bad for always being away. We had a huge fight afterwards over it. It wasn’t his fault, but anyway, he and I were never really right.”
“I know, I know,” she responded soothingly. “What about Bob? Did you try him?”
I just shook my head as tears streamed down my face. “He dropped me a splinter, but he’s so stoned all the time. What’s the point?”
Aunt Pattie looked at me tenderly and dried my tears, and we continued to walk a while longer, stepping gently through the lollipops.
“I guess he just needs more time to heal as well.”
15
“WELL YOU JUST bloody well better figure out a way to fix it, my friend,” threatened Vicious, right up in Jimmy’s face.
Jimmy just laughed and walked through Vicious to pick up a file he was working on. Vicious sputtered indignantly.
We didn’t exactly make a very threatening package—the four stooges. I got the feeling that Jimmy had accepted to speak with us only as a courtesy to Bob. He didn’t really seem surprised or even to care. Then again, with the storms and him being newly appointed to the Security Council, he had a lot more important things on his plate right now.
“Look, I appreciate your situation, and I honestly feel for you,” Jimmy said after a moment, looking up from the file at me with disinterest, and then looking back to Bob and Sid. “I can’t do anything right now. I’m spread incredibly thin as it is. I just showed Willy where the tools were and, okay, sure I described how he could exploit some vulnerabilities, but so what?”
“Come on Jimmy, this is your fault, you can do better than that,” urged Bob. “We’ve got a real problem here, Willy is in serious trouble.”
“That’s an understatement,” laughed Jimmy, putting down the file. “Look, I’m really sorry about what happened. I was only trying to help Willy, to give him what he wanted.”
“Only to get what
Jimmy shrugged. “Aren’t friends supposed to help each other out?” He looked directly at Bob. “I mean, did you help him out? Did you even know how much financial trouble he was in?”
Bob looked away.
“I didn’t think so,” continued Jimmy. “Too caught up in getting stoned and partying with these idiots.” He motioned towards Sid and Vicious with a nod of his head, still looking at Bob. “Too busy having a good time to even pay attention to your family, which includes me now, if you haven’t forgotten.”
“Of course not,” said Bob quietly.
“You think I’m being uncaring?” Jimmy looked around at us all. “Have you seen the way Bob treats Martin?”
Nobody said anything, but the words almost physically impacted Bob. He rocked back on his feet a little.
“We all have problems, Bob,” added Jimmy, looking straight into Bob’s face now. “We all have our pain to deal with. You don’t think I’ve had it hard? I’m dealing with it, trying to become a part of the solution, taking responsibility. Going and laying blame everywhere else isn’t going to solve anything.”
This was starting to get personal.
“Look, this is my own fault okay?” I interjected, waving my hands in the air and stepping between Bob and Jimmy. “We’re not trying to lay blame, I’m just looking for a little help.”
Jimmy shook his head.
“I can’t help you, the situation you’ve created is beyond me right now.”
Bob and I both nodded, but Sid wasn’t buying it.
“Well then maybe we should go and speak with police about your part in this,” he suggested, trying his best to appear intimidating, but it just wasn’t him.
“And maybe I should tell those same police about some of the viral skins you’ve been letting loose in the cyber ecosystem,” replied Jimmy. “I’ve been watching you, my friend.”
“So what if he has?” bluffed Bob, now defending Sid. “Willy’s problem goes way beyond any nuisance Sid’s toys create.”
“Well maybe yes, but maybe no,” replied Jimmy in a threatening tone.
“What do you mean by that?” asked Bob.
“Go ahead and tell the police that I was involved,” replied Jimmy, ignoring Bob’s question, “but I’m the one on the Security Council, and it’s my job to know about the leaks, which I’ve since fixed by the way. And any chats I had with Willy were under tight security blankets, so it would be my word against his.” Jimmy let this settle awhile before adding, “Quite frankly, Willy being plugged through the perimeter and into Terra Nova, and us not being able to close the connection due to some legal nonsense, is a big problem.”
“So what? You’d just cut him off?” demanded Bob. “Where would he end up?”
“I don’t know, but definitely not here. Somewhere in the open multiverse I would guess.”
This was tantamount to exile, and brought cold stares from Bob and Sid. I felt like I was going to throw up.
“Look. I just showed him the tools he asked about. Willy’s a big boy. He’s the one who did it.”
Stony silence.
“Boys, look, I really have to go. We’ll talk later, okay?”
And he closed the connection.
16
AFTER THE CONFRONTATION with Jimmy, the whole gang had dove into my problem, trying to figure out what had happened.
I poked the embers of the dying fire, watching them dance.
The carpet of stars hung back above us like it did before, that day long ago when we were last camping at this spot. An owl hooted softly in the darkness. Bob sat with a beer balanced back on his knee, half illuminated by the fire, grinning at me.
“I told you everything would be fine, Willy,” Bob pointed out with his empty beer can.
I continued to stare into the fire, lost in my own thoughts.
What was it, I wondered, about the embers of a fire that so mesmerized me? I imagined the heat of the sun, warming green leaves of long ago, the leaves soaking up the sunshine, slowly converting this into the lignin and biomass of the tree trunk. Then today, after being stored for decades, that same captured sunshine was radiating back out as heat energy when we burned the wood, heating my hands and face as I watched in silent wonder.
Since my own consciousness hadn’t winked out, we had to assume that my body was alive and healthy somewhere out there.
We’d sent out a veritable private army to try and to find it, using up almost all of the considerable fortune I’d amassed as Atopia’s hottest stock jock in my brief blaze of glory back when I had a body.
The searching had begun within Atopia itself, a thorough physical search using platoons of pssi–minded cockroaches and rented psombies, followed by a full digital scan using a private cloud dustings of smarticles.
We’d quickly expanded the physical search radius into the watery surroundings and into cities directly connected to our passenger cannon. We sent out and rented time in uncountable bots and synthetics, even human
