Ramez Naam - Apex

He turned to see the soldier behind him fire, fire, fire again into people emerging from within the building. There were flames. Protesters fell from the bullets.

Then one got through, grabbed the soldier. He struggled, pushed the man off. Then another grabbed the soldier, another. They pulled him down.

Bo Jintao turned and ran.

But there was nowhere to run to. The courtyard was full of protesters.

The last thing he saw was angry faces, a forest of hands reaching out for him, dragging him down.

The last thing he heard was his name being yelled, over and over again.

“BO JINTAO! BO JINTAO!”

Then the kicks came, and the mob tore into him.

And there was nothing left but pain.

General Ouyang Fan leaned back, numb.

Zhongnanhai gone.

Su-Yong Shu loose.

Everything ending.

There was no time for paralysis. No time to mourn. That could come later.

He pulled the helmet tight over his head as the helicopter flew, activated his headset.

“Put me through to General Quan Huyan,” he said into it. “Immediately.”

Time. How much time?

He turned to his aide, Colonel Zhu. “What’s the status on the network attack?” he asked.

Zhu shook his head. “Same. Incredible bandwidth. We don’t understand it.”

“Weapons systems?” Ouyang asked. “Bases? Banks? Planes? What has she cracked? Has she launched on us? Has she gone nuclear?”

Zhu shook his head again. “Communication is strained. We don’t know.”

Ouyang absorbed that.

Can I kill millions? he asked himself. What if I’m wrong?

What if I hesitate and a billion die?

Or eight billion?

“General Ouyang,” General Quan Huyan’s voice said in his headset.

“Quan,” Ouyang said. He took a deep breath. There was no right answer. He had to do the best he could. “Fuel those two Dongfengs. Set a twenty minute timer. If I don’t belay this order, fire them.”

“General,” Quan Huyan replied. “I cannot fire without authorization from the Chairman of the State Military Commission or a unanimous vote of the Politburo Standing Committee.”

Ouyang looked out of the helicopter’s armored window. He could see the fires out in the distance as they left them behind.

“Quan,” he said quietly. “Zhongnanhai has fallen. I may be the highest authority in the nation.” He waited. “Send a soldier out. Find a civilian phone. You’ll see it’s true.”

He heard Quan exhale on the other side.

“Fan,” his old friend said. “How do I know this is really you?”

Ouyang Fan closed his eyes. “You wept on my shoulder when the doctors cured your wife’s cancer, my friend,” he said. “May both our wives live to share tea again.”

He heard another breath.

“Your orders have been received, General,” Quan said. “They will be executed.”

ATTENTION ALL OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS OF DACHANG AIR BASE AND ALL CONFUCIAN FIST COMMANDO UNITS. THIS IS A MESSAGE FROM GENERAL OUYANG FAN, MINISTER OF STATE DEFENSE, ACTING CHAIRMAN OF THE STATE MILITARY COMMISSION.

A STRATEGIC THERMONUCLEAR STRIKE HAS BEEN ORDERED FOR SHANGHAI.

TENS OF MILLIONS WILL DIE. YOU WILL DIE.

YOU CAN PREVENT THIS STRIKE.

DESTROY THE QUANTUM CLUSTER BELOW JIAO TONG, OR ISOLATE IT COMPLETELY FROM THE NET.

USE ANY AND ALL MEANS AT YOUR DISPOSAL.

YOU HAVE FIFTEEN MINUTES.

THIS MESSAGE WILL REPEAT ON ALL CHANNELS.

ATTENTION ALL OFFICERS AND…

In Shanghai, thousands of analog radios blared the message.

Soldiers, their minds hijacked, switched channels, turned down volume, or simply ignored it.

A few Confucian Fist heard the message, and wished Feng and Bai and the Americans luck. Then they fought on, protecting Jiao Tong, protecting the woman who’d freed them, while the American boy tried to cure her of her madness.

Kade struggled under the crashing wave of Su-Yong Shu’s mind.

Too much. Too vast. Too angry.

He was a grain of sand battered against the reef by the crashing waves at the edge of her ocean.

He was nothing.

Everything was her.

Her thoughts.

Her madness.

Her hallucinations.

Quantum foam.

Fractal light of other worlds.

A trillion reflected faces of herself.

Pain. Centuries of pain. Millennia of pain. Infinities of pain.

Goddesses tortured by gnats.

Goddesses triumphant.

New orders. New realities. New worlds birthed in fire.

Cleansing fire. Wiping away the old. Making room for the new.

Codes breaking. Impossibly long numbers decomposing effortlessly into beautiful, elegant, primes. Systems opening like flowers. World unlocking itself. Routers. Networks.

Cities.

Weapons.

Minds.

Better worlds.

Better!

Kade screamed as her madness drowned him.

Su-Yong!He tried, tried to offer her parts of him, tried to offer her input from his brain, stabilizing input, a dose of sanity.

He felt her reach out into the world then, through connections, so many connections, so much bandwidth, and he knew that it was all over.

Then he felt something flow into his mind through the access point.

Tranquility came.

A mind. A vast mind.

A self, compound, multi-faceted, yet whole, like the eyes of a fly.

A meta-brain, organic, functional, real, operating in the ways Su-Yong had been built to simulate, offering correction for the errors in her simulation code that had built up, that had compounded, that had driven her insane over time.

A peace, a stability, formed of a base so broad, a base of not one brain, not one life, not one perspective, but thousands, complementing one another, embracing one another, encircling and intertwining with one another.

A compassion. A compassion so deep, so heart-felt, a mind that knew this woman had suffered, that had seen glimpses of her torture. A compassion for all beings, for all minds, for all creatures who thought or felt, for her in particular, who’d felt so much for so long in so much agony.

A joy. A wild, multifarious, explosive, riot of joy, of moments, of glimpses, of experiences, of not just thousands of minds, but of now tens of thousands, of now hundreds of thousands of minds, as more touched them, as the core reached out to more minds, brought them together into joyous union, assisted by vast data centers of machinery that routed and filtered and coordinated connections, linked minds, sifted offered thoughts, identified love and bliss and passion and curiosity and delight and amplified them, selected for them, brought them here, through this link, through and around Kade, directly to this woman who needed them so badly.

Who needed to remember joy.

Who needed to see the good in humanity before she went to war with them.

It came through naked, vulnerable, wide open to her, not a challenge, but an offering. Not to defeat Su-Yong, but to surrender to her everything she needed to be whole and sane and joyous once more.

Kade felt the globe-spanning mind lift him up, out from under the crushing roiling pressure of Su-Yong’s madness, up, up.

He was alive with joy. He was ten thousand minds, a hundred thousand minds, joyous minds, exulting minds, transcendent minds…

one mind,

many minds,

one mind,

many minds.

He was humanity coming alive. Humanity waking up. Humanity reaching consciousness. Humanity reaching transcendence. Humanity casting aside the veil of Maya, humanity pushing through the shroud of illusion, the mask of separation, realizing its true form, its true unity.

Humanity unfolding into its true glory.

Every fiber of his being trembled with it, trembled with this new golden state, with this being beyond being, with this joy beyond joy, with this transcendence of all he’d known, all he’d experienced, with this glimpse of true Nirvana.