“Actually, Jimmy, that’d be great.”
“No problem.”
“Why don’t you just take the rest of the day off? I think Jimmy is right,” Echo added. “And I just checked with Cindy, she has the afternoon free.”
I looked up at him. “You talked to Cindy?”
“She was just checking in on you while you were busy with Jimmy.”
“Thanks guys,” I said, looking at the two of them. “I really appreciate it.”
“Oh, Rick, by the way,” said Jimmy as I began to get up to go. “Your wife asked me to help her with some stuff with your proxxids. You’re okay with all that?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” I said, waving him on, “whatever she needs.”
I forwarded him my proxxid credentials and flitted off.
Echo walked my body most of the way home while I finished some paperwork. Reaching the door, I stowed the paperwork in my virtual office and took control back. I paused, thinking about what I wanted to say to Cindy. With a deep breath, I opened the door to our apartment, expecting a wave of screaming kids. It was completely quiet, however, and right away, I was worried.
Tentatively, I looked around inside.
Cindy was sitting by herself on a small couch in the center. Our place was pristine white, a nearly featureless projection—calm and quiet.
It felt creepy.
“Oh, Rick,” she exclaimed, getting up off the couch and coming to me as I entered. “What did you do to yourself?”
“It’s not your fault. It was my fault.” I held up my hands. “I’m okay, it’s just a scratch. I was out doing some night drills for work.”
She looked unconvinced. “About last night, Rick, I know you had something important to say—”
“And I still do,” I interrupted. “Look, I know it’s been a long time getting here, but I’m ready now, and I know you are.”
She smiled and wrapped her arms around me, kissing me. “That’s wonderful news, baby.”
I’d expected a little more. I repeated myself. “I want to have a real baby with you, you understand?”
She nodded. “Of course I do, and that’s wonderful news. Let’s get it just right then.”
I took a deep breath, feeling relief wash through my body. “Where are the boys?”
“Oh, they’re gone now,” she replied casually, surprising me.
As long as she was happy, which she seemed to be, it was fine with me. Still, I had to admit I felt some sudden pangs of regret.
“But,” she continued, “I do have someone I’d like you to meet.”
A crack appeared in the smooth white wall behind the couch. She led me by the hand toward it as the wall slid open to reveal a room beyond. I heard a soft gurgling sound. We walked up to the edge of a cradle, and Cindy bent over to pick up a baby girl who lay inside it.
She held her up to me, and I took the baby in my arms.
“Rick, please meet Brianna,” Cindy announced softly.
I looked down into my new daughter’s face. She was beautiful.
Maybe I’d always wanted a baby girl.
5
Cindy had transported our family into a Norman Rockwell–like setting. We were outside, sitting together at an old weather-beaten table at the edge of an apple orchard behind a gray-shingled cottage complete with peeling paint and a musty interior full of yellowing family photographs on mantelpieces.
It was warm, hot even, as the sun lazily set under a cloudless blue sky. We were on Martha’s Vineyard in a circa-1940s wikiworld. The fading day had a languid, easygoing feel to it, which was nice after a hectic day of chasing down cyberthreats. Sea air rustled in through tall, unkempt grasses atop the nearby dunes.
Like getting a fresh fix, our first baby girl proxxid had injected new life into our relationship, and the days and weeks had passed with a sense of rejuvenated expectations. Jimmy and Echo sensed what was going on, and the pair of them had volunteered to take on a lot of my Command functions, giving me the time to work things out with Cindy.
The highlight of each day became a ritualized homecoming to explore a new metaworld that Cindy would create for us, and, of course, to play with the latest proxxid. As time went on, we progressed, one by one, through Brianna, our first girl proxxid, and then Georgina, Paul, Pauli, and eventually to our new favorite, Ricky-Two.
“Adriana was right,” said Cindy, looking down into Ricky-Two’s face. “Blue eyes are the best. Just like little Ricky’s.”
“Huh?”
I was deep into a Phuture News report predicting a flare-up in the Weather Wars. I flicked away tabloid splinters that tried to correlate this to some paranormal reports. Of course, a lot of people were tracking events in the Weather Wars, and with so many people getting advance notice of events on this scale, there was a good chance the event wouldn’t happen.
As I was thinking this, the new news reported that the offensive was delayed and then quickly canceled. Suddenly, a report came in that a tactical nuclear weapon would be launched against a target in Kashmir, but this was aborted at the last instant. All sides were already at the negotiating table.
Accurate futuring technology was bringing out random behavior—phuturecasting meant everyone could see you coming, so being unpredictable and random had its advantages, usually at the expense of lacking strategic intent. The irony that “knowing the future” seemed to make things even less predictable didn’t escape me, but the serious strategists on the topic said that this perception was just the result of our primary subjectives being stuck in a single timeline.
I sighed.
The ops teams were reporting that Hurricane Ignacia had shifted directions entirely and now looked like it would slam into Costa Rica and cross over from the Caribbean into the Eastern Pacific. It had grown into a monster Category 4.
We were already backpedaling away from Hurricane Newton, a steady Category 2, as it wound its way up the coast of Mexico, and so were suddenly faced with two major hurricanes in our oceanic basin, with several other depressions spinning up in the background. Not unprecedented, but certainly unusual.
A mosquito hovered uncertainly before me, and I swatted it away, shaking my head.
“Remember our first Ricky’s eyes?” repeated Cindy. “I replayed them in Ricky-Two’s features. I just love them.”
She choked up as she said this, even though it had been six weeks since we’d discontinued the original Ricky proxxid. Sensing tears coming, I snapped out of Phuture News and focused my attention on Cindy.
“Yes, I love them, too,” I replied.
One of our favorite activities was to discuss and compare features of each proxxid. I thought I’d try launching into this to avert whatever was happening.
“I really like the face structure of Ricky-Two,” I suggested helpfully.
Cindy went completely still. In the sudden silence, I could hear the wooden grandfather clock in the cottage’s main hallway ticking through the seconds. Cindy stared down into Ricky-Two’s face. She seemed about to cry.
“Me too,” replied Cindy, catching herself. With a deep breath, she recovered from whatever it was.
“Who’s my cute little baby boy?” she whispered to the baby, jiggling him softly and then squeezing him against her body. He burbled with delight and cuddled his head into her.
Something definitely wasn’t right. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” She held the synthetic baby ever tighter.
A cicada’s whine played high in the distance. I squinted into the sunlight slanting through the apple trees and watched my wife doting over the proxxid. This was all very nice, but my uneasiness was wearing my patience thin. I’d been more than ready to move onto the real thing for some time.