Complete Atopia Chronicles

“Mother, this is not just about the pssi program, not the program by itself,” replied Tyrel, wiping away his tears. “By itself, we would have been happy to evolve together in a symbiotic coexistence under your dominance, but you have unwittingly unleashed a terrible evil into the world that will consume it. We need to destroy Atopia to stop it.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, bewildered. Then a light winked on. “So you admit that you have created these storms to destroy us?”

My mind raced. Had Sintil8 double-crossed me, had I made a fatal mistake in bringing him so close to me? Was he the monster I had unleashed? How had Terra Nova managed to jump so far ahead technologically to be able to control weather like this? How could they possibly think they could get away with destroying us for their own gain?

“Yes, we created these storms, as you say,” Tyrel admitted quietly, “but we cannot explain why. As secure as the steps you took to come here, there is still a connection back through you, and we still don’t have the full picture. We think the key is contained in William McIntyre’s body.”

“Willy?” I asked, remembering the report on Bob’s friend now. I became even more bewildered. “Did you have something to do with Willy’s body disappearing? Why?”

“It was through Wallace that we first understood the potential magnitude of the danger,” admitted Tyrel, “but it was Sintil8 who helped Wallace to disappear from Atopia, using the access keys you granted. Wallace was acting to protect William.”

Things had begun to spin into nonsense. So, Sintil8 had been involved in the disappearances.

“We have no time for this,” I objected furiously, sensing time running out. “We need to make a deal now. You’ve seen the same phutures I have, there is no other solution. We will escape this trap you’ve set, and I want you to be on my side when we do, to help with what I need to get done, to help save yourselves!”

“We have seen the phutures,” agreed Tyrel, “but you didn’t take into account one scenario.”

“And what is that?” I asked impatiently. We’d played out billions of phutures.

“The destruction of Atopia.”

That stopped me in my tracks. It was true—all of our phutures had included Atopia as a component of the solution set. With a sudden lurch, I could feel my own pride and sense of destiny having perhaps blinded me.

“Look,” I said after a moment of reflection, “that may be true, but we’re escaping your trap. I need to make a deal with you now.”

More silence.

“This is a trap of your own making,” replied Tyrel slowly, “and yes, you may escape these storms.”

I nodded, waiting for him to finish.

“But, by my word, before the sun rises tomorrow morning, Atopia will be wiped from the face of this world.”

22

Identity: Bobby Baxter

SMILING AT NANCY, I stuffed some more pasta into my face.

“Think of it like we’re about to run a marathon,” I explained. “We need to do some carb loading and build up our smarticle reservoirs. Keep eating!”

We’d both been storing far more than the usual load of smarticles that we naturally absorbed from the Atopian environment, far beyond even our own high tolerances.

Nancy nodded and continued to eat methodically, looking down into her plate. It had been a long time since I’d been this physically close to her, and a lot of memories were flooding back. With an effort I kept my mind from splintering and scuttling off into the past.

“I just don’t like that we’re hiding this from Pat,” she said looking down into her pasta. “Do you really think she’s hiding something?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, “but we need to keep all our options open. You understand?”

She nodded. “But why tell Jimmy then?”

“Just a hunch I have,” I replied, not able to explain much more than that. “Knowing he knows what we’re doing enables us to watch him watching us, if that makes any sense.”

“Plus, we won’t set off his alarms when we’re scanning the Atopian infrastructure,” added Sid.

Nancy shrugged.

“Makes sense I guess.”

Willy, Sid, Vicious, Robert, Vince and Hotstuff were all sitting at the table together with us in a dingy little cafeteria in a deep, dark forgotten corner of the Atopian service infrastructure below Purgatory.

We were as close as we could get to the routing core of the pssi network, and for what I wanted to do, reducing distance latency to the core would help minimize transactional delays and give us an edge over any self-correcting algorithmic blind spots that may be installed within it. We were going to plug in as directly as we could and watch for anomalies.

“Go over the plan again with me?” asked Nancy as she carefully considered the noodles before her. She took another mouthful.

“Your mind is still the best neuroplatically formatted of anyone on Atopia to handle wide area splintering,” I started to explain.

“Yeah,” added Vicious, “it’s like you can be everywhere at once.”

Nancy sighed. “Yes, everywhere but the place I should have been.”

She looked directly into my eyes and my heart jumped up through my throat.