Complete Atopia Chronicles

1 Identity: Olympia Onassis

“No! no! your other left!” I yelled at the idiot behind the counter, gesturing towards the pack of cigarettes I wanted. My anger was still peaking after the screaming fight I’d had with Alex in the street outside. We’d just broken up, and this time for the last time.

It wasn’t helping that I hadn’t slept properly in weeks.

The idiot stared at me and began to prattle on in some foreign chatter. How on earth they let so many people that didn’t speak a word of English through Passport Control stunned me. Even with languages going extinct faster than frogs, I’d read that the City still had over a thousand spoken throughout its many boroughs. What a mess.

Now the idiot shrugged as if to ask what to do next. The impatience of the people in line behind me almost overcame my need for a nicotine fix. Almost, but not quite.

“Just wait a minute!”

I scowled at him while I searched around in my purse for my mobile. Squeamish of implants, I still used an old fashioned ear bud, but showing people that I had one made me feel self-conscious. I hated keeping it in all the time. Popping the mobile bud into my ear I repeated myself.

“The Camel Lights!” I yelled over the counter, jabbing my finger at the display case.

Whatever language he was speaking was instantly translated, “Like I said lady, those aren’t Camels, the package looks the same but you’ll have to go across the street to find those.”

He pointed helpfully out the door.

I was annoyed this person couldn’t speak to me in the official language of the place we lived in. Why was it that I had to bow to his deficiencies? Why couldn’t he service me properly? I made a mental note to leave a scathing review of this pharmacy in my social cloud. The owners of this place would regret this.

“Whatever, that’s fine, whatever those are,” I snarled.

He shrugged and reached into the display and then handed them over. Credits for the transaction were automatically deducted from my daily account as I walked towards the door, picking up a bag of freeze dried vegetable chips on my way.

Getting cigarettes was a regulated activity that required a pharmacist to personally verify my nano-cleaning certification. Of course this also aggravated me. I banged open the door to the drugstore as I stormed out, startling some incoming customers, and opening the cigarettes as I went.

Smoking was a bad habit I’d picked up from my mother. I hadn’t spoken to her in years, but then, my mother had barely ever shown any interest in me. She was a very difficult woman, always judging, and had driven my father away to some Luddite commune back in Montana with the rest of his family. I hadn’t been able to reach him in years. It wasn’t something I was going to forgive my mother for anytime soon.

I stopped just outside the door of the pharmacy to light up, taking a deep drag and feeling some facsimile of relaxation spreading into my body.

Midtown Manhattan blazed away before me in an orgy of advertising. Almost every square inch of space, from lamp post to sidewalk, was full of some sort of commercial heralding a new Broadway show or multiverse world. A holographic head danced above me that sparkled and wobbled slightly as the smoke from my cigarette drifted up into it.

I blew more smoke up at it as I absently watched it tell me, “Come to Titan, experience the methane rain.” The chaotic glow from the street had an almost pornographic luminescence to it, but it hardly registered on me. For me, it was just the frenetically familiar background of New York City.

Taking another long drag from my smoke, I glanced back up at the holographic head. There was just no sex appeal in that messaging. They should be saying something like, “Make love in the hydrocarbon desert.” I laughed silently to myself—make love, now there was something alien, never mind Titan.

Without warning, a robotic surrogate that I’d noticed lining up behind me in the shop came from nowhere and barreled into me, pinning me hard against the wall. It fumbled at my body, grabbing at me.

Blood drained from my face with the incomprehensible and previously unconsidered prospect of being raped by a robot. The draining blood, however, left a vacuum that was filled by a bolt of pure fury, and I lashed back, yelling and flailing.

“Get off me!” I screamed.

It bounced back much more easily than I’d anticipated. We stood staring at each other for a moment, my green and angry eyes meeting its dead, gunmetal grey orbs.

Giving what I could only interpret as a furtive glance, it shrugged an oddly robotic shrug before turning to disappear into the stream of pedestrian traffic. I lurched forward as if to give chase, but gave up almost instantly.

I was shaking.

Breathing hard and ragged, I wiped spittle from the side of my mouth. Looking down, I noticed that he had stolen my cigarette pack, and my trembling hands were somehow matching the wobbly holographic projection still touting Titan above me. In my right hand, the cigarette continued to burn happily away, completely unconcerned with my threatened violation. I shrugged and took a drag, calming my nerves.

Nobody walking by seemed to have noticed anything, or at least, nobody had wanted to see anything. I guess he’d just wanted the cigarettes, although why a robot would want cigarettes was beyond me.

This goddamn city.

I had half a mind to call Alex, but after screaming at him that I wanted to be left alone, right now wasn’t the right time. I’d report this when I got home after work, but I was already late for my presentation. Shaking my head, I dropped my smoke and ground it out underfoot and then ventured out from under the awning to merge into the sea of pedestrians flowing down West 57 Street.

I surged with the dense crowd for a moment, watching for an eddy current that could carry me towards curb. Up ahead, someone swore out loud and then stopped to stamp his foot in anger. Now motionless, a wave of people began flowing outwards and around him. I saw my chance.

Sailing up beside him, I ducked smoothly in behind and was caught perfectly in the opposite flow to go in the direction I needed, but then I ran straight smack into a ridiculous looking woman in sparkling red body paint and peacock feathers.

“Out of my way!” I scowled.

Shoving her aside, I rotated out and away towards the edge of the street. Elbowing my way to the curb, I outstretched my arm to join with the forest of other outstretched arms.

“Ten! Ten!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, offering ten times the going rate.

This was excessive, but I was tired and frightened and just wanted to get out of there. A cab merged fluidly from the traffic flow to pull up beside me, my generosity earning me dirty looks from people around me trying to get their own ride. In return, I offered them my finger as the tiny gull wing door of the cab opened.

I stepped inside and sat down. The relief was immediate. Cool, recycled air swept around me as the door closed to expose the silence within. I took a moment to collect myself, closing my eyes, exhaling softly, trying to relieve the pressure.

“Where to, lady?” asked the cab. It was a mini self-driving electric, one of those Hondasoft ones with the motors in the wheels—barely more than a plastic tub on roller skates, if you asked me, but a cab nonetheless. I took a deep breath.

Where to? To the office was where to.

“Ah...” I said, and then stopped.

What the hell was my office address? I sat bolt upright and rubbed my eyes, blinking hard. Where did I work again? I couldn’t remember where my office was, and I’d worked there for over ten years now. Fear gripped the pit of my stomach.

“Lady, where to?” asked the cab again impatiently.

Damn machines, it’s like they thought they ran the world. Don’t rush me you little bastard.

“One second,” I snapped at the cab a little shakily.

“Ah, Kenny, what is my office address?”

I posed the question to my tech assistant through the mobile bud I still had stuck in my ear.

“555 5th Avenue...” a perplexed Kenny began to respond, which I then relayed to the cabbie.

My face flushed.

