The General’s image was now projected into Command. He just stood there, not sure what to say as he scratched his head.
“You kids sure have some explaining to do.”
One by one, surprised and shocked expressions clicked through the other faces in Command, and I wondered what was happening until suddenly it happened to me too.
The storms were gone.
I spun out from Patricia’s office to click into my splinters arrayed out around Atopia and it was all the same- blue skies, calm seas, the coast of America sitting serenely on the horizon.
The F35s were buzzing angrily around in the skies in tight orbits, watching us carefully as navy destroyers ringed us further out, with their weapons armed and pointing at us.
“We were just about to blow you out of existence, son,” said the General after another moment.
It all became clear. As Jimmy released information, the mediaworlds began to buzz and then roar with stories. The citizens of Atopia had been infected with a group-synthesizing reality skin. While we had driven Atopia into the coast of America, in our minds trying to save ourselves from non-existent storms projected from an infected reality skin, the rest of the world had watched in puzzlement and amazement.
Atopia had at first inexplicably breached American territorial waters, and then had begun furiously shipping off non-nationals via its passenger cannon. Amid confusing and contradictory stories, Atopia had stowed and locked itself down, cut off all communications as it approached land, and then begun powering up its fearsome weapons systems. America had no choice but to prepare to defend itself.
If we’d powered up the slingshot and mass driver, America had its finger on the trigger to unleash a hailstorm of tactical nuclear weapons to destroy us, an attack that even we couldn’t have repelled.
Patricia rematerialized in her office with me as I watched all this in my display spaces. She looked grim. My anger had totally deflated.
“I guess you’re right, Patricia,” I said as she appeared. “What could be worse than letting billions of people die? Thank God Jimmy figured it out.”
“Don’t thank God,” said Patricia quietly under her breath. “To be honest Bob, there may be something worse, and that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, but I wasn’t sure until now.”
She looked at me with infinitely weary eyes.
“Bob, I need you to do something for me.”
“What’s that?”
“I need you to leave Atopia, as soon as they open up the surface, and take as many of your friends as you can. Take Sid, Willy, Brigitte, and please, take Nancy away from here.”
“Why?” I asked, shocked.
I’d never even considered leaving Atopia before. It was all I’d ever known. Even the thought of leaving made my skin crawl.
“I can’t explain right now, I just need you to trust me. Even I’m not sure right now. It’s just a precaution.”
“Give me one good reason!” I demanded. Even if I wasn’t really angry anymore, my trust in her was almost completely gone.
“For one thing,” she said slowly and with effort, “Willy’s connection here through Terra Nova will almost certainly be revoked-he will be in effect exiled. Do you want him to go alone?”
I sat thinking on this for a moment. Jimmy had mentioned it, but I hadn’t considered it as a real possibility.
“I have a feeling that Willy and Sid will be implicated in what has happened,” she continued. “As soon as the surface opens I need you to get away from Atopia, and please take Nancy. I can’t explain more than that for now.”
Looking tired beyond comprehension, she added, “I need some time to myself. Oh, and one last thing, apologize to Vince for me-I couldn’t get Kesselring to remove the system we have chasing him.”
I nodded. She just looked at me sadly and then closed the connection to her office.
I snapped back into my body, down with Nancy and Sid in the dimly lit cafeteria. Robert had taken my body out of the water and we all sat together at one of the tables, everyone splintered out watching the media frenzy. Wet towels were draped around Nancy and I. They were all transfixed by the unfolding media storm.
Only Jimmy had been able to see it. The media stories began buzzing about links to Terra Nova as synthetic forensic intelligences tore backwards through the path of the virus, reverse hacking to where it had come from. Images of Jimmy, the savior, were featured on the covers of magazines and billboards, instantly appearing in millions of metaworlds. Information about the coming phuture apocalypses gained ground.
Stories began to emerge about the phuturecasts of world destruction Patricia had been hiding, how the Atopia pssi program was designed as the solution to save us, and how Terra Nova had attempted to stop this for their own profit. Stories were even circulating about the how Patricia had been hiding some of the addictive effects of pssi, but how there were ways to control it. In the middle of it all remained the image of Patricia, struggling to stop Jimmy from saving us all.
Jimmy had saved the world, and a grateful world was held spellbound.
“Patricia wants us all to leave,” was all I said on my return to the gang.
Everyone turned towards me, shocked, as parts of their minds disengaged from the media frenzy to comprehend what I was saying. I left a splinter to explain what had happened while I flitted off to the surface for a walk on the beach.
I needed to clear my mind and put things in order.
29
Identity: Patricia Killiam
“No publicity is bad publicity,” said Kesselring, standing uncomfortably in my office, “but how on earth did you let this viral skin get past you?”
I just stared at him and took a drag from my cigarette.
“You are our chief scientist-you must understand how this looks,” added Kesselring. “The blame for hiding any data regarding the trials has to come down on your shoulders.”
I was the scapegoat.
Jimmy and Kesselring had pre-empted my plan to release the hidden data on the pssi program through Sintil8. By coming clean at this moment, and laying the blame on my doorstep at the same time as exposing the apocalyptic phuturecast data, they had neatly jiu-jitsued themselves into the position of saviors and simultaneously thrust the pssi program into the global mind.
“You can’t buy advertising like that,” I bitterly complained, “and it looks like you don’t need me anymore.”
I was tired beyond belief after the showdown with Jimmy. He had used some sort of pssi weapon to stun me into submission at the end, a part of the weapons program Kesselring had been hiding. I’d felt it once before, long ago when Jimmy had been exposed at Nancy’s thirteenth birthday party, but he was infinitely more powerful now.
“There will always be a place for you here, Patricia.”
Patronizing bastard.
“So what’s happening then?” I asked wearily.
“Jimmy had made some modifications for an override to the pssi network to stop something like this from ever happening again,” said Kesselring. While I felt defeated, he looked elated. “The media attention has boosted demand for the launch with consumers by an order of magnitude. We’ve already begun private distribution of smarticles into business ecospheres for early adopters.”
There was nothing I could say, nothing I could do anymore. I had created a monster, which I loved.
