The Atopia Chronicles

1 Identity: Olympia Onassis

“No! No! Your other left!” I barked, gesturing toward the pack of cigarettes I wanted. My heart was still pounding after the screaming fight I’d had with Alex in the street outside. He’d wanted us to move in together—or rather, he’d wanted to move in with me. I wasn’t ready, and frankly I wasn’t sure I’d ever be. 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 pharmacist behind the counter stared at me and began speaking in something foreign. Even with languages going extinct faster than frogs, I’d read that the city still had nearly a thousand spoken throughout its many boroughs. What a mess.

He shrugged as if to say, “Now what?”

The rumbling impatience of the line behind me almost overcame my need for nicotine. Almost, but not quite. Buying one stupid pack of cigarettes required a pharmacist to personally verify my nano-cleaning certification, and I wasn’t about to go through this hassle all over again.

“Wait a minute!” I held up one hand and rummaged around in my purse for my mobile with the other. Squeamish of surgical implants, I still used an old-fashioned earbud. Acutely aware of the eyes on me, I popped it into my ear.

“Camel Lights!” I repeated, 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 hopefully out the door.

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

Reaching into the display, he handed them over, and I grabbed them and began pushing my way back through the crowd toward the entrance, credits for the transaction automatically charged to me as I opened the pack. I banged open the door to the street as I stormed out, startling the incoming customers.

Smoking was a bad habit I’d picked up from my mother. We hadn’t spoken in years, but then she’d barely ever shown any interest in me when we had. She’d shown about as much interest in my father, eventually driving him away to some kind of Luddite commune back in Montana with the rest of his family. I hadn’t been able to reach him in almost as long as I hadn’t spoken to my mother, and it wasn’t something I was going to forgive her for anytime soon.

I stopped just outside the door of the pharmacy to light up, closing my eyes and taking a deep drag.

Midtown blazed away before me in an orgy of advertising. Almost every square inch of space, from lamppost to sidewalk, was full of commercials heralding a new Broadway show or multiverse world. A holographic head danced above me, sparkling and wobbling as the smoke from my cigarette drifted up into it. “Come to Titan, experience the methane rain.”

Taking another drag, I glanced up at the grinning head. “Experience the methane rain?” Not exactly sexy. They should have been pitching something like, “Take her to new heights—make love in the hydrocarbon desert.” I laughed grimly to myself—“make love,” now there was something alien, never mind Titan.

Without warning, the metallic robotic surrogate I’d noticed lining up behind me in the shop came barreling into me, pinning me hard against the wall. It fumbled at me. Blood drained from my face in shock, but my confusion and fear were quickly replaced by a bolt of fury, and I lashed back, yelling and flailing.

“Get off me!”

It bounced back much more easily than I’d anticipated. We stood staring at each other for a moment, my angry gaze meeting its dead, gunmetal-grey orbs. With what I could only interpret as a furtive glance, it shifted its shoulders in an oddly mechanical shrug before turning to disappear into the stream of pedestrian traffic. I lurched forward to give chase but gave up almost instantly.

I was shaking.

Breathing raggedly, I wiped spittle from the side of my mouth. Looking down, I noticed that he had stolen my cigarette pack. The tremble in my hands matched the wobble of the hologram touting Titan above me. In my right hand, the cigarette continued to burn away, unconcerned.

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

This goddamn city.

I had half a mind to call Alex, but remembered the fight we just had, and I was already late for my presentation. Still shaking, I dropped my smoke and ground it out underfoot before venturing out from under the awning to merge into the sea of pedestrians flowing down West Fifty-Seventh Street.

Surging with the crowd, I watched for a current that could carry me toward the curb. Up ahead, someone swore out loud and then stopped. His arrested momentum forced a wave of people to flow outward and around him.

This was my chance.

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

“Out of my way!” I growled. Shoving her aside, I rotated toward the edge of the street and elbowed my way to the curb, where I stretched out my arm to join with the forest of other outstretched limbs.

“Ten! Ten!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, offering ten times the going rate. I was tired and frightened and wanted to get out of there.

A cab slipped from traffic to pull up beside me, my generosity earning me dirty looks from the people around me trying to snag 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. Cool, recycled air swept around me as the door clicked shut. I took a moment to collect myself, closing my eyes, exhaling softly, trying to relieve the pressure.