How in the world could I have forgotten that? I needed a drink. The cab immediately accelerated and merged into the traffic. I sat back and took some deep breaths, trying to loosen up the tightness in my chest while we sped off towards my meeting.

2

Carefully taking one bright paper napkin from the black conference room table, I wiped off a residue of sweat from the nape of my neck. I was nervous. Patricia Killiam, the famous godmother of synthetic reality, had decided to personally attend the meeting today, or at least her bio-simulation proxxi had.

This was much the same thing to Atopians.

I’d had to rush to get here, sprinting the last yards from the elevators, but I’d made it just in time. They’d immediately jumped me into my presentation to the Cognix people. That incident with the robot had really thrown me, and my pitch timing had been off. I was still shaking, even now. It made me look like an amateur.

The Cognix account was easily the biggest to ever come through our office, and I’d been named as the lead for closing the deal. Other people were always taking credit for my work, and winning this contract would enable me to finally take center stage. The pressure was intense.

With my part done, I sat back and watched my colleague Bertram finish the presentation. I was thinking of my fight with Alex. He’d wanted to move in together, but I really needed my space.

With him, it was always about spending time with his family and brothers and sisters, but they were always judging me. It was a constant source of friction between us, made worse when he kept insisting that it was just my own insecurities. The nerve. He also wanted kids, telling me how I was too focused on my career, but I had no idea how anyone could want to bring a child into this world. It was falling apart.

I couldn’t believe my boss had almost given this jerk Bertram the lead on closing the account. Look at him, pantomiming away in that ridiculous multi-phasic suit, flattering the boss, laughing at his own jokes. Whatever he was doing seemed to be working, however, from the way everyone was reacting to his pitch.

I needed a smoke.

Maybe I was getting too old for this. Kids nowadays had AIs running around doing most of their jobs for them. I had a hard time keeping up with it all. Thinking about kids brought me back thinking about Alex again. Perhaps I had made a terrible mistake. My stomach lurched.

“Cognix, making tomorrow your today!” gushed Bertram the jerk as he finished up, sweeping his hand into the distance with a flourish. There was a smattering of applause.

Wait a minute. That was my tagline. What the hell was he doing presenting that today? I was supposed to be using that tomorrow. We’d agreed on this.

“Something wrong Olympia?” asked my boss, Roger.

Was my boss in on this too?

“Olympia, do you have anything to add?” asked Roger again.

Everyone turned to look at me.

God it was stuffy in here. With a short intake of breath I thought of what I could say to make Bertram look like the fool he was. I tried to shake off sudden vertigo.

“I, uh, I...” I stammered, but I couldn’t get anything out.

All the air in the room evacuated itself and I felt a crushing pain in my chest. Panic flowed hotly into my veins. Gripping my chest, I wrenched myself up from the table and fled out the door in my search for air.

“Someone call a doctor!” I heard Bertram the jerk yelling out behind me as my vision faded and blackness descended.

3

“Nothing more than a simple panic attack,” said the doctor.

That was a relief. I guess I knew I wasn’t really having a heart attack, but it was good to hear anyway. The terror had been real enough at the time.

The doctor’s bald pate reflected the overhead panel lighting like a shimmering, sweaty halo above his radiantly clean lab coat. A stethoscope hung uselessly around his neck. He leaned forward over his veneer mahogany desk and clasped his hands, bringing them up to support his chin in what I assumed was his thoughtful pose.

“Are you still smoking?” he asked.

Stupid question. Of course he knew I was still smoking. This was some kind of tactic to convince me to quit. I hated it when people were manipulative.

“Yes, I am still smoking, but I stay fit.”

He shrugged and shook his head, sensing this was a fight he didn’t want to get into. He looked at his notes.

“Well, this could be fixable via medication,” he suggested, but I cut that short.

“Look doc, thanks, but no thanks, I’m on a strict organic farmaceutical diet,” I explained hotly. “I need to limit the medications.”

Something about him reminded me of the endless string of men my mother had dated after she’d driven my father off. My parents’ relationship had been doomed from the start. Trying to mix a Greek and a Scot was a surefire recipe for disaster.

“Stress and anxiety are the big killers,” explained the doctor. “Olympia, you really have to take care of this.”

They’d had me as an excuse to try and justify their relationship, an excuse that hadn’t worked despite their best attempts to argue and fight their way through it. And with a name like Olympia McIntyre, I’d never felt like I fit in anywhere growing up, least of all at home. I’d taken my mother’s name, Onassis, as an adult. It was the only thing I wanted from her anymore.

“Olympia, are you all right?” asked the doctor. He’d noticed my attention wandering.

“Yes, yes,” I shot back. “There must be something else, what about some more nanobots?”

“Those still use medications,” he explained. “Mostly they’re just delivery systems.”

“So I have to figure this out myself,” I declared, rolling my eyes and shrugging theatrically, “meditation, relaxation...”

What a load of bullshit, I didn’t need to add.

“Yes, that would probably work best in the long term, but I’m not so sure this would work in your case.”

Now it was his turn to shrug, and hopelessly of course. The sheer magnitude of his uselessness almost overpowered me. I sat speechless for a moment while we stared at each other.

“So what are you suggesting then?” I asked, trying to keep whatever process this was moving along. My impatience grew. Why couldn’t he just fix me the way I wanted so I could get on with my life? It was always up to me to fix everything, to come up with all the solutions.

“Look, Olympia, I think we have something perfect for you, but I was just weighing the other options.”

“So?”

I shook my head and waited for his inspiration. He struck another irritatingly thoughtful pose.

“Stress and anxiety are deeply rooted problems in society,” he replied calmly, “while they respond to drugs, these don’t correct the underlying issues. Medical science has found ways to fix most major diseases, but the mind is a tricky thing.”

“I agree, so what are you saying?”

I was about to lose it. How in the hell did this guy get his medical degree? I just wanted to get on with my day and he was launching into some discussion on metaphysics. He adjusted himself in his seat, clearly miffed I hadn’t let him dive off onto whatever tangent he was about to wander off on.

“There is a new synthetic reality system that we’ve been testing with select clients,” he began, raising his hands to fend off my objections, “before you say anything, there are no implants, not really anyway. You’ve already used the delivery nanobots, and this is just one step further.”

I wagged my head slightly. “Okay...”

“All you do is swallow a pill with a glass of water. Nanoscale devices called ‘smarticles’ in the pill diffuse through your body and attach themselves to your neural system. They’re able to modify signals flowing through your neurons…”

“Look, I don’t need the details,” I interrupted, shaking my head again. I hated technical mumbo-jumbo.

He stopped and looked at me before continuing, “Okay, but if you ever decide you don’t like or want it anymore, a simple verbal command deactivates the whole thing and it washes back out of your system and is excreted. It’s as simple as that.”

Excrement. Several ideas linking the good doctor to excrement sprang immediately to mind. He smiled, but now I smiled back. I was excited. I’d suddenly realized what it was he was describing.

