The huge ballroom was filled to overflowing, with the tables packed and a crush of people milling about along the edges of the room. The sound of glasses and tableware clinking competed with a beehive of buzzing background conversation. The noise began settling as the crowd turned its attention toward us.
“Very good!” continued Kesselring. “We’re now bringing online the Indian and Chinese contingents. I would like a hearty Atopian round of applause to welcome them!”
The crowded room erupted as the foreign delegations materialized to the left and right of us. It was an incredible photo opportunity, the Chinese and Indian banners appearing on each side of the Atopian flag.
Protocol for the event dictated that the senior Chinese and Indian officials would come to the center table to shake hands at exactly the same time, and it came off perfectly. In a splinter, I watched the pre-market analysis of the Infinixx stock as the broadcast of the event caught the world. The anticipated stock price was climbing fast on Phuture News.
My heart was in my throat.
I was in the dead center of attention, and I could feel the gravity of the moment pressing down upon me as we got up from our chairs at the banquet table, on stage at the front of the hall, to approach the switch. I had Jimmy to one side of me and Patricia to the other, with the rest of the board and executives fanning out around us.
Stepping to the back wall, I stared at the big green power switch. “It looks like something borrowed from a Russian hydroelectric dam,” I joked with Patricia under my breath. She smiled and turned to beam at the assembled crowd.
Reaching out, I held Patricia’s and Jimmy’s hands in mine, then let go to touch the switch. It felt cool and hard and hummed as it coursed with unseen power. Then the lights dimmed and the countdown began.
The whole auditorium joined in, as if it were New Year’s in Times Square.
“TEN!” they all shouted. “NINE!… EIGHT!… ”
“Aunt Patty,” I said, turning to look at her with tears in my eyes, “I’ve decided I’d like you to throw the switch. Everything here is all because of you!”
The crowd continued to roar, “SEVEN!… SIX!… ”
“I’d love to, sweetheart,” Patricia replied quickly, “but I had a last minute thing come up, and I’m not here kinetically. You go ahead, dear!”
“FIVE!… FOUR!… ”
Ah well, I thought, crestfallen.
“Jimmy, how about you then? Go ahead. I really wanted it to be one of you two.” I released the switch and encouraged Jimmy to take it.
“THREE!… TWO!… ”
“I’m sorry, Nance, I had something, too. I’m only dialed-in. You go ahead… quick now!”
“ONE!”
The blood drained from my face. I could hear a SNAP as the Chinese and Indians flipped their switches at their remote locations. My metasenses felt the cavernous thrum of the Infinixx installations bootstrapping deep in the multiverse.
Okay, keep calm.
Perplexed faces around the room watched us on the stage, waiting for my main connecting switch to be thrown. I quickly queried each of the executives at the table with me. Karen had stayed with her kids; Louise, Brian, Cindy—nobody was physically present. They were all dialed-in, despite my specific instructions requesting everyone to be here in person.
Then again, I thought as all my blood drained into my shoes and I gazed with dread at the audience—I’m not here either.
I could feel the switch in my hand, as cool and as hard as if I were standing there and holding it myself. The wikiworld simulated it perfectly, but I couldn’t budge it even a millimeter without having someone or something here physically.
After the disasters of destroyed power grids in the first cyberattacks nearly fifty years ago, security protocols had been rewritten so that critical nodes in power systems had to be completely disconnected from any communication networks to prevent the ability to hack into them. Despite Atopia being at the center of the cyberworld, we had to conform to international security standards, especially for a project like this.
I told myself that I hadn’t overlooked this—I’d expected all of my executive team and board members to be here in person. I’d specifically requested it and even verified it just minutes before the event.
But, of course, even I hadn’t listened to myself.
Staring out at the crowd, I took one last, desperate step. I flipped my pssi into identity mode, removing all virtual and augmented objects from my senses. The buzzing, crowded room faded from view, and all I was left with was my own low groan of fear. Not a single person was in sight. The entire ballroom was as empty and quiet as a morgue.
I stared back at the green switch, humiliated.
Already the assembled crowd and world press had figured out what had happened, and I was being pinged with a Times article trumpeting, “Infinixx—Everywhere But Nowhere!”
Lawyers from the Indian and Chinese sides had already filed a lawsuit against us, claiming monumental damages, and conspiracy theories were blossoming about connections to the Weather Wars. My executive team unlocked the exterior security perimeters, and I could see a psombie guard racing toward the stage.
“Forget it,” I told him as he got close to the stage.
I closed my eyes. It was already too late. Almost twenty seconds had passed, and the two other systems had already progressed too far into their bootstrap cycles for us to phase-lock into them.
Millions of users had already logged into the systems and begun using them. We’d have to negotiate a downtime to reboot and lock all the systems together at a later date, but for now, we’d have to run them as separate domains.
It meant users would only be able to distribute their consciousnesses locally. Technically, it wasn’t a disaster, but it made me look incredibly foolish. Correction, it made us look foolish. Kesselring was furious at the damage to the Atopian brand.
I withdrew my conscious webwork into a tight shell around myself like a cyber-tortoise retreating from danger.
Already the world media had minted a new term for a Zen-like business failure of being everywhere but nowhere at the same time, tripping on your own sword.
They called it an Infinixx.
13
Identity: William McIntyre
The police station loomed before me at the base of the vertical farming complex, and I was making my way towards it.
The Boulevard was the only real street we had, a wide pedestrian thoroughfare that crossed from the eastern to western inlets, dividing in half the four gleaming farm towers at the center of the surface of Atopia.
Glamorous palms lined both sides of the street, bordering the tourist shops, restaurants, and bars whose terraces spilled out into the kaleidoscopic melee in between. Even with the storms threatening and the evacuations announced, the atmosphere was still carefree and festive.
At least for now.
It’d been ages since I’d been above, and I hadn’t been to these parts since I was a tween. I stood blinking in the bright sunshine as I tried to think my way through what was happening to me.
I felt alone and exposed.
What else can I do?
Looking up at the towers, I imagined myself as one of the psombies inside. My hand trembling, I opened the police station doors. Cool, administrative air swept over me, and the clerk at the desk, an attractive young woman, smiled at me synthetically.
“Can I help you, sir?” she asked, as sweet as a police officer could be.