Ramez Naam - Apex

And then to wake up one day, and hear the news of thousands dead in Laramie, and hear the words “Aryan Rising”, and see the pictures of those clones, those “perfect” Aryan transhuman clone kids, genetically immune to the plague they’d intended to use to wipe out humanity. Evil little Aryan transhumans bent on wiping out the rest of humanity. Vicious little clones that didn’t quite look like Maximilian Barnes. But resembled the boy he’d been at that age a bit too much for comfort.

He’d been in the Asher administration then, had gone to the FBI immediately, told them everything about his background, about what he knew of the Aryan Rising, told his bosses in the White House, and somehow found himself rewarded, thrust into a policy role, carried forward into the Jameson administration, and then Stockton’s. The emerging technologies hawk. The man who’d convinced President Jameson to euthanize the Aryan Rising clones. The man who’d been put in charge of the program to make sure the US public never faltered in its opposition to transhuman technologies.

Maximilian Barnes was a man who knew the face of evil. And he’d be damned if he ever let the US public soften in its resolve, or ever let a capitulator like Senator Stanley Kim take the White House, and throw open the floodgates to transhumans and AIs and worse.

In a rented room in a roadside motel in Massachusetts, a man named Breece leaned over a table, staring at a slate. He was tall, broad of shoulder, muscular, but not conspicuously so. His hair was sandy this night, the indeterminate color between brown and blond, long enough to need combing, but not much longer. His eyes were as unremarkable as his hair. He preferred them that way.

Breece played the video again, his hands tense on the oversized slate, the sound coming in through headphones, so no one in this cheap motel would realize just how obsessively he was watching and re-watching this.

“PLF is a lie… you created.”

Breece shook his head in wonder.

He flipped back to the documents that had been released with the video. A memorandum signed by President Miles Jameson. A memorandum creating the Posthuman Liberation Front, as a false flag operation, a front group run by a splinter office of what would become Homeland Security’s Emerging Risks Directorate, run specifically by a man named Maximilian Barnes.

Maximilian Barnes had gone on to be Special Policy Advisor to Jameson, and then to President John Stockton after him.

Maximilian Barnes had become Acting Director of Homeland Security’s Emerging Risk’s Directorate four months ago when Breece’s bomb – aimed at Stockton – had killed the last ERD Director.

Goddammit. Breece had gotten this guy promoted.

And all this time…

All this time Maximilian Barnes had also been Zarathustra. The leader of the Posthuman Liberation Front.

Breece’s superior in the Cause.

The man who’d given Breece his marching orders, sent him on missions, for all these years.

Breece yanked the headphones from his ears, tossed the slate onto the desk, and pushed back in his chair, his hands coming up to his face.

It all made so much sense. All the missions that made headlines, but where human targets just barely escaped.

Oh god. The miss. The miss on Stockton. The software should have fired that gun perfectly. The bullet just barely missed Stockton’s head!

Zarathustra gave them the software. Of course.

Zara had been so furious that Breece had improvised, had added a bomb to the plan, on top of the gun.

They’d been meant to miss.

They’d been played.

And then Breece started laughing.

Because Zara – Barnes – might have meant to play them, but he hadn’t meant for Breece to set off that bomb in DC, or the one in Chicago.

Barnes sure hadn’t meant for Breece and his team to set off a bomb at Westwood Baptist in Houston this morning, assassinating Daniel Chandler – author of the Chandler Act – and the Reverend Josiah Shepherd.

The laughter kept coming. He’d eliminated two of the greatest enemies of the future this morning, human purist fascists, along with hundreds of their dittoheads. He’d set an example in front of the whole nation.

I pushed the button, he thought. Me! And this Maximilian Barnes has been funding me for years.

It was rich.

Faces flashed through Breece’s mind. Faces of men and women he’d known. PLF operatives that had been caught, killed, imprisoned.

He stopped laughing.

Barnes. Barnes had set those men and women up.

More faces. The assassins who’d tried to kill him outside Austin. Who’d found him in the cemetery. Who Breece had killed. They’d begged for their lives.

Barnes had sent them too.

Breece’s face turned grim.

He reached for his slate to scan the documents again, looking for details he could use. The Cause would be in chaos. And Barnes… Barnes had a lot to answer for.

A message was flashing on his slate.

] I can get you to Maximilian Barnes.

Breece froze. Fear went up his spine. He dropped the slate, his head turning, his eyes scanning the room. The gun was hidden in his bag, there in the closet.

He turned back, to wipe the slate, and another message flashed on its screen. From an app he didn’t have installed.

] I’m not your enemy. If I were, you’d be dead.

Breece stared at the thing. He should run. Wipe the data, grab the gun, grab the go-bag, sanitize the room, burn this identity, tell his team to do the same.

But Barnes…

More messages flashed on the screen.

] You’re in room 418 of the Roadside Express in Quincy, MA.

] That’s just south of Boston. You checked in yesterday at 3.07pm.

Breece’s heart lurched.

] Your real name is Andrew Marcum.

His stomach rose up.

] If I was law enforcement, there would be police at your door.

It could all be a trick, Breece thought. A delaying tactic, while forces moved in to take him.

] I can get you to Barnes. But there isn’t much time. It must be now.

He reached forward, touched a panel on the slate, and a keyboard snicked out and into place, the face of the slate coming up at an angle, forming a terminal.

>> Who are you?

] I’m a friend, Breece. I’m someone who’s watched you for a long time.

] And I can get you to the man who lied to you all these years.

] The man who used you. Who betrayed you and so many others.

] But only if we do it my way.

Breece stared at the screen. Then his fingers moved.

>> I have conditions of my own.

Barnes stepped back inside. In the short term, denial was key. The election would be over in less than forty-eight hours. Large swaths of the country had already voted electronically. At this point, there were good odds that nothing could stop a Stockton victory.

I made that happen, Barnes told himself. Me . With the assassination attempt in DC.

All he had to do was deny everything. Keep any facts from being confirmed. There would be no evidence. He was wired deep into the system. DHS had learned long ago that in a surveillance state it was vital to reserve the ability to turn a blind eye to certain people at certain times. Standardization of code across Federal, State, and Local levels had made it possible. When DHS gave out billions in Homeland Security grants, they could dictate the terms, could use that money to get the data they wanted, spread the software they wanted far and wide.

And they had.

He was one of the few who could make the system turn a blind eye, one of the few remaining who even knew it was possible. And so there was no record of his trip to DC. No traffic camera had preserved any memory of his car that night. No cell tower recalled having contact with his phone on that trip. No gate or elevator or door at ERD remembered his face or his badge for that crucial hour.