Ramez Naam - Apex

“And if that happens,” Kim went on. “Then your cause, my cause, o ur cause , isn’t going to be helped. It’s going to be set back. It’s going to be associated with violence. With destruction.”

Kim paused. Then he pointed back at the Capitol, and raised his voice.

“When the real violence has been done by the man in the White House and those who work for him!”

Cheers rose up again.

Kim looked out at them.

“We didn’t get what we deserved last month,” he said. “But that day will come! So stand proud! Wave those signs high!”

People cheered, less passionately, perhaps, but they cheered. Signs waved.

“Make your voices heard!” Stan Kim yelled.

People cheered again.

“Louder!” Stan Kim yelled.

This time they gave it to him.

“Show the world what you want, America! Make John Stockton afraid!”

The crowd went wild at that.

“Raise your voices today and not your fists!”

More cheering. Rangan saw a few sullen, angry faces, but there were many more cheers, there was more hope.

“Then keep memory alive!” Stan Kim yelled. “Keep the outrage alive! And in two years we’ll have that revolution!”

The crowd cheered for him.

Rangan shook his head in awe and admiration.

Kate stared at the message.

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

She looked back to the wallscreen, to the multiple feeds of data her filters were painting there.

The scene of the DC protest was triumphant, not violent. Breece hadn’t assaulted them. He’d listened to her warning.

She wouldn’t sell him out.

But China was going crazy. And reports were streaming in about US troop mobilizations, about aircraft launching from carriers.

When Breece’s noon mission completed…

Kate shook her head. Panicky people made bad decisions when surprised.

She had to give this person something, had to get a message to their higher ups.

She typed a message back.

[ERD_SECRETS: We’re PLF. The files we leaked are from Barnes’s personal data. That’s how I know. Events in China and the world are your proof. You must relay this upwards. China did not take offensive action against the US.]

Breece frowned at the screen. He stretched out his hand towards the terminal.

“Good speech,” the Nigerian said.

“Talk’s cheap,” Breece replied. He jammed a finger down on a key.

Rangan shook his head in awe and admiration.

The crowd around him was cheering, waving signs. He felt passion and energy. There was disappointment. There was resentment. But it was isolated. People were looking around furtively, finding themselves in the minority. The bulk of the protesters here were fired up about doing exactly what this march had been billed to do – peacefully raising their voices right here, letting the world know they weren’t going away.

It was incredible. Stan Kim had no Nexus. No fancy code. No nothing. The man had just talked to them.

Old school.

Then the hate hit.

[MULTIPLEX SIGNAL DETECTED]

It crashed over him like a wave, dragged him down into its red depths, so much darker, deeper, more violent than before. There were screams around him. Screams of rage. He felt the whole crowd surge forward, mad, a rabid beast.

[MESH NETWORK CALIBRATION UNDERWAY]

His eyes flew open and he found himself running, snarling, shoving, pushing, viciously trying to get through the press of arms and bodies ahead, so he could get to that goddamn barrier, tear it the fuck down, get to those pigs on the other side, rip their motherfucking arms off and use them to club the…

[FIREWALL CONFIG UPDATED]

Code sliced through the chaos. Digital filters blockaded specific signal patterns identified by peer-to-peer comparison across the mesh. The filters reduced the identified broadcast to data, to mere bits, canceled out those bits at the firewall around his mind.

[AREA COUNTERMEASURES ACTIVATED]

Countersignals burst out from code in his mind, using the Nexus nodes in his brain as transmitters, coordinating with hundreds of nearby peers on the mesh, shaping the countersignal to maximize destructive interference, to cancel out the hate broadcast over as wide an area as possible.

Rangan stumbled. His mind cleared. The crowd slammed into him from behind, forcing him forward. All around him he felt confusion, but still hate. His firewalls were keeping Breece’s broadcast from touching him, were suppressing Breece’s broadcast at least partially around him.

But the firewalls didn’t touch the secondary effects. People were growing enraged. Their own anger was being rekindled, and blaring out loud and clear.

So was fear.

He looked right and left, struggling to break free of the crowd. From the minds nearest him, where his active countermeasures were doing the most to cancel out Breece’s signal, he felt panic.

He felt men and women suddenly realizing they were being pressed forward by the hundreds of thousands behind them.

Whether they liked it or not.

BZZZZZZZZZZZT.

Rangan’s insides turned to jelly. He groaned as the sonic disruptor resonated in his chest, his jaw, his belly. He would have fallen but the crowd held him up.

Then the press in front of him was gone. He stumbled forward, fell to one knee, sweet Jesus he was going to get run over, and then somehow he was back up, and in front of him the barriers were bowled over, protesters were pushing back riot police. Tear gas was hanging in the air. There were screams ahead and behind. There was pain and confusion in his mind, even without Breece’s broadcast.

And there were the stairs to the stage, just ahead of him.

And enraged protesters hauling up those stairs.

Towards a totally alone Stan Kim.

Rangan charged forward, hauled up the stairs.

HELP!he sent in a broadband across the mesh. The stage! Stan Kim!

There were three protesters ahead of him. He threw himself at the first, trying to tackle the man around the waist.

He fell short, grabbed the man by one leg instead. They both fell to the stairs. Rangan pushed himself up, ran over the man, up onto the main level of the stage itself.

Stan Kim was standing up, struggling with one of the men. The other was swinging the remnants of a sign at Kim, hitting him across the back.

Rangan ran full bore, charged shoulder-first into the man swinging what remained of a sign, sent him sprawling. He stumbled himself, caught himself on a railing at the edge of the stage, then turned.

The other protester was a big guy, more than six feet tall, muscle-bound. He had Stan Kim bent back over the edge of the rail.

Rangan ran at them, slammed into the man, meaning to knock him down.

The big guy moved maybe a foot, and stayed upright, but he did let go of Kim. Rangan bounced away. The big man turned and snarled at him, his fist drawing back.

Rangan reached in, boosted the Active Countermeasure strength to max.

The man hesitated.

“Someone’s fucking with your head!” Rangan yelled at him.

The man lowered his fist slowly, turned his head to the left, a confused look on his face. Rangan followed it. Stan Kim was up.

“Who the hell are you?” Kim asked.

Rangan was panting. There was a Rangan Shankari mask on his face. He dropped his hands to his knees.

“I’m a friend,” he managed.

Then he turned, and looked out, and saw and heard the chaos.

There were ranks of people at the bottom of the stairs to the stage. People using mesh. Volunteers, who’d come at his call, sealing it off, keeping it safe.

But beyond that…

Clashes everywhere. Clouds of tear gas rising up. Molotov cocktails flying. Riot police struggling with protesters. Screams. Pain.