have control over the technology, but not over her mind, and she’s chosen to do this herself.”
“Chosen to do what to herself?” I demanded.
The doctor shrugged and shook his head. Apparently he wasn’t sure.
“We could physiologically remove the pssi network by flushing out all the smarticles, but this could trigger an unstable feedback loop that could destroy her psyche in the process.”
I stared at him in silence.
“So what can you do then?”
“Well, Commander Strong, it would help if we understood why. Is there anything that happened recently? I noted that you’d been experimenting with the proxxids.”
“Yes,” I responded, feeling mounting dread, “sure we did. That’s what this place is for, right?”
“Commander Strong,” the doctor continued, “proxxids can have very powerful emotional side effects if not taken properly. Did you read the warning labels before taking so many of them? Tell me, Commander Strong, what did you do with the proxxids when you were done?”
8
THE INVESTIGATION HAD uncovered that Cindy hadn’t been terminating our proxxids. Instead she’d been secreting them away, one by one, in her own private metaworlds. As she’d become more pssi aware, she’d started constructing ever more elaborate worlds and hidden them deeper and deeper away from me to protect her ever growing family, using private networks and security blankets to cover her tracks.
It wasn’t all that hard, and I guess I hadn’t been paying attention. Her mood had been so great at the time that I hadn’t dug too deep into what she was up to when I was away.
All the questions she had been asking about the lifespan of the proxxids floated into sharp detail in my mind. She’d begun demanding more and more flexibility for each of them as we’d spawned them. I’d always refused, wanting to keep them as short as possible to try and move the process along.
Since they used a recombination of our DNA, based on our legal copyrights, both of us had to agree on the format of the proxxid before spawning. Once their processes had been started they could only be changed by resetting the system, effectively terminating that instance. So she hadn’t been able to modify them without destroying them.
Despite the mounting emergency facing Atopia, I could hardly muster the energy to spend any time at Command, especially after Jimmy had cracked into her private worlds and delivered copies to me.
Jimmy and Echo could handle what was going on as well as I could. Atopia would push through the storms, and even if it didn’t, what would it matter to me? I was busy fighting for my own piece of mind amid the wreckage that had become my life.
§
Proxxids weren’t intended to have been used this way. Cindy had overridden the proxxid controls using my own security clearance. A desperate mother could find a way around any obstacle that threatened her children.
As I accessed the copies of the worlds she’d created, I began a bizarre journey, watching them all grow up together in that little white washed cottage on Martha’s Vineyard I had once visited with her. It was like watching an ancient rerun of a television show about country living, complete with sheets flapping like white flags surrendering yesteryear on the clothesline out back.
I spent my days sitting and watching Little Ricky, Derek, Brianna, Georgina, Paul, Pauli and Little Ricky-Two playing together, growing up together, living out their lives. I smiled as I watched them, remembering them all as babies in my arms.
The simulation mechanics of the proxxids, which I’d forced upon Cindy, had created surreally accelerated lifespans where they’d aged from babies into old men and women in varying spans of barely three months in a crazy, non-linear time warp.
They didn’t seem to notice anything odd was happening because of the cognitive blind spot they had built into them, or maybe because, as children living the only lives they ever knew, they
“Chosen to do what to herself?” I demanded.
The doctor shrugged and shook his head. Apparently he wasn’t sure.
“We could physiologically remove the pssi network by flushing out all the smarticles, but this could trigger an unstable feedback loop that could destroy her psyche in the process.”
I stared at him in silence.
“So what can you do then?”
“Well, Commander Strong, it would help if we understood why. Is there anything that happened recently? I noted that you’d been experimenting with the proxxids.”
“Yes,” I responded, feeling mounting dread, “sure we did. That’s what this place is for, right?”
“Commander Strong,” the doctor continued, “proxxids can have very powerful emotional side effects if not taken properly. Did you read the warning labels before taking so many of them? Tell me, Commander Strong, what did you do with the proxxids when you were done?”
8
THE INVESTIGATION HAD uncovered that Cindy hadn’t been terminating our proxxids. Instead she’d been secreting them away, one by one, in her own private metaworlds. As she’d become more pssi aware, she’d started constructing ever more elaborate worlds and hidden them deeper and deeper away from me to protect her ever growing family, using private networks and security blankets to cover her tracks.
It wasn’t all that hard, and I guess I hadn’t been paying attention. Her mood had been so great at the time that I hadn’t dug too deep into what she was up to when I was away.
All the questions she had been asking about the lifespan of the proxxids floated into sharp detail in my mind. She’d begun demanding more and more flexibility for each of them as we’d spawned them. I’d always refused, wanting to keep them as short as possible to try and move the process along.
Since they used a recombination of our DNA, based on our legal copyrights, both of us had to agree on the format of the proxxid before spawning. Once their processes had been started they could only be changed by resetting the system, effectively terminating that instance. So she hadn’t been able to modify them without destroying them.
Despite the mounting emergency facing Atopia, I could hardly muster the energy to spend any time at Command, especially after Jimmy had cracked into her private worlds and delivered copies to me.
Jimmy and Echo could handle what was going on as well as I could. Atopia would push through the storms, and even if it didn’t, what would it matter to me? I was busy fighting for my own piece of mind amid the wreckage that had become my life.
§
Proxxids weren’t intended to have been used this way. Cindy had overridden the proxxid controls using my own security clearance. A desperate mother could find a way around any obstacle that threatened her children.
As I accessed the copies of the worlds she’d created, I began a bizarre journey, watching them all grow up together in that little white washed cottage on Martha’s Vineyard I had once visited with her. It was like watching an ancient rerun of a television show about country living, complete with sheets flapping like white flags surrendering yesteryear on the clothesline out back.
I spent my days sitting and watching Little Ricky, Derek, Brianna, Georgina, Paul, Pauli and Little Ricky-Two playing together, growing up together, living out their lives. I smiled as I watched them, remembering them all as babies in my arms.
The simulation mechanics of the proxxids, which I’d forced upon Cindy, had created surreally accelerated lifespans where they’d aged from babies into old men and women in varying spans of barely three months in a crazy, non-linear time warp.
They didn’t seem to notice anything odd was happening because of the cognitive blind spot they had built into them, or maybe because, as children living the only lives they ever knew, they
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