crawling mass under my skin.
“Waaallly!” I cried out.
A burst of laughter erupted from behind the shower curtain. Immediately I knew what was happening.
“You assholes!” I exclaimed, turning to rip open the curtain, my face dripping and oozing worms, millipedes and other hideous creeping and crawling little creatures.
Hoots of laughter exploded from Bob, Martin, Sid, and Vicious as they held onto each other, crowded into the small shower stall.
“You should have seen your face, mate!” laughed Vicious, tears now streaming down his face as he gripped onto Sid, who was doubled over and laughing hard too. Bob was grinning widely, his arms around the others, shaking his head. I couldn’t help joining in laughing as well, despite it all.
“Fine,” I declared, “you got me. Okay Sid, make it stop.”
Immediately the itching stopped and the beasties quit wriggling. I absentmindedly rubbed my hand across my now smooth face, feeling the remains of the lather and my stubble.
“Sorry man,” said Sid, still wiping away tears, “when you asked Vince for a Phuture News upgrade, I slipped a skin in and you authorized it. You gotta pay more attention to what you’re doing!”
They all laughed some more.
“Hey it was Martin’s idea,” added Vicious, giving Martin a little shot in the shoulder.
“Oh yeah?” I replied, shaking my head and smiling at Martin. He smiled back timidly. I was glad him and Bob were hanging out.
I didn’t even remember authorizing that transaction, but I had already called it up on my inVerse. I really did need more sleep.
“Anyway,” added Bob, “the real reason for this escapade was to get the attention of our hardest working friend to ask him out for a surfing date.” He raised his eyebrows to make the point.
Smiling, I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Yeah okay, sure, how about the end of the day? I could use a break.”
“Outstanding!” replied Bob. “Okay guys, let’s leave our buddy to finish whatever he was starting.”
With that they were off and I was standing alone again in my bathroom. Well, apart from Wally now sitting on the toilet.
“I just didn’t see any harm in it,” he said before I could say anything. “I figured you and Bob could use a good laugh together. You hardly see him anymore.”
I rolled my eyes but smiled, and got back to shaving.
Just then, Jimmy pinged me for lunch.
I stopped shaving, calling up a display space for more information on the request, but there was none. I’d hadn’t seen or talked to Jimmy in years, so it was unusual that he’d just call me like this out of the blue.
Jimmy was Bob’s adoptive brother. He’d always been a bit of oddball as a kid, never quite fitting in, or perhaps, never quite understanding how to fit in. He’d had a tough time growing up, though, and being left behind by a parent was something I could relate to. I’d tried hanging out with him back then, until the incident at Nancy’s birthday party. After that, we’d barely spoken.
Some kids were just ugly ducklings, however, and as an adult he’d more than recovered. He was now the star of the pssi-kid program, and a minor celebrity in his own right. He’d risen far up the ranks, and had a lot of powerful friends. He’d be a good person to reconnect with, and maybe could even help me out.
“Well, you’re in tight with Susie,” explained Jimmy at our lunch table.
He wanted me to set him up with someone. Susie and I had been close childhood friends, even perhaps my first girlfriend, although at nine years old I hadn’t really understood the idea.
“If you help me,” he explained, “maybe I could help you.” He raised his eyebrows.
“Sure,” I replied cautiously, shrugging. Pretending it was an afterthought I added, “And what would you help me with?”
I smiled, wondering what on earth Jimmy would want with Susie. She just didn’t seem his type, but then there was no accounting for taste.
“Well, I think I could help you,” Jimmy answered, watching me carefully, “by getting access to higher order splintering.”
That both surprised and excited me. He obviously knew about my side project, but then again, he was now head of conscious security systems on Atopia.
“Oh yeah?” I tried to appear disinterested. “So what, like you could double my account settings or something?”
“Much,” he laughed, “much more than that Willy. I could show you how to fix the system to have almost unlimited splinters. You’ll blow everyone else in the market away.”
I glanced at the glittering blue security blanket around us.
“So nobody else can know what we’re talking about, right?”
I tested the security blanket with some of my phantoms, looking for holes, but of course this was a waste of time.
“Absolutely, Willy,” Jimmy replied with a wolfish grin. “I’m the security expert, remember?”
“Right.”
I paused.
“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?” He paused, raising his eyebrows again. I nodded, acknowledging my understanding. “Then, I’ll set you up with what you need.”
“You can really pull it off, with nobody else knowing?” I asked, slightly incredulous. “No risk?”
“I sure can,” he responded, smiling. “Nobody will ever find out. Let me explain…”
6
“OLYMPIA,” I WHISPERED to the test subject, lying out on the pod before me. No response. Her mind was still hovering somewhere in the nether regions between consciousness and unconsciousness.
I’d inhabited a robotic body, now in a doctor’s office in Manhattan, to personally attend to the end of the New York clinical trials.
After many years we’d almost reached the end of the process and Cognix was now on the verge of approval by the FDA. Approval here in America would trigger a cascade of approvals in other super-jurisdictions around the world. It was a critical juncture in the future of Cognix Corporation, and by extension, for Atopia as well.
Aunt Patricia had made it clear to make this a priority, so I was here in person. At least, a part of me was here in person. The splinter I had controlling this robody was circling at the very peripheries of my consciousness, just a voice in the background of all the buzzing activity that I was dealing with. As Olympia began to stir, the splinter dug deeper into my awareness matrix, prickling my brain, and my attention was drawn towards that one place, my mind automatically load balancing the other tasks and places and people I was dealing with seamlessly onto my proxxi and other splinters.
“Olympia,” I called out again, louder now. She twitched and one of her eyes fluttered, this signal of impending activity collapsing my awareness firmly into this space.
My mind shivered at the cold, confined reality it suddenly found itself in. “Does distributed consciousness really work?” whispered one far away splinter, attending a press conference in Australia. “Yes,” that splinter answered, “even while talking to you I am attending clinical trials in New York.” I was still listening to my other streams of consciousness, but these were now faint murmurs in the background of the physicality of this place.
I looked up at the lighting panels in the ceiling, feeling my robotic irises focus in and out, adjusting to the brightness, and then looked back down at Olympia as I gently cradled her head in my plastic hands.
Slowly, her eyes opened, her mind dredging itself up from beneath the sedatives. She wouldn’t see a robot