“Where to, lady?” chimed a metallic voice. It was a 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. “Ah.… ” What the hell was my office address? I sat upright in a panic. What was wrong with me? I’d worked there for over ten years.

“Lady, where to?”

“One second,” I snapped. Remembering I still had the mobile bud in place, I called up my tech assistant. “Kenny, what’s our office address?”

“555 Fifth Avenue,” a perplexed Kenny responded almost instantly, which I relayed to the cabbie.

My face flushed. How could I have forgotten my own office address? I needed a drink. The cab immediately accelerated and merged into traffic. Sitting back I took some deep breaths, trying to loosen up the tightness in my chest while we sped off.

2

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

This was much the same thing to Atopians.

The new Cognix account was the biggest to ever come through our office, and I’d been named as the lead for closing the deal. By winning it, I could finally step out from the shadows and take center stage. The pressure was intense.

I’d had to rush to get there, 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. My pitch was a mess––the incident with the robot and my blank-out in the cab had really thrown me—and my timing was off.

Well, at least my part was done. I sat back and watched my colleague Bertram finish the presentation.

I was thinking of my fight with Alex. It wasn’t just about living together. He was always on me to spend more time with his family, his brothers and sisters, but they always seemed to ready to critique me. It was a constant source of friction between us, made worse when he kept insisting that it was just my own insecurities. Raised in a big family, he wanted kids, but I had no idea how anyone could want to bring a child into this world. It was falling apart.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an incoming email from the Washington Heights orphanage I was working with. Maybe I didn’t want to have a kid with Alex, but that didn’t mean I didn’t care. I understood what it was like to be left alone. But that was my business. I erased the message before anyone else could see it.

I looked back up at Bertram. After the endless overtime I’d put into this account, I couldn’t believe my boss had almost given Bertram the lead on closing it. Floppy mop of brown hair, pantomiming away in that ridiculous multi-phasic suit, laughing at his own jokes. Judging from the way everyone was reacting to his end of the pitch, however, whatever he was doing was working. I could almost feel my career slipping away.

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 made me think about Alex again. Had I made a terrible mistake? My stomach lurched.

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

There was a smattering of applause.

Wait a minute. That’s my tagline. What was he doing presenting that today? I was supposed to be using it tomorrow. I thought we’d agreed.

My boss glanced at me. “Something wrong, Olympia?” The epitome of middle-management, Roger always had a coffee cup in hand and a seemingly unending supply of ill-fitting suits and cheap ties. “Do you have anything to add?” He lifted his coffee to take a sip. Everyone turned to look at me.

My God, it’s stuffy in here.

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

It seemed as if all the air in the room evacuated, and a crushing pain tightened my chest like a vise. Wrenching myself up from the table I fled through the door in search of air.

“Someone call a doctor!” I heard Roger yelling behind me. My vision faded and blackness descended.

3

“Nothing more than a simple panic attack.” 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 desk and clasped his hands, bringing them up to support his chin in what I assumed was his thoughtful pose. “Are you still smoking?”

A stupid question. Of course he knew.

“Yes, but I stay fit.”

He nodded and looked at his notes, sensing this was a fight he didn’t want to get into. “This could be fixable via medication—”

“I’m trying to keep on an organic farmaceutical diet,” I interrupted. “I need to limit the medications.”

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

The doctor stared at me, considering what to say next. “Stress and anxiety are the big killers these days. You really need to take care of this.”

They’d had me as an excuse to try to justify their angry entanglement, a glue that hadn’t worked despite their best attempts to argue and fight their way through it. In the process, neither of them had paid much attention to me. 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?” The doctor had noticed my attention wandering.

“Yes, yes.” I just wanted to get out of there. “But there must be something else. What about more nanobots?”

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

“So I have to figure this out myself.” I rolled my eyes. “Meditation, relaxation.… ” What a load of bullshit, I didn’t need to add.

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

“So what are you suggesting?” Why couldn’t he get to the point already?

He took a deep breath. “I think we have something perfect for you, but I’ve been weighing the options.”

“And?” I waited for his revelation. 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.… ”

He adjusted himself in his seat. “There’s 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, nothing surgical anyway. You’ve already used the delivery nanobots, and this is just one step further.”

I wagged my head. “Okay.… ”

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

My attention began to wander again and the doctor could see it. I hated technical mumbo-jumbo.

He stopped and looked at me before continuing, “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.”