“And this has been tested?” I asked.

This must be the new Atopian Cognix system we were pitching at the office. It wasn’t on the market yet, but I knew they were doing highly restricted trials. I brightened up. It looked like someone on top had given me the nod. Maybe I would win the account after all.

“The system has been in clinical trials for years now and is fairly well understood. I can’t give you the brand name, but that shouldn’t make any difference. Does it?”

I was sure he knew I knew what he was talking about, but he had to go through the motions anyway. I played along, knowing that all this would be reviewed by someone at Cognix as soon as I gave my consent.

“No, not really, but if you say it’ll help,” I replied, trying to conceal my glee. I wondered if he would be feeding me any of my own marketing spiel.

“One of the major modern causes of stress and anxiety is advertising.” He paused, knowing I was an advertising executive. “My recommendation is that you should use this system to remove advertising from your environment for a time, see how you feel.”

“Sure, that sounds like a good idea,” I agreed.

He seemed unsure whether I was being sarcastic or not, but could sense my mood lightening. He shrugged slightly.

“Anyway, I’d recommend that you try it out. Should I fill in a prescription for its usage?”

Absolutely you will. “So I’ll have complete control over it?”

“Of course.”

There was a pause while we looked at each other.

“Are you ready?”

“What, now?”

“Yes, now, if you’re ready...”

Another pause, and then I slowly nodded.

He stood, holding a small package in one hand, and then turned to pick up a paper cup that he filled from a small sink behind his desk. Walking around his desk he stood in front of me and leaned back on his desk, handing me the paper cup and a small white tablet.

“Just swallow this. It includes a sedative to help keep you immobile during the initial data gathering session. This isn’t required to activate the system. It’s simply a part of the trial program.”

I took the pill and paper cup from him. He looked me directly in the eye.

“Olympia, do you give your consent to give your personal data to the program?”

Of course I did. I nodded again.

“This includes background personal data, you understand?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“As a beta system, we won’t be able to activate it today. You’ll have to come back later in the week, but we can install it now,” said the doctor.

I took the cup and pill from him and studied them briefly, then popped the pill into my mouth and washed it down.

“Okay so now what?” I demanded, handing the empty cup back to him.

“Follow me,” he replied.

He stood up and led me out of his office and into a smaller room with a human-shaped pod in it. It looked like one of those old tanning beds.

“Now you need to completely undress,” he said.

I quickly and lazily complied. The sedative was already taking hold and my brain had started swimming peacefully. I laid down into the pod and the slightly gooey gel inside it conformed around my body.

“Now just relax.” He lowered the top of the enclosure.

I felt it suction onto me, completely enveloping my body. In a semi-lucid dream state I could remember feeling tiny fingers probing and tickling me, lights and patterns flashing in my eyes and sounds like some kind of hearing test. My muscles twitched as small electric shocks seemed to race back and forth across my body. Sweet and salty liquids washed through my mouth as my nostrils filled with acrid smoke, and the whole thing cycled hot to cold and back again.

I quickly fell asleep, and dreamt of flying above fields of golden daisies, with sunshine filling a perfect golden sky. I dreamt of babies with blue eyes, alive but never living, their blue eyes filling blue seas with blue pain.

4

“Olympia…”

“Olympia,” came the voice again.

I was floating, peacefully alone, and some pestering thing had broken the tranquility. My brain tried to ignore it, but then there it was once more, “Olympia?”

I reluctantly opened my eyes to see an angel hovering above me, an angel that strangely reminded me of my cat, Mr. Tweedles. No wait, not an angel, it was a nurse. That’s right. I was back at the doctor’s office getting that thing activated, and they’d sedated me again. I closed my eyes, bringing up a hand to rub them, and then opened them again and sighed heavily.

“Yes?” I responded groggily. Irritably.

“Seems like someone needed a little more sleepy time,” laughed the nurse. “Come on, I’ll get you up and dressed.”

I propped myself up on my elbows and frowned at her. “How long was I out?”

“Hmm...” she considered, “about two hours I’d say. Everything seems to be working perfectly. In fact we’ve just activated the system. Your proxxi will explain everything to you once you get home. I would have woken you sooner but you just seemed so peaceful.”

“Yeah, well, thanks for that,” I said, swinging my legs off the side of the pod as I sat up, pushing off her attempts to handle me. Shrugging, she handed me my clothes.

“I can take it from here, thank you very much,” I stated flatly and aggressively, waving her away.

She took a look at me and narrowed her eyes slightly, but then her smile returned and she shrugged again and began to walk out.

“I’m going to bring you in to speak to the doctor before you leave okay? He needs to have a final word,” she said as she went through the door.

I finished getting dressed and walked out into the hallway. The nurse was watching me carefully from a distance, studying me. Silly cow. I stopped at the doctor’s office and half hung my head inside, making sure he could sense my need to get a move on.

“So how do you feel?” he asked, looking up from whatever he was doing. “Please, come in.”

“No, I’m fine. I mean, I just want to get going. This was supposed to be under an hour, I’ve got things to do,” I complained. “So just tell me quick, what do I need to know?”

He paused.

“You have a very powerful new tool at your disposal, just be careful with it, and don’t activate any of the distributed consciousness features yet.”

“Distributed consciousness,” I snorted, looking back towards the nurse who’d positioned herself behind me in the hallway. I bet she had no idea what we were talking about. “Where do they get these ideas?”

“If you want to talk with me,” continued the doctor, and I looked back towards him, “just say my name and you will be instantly patched through to me, anytime of the day or night.”

With some effort, I managed to disengage my disgust from the sweaty reflection off his head.

“Great,” I replied impatiently. “Got it.”

“When you get home today and feel ready, just say ‘pssi instructions’ and you will get all the information you need from your new proxxi.”

“Perfect.” I felt almost cheerful, sensing an imminent exit. “I’ll be in touch.”

With the tiniest of waves I bid him goodbye, and marched off down the hallway and out the door, purposely ignoring the nurse who was watching me all the way out.

The air outside was crisp and fresh, and for the first time in ages I felt a surge of optimism. I decided to walk myself home from the clinic. I could use a breath of fresh air.

I stopped to light up a cigarette.

I’d decided that I hadn’t made a mistake with Alex. I really needed my space, to be alone for a while. He never supported or defended me anyway. In fact, my whole life it had always been up to me to defend my own place. Nobody ever helped me with anything.

Fall was in fully now, and the leaves on the trees lining the streets were turning beautiful shades of crimson and yellow. The air had a refreshing edge. I strode energetically along the sidewalks, enjoying myself, looking at everything around me.

I didn’t feel any different, and part of me doubted that whatever they had done would work as well as it was billed, despite that I was personally marketing it all. The crowds on the Upper East Side were dense but navigable, and billboards and holograms cluttered the view, but it still made for a nice walk. Eventually, I made my way home to the personal oasis of my brownstone walk-up.

