I wiped the sweat off my forehead, rubbing my eyes. Why had she returned to my dreams now? I sighed. It must be the baby shower I was going to later in the day. Family events always made me think of Pamela, of a life I’d lost so long ago, a life I’d filled with senseless fluff but was now defending with everything I had.
Perhaps it wasn’t worth it. Why was I even trying? I could perhaps save my own life, but the future of the world? I knew the future, and it wasn’t something I wished I knew. In fact, I’d been trying my best to forget. I laid back down in the bed and put my heart back away, closing my eyes.
I needed to try and get some sleep.
7
Wasn’t a baby shower supposed to come before a baby was born? Anyway, it didn’t really matter. I was here to congratulate the happy couple.
I’d just materialized in the entertainment metaworld that Commander Strong had created for his family’s coming out party. Well, his sort-of family. Rick waved at me and I smiled and waved back, watching him hand his new simulated baby back to his wife.
Despite being a big believer in Patricia’s synthetic reality program, I couldn’t help feeling that these ‘proxxid’ simulated babies were slightly creepy, and I’d been hearing dark rumors hinting terrible things Dr. Granger had been using them for.
I would have avoided coming entirely, but this event had sprung up on my threat radar today. Convincing Rick that this proxxid, and having many more besides, was a good idea would somehow collapse a whole subset of threat vectors coming my way.
I didn’t like the idea of being so disingenuous, and I’d argued and tried to plan other contingencies all night with Hotstuff, but the alternatives were a lot more dangerous. After a little reflection, though, it didn’t seem a bad thing, and the happy couple seemed to be enjoying it.
“Congrats Commander!” I exclaimed as Rick neared, outstretching my hand. He shook it firmly, looking a little sheepish, and motioned towards the bar.
“Thanks, Vince. Oh, and thanks for those flowers the other day, Cindy really loved them.”
“No problem at all.”
We’d reached the bar. “So, what’ll it be?” he asked.
I surveyed the bottles. “Nothing for me, thanks.”
Right now wasn’t the time for a drink. It would have only been a synthetic drink for me, so I could choose whether to feel intoxicated or not, but the real issue was the interpersonal engagement. Taking a drink would necessitate having a chat, and I felt very uncomfortable about having to lie to my friend.
I shrugged weakly.
“You sure?” he asked, dropping some ice cubes into a cut glass tumbler and topping it off with a more than generous dose of whiskey.
“Yeah, I’m just kind of busy.”
I was struggling with what needed to come next. Rick fidgeted in front of me, taking a big gulp from his drink and smiling awkwardly.
“This thing, it’s just a little game,” he laughed, misinterpreting my discomfort as mockery. Knocking back another big swig from his drink he shook his head, looking towards his wife holding their proxxid. “I’m just doing it to keep her happy, you know how it is.”
The time had come.
“No, no, absolutely this is the best thing,” I said enthusiastically, “you need to do this. This is the way of the future!” I clapped Rick on the back to emphasize the point.
He snorted and took another big swig of his drink, his face brightening.
“I mean it, Rick, you should have as many simulated babies as you can before going on to the real thing.”
“You really think so?”
“I do my friend, I do.” I put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it encouragingly. I felt terrible. I had to get out of there as quickly as possible. “Listen, I have to get going, though. Sorry. Give Cindy a kiss for me, okay?”
“I will.” He nodded, smiling.
I hesitated. Maybe I shouldn’t do this. Perhaps I should just come clean, see if he could help me with my problem.
“Go on,” laughed Rick, “get going!”
As much as I was struggling with lying to Rick, there was nothing I could do. I nodded goodbye and faded away from the sensory space of his party.
I needed a little break to think about things, so decided on a walk in one of my private spaces. I materialized walking along a dusty path next to the Crystal Mountain in the middle of the Sahara desert in Egypt, near the border of Libya.
This place held a mystical, almost magnetic, attraction to me, a massive single quartzite crystal that rose up hundreds of feet out of the barren, limestone landscape surrounding it. I’d recently installed my own private sensor network here, in secret, as the open wikiworld version lacked the resolution to really experience it, to enjoy the nuances and stark beauty of the place. It allowed me a place to wander truly alone; to enjoy some peace for short stretches in my newly frightening personal reality.
Night was falling, spreading its indigo carpet across the sky to reveal the cathedral of stars that shone only in the deepest of deserts. The perpetual wind here, the Sirocco, whistled softly, carrying with it the sand that over the aeons had etched the limestone bedrock into fantastical forms that sprang up out of the desert floor like giant gnomes and mushrooms, lending the lifeless place an interior life of its own.
Massive sand dunes sat hunched in the distance, slowly sailing their lonely courses across the bare bedrock, their hulks propelled by the same unrelenting wind that shaped this place. As they moved, they swallowed everything in their paths, but, just as inevitably as they consumed, they would eventually release as they moved on. You just had to stand still long enough, exist long enough, to be released.
I stepped slowly between the ghostly sandstone figures that towered above me, frozen in time in their mad dance together. The Crystal Mountain glowed in an ethereal purple above it all, its interior lit by a million tiny points of starlight.
It was a strange thing not being able to see my future hanging there in front of me. I mean, I could see my phutures, sense the nearness of their reality in the splinters of my distributed consciousness spreading out ahead of me, but now they all terminated abruptly. The fingers of time I’d carefully nurtured over the years had now been painfully amputated.
Where before the future had flowed straight ahead of me, like a train running to known destinations where I could just switch stations on a whim as the rails flowed past. Now all tracks ahead ended in flames. A suffocating fire enveloped me, the future choking the lifeblood out of my present. I felt trapped in the moment.
“Hotstuff, could you pop in for a sec?”
Hotstuff, my proxxi, obediently materialized next to me. In sharp contrast to the dreamlike landscape I had lost myself in, her vitality and energy sizzled into this space. She was looking extremely sharp in tight, striped riding pants and boots with a low cut, high necked red jacket. Her long blond hair fell in waves down her back and across her shoulders.
Some people liked to create some sort of alter ego as their proxxi, which was all fine for them. I preferred to have an attractive woman as my personal assistant. Plus I liked the idea of a woman driving my body around when I wasn’t in it.
“So did you hear what Patricia said the other day?” I asked as she appeared, trying not to dwell on the implications of me enjoying having a woman enter my body when I was away.
“What, that stuff about being concerned about you?”