Complete Atopia Chronicles

He had been lobbying hard to at least have the pleasure pathways removed from the pssi protocols, and we’d often been at each others’ throats in closed-room government regulatory meetings around the world.

Kesselring had won the day by portraying Sintil8 as a modern-day Al Capone-style gangster, lording over the weaknesses of the human animal from his fortresses in Chicago and Moscow and other cities around the world. It wasn’t far from the truth.

Despite my less than savory opinion of him, in an enemy-of-my-enemy sort of logic, I’d come to Sintil8 to try and help me root out what Kesselring was hiding from me. Really, it was more of a fallback plan in case I needed an ace up my sleeve. I also had half an idea of wanting to keep Sintil8 close to my chest to tease out his own intrigues involving us. The latest string of disappearances was just the sort of thing he’d be capable of orchestrating.

“Look,” I said, turning all this over in my mind, “I may be able to help you if you help me.”

“Now you’re finally speaking my language,” he replied with a smile. He scanned the information and data sets I’d just sent him, the details of a deal.

“Ladno. I will find out what I can,” he said finally, nodding his understanding of my offer.

“Good.”

A pause, and his smile grew wider. “How rude of me, would you like to stay for dinner?”

I shook my head. “Thanks, but no,” I replied, gruesomely wondering what, or rather who, they would be eating tonight.

We sat and inspected each other again. Despite expending considerable resources in Atopia’s tussles with Sintil8, we still didn’t have the full picture of him. He was probably one of the few people alive older than me, and as far as we could tell he had risen up through the ranks of the Russian mafia in the late 20th century after starting a career in Stalin’s security apparatus.

Some reports hinted that he had been a tank commander in the Red Army’s defeat of the Nazis outside Stalingrad, the battles in which he had probably lost the first parts of his own body. We suspected he had become just a brain in a box somewhere, but exactly where we didn’t know.

“We drink to our agreement,” Sintil8 commanded as he raised his scotch. A glass of scotch dutifully materialized in my own hands.

“Budem zdorovy,” intoned Sintil8.

“Stay healthy indeed,” I replied, raising my glass with his and drinking to seal our bargain.

11

Identity: Jimmy Jones

“WHERE DID THE idea for your distributed consciousness technology come from?”

The question wasn’t directed at me. Some of the reporters laughed, and Nancy smiled. They’d all heard this before. The question was another opportunity for a sound bite, and Nancy launched into it with a smile.

In the days and weeks after the announcement of the Infinixx launch date, Nancy’s star had risen dramatically. The press couldn’t get enough of her. I’d been asked to help out, and I had splinters strung out in a seemingly endless stream of press events across the multiverse.

As I disengaged my primary subjective from the splinter covering this event I let my mind wander off. Nancy was still talking about how it had all come from the childhood game flitter tag that we used to play. She was gushing on and on, and it was beginning to annoy me.

Flitter tag may have been the king of pssi-kid games, but my favorite had always been rag–dolling. It had been my own personal addition to our repertoire.

One day, Ms. Parnassus, our human teacher back at the pssi-kid Academy, had asked each of us to come and demonstrate a special trick or skill. Each child had gotten up in turn to show off something they could do. One inflated into a balloon and floated up to bounce around on the ceiling. Nancy showed off holding a dozen conversations at once with everyone around the classroom. Bob of course took us surfing, and then my turn had come.

“Come on Jimmy,” our teacher encouraged, “show everyone what you showed me.”

She gently rotated me into the center of everyone’s attentional matrix. I nervously looked at my classmates—an arrayed collection of fantastical little creatures floating impatiently around in my display spaces.

Fidgeting, I looked down at my feet. They uncontrollably spawned into writhing tentacles that nervously knotted together like cave eels trying to escape sudden sunlight.

Giggles erupted.

“Go ahead,” said Ms. Parnassus, nodding and smiling, prodding me on. She collapsed everyone’s skins into my identity space, morphing us into a shared reality of children standing around the Schoolyard playground, with me at the center. I was now dressed in gray flannel shorts, with a matching sweater and shirt with a little red clip–on tie.

More giggles. Mother had insisted on this ridiculous outfit for my primary identity.

Oak trees arched between the swing sets and jungle gyms of the Schoolyard, reaching high above us like a leafy green cathedral beneath a perfectly blue sky.

“Come on Jimmy, they’ll love it, trust me,” said Ms. Parnassus. I nodded, and set up my trick.