I was hardly able to contain my excitement, but I was now nervous as well. I realized that this was actually going to happen, that all my dreams were coming true. But there'd been another reason I had asked to speak with her as well.

Squinting slightly, I took a deep breath, not sure how to bring this up.

"There's something else?" asked Patricia. She could sense me hesitating.

I sighed. "What's going on with Uncle Vince?"

Reports were flooding in about him dying almost constantly, along with rumors of him selling off chunks of his vast, if haphazard, empire. He wasn't my real uncle, but I'd known him all my life and he was a close friend of our family.

It was Patricia's turn to sigh, her face clouding up. I thought she was about to share some terrible secret with me when she just said simply, "Nothing is going on with Vince, nothing at all."

"What do you mean?" What was happening certainly didn't count as nothing.

"He's just, well, he's just fooling around."

Aunt Pattie shrugged, as if to say: What could one expect from a bored trillionaire? But her eyes said more. Whatever was going on, she wasn't going to share it with me now, and I trusted her reasons, whatever they were.

"Okay," I replied hesitantly, "if you say so. Just tell me what I need to do to help with the Board."

"I will. Speaking of the Board, will we be seeing you at the Foreign Banquet tomorrow evening?"

"Yes, I'll be there."

Patricia hesitated. "Dr. Baxter said he may bring Bob along..."

She let the words hangs in the air.

"Well I think I'm going solo anyway," I replied with a smile. "It's an official function and those bore David to death."

"I just thought I'd mention it." Patricia smiled back. "Now you get back to your evening!"

My excitement bubbled back up, and I positively squealed as she faded away.

"That's fantastic, Nance, that's really good news," said David on my return to him and dinner. He seemed a little uncertain now, hovering, but his love for me shone out in his eyes. Try as I might, though, my heart could never quite return it.

"Come here, my big bad boy," I said l.u.s.tily, trying to hide my uncertainty.

I grabbed his hand and pulled him across the side of the table and towards me. He took my cue, and met my lips with his in a strong, firm kiss, opening my mouth and meeting my tongue. I could feel one of his hands sliding down my back, gripping me, pulling me further into him, and our bodies pressed together.

We both flittered for a stimswitch almost at the same time, and I laughed, my mouth pressed against his, as my point of view switched into his and I felt the heat and strength and urgency in his body. I found myself staring into my own eyes with him staring back out from them into my gaze, our senses shimmering back and forth like two mirrors reflecting an image endlessly into each other.

"What about dinner?" I asked breathlessly as our bodies rocked together in rhythm and slid to the floor while we pulled off our clothes.

"This is dinner," he gasped back.

He phase-locked our stimswitch so we simultaneously ghosted each other. I was him and he was me, our sensory channels now overlaid into and onto each other as we began our lovemaking.

While most of me was there, perhaps the most important part of me wasn't. If you can't be with the one you love, then you love the one you're with.

At least, you do your best.

Ident.i.ty: William McIntyre I'D HAD ANOTHER terrible night. With my splinter limit fixed at ten, I'd been forced to funnel more and more of my resources into the Phuture News Network. Combining my natural abilities with the reduced rates I'd managed to get from Vince through Bob, I was still beating the markets, but I wasn't the star I used to be.

"Are we going to have breakfast together?" asked Brigitte, standing next to me in the bathroom that morning. She was brushing her teeth.

"Pumpkin," I sighed, "I just don't have time."

I was staring at my face, lathering it for a shave. I enjoyed a real shave from time to time. It helped me reconnect with myself after nights spent shattered all over the multiverse.

"You could have Wally shave you," she suggested meekly. "We haven't sat down for breakfast together in more than a week."

She was pouting.

"Jesus Brigitte, you know I just like to shave myself sometimes!" I snapped. Why couldn't she just leave me be?

Her hurt expression reflected in the mirror. With a quick intake of breath I was about to apologize, but she'd already flitted off without another word. Bardot, her proxxi, sat staring back at me from Brigitte's body, shaking her head and rolling her eyes. She spat out her mouthful of toothpaste into the sink, handing me the toothbrush, and left as well.

I sighed.

I felt bad, but I really just needed some more time to myself.

Rubbing away the condensation from the mirror, I focused on my face and began to shave. I felt an itch and erratically scratched my shoulder as I held the razor up. With a swipe of the razor across my lathered face, I thought, what the h.e.l.l am I going to do? Things were just starting to work out for me, and now Nancy is ruining it all.

