Complete Atopia Chronicles

Almost every American had lost someone in 2C, the cyber attacks of ‘22, but our family had been particularly hard hit. We came from working class roots in South Boston, and with a name like McIntyre, living in Southie had never been easy. But when the first cyber strikes had hit in the middle of a cold snap of February of that year, triggering the power grid shutdowns, something not easy had turned into something terrifyingly deadly. When the lights had come back on over a month later, we’d lost nine of our family to the cold, starvation and riots.

Deep suspicion of technology had driven my grandfather, along with a big chunk of the rest of the world, literally into the hills.

Hiding from the world had made for a hard life, and one my own father had desperately wanted to escape. A huge fight had erupted when my dad had announced plans to move to Atopia, to start anew and break with the Luddite community my grandfather had founded in the foothills of Montana.

It had been a huge gamble, a gamble for a better life for me and my mother, and it was one that had cut my dad off from the rest of our family. It was a gamble whose burden to make good I felt had now fallen on my shoulders.

While my dad and I had managed the transition, my mother hadn’t been able to cope, and after a few years had returned to the commune. I remembered being furious at her, refusing to leave, and I barely spoke to her afterwards. I wasn’t mad at her anymore, but the commune forbade modern communication technology.

I’d been planning a trip to see her for years now, but was always finding excuses for staying, a trip on foot into the mountains not being something I was comfortable with, but it was more than simply that. I wanted to make good first, to prove that my dad had been right, and that she’d made the right decision in leaving me with him.

“William?” said Brigitte, catching my attention. I shook my head, casting out the memories. She was standing now in front of me, her hand on my head, and looking into my eyes.

She’d dressed up for our evening, her hair falling in luxurious waves over her shoulders, dressed in a glittering black slip that barely covered her petite frame. Her perfume was powerful and seductive, working some pssi magic, and I felt myself getting horny. Whatever it was, definitely zeroed my attention onto her. I collapsed the rest of my conscious splinters into the here and now, and centered my full attention on her soft brown eyes.

She deserved better. I would do better.

“Yes?”

“Are you here with me now?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” I sighed. “It’s just, well, it’s complicated.”

She watched me quietly.

“Not everything needs to be complicated, you know.” She moved her hand down to my cheek, and then pulled my chin up so I was looking directly into her eyes. “Come on, let’s eat.”

Waiters immediately floated in around us with plates of food.

“I want to apologize for giving you a hard time about money and everything,” she said, leaning over to kiss my forehead and then returning to sit down opposite me. I’d almost forgotten about all that.

“No worries, pumpkin,” I replied, my mind-fog lifting. “It’s me that should be the one apologizing.”

She smiled at me and reached over to hold my hand.

“Enough apologizing, cheri,” she said tenderly. “First we eat, and then off to bed.”

Her smile turned seductive.

My stomach growled. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. Hungry and horny, I thought as I looked at her, and I could see she wanted to make me a happy man. Life didn’t get much better than this. I smiled and dug into dinner.

Perhaps my situation wasn’t as bad as I thought.

§

Soon after, I was lying on my back in bed amid the mess of sheets and pillows strewn about from our lovemaking. A gentle breeze was blowing in through the window, and Brigitte clung tightly to my side.

We enjoyed sex without any of the messy special effects a lot of the other pssi–kids went for. Not to say we hadn’t experimented with all that stuff. Brigitte was quite the wild child in her day, but as we’d gotten older and found each other, the craziness had lost its appeal.

“Willy,” she purred softly, “can I ask you something? And promise not to get mad okay?”

“Sure, anything, sweet pea,” I replied. All of my defenses were down, and right now she could have asked me to jump into the canal and I would have happily complied.

“Willy, do you think we could start sharing our realities? I mean, completely.”

Even with my defenses down, this gave me a little start.

“Sweetie,” I replied calmly, “even couples that have been married for years don’t share their realities entirely.”

Right now we were sharing a reality of being in Venice together, which was great, but she meant that we’d fully share each others’ reality skins, the little and big ways we filtered and modified real and virtual worlds. I wasn’t sure I wanted her to see the world the way I saw it.

“I know what other people do and I don’t want that to be us,” she continued. “It is possible, you know.”