off in virtual worlds as they stampeded through synthetic savannahs while vet–bots tended to their real bodies in downtime.
Not much wild was left in the world today. It was ironic that tourists now lined up to come to a completely artificial island built to perfect synthetic reality, all to enjoy a shred of the old reality hiding inside it by dusting themselves down in smarticles.
Smarticles were the pixie dust that permeated everything on Atopia, a system of nanoscale particles that worked as both a sensor and communication network, floating everywhere in the air and water. They suffused through the bodies of living creatures to lodge into their nervous systems to form the foundation of pssi.
Pssi enabled not just jumping off into virtual worlds, but also the sharing of experiences and even bodies. A philosopher had once rhetorically asked what it was like to be a bat, meaning that it was something we could never know, but out here on Atopia, you could inhabit a bat, a bear, a fish, a shark, a tree, and even, sometimes, yourself.
The beaming sun was drying the salt water into crystals on my skin, making it itchy as it baked, and I scratched my neck and shifted positions on my board. A breeze mixed the sea air with the musty odor of a tangle of seaweed floating nearby.
While the water was cold, my pssi tuned it out and I was perfectly comfortable. I just had to be careful my muscles didn’t get too sluggish when it came time for action.
Seagulls squawked and wheeled in the sky, and otters were playing out in the kelp not far away, chattering away about whatever otters chattered about. Some were floating around on their backs, eating a breakfast of clams they had scrounged from aquaculture bins below.
Out here I felt a certain peace that escaped me elsewhere, a deep meditative calm outside the madness. I came out here often to think about Nancy, to think about my brother, to think about how I had messed everything up. Looking up, I could see nimbus clouds striping the blue cathedral of the sky.
It was just another day in paradise.
After some fuss, Vince Indigo, the famous founder of PhutureNews, had agreed to come surfing with me this morning. He’d become my regular surf buddy this past year, but had recently, and suddenly, dropped off the map.
Convincing him to come out this morning had been a major struggle, and even then, he didn’t look like he was enjoying himself. He was just staring off into space, not his usual chatty self. I was about to call out to Vince, to see what was bugging him, when I was interrupted.
“Hey.”
I looked down to find Martin sitting on the front of my board. We bobbed up and down in the swells together.
“Hey to you too, buddy,” I responded sheepishly. “Sorry about this morning, I know it was your birthday.”
Martin always kept the same clean-cut, square jawed image going despite the vagaries of fashion—fashion being so ugly these days, apparently, that its look had to be changed almost hourly. I grinned back into his pale blue eyes, a reflection of my own, and admired the tight buzz cut he was sporting today. Buzz Aldrin came to mind, or perhaps better, Buzz Lightyear.
You could hardly have imagined two twins more different.
“Don’t worry about it. Dad always gets worked up about that stuff, I don’t care.”
“Yeah he sure does,” I laughed, “and thanks for not ratting on me. So, Inuit huh? No Eskimos left in this world today?”
“Not according to me, I guess.”
We laughed together. It was nice.
“I just get so tired of him talking about Jimmy all the time,” I added, and Martin nodded.
When we were growing up here, I’d been just about the only one who’d tried befriending Jimmy. He’d been something of an oddball kid, but he shared the same birthday as my brother and I, so I guess I’d felt some kind of natural affinity towards him.
When his parents had abandoned Jimmy as a teenager, Patricia Killiam, his godmother and head of Solomon House Research Center, had asked our family to take him in. No good deed goes unpunished, as they said, and the downward spiral our family had been in, just continued ever steeper. To our father, Jimmy was now the shining star and savior of our family honor.
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” agreed Martin.
“I guess it’s hard to be encouraging if your son is a stoner surfer,” I laughed. “Anyway, who cares? I’m doing what I love.”
“Then what more could you ask for?”
I laughed and shrugged.
“Got some big action today?” he asked, changing the topic.
“Huge.”
I was sure he’d already checked out the big barrels being laid down across the northern crescent. Storm systems were generating some dangerous waves today, and that was just how I liked it.
“Anything interesting coming in?”
One of my phuturecasts was focused on incoming swells as it predicted the shape and size of the break, how the pipe developed and a dozen other factors. I could just sit here and watch the horizon for waves, but this way I could track swells coming from miles out and select the perfect one to get set at just the right point.
“Yeah, there have been a few nice ones, but I’m waiting for the real beast.”
Martin laughed. “Always the perfectionist, huh?”
“Well, with some things anyway.”
“Yeah, with some things.” He smiled and looked away.
“Bob!” came a yell from across the water. It was Vince, waving at us. “Bob, I need to get going!”
“Already?”
“Yeah, I need to get back to that thing.”
“I have a hard time imagining anyone telling you what to do,” I observed.
Vince was one of the richest guys in the world, and lately all he’d be doing was surfing with me. I wondered what had suddenly gotten his hair on fire.
“Anyway, ping me if you change your mind. Hey, you should check out all that weird stuff on the news channels, and good luck!”
“Thanks, Bob,” he replied as his primary subjective flitted off, leaving his proxxi to guide his body home, “and good luck to you to!”
Both Martin and I waved goodbye, and then sat silently for a few minutes, enjoying the sea, sky and silence.
Martin looked down awkwardly. He was struggling with something.
“Bob, we should probably have a chat. I want to understand what’s going on with you.”
I looked down too.
“Yeah, I’ve been wanting to talk to you too…”
Maybe the time was right to bring up the gorilla in the room, but just then my metasenses started tingling.
“… but maybe in a few minutes?” I blurted out.
I detached my primary subjective point of view to spin it far out into the Pacific. My viewpoint coasted in just above the water, following a monster swell that was making its way towards us. It was huge, at least twenty feet deep, even out in the open ocean, and as I followed, it sprayed and frothed angrily, surging powerfully towards the glimmering speck of Atopia in the distance.
“This is the one I’ve been waiting for! I totally want to talk, but could I catch this wave first?”
I snapped hard back into my body and, using a phantom, punched up a visual overlay of how this wave would be breaking in a few minutes.
“No problem,” Martin laughed, pointing at the simulation. “Oh yeah, that’s gonna be huge!”
The wave would peak at nearly forty feet and generate an almond shaped pipe that would continuously sweep past the northern crescent for more than two miles. The system selected an optimal drop-in point and I