He smiled, but now I smiled back. I’d realized what it was that he was describing.

“And it’s 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 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 already 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 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.”

He seemed unsure whether I was being sarcastic or not, but he could sense my mood lightening. “Should I write you a prescription?”

I nodded. “So I’ll have complete control over it?”

“Of course.”

A pause while we looked at each other.

“Are you ready?”

“What, now?”

“If you’re ready.… ”

Another pause, and then I nodded again. The mobile, still in my ear, chimed softly as it received the electronic prescription from the doctor’s automated assistant.

The doctor filled a small paper cup from a bottle of water in the cabinet behind his desk and handed it to me along with a small white tablet.

“Just swallow this. It includes a sedative to help keep you immobile during the initial data-gathering session.”

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

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

I nodded once more.

“This includes background personal data, you understand?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“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.”

I studied the pill briefly, popped it into my mouth and washed it down, then handed the empty cup back to him.

“Follow me.” He stood up and led me out of his office and into a smaller room containing a human-shaped pod. It looked like one of those old tanning beds. “You’ll need to completely undress.”

I lazily complied. The sedative was already taking hold and my brain had started swimming peacefully. I lay down in the pod, and the gooey gel inside it conformed around my body.

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

It suctioned onto me, completely enveloping my body. In a dream-like state I felt 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 raced 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 from hot to cold and back again.

I 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.…

“Olympia?”

I reluctantly opened my eyes to find an angel hovering above me, an angel that somehow reminded me of my cat, Mr. Tweedles. No wait, not an angel, it was a nurse. That’s right. A few days ago I’d installed that system, and I was back at the doctor’s office getting it activated. They’d sedated me again. Closing my eyes, I brought up a hand to rub my face, and then opened them and sighed irritably. “Yes?”

“Seems like someone needs 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. We just activated the system. Your proxxi will explain everything to you once you get home. I would have woken you sooner, but you seemed so peaceful.”

Shaking my head, I swung my legs off the side of the pod as I sat up, pushing off her attempts to help me. “I can take it from here, thank you very much.”

She looked at me and narrowed her eyes, but then her smile returned and she turned to go. “I’m going to bring you in to speak to the doctor before you leave—he needs to have a final word,” she said on her way out and closed the door behind her.

After a minute or two I finished getting dressed and opened the door to walk into the hallway. The nurse watched me from a distance, studying me. I stopped at the doctor’s office and half-hung my head inside.

“How do you feel?” he asked immediately, looking up from some paperwork. “Please, come in.”

“No, no, I’m fine. I mean, I just want to get going. I’ve got things to do. So just tell me quick, what do I need to know?”

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

“Distributed consciousness,” I snorted, looking back toward the nurse who’d positioned herself behind me in the hallway. “Where do they get these ideas?”

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

“Great,” I replied. “Got it.”

“When you get home today, 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 good-bye and marched off down the hallway and out the door, purposely ignoring the nurse who watched me the whole way out.

The air outside was crisp and fresh, and for the first time in ages I felt a surge of optimism. I should walk home—I could use a breath of fresh air.

I stopped to light a cigarette.

I’d decided that I hadn’t made a mistake with Alex. I needed to be alone for a while.

The heat of late summer was just winding down, and 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 a part of me doubted that whatever they had done would work as well as it was billed—despite that I was marketing it. The crowds on the Upper East Side were dense but navigable, with billboards and holograms cluttering the view, but it still made for a nice walk. Eventually, I arrived at the personal oasis of my brownstone walk-up.

Mr. Tweedles sprang at me the moment I opened the door and began purring loudly as he rubbed himself against my pant leg. I closed the door and emptied my pockets. The cat had been my friend Mary’s idea. To provide some companionship, she’d said. I shooed him away, hating the thought of all the hair he was depositing on me with each purring caress.

Immediately, I made for the bottle of wine on my kitchen counter and poured myself a glass. Collapsing onto my couch, I drank a big mouthful, savoring it. Rummaging around in my purse, I found the last cigarette in my pack. With all this technological wizardry, you’d think they could invent a realistic endless cigarette—those e-cigarettes were just so unsatisfying. I crumpled up the empty cardboard packaging and threw it onto the table.

Might as well get it over with. “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 beside me sitting on my matching armchair, something that looked sort of like me. In fact, it looked exactly like me.

