“No, it’s too dangerous to talk with the Terra Novans right now,” I replied.
“But not too dangerous to be talking with gangsters who’ve been trying to infiltrate Cognix?”
I stared at Marie. Of course she knew what I was thinking.
“Sintil8 doesn’t really want to stop what we’re doing, he just wants his cut,” I replied. Criminals were reliable in their predictability and motivations, if nothing else. “He has the kind of backdoor connections and freedom to operate that may yield us some answers.”
The problem wasn’t just my suspicions about Kesselring or our disagreements anymore. The huge depression we’d been tracking up the Eastern Pacific had transitioned from tropical storm status into full blown Hurricane Newton, and Hurricane Ignacia was spinning up into a monster Category 4 out in the North Atlantic. The way these storm systems were behaving had gone from being simply unusual to downright suspicious.
By my calculations, these weren’t natural storms anymore.
Taking a good long pull on the whiskey, I straightened up and looked Marie in the eye.
“Set up the meeting with Sintil8.”
9
Identity: Jimmy Jones
“I’m sorry Jimmy, but that Patricia Killiam. Where does she get off talking about happiness? I’m really concerned about her.”
“No need to apologize Dr. Granger,” I replied. “I’m worried about her too. She just hasn’t been herself lately.”
We were taking an aimless wander through a few floors of the hydroponic farms, on our way back from Kesselring’s office after the Board meeting. Kesselring kept his offices perched at the very apex of the connecting structures on the top floors of the vertical farming complex. Even the master of synthetic reality liked to keep his specific reality above the riff-raff.
Over a hundred floors up, I enjoyed the views down on Atopia from here—the green forests capped by crescents of white beaches and the frothy breakwaters beyond. Through the phase shifted glass walls, the sea still managed to glitter under a cloudless blue sky. The humid and organic, if not earthy, smell of the grow farms reminded me of the days I used to spend out on the kelp forests with my dad as a child.
“I’m getting tired of her routine as the famous mother of synthetic reality,” continued Dr. Hal Granger. “Sure, fluidic and crystallized intelligence are important, but isn’t synthetic emotional and social intelligence the key to all this?”
We’d all heard this speech before, repeated endlessly on his EmoShow, and now that I was on the Council, I was being given the treat of getting to hear it in person as well. Dr. Granger’s claim to fame was as the creator of the technology that could pick apart and decipher emotions, and you could be sure he wouldn’t ever let you forget it. I tried not to roll my eyes.
“What was more important to understand?” he asked angrily while we walked through the hydroponics. “What someone says, or the emotional reason behind why they said it? Who knows more about happiness than me?”
“I’d say they’re both just as important,” I replied. Dr. Granger had used his growing fame to secure the position as head psychologist on Atopia. No matter what one thought of him, it was best to tread a careful line.
He stopped walking and turned to look at me.
“Exactly.”
One of the grow farm staff walked by and gave Dr. Granger a curt, respectful nod. His office was a few floors down from here, far away from the other senior staff, which was unusual. Observing him on our walk I think I knew why.
As we were walking, Dr. Granger had been watching the blank faces of the psombie inmates, and each of the staff had almost stood at attention while we passed. It was a structured and controlled environment, one that made him feel both powerful and safe. And important.
Most of the psombies here were people incarcerated for crimes, their minds and proxxi disconnected from their bodies as they waited out their sentences in multiverse prisonworlds. Even in paradise, we needed correctional services. Their bodies were consigned to community work around Atopia in the interim, safely guided by automated psombie minders.
While most of the psombies here were inmates, an increasing number were people who donated their bodies for community work while they flitted off amusing themselves in the multiverse. These people judged their bodies without enough value to even warrant leaving their proxxi to inhabit them.
“We’d better start a new special file on Patricia,” he said after a pause.
I shrugged. It wasn’t my place to argue. We continued walking.
“Shimmer!” he called out to his proxxi, who then appeared walking beside us.
Shimmer was a perfectly androgynous creature. As a synthetic being, sex was superfluous in the biological sense, but still critical in others. It was Shimmer’s ability to understand aspects of both sexes, and fluidly understand their emotional dynamics, that had made Dr. Granger famous. It was his lifetime’s work, although most people whispered that it was based on taking credit for his graduate students’ efforts over the years.
“Yes, Dr. Granger?” Shimmer replied. “Do you want me to start a new log entry on Dr. Killiam? Already done, sir.”
“Thank you Shimmer,” replied Dr. Granger, smiling at his proxxi. “Now please, I need to speak with this young gentleman alone.”
“Yes Dr. Granger.”
Shimmer faded away.
Hal turned to look at me while we walked, his hands now clasped behind his back.
“Do you really think it’s possible?” he asked, returning to the reason he had asked me to walk with him today. “I mean, with the technology we have now?”
“Absolutely,” I replied. “The project has been going on for some time, as you well know, in fact using some of your own work. Conscious transference—a lot of people have been working on it. But the trick, of course, is to get it right, for you to stay you, in the process.”
“And if I agree to support you, to support this, you will make sure that I’m the first?”
As good as medical technology was these days there was always the risk of the unexpected, of some accident sending you suddenly into the forever of oblivion. Dr. Granger wasn’t as concerned about his life, however, as much as he was about his fame surviving.
“Yes,” I replied simply. “It will take some time, though, certainly not before the commercial launch of pssi.”
“Good, good,” he said thoughtfully, apparently satisfied. He smiled at the mindless faces of some psombies that we passed.
“You know, Jimmy, you’re always working, you should find yourself a nice girl, find some emotional balance.”
He’d started into his EmoShow routine now, his face now serious and concerned.
He laughed. “I’m sure a good looking young man in your position must have girls throwing themselves at your feet. What I mean is you should find someone special.”
Saying nothing, I just nodded and silently continued on our walk down to his offices. I had found someone special, but I wasn’t going to share that with him.
Susie was a girl I’d had a special attraction to for a long time now. She was a unique soul, her emotions and sensations finely attuned, and I’d always felt like we shared a special bond.
I’d known her as a fellow pssi-kid, but she’d come to my attention again, and become a celebrity in her own right, when as a teen she’d turned herself into a living piece of installation artwork by mapping the emotional and physical state of each of the world’s ten billion souls into her pain system.