Ramez Naam - Apex

Nothing.

“For the past eight years I have served as Special Policy Advisor, first under President Miles Jameson, and then under President John Stockton. Eight years ago, at the orders of President Jameson, and with very deep personal reservations, I created the Posthuman Liberation Front, the international terrorist group known as the PLF, as a front group to frighten America and the world into accepting laws and international agreements that restrict the use of and research into neurotechnology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. To my shame, I’ve run this terrorist organization every day since then, with the full knowledge of President Jameson…”

Fight! Barnes roared at himself. Fight! He pushed with everything he had, one massive surge at his right foot, just to move it an inch, just enough to slip, to fall, to die before he said the words!

“…and with the full knowledge of President Stockton, and the full knowledge of key members of his administration.”

NOOOOO!

“At the President’s direct orders, despite the misgivings of my conscience, I staged the assassination attempt in July, knowing the President himself would be unharmed, and that it would secure his re-election.”

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

“I’ve killed men to keep my secrets. To keep the President’s secrets.”

On the screen, his face was mournful, contrite, a man who regretted his deeds.

I REGRET NOTHING! NOTHING!

“I can no longer live with what I’ve done. To my country, all I can tell you is this: you deserve better.”

LIES! LIES! Barnes tried to force the words out of his mouth. ALL LIES!

And then his body toppled backwards, the phone still held in his hand, the camera capturing his humble, remorseful, utterly resigned face as he fell towards the fast-rushing waters of the river below.

LIES! He raged, struggling to spit that one word out, to force one piece of true emotion across, as he fell, and fell, and fell, endlessly backwards towards the water below, the wind of his fall rustling his hair, whistling past his ears, the heavy clouds of Zoe looming above, the bridge receding, out beyond the horror of the red TRANSMIT light on the screen of the phone held in his paralyzed hand.

LIES! He strained as he fell.

Then he crashed into the river and the waves swallowed him, his sincere, repentant face the last image the camera captured before darkness.

8

Back to Jesus

Saturday 2040.11.03

Rangan Shankari groaned as Earl and Emma Miller manhandled him into the truck and loaded him with blankets and food and water. The movement sent waves of agony through the throbbing bullet wound in his side, temporarily pushing aside his terror with even more visceral pain.

Earl Miller leaned over him to check Rangan’s safety belt. “Sorry, son,” he said. “Gotta get to town ’fore they close the noose.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. He’d been going to hide at the Miller farm. Wait, for weeks if needed, until things cooled off. Then neighbors had sent word. Police were going door to door, searching homes, fields, barns, cellars. They had to get Rangan out. And St Mark’s, at least, had a hidden cellar, that might avoid detection in a search.

Rangan nodded feebly, his eyes closed, trying to express his thanks, his gratitude that they’d taken this risk for him. But he couldn’t breathe. The pain or the fear or the exertion of coming up the stairs and into the garage and then the truck were too much. There was sweat all over. He put a hand to his side, where a bandage covered the bullet wound. It was wet.

He opened his eyes. Miller wasn’t even in the truck with him. Earl and Emma were out in front of the truck, framed between the pickup and the wall of the garage, the older couple holding each other, the pudgy woman’s hands wrapped around her grey haired husband’s neck, their eyes closed. Were those tears on Emma’s face?

He closed his eyes to give them privacy.

More people sticking their necks out for me, he thought.

He opened his eyes again, and for a moment, it wasn’t Earl and Emma Miller out there. It was his own mom and dad. There was a knot in his stomach.

Earl Miller climbed into the cab, loading his shotgun and boxes of shells behind the seats. Then the garage door was opening, and the howling wind was coming for them.

Zoe was older and weaker, but she was still a monster.

She struck them from the side as Earl backed them out of the garage, rocking the truck. Rangan groaned as something in his midsection compressed, sending a new burst of pain up through the fuzz. Wind rushed into the garage. Debris flew loose inside. A garbage can went careening into a far wall, knocking down a rack of tools. Then they were clear of the garage entirely, still backing up, the wind howling at them, the rain pelting the windshield, the trees they could see bent nearly in two. The garage door started dropping in front of them.

“Dangerous weather detected,” the truck told them, in a low feminine drawl.

The garage door reversed its fall, started rising again.

“Taking shelter,” the truck continued.

The truck abruptly stopped backing up. The drive indicator light switched from MANUAL to AUTOMATIC as it drove forward, towards the open garage door again, the bouncing garbage can inside it.

Earl Miller slammed his palm down on the steering wheel. “Override!” he yelled at it.

The truck stopped moving. The indicator light switched back to MANUAL, and Earl Miller started backing them down the long country driveway again, Zoe pounding them with gravel and rain and debris as they went.

“Warning,” the truck went on. “Dangerous weather detected. You should stop driving and take shelter immed–”

“Shut up!” Earl Miller told the car, cutting it off in mid-sentence.

Then the old farmer shook his head. “Never shoulda got this new truck,” he yelled over the sound of the storm. “Automobiles shouldn’t speak unless spoken to.”

Through the pain, Rangan tried to laugh.

He failed.

Earl drove them into the gloom, on manual, the truck on battery only, the lights turned off. Zoe battered them, tried to push them off the road, threw branches and dirt and burst after burst after burst of hard horizontal rain at them.

Rangan was cold all over, even with the blankets pulled over him.

“They’ve closed off Seminole,” the old man yelled. “Spotswood Trail, Highway 33, Orange Road, James Madison Highway.” Miller shook his head. “They want you bad.”

Rangan groaned as they rammed through a pothole.

The windshield had night vision turned on, transforming the outside world to a surreal greenish landscape, highlighting outlines of the mud and water-drenched road, of downed trees, of intersections.

But the scene kept changing, warping in crazy ways. The processors were having trouble parsing the world ahead through the biting rain and howling wind. They were driving nearly blind. And being hunted.

He forced himself to talk, to distract himself from the pain and fear. “Won’t they see us moving?”

Another piece of debris flashed out of the night at them. Rangan ducked reflexively. Earl Miller spun the wheel to avoid it.

“Can’t fly their drones in this weather!” Miller yelled. “Can’t see us on satellite!”

Fragments of cop shows flashed through Rangan’s head. “Infrared?” he asked.

“You ever hunt, son?” Earl Miller asked Rangan.

“Only girls,” Rangan replied.

Earl Miller chuckled at that. “Well, I hunt deer,” he said.

Something flew at them abruptly. Rangan cried out and twisted to avoid the blow. Miller turned the wheel hard. A massive tree limb slammed into them on Miller’s side. The truck shook. Pain jolted through Rangan’s side and up through his guts. Something else struck the window above Miller’s door window, leaving a spider web of cracks. Zoe took the chance to pummel them from a new angle, turning the windshield into a massive sheet of water, with augmented outlines of the road superimposed on it, and pushing the left side of the truck so hard that Rangan feared the wheels would come up off the ground. Then somehow Earl Miller brought them back onto the flooded country road, headed straight into the wind again.