“I am your new polysynthetic 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 smoke in front of me, “hold on a sec.”

I wanted to get Kenny from work in on this. I fumbled around in my purse for my mobile.

“You don’t need your mobile anymore,” 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. Always dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, with eternally messy hair, Kenny constantly frustrated my requests for more formal office attire. He was dedicated, however, and a consummate nerd when it came to technology, so I put up with him.

“Yes, boss?” he asked from behind his square-rimmed glasses. “Whoa, you got some kind of fancy lens display system going on?”

I’d tripped his geek-chic alarm, and I waited for him to collect himself.

“Please listen to what, this, ah, woman is saying,” I said, pointing toward my new proxxi. “Pssi interface, or proxxi, or whatever, please continue.”

Kenny’s eyes grew wide as the proxxi began describing the system controls. I just sat back and enjoyed one glass of wine and then another.

Presently, the proxxi faded away and I turned to Kenny to finish up. “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. From what I understood, you can’t hand off all the root functions, but give me a day or two to look into it.”

His geek love was sparking hard.

“Just don’t waste too much time, right?” He’d just use this as an excuse to duck out of other work if I let him.

He nodded. “Right.”

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

“Exactly. Anytime, anywhere.”

“Perfect.”

I was about to dismiss him, but he was staring at me intently. “What?”

“You were you paying attention to the safety stuff, right?” he asked. “If you need to reset the system there’s this hardwired gesture recognition.” He began motioning in the air, reaching toward 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, correct?”

He stopped what he was doing in mid-motion. “Sure, yeah.”

“Just take care of it for me, okay?”

“Okay, boss.”

“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 not needing the mobile bud anymore, and the technology looked amazing, even from just the proxxi session.

Waving Kenny away, I settled back into the couch and let Mr. Tweedles cuddle up into me. I scratched his ears and felt him purring, and then felt a sudden twinge of realization that Alex wouldn’t be coming by anymore. It’s just and me and you, Mr. Tweedles.

5

The next morning I awoke early, feeling unusually refreshed. At this time of year, the rising sun just managed to sneak into the alleyway between the buildings next to me and cast cheerful rays in through my bedroom window. I dreamily watched motes of dust settle and spin in the sunlight streaming through the blinds. My mind was at ease for the first time in longer than I could remember. Something was different, but what?

Then slowly, very slowly, the noise of the world outside rose in volume, growing until it filled the same space in my consciousness that it usually did. I realized then that the pssi interface had been keeping it quiet while I was asleep.

Energized, I pulled back the sheets. Time to face the day! Swinging my legs off the bed, I called out to Mr. Tweedles, who trotted in to rub up against me. I leaned down to pet him, then stretched and yawned, sitting for a moment on the edge of the bed as I collected myself and put on my slippers and robe. Picking up Mr. Tweedles, I got up and walked into the kitchen, grabbing my waiting morning cup of coffee.

As I rooted around for the holographic remote in the bowl of junk in the middle of the kitchen counter, my morning Phuture News Network sprang into life by itself, dissolving the opposite wall of my living room. Surprised, I blinked and realized this must be another feature of my new pssi system.

A message flashed up on the display. Mary had called again. I didn’t make friends easily, but we’d met a few months ago at a coffee shop nearby and hit it off. We’d struck up an immediate friendship, but lately she was beginning to annoy me as we got to know each other better. I was finding her to be a bit of a hypocrite. I ignored the message.

Sitting down on a stool at my breakfast countertop, I passed my bowl of instant oats under the tap and a short jet of boiling water filled it to the prescribed level. I stirred it absentmindedly while I watched predictions of the day’s news to come on Phuture News.

This new pssi display is amazing. It looked so realistic that I felt as if I could get up and walk right from my living room into whatever I was looking it. At that moment it was a swirling storm system out in the Atlantic, grinding its way toward some unfortunate Caribbean island. The image was far superior to my old holographic display, and much better than the contact lens systems I found so irritating and headache-inducing.

“By the end of the week,” predicted the Phuture News weather anchor who floated to one side of the display, “tropical storm Ignacia will reach hurricane status and 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 these days.

In an overlaid display, Phuture News described soon-to-be-emerging conflicts in the Weather Wars, along with a list of predicted famines and disasters. It was all they ever talked about. No wonder everyone was anxious and depressed, never mind the advertising. I spooned my oatmeal absentmindedly into my mouth as they detailed the death and destruction.

