the technology that could pick apart and decipher emotions, and you could be sure he wouldn’t ever let you forget it. I tried not to roll my eyes.
“What was more important to understand?” he asked angrily while we walked through the hydroponics. “What someone says, or the emotional reason behind why they said it? Who knows more about happiness than me?”
“I’d say they’re both just as important,” I replied. Dr. Granger had used his growing fame to secure the position as head psychologist on Atopia. No matter what one thought of him, it was best to tread a careful line.
He stopped walking and turned to look at me.
“Exactly.”
One of the grow farm staff walked by and gave Dr. Granger a curt, respectful nod. His office was a few floors down from here, far away from the other senior staff, which was unusual. Observing him on our walk I think I knew why.
As we were walking, Dr. Granger had been watching the blank faces of the psombie inmates, and each of the staff had almost stood at attention while we passed. It was a structured and controlled environment, one that made him feel both powerful and safe. And important.
Most of the psombies here were people incarcerated for crimes, their minds and proxxi disconnected from their bodies as they waited out their sentences in multiverse prisonworlds. Even in paradise, we needed correctional services. Their bodies were consigned to community work around Atopia in the interim, safely guided by automated psombie minders.
While most of the psombies here were inmates, an increasing number were people who donated their bodies for community work while they flitted off amusing themselves in the multiverse. These people judged their bodies without enough value to even warrant leaving their proxxi to inhabit them.
“We’d better start a new special file on Patricia,” he said after a pause.
I shrugged. It wasn’t my place to argue. We continued walking.
“Shimmer!” he called out to his proxxi, who then appeared walking beside us.
Shimmer was a perfectly androgynous creature. As a synthetic being, sex was superfluous in the biological sense, but still critical in others. It was Shimmer’s ability to understand aspects of both sexes, and fluidly understand their emotional dynamics, that had made Dr. Granger famous. It was his lifetime’s work, although most people whispered that it was based on taking credit for his graduate students’ efforts over the years.
“Yes, Dr. Granger?” Shimmer replied. “Do you want me to start a new log entry on Dr. Killiam? Already done, sir.”
“Thank you Shimmer,” replied Dr. Granger, smiling at his proxxi. “Now please, I need to speak with this young gentleman alone.”
“Yes Dr. Granger.”
Shimmer faded away.
Hal turned to look at me while we walked, his hands now clasped behind his back.
“Do you really think it’s possible?” he asked, returning to the reason he had asked me to walk with him today. “I mean, with the technology we have now?”
“Absolutely,” I replied. “The project has been going on for some time, as you well know, in fact using some of your own work. Conscious transference-a lot of people have been working on it. But the trick, of course, is to get it right, for you to
“And if I agree to support you, to support this, you will make sure that I’m the first?”
As good as medical technology was these days there was always the risk of the unexpected, of some accident sending you suddenly into the forever of oblivion. Dr. Granger wasn’t as concerned about his life, however, as much as he was about his fame surviving.
“Yes,” I replied simply. “It will take some time, though, certainly not before the commercial launch of pssi.”
“Good, good,” he said thoughtfully, apparently satisfied. He smiled at the mindless faces of some psombies that we passed.
“You know, Jimmy, you’re always working, you should find yourself a nice girl, find some emotional balance.”
He’d started into his EmoShow routine now, his face now serious and concerned.
He laughed. “I’m sure a good looking young man in your position must have girls throwing themselves at your feet. What I mean is you should find someone special.”
Saying nothing, I just nodded and silently continued on our walk down to his offices. I had found someone special, but I wasn’t going to share that with him.
Susie was a girl I’d had a special attraction to for a long time now. She was a unique soul, her emotions and sensations finely attuned, and I’d always felt like we shared a special bond.
I’d known her as a fellow pssi-kid, but she’d come to my attention again, and become a celebrity in her own right, when as a teen she’d turned herself into a living piece of installation artwork by mapping the emotional and physical state of each of the world’s ten billion souls into her pain system.
She literally felt the pain of the world; a bloated stomach when the Weather Wars flared up again in India, a burning calf for food riots in Rio, a painful pinprick when terrorists blew up a monorail transport in California.
Susie bravely bore the pain of the world like a Mahatma Ghandi of the multiverse, imploring people to stop what they were doing. Her impassioned pleas, featuring her painfully writhing nubile body, had been happily broadcast on obliging, bemused world news networks as the latest and greatest from the magical world of Atopia.
Her star had risen, and in turns had made her the source of both ridicule and inspiration. After a short while, though, the world had gotten bored and gone back to its media mainstay of killing and maiming.
For Susie the project hadn’t been a fad, but her calling in life. Even when the world had turned off, she’d kept going. In the process, she’d gained a small but diehard following of hippie flitterati that protected her from the ridicule of the world, forming an almost impenetrable sphere of free floating flower children that inhabited the metaworlds around her, like petals on a painful daisy.
I’d been trying to get in touch with Susie for a long time, but it was nearly impossible to get through her protective entourage. I needed a way in. My security systems had recently flagged some unusual and illegal splintering activity from my old friend Willy, and it seemed I had found a way.
§
“Well, you’re in tight with Susie,” I explained at a lunch I’d arranged with Willy later in the day.
The light dawned in Willy’s face, realizing what I’d asked him there for. I’d kept the reason for our meeting secret, and upon arrival I had enclosed us in an extremely tight security blanket. I could see his need for money begin to spin the cranks behind his eyes.
“If you help me,” I explained, “maybe I could help you.”
“Sure,” he replied slowly, trying to hide his greed, “and what would you help me with?”
“I could help you,” I answered, “by getting access to higher order splintering.”
“Oh yeah? So, what, like you could double my account settings or something?”
“Much,” I laughed, “much more than that Willy. I could show you how to fix the system to have almost unlimited splintering. You’ll blow everyone else in the market away.”
He glanced at the glittering blue security blanket around us.
“So nobody else can know what we’re talking about, right?”
“Absolutely, Willy. I’m the security expert, remember?”
“Right.”
“So what’s the deal then, Mr. Security?”
“If you can get me a date with Susie, but I mean, really set me up with her, you know?” I paused, waiting for him to acknowledge what I meant. “Then I’ll set you up with what you need.”
“You can really pull it off, with nobody else knowing? No risk?”
“I sure can,” I responded, smiling. “Nobody will ever find out. Let me explain.”
Willy leaned in closer.
