towards the ceiling of the crystal enclosure. It left a few feathers behind in its desperate flight. We all turned to watch it fly away. Mrs. McInnis beamed at me.
“Jimmy is my newest addition to the Security Council,” laughed Rick, raising an eyebrow back at the General.
“Well, he certainly has a flair with people,” replied the General. He smiled at me.
“That is absolutely the truth,” added Mrs. McInnis. At that moment, someone leaned in to touch her arm, obviously an old friend.
“Oh Margie! Did you see that?” she said as she turned away, and then peeled off from us. “Excuse me, gentlemen.”
We all nodded politely as she left. General McInnis, I could see from research notes that floated into a splinter from Samson, had been Rick’s commanding officer on two tours of duty back in Nanda Devi.
“Proxxids may seem odd, sir, but my parents fought so much,” said Rick after a pause, apparently getting back to the topic they’d been talking about before I’d arrived. “I’m just trying to be careful.”
“Could have fooled me,” laughed the General, “that third tour you signed up for was some heavy duty. That didn’t strike me as the plan of a man being careful.”
“Well I mean…”
“I know what you mean, son. Look, I don’t blame you, running away out here. Heck, getting overrun by a squad of five hundred pound steroid-raging Silverbacks in full battle armor would be enough to make anyone wet their pants.”
Rick straightened up. “With all due respect, sir, I’ve never run away from anything.”
“Well maybe you haven’t. Then again, maybe you have,” the General stated evenly. He then turned to size me up. I returned his gaze steadily. “Young man, what do you think of these proxxids?”
“I think what Commander Strong is doing is absolutely the best thing,” I replied without hesitation. “We test most things in life before we dive in, why not test how we’d like our children to be?”
The General looked unconvinced, so I added, “There’s no harm in it, and I think he should try it out until he feels comfortable.”
Rick looked at me appreciatively.
The General considered this, and then turned to look at Rick.
“Coming out here seems a perfect way to start over, Rick. Just really get started is all I’m saying, don’t pretend, son. All this gimmickry can’t replace the real thing.” He stood and stared at the Commander for a moment before adding, “Don’t spend too much time trying to test out life, just live it. Having a child may help bring some meaning to your relationship.”
I watched both of them intently.
“Anyway,” said the General, clapping Rick on the shoulder, “I’m just calling it how I see it. I know you must have a lot of glad-handing to do here, son, I’ll let you get on your way.”
With that he turned away to find his wife.
“Jimmy, nice to meet you, and Rick, all the best,” said the General as he left, giving us the tiniest of salutes.
“Very nice to meet you too, sir,” I said to the retreating General, earning me a nod as he wound his way out through the crowd towards his wife.
I could see how deeply this issue with Rick’s wife was affecting him, and I was studying Commander Strong when the General spoke about Nanda Devi. I could taste an edge of fear. Of weakness.
“You look just scrumptious!”
I spun on my heels, champagne in hand, to find a stunning brunette staring at me, her long, wavy hair falling in tresses over tanned shoulders. A gossamer dress in abstract floral patterns fluttered around her like leaves in a nubile cyclone, barely obscuring an athletic frame underneath. She laughed nervously, watching me smiling at her.
Commander Strong grinned at the two of us, taking a long second look at the brunette.
“Well, I think I’ll leave you to it, I’ve got to go and talk to some people still.” With a wink my way, he was off.
“Those ADF Whites sure look good on you, Jimmy,” continued the brunette, glancing at the departing Rick and then returning her smile to me. She obviously knew me, but seemed edgy.
I definitely knew her too, but couldn’t quite place her. I was suppressing my pssi memory, determined to work on exercising my own mind’s memory systems. Lately, I could feel a deep welling of energy seeping outwards from within me the more time I spent in my own skin.
Most pssi-kids hardly spent any time at all in their own bodies as they spread their splintered minds across the multiverse. This led to a loss of neural cohesion between their minds and bodies, but they didn’t care. I did. It was almost touching to see this girl had come in her own body, even if she was probably just making a show of it.
But what was her name? It was the first time I’d worn the ADF Whites, and I had to admit, they fit just perfectly. I guess there really was nothing like champagne and a man in uniform to get a girl all weak kneed. I smiled as the light dawned.
“Cynthia!” I exclaimed. “It’s been a long time.”
“Yeah, I know. I haven’t seen you since, well, since Nancy’s 13birthday party…” she trailed off, looking embarrassed.
I let the uncomfortable silence settle for a moment. I liked the way it made her look vulnerable.
“Hey, we were kids,” I said finally, letting her off the hook. “I was a bit of an awkward kid. You, you were…”
“I was awful.”
“I was going to say beautiful. Come on, you weren’t awful. It was a weird situation.”
“I was. Jimmy, I didn’t get a chance to ever apologize for that. I’m really sorry.”
“Hey, it helped focus me at the time, and look where that got me,” I said, sweeping my arm towards all the important looking dignitaries. “I should be thanking you.”
“No, I don’t think you should be thanking me.”
She shook her head, looking down, but then looking back up at me.
“Just look at you now, Mr. Jimmy Jones,” she laughed, looking back up and admiring me in full. “You sure have changed.”
“Oh,” I said, “you have no idea.” She really did have no idea.
We stared at each other, tingling in the electricity of what may come next.
“So, you call that an apology?” I asked, drawing her in. “That just now?”
“Yes,” she laughed, “yes, it was, Jimmy.”
“I think maybe I need a longer apology-over dinner.”
She smiled. “That sounds like a great idea. When?”
“No time like the present,” I replied with a wink. Things were done here.
She leaned into me to give me a kiss.
“Sounds perfect.”
Something inside me growled, and I took her hand, leading her towards the exit.
Identity: Patricia Killiam
“Are you sure?”
Atopia wasn’t just about perfecting synthetic reality. Technologies we’d developed here also enabled us to lead the cutting edge in many other fields. As senior researcher, my own pet project was the deep neutrino array.
We’d seeded the Pacific Ocean basin with a carpet of modified smarticles to act as a vast sensor mote network of photoreceptors, searching out the blackness of the depths for flashes of Cherenkov radiation that signaled the passing of neutrinos-the Pacific Ocean Neutrino Detector. The POND was our part of the quest to verify predictions of neutrinos from parallel universes passing through our own.
“Well, the signal is there.”