Mr. Tweedles sprang at me as I entered, and began purring loudly as he rubbed himself against my pant leg while I closed the door and arranged my things. The cat had been my friend Mary’s idea, to provide some companionship. I’d grown fond of him, but the thing was just so needy. I shooed him away, hating the thought of all the hair he was depositing on me with each purring caress.

I immediately made for the bottle of wine on my kitchen counter that I’d opened yesterday and poured myself a glass. Collapsing onto my couch, I luxuriated in the taste of the earthy Tempranillo.

Sighing, I realized I had to review the installation instructions for my new toy. I might as well get it over with, but I had no patience for dealing with anything technical.

Rummaging around in my purse, I found a cigarette. I’d already gone through another pack. With all the technological wizardry you’d think they could invent an endless cigarette. I shook my head and crumpled up the empty cardboard packaging and threw it onto the table.

“Pssi instructions,” I called out, lighting up my smoke.

“System activated,” I heard from a voice that seemed to be inside my head. “I will now appear on the chair beside you. Please do not be alarmed.”

With that, something materialized sitting beside me on my matching armchair, something that looked sort of like me. In fact, it looked exactly like me.

“I am your new poly-synthetic sensory interface, or pssi, proxxi,” it said. “I will now explain the system features to you. You can stop me at any time.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I objected, waving my glass of wine in front of me, “hold on a sec.”

I wanted to get Kenny, my techie and personal assistant from work, in on this. I fumbled around in my purse for my mobile.

“You don’t need your mobile anymore,” helpfully suggested my new proxxi, seeming to know what I was thinking. That stopped me in my tracks.

“Kenny?” I called out tentatively, and his projection instantly appeared floating in the middle of my living room.

“Yes boss?” he asked. “Whoa, you got some kind of fancy lens display system going on?”

I’d tripped his geek-chic alarm.

“Yeah, Kenny, great, just get over it okay? Please listen to what, this, ah, woman is saying,” I said pointing towards my new proxxi. “Pssi interface, or proxxi, or whatever, please continue.”

Kenny’s eyes grew wide as the proxxi began speaking and describing the system controls. I just sat back and let my eyes glaze over, enjoying my wine. Presently, the proxxi faded away and I turned to Kenny to finish up.

“Kenny, I hate dealing with all this technical stuff,” I complained, “can I give you root access to my system and you handle the settings and dealing with this proxxi? I don’t want to have anything to do with it, and quite frankly I find it, or her or whatever, disturbing.”

“Not sure boss,” he replied skeptically, “let me look into it. From what I understood, you can’t hand off all the root functions, but give me a day or two to research it.”

His geek love was sparking hard.

“Just don’t waste too much time on it, right?” He’d just use this as an excuse to duck out of other work, the little weasel.

He nodded. “Okay.”

“Any problem I have, I just call your name and you pop up, right?”

“Exactly,” he agreed, “anytime, anywhere. Still, were you paying attention to the safety? If you need to reset the system there is this hardwired gesture recognition…”

He began motioning in the air, reaching towards his chest and twisting and pulling. It looked ridiculous.

“Look Kenny, I’ve got you, right? Or Dr. Simmons, or failing that I just call this proxxi thing, right?”

“Yes, absolutely.” He smiled and shrugged, stopping what he was doing.

“I really don’t like dealing with this AI and synthetic stuff,” I sighed.

“But you were listening to all that, right?” he asked, furrowing his brow in feigned concern. “This system is very powerful.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes Kenny, I was listening, but just take care of it for me, okay?”

“Right boss,” he replied with a shrug.

“Now, please set it so it removes all advertising as my doctor prescribed.”

There was a short pause while he spoke to my new proxxi on his end.

“All done,” he replied quickly. He smiled and raised his eyebrows.

That was fast.

I had to admit I liked the way I didn’t need the mobile bud anymore, and the technology looked pretty amazing, even from just the proxxi session.

Waving Kenny away, I settled back into the couch. Mr. Tweedles made an attempt to come up for some affection, and I shoved him away. Not on my new authentic leather couch. What the hell was he thinking?

It was time for bed. I picked my reading tablet up from the coffee table and walked off towards my bedroom. Quickly, I undressed and slipped under the covers, opening up the tablet to get back into reading a trashy romance novel I had been trying to finish, set in some ridiculous corner of the multiverse.

The pages of text quickly began to fade and blur as I tried to read them, and I fell peacefully off to sleep amid dreams of peaceful order and solitude.

5

The next morning I awoke early, feeling unusually refreshed. At this time of year, the sun just managed to sneak into the alleyway between the buildings next to me and was casting some cheerful rays in through my bedroom window.

Laid out peacefully in my bed under the covers, my body was lethargic from sleep. I dreamily watched motes of dust settle and spin in the sunlight streaming in from the blinds. My mind was completely at ease for the first time in longer than I could remember. Something was different, but what?

Then slowly, very slowly, the noise from the street began to filter into my consciousness, gradually rising until it filled the space it usually did. I realized then that the pssi interface had been filtering it out while I was asleep. No wonder I felt so refreshed.

Energized, I pulled back the sheets. Time to face the day! As I swung my terry cloth pajama legs off the bed, I called out to Mr. Tweedles, who trotted in obediently to rub up against me. I leaned down to pet him, then stretched and yawned and sat for a moment on the edge of the bed as I collected myself and put on my slippers.

“Okay, okay, enough!” I complained at Mr. Tweedles. I shooed him away and got up to pad off into the kitchen to pick up my morning cup of coffee that was waiting for me there.

Arriving in the kitchen, I began to fumble around for the holographic remote in the bowl of junk in the middle of the counter. As I rooted around looking for it, my morning Phuture News Network sprang into life by itself, dissolving the opposite wall of my living room. I blinked, surprised, and realized this must be my new pssi system again.

A message flashed up on the display. Mary had called again. I didn’t make friends easily, but her and I had met a few months ago at a coffee shop nearby and had struck up an immediate friendship. She was beginning to annoy me a little as we got to know each other better. A hypocrite, and very judgmental. I ignored the message.

Sitting down on a stool at my granite breakfast countertop, I passed my bowl of instant oats under the tap and a short jet of water filled it to the prescribed level. The oatmeal began sputtering and bubbling as the thermo-reactive particles in it prepared themselves, and I sat stirring it absentmindedly while I watched predictions of the day’s news to come.

The new pssi display was amazing, it looked so good I felt like I could get up and walk right through from my living room and drop right into whatever I was looking it. At that moment it was a swirling storm system somewhere out in the Atlantic, grinding its way towards some unfortunate Caribbean island.

The image was far superior to my old holographic, and much better than the contact lens displays I found so irritating and headache inducing.

“By the end of the week,” predicted the Phuture News weather anchor floating to one side of the display, “tropical storm Ignacia will reach hurricane status and quickly progress into the third major storm of the season.”

They were projecting it would wash all the way up the coast and threaten New York, an almost regular occurrence.

