. “Nobody will ever find out. Let me explain.”

Willy leaned in closer.

“I’ll download a list of vulnerabilities in the Atopian perimeter that you can use to connect with the outside, and then I’ll show you how to anonymize your conscious stream.”

The perplexed look on his face changed and grew into a smile.

10

Identity: Patricia Killiam

I CURIOUSLY WONDERED how many ways this unpleasant specimen of humanity had inflicted death upon his fellow man—fellow man being something of a stretch given his own current state of being. That being said, Sintil8 projected the image of an attractive and urbane gentleman, his elderly face smiling warmly from under a manicured wave of properly graying hair. Intelligent eyes sparkled at me darkly.

“Nice press conference today,” said Sintil8, flashing a mouthful of perfect teeth. “Such a wonderful thing you are doing, saving the world.”

The sarcasm was as thick as his Russian accent.

“Thank you,” I replied simply, not taking the bait.

We studied each other.

“So, Patricia, what exactly would you like me to find out for you?” he asked with an equal parts soothing and menacing voice.

“These storm systems, for one,” I replied cautiously. “I want to know if this is some kind of new weapon. It seems the sort of thing you’d know about.”

He laughed. “Ah, I see.”

We were sitting in a sumptuous penthouse atop one of his many skyscrapers dotting the landscape of New Moscow. Views from the top of the world stretched out brightly below us in the midday sunshine, and I caught glimpses of the Moskva River snaking out into the smoggy distance below.

Sintil8 was comfortably draped on a black leather couch across a glass and steel coffee table from where I was, still dressed in blue silk pajamas. He was wrapped up in a velvet house coat and wearing gray fur slippers, one of which dangled casually off a foot as he crossed his legs. I was perched uneasily on the edge of my matching couch.

As we spoke, one of his minions, or disciples depending how you looked at it, swept smoothly across the landing to hand him another glass of scotch. Her scarred and mottled body was barely a shrunken stump suspended between impossibly spindly metal legs, with matching thin metal arms.

Sadly, she wasn’t all that unusual. Mandroids—humans with extensive robotic replacement limbs and parts—were becoming all the more common as entanglements in the Weather Wars continued to spread. Medical technology could stop soldiers in the field from dying from almost any inflicted trauma, apart from major brain damage, and so had begun the steady stream of half man, half machines into societies around the world.

Of course, this one was no soldier, but had instead done it to herself. Sintil8 was the leader of a cult that grotesquely encouraged its closest followers to consume their own bodies; literally a ritualized eating of themselves that was matched with a gradual replacement of their disappearing body parts by robotic ones. Consuming themselves was the path to spiritual and corporal enlightenment; so preached Sintil8.

“Thank you,” said Sintil8 as he accepted the drink.

This included consuming her own eyes, I realized with horror as she turned to attempt what she must have thought of as a smile my way. Dark caverns yawned out at me from where her eyes should have been. In the depths of the shadows at the backs of her scarred orbitals, I could see the glittering red of photoreceptor arrays.

“Tut, tut,” chided Sintil8, watching my expression while she walked away, “so quick to judge. And you, you’re not creating any monsters out there, are you?”

“We’re not brainwashing people into twisting their lives around.”

“No?” he replied, letting this hang in the air as he smiled at me, barely able to conceal his mirth. “And yet, here you are, coming to me for help. What a surprising turn of events this is.”

Sintil8 was one of the most powerful and persistent opponents of the pssi program. As one of the greatest purveyors of pleasures in the physical world, not to mention arms dealer to all sides of the Weather Wars, the global organization he represented stood to lose a lot of money when pssi was released.