Complete Atopia Chronicles

A few sniggers followed that comment, but these were obviously related to the Infinixx mess and nothing clever I was saying.

“Okay, next question,” I said quickly, wanting to get this over with. Only a small part of my consciousness was there, most of the rest of me was trying to calm Kesselring. We’d had the whole world tuned in for the launch. He was furious.

“The responsibility for Infinixx is yours,” fumed Kesselring. “This has injected serious uncertainty vectors into our phutures. Who knows what the ramifications could be. I’m going to have to remove you from the media circuit. The Killiam name is a joke now.”

“That’s fine with me,” I snorted. I’d been tired of the media road show for a long time already. He was posturing about the long range phutures, but I knew he was really annoyed about the declining price of the Cognix stock offering.

“The main timeline is holding steady,” I added after giving him a moment to stew. “It’s nothing to get excited about.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Nothing to get excited about? If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that you were behind this.”

“Why would I sabotage my own niece’s project?” I replied, rolling my eyes.

“You don’t think this looks suspicious? You turning around at the last minute, in fact, everyone turning away in the last seconds, even Nancy herself?”

He stood and stared at me. I looked away.

“I had to. Vince asked me for help. Do you think I could ignore him? After what we’ve done? Perhaps this was just a coincidence.”

“A coincidence?” snorted Kesselring. “You expect me to believe that?”

Shaking my head I quietly replied, “No, I guess that stretches believability.”

“It must be the Terra Novans somehow,” he said after a pause, shaking his head and looking off into space.  “You realize we’re going to have to remove Nancy as the head of Infinixx.”

At the same time, I had another splinter who was busy arguing with Hal. It was another battle of the happiness brigade regarding test results from the clinical trials on addiction.

Hal was in the middle of another of his monologues.

“As the world gets more complex, people begin to compensate by looking for escape,” Hal explained as my splinter assimilated into that reality. “Look at the rise in reports of paranormal phenomenon. We know it’s not real, even they know it’s not real, but they need the escape.”

“Okay Hal, I see your point, but just for instance, what about Cody Chavez?” my splinter demanded. We were in Hal’s new space, his office climbing ever higher in the Solomon House complex.

“Cody Chavez is perfectly happy and healthy,” argued Hal. “So he chooses to spend his days with reality skinned up so everyone looks like Elvis and global warming never happened. Cody knows this isn’t real. He’s just suspended disbelief for a while.”

“I think it’s a little more serious than simply suspending disbelief.”

“Cody was suffering from incurable anxiety, directly linked to the intractable problems he saw in the world. So he’s skinned up something to brighten his days, so what?” Hal shrugged and then wagged his finger in the air. “And all without drugs.”

It was just at that point that the Infinixx mess climaxed. I sighed.

“Can we resolve the issue of making the new tests public another time?” I asked.

He shook his head angrily. “Always an excuse with you, isn’t there Pat?”

“It’s just…”

He cut me off. “I know, Infinixx, disaster. The whole world knows, my dear.” He smiled cruelly.

I began to get angry.

“Fine then,” I said, switching gears, “doesn’t it bother you that we seem to be breeding a generation of lazy, self-absorbed sexual deviants with the pssi–kids? Is this where the pursuit of happiness leads us?”

“Deviants?” laughed Hal. “Lazy? Come now, Patricia, listen to yourself! Isn’t this just the same old accusation of parents about ‘kids these days’ down throughout the ages?”

I stopped for a moment and considered this.

“I think maybe you’re just too old,” added Hal with a nasty twinkle in his eye. “These kids do amazing things too, you know.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes. Maybe he was right, but then I knew a few things he didn’t. The weight bore down ever tighter.

“Forget the pssi–kids, then,” I conceded. “What about this disgusting trade in proxxids?”

He arched his eyebrows. “Again, deviants?”

“I, for one, hadn’t planned on starting a whole new industry in sexual tourism for pedophiles,” I complained. “Maybe this was what some of you had in mind, but I find it disgusting.”

“Sexual tourism is a gross exaggeration.”

I said nothing, shaking my head.

“Is it wrong, Patricia?” he countered coolly. “Is it wrong to have computer generated models of naked children if they’re not based on any real, specific child? Nobody is being exploited. It is a critical part of our therapy program for pedophiles.”

“Still…” I replied with revulsion.