In an overlaid display, Phuture News droned on about soon to be emerging conflicts in the Weather Wars along with a list of other clashes and predicted famines and disasters. It seemed it was all they ever talked about. No wonder everyone was anxious and depressed, never mind the advertising.

Oh well, I thought as I spooned my oatmeal rhythmically into my mouth and they detailed the death and destruction, what could I do about it?

“Good morning. I hope you didn’t mind, but I filtered out the street noise last night. I thought it would help you sleep better.”

I looked up from my oatmeal to find myself looking at me, or rather, a similar version of myself. My proxxi was strikingly composed in a tight, fashionable business suit with her hair done up in a severe bun. She looked amazing. Oatmeal dripped off my spoon as I looked at her. My hair was a frizzy mess.

“I also took the liberty of preparing a relevant summary of world events that happened while you were sleeping,” she said brightly. I stared at her, feeling violated and annoyed. I just wanted to have my oatmeal in peace. I hadn’t requested any of this.

“I think that these may be most relevant regarding your work today,” she continued, and a blur of images hung in an augmented display space in front of me. I put my spoon down. “Instead of talking it would be easier if we could commingle my subjective reality with yours…”

I cut her off. “No, no, look, I just wanted to try this for the advertising block. I realize you are the main system interface but please, just communicate with Kenny, okay?” Anyway, my doctor had said to avoid distributed consciousness features, which is what this commingling of realities sounded like.

She shrugged. “Of course, Olympia. My apologies. I will interface with Kenny from now on until I hear otherwise from you.”

With that she faded away. Honestly, I found this proxxi thing unnerving, but at least she hadn’t given me any attitude. She’d just responded to my request and gotten on with it.

I returned my gaze to Phuture News and began eating my oatmeal again.

“News off please!” I announced, wondering how the pssi system would respond.

Magically, the display faded and my wall returned, but the system left behind a persistent visual overlay that was curiously both visible and somehow invisible at the same time. This technology was actually pretty amazing.

An image of some new war that was about to start hung in my new overlaid display. Maybe I shouldn’t start my days with Phuture News. But even as I muttered this aloud, I could see a Phuture News feed at the bottom of my display saying there was a ninety percent chance I would anyway. I laughed. Obviously the system was a comedian as well.

As I sat mulling this, I picked up the new edition of Marketing Miracles from the counter, a rare print magazine, and leafed through it. My brow furrowed. That’s odd. Then I figured it out.

“Kenny,” I announced into thin air, “could you switch the advertisement blocking system off?”

Immediately the pages of the magazine began to morph, shifting and dissolving until the same page appeared before me, but this time with the advertisements in it.

“And, Kenny, now back on please.”

The images and text on the page quickly shape shifted back and the adverts dissolved away. Amazing.

As I considered this, I realized that the news broadcast hadn’t had any ads floating across it either, nor had it been interrupted by any advertising breaks. Really amazing.

I sat bolt upright and listened hard to the noise from outside, paying attention more carefully. I could still hear the traffic and bustle of people, but the baseline clatter of the street hawkers and holo ads was absent.

Nice.

6

We’d won the first phase of the Cognix account. It was the biggest our marketing company had ever been awarded and I was something of a hero around the office. Bertram had even been tolerable lately, but only just.

Today we were helping run an online press conference with Patricia Killiam, Cognix’s most famous scientist and primary press presence. The meeting was being held in one of the Atopian conference rooms. Many of the reporters were actually on Atopia with Patricia in the room, but most people, like me, were attending remotely. I started up the holographic promo-world for the reporters to get the show started.

“Imagine,” said an extremely attractive young woman, or man, depending on your preference, “have you ever thought of hiking the Himalayas in the morning and finishing off the day on a beach in the Bahamas?”

As she walked along an exotically anonymous beach, she began nodding, conveying to us that not only was it possible, but it was something that we needed, and that we obviously needed right away.

“Pssionics now enables limitless travel with nearly zero environmental impact. You’ll be having the most fun, with the lowest combined footprint, of anyone in your social cloud!”

“And you’ll never forget anything again,” laughed the girl, reminding us of everything we’d ever thought we’d forgotten. “You’ll never again have to argue about who said what!”

While we all contemplated the things our mates had gotten wrong over the years, her face shifted into a more serious demeanor.

“Imagine performing more at work while being there less. Want to get in shape? Your new proxxi can take you for a run while you relax by the pool!” she exclaimed, stopping her walk to look directly into the viewer’s eyes.

“Look how you want, when you want, where you want, and live longer doing it. Create the reality you need right now with Atopian pssionics, and sign up soon for zero cost!”

The woman faded into the slowly rotating Atopian logo.

A short silence settled while Patricia let it all sink in. She was the master at this, and she should be after all the years she’d spent punting for it.

“So, how exactly is pssionics going to make the world a better place?” asked an attractive blond from one of the entertainment outlets.

I watched Patricia carefully roll her eyes. She didn’t like the term ‘pssionics’, too much baggage. The blond reporter’s name floated into view in one of my display spaces: Ginny.

“Well Ginny, I prefer to use the term ‘polysynthetic sensory interface’ or just pssi,” replied Patricia, detaching from her body.

A computerized image of Patricia floated up above her body and continued to talk with the reporters while her proxxi walked her body along beneath the projection. Nobody batted an eye. They weren’t easily impressed anymore.

“We’ve been able to demonstrate here on Atopia that people are just as happy with virtual goods as material ones. You just need to make the simulation good enough, real enough.”

Everyone nodded as they’d all heard this before. I’d already heard this speech a dozen times myself, and my mind wandered off to thinking about how pssi had already changed my life. I certainly felt more rested. I began thinking of calling Alex, just to chat.

“Everyone!” announced Patricia, drawing my attention back to her presentation. That’s right. This morning they were going to be doing the weapons demonstration. It was a good marketing stunt to show off that they were serious.

“If you’ll allow me,” continued Patricia, “I’d like to take whoever is coming up to watch the test firing of the slingshot.”

Everyone nodded, and she took control of our visual points-of-view and pulled us up through the ceiling of the conference room and out above Atopia with dizzying speed. We shot upwards into the sky.

“So to answer your question, pssi will change the world by moving it from the destructive downward spiral of material consumption and into the clean world of synthetic consumption.”

Our viewpoint began to slow as we neared the edge of space. The curved horizon of the Earth was spread out in the distance, above oceans far below. The sun was just rising.

“Ten billion people all fighting for their piece of the material dream is destroying the planet, and pssi is the solution that will bring us back from the brink!”

Her finale was punctuated by a growling roar as the slingshot filled the air around us with a fiery inferno. The reporters clapped loudly in the background.

They couldn’t get enough of this stuff.

7

It had been a long day, and a creeping headache was just reaching a roaring finale by the time I finished late at night. After a few weeks of smooth sailing on the Cognix account, today we’d had our first major speed bump with the disaster of a Cognix-related project launch called Infinixx.