G.o.dd.a.m.n it! My hand shot under my armpit to scratch something. What the h.e.l.l? My neck was itchy too. I dropped the razor into the sink with a clatter and began to madly scratch at myself.

It felt like ants were crawling under my skin.

I managed to stop scratching for a second to inspect my arm, and was shocked to see a small b.u.mp under the skin. What was going on? Then it moved. I wildly sc.r.a.ped at it, ripping open the skin and blood oozed out. Looking into the mirror in horror, I saw my face seething and roiling with boils. My hands shot to my face, feeling a crawling ma.s.s under my skin.

"Waaallly!" I cried out.

A burst of laughter erupted from behind the shower curtain. Immediately I knew what was happening.

"You a.s.sholes!" I exclaimed, turning to rip open the curtain, my face dripping and oozing worms, millipedes and other hideous creeping and crawling little creatures.

Hoots of laughter exploded from Bob, Martin, Sid, and Vicious as they held onto each other, crowded into the small shower stall.

"You should have seen your face, mate!" laughed Vicious, tears now streaming down his face as he gripped onto Sid, who was doubled over and laughing hard too. Bob was grinning widely, his arms around the others, shaking his head. I couldn't help joining in laughing as well, despite it all.

"Fine," I declared, "you got me. Okay Sid, make it stop."

Immediately the itching stopped and the beasties quit wriggling. I absentmindedly rubbed my hand across my now smooth face, feeling the remains of the lather and my stubble.

"Sorry man," said Sid, still wiping away tears, "when you asked Vince for a Phuture News upgrade, I slipped a skin in and you authorized it. You gotta pay more attention to what you're doing!"

They all laughed some more.

"Hey it was Martin's idea," added Vicious, giving Martin a little shot in the shoulder.

"Oh yeah?" I replied, shaking my head and smiling at Martin. He smiled back timidly. I was glad him and Bob were hanging out.

I didn't even remember authorizing that transaction, but I had already called it up on my inVerse. I really did need more sleep.

"Anyway," added Bob, "the real reason for this escapade was to get the attention of our hardest working friend to ask him out for a surfing date." He raised his eyebrows to make the point.

Smiling, I rubbed the bridge of my nose. "Yeah okay, sure, how about the end of the day? I could use a break."

"Outstanding!" replied Bob. "Okay guys, let's leave our buddy to finish whatever he was starting."

With that they were off and I was standing alone again in my bathroom. Well, apart from Wally now sitting on the toilet.

"I just didn't see any harm in it," he said before I could say anything. "I figured you and Bob could use a good laugh together. You hardly see him anymore."

I rolled my eyes but smiled, and got back to shaving.

Just then, Jimmy pinged me for lunch.

I stopped shaving, calling up a display s.p.a.ce for more information on the request, but there was none. I'd hadn't seen or talked to Jimmy in years, so it was unusual that he'd just call me like this out of the blue.

Jimmy was Bob's adoptive brother. He'd always been a bit of oddball as a kid, never quite fitting in, or perhaps, never quite understanding how to fit in. He'd had a tough time growing up, though, and being left behind by a parent was something I could relate to. I'd tried hanging out with him back then, until the incident at Nancy's birthday party. After that, we'd barely spoken.

Some kids were just ugly ducklings, however, and as an adult he'd more than recovered. He was now the star of the pssi-kid program, and a minor celebrity in his own right. He'd risen far up the ranks, and had a lot of powerful friends. He'd be a good person to reconnect with, and maybe could even help me out.

"Well, you're in tight with Susie," explained Jimmy at our lunch table.

He wanted me to set him up with someone. Susie and I had been close childhood friends, even perhaps my first girlfriend, although at nine years old I hadn't really understood the idea.

"If you help me," he explained, "maybe I could help you." He raised his eyebrows.

"Sure," I replied cautiously, shrugging. Pretending it was an afterthought I added, "And what would you help me with?"

I smiled, wondering what on earth Jimmy would want with Susie. She just didn't seem his type, but then there was no accounting for taste.

"Well, I think I could help you," Jimmy answered, watching me carefully, "by getting access to higher order splintering."

That both surprised and excited me. He obviously knew about my side project, but then again, he was now head of conscious security systems on Atopia.

"Oh yeah?" I tried to appear disinterested. "So what, like you could double my account settings or something?"

