The Reverend went silent.
“Before what?” Brigitte asked after a respectful pause.
The Reverend rocked back in his chair. “Forgive my caution. The Commune has enemies, and this business with my grandson William has inspired new ones.”
“Father, you know Willy is innocent.”
Vince and Brigitte turned to the doorway to see a middle-aged woman with clear gray eyes smiling at them.
Brigitte jumped up. “You must be Willy’s mother!” The woman nodded. In two steps Brigitte was taking her hand, leaning in to kiss her cheek. “It’s a pleasure.”
Willy’s mother accepted the kiss but kept her distance. “Likewise, I’m sure.”
The Reverend stood and stared at Vince. “So you wanted to speak with Elspeth?”
“Is it possible to talk with her in private…?” Vince asked.
The Reverend gestured to the room. “This is as private as you’ll be allowed, I’m afraid.”
A sense of absurdity overcame Vince—how to tell a mother that her son was gone, but not gone? “We have some disturbing news, and we were hoping you might be able to help us.” He looked into Elspeth’s eyes. “Willy’s missing—or, er, his body is missing.”
Elspeth’s brow wrinkled. “What do you mean?”
“A few months ago…” Vince began but then stopped. A few months ago he’d been living in endless virtual worlds while running from future death threats. How was he going to explain their world to Willy’s Neo-Luddite mother?
“Perhaps I could try?” suggested Brigitte.
At a loss, Vince nodded.
“Willy is fine,” Brigitte started to say, “so you don’t need to worry, but we—”
“I know,” Elpeth said.
Vince cocked his head. “You know what?”
Elspeth looked at the Reverend. He met her gaze and nodded. “That he’s fine,” she replied.
Vince frowned. “And how do you know that?”
“Because he was just here.”
8
The tip of the Great Pyramid, covered in electrum, hovered in the sky under the hot eye of god. Guardians lined the leafy promenade leading up to the pyramid’s entrance. Its base on four sides was surrounded by lush gardens and temples. A priest walked beside Bob as they made their way up the promenade toward the pyramid. “Intelligence is that which creates attachment,” the priest said. His face was hidden.
Bob looked up at the Sphinx. It smiled down benevolently, the smooth curve of its nose glistening in the midday sun. “Isn’t it the self that creates attachment?”
The priest nodded. “And it is the self that arises from intelligence.”
Bob fought the dream. He tried to launch himself into flight to soar above the pyramids and into the desert beyond, but he felt like he was caught in molasses. His feet kept moving along the marble walkway, locked in step with the priest’s. Thoughts curled around his mind like sand swirling on the desert wind.
They reached the base of the pyramid and began up the steps to its entrance. The guards parted before them. “It is only through the destruction of the self that peace can be realized,” the priest said as they reached the top of the stairway.
With a final glance at the blue sky, Bob ducked his head and followed the priest into the dark tunnel. He had to hunch over and shuffle to get through.
Bob hated small spaces, ever since he had gotten stuck in the passenger cannon access tunnel on Atopia as a child, searching for ways to access the upper levels directly from their habitat. It took hours for rescuers to get him out. Even with his mind able to soar free into synthetic worlds, he’d known that his body was trapped, that the perceived freedom was an illusion.
Between sputtering oil torches, the tunnel was pitch black, leading them down and down. He could only see the shifting shape of the priest ahead. The tunnel eventually opened up into a room that was filled with more guards, and another tunnel led upward from that, larger this time, with a wooden walkway and ropes hanging along its side.
The oppressive weight of millions of tons of stone hung above them, squeezing Bob’s mind. “So that peace can be brought to what?” he asked. “To the self?” That didn’t make any sense. If the self was destroyed, to what were they bringing peace?
The main chamber opened up before them, and the priest urged him into the room. It was the heart of the Great Pyramid. More priests, their heads bowed, were arrayed around a large stone sarcophagus. Its lid was off, set to one side. Colorful hieroglyphs danced on the walls around them in the flickering torchlight. Bob’s pssi instantly translated them, and the stories splintered into his mind—stories of Isis and her husband Osiris, his body quartered and dragged to the four corners, and then his return to life and his betrayal by his brother Seth.
The priests began chanting. A light grew out of a crystal structure within the sarcophagus, rising up to form a shape that hung in space. The shape solidified into a creature that hovered above the assembled. Sobek, the crocodile god, stared at Bob with fiery eyes and said, “It looks like Willy’s proxxi is running from us.”
The god’s face morphed into a green version of Sid.
The priests continued to chant.
“Maybe it’s not his proxxi who stole his body,” Bob replied.
The confines of the sarcophagus chamber melted into the concrete grays of New York City. Self-driving cars swept by on wet streets. There were no street lights or signals, just a never-ending stream of traffic that melted together at junctions and around corners. Sid had left Deanna’s apartment while Bob was asleep, and a splinter, in the middle of a conversation, was integrating into Bob’s consciousness as he awoke.
The dreams were becoming more intense.
Sid noticed the arrival of Bob’s primary self. “Are you okay?” he asked. “You don’t look so good.”
“I’m fine,” Bob replied. He didn’t want to talk about the dreams. “Just waking up. Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You needed the rest.” Sid smiled. “Besides, you’ve never been on time for anything in your life. Why so surprised?”
Vince was with them virtually. He’d climbed outside the Commune’s perimeter to tell them the news that Willy’s body had preceded them there. A projection of Vince’s virtual self lounged on a chair, sitting beside Willy and Sid. In the background, multibots were busy setting up the tables and chairs of Herald Square for the day. The square’s cover peeled back like a blooming flower as the sun broke through the clouds overhead. The rain finally stopped.
Sid returned to the discussion while Bob assimilated the backstory. “If Willy’s proxxi didn’t steal his body, then the question is who, or what, did? And why?” He stretched and rubbed his eyes.
“To gain access to the Commune?” Vince suggested. “It’s almost impossible to get in there.”
“Hold on.” Bob slipped his brain into the conversation. “Why couldn’t it have been proxxi?” Nothing suggested it wasn’t Willy’s proxxi who was still guarding Willy’s body.
Sid shrugged. “How would he have kept the smarticle network operating in Willy’s body while he was in the Commune?” Because all outgoing communications would have been cut off from Willy’s mind, was Sid’s point. Sid looked at Willy. “Did you have any gaps in your conscious stream?”
“None at all,” Willy replied.
It was only when Willy’s body left the Commune that access had been granted to Vince and Brigitte. Was it coincidence, or was the Commune part of whatever was happening?
Bob looked around. People walking by kept their distance. They mostly kept outside the information security blanket that glittered in the augmented wikiworld around them. But it wasn’t just the security blanket. Vince’s phuturing network was also altering their trajectories without them realizing it, keeping them looking away.