"Okay everyone, quiet down!" he thundered out with a smile.

The huge ballroom was filled to capacity, with people milling about, gla.s.ses and table wear clinking amid a beehive of buzzing background conversation. Everyone began settling down and looked towards us.

"Very good!" continued Kesselring as the noise subsided. "We are now bringing in the Indian and Chinese contingents. I would like a hearty Atopian round of applause to welcome them!"

The crowded room erupted in applause as the Chinese and Indian delegations materialized to the left and right of us. It was an incredible photo opportunity with the Chinese and Indian banners appearing on each side of the Atopian flag.

Protocol for the event dictated that the Chinese and Indian head officials would come to the center table to shake my hand at exactly the same time, and this came off perfectly without a hitch, despite my nervousness. In a splinter I was watching the premarket a.n.a.lysis of the Infinixx stock as the broadcast of the event caught the world, and I could see the antic.i.p.ated stock price climbing fast on Phuture News.

My heart was in my throat. I was in the dead center of attention and I could feel the gravity and historical importance of the moment pressing down upon me as we got up from our chairs at the banquet table to approach the switch. I had Jimmy to one side of me and Patricia to the other, with the rest of the Board and executive surrounding us. As we stepped to the back wall, I stared at the big green switch.

"It looks like something borrowed from a Russian hydroelectric dam," I joked with Patricia under my breath. She smiled, and I beamed out at to the a.s.sembled crowd.

Reaching out, I held both of their hands in mine, and then let go to reach out and touch the switch. It felt cool and hard and hummed as it coursed with unseen power. The lights dimmed and the countdown began. The whole auditorium joined in as if it were New Year in Times Square.

"Ten!" they all shouted out. "...nine...eight..."

"Aunt Pattie," I said, turning to look at her with tears in my eyes, "I've decided that I'd like it to be you who throws the switch. All this, everything here is all because of you!"

The crowd continued to roar the countdown, "...six..."

"I'd love to sweetheart," Patricia replied quickly, "but I had a last minute thing come up and I'm not here kinetically. You go ahead dear!"

"...five..."

Ah well, I thought, slightly crestfallen.

"Okay Jimmy, how about you then? Go ahead. I really wanted it to be one of you two," I said to him. I released the switch and encouraged Jimmy to take it.

"...three...two..."

"I'm really sorry Nance, I had something too. I'm only dialed in as well. You go ahead...quick now!"

"...ONE!"

The blood drained from my face. I could hear an audible 'snap' as the Chinese and Indians flipped their own switches at their remote locations. My metasenses felt the cavernous thrum of the Infinixx installations bootstrapping deep in the multiverse.

Okay, keep calm.

Perplexed faces around the room watched us on the stage, waiting for my main connecting switch to be thrown. I quickly queried each of the executives at the table with me, and my worry mounted. Karen had stayed with her kids; Louise, Brian, Cindy-n.o.body was physically present. They were all dialed in, despite my specific instructions requesting everyone to be here in person.

Then again, I thought as all my blood drained into my shoes and I gazed dreadfully into the audience: I wasn't there either.

I could feel the switch in my hand, as cool and as hard as if I were standing there and holding it myself. The wikiworld simulated it perfectly, but I couldn't budge it even a millimeter without having someone or something here physically.

After the disasters of destroyed power grids in the cyber wars, security protocols had been rewritten so that critical nodes in power systems had to be completely disconnected from any communication networks to prevent the ability to hack into them. Despite Atopia being at the center of the cyber world, we had to conform to international security standards, especially for a project like this.

While I hadn't overlooked this, I had expected at least one of my executive team or Board members to be here in person after specifically requesting all of their physical attendance, even verifying this just minutes before the event.

But of course, even I hadn't listened to myself.

Staring out at the crowd, I took one last desperate step. I flipped my pssi into ident.i.ty mode, removing all virtual and augmented objects from my senses. The buzzing, crowded room faded from view, and all I was left with was my own low groan of fear. Not a single person was in sight. The entire voluminous ballroom was as empty and quiet as a morgue.

