“Even though they signed off on a hold harmless clause with the beta testing?”
“This sort of thing could get, well, it could be pretty media friendly,” explained the lawyer, looking even more bored as he said it, if that was possible, “or pretty unfriendly, depending on how you look at it.”
This was exactly the reason why I couldn’t let Willy increase his splinter limit, unexpected repercussions and technical glitches like this. We just couldn’t afford the risk.
“Make the deal,” I sighed. The lawyer nodded and faded away.
“And Karen,” I added, “fix this problem. I don’t care what it takes, but get it fixed.”
The Infinixx platform had been designed to enable even regular humans to manage the trick of distributing their consciousness. For us pssi-kids, who grew up with the knack for doing this, the Infinixx platform was an amplifier that multiplied what we could already do, but learning the trick was a little more difficult for the general population than we’d imagined.
Our slogan was ‘Everyone. Everywhere. Everytime.’ or E3. The ‘E’ and the ‘3’ were stylized in the logo, facing each other to form an infinity symbol above the Infinixx name. It was all very clever branding.
“What exactly does it mean?” I was asked at the press conference immediately following the tech meeting.
We were announcing the slogan and unveiling our marketing program. The media people were very proud of it and were hanging in the wings of the presentation space, egging me on to nail their positioning.
“E3 represents the infinite possibilities of the future that we’re bringing to life,” I rolled out breathlessly. “E3 is the idea that anyone can be everywhere and anywhere at any time they like-while still never needing to be anywhere they don’t want.”
I paused before my finale, catching my breath.
“For the first time, people will be free to be nowhere and everywhere at the same time-E3 represents total freedom!”
Applause rang out as I raised my hands to the crowd. I managed to say all of this without the slightest of smiles, even though I wasn’t sure I understood what it meant. All that mattered was that the marketing department was in love with it.
While distributing consciousness was a nice trick, what had the business world so excited were the implications for productivity. Synthetic intelligences and phuturing had been able to push the needle a long way, but lately they’d been stalled in their revenue enhancing capabilities, and distributed consciousness was the new buzzword in investor circles. Many groups were pursuing something like it, but with our intimate link to Cognix and our unique abilities as pssi-kids, we had an edge nobody else could match. The investments had just poured in.
The explosive growth was an adrenaline rush.
We’d begun synthesizing intermediate management as splinter constructs, their personalities and experiences amalgamated from the team members they would be managing. Our managers thus became a little bit of everyone they managed, but despite this, people still hated them for some reason.
Even with these innovations, it was a grind, especially the constant need to bring in new talent. Picking new staff became a Herculean task with each new staff member counting as ten-the productivity multiplier goal we were trying to demonstrate-so a mistake picking out any new employee tended to magnify itself. We were constantly having endless rounds of human resources meetings in our main conference room, discussing the merits of new candidates.
“Did you hear about Cynthia, that new administrative girl we hired?” asked my VP of Human Resources, at the start of one of those meetings. My VP of Synthetic Resources rolled her eyes and looked towards me, as if I- told-you-so.
Cynthia has been a great hire, but had recently dropped off the radar without any warning. People disappearing off into cyber hedonistic fantasy worlds weren’t uncommon, but Cynthia had been my pick. She’d seemed a little more reliable than that.
“Yeah, I heard about that. So her neural functions are off the charts, but they can’t find her and she’s off in the multiverse somewhere?” asked Kelly, my co-founding business partner.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with us, does it?” I suddenly exclaimed, pulling the splinter for this meeting into the center of my consciousness.
“No, nothing to do with us,” confirmed Kelly, “but speaking of strange, how about Vince Indigo. Have you seen the flash death mobs he’s attracting?”
There were a few laughs around the table. I stayed quiet. I had a feeling Vince and Patricia were up to something, but didn’t want to say anything. Cunard pinged me right then for the start to yet another press event.
“The Security Council has taken over Cynthia’s file now,” said Brian, our Chief Technical Officer, bringing the discussion back. “Let’s keep moving. Speaking of the Security Council, what does everyone think of Jimmy getting nominated?”
“I think Jimmy is great,” I replied.
“Of course you would,” snorted Kelly. “More of the Killiam clan in charge, but then what’s good for the goose…”
“Hey!” I said defensively. “That’s not fair. Jimmy’s family is barely related to mine.” My cheeks blushed.
They all rolled their eyes.
Jimmy was related to me, but only distantly. Our great-grandfathers had been cousins, whatever that made us. All of that didn’t make any difference to me, and the awkwardness I felt now was because Patricia had asked Bob’s family to adopt Jimmy when he’d been left in her care.
I’d been dating Bob at the time, and in fact we’d been inseparable as children. From that point on, though, I’d been teased for dating what amounted to my cousin, if only cousin-in-law. Childhood taunts had a way of sticking with you in life.
“Gang, I have to get to the next press event,” I added, happy for a reason to exit-stage-left, and flitted off for the next press conference.
Identity: William McIntyre
“Willy!”
Whole scaffolds of my conscious webwork collapsed as Bob forced his way in using one of Sid’s viral skins. Sid was going to get in trouble with his little sidelines one day, but then again, who was I to talk?
I hadn’t seen Bob in weeks, maybe longer. Work had totally absorbed me, and to focus I’d begun filtering all of my communications straight into my proxxi.
“Willy!” yelled Bob at maximum volume across my full audio spectrum. “Wiiiillllly!”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here,” I responded, releasing most of my splinter network into autopilot and distilling a good chunk of myself back into a private workplace where I’d pulled Bob.
Bob smiled goofily as we both materialized into each others’ sensory spaces. We were sitting across from each other in one of my meeting spaces. I was sitting straight up in a chair at one end of the room, dressed in a blazer and slacks, while he had draped himself over a leather couch facing me, wearing only his swimming shorts and a baseball cap.
“How’s it going, Mr. Rockefeller?”
“Actually, it’s going really well,” I laughed, looking at him. “I had a gale force wind blowing almost all week!”
Bob understood what I meant, but he didn’t quite share my enthusiasm. While his metasenses were king in the water, I had my stock portfolio wired into my tactile arrays. It created that spine tingling feeling of money on the move.
“As long as you’re happy,” Bob replied skeptically. He shook his head and sat up on the couch.
The last time I’d seen him was when we were surfing, when Brigitte and I had split.
“I heard you quit Infinixx.”
“Yeah, Nancy is kinda full of herself these days, don’t you think?”
I didn’t mention the investigation into my tinkering with the Infinixx code. Nothing had come of it, and I’d
