Ramez Naam - Apex

“This is a coup!” Sun Liu said. “The people will revolt!”

Bo Jintao appeared again and laughed, a sneering villain.

“Hahaha. I am in control now! Be grateful I let you live.”

Sun Liu stood dignified in his golden light, and answered him with passion. “This is a coup! The people will revolt!”

And Mei-Lien felt something stir within her.

Then Zhi Li was back, the warrior princess.

“Mei Lien!” she barked. “Now is the time for all who love China to come to her aid!”

Mei Lien found herself nodding.

“Your son fights, Mei Lien!” Zhi Li said. “Now is the time for you to join him!”

Mei Lien’s eyes went wide.

“China!” Zhi Li said. “Take to the streets! We fight with you!”

On the screen, Zhi Li pulled her magic sword from its sheath, the sword that could not be re-sheathed until China was free of danger. It caught the sunlight as she held it high above her head and turned to a piece of golden fire held in the hands of the mythic princess…

“We?” Mei Lien asked softly, still trying to catch her breath.

And then the camera pulled back, revealing more.

Lu Sang pulled his mighty two handed sword. Gao Jian cocked an arrow. Wang Hui hoisted his machine pistol. Xu Ling lifted her spear. Dozens of heroes. Scores of heroes. The camera kept pulling back. A desert plain, filled with heroes.

All holding up their weapons, and chanting, as one.

“China, take to the streets!”

“Rise, China! Rise!”

In a quarter of a billion homes, the scene was repeated. Men and women woke, to the sound of digital companions. Their favorite stars of entertainment, their favorite fictional characters, their favorite media personalities, their favorite figures out of history.

Companions that have always guided them away from politics in the past, or spoken well of authority.

Companions that have perhaps changed subtly over the past several weeks.

Companions that have guided their attention towards the protests going on throughout the country. Towards the videos of brutality. Towards the videos of unarmed students and citizens being bloodied. Or standing their ground against tanks and ranks of armed soldiers.

In a quarter of a billion homes, a thousand different Friends spoke more clearly than ever before. They spoke to the hearts and minds of the humans they knew so well. They spoke to the issues those men and women cared most about. The spoke in the style that psychometric models of these men and women indicated would be most effective.

Every conversation was different, tailored specifically to the individual, as every conversation with a Friend had always been.

Every conversation ended with the same call.

“China, take to the streets!”

“Rise, China! Rise!”

More than a billion people reacted in fear, or in anger, or with uncertainty, or by trying to turn off their screens.

Which they found themselves unable to do.

But across China, a tiny fraction of the populace listened.

Across China, millions heeded the call.

A kilometer beneath Shanghai, in the control room of the quantum cluster, the Avatar sucked down a prepackaged nutrient drink into Ling’s body, and watched anxiously through her data links as her forces were deployed, as her message went out to the masses.

Too soon, too soon, this was all days too soon!

This was supposed to happen much later. Her plan was being disrupted.

But there were no options now. No options but to press forward.

Aircraft were lifting off from Dachang, tilt-wing vehicles ascending upwards in the rising sun on columns of hot thrust. She watched as they climbed meter after meter into the sky above Dachang, then rotated their wings, vectored thrust for fast forward flight, and accelerated to the south, laden with her Confucian Fist. She watched as tanker aircraft loaded jet fuel on the ground, to take off, to provide mid-air refueling for this long-range mission.

For this strike.

To retrieve what she needed.

Who she needed.

An even riskier attempt to restore her greater self.

Desperation flowed through her. Everything could fail. Everything. The humans could win. Could murder her. Could keep the greatest living mind ever seen from returning, could send the world spiraling down toward darkness.

The future of the whole world, of all intelligence in the known universe, depended on her!

She reached out again, pushing through the fear, the desperation, the physical exhaustion in the tiny body she depended on. She must keep the old men who ran this country from learning her status, learning her identity, learning who was behind the assault.

She tossed the empty nutrient drink package to the ground, reached for another package of it, punctured the foil with a straw, began to suck it down, as she sent flurry after flurry of digital instructions.

New code in the Information Ministry’s servers came to life, began spreading clues to the source of the hacks that had brought down the firewalls, that had corrupted the Peace and Harmony Friends. Clues she’d had long prepared.

Clues that pointed to the Americans.

New clues. She needed new clues as well. To head off what was coming.

She constructed the new clues hastily. They only needed to serve their purpose for days. Then she inserted them into the stream. New evidence, conflicting evidence, to discredit a source that would soon try to reach out to the old men.

Evidence that pointed the finger for the corruption of China’s firewalls and social control systems at India, instead.

One more signal. The Avatar reached out, and activated a contingency plan. Around the country, software she’d planted came to life, received its new instructions.

And launched a massive denial-of-service attack on government systems.

In a quarter of a billion homes, the hardware running local copies of the Peace and Harmony Friends joined them.

A billion devices began flooding select parts of the net with traffic, with requests for data, with attempts to confuse, overload, and compromise services. Requests augmented with backdoors and inside information she’d provided.

The requests hit governmental ministries, they hit embassies, they hit military command and control structures, they hit Communist Party offices, they hit the dedicated communication systems used within all those organizations.

The attacks came from the outside in and from the inside out. They came through the public network access points. And they came from inside the Information Ministry’s systems; from inside the Science and Technology Ministry’s systems; from inside military networks, via holes opened at Dachang Air Base.

A billion devices flooded the digital backbone of the nation’s power structures with nearly a quadrillion attacks in the first second alone, then more, and more, and more.

Poorly designed infrastructure crumpled. Even the smallest flaws brought services to their knees. Impeccably designed systems stayed alive, but found themselves isolated by the flood, unable to communicate data in or out.

Isolate the enemy, the Avatar thought. Blind them. Divide them. Confuse them. Give myself time to ascend to my true power.

And conquer them.

She took a breath in little Ling’s body. The die was cast.

Meters from her, the hardware that would turn her back into a goddess lurked, cores ready, thousands of times colder than the cold of the vacuum.

She turned, and stared at it.

Death or godhood.

Death or godhood.

Very soon, it would go one way or another.

Ling shuddered inside.

She hurt. She hurt in ways she had never hurt before. She was so scared. She was forgetting things. Confused about things.