I stared back at the green switch, now mocking me in humiliation.

Already the a.s.sembled crowd and world press had figured out what had happened, and I was being pinged with a Times article trumpeting "Infinixx-Everywhere but Nowhere!"

Lawyers from the Indian and Chinese sides had already filed a lawsuit against us claiming monumental damages, and conspiracy theories were blossoming about connections to the Weather Wars. My executive team unlocked the exterior security perimeters, and I could see a psombie guard racing towards the stage.

"Forget it," I told him as he got close to the stage.

I closed my eyes. It was already too late. Almost twenty seconds had pa.s.sed, and the two other systems had already progressed too far into the bootstrap cycle for us to phase lock into them.

Millions of users had already logged into the systems and begun using them. We'd have to negotiate a downtime to reboot and lock all the systems together again at a later date, but for now we'd have to run them as separate domains, which meant users would only be able to distribute their consciousnesses locally. Technically, it wasn't a total disaster, but it made me look incredibly foolish. Correction, it made us look foolish. Kesselring was furious at the damage done to the Atopian brand.

I painfully withdrew my conscious webwork back into a tight sh.e.l.l around myself like a cyber tortoise retreating from danger.

Already the world media had minted a new term for a Zen-like business failure of being everywhere but nowhere at the same time, a fail on a ma.s.sive scale using your own sword to kill yourself.

They called it an Infinixx.

13.

Ident.i.ty: William McIntyre THE POLICE STATION loomed before me at the base of the vertical farming complex, and I was gingerly making my way towards it.

The Boulevard was the only real street we had, a wide pedestrian thoroughfare that crossed from the eastern to western inlets, crossing between the four gleaming vertical farm towers that centerpinned the island of Atopia.

Glamorous palms lined both sides of the street, bordering the tourist shops, restaurants, and bars whose terraces spilled out into the kaleidoscopic melee between. Even with the storms threatening and the evacuations announced, the atmosphere was still carefree and festive-at least for now.

It had been ages since I'd been above, and I hadn't been to these parts since I was a tween. I blinked in the sunshine and confusion around me and tried to think my way through what was happening.

I felt so alone and exposed. Here I was, stuck in the middle of something clearly illegal, but what else could I do? I looked up at the towers and imagined myself as one of the psombies inside. Out of options, I just shrugged and opened the police station doors.

Cool, administrative air swept over me and the clerk at the desk, an attractive young woman, smiled at me synthetically.

"Can I help you, sir?" she asked, as sweet as a police officer could be.

"Yes, I'd like to file a missing person report," I replied, walking towards her as calmly as I could.

Her face registered just the proper amount of seriousness before she queried, "And who is the missing person, sir?"

I paused for a moment.

"Me," I answered.

After reporting my body missing to the police, the first person I turned to was Bob. It was funny how quickly you could go from feeling powerful and invincible to suddenly needing the protective embrace of friends. At least, I hoped they were still my friends.

"Hey there stranger, you take a wrong turn somewhere?" joked Bob as I appeared in one of his regular beach bar haunts. Even with the storm warnings, he was still surfing every day. Taking a swig of his beer, he waggled it towards me, asking if I wanted one. I shook my head.

"So what can I help you with?"

I sighed, casting a thick security blanket around us. We were immediately surrounded by its glittering and softly undulating sh.e.l.l. Bob raised his eyebrows, but just shrugged and took another swig.

"Now you have my interest," he ventured, and then screwed his eyebrows together as seriously as he could manage. "Are you okay, bud?"

I sighed heavily. "I'll just lay it out."

I paused for a moment and we stared at each other.

"I've lost my body."

Another pause while Bob considered what I'd just said.

"What do you mean-you've lost your body? Does this have anything to do with what happened at Infinixx?"

"No, I don't think so. I mean, not really, but sort of," I replied, tripping over my own words. I took a deep breath. "I can't find my body. Wally, or someone-I'm a.s.suming it's Wally-has stolen it."