“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. My proxxi was sitting across the counter from me, strikingly composed in a tight, fashionable business suit with her hair done up in a severe bun. She looks amazing. Oatmeal dripped off my spoon as I took her in, uncomfortably aware that my own 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. I just wanted to have my oatmeal in peace.

“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—”

“Look,” I cut her off, “I just wanted to try this for the advertising block. I realize you are the main system interface, but please deal through Kenny, okay?” Anyway, my doctor had said to avoid the distributed consciousness features, which was what her commingling of realities sounded like.

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

With that, she faded away. This proxxi thing was unnerving, but at least she hadn’t given me any attitude. I returned my gaze to Phuture News and my oatmeal.

“News off!” 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 both visible and somehow invisible at the same time—information about some war that was about to start in Africa hung in my new overlaid display.

“Maybe I shouldn’t start my days with Phuture News,” I muttered aloud, and immediately a Phuture News feed at the bottom of my display said there was a 90 percent chance I would anyway. I laughed. The system was a comedian as well.

Picking up the new edition of Marketing Miracles from the counter, a rare print magazine, I leafed through it. That’s odd. Something wasn’t right.

And then I figured it out.

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

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

“Kenny, put the advertisement block 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. Sitting bolt upright, I listened hard to the noise from outside. I could still hear the traffic and bustle of people, but the baseline clatter of the street hawkers and holo-ads was absent.

Really amazing.

6

“Congratulations on the win, Olympia.”

“Thank you, Ms. Mitchell,” I replied quietly. We’d won the first phase of the Cognix account, and I was sitting next to one of the firm’s senior partners, Antonia Mitchell.

It was the biggest contract our company had ever been awarded, and I was something of a hero around the office. Bertram had even been tolerable lately.

Antonia smiled back at me. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, please continue.”

The day’s main event was 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 Antonia and I, were attending remotely.

Atopia was one of the floating city-states, physically located somewhere in the thousands of miles of open ocean in the Pacific off California. The technology they were developing, and we were marketing for them, enabled perfect simulated reality. That meant place and distance ceased to have any real meaning for them. Antonia was participating in the meeting using an older, lens-based virtual reality technology, but I used my new pssi system.

I started up the holographic promo-world for the reporters to get the show started.

“Imagine,” said an 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 exotic anonymous beach, she smiled confidently, conveying to us that not only was it possible, but it was something we needed, and needed right away. “Pssionics enables limitless travel with no 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,” she laughed, reminding us of all the things 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 became more serious.

“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 each 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. Sign up soon for zero cost!”

The woman faded into the slowly rotating Atopian logo, a pyramid with a sphere balanced at its apex. A short silence settled while Patricia let it sink in. She was the master at this, and she should be after the lifetime she’d spent working on it.

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

I watched Patricia 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,” Patricia replied, 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. They’d heard this before—as had I, at least a dozen times, and my mind wandered off to thinking about how pssi had already changed my life. I certainly felt more rested, and I started to consider calling Alex, perhaps just to chat.

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

Her asking was a formality as they’d all signed off already, but they all nodded just the same. Patricia took control of our collective visual points-of-view and pulled us up through the ceiling of the conference room and out above Atopia with dizzying speed. We shot upward into the sky, while the green dot of Atopia receded into the endless blue of the Pacific below us.

“To answer Ginny’s original 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 Earth’s curved horizon spread out in the distance, above the 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 reaching its roaring finale by the time I finished late that night. After a few weeks of smooth sailing on the Cognix account, we’d hit our first major speed bump with the disasterous launch of a Cognix-related project called Infinixx.

We were in damage-control mode, and 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 romance victim.

Bertram and I had a big argument about whether to use Patricia or a young pssi-kid named 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. Antonia was on my side, but Bertram had allies against us in some of the other senior partners.

Everything and everyone at the office was getting on my nerves, and I’d escaped outside for a cigarette nearly every hour just to get away.

Alex had started dating my sort-of-friend Mary. Is this what friends do? 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. Downing the pills dry, I exited the giant brass-and-glass doors of our building and walked out onto Fifth Avenue.

I was lost deep in thought about how to spin the Infinixx mess when I stopped in my tracks to marvel again at my new city. Blinking, I looked 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 advertisements were gone, as if they had never been there.

