"You're right, pumpkin, you're right," was all I could think to say.

I could feel my metasenses tingling and that meant a hot stock move. I'd remapped my skin's tactile array from the nape of my neck and down my back, like a fish's lateral line sensors, in order to pick up eddy currents in market phuturecasts. I could feel even the slightest pressure trends in the markets tickling across my back, a surefire way to get my attention. Right now a stiff wind was buffeting my b.u.t.tocks as I was b.u.t.tering my toast.

"I gotta go," I told her hurriedly, getting up and leaning over to peck her on the cheek. "Something for work. I really have to run. Sorry."

She rolled her eyes.

I stepped away and bolted upwards through the sky, the world disappearing away below me as I arrived at my workworld. This was my favorite way to get going-it gave me that Superman start for the day.

Wally was already there, and I rapidly turned on, tuned in, and dropped out into the multiverse, splintering my mind to a.s.similate what was happening. One splinter was already tuned into the press conference my boss, Nancy, had just started, so I let my mind hover over this for a moment.

Ident.i.ty: Nancy Killiam "ECONOMIC GROWTH IS only possible through enhanced productivity and the cl.u.s.tering of talent," I roared out to an approving audience.

The world population was declining and fertility rates were collapsing, I didn't have to add the failing prospects for the Yen and greenback, as bitcoin derivatives gained ground. While declining populations equaled better prospects for the planet, it was bad news for economics, and for once, today was all about business.

"Atopia and Cognix aren't simply about being green," I pointed out, "but about boosting business productivity and profits to provide the basis for a whole new surge in the world economy."

I could see the faces closest to me, reporters that were mostly familiar. Beyond that, faces upon faces filled my display s.p.a.ces into the blueshifted distance. This was a well worn speech for me, like a rutted track down an old country road. Maybe not the best a.n.a.logy, I chuckled to myself.

I stopped and looked up and around at the crowd. The pause was well rehea.r.s.ed and I was enjoying this. I let a confidence inspiring smile spread across my many faces.

"And the Infinixx distributed consciousness platform is the solution that will carry business into the 22 century!"

The ma.s.ses before me burst into applause. I shook my head and looked down at the stage, trying to convey that I didn't deserve such adulation.

"So...questions?" I asked, looking back up into the crowd. I saw Tammy from World Press with her arm up. She was always a friendly starter. I pointed at her and nodded.

"Could you describe for our audience what, exactly, distributed consciousness feels like?" asked Tammy. "I mean, how would you describe it, and not from a technical point of view."

This brought hushed laughter. I was famous for inundating reporters with technical jargon that left them feeling like they knew less than what they started with, so I made an effort to make it simple.

"Sure, good question. The easiest way to describe it is like speed reading. When you're speed reading, you don't really read every word-you read the first and last lines of paragraphs and scan for a few key words in between. It's sort of like that."

"Doesn't that imply you're not really getting the whole picture?" asked Tammy.

Good question, but hard to answer simply. Distributed consciousness both was and wasn't what it described.

It wasn't really distributing your conscious mind; what it was doing was creating an estimate of your cognitive state at that point in time, and with the particular issue you needed to deal with, then tagging this with as much background data regarding your memories as it thought relevant and available. The system then started up a synthetic intelligence engine and sent it out to canvas whatever you wanted to look at.

From time to time this 'splinter', as we called it, would report back with compressed sensory data that would be perfectly understandable only to your frame of reference.

Imagine your best friend winking at you when you asked about someone you both knew-based on your shared experiences, huge amounts of information could be encoded in a single binary bit communicated this way. Infinixx was something like this-the ultimate data gathering, compression and transmission scheme, tailored exactly to your individual mind at that moment in time.

Even without pssi-the poly-synthetic sensory interface developed here on Atopia-we could approximate a lot of the techniques so that first time users could realize some benefits. At first this worked nowhere near as well as it did for long time pssi users, but still, it worked.

"Well, you are getting the whole picture," I responded to Tammy after reflection, "just not every detail. Speed reading really comes down to the unconscious skill the reader has in scanning the right parts to focus on."

I paused to let them soak in what I was saying.

"Infinixx technology provides that attentional context, as well as the sensory and cognitive multiplexing technology to make it easy for even a novice to begin distributing their consciousness into the cloud within a few hours."

I scanned the upturned faces and watched them nodding, but that last sentence had injected a slightly glazed look into their eyes.

"Okay for instance," I continued quickly, "the last meeting you attended, how much of that was just an excuse for a coworker to ramble on about something that had nothing to do with you?"

This earned a few chuckles.

"However," I declared, drawing the word out, "there were probably a few bits here and there that you found useful. Infinixx provides the ability to tune a small part of your attention to only those interesting bits, allowing you to 'be there' the whole time without actually needing to be there."

"So how long does it take to understand how to use all this?" Max cut in.

