were trying to demonstrate—so a mistake picking out any new employee tended to magnify itself. We were constantly having endless rounds of human resources meetings in our main conference room, discussing the merits of new candidates.
“Did you hear about Cynthia, that new administrative girl we hired?” asked my VP of Human Resources, at the start of one of those meetings. My VP of Synthetic Resources rolled her eyes and looked towards me, as if I- told-you-so.
Cynthia has been a great hire, but had recently dropped off the radar without any warning. People disappearing off into cyber hedonistic fantasy worlds weren’t uncommon, but Cynthia had been my pick. She’d seemed a little more reliable than that.
“Yeah, I heard about that. So her neural functions are off the charts, but they can’t find her and she’s off in the multiverse somewhere?” asked Kelly, my co–founding business partner.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with us, does it?” I suddenly exclaimed, pulling the splinter for this meeting into the center of my consciousness.
“No, nothing to do with us,” confirmed Kelly, “but speaking of strange, how about Vince Indigo. Have you seen the flash death mobs he’s attracting?”
There were a few laughs around the table. I stayed quiet. I had a feeling Vince and Patricia were up to something, but didn’t want to say anything. Cunard pinged me right then for the start to yet another press event.
“The Security Council has taken over Cynthia’s file now,” said Brian, our Chief Technical Officer, bringing the discussion back. “Let’s keep moving. Speaking of the Security Council, what does everyone think of Jimmy getting nominated?”
“I think Jimmy is great,” I replied.
“Of course you would,” snorted Kelly. “More of the Killiam clan in charge, but then what’s good for the goose…”
“Hey!” I said defensively. “That’s not fair. Jimmy’s family is barely related to mine.” My cheeks blushed.
They all rolled their eyes.
Jimmy was related to me, but only distantly. Our great-grandfathers had been cousins, whatever that made us. All of that didn’t make any difference to me, and the awkwardness I felt now was because Patricia had asked Bob’s family to adopt Jimmy when he’d been left in her care.
I’d been dating Bob at the time, and in fact we’d been inseparable as children. From that point on, though, I’d been teased for dating what amounted to my cousin, if only cousin-in-law. Childhood taunts had a way of sticking with you in life.
“Gang, I have to get to the next press event,” I added, happy for a reason to exit-stage-left, and flitted off for the next press conference.
9
“WILLY!”
Whole scaffolds of my conscious webwork collapsed as Bob forced his way in using one of Sid’s viral skins. Sid was going to get in trouble with his little sidelines one day, but then again, who was I to talk?
I hadn’t seen Bob in weeks, maybe longer. Work had totally absorbed me, and to focus I’d begun filtering all of my communications straight into my proxxi.
“Willy!” yelled Bob at maximum volume across my full audio spectrum. “Wiiiillllly!”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here,” I responded, releasing most of my splinter network into autopilot and distilling a good chunk of myself back into a private workplace where I’d pulled Bob.
Bob smiled goofily as we both materialized into each others’ sensory spaces. We were sitting across from each other in one of my meeting spaces. I was sitting straight up in a chair at one end of the room, dressed in a blazer and slacks, while he had draped himself over a leather couch facing me, wearing only his swimming shorts and a baseball cap.
“How’s it going, Mr. Rockefeller?”
“Actually, it’s going really well,” I laughed, looking at him. “I had a gale force wind blowing almost all week!”
Bob understood what I meant, but he didn’t quite share my enthusiasm. While his metasenses were king in the water, I had my stock portfolio wired into my tactile arrays. It created that spine tingling feeling of money on the move.
“As long as you’re happy,” Bob replied skeptically. He shook his head and sat up on the couch.
The last time I’d seen him was when we were surfing, when Brigitte and I had split.
“I heard you quit Infinixx.”
“Yeah, Nancy is kinda full of herself these days, don’t you think?”
I didn’t mention the investigation into my tinkering with the Infinixx code. Nothing had come of it, and I’d gotten what I’d wanted.
Bob raised his eyebrows.
“Geez, Nancy was always a sweetheart…” he started to say, but was lost for words as he watched me.
“Hey you’re not mad at me are you?” he asked. “I mean, that Brigitte thing. Sid and I were just messing around.”
I shook my head.
“Don’t worry about it,” I sighed.
Thinking of Brigitte made my stomach tighten into knots, and my patience suddenly evaporated. I had a lot of stuff to get done. Bob watched me in silence, unconvinced with my answer, but changed topics anyway.
“So who are hanging out with these days?” he asked.
“Ah, just work people, you know…”
It wasn’t like he really worked anyway, so why should I bother explaining? Maybe accepting his ping had been a bad idea. Now I felt annoyed. Just then Wally warned me that Vince Indigo was waiting. I didn’t remember taking a meeting with Vince. Wally was telling me that he had already alerted me five minutes ago, but I had been so far splintered that it hadn’t registered.
“Listen, I have Vince Indigo waiting in person,” I said, happy for a reason to cut our chat short. “Big client, I’d better go.”
“Yeah, okay, sure,” Bob replied quietly. He squinted and cocked his head to one side. “Do you think you could ask Vince if he’s okay, for me? All this stuff on Phuture News is kind of weirding me out.”
“I’m really not comfortable doing that,” I replied quickly, my annoyance mounting. “I don’t know him very well. Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
Bob shrugged. “He doesn’t answer my pings anymore.”
I shouldn’t either. “Look, this is business…”
Bob looked down. “Right. Anyway, let’s hang out soon, yeah? I think we should talk about all this stuff, all your work changes and Brigitte and all.”
“Sure, sure, gotta go,” I said dismissively and waved goodbye, leaving a wafer thin splinter behind.
I flitted back into real space at my apartment where Vince was waiting for me. Unimpressed visions of Bob watching me go persisted in several of my visual channels.
“So, I assume business is good?” asked Vince, noting my arrival.
He was wandering around the periphery of my apartment, staring outwards at the projected spaces of my growing business in the multiverse world of New London.
My new offices had been designed by one of the most sought-after interior metaworld designers. The glass walled space was floating in air, suspended above an almost endless array of cubicles housing renderings of my splintered parts, sub–proxxi and other synthetic beings and bots that were spawned outwards from my own cognitive systems. It was thousands of me working for me.
“Business is very, very good,” I replied, grinning widely. I wanted to tell him I’d found a back door to Infinixx,
