Ramez Naam - Apex

There was an ugly bruise on one side of Ling’s face. Her eyes were bloodshot. One lip was swollen. There was blood on her dress. From where it had dripped down from the lip, he’d guess.

Her mouth was working. Her lips were saying something. Not the same as her mind was saying.

In the corner, Chen Pang stood, staring at the quantum cluster behind the glass.

But do not reveal yourselves yet,the thing that he’d once thought was Su-Yong went on. New brothers will be arriving, reinforcing you.

More than fifty had already arrived, from Dachang, sneaking in, using chameleonware, or disguised in other ways to hide their distinctive faces.

“Mother…” Peng said aloud. His voice sounded tentative, uncertain.

Bai felt fear rush through him.

Don’t say the wrong thing, Peng, he thought, not daring to transmit it. Don’t say the wrong thing.

“…is everything going alright?” Peng finished.

Little Ling’s mouth stopped making words to them. She smiled with it instead, showing teeth that needed cleaning.

“Everything will be just fine,” she said in Ling’s voice.

It wasn’t until he and Peng were near the top of the kilometer-high elevator shaft that they even looked at each other.

And Peng silently moved his lips and mouth in a precise mimicry of what Ling’s had done.

Bai nodded silently.

Help me. Please, help me. That’s what Ling’s mouth had been saying. Even as the entity that occupied her had been telling them something else entirely.

Bai shivered, and felt and saw his brother do the same.

106

Inflamed

Sunday 2041.01.20

Zhi Li stood atop the table in the setting sun, looking down on the crowd in the square of Jiao Tong.

She could feel them in her mind. She could feel their thoughts and emotions. Incredible. Her hallucination was still so vivid in her thoughts. This was a story. This was a thousand stories. This was a million stories. Each of these faces was a role, was a hundred roles. She looked at a woman and saw a mother, a wife, a daughter, a granddaughter, a grandmother someday, a worker, a student, a teacher, an inventor, a lover.

A freedom fighter.

A billion stories.

A trillion stories.

Interwoven.

All intermeshing with hers.

She opened her mouth to speak and it was almost too much.

“Today,” she said.

And they cheered, cheered loud just to see her there, held cameras up, broadcast her, photographed her.

Zhi Li laughed. How absurd! They were actors and actresses as much as she was!

They were as famous as she was!

As important as she was!

She held up her left hand and smiled until it was over, until she could hear herself. A boy handed Lu Song a microphone, and Lu Song stepped up next to her, held it before her mouth.

“Today!” she said again, and this time her words crackled out, and she saw them ripple across the whole crowd.

She felt them ripple across the minds of the crowd.

She saw even the soldiers, beyond the barricades, watching her, listening to her.

“Today, we are China! ” she roared, and the crowd roared back.

“China is not a place!” she said. “China is not a government! China is the people! ”

They roared again, hooting for her, their minds exulting for her.

“ I am not important!” she said, bringing her left hand to her chest. She showed it to them, showed them her sincerity, pushed it at them with her mind. It confused them. They cheered, half-heartedly.

“ They are not important!” She gestured, vaguely at the troops, at the direction of Beijing.

The crowd cheered louder this time.

“Fuck the party!” she heard someone yell. Laughter followed. She smiled.

“But you are important!” She pointed at the crowd. “ We are important. Because WE ARE CHINA !”

The crowd roared louder than ever now, roared its approval, showed it to her in their thoughts.

“If China oppresses its people, China oppresses itself !”

Their minds opened to her, gave her love, gave her passion.

She opened herself wide, threw it back at them, held up her left fist in defiance, let it show in her face, in her wide open mouth, in the fire in her eyes, let it be heard in her voice for everyone around the nation and the world to hear.

“Today we free ourselves, and so China frees China !”

They roared again, and with that, she lifted her sword out of the bucket where the blade had been soaking and held it up high, her hand wrapped around the little box and the wires that had been affixed to it.

The crowd cheered louder.

Her eyes caught those of that boy, Yuguo’s, in the front, and he hit a button on his phone.

And the blade of her sword burst into flame.

The crowd went wild in voice and mind. Flashbulbs burst.

And Zhi Li tried not to flinch from the burning object she held above her head.

A thousand kilometers away, in Tiananmen Square, in the heart of Beijing, Peng Luli screams in joy as her idol, Zhi Li, lifts the flaming sword into the sky! Hundreds of thousands in Tiananmen see through the eyes of men and women in Shanghai, and cheer just as loudly.

In Guangzhou, in Hong Kong, in Dalian, in Shenzhen, in Chengdu, in Wuhan, in Dongguan, millions more see the same sight, experience the same sight through the eyes and ears of just thousands at Jiao Tong, and roar their approval.

Zhi Li is with them! The revolution cannot fail!

“They’re coming again!” someone yelled, hours later.

Zhi crouched down lower behind the overturned table in the darkness, goggles pulled down over her eyes, wet bandana wrapped over her mouth and nose. Next to her Lu Song crouched protectively, a long pipe in his hand. Qi and Dai were on either side of them, hands in the pockets of their wind blazers. Where their pistols were.

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZT.

She groaned as the blast hit her again. Subsonic vibrations moved through her bones, her bowels. Her head throbbed.

She heard popping sounds, the distinctive noise of the tear gas grenade launchers.

And then thuds as they came down. Hissing as the gas came out of them at high pressure, barely visible in the darkness, except where it blocked the red flames.

Coughing. She felt coughing in the minds around her, even with the bandanas, the few gas masks.

NOW!Yuguo sent.

Was the boy twenty? Nineteen? Some sort of nerd. And somehow he’d become the leader here.

Two-person teams of protesters leapt to their feet from behind shelter, illuminated by the light of the burning barricades. Each had a shield-holder, hoisting a human-sized piece of wood or stiff plastic or sheet metal, gleaming in the firelight; and a thrower, cocking back a Molotov cocktail. On the ground next to them would be a third person, lighting the cocktail, handing them another if there was time for a second throw.

Twenty lit cocktails soared into the air, up over the burning barrier between them and the army forces.

More flame now. Less cheering.

Army shooters fired back with rubber bullets, knocking one girl down, spinning another thrower around, forcing all the rest to take cover.

Through the eyes of the lookouts linked to them, Zhi Li saw the fuel-filled bottles slam into the upheld shields of soldiers and riot police moving in, saw them burst into flame, saw the line fall back, their advance halted.

Slingshots!Yuguo sent.

Further back, three larger teams popped up, with slings made of meters-long pieces of thick elastic tubing. Each team had four or five shield holders, plus two sling holders, and one puller in the middle. Even now the puller she had her eyes on was hauling back, stretching out the tubing, loading a lit Molotov into the cup at the center of his sling…