"Even you'll be able to use it right away, Max," I joked as I winked at him. This earned some laughs. "We're ready to go if you are!"

I tried to maintain a steady smile on Max. To fully realize the benefits of this technology, I was thinking, you really needed to grow up with it, but I wasn't going to tell them that. Not right now, anyway.

Ident.i.ty: William McIntyre "IT IS IN our interest to work together, to find a way to shape our differences," droned the Chinese Minister of State. Sure, in exactly the same way that you've shaped all previous differences; in your favor.

The splinter covering this latest round of peace talks between China and India didn't need to send in very much new information, the tone and character of the meeting having been pretty much the same as every other one in the recent past; nothing positive, and very predictable. Then again, for business purposes, predictability was everything. I pulled the splinter back for more important work elsewhere.

I quickly a.s.similated that thin conscious stream and turned my mind to an exploration hike that another one of my splinters was on in the Brazilian rain forest.

The wikiworld displayed vast tracts of remote farmland belonging to Greengenics outside of Manos, all sown with a complex matrix of plants varietals that was supposed to mimic the diversity of the forest surrounding it. I wasn't buying their story and suspected they were strip farming the area. I'd hired a local guide to walk in and snoop for me, and this splinter was ghosting in through the guide's contact lens display.

Pulling back the last of the dense foliage before the edge of the farm area, we peered in, and my suspicions were confirmed. Long rows of bio-engineered farmaceuticals stretched out into the distance. Greengenics had been falsifying its wikiworld feeds. This splinter of information, at the edges of my attention, shattered into a dozen others and then went off and used the information, shorting the Greengenics stock, pushing and pulling information that streamed outwards.

The Shanghai market was about to close its morning session when disaster hit.

"What?"

"Pull out of the short positions right away," warned w.i.l.l.y. "I've already done as much as I can."

Visions of the peace talks closing splintered into my mind. Interest rates were supposed to be trending a full point lower, but a last second and unexpected announcement between the Chinese and Indians regarding a joint farmaceutical project had injected future uncertainty, pushing expected rates higher. Worse, the Greengenics facility was named as their secret collaboration, sending the stock of this small company soaring. This unusual twist around my strategy suddenly shot everything out of alignment.

"Put in sell orders!" I yelled into my dozen splinters.

The bell chimed signaling the close of Shanghai. Within seconds, the secondary and after markets had kicked in, but by the time we'd managed to unravel my positions, I'd chalked up a huge loss.

I was too highly leveraged, trying to be too clever.

Hovering over the small metaworld that was my financial control center, I closed my eyes and sighed. I needed more splinters to cover more things at the same time. All I'd been able to scrounge up was about fifteen, and half of them were prototypes that were getting called back for updates and re-initializations all the time. A growing headache began to pound behind my eyes, and I focused inwards and back outwards, getting myself ready for the rest of the night's work.

The day had ended in total, personal financial disaster. Almost everything that could have gone wrong, had gone wrong. Even though I hadn't said anything, Brigitte could sense my mood and had prepared a special night for us. She'd taken the time to personally reserve a little patch of sidewalk on the side of the Grand Ca.n.a.l in Venice.

The spot was undeniably romantic; a candle set in a green wine bottle atop a red checked tablecloth, the gentle slap of the Adriatic against the ca.n.a.l walls, and the twinkling lights of Venezia under a rising full moon. The strains of an accordion played somewhere nearby, the notes floating together with the smells of fresh cut herbs and tomatoes and seafood.

"Brigitte, this is beautiful," I managed to say as I arrived, dropping most of my webwork of splinters behind.

Stepping into this one reality I sat down opposite her. I tried to relax and let my foul mood evaporate into the warm night air. I could guess that she and Wally had been speaking, and from the look on her face there was more in store. I sighed.

I was still stewing over a heated argument I'd had with Nancy earlier regarding my splintering limit. I'd tried to explain what a difficult spot I was in, but it hadn't mattered to her. Atopia was supposed to be this shining beacon of libertarian ideals, a place that wouldn't stoop to the base realities of the rest of the world. In actuality, it was just another country club for rich sn.o.bs like the Killiams to lord over us commoners. She had no idea what it was like for a family like ours here.

Almost every American had lost someone in 2C, the cyber attacks of '22, but our family had been particularly hard hit. We came from working cla.s.s roots in South Boston, and with a name like McIntyre, living in Southie had never been easy. But when the first cyber strikes had hit in the middle of a cold snap of February of that year, triggering the power grid shutdowns, something not easy had turned into something terrifyingly deadly. When the lights had come back on over a month later, we'd lost nine of our family to the cold, starvation and riots.

Deep suspicion of technology had driven my grandfather, along with a big chunk of the rest of the world, literally into the hills.

Hiding from the world had made for a hard life, and one my own father had desperately wanted to escape. A huge fight had erupted when my dad had announced plans to move to Atopia, to start anew and break with the Luddite community my grandfather had founded in the foothills of Montana.