I could actually see the buildings around me.

Stepping into the flow of pedestrian traffic, I looked up above me in wonderment, admiring all the views I’d never been able to see before because they’d been blocked by billboards and holograms. The flow carried me up Fifth 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 some time already, but New York without advertising still felt special. It was relaxing, and as my headache subsided, I decided to get some exercise and finish my return home by foot.

The gathering darkness was something else I still 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 by a bum 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 man at my feet, knocking over his collection bowl. Nobody around me even glanced at the commotion as they swept past.

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

The frustration of the day and my lingering headache got the better of me. I bet he’s not even legal. What was he doing there, dirtying up my neighborhood?

“Get out of the way!”

He looked up at me. I’d expected to see a scowl, but he simply stared at me. “You think you’re important, lady? I used to be a stockbroker.”

People streamed past us as we stared at each other. Still the blank stare. Was he about to cry? My sympathy and frustration fought with each other, and I fumbled around in my pockets but had no change. Who carried money these days? Wanting to escape, I turned away, merging back into the pedestrian flow.

“You should be more careful. Life can throw you funny curveballs, lady,” I heard him shout, his voice fading away.

I shivered. At that moment, an incoming ping arrived from Kenny.

“Yes?” I asked aloud, happy to move onto a new topic.

Kenny materialized, walking in step beside me. “That was close.”

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

“That bum that almost kneecapped you just now.”

“How do you know what just happened?” The encounter had hit a nerve, exposing some unreasonable fear that I couldn’t identify.

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

“You’re not watching me with that thing are you?”

“It’s just an alarm,” protested Kenny, his projection ducking and weaving around the foot traffic as he kept pace with me. “As root user, I get security alerts fed to me and thought you might need help.”

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

That was good news. I didn’t need any more responsibilities on my plate.

“Someone authorized it as part of the testing and gave us a workaround.”

Probably because we had a close working relationship with them. “Good.”

At least something was going my way. Kenny stared at me as I squinted into the darkness. I could see he had something more to say.

“What?”

“Want me to make it easier for you to see things?” he asked. “I could set the pssi to adjust your perceptual brightness, even optimize contrast.”

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

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

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

He brightened up like a puppy at my praise.

“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’d need to initiate some of the kinesthetic features, though.”

We turned onto Seventy-Fifth, my street, and I could see a few homeless people hanging around on the corner up ahead, begging for money. An image of the bum I’d nearly tripped over floated into my mind, and my chest tightened up.

“Sure, let’s try it.”

Nearly the instant I said it, the panhandlers up ahead melted away and the walls of the buildings washed free of graffiti. The sidewalk beneath me began to glisten as if it was newly poured.

“How’s that?” Kenny asked.

I stopped walking. “Amazing.”

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

But if I couldn’t see them… “What happens if I run into them?”

“The kinesthetic function is turned on now, so it won’t let you run into them,” explained Kenny. “You’re guiding your body, but the system takes over your foot placements, even modifies what you see so that you don’t notice your body making the detours your kinesthetic system makes for you.”

I nodded. Of course I’d read all about it, but experiencing it was different.

In the distance, a robot walked 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 too much to share with Kenny, but I said it without thinking. Kenny nodded, and I realized then that he was perhaps the closest thing that I had to a friend.

“All done,” he replied after a few seconds. “So this is the new pssi system that Cognix is going to release, huh?”

I had been busy enjoying myself, admiring my new neighborhood—Kenny’s innocent mention of Cognix brought me roughly back down to Earth. My nerves were frayed. “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. I’ll make sure you’re first in line.”

“Cool.” In an overlaid display space I could see him tuning into a media broadcast from Patricia Killiam.

8

New York could 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 in the history of the world, and we were in a fever pitch trying to get everything ready.

Storms were sweeping up the eastern Pacific toward Atopia. Hurricanes by themselves were nothing unusual these days, and they weren’t really threatening the island-city, but Atopia had inexplicably begun moving itself much closer toward America. Too close, some were saying, and the Atopians weren’t offering any explanations for why.

We had to somehow spin it positively in addition to everything else going on.

Kenny had installed filters in my pssi so that Bertram and the floozies in the assistant pool were filtered out of my visual input unless they directly addressed me in some way. That was great to begin with, but as the days went by, the stress was piling on, and I’d been growing more and more frustrated with almost everyone.

