It made no sense to Bob. Why didn’t she just flit into work, using a virtual projection? But this was just one in a long list of things on the “outside” that made no sense. It seemed wasteful, but then all the energy for her back-and-forth trips was sucked up from the ground, from the geothermal generators, and Bob certainly had no standing to complain about anything seeming unnatural.
Bob stared at the spot where Deanna’s jet had disappeared into the sky.
A thin line of light hung on the horizon, the remains of the setting sun disappearing as stars began spreading across the sky. Willy had always heard how nice it was to walk in the countryside, that reality was different than flitting in and experiencing it in the wikiworld. Confined in his virtual self now, he was afraid he’d never get to find out. He let his point-of-view spin out around the perimeters, shifting into infrared. In the plains in the far distance, a herd of buffalo scattered at the noise of a passing drone.
Willy was taking an opportunity for some personal time with Brigitte before she went into the Commune. With pssi installed in Brigitte’s neural pathways, even if Willy was only a virtual presence here, to Brigitte he still looked and felt as real as if he was there physically. Still, he was a lucky man that she didn’t make a big deal of it. They held hands as they walked down a path leading away from the farmhouse.
“Do you really believe all that stuff Patricia told us about Jimmy?” Brigitte asked. “About him taking over Atopia? That he stole Commander Strong’s wife’s mind?” She paused. “Do you think he killed Patricia?”
Willy didn’t hesitate. “She’s dead, isn’t she? Isn’t that enough evidence?”
“Maybe it was natural…”
“Nothing about Atopia is natural. People like her don’t die anymore.” Willy sighed. “Do you really think it was just coincidence?”
“No, I guess I don’t.” Brigitte carefully stepped between glowing sugar beet leaves. Genes from bioluminescent houseplants, a novelty fifty years before, had jumped into the wild a long time ago. Now patches of the outdoors, grasses and plants and even some trees, glowed as brightly as the stars over their heads. “It’s very brave of everyone to come out here.”
Willy kicked his foot along the ground. “They’re here because of me, because of my mess.”
“That’s not true.”
“I think it’s better if my body stays lost. Something worse might happen if we find it.”
“Willy, stop that.”
Holding hands, they looked up at the faint smudge of the comet being brought into Earth orbit. It was being billed as the spectacle of the millennium. Where Atopia was trying to help the world flee into inner virtual spaces, supporters of the Comet Catcher mission were dreaming of humanity jumping outward. Either way was an escape from the crush and clutter that plagued Earth.
“I do know that I’m not the only reason Bob is here,” Willy said after a pause. “He likes to please people. It’s his only fault, if that could be one.” He considered his statement for a second. “That plus his temper.”
“I know why Bob’s upset.” Brigitte stopped to pick one of the glowing leaves at their feet. “I know what it means to be afraid for someone you love.” She looked into Willy’s eyes. “He’s worried about Nancy.”
Willy squeezed her hand. “It’s not just that. You only know Bob as the stoner surfer, but back when we grew up together, he was the star of the Academy. He was Patricia’s favorite. He was a couple with Nancy since they were kids.”
“Was it what happened to his brother?”
Willy nodded. “To us it seems a long time ago, but to him… When Martin committed suicide, Bob blamed himself. Something happened he never told us about. He’s angry at himself, angry at the world, and he hid it under drugs, pushing Nancy away, pushing us all away.”
They continued in silence, walking to sit underneath an oak tree on a hill overlooking the farmhouse.
“I wish we could talk to Nancy,” Brigitte said, breaking the low hum of the drones circling in the fields. “Tell her what’s going on.”
Willy shook his head. “Any message we send her might be intercepted by Jimmy. It would just make things worse—for her and for us.”
Nodding, Brigitte considered. “I bet she’s figured out a lot more than you think already.”
Willy looked at Brigitte “Have you seen her on the mediaworld presentations? Up on stage, holding hands with Jimmy? Doesn’t seem like she’s caught on that something is wrong with him.”
Brigitte raised an eyebrow. Of course she’d been watching the mediaworlds. “You think you guys are the only smart ones?”
Over dinner, Bob, Sid, and Vince had come up with a plan. Sid made contact with a hacking community in the New York underground who might have leads to finding Willy’s body. Now invited, Vince and Brigitte would go to the Commune the next morning, while Sid and Bob would move on directly to New York, hopping a ride in Deanna’s turbofan.
“Nancy’s not the one I’m really worried about.” Willy dug his heels into the earth. “That anger inside of Bob, I’m not sure what he’d do if anything happened to her.”
4
The bipedal buggy lumbered its way up the soggy mountain trail with Brigitte and Vince crammed together in its tight passenger compartment. The path wasn’t maintained, the terrain rough and nearly impassible, but then that was the point—the Commune didn’t like visitors.
This is a wild goose chase, thought Vince as he swayed back and forth. The Commune—where Willy’s mother lived—was the only connection Willy had on the outside. This was the most obvious place to look. Whoever stole Willy’s body, they’d be a million miles from here by now. Ten billion people on the planet, and Vince had already spent a fortune combing it for any sign of Willy.
But then again, this wasn’t Vince’s first goose chase.
At least the future death threats—the unending series of possible future fatalities that plagued him in the past months—had nearly stopped. The imagined futures that pinned him down on Atopia were dissipating the further removed he was from that world. Hotstuff, and the international espionage network she’d set up, had been working hard at containing the future threats. Their efforts paid off. His futures were already becoming part of his past.
On Atopia, the plan to go out and find Willy’s body had seemed crucial. Vince craved the excitement of an adventure. But out here, in the light of day, strapped to the back of a robotic crawler as it rocked between the pine trees, with virtual projections of Willy and Hotstuff riding shotgun, it all felt… well… ridiculous.
Willy’s virtual projection tapped him on the shoulder. “Bob’s dad left a beacon for him yesterday.”
“I thought Sid terminated all communications.” Vince turned to Willy. “Aren’t we hiding?”
“His dad’s getting desperate. He left an encrypted packet attached to a data beacon in the open multiverse,” Willy explained. “Bob retrieved a copy yesterday.”
“And?” There had to be a reason Willy was bringing this up now.
“Bob opened it. His dad was begging him to come back to Atopia, telling him that they would get all the charges cleared.”
In an overlaid display, Vince watched a mediaworld broadcast on the continuing Bob-and-Sid-and-Vince conspiracy: “Why did Sidney Horowitz disappear from Atopia after the attack? We’ve all heard a lot of theories, but the fact that he and Robert Baxter are friends with Vincent Indigo makes it seem all the more suspicious…” Vince cut off the broadcast. He’d heard it a million times already. The newsworlds were predicting more terrorism against Atopia, and every story featured a connection to himself or Sid or even Bob.