Ramez Naam - Apex

Rangan marched down E street, in the first ranks of hundreds of thousands, his face hidden behind a mask of himself. He was one of thousands in masks. There were others here with masks of his face, with iconic Guy Fawkes masks, with John Stockton masks, with scarves, with face paint, with oversized sunglasses, with giant face-distorting goggles.

This was supposed to be a peaceful march. But all around him he saw people attempting to escape recognition. He saw backpacks and satchels that looked heavy. He saw scarves and surgical masks and even gasmasks at the ready for tear gas attacks.

And he could feel anger building. He could feel the violence around the globe and the frustration of the last few months converging here, heating up as they marched.

All around them, there were police, national guard, homeland security, lining the march route, waiting with riot armor and truncheons and gas masks and armored vehicles, waiting, and ready to clear them, if they left the route they’d declared, if they threatened to disrupt the inauguration.

Waiting, but not attacking. Waiting, but letting them march.

Around the world, it was different. People were dying. Soldiers were firing into crowds. Fireballs were going up.

Rangan didn’t need to reach out to know that. People all around him were tuning in, passing the feeds and snippets around angrily as they marched, chanting in solidarity. The images and sensations surged out of people’s minds, touching everyone, whether they’d tuned into a feed or not.

He was a girl in Nairobi being beaten by riot police. He was a student in Shanghai, his leg shattered by automatic fire. He was an old man in Kazakhstan, his arms being wrenched back by the dictator’s thugs.

He clenched his mind down, pushed it out. There were tens of thousands of people running mesh in this crowd. But the mindstream sites themselves were acting as a kind of global mesh. And they were being used to spread rage.

That’s not here! Rangan tried to tell everyone around him. Don’t get confused! Don’t give them a reason!

But the anger was strong. And it was growing.

Yuguo crouched down as the deafening roar came overhead.

FLEE INDOORS,the clones who called themselves Confucian Fists sent.

Up above the army helicopters dove towards them. He saw missiles fire. Red streaks hurtled this way. Explosions lit up the night. Buildings all around suddenly erupted in flame. Bodies were hurtled from the ground. Pain burst out in staggering amounts. Minds were silenced. Helicopters exploded. Other craft flew over them. More explosions. Everything was chaos.

Yuguo grabbed for the controller they’d built, the controller for the electronic weapons, the ones that disabled tanks.

“WE HAVE TO RUN!” Lu Song shouted into his ear, over the deafening roar of explosions, of engines up above.

More gunfire, on the ground now.

He heard the crack and whoosh of Molotovs breaking, fireballs erupting.

He heard screams.

“NO!” Yuguo yelled, hunting through the menus, there must be something, something for helicopters.

“TANKS!” Zhi Li yelled, crouching down next to him.

Yuguo looked up. More tanks, pushing in from the end of the square. Dozens of tanks. He saw their turrets turning, heard massive booms.

He hit the button for the tanks.

The world exploded all around him.

Pain like he’d never known ripped through his body.

Ekaterina Naumenko yells in rage as she runs towards the faceless, shielded state thugs in Moscow’s Red Square. They are killing her comrades in Shanghai! Gunning them down with tanks, with helicopters!

“Murderers!” she screams. “Cowards!”

From behind her, she feels it in her mind as patriots launch a volley of Molotovs into the air, hurtling at the lines of riot police. The fire that bursts forth inflames her heart.

Fazil Kamal hauls harder on the stun gun in the hands of the soldier in Istanbul’s Taksim Square. The soldier won’t let it go! Fazil’s cousins, Burak and Mustafa, hold the man down and pummel him.

“Damn you!” Fazil yells. He kicks the soldier again.

With a final heave the stun gun comes free.

Fazil stumbles backwards with the shock of it, then raises his prize high into the Turkish night.

Yes! It’s theirs. He looks around the square and he sees soldiers on their backs, freedom fighters rising triumphant.

He can feel it.

Aybek Nabiyov lights another Molotov cocktail, and hurls it up at the dictator’s palace in Almaty. Dozens of men and women around him are hurling them now. The dictator’s secret police are broken. The Americans have not come out of their bases.

The lit Molotovs fly up gorgeously, almost serenely, spinning end over end, the lit rags stuffed into the mouths of the fuel-filled glass bottles moving like fireflies on this dark cold, starless night.

Then they smash against the palace the dictator built with the billions he stole.

The palace is burning.

“For Lunara,” Aybek says, tears on his face. For the woman he loved. The woman he would have married. The woman who’s dead because of the dictator.

Talgat reaches out a hand, and Aybek takes it. He can feel the solidarity of his brothers, his brothers in arms. Their anger has not been for nothing.

The dictator has fled.

Kazakhstan will be theirs again.

Around the whole world he feels that solidarity, a million minds crying out in righteous anger. Ten million. Who even knew how many?

But enough.

Men and women are crying out for justice. Crying out together. Crying out in unison.

The world will belong to the people once more.

Carolyn Pryce watched the screens, transfixed.

It was blowing up. Everywhere. Maybe Shanghai had started it. Maybe something else. But now… Every shooting, every explosion, every brutality someone on Nexus captured went viral. They ricocheted around the globe. They fed more violence, enraging protesters, driving police to more extreme measures.

It was a feedback loop. White noise. The whole thing going to a screeching caterwaul that was going to break the windows of civilization.

“Iran’s off the net,” NSA said. “So are Yemen, Syria, Qatar. Trying to stop the spread.” He paused. “Kazakhstan just went dark.”

“Too late for Kazakhstan,” CIA replied, looking up from a console. “President Bayzhonov’s fled the country.”

“Jesus,” Pryce said. “Our troops?”

“Confined to base,” Admiral McWilliams said, shaking his head. “This was civilian action, not rebel.”

“Fuck,” she muttered. “North Korea?”

“Nexus never took hold,” NSA said. “We think .”

Pryce’s phone buzzed at her then, three sharp buzzes in succession, the highest priority signal there was.

She pulled it out of her pocket, expecting an urgent message from Kaori, maybe even something from the President.

Instead she saw something else.

[ERD_SECRETS: URGENT: China didn’t kill Barnes. PLF did, w/ help of hacker now spreading Nexus, destabilizing both US and China.]

Pryce stared at it.

What the hell?

She jabbed a message back.

[How do you know? Who are you? What proof?]

“Holy shit!” CIA said. “Imaging, give me real-time of latitude thirty-one point two zero two two, longitude one twenty-one point four three five three.”

Pryce looked up from her phone and stared at the man from CIA.

He looked up, addressed her, moved his eyes to take in the SecDef and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “We have air combat over Shanghai! Dozens of units involved. Aircraft shot down.” The CIA man paused, his face pale. “It’s a full blown war zone.”

122

Million Human