“It looks like something borrowed from a Russian hydroelectric dam,” I joked with Patricia under my breath. She smiled, and I beamed out at to the assembled crowd.
Reaching out, I held both of their hands in mine, and then let go to reach out and touch the switch. It felt cool and hard and hummed as it coursed with unseen power. The lights dimmed and the countdown began. The whole auditorium joined in as if it were New Year in Times Square.
“Ten!” they all shouted out. “…nine…eight…”
“Aunt Pattie,” I said, turning to look at her with tears in my eyes, “I’ve decided that I’d like it to be you who throws the switch. All this, everything here is all because of you!”
The crowd continued to roar the countdown, “…six…”
“I’d love to sweetheart,” Patricia replied quickly, “but I had a last minute thing come up and I’m not here kinetically. You go ahead dear!”
“…five…”
“Okay Jimmy, how about you then? Go ahead. I really wanted it to be one of you two,” I said to him. I released the switch and encouraged Jimmy to take it.
“…three…two…”
“I’m really sorry Nance, I had something too. I’m only dialed in as well. You go ahead…quick now!”
“…ONE!”
The blood drained from my face. I could hear an audible ‘snap’ as the Chinese and Indians flipped their own switches at their remote locations. My metasenses felt the cavernous thrum of the Infinixx installations bootstrapping deep in the multiverse.
Okay, keep calm.
Perplexed faces around the room watched us on the stage, waiting for my main connecting switch to be thrown. I quickly queried each of the executives at the table with me, and my worry mounted. Karen had stayed with her kids; Louise, Brian, Cindy-nobody was physically present. They were all dialed in, despite my specific instructions requesting everyone to be here in person.
Then again, I thought as all my blood drained into my shoes and I gazed dreadfully into the audience: I wasn’t there either.
I could feel the switch in my hand, as cool and as hard as if I were standing there and holding it myself. The wikiworld simulated it perfectly, but I couldn’t budge it even a millimeter without having someone or something here physically.
After the disasters of destroyed power grids in the cyber wars, security protocols had been rewritten so that critical nodes in power systems had to be completely disconnected from any communication networks to prevent the ability to hack into them. Despite Atopia being at the center of the cyber world, we had to conform to international security standards, especially for a project like this.
While I hadn’t overlooked this, I had expected at least one of my executive team or Board members to be here in person after specifically requesting all of their physical attendance, even verifying this just minutes before the event.
But of course, even I hadn’t listened to myself.
Staring out at the crowd, I took one last desperate step. I flipped my pssi into identity mode, removing all virtual and augmented objects from my senses. The buzzing, crowded room faded from view, and all I was left with was my own low groan of fear. Not a single person was in sight. The entire voluminous ballroom was as empty and quiet as a morgue.
I stared back at the green switch, now mocking me in humiliation.
Already the assembled crowd and world press had figured out what had happened, and I was being pinged with a Times article trumpeting “Infinixx-Everywhere but Nowhere!”
Lawyers from the Indian and Chinese sides had already filed a lawsuit against us claiming monumental damages, and conspiracy theories were blossoming about connections to the Weather Wars. My executive team unlocked the exterior security perimeters, and I could see a psombie guard racing towards the stage.
“Forget it,” I told him as he got close to the stage.
I closed my eyes. It was already too late. Almost twenty seconds had passed, and the two other systems had already progressed too far into the bootstrap cycle for us to phase lock into them.
Millions of users had already logged into the systems and begun using them. We’d have to negotiate a downtime to reboot and lock all the systems together again at a later date, but for now we’d have to run them as separate domains, which meant users would only be able to distribute their consciousnesses locally. Technically, it wasn’t a total disaster, but it made me look incredibly foolish. Correction, it made us look foolish. Kesselring was furious at the damage done to the Atopian brand.
I painfully withdrew my conscious webwork back into a tight shell around myself like a cyber tortoise retreating from danger.
Already the world media had minted a new term for a Zen-like business failure of being everywhere but nowhere at the same time, a fail on a massive scale using your own sword to kill yourself.
They called it an Infinixx.
13
Identity: William McIntyre
The Police station loomed before me at the base of the vertical farming complex, and I was gingerly making my way towards it.
The Boulevard was the only real street we had, a wide pedestrian thoroughfare that crossed from the eastern to western inlets, crossing between the four gleaming vertical farm towers that center-pinned the island of Atopia.
Glamorous palms lined both sides of the street, bordering the tourist shops, restaurants, and bars whose terraces spilled out into the kaleidoscopic melee between. Even with the storms threatening and the evacuations announced, the atmosphere was still carefree and festive-at least for now.
It had been ages since I’d been above, and I hadn’t been to these parts since I was a tween. I blinked in the sunshine and confusion around me and tried to think my way through what was happening.
I felt so alone and exposed. Here I was, stuck in the middle of something clearly illegal, but what else could I do? I looked up at the towers and imagined myself as one of the psombies inside. Out of options, I just shrugged and opened the police station doors.
Cool, administrative air swept over me and the clerk at the desk, an attractive young woman, smiled at me synthetically.
“Can I help you, sir?” she asked, as sweet as a police officer could be.
“Yes, I’d like to file a missing person report,” I replied, walking towards her as calmly as I could.
Her face registered just the proper amount of seriousness before she queried, “And who is the missing person, sir?”
I paused for a moment.
“Me,” I answered.
After reporting my body missing to the police, the first person I turned to was Bob. It was funny how quickly you could go from feeling powerful and invincible to suddenly needing the protective embrace of friends. At least, I hoped they were still my friends.
“Hey there stranger, you take a wrong turn somewhere?” joked Bob as I appeared in one of his regular beach bar haunts. Even with the storm warnings, he was still surfing every day. Taking a swig of his beer, he waggled it towards me, asking if I wanted one. I shook my head.
“So what can I help you with?”
I sighed, casting a thick security blanket around us. We were immediately surrounded by its glittering and softly undulating shell. Bob raised his eyebrows, but just shrugged and took another swig.
