Sitting in my office, I was going over some research notes regarding Hurricane Ignacia. It was mind numbing. I decided to splinter in on a game of rag doll that some of the younger pssi-kids had started up in the Schoolyard. It was one thing to review data, but the data could never quite match the intuitive observations of actually sensing an event in process.
While the flitter tag game the kids played was straightforward from a game-theory point-of-view, rag dolling wasn’t even really a game, and it was dominated by singular personalities. Flitter tag had the organic feeling of birds flocking, a murmuration, the madly fluttering splinters of the children’s minds circling around each other in one body and then the next, in this world and then another. But rag dolling had an entirely different feeling to it, something decidedly uncomfortable. Watching these young pssi-kids at play, I couldn’t help getting the feeling there was something I wasn’t seeing.
The problem was in what exactly I couldn’t see.
It was fairly simple to catalog the changes to the body as people switched from one to the other, added phantoms and metasenses, or switched into entirely synthetic bodies in the metaworlds. We could even track the neurological adaptations going on.
The mind, however, was an emergent property of all this, and more than just a sum of the parts. It was impossible to understand how minds were changing as a result. As Dr. Turing had observed in our conversations a century before, change the body and you change the mind.
Where before this had been a philosophical point, here on Atopia it had a very immediate and tangible effect. All of humanity had previously shared the same physical morphology, and therefore, more or less, the same mind.
But no more.
The human mind was not just the brain.
Our nervous systems extended throughout our entire bodies, including the ancient brain in our gut that was connected to our heads via the vagus nerve. When we said something was the result of gut thinking, it was truer than most people imagined.
By extension, human abstract thought was intimately tied to the entire human body: “she gave me the cold shoulder,” “my hands were full,” “I couldn’t swallow it,” and so on. When we changed the body, we began to change the way our mind conceived of abstract thoughts, even the way it constructed thoughts themselves.
Almost as soon as they could communicate with us, pssi-kids began to use a lexicon of abstract expressions that we couldn’t properly understand, such as splintered-out, tubered, slivering, cloudy, and many more that developed as they did. But where we’d introduced pssi into our wetware as adults and knew the difference between real and synthetic, the pssi-kids had grown up with the stimulus embedded. Most of the distinction was lost to them. Their brains and nervous systems had developed together with pssi, and their minds had started to become something different.
They had become something different.
Changing the body was one thing, but changing the mind, now this was something else. As I watched these pssi-kids playing rag doll, I now had the eerie sensation of watching alien creatures before me.
The rag doll collective stopped and looked straight at the point from where I was observing it. I hadn’t appeared in their sensory spaces nor flagged my presence, so it couldn’t have known that I was watching, or even that I was there. And yet it stopped and stared intently at where I would have been, as if they knew what I was thinking.
As if they were staring straight into my soul.
Quickly, I clicked out and into the safe space of my office.
I shivered.
13
Identity: Jimmy Scadden
“Regarding our project, there is something I need you to do for me in return,” I said to Dr. Granger.
We were back on another walk through the hydroponic farms. He’d wanted an update and confirmation of our deal to put him first in line for the conscious transference project.
“I want to be put into the research groups on memory and addiction.”
“Consider it done,” he agreed with a smile. Dr. Granger held out a hand to pass it through the green leaves of a plant nearby. He stopped to inspect one large, ripe tomato hanging in from its vines.
“And I’ll need to get root access to Shimmer,” I added, “and your own pssi system.”
He let go of the tomato and turned to look at me. I could see the doubt turning behind his eyes, but then again, to become immortal, to secure his fame forever.…
“Yes, but with some provisos,” he replied slowly. “I’ll need to understand the details of what you want to do, but yes.”
“Of course,” I agreed. “You also understand we need to keep this private, just between you and me.”
He narrowed his eyes and smiled.
“I don’t want Patricia to be a part of this,” I explained.
“Isn’t she like a mother to you?”
He was trying to measure an emotional response from me, but I merely stared at him.
Patricia had never liked Granger, and I didn’t want to create any more problems by making it public that I was working with him. As the lead on conscious perimeter security, I had a growing passion in the next evolving step of the pssi program: consciousness transference. We were still a ways off, but we were evolving ways to understand how the ethereal mind hovered somewhere within the physical cage of the brain where the seat of consciousness and our sense of self came together.
Immortality, or something approaching it, was close at hand.
Soon enough, as pssi flooded the world and mankind began flittering between gameworlds and sensorgies, an upgrade to their monthly pssi package would feature an option for conscious transference.
Transfer from what? They will ask. From my old body? That thing I haven’t seen in a year?
And in an instant it will be done, the age-old dream of immortality realized with as little fanfare as the click of a button. They’ll leave their bodies to collect dust somewhere in the corner of a garage like an old television set, eventually to be thrown out.
In this context, ceding executive control to pssi was like offering up your eternal soul.
Granger really shouldn’t be quite so trusting, no matter what the possible gains. He was lucky he was dealing with me, and not someone else.
“She loves you,” he added, watching me, fishing.
I flashed with irritation, but before I could say anything, he beat me to the punch.
“Sorry. I don’t mean to test you—old habits die hard,” he laughed. “I very much appreciate working with you. Consider me at your disposal for anything.”
“Are you coming to the Infinixx launch tonight?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” He rolled his eyes, obviously no fan of the Killiam clan.
“Good.”
He nodded, returning his attention to the tomato plant. “Anything you say, Jimmy.”
14
Identity: Patricia Killiam
“TEN!.. NINE!.. EIGHT!..”
Looking out at the packed crowd in the ballroom, I felt the excitement of the crowd rising. In the background, my splinter network scanned the billion-plus people who’d tuned in to witness the launch of Infinixx.
“Aunt Patty,” said Nancy, turning to look toward me with tears in her eyes, “I’ve decided that I’d like you to throw the switch. Everything here is all because of you!”
The crowd continued to roar the countdown. “SEVEN!… SIX!… ”