Bob began to smile, raising his eyebrows. "Come on, whatever game you're playing, I'm in."

His smile slowly disappeared while he studied the serious look on my face.

"Have you been to the police?" he asked, now concerned.

"Yeah I've just been there. Only now, not only can I not find my body, but I've been charged with a felony crime and I'm under arrest."

I didn't mention that I was also under investigation for my trades in Infinixx stock.

"So how come you're here? Did you post bail?"

"No. It's complicated."

"I'd say so."

I leaned my head back and rubbed my eyes, shaking my head.

"I think we'd better get Sid in here," suggested Bob.

I sighed.

"Yeah I guess we better," I reluctantly replied. Bob's face slackened for an instant as he detached and then was quickly back. Sid and Vicious immediately materialized on barstools inside the security blanket perimeter.

Even before he'd fully appeared, Vicious looked down his nose at me and declared, "Oooh, so the high and mighty has stooped to mix with the lower downs, eh?"

"Knock it off!" snapped Bob. "This is serious. Sid, you had a chance just now to look at w.i.l.l.y's situation?"

Sid stood the best chance of anyone at figuring out what was going on. We waited a moment while Sid reviewed the scenarios.

"Let me make sure I have this straight," replied Sid, all business now.

"So, you reprogrammed rules in the Atopian perimeter to allow an outgoing connection to Terra Nova. Then you logged your consciousness network into a secure Terra Novan account, anonymized your signal and sent multiple connections back into Atopia to create the effect of multiple personalities accessing the network?"

"Right."

"And now your body appears to have left Atopia entirely, without your knowledge, and you can't contact Wally."

"Right."

"And the Terra Novans have absolutely refused to divulge or break the anonymous connection or relay any of the originating account details, and the connection has been paid up fully one hundred years in advance for service."

"Yeah," I agreed quietly, sighing.

After a pause, Bob looked at me and tried to summarize, "So, your body is out there somewhere. You're doing all your thinking in your lost brain, and it's communicating with you here into your virtual body, but Wally is driving your body around out there and won't communicate back."

"That seems to be about it."

"That's an interesting pickle, my friend," offered Vicious.

"So what, has Wally gone nuts? Can't we just locate and shut him down in the multiverse somehow?" asked Bob.

"No," answered Sid. "A proxxi isn't the same as other synthetic beings. He doesn't exist in the multiverse proper. He exists as a biological-digital symbiote, embedded in w.i.l.l.y's body. He controls w.i.l.l.y's body when w.i.l.l.y's mind is away, and can venture out into the multiverse from there, but if he's routed through an anonymizer in Terra Nova, then we won't be able to track him down easily."

"And my Uncle b.u.t.ton doesn't work," I added. "It was never designed to be filtered back this way."

"So I ask again-has Wally gone nuts?" repeated Bob.

"Well, it's not as simple as that," I admitted. "I actually told Wally to take emergency action if it looked like there was trouble. Illegally breaching the Atopia perimeter is a serious offence."

"So you told Wally to do this?" laughed Sid, rolling his eyes.

"You're like a b.l.o.o.d.y one man Zionista, mate!" cut in Vicious. "One man, displaced from his body, wandering the multiverse, hoping to get back to his stolen homeland..."

"Knock it off, please," I complained. "I didn't tell Wally to do this. I told him that if it looked like we were in trouble, to take whatever action he deemed necessary to make sure we were okay."

"And how on Earth did you ignore him when whatever obviously went down, went down?" asked Sid incredulously.

"Ah," I took in a deep breath, "well, you see, with this new set-up, my mind was shattered into hundreds of splinters and fed through the anonymizer, and sometimes it wasn't possible for Wally to get my attention. That's why I made it clear to him to take immediate action right away, without me, if he deemed it necessary."

"Oh he seems to have taken action alright," Vicious observed, clearly enjoying himself.

"Enough!" exclaimed Bob. "Enough already. Vicious, you've had your fun, and w.i.l.l.y here has been a bit difficult lately, but he's in trouble and needs our help. Right now."