Complete Atopia Chronicles

Bob and I were sitting on our boards and waiting for waves just inside the edge of the kelp forest, near the western inlet and not far from my habitat.

Atopian kelp, the base of our ecological chain, had been bioengineered to grow inverted with its holdfast now a gas filled bladder floating on the surface with the kelp blades spreading downwards hundreds of feet into the depths. It sprouted outwards at fantastic rates like a watery mangrove, beginning just at the edge of the underwater extremity of Atopia and stretching outwards from there to about two miles out through the water.

My wealth afforded me the luxury of my own private habitat, a household that was attached to one of the passenger cannon supports, sprouting up out of the water and into the sunshine. Most of the million-plus inhabitants here lived below decks in the seascrapers stretching out into the depths. Atopia was the ultimate in dense, urban city planning, but then that was the whole idea: with access to limitless synthetic reality, Atopians didn’t need much in the way of real space.

I’d been one of the earliest converts to the Atopia marketing program, pulling up stakes from my wandering existence around the Bay Area to move onto the original Atopian platform in the early 40’s.

America just wasn’t what it used to be anymore, with constant cyber attacks pushing into an insular downward spiral and the Midwest returning to the dustbowl of more than a hundred years earlier. No good end was in sight, and entanglements in the Weather Wars were squeezing the last drops of blood from a country already gone dry.

For me, in my rich, insular world, the kicker had really been the surfing. Floating free in the Pacific, Atopia was exposed to huge, open ocean swells. When they caught just right, these would break and curl into pipes that broke for miles as they swept around its perfectly circular edge.

Atopia was a magnet for the best surfers in the world, but it was hard for them to compete with residents who used pssi—poly-synthetic sensory interface— technology. There was a kind of religion to surfing, and outsiders thought that with pssi we were cheating the gods, but really, the gods were jealous.

These days, those gods seemed to be having a particular issue with me.

Bob was waiting for the ultimate wave, and while I’d managed to catch one good one, I didn’t have his attuned water-sense and was having a hard time relaxing into it. Time was pressing down heavily.

“Bob!” I yelled out across the water, interrupting a conversation I could see he was having with his brother-of-sorts, Martin. “Bob, I need to get going!”

“Already?”

“Yeah, I need to get back to that thing.”

My promised hour wasn’t even up, yet Hotstuff was flooding me with things we needed to get done. It was impossible to enjoy the surfing, perhaps even dangerous. I’d better get on with it.

“I have a hard time imagining anyone telling you what to do,” declared Bob, shrugging. “Anyway, ping me if you change your mind. Hey, you should check out all that stuff on the news!”

“Thanks, Bob.”

With a wave goodbye I flitted off back to my habitat, leaving Hotstuff to guide my body home.

2

I CHECKED OUT the news Bob had sent me as I returned to the top deck of my habitat. There’d been a rash of UFO sightings in the Midwest last night, and he knew I was something of a paranormal fan boy. Today, though, more important things were on the agenda.

I strode back and forth like a caged animal, my mind racing, and then stood still as I made a decision, looking out towards the breaking waves.

“Ready for business?” demanded Hotstuff.

She was sitting and waiting for me on a stool at the deck bar, drinking a latte and going over the morning’s business news, impatiently tapping her high heels against the polished blue marble floor. Behind her, my carefully curated collection of some of the world’s rarest whiskeys and cognacs sparkled invitingly in the midmorning sunshine. It was about the time I’d usually be waking up, but I’d already been up since dawn.

“Do we have to?” I asked uselessly, thinking of how a little taste of the Aberlour would be nice.

“Some kind of action is required,” she observed. “Even inaction is an action, and perhaps the only kind of action you seem to enjoy lately.”

Hotstuff raised her eyebrows in disdain while she scanned the European financial reports.

“Okay then, summon the council,” I sighed, scratching my stubble.

Portals to my homeworld opened up off the deck, and I walked into our main conference room, shifting my attire into a navy sport coat with a stiff collared, open necked white shirt. Hotstuff strode in behind me, her braided bun of hair and short skirted business suit radiating efficiency and purpose.