We were all in high damage control mode. The spectacle of Bertram in another one of his ridiculous outfits had just topped it all off. While I was slaving away, he’d spent most of the day trolling around the office assistant pool, looking for some ditzy new romantic victim.

Bertram and I had also just had a big argument about whether to use Patricia or some new young pssi-kid, Jimmy, as the main media presence for marketing. I was adamant about sticking with Patricia, but Bertram was just as convinced we should switch to someone newer and younger.

Everything and everyone at the office was getting on my nerves. I had to escape outside for a cigarette nearly every half hour to get away. I just wanted to be left alone.

I’d found out that Alex had started dating Mary. I didn’t care, but their hypocrisy made me angry. Is this what friends did? I was having a hard time getting it out of my mind, and I’d blocked all of their incoming messages and removed them from my social clouds.

Grabbing a handful of anti-inflammatories from my desk drawer, I got up to leave for the night, and downed the pills dry as I exited the giant brass and glass doors of our building out onto 5 Avenue.

I was lost deep in thought about how to spin the Infinixx mess when my senses were shocked by an expectational vacuum. Stopped in my tracks, I blinked out into the collecting dusk, looking out above the sea of people jostling past me.

It was as if a layer of noisy fluorescent dirt had been scraped off the City by the hand of God.

All the advertising was gone, as if it had never been there. I could actually see the buildings around me. The comparative calmness was mesmerizing, and I stepped out and into the quiet flow of pedestrian hubbub, looking up above and around me in wonderment. The flow carried me up 5 and into Central Park, and in a dreamy state I continued to walk around the edge of the park, staring at my City with new eyes.

I’d been using my pssi for a while already, but New York without advertising still had a creepy feel to it. But, it was definitely relaxing, and as my headache subsided, I decided to get a little exercise and finish the walk all the way home myself.

The gathering darkness was something else I wasn’t accustomed to. Normally the advertisements lit up the streets and sidewalks. As I neared home, staring up and around, I was nearly tripped up by a bum who was splayed out on the street. The stench of his body odor should have been forewarning enough, but the darkness and my wandering eyes betrayed me.

“Lady! Lady! Watch it!”

Looking down just in time, I danced awkwardly over the grubby human at my feet, knocking over his collection bowl. Nobody else around me even bothered to glance at the commotion as they swept past.

He cowered for an instant, with me jittering over him, and then shot outwards on all fours to collect the bills I’d scattered, darting this way and that underfoot the human traffic.

What a pathetic creature.

I should report this to Passport Control. I bet he’s not even supposed to be here, and even if he is, he should be deported. What possible good could be coming from him being here, dirtying up my neighborhood? He was worse than trash. At least trash you could package up and bury or burn somewhere.

“Get out of the way!” I spat at him as he sat back on his haunches.

He just looked up at me. I had expected to see a scowl and his anger reflected to fuel my own, but he simply stared at me.

“You think you’re important lady?”

People streamed past us. We seemed lost in the moment, staring at each other. Still the blank stare. Was he about to cry? Ah shit. I fumbled around in my pockets, but I had no change. Anyway, why should I help him? Nobody had ever helped me in my life. I’d always had to fend for myself, for everything.

I felt suddenly angry. In a flash my senses returned and I dismissed this human straggler. Turning away I merged back into the pedestrian flow.

“You should be more careful, life can throw you funny curveballs lady,” I heard him say while I was swept away.

“We’ll be seeing you here with us soon!” he shouted, in the distance, fading away.

I shivered. There was no way I’d let myself fall so far. He was probably lying anyway. That’s what they did. At that moment an incoming ping arrived from Kenny.

“What?” I asked, happy to move onto some new topic.

Kenny materialized walking in step beside me.

“That was close,” he commented.

“What was close?” Was he spying on me?

“That bum that almost knee capped you just now.”

“Kenny, how do you know what just happened?” My anger began brimming from its ambient low boil.

“Your pssi has an automated threat assessment, and since I’m the root user, a security alert popped up on my display,” he said defensively. “You know, there’s an automated collision avoidance system you could activate.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” I shot back. “You’re not watching me with that thing are you?”

“No, no, it’s just an alarm,” protested Kenny, his projection ducking and weaving around the foot traffic as he kept pace with me. “Like I said, as the root user, I get security alerts fed to me automatically. I just thought you may have needed some help.”

I looked at him. “So you managed to get root access to my system? I thought you said the system didn’t allow it?”

It was all the same to me. I hated dealing with that stuff. Having Kenny manage it made my life that much simpler.

“Yeah, someone from the company authorized it as part of the testing procedure. They gave us a backdoor workaround.”

“Good.”

At least something was going my way. Kenny was staring at me as I squinted into the darkness.

“What?” I urged. I could see he had something more to say.

“Well, I could set the pssi to adjust your perceptual brightness, even optimize contrast. That would make it easier for you to see things.”

I wasn’t too keen on the thing controlling my body, but this seemed reasonable.

“Sure, show me,” I replied, my anger fizzling.

Immediately, the scene around me brightened and the edges grew sharper. I knew it was dark out, but I could see everything clearly, in even sharper detail than full daylight.

“Kenny, that is actually...great,” I said after a moment. “Good work.”

He brightened up at my praise like a puppy. Before I could say anything else, Kenny started to speak again, his geek-citement bubbling out.

“Believe it or not, but we could filter out street people too,” he added. “I could also set it so that garbage and dirt is cleaned off the street, or remove graffiti. There are all kinds of reality skins you can set in this thing. We would need to initiate some of the kinesthetic features, though.”

I had turned onto 75 by then, my street, and could see a few street people hanging around on the corner up ahead, begging for money. They were more or less invisible to me anyway, the great unseen as it were, but seeing them there irked me.

“Sure, Kenny, let’s try it,” I replied with mildly venomous enthusiasm at the thought of wiping out these street vermin. The instant I said it, the panhandlers up ahead melted away, and the walls of the buildings suddenly washed free of graffiti. The sidewalk beneath me began to glisten as if it was newly laid.

“How’s that?” asked Kenny.

“That is amazing,” I replied.

It actually was amazing. It was my neighborhood, just a better version. Scrubbed clean.

In the distance, I saw a robot walk by.

“Could you also set it to remove all robotics, I mean, unless they directly address me?” They still made me nervous. This gave me another idea. “And remove all couples holding hands as well.”

Perhaps this was a little too much information to share with Kenny, but he just shrugged and nodded.

“All done. So this is the new pssi system that Cognix is going to release, huh?” asked Kenny.

I was busy enjoying myself, looking around and admiring my new neighborhood, but felt some irritation creep back in. Kenny was always looking to pick under the edges.

“I don’t know, Kenny, but they’re going to be giving it away soon so you’ll be able to play with it to your heart’s content, okay?”

“Cool,” he replied.

In an overlaid display space I could see him tuning into a media broadcast from Patricia Killiam. Our marketing program really did seem to be working.

