Complete Atopia Chronicles

“As you yourself have said many times,” he pointed out, “we need to maximize saturation of the product introduction to maximize networking effects. The Terra Novan’s own synthetic reality system isn’t far behind us. We need to get our product in first and fast to capture the market.”

I sighed, shaking my head.

“That is not the goal of what we’re doing here.”

Kesselring looked at me steadily.

“Perhaps not your goal, but somebody has to pay for all this.”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose, feeling the noose tighten around my neck.

~ BROTHERS BLIND ~ Book 4: Bobby Baxter

PROLOGUE

“I CAN BE good at anything I want,” I explained proudly. “I just need to apply myself.”

I smiled impressively and took another swig from the bottle of fermented seaweed. It was my fourteenth birthday and I was drunk. Or rather, it was our fourteenth birthday.

My brother and I were sitting on railings at one of the entrances to the passenger cannon, suspended hundreds of feet above the Atopian beaches. The steady thwump, thwump of the cannon discharging its nightly cargo shipments reverberated powerfully in the air around us. We weren’t supposed to be here.

“How did you override the security controls again?” asked my brother.

“Easy as pie!” I boasted. “Get your proxxi in here, I’ll download the details and show him.”

My brother looked away towards the breaking surf below.

“You always want to explain it to my proxxi,” he complained.

“Come on, seriously?” I chuckled. “You know you’re not good at security stuff.”

“I’m not good at anything,” he replied quietly. “How is it possible that you have such an easy time with everything, but I struggle so much? Aren’t twins supposed to be the same?”

“We’re not identical twins,” I laughed.

He looked hurt.

“Hey now, come on. Don’t exaggerate. You’re like the funniest guy I know. That’s a gift!”

He sighed. “It’s the same with everyone. Everyone wants to talk to my proxxi.”

“That’s not true, come on.”

He sighed again, but then he brightened up. “But you are amazing, Bob. You can do anything.”

I smiled. “See? Now that’s the spirit!”

1

Identity: Bobby Baxter

I AM TEMUJIN, great warrior of the Mongol clan of the Ong Khan. The year is 1198 and the heat of the summer solstice has baked the steppes dry and cracked. We will soon replenish Mother Earth and soak Her with the blood of our enemies, and I will rise to my rightful and God-given place among my people as the Universal Ruler, the Ghengis Khan.

Opening my eyes slowly, I listened to the crisp snapping of our banners flapping in the breeze and watched the Tatars amassing in the dusty distance on the plains below. Sitting outside the royal yurt with my trusty saber balanced on my knees, my body was flowing and pulsing with the power of my ancestors.

Today would end in victory, or in glorious death.

“Bob, do you ever get the feeling none of this is real?” asked Martin, sitting over to my right with a great wad of half chewed venison dripping from his mouth. His eyebrows were cocked high as he leaned towards me with the question, waving the rest of the bloody deer haunch around in circles for emphasis.

While my brother had always scored great in logic and linguistics, he’d just as consistently scored extremely low in existential intelligence. I groaned.

“Dude, you are totally ruining this for me.”

I’d asked him to be my partner in the gameworlds today, at the urging of our mother, but I was feeling like I’d live, or die, to regret the decision. A sinking feeling settled into my gut.

“Yeah I know, but, you know what I mean,” he continued, enthusiastically diving in to rip another hunk of meat off the bone. “I mean, how can I know that I really exist?”

I studied him carefully, deciding what to say next, but right now I needed to prop up our audience stats. Sid and the rest of the guys were counting on me.

“In a nutshell, my friend, you can’t,” I replied, working up an angle to get his head in the game. “I think, therefore I am, as Descartes famously put it in 1644. Since then, really no progress.”

“Mmmmm,” was all Martin could add philosophically as he looked skywards. “So how can I be sure that you’re not just some gameworld zombie?”

“Again, my friend, you can’t,” I replied. “Although from my point of view, the issue is rather more about you.” I laughed and he joined in. “But if we’re worrying about whether people around us are mindless zombies, then the question is rather moot, no?”

Martin smiled at that, wiping his greasy face with the back of one hand. Before we could continue, Vicious rode up. Vicious was my best friend Sid’s proxxi. A seventies British punk rocker, in his best pasty whiteness, looked awfully comical with knobby knees poking out from under Mongol battle armor. The leather helmet must have been hell on his spiky hair.

A big smile spread across my face.