It had been a huge gamble, a gamble for a better life for me and my mother, and it was one that had cut my dad off from the rest of our family. It was a gamble whose burden to make good I felt had now fallen on my shoulders.

While my dad and I had managed the transition, my mother hadn't been able to cope, and after a few years had returned to the commune. I remembered being furious at her, refusing to leave, and I barely spoke to her afterwards. I wasn't mad at her anymore, but the commune forbade modern communication technology.

I'd been planning a trip to see her for years now, but was always finding excuses for staying, a trip on foot into the mountains not being something I was comfortable with, but it was more than simply that. I wanted to make good first, to prove that my dad had been right, and that she'd made the right decision in leaving me with him.

"William?" said Brigitte, catching my attention. I shook my head, casting out the memories. She was standing now in front of me, her hand on my head, and looking into my eyes.

She'd dressed up for our evening, her hair falling in luxurious waves over her shoulders, dressed in a glittering black slip that barely covered her pet.i.te frame. Her perfume was powerful and seductive, working some pssi magic, and I felt myself getting h.o.r.n.y. Whatever it was, definitely zeroed my attention onto her. I collapsed the rest of my conscious splinters into the here and now, and centered my full attention on her soft brown eyes.

She deserved better. I would do better.

"Yes?"

"Are you here with me now?" she asked.

"I'm sorry," I sighed. "It's just, well, it's complicated."

She watched me quietly.

"Not everything needs to be complicated, you know." She moved her hand down to my cheek, and then pulled my chin up so I was looking directly into her eyes. "Come on, let's eat."

Waiters immediately floated in around us with plates of food.

"I want to apologize for giving you a hard time about money and everything," she said, leaning over to kiss my forehead and then returning to sit down opposite me. I'd almost forgotten about all that.

"No worries, pumpkin," I replied, my mind-fog lifting. "It's me that should be the one apologizing."

She smiled at me and reached over to hold my hand.

"Enough apologizing, cheri," she said tenderly. "First we eat, and then off to bed."

Her smile turned seductive.

My stomach growled. I hadn't realized how hungry I was. Hungry and h.o.r.n.y, I thought as I looked at her, and I could see she wanted to make me a happy man. Life didn't get much better than this. I smiled and dug into dinner.

Perhaps my situation wasn't as bad as I thought.

Soon after, I was lying on my back in bed amid the mess of sheets and pillows strewn about from our lovemaking. A gentle breeze was blowing in through the window, and Brigitte clung tightly to my side.

We enjoyed s.e.x without any of the messy special effects a lot of the other pssikids went for. Not to say we hadn't experimented with all that stuff. Brigitte was quite the wild child in her day, but as we'd gotten older and found each other, the craziness had lost its appeal.

"w.i.l.l.y," she purred softly, "can I ask you something? And promise not to get mad okay?"

"Sure, anything, sweet pea," I replied. All of my defenses were down, and right now she could have asked me to jump into the ca.n.a.l and I would have happily complied.

"w.i.l.l.y, do you think we could start sharing our realities? I mean, completely."

Even with my defenses down, this gave me a little start.

"Sweetie," I replied calmly, "even couples that have been married for years don't share their realities entirely."

Right now we were sharing a reality of being in Venice together, which was great, but she meant that we'd fully share each others' reality skins, the little and big ways we filtered and modified real and virtual worlds. I wasn't sure I wanted her to see the world the way I saw it.

"I know what other people do and I don't want that to be us," she continued. "It is possible, you know."

Now it wasn't like I walked around the world with it skinned up as some weird fantasy, but still, sometimes I liked the world to appear the way I liked it to appear. It was hard to deny her, though.

"I want us to take that next step in our relationship, to experience the world together in the same way."

Really it wasn't that big a deal. It's not like we were teenagers and I had something to hide. She really deserved more from me. Whenever I knew I was going to jump, I always just jumped.

So I jumped.

"Sure, let's do it, I'd love to do that with you. It'll be great!"

This earned me a big hug and kiss. I pulled myself away gently.

"I love you sweetheart."

"I love you too," she softly replied.

I paused, looking at her expectantly. A steady wind only I could feel had begun to blow.

"Yes, yes, go to work," she said, smiling as she rolled her eyes. "I know you're dying to get out there with Wally."

She hit me playfully with a pillow.

"Thanks baby!" I laughed, grabbing the pillow away and pulling her in for a final kiss.

In a flash, I was off rocketing up through the heavens and into my works.p.a.ce.

The main action for me wasn't out in the front of my life. The real action was in the backrooms where Wally and I were working to build my growing hedge fund.

My ability to consistently outpace the market using the new Infinixx distributed consciousness platform made it possible to do things n.o.body else could do. People out there were noticing how this pssikid was beating them out day by day, and I was starting to get some traction in the market.