"Much," he laughed, "much more than that w.i.l.l.y. I could show you how to fix the system to have almost unlimited splinters. You'll blow everyone else in the market away."

I glanced at the glittering blue security blanket around us.

"So n.o.body else can know what we're talking about, right?"

I tested the security blanket with some of my phantoms, looking for holes, but of course this was a waste of time.

"Absolutely, w.i.l.l.y," Jimmy replied with a wolfish grin. "I'm the security expert, remember?"

"Right."

I paused.

"So what's the deal then, Mr. Security?"

"If you can get me a date with Susie, but I mean, really set me up with her, you know?" He paused, raising his eyebrows again. I nodded, acknowledging my understanding. "Then, I'll set you up with what you need."

"You can really pull it off, with n.o.body else knowing?" I asked, slightly incredulous. "No risk?"

"I sure can," he responded, smiling. "n.o.body will ever find out. Let me explain..."

Ident.i.ty: Nancy Killiam "OLYMPIA," I WHISPERED to the test subject, lying out on the pod before me. No response. Her mind was still hovering somewhere in the nether regions between consciousness and unconsciousness.

I'd inhabited a robotic body, now in a doctor's office in Manhattan, to personally attend to the end of the New York clinical trials.

After many years we'd almost reached the end of the process and Cognix was now on the verge of approval by the FDA. Approval here in America would trigger a cascade of approvals in other super-jurisdictions around the world. It was a critical juncture in the future of Cognix Corporation, and by extension, for Atopia as well.

Aunt Patricia had made it clear to make this a priority, so I was here in person. At least, a part of me was here in person. The splinter I had controlling this robody was circling at the very peripheries of my consciousness, just a voice in the background of all the buzzing activity that I was dealing with. As Olympia began to stir, the splinter dug deeper into my awareness matrix, p.r.i.c.kling my brain, and my attention was drawn towards that one place, my mind automatically load balancing the other tasks and places and people I was dealing with seamlessly onto my proxxi and other splinters.

"Olympia," I called out again, louder now. She twitched and one of her eyes fluttered, this signal of impending activity collapsing my awareness firmly into this s.p.a.ce.

My mind shivered at the cold, confined reality it suddenly found itself in. "Does distributed consciousness really work?" whispered one far away splinter, attending a press conference in Australia. "Yes," that splinter answered, "even while talking to you I am attending clinical trials in New York." I was still listening to my other streams of consciousness, but these were now faint murmurs in the background of the physicality of this place.

I looked up at the lighting panels in the ceiling, feeling my robotic irises focus in and out, adjusting to the brightness, and then looked back down at Olympia as I gently cradled her head in my plastic hands.

Slowly, her eyes opened, her mind dredging itself up from beneath the sedatives. She wouldn't see a robot hovering above her, however. The pssi was now installed in her neural pathways, and I'd clipped a reality skin around my robot's body so that I would appear to her as her own impression of the most caring and loving person she had ever known, an amalgamation of the people the system could figure out that she may have been closest to.

"Yes?" Olympia replied.

Barely conscious, and I could tell she was already annoyed. She obviously didn't have much in the way of loving people in her life.

"Seems like someone needs a little more sleepy time," I purred softly. "Come on, I'll get you up and dressed."

Olympia was something of a special case. She was one of the key external marketing executives setting the groundwork for the commercial release of pssi later this year. Olympia had been inserted into the program at the last minute by Dr. Hal Granger, one of Cognix's senior executives and our leading psychologist. Her file indicated acute anxiety, which certainly qualified her, but it was strange that she'd been shuffled in at the last second like this.

"How long was I out?" asked Olympia irritably, propping herself up on the bed.

"Hmm..." I replied while my mind a.s.similated a thin stream of information from the splinter that had been attending her here, "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," she said grumpily, swinging her legs off the side of the podbed and sitting up.

I tried to reach over to steady her, but she just pushed me off. I shrugged and leaned over to grab her clothes and hand them to her.

"I can take it from here, thank you very much," she stated flatly and aggressively, waving me away.

I stared at her with concern, wondering if her intensely aggressive mood had been stimulated by some psycho-active response to the pssi stimulus, but a set of clinical notes floated into view in an overlaid display s.p.a.ce. She was always that way. Everything was fine, then, in fact all of the other reports coming in signaled that this was another perfect pssi installation.