The showstopper came at the end of the week.

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

It was the final decision on the last stage of the Cognix account and I was nervous. The old school and new school were facing down in the battle brewing between Bertram and me, and I felt my career hanging in the balance.

Flicking off a gossip-girl channel on Phuture News, I collected my Cognix materials and sent them over to the conference room, closing down my workspaces 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 God, is that me? I looked so old. My long blond hair, the pride of my youth, hung in a frazzled mess around my shoulders. Even from here, I could see the lines in my face. I’d always been slender, but my reflection looked gaunt. My heart thumped loudly in my chest, each contraction forcing the blood through my arteries, 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 as my chest tightened. Sweat beaded on my forehead.

Shake it off, take the fight to them. A vision of that bum on the street crowded my mind and I looked down.

My heart began racing.

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 was right—the stress was getting to me.

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

I entered the conference room down the hallway and was surprised to find that projections of our Cognix customers—Patricia Killiam and the others—weren’t filling the holographic wall. Roger and Bertram were sitting down on the other side of the long table, looking at me.

Pulling up a chair opposite them, I leaned into the table, feeling my old friend anger begin to make an appearance.

“What’s up, guys?” I half-asked, half-challenged.

“Olympia, we’re glad you’re here,” Roger began, opening clasped hands that had been supporting his chin.

I let go an audible groan. “What’s up? Cut the bullshit. Did we lose the final phase?”

“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, relaxing my shoulders.

“But.… ”

“But what?”

“We’ve made, ah, our client wants.… ” Roger coughed and wiped a hand across his face. “We want Bertram to head the account. You’ll be working under him on this. But I’d like you to show him the ropes, you know, you’re the expert.”

He smiled at me weakly while Bertram beamed. The simmering pot inside me exploded.

“Are you out of your mind?” I barked back at them both.

Bertram shifted back in his chair, enjoying the spectacle, his grin floating disconnectedly in my red-shifted vision. My chest tightened. Gripping the table with white knuckles, my vision swam. “Does this have anything to do with me not wanting to use that kid Jimmy instead of Patricia?”

“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?”

I stared down at the table, trying to get a grip.

“Fine,” I grumbled under my breath. This wasn’t a fight I could win right now. “Glad we won the contract, sir. I could actually use a little time off.”

“See,” said Roger, brightening, “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 got home quickly and was just into a second bottle of wine and curled up on my couch with Mr. Tweedles when night began to fall. It started raining outside, and through my large bay window I watched the wind drive the sudden downpour in the streets outside.

After polishing off the wine, I was having a hard time concentrating on a new romance novel I’d started. My mind was constantly shifting back to plotting the downfall of Bertram.

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’d obliged, and been rewarded with a nip for my efforts. I kicked the ungrateful little fuzzball off the couch.

Sighing, I washed a sleeping pill down with a mouthful of wine. Lighting up my last cigarette for the night, I called Kenny.

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied instantly, appearing with a careful smile in my primary display space. I was sure he’d heard about my little incident with Roger and Bertram. I bet I’d been 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 might as well 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 said, then added, “And hey, enjoy the time off.”

Was that sarcasm?

Without another word, I clicked him out of my sensory spaces and got up off the couch—whoa, drunker than I thought—and wandered into my bedroom to collapse.

9

Oouf, my head hurt.

I groggily lifted it off the sheets and waited while my blurry vision adjusted to the semidarkness of my bedroom. It was still early. Wait a minute, it’s Saturday. I didn’t need to go to work. Memories seeped into my brain, and I realized I had a pass from work the whole next week, perhaps longer. Flopping my head back onto my pillow, I called out weakly for Mr. Tweedles.

“Hey, kitty kitty.”

He didn’t appear. That’s odd. Ah, well. I conked back out.

What seemed like moments later, bright light was streaming in through the window. I flopped out of bed and made for the kitchen to get a glass of water.

Mr. Tweedles was still nowhere to be seen. In a sudden panicked thought I tried to remember if I’d let him out the night before. I usually didn’t, but I had been a little drunk. I looked out the front door and the windows, but he was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he was hiding, I thought guiltily, remembering shoving him off the couch.

Maybe I should go for a run.

That’d 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. If Mr. Tweedles was out, he’d be back by the time I returned, and if he was hiding, maybe he’d have forgiven me by then.