8

New York can make you crazy, but if I’d ever had a bad day at work, this was the worst. I’d spent the past week almost sleeping at the office, preparing reams of new material for the Cognix launch. It was a simultaneous worldwide release, the biggest media campaign of all time, and we were in a fever pitch trying to get everything ready.

Storms were sweeping up the Eastern Pacific towards Atopia. Hurricanes by themselves were nothing unusual, and these weren’t close to threatening the island city, but Atopia had begun inexplicably moving itself much closer towards America. Without any explanation from them we had to somehow cover and spin this positively in addition to everything else going on.

Kenny had managed to install filters in my own pssi system so that Bertram the jerk, and the floosies in the assistant pool, were filtered out of my visual input unless they directly addressed me in some way. That had been great to begin with, but as the days went by, I’d started getting more and more frustrated with almost everyone.

The show stopper had come at the end of the week.

“Olympia,” came the call from my boss, “could you come in here please?”

This was the final decision on the final stage of the Cognix account, and I was nervous. The old school and the new school were facing down, and I felt the future of my career suddenly hanging in the balance.

Flicking off some Phuture News gossip girls, I collected my Cognix materials and sent them over to the conference room, closing down my workstation as I got up to leave. I ran a hand through my hair to straighten it out and absently brushed some lint off my shoulder as I looked out at the wall of the building facing my window, hardly ten feet away.

My reflected image hung thinly over the cold, chipped brick beyond. My heart thumped loudly in my chest, each contraction pushing blood tensely through my arteries, forcing it down into my veins, straining it into the smallest of vessels as the pressure built up. I tried taking a deep breath, but there was nowhere for the air to go.

Sweat beaded upon my forehead.

Shake it off, take the fight to them, I thought to myself. A vision of that bum on the street suddenly crowded my mind, and I looked down and away. “We’ll be seeing you soon,” was what he’d said. What did he mean by that? That will never be me.

My heart began racing.

Why are you thinking like this? You’re a high powered executive, a queen of New York. You have savings, you have important friends, you own your home, and you’ve even got Mr. Tweedles. I smiled at that. The doctor must have been right—the stress was getting to me. I just didn’t feel like myself.

Letting out a big sigh, I collected myself and made for the door. Everything would be fine.

Down the hallway I entered the conference room, and was surprised that projections of our Cognix customers weren’t filling the holographic wall. My boss and Bertram were sitting down on the other side of the long table, looking at me like they were waiting for my arrival.

I pulled up a chair opposite them, taking an aggressive stance as I sat down. I leaned into the table, feeling my old friend anger begin to make an appearance.

“What’s up guys?” I half asked, half challenged. I’d had enough of them already this week.

“Olympia, we’re glad you’re here,” began my boss stupidly, opening clasped hands that had been supporting his weak chin as if about to accept an award for incompetence.

I let go an audible groan.

“Roger, what’s up? Cut the bullshit. Did we lose the final phase of the account?”

“No,” he announced with pronounced lack of enthusiasm, “actually, we won.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“No problem at all. In fact, we want to use all of the materials you created. Great work!”

“Well, good then,” I replied carefully, softening up my seated posture.

“But...”

“But what?” I growled, leaning back into the table.

“We’ve made, ah, our client wants, ah, well, we want Bertram here to head the account. You’ll be working underneath him on this. I’d like you to show him the ropes, you know, you’re the expert.”

He smiled at me weakly while Bertram beamed enthusiastically. Worm. I smiled as I mentally uncapped the pot simmering inside me, feeling it boil over to explode through my temples.

“Are you out of your mind?” I yelled back at them both. “There is no way that I’m going to train this little shit eating monkey to do my job!”

Bertram shifted back in his chair, enjoying the spectacle, his grin floating disconnectedly in my red-shifted vision. My chest tightened as I attempted to let go another salvo. I gripped the table with white knuckles. My vision was swimming.

“Does this have anything to do with me not wanting to use that kid instead of Patricia?” I asked.

“No, nothing like that,” said Bertram, smiling. I didn’t believe him.

“Olympia, look, I understand how you feel,” pleaded my boss, “but you could learn a lot from Bertram too. Look how calm and collected he is.” He looked back at Bertram. “There is no rush on this, why don’t you take next week off, paid leave, and think about everything, okay?”

I stared down at the table, trying to get a grip on myself. Maybe that wouldn’t be a bad idea. I could use the time to plan out a strategy of how to undermine these idiots. Maybe it was best to just nurse my wounds.

“Fine,” I grumbled under my breath. I let the prospect of vengeance cool my soul. “Fine. Glad we won the contract, sir. I could actually use a little time off.”

“See,” said Roger, brightening up, “now that’s the spirit. Take as much time as you need, Olympia, we need you here in top shape. This will be a big job.”

Yes, I thought, this will be a big job.

Taking off early, I managed to get home quickly and was well through a second bottle of wine and curled up with Mr. Tweedles on my couch when night began to fall. An unusual early snow had started outside, and I watched squalls of snowflakes begin sweeping by in the streets outside through my large bay window.

The stress of the day had hardly abated. Even after polishing off the first bottle, I was having a hard time concentrating on a new romance novel I’d started. My mind was shifting back to plotting the downfall of Bertram and my boss.

Mr. Tweedles started purring and rubbing up against me. I’d been enjoying cuddling with him, but he’d rolled over onto his back, inviting me to scratch his tummy. I kicked him off the couch.

Sighing, I picked up two sleeping pills from the drawer in my coffee table, and taking a deep breath I washed them down with a mouthful of wine. Lighting up my last cigarette for the night, I called up Kenny.

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied instantly, appearing with a careful smile in my primary display space. I bet he’d heard about my little incident today. I bet I was the talk of the office.

I’d show them.

“Kenny, look, could you set my pssi to filter out anything that I find annoying, until you hear different from me?” If I have some time off, I reasoned, I may as well try to depressurize and make the most of the tools at my disposal.

“Sure,” he replied, “I guess I could do that.”

“I’ll just ping you if I need anything, okay?”

“Sounds good, no problem,” he responded, and then added, “and hey, enjoy the time off, okay boss?”

If I didn’t know any better, I could have sworn he was being genuine. I clicked him out of my sensory spaces without another word and got up off the couch, drunker than I thought I was, to wander into my bedroom and collapse on the bed.

9

Oh my head hurt. I groggily lifted it off the sheets and waited while my blurry vision adjusted to the half darkness of my bedroom. It was still early and I didn’t need to be up for work.

Wait a minute, it was Saturday. Finally, the weekend. As memories seeped into my brain, I realized that I didn’t need to go back to work this whole week, perhaps longer. Screw it. I flopped my head back onto my pillow and called out weakly for Mr. Tweedles.

“Hey, kitty kitty,” I called out, but without response. That was odd. Ah well. I conked back out.

In what seemed like moments later, bright light began streaming in through the window. It must have been fully morning. My head ached dully, so I flopped out of bed and made for the kitchen to get a glass of cold water.

