salute with the riding crop. “Commander Strong’s proxxi asked for some flowers for his wife-which I provided from our private gardens-and Bob just pinged you to go surfing.” She raised her eyebrows as if to tell me that surfing obviously wasn’t an option today.
“Patch him through,” I replied groggily. Sensing Hotstuff hesitating I added, “Now Hotstuff!”
Bob immediately materialized before me, holding his yellow long board, smirking. He looked stoned already.
A great mop of blond hair lived a life of its own above his twinkling blue eyes, and while he had all the appearances of the uber-surfer, there was a persistent and unmistakable intelligence underpinning it all-the philosopher king of wave hunters. What a great kid, it was just too bad.
“So…surfing today?” asked Bob lazily.
Yeah, he was high. Sizing up Hotstuff’s outfit, he grinned appreciatively.
“No, sorry, Bob. Can’t make it. Something has popped up.”
“Popped up, huh?” laughed Bob, looking back at Hotstuff again. He’d begun projecting some nicely curling waves into my display spaces. “Come on, dude! It’s going to be monster out there today!”
“I really can’t,” I reiterated weakly. Jealously I watched the waves. My nerves were frazzled. Honestly, I could use a little relaxation, and I hadn’t been out surfing in weeks.
“What could you possibly have to do?” asked Bob. “I thought you were like the richest guy in the world? Get someone else to do it!”
“I wish I could…”
I looked pleadingly towards Hotstuff. She rolled her eyes and wagged the riding crop at me.
“Hey it’s your life mister,” she scolded, sensing I was going to do what I wanted anyway. “I suppose an hour couldn’t hurt, we don’t have anything imminent I can’t handle right now. But only one hour, right? After that it could get dangerous.”
I was already halfway out the door to get my wetsuit by the time she’d finished the sentence. Bob gave me a goofy thumbs-up before flitting away to rejoin his body in the hunt for waves. I’d catch up with him in a minute.
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.
One by one my councilors materialized around the long cherry wood conference table that glistened under the bioluminescent ceiling. About half of them appeared dull eyed, awakening to instantly patch in from whatever time zone they were in for this surprise meeting. The other half weren’t humans, but our trusted synthetics, and they appeared brightly and cheerfully, their smiles following me around the room towards the head of the table.
Then again, perhaps I had them mixed up, the dull eyed ones now looking like my synthetics. I had a hard time telling the difference anymore.
Everyone around the table, however, was most definitely female, and not just your run-of-the-mill varietals, but, like Hotstuff, more like a twelve year old boy’s fantasy. They posed casually but intently around the table as if a fashion shoot could be announced at any instant, with the long conference table springing into action as a catwalk.
My calling a sudden meeting like this was unusual, to say the least, and they all watched me cautiously. Information packets were dispersed and appeared on the table in front of them as I sat down.
“No need for pleasantries.” This wasn’t a social call after all. “Just have a look at your instructions. We’re
