“I don’t know,” I admitted, “but we need to keep an open mind, keep a low profile.”
She nodded, then frowned. “Why tell Jimmy then?”
“Just a hunch.” I wasn’t able to explain much more than that. “Knowing that he knows what we’re doing allows us to watch him watching us, if that makes any sense.”
“And we won’t set off his alarms when we’re scanning the Atopian infrastructure,” added Sid.
Nancy shrugged. “Sure.”
Willy, Sid, Vicious, Robert, Vince, and Hotstuff were all sitting at a table with us in a dingy little cafeteria in a deep, forgotten corner of the Atopian service infrastructure below Purgatory, the entertainment district.
We were as close as we could get to the routing core of the pssi network, and for what I wanted to do, reducing distance latency to the core would help minimize transactional delays, giving us an edge over any self-correcting algorithmic blind spots that might be installed in it. We were going to plug in, as directly as we could, and watch for anomalies to emerge.
“Go over the plan again with me?” Nancy carefully considered her noodles before taking another mouthful.
“You have the most neuroplastically flexible mind for handling wide-area splintering,” I started to explain.
“It’s like you can be everywhere at once,” added Vicious.
Nancy sighed. “Everywhere but the place I should have been.”
She looked directly into my eyes. My heart leapt, pounding.
“We need your head in this completely, or not at all,” I replied softly. “Are you sure you’re up for it?” It wasn’t going to be easy.
“I’m in, Bobby, you’ve just surprised me, is all.” She held my gaze steadily.
I smiled. “I like to be full of surprises.” Back to business. “Sid is making some changes to my water-sense so it settles around information eddies—”
“So you can sense waves of information about Atopia?”
“Exactly. You and I are going to composite, then recombine via your Infinixx tethers to push my water-sense into thousands of composite splinters. We’ll push these into every nook and cranny of the multiverse.”
“Then I’ll amplify and cross-connect your network into the billions of private Phuture News feeds that Vince will open up to us,” continued Sid. “And Bob will wait for interesting waves of information and then follow them in.”
“You sure about opening the personal phuturecasts to us?” I asked Vince, giving him another opportunity to back out. “If it leaks, it’ll be the end of Phuture News.”
Vince laughed grimly. “My situation can’t get any worse than it is. I want some answers.”
During the last half hour, Vince had already had to flit out three times to save his own life, but he appeared the most awake and alive of all of us.
Nancy looked at me. “What we’re doing could kill you.”
“I doubt it.” I smiled. “Anyway, it’s less dangerous than surfing.”
“When you surf, you don’t purposely cook your brain. Are you sure?”
I took a deep breath. “Anything to get naked with you.”
She laughed. “All you had to do was ask.”
“Yeah, well, I like special occasions.… ”
“Okay, lovebirds,” laughed Vicious, “time to take a cold shower. We gotta get this show on the road.”
Quickening a composite like this was tricky, and for the best possible chances at cognitive coherence, we needed to be as close together as physically possible. Nancy had to be right there with me to reduce distance delays between our coupled nervous systems, but I was going to be taking the brunt of the quickening intensity, and we needed to disperse the energy generated. Off to one corner of the room, we’d filled a large tub with ice and water—even with all the technology at our disposal, it was still the simplest and most direct way to heat-sink energy away from a body.
I glanced at Nancy nervously. “Ready?”
She nodded and began to undress, although she remained modestly clothed in her pssi-projection. I did the same, and we walked over to the tub of cold water, holding hands, surrounded silently by the rest of our gang.
“Good luck,” said Vince, leaning in to give us both hugs.
I looked into Nancy’s eyes. She was quivering.
“I love you, Nance. Don’t worry, I got this.”
As we stepped into the cold water, I gently felt her out with my phantoms, and she responded to me, welcoming me in the myriad hyperspaces where we connected. Our synthetic bodies locked together around us like the wings of angels, enclosing us in a protective, otherworldly cocoon.
Finally, we stepped physically together, embracing as we lowered ourselves down into the frigid water. Cradling her head below mine, I initiated the compositing sequence, and the hundreds of billions of neurons in my nervous system began virtually fusing with hers. Our minds began to flow together.
“Just breathe slowly, in and out,” I told her, “and on each breath out, we’ll push the quickening a little more.”
Closing my eyes, I let my consciousness merge with Nancy’s, then felt her pushing me out, splintering me further and further, spreading us across the multiverse. Our minds and bodies began quickening, and an ocean of information flowed into me as I settled back to sense the ebb and flow of anything to do with Atopia.
I relaxed into our new self, letting Nancy diffuse us out. With each breath, I kept increasing the pace of quickening, pushing our hived mind faster and further, stretching ever outward. With a final deep breath, we breached an invisible wall somewhere in the universal consciousness.
Time stopped, ceasing to exist.
We became the alpha, the omega, and everything else in between.
24
Identity: Jimmy Scadden
This had better work.
Dragging a live fusion reactor with a million lives aboard through the center of two converging hurricanes was enough to make anyone nervous.
But even with the pressure mounting, my mind was extraordinarily clear. It rang crisply with purpose and energy.
I’d never felt better in my life.
Kesselring had given me tactical command of the operation. My primary subjective was now floating up at the edge of space, watching overlays of the constantly updated simulations. Far below me, the storms were grinding into each other. From this distance, everything looked like it was moving in calm, orderly slow motion, but the violence at sea level was astounding. Already, most of Atopia’s forests had been destroyed.
I was using Samson as my primary media interface as we worked to downplay the situation. The questions and inquiries we were getting were unusually low in volume, but I didn’t have the time to investigate. Either we were doing an awfully good job at containing the situation media-wise, or something else was going on, but more important things had my attention.
Since the Infinixx incident, Kesselring had removed Patricia from the media circuit. Her association with Nancy was too much of a distraction. I don’t think Kesselring trusted her anymore, but then again, he didn’t need her anymore either.
The original emotion-driven media campaign had been centered on confidence and trust in our bid to win regulatory approval. The hard work of gaining the trust of experts and governments was now complete—Atopia had passed clinical trial certifications in all major jurisdictions.
What was left was to simply inspire in the masses a desire pssi for themselves. Dr. Granger had taken over the media messaging, and we began delivering more elevating pitches. It was devoid of any real content when looked at in detail, but nobody did that anymore. Dr. Granger started using me—young and handsome in my crisp ADF Whites—in the media campaigns instead of Patricia, a poster child for Atopia and the future to come.