Mr. Tweedles was still nowhere to be seen. Did I let him out last night? I didn’t usually let him out since he was a house cat, but I had been a little drunk.

Downing a tall, cool glass of water, I immediately felt refreshed. I should go for a run, I thought to myself. That would burn off some stress and get the gears going. There was nothing like a good run to fire up the imagination, and my mind was already cycling with ways to get back at Bertram and my boss.

So I moved back off to my bedroom to put on some cool weather sports gear, and moments later I was off jogging down my street, drinking in the cool autumn air and enjoying the crisp bite of the year’s first frost burning off in the early sunshine.

I admired the scenery, completely devoid of any ads, the streets sparkling and walls scrubbed clean, with no vagrants to spoil the view or inspire guilt. It was perfect. I jogged along 75 towards Central Park.

It was calm, but gradually I began to get the feeling it was too calm. There was a complete lack of other people walking on the streets, or even any people in cars. It was early morning on the weekend, but even so. As I made it to the corner of the park, I decided I’d better check in with Kenny to make sure my pssi was working properly.

“Kenny!” I demanded. “Kenny, could you check the pssi system for me?”

No response. I slowed up my jog a little, suddenly nervous. Maybe he was hung-over too.

“Kenny!” I yelled out again, and then stopped jogging and halted, waiting for a response.

“Kenny!” I yelled, and then screamed, “Kenny!!”

My voice just echoed back from the empty space of the park. No sounds at all. Panicking, I turned around and began to sprint as fast as I could back to my apartment, calling out people’s names as I ran.

Nobody answered.

“Pssi interface!” I screeched as I ran.

“Dr. Simmons!” I pleaded, but there was no response.

Maybe the pssi was just broken, I thought, maybe I should just try my mobile. I burst in through my front door and rummaged around my purse for my mobile. I popped it in my ear and began calling out people’s names, but still, nothing. Alarm settled into my gut. I ran back out into the street in a panic.

There were cars lining the street but no one driving them, no people anywhere, and no Mr. Tweedles. How was it possible I was walking around in the street, right down the middle and not seeing anyone? How was it possible?

My mind raced. I’d told Kenny to set the system to erase anything I found annoying. I’d given Kenny root executive control, and I certainly found Kenny annoying, as well as my doctor. My God, what had I done?

I ran down the street, tears streaming down my face, my chest burning. I would get to my office, someone would be there even on the weekend, they would see me, they could fix this even if I couldn’t see them. My legs tired and I began to walk, calming down. This was ridiculous. Don’t panic. Just stay calm.

Eventually I rounded the last block before my building, and, turning the corner, I thought of all the ways I was going to laugh this off with everyone, but then my heart fell through my stomach. My office tower was gone, replaced by some other morphed amalgamation that looked similar but dissimilar at the same time.

I began to weep, waving my arms around. Of course I’d found work annoying. In fact, I found almost everything and everyone annoying.

“Please, someone help me! I’m stuck in the pssi! Please someone help me!” I cried out into the empty streets, looking desperately around me.

I was utterly alone in one of the world’s most densely populated cities.

I let out a slow moan of dread.

10

At first I’d wandered through the empty streets of New York. In desperation I’d taken the New York Passenger Cannon, operating perfectly to timetable but yet empty of passengers, to San Francisco. Arrival there had just made things worse, however, as it was as empty as New York.

For the first few days, I’d tried to remember the deactivation gesture that Kenny had tried to show me, the hardwired failsafe, but I hadn’t been paying attention. What was that sequence, what was the motion? Walking around, I pulled and scraped at my chest, twisting and turning and muttering random words, hoping one of them would be the deactivation sequence. But nothing happened.

With a mounting sense of horror, I began to realize that perhaps I was the only person left, the last person on Earth, or at least the last person on whatever version of the Earth I had led myself onto.

I stopped at the end of the pier at Fisherman’s’ Wharf. This place was usually packed with tourists, but of course it was desolately empty.

Opening my purse I stared at the pack of cigarettes inside. It had become endless. No matter how many cigarettes I took from it, the next time I opened my purse, it was full again. I’d even tried throwing it away in a fit of frustration, but then there it was again the next time I felt an urge coming on. Shaking my head, I pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

I’d explored everywhere, tried everything. I didn’t need to bring any luggage with me for traveling as I could just pick up clothes, any clothes I wanted, right off the racks.

Restaurants were always open. At first I tried going into buffets, and row upon row of fresh, steaming food would always be waiting for me. After a little while I’d discovered that if I had an urge for anything, I could just go into a restaurant, and magically the meal I wanted would be there, ready for me to sit down and eat alone.

All of the mediaworlds were still broadcasting, but the news was filled with stories about families, about happy reunions and lost children newly found. I often spent my afternoons sitting alone in cinemas and watching endless reruns of old romance films.

Something had to be wrong with the pssi system. Weren’t the smarticles supposed to wash out of my system by themselves eventually? Somebody out there would figure it out, somebody would save me, and then just as suddenly as it had started, it would be over.

Perhaps I’d been upset with everyone, angry at the world, but I wasn’t anymore. I just desperately wanted to see someone, anyone, it didn’t matter. I’d become beyond terrified of being alone.

But still, nobody appeared.

11

Had it been weeks or months? It was hard to tell. My psyche had begun to unglue itself as my conviction slipped that somebody out there would notice my absence.

How long could this last? My mind kept returning to my own marketing campaigns, to pssi’s main selling feature of dramatically stretching the human lifespan. Was it possible that I could be left wandering alone for years, decades, even a century? Or more?

My mind frantically circled around and around the thought, unable to fathom it, clawing desperately at the edges of this prison without walls. I suspected that the system wouldn’t even let me kill myself. There was no escape.

Today I was wandering around Madrid, through Beun Retiro Park. It was as devoid of people as everywhere else my lonely travels had taken me. I was walking between rows of skeleton trees, across carpets of golden leaves that they’d shed like tears just for me. It was a beautiful day under a perfect sky as winter settled in.

At least, it could have been beautiful if there’d been anybody else there but me, by myself.

I thought a lot about Mr. Tweedles. Everywhere I went, I kept thinking I saw him, just up ahead, just passing a lamppost. I’d feel him brushing up against my leg, and then wake up, realizing I was still stuck in this nightmare. I think he’d been the only creature who’d ever loved me. I hoped someone was taking care of him.

My life hadn’t ended, but without anyone else, it had ceased to have any meaning.

Stopping next to the Crystal Palace in the middle of the park, I opened my purse to take out another of the endless cigarettes. I lit up, and then bent down to pick up one of the beautiful golden leaves from the gravel path. I studied it carefully and began to laugh, and then to cry.

It was so peaceful here. It was what I’d always wanted, just to be left alone, and I only had myself to blame, or to thank. My God, please, somebody had to notice I was gone.

My sobs of laughter rang out through the empty morning sunshine, under a faultless, empty blue sky.