Complete Atopia Chronicles

Sitting on my surfboard, bobbing up and down between the swells, I could feel the pressure and shape and even the temperature of the water’s surface around me through my skin, and the thousands of neurons attached to each hair follicle could sense tiny subsurface eddies and water currents.

After nearly twenty years of dedicated practice, my brain had neuroplastically reformatted to devote a large part of itself to my water-sense, and I now had the most highly attuned tactile array of any pssi–kid, or for that matter, anyone else in the world. Sitting with my eyes closed, I could feel the water moving and undulating around me as a perfectly natural and integral part of my body.

I was one with the water, and it was one with me.

Still a little hung-over from the previous evening, I opened my eyes to awake from my reverie. Atopia sure was pretty from out here, with its thick forests rising up from white sandy beaches. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move and a beautiful stag suddenly burst forth from the forest underbrush. We eyed each other for a moment, and then he disappeared.

Above decks, the floating island of Atopia was covered in forests that were teaming with ‘wild’ animals, but like everything else out there, their neural systems were loaded with the smarticles that floated in the air and water around us. Everything here was a part of the pssi network, but I doubted that the animals ever realized they were off in virtual worlds as they stampeded through synthetic savannahs while vet–bots tended to their real bodies in downtime.

Not much wild was left in the world today. It was ironic that tourists now lined up to come to a completely artificial island built to perfect synthetic reality, all to enjoy a shred of the old reality hiding inside it by dusting themselves down in smarticles.

Smarticles were the pixie dust that permeated everything on Atopia, a system of nanoscale particles that worked as both a sensor and communication network, floating everywhere in the air and water. They suffused through the bodies of living creatures to lodge into their nervous systems to form the foundation of pssi.

Pssi enabled not just jumping off into virtual worlds, but also the sharing of experiences and even bodies. A philosopher had once rhetorically asked what it was like to be a bat, meaning that it was something we could never know, but out here on Atopia, you could inhabit a bat, a bear, a fish, a shark, a tree, and even, sometimes, yourself.

The beaming sun was drying the salt water into crystals on my skin, making it itchy as it baked, and I scratched my neck and shifted positions on my board. A breeze mixed the sea air with the musty odor of a tangle of seaweed floating nearby.

While the water was cold, my pssi tuned it out and I was perfectly comfortable. I just had to be careful my muscles didn’t get too sluggish when it came time for action.

Seagulls squawked and wheeled in the sky, and otters were playing out in the kelp not far away, chattering away about whatever otters chattered about. Some were floating around on their backs, eating a breakfast of clams they had scrounged from aquaculture bins below.

Out here I felt a certain peace that escaped me elsewhere, a deep meditative calm outside the madness. I came out here often to think about Nancy, to think about my brother, to think about how I had messed everything up. Looking up, I could see nimbus clouds striping the blue cathedral of the sky.

It was just another day in paradise.

After some fuss, Vince Indigo, the famous founder of PhutureNews, had agreed to come surfing with me this morning. He’d become my regular surf buddy this past year, but had recently, and suddenly, dropped off the map.

Convincing him to come out this morning had been a major struggle, and even then, he didn’t look like he was enjoying himself. He was just staring off into space, not his usual chatty self. I was about to call out to Vince, to see what was bugging him, when I was interrupted.

“Hey.”

I looked down to find Martin sitting on the front of my board. We bobbed up and down in the swells together.

“Hey to you too, buddy,” I responded sheepishly. “Sorry about this morning, I know it was your birthday.”

Martin always kept the same clean-cut, square jawed image going despite the vagaries of fashion—fashion being so ugly these days, apparently, that its look had to be changed almost hourly. I grinned back into his pale blue eyes, a reflection of my own, and admired the tight buzz cut he was sporting today. Buzz Aldrin came to mind, or perhaps better, Buzz Lightyear.

You could hardly have imagined two twins more different.

“Don’t worry about it. Dad always gets worked up about that stuff, I don’t care.”

“Yeah he sure does,” I laughed, “and thanks for not ratting on me. So, Inuit huh? No Eskimos left in this world today?”

“Not according to me, I guess.”

We laughed together. It was nice.

“I just get so tired of him talking about Jimmy all the time,” I added, and Martin nodded.