Walking into my bedroom, I pulled on some sports gear. Moments later, I was bounding down my front steps. I drank in the cool morning air, enjoying the crisp bite of the rain of the night before as it burned off in the early sunshine.

I admired the scenery, which was 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 Seventy-Fifth toward Central Park.

Gradually, I began to get the feeling something was wrong.

There was a complete lack of other people on the streets, or even 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, could you check the pssi system for me?”

No response. I slowed up my jog. Maybe he was hungover, too.

“Kenny!” I called out again, stopping and waiting for him to appear.

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

My voice echoed back from the empty space of the park.

There were no sounds at all except for seagulls squawking in the distance. I turned around and began to sprint back to my apartment, calling out people’s names.

“Pssi interface!” I screeched as I ran.

No response.

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

Maybe the pssi is broken—I’ll try my mobile. I burst through my front door, grabbed my purse, and rummaged around in it for my earbud. I popped it in and began pinging people. Still nothing.

Alarm settled into my gut and I fled back outside in a panic, purse in hand.

Cars lined the street, but no one drove them—there were no people anywhere, and no Mr. Tweedles. How was it possible I could be walking right down the middle of Seventy-Fifth Street and not see anyone, anywhere?

My mind raced. Last night I’d told Kenny to set the system to erase anything I found annoying. I’d given him root executive control—and I certainly found Kenny annoying lately, as well as my doctor.

My God, what have I done?

I ran down the street, my eyes watering and my chest burning. My office, I thought. Someone will be there even on the weekend. They would see me, they could fix this. My legs tired, and I slowed to a walk. This is ridiculous. Don’t panic. Stay calm, I told myself.

Eventually, I rounded the last block before my building, and turning the corner, I tried to tell myself how I’d soon be laughing this off with everyone. 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. 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, utterly alone in one of the world’s most densely populated cities.

10

At first I’d wandered through the empty streets of New York. In desperation, I took the New York Passenger Cannon, operating perfectly to timetable but empty of passengers, to San Francisco. But that foggy city was as empty as New York.

For the first few days, I’d tried to remember the deactivation gesture that Kenny had attempted to show me—the hardwired fail-safe—but I hadn’t been paying enough attention. What was the sequence; what was the motion?

Wandering around, I pulled and scraped at my chest, twisting and turning and muttering random words, hoping that something would deactivate it. But nothing changed. With a mounting sense of horror, I slowly realized 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’d 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 too was desolate.

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 once more. I’d even tried throwing it away in a fit of frustration, but there it was again the next time I felt an urge coming on. With shaking hands, I pulled out a cigarette and lit it, realizing I was smoking some kind of virtual cigarette but not able to stop.

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 in empty department stores. Everwhere I went, the stores and restaurants were always open, but totally empty of people. At first, when I got hungry I just grabbed things off shelves in corner stores. After a while, I’d discovered that if I had an urge for anything, I could just enter 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 who had been found. I often spent my afternoons sitting alone in cinemas, watching endless reruns of old romance films.

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.

Wouldn’t it?

Something had to be wrong with the pssi system; it wasn’t working as it was supposed to. I’d gone to the orphanage in New York where I’d helped out, but it was gone too. I hadn’t been annoyed with them, had I? I wasn’t sure. Perhaps I’d been upset with everyone, angry at the world, but certainly I wasn’t anymore, so shouldn’t people be appearing back in my sensory spaces? Beyond terrified of being alone, I just desperately wanted to see someone, anyone.

11

Was it weeks or months?

It was hard to tell. My psyche was ungluing itself.

How long could this last? My thoughts 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 or decades? Or even longer?

My mind frantically circled around and around this 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.

My wanderings had taken me to Madrid, and I walked around Beun Retiro Park. It was as empty of people as everywhere else my lonely travels had taken me. I walked between rows of skeleton trees, across carpets of golden leaves that they were shedding like tears just for me. It was a beautiful day under a perfect sky as fall settled in.

At least, it would have been beautiful if there’d been anybody else there to share it with.

I thought a lot about Mr. Tweedles. Everywhere I went, I kept imagining 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 about 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 in it, 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 leaves from the gravel path. I studied it carefully and began to laugh, and then to cry.

It was so peaceful. It was what I’d always wanted, just to be left alone, and I only had myself to blame, or to thank. My sobs of laughter rang out through the empty morning sunshine, under a faultless, empty blue sky.