Ramez Naam - Apex

The fighting was over, all over.

A crowd was gathered, all around one tank.

And atop that tank, with lights pointed at him, with thousands of phones pointed at him, a man was speaking, giving a speech, impassioned, while signs behind him waved, with characters so simple and iconic that Sam knew them.

Let a Billion Flowers Bloom!

Sam watched as Sun Liu stood atop the paralyzed tank, his hands pumping the air, his mouth moving, his face screwed up with passion, as the phones and the lights pointed up at him.

A kilometer below Shanghai, Kade swam in light, his eyes closed, his mind drifting, drifting through waves of beauty, through something so like Nirvana, so like the end of Maya…

So many minds, so many men and women and children. So much beauty. So much potential.

Such a glorious start.

Kade,Su-Yong sent. There isn’t much time left. I can make your last few moments blissful, if you’d like. Or ecstatic.

Kade smiled. This was already so amazing. He’d lived to see this.

I want… to understand,he sent back. I want… to know… everything… Everything.

He felt a ripple of amusement from Su-Yong at that.

Want to know…he sent. How proteins fold… memories form… life started… universe created. All of it.

He felt Su-Yong grow serious. Felt something from her.

Recognition.

A recognition of the core trait they shared.

That hunger to learn. To discover. To understand.

That incessant curiosity.

There’s so much I don’t know myself,Su-Yong sent him, bemused. But I’ll show you what I can.

Then her mind suffused his, and his hers. His thoughts expanded.

Knowledge flooded in.

So much, so much.

One more thing,Su-Yong sent, even as she flooded him with so much. Let me show you what it was like to die, and be reborn.

And she did.

Kade gasped. Gasped at it. Gasped at what she’d seen. Gasped at the possibilities.

And in the instant before the nuclear battery blew,

in the instant before his body was vaporized,

the last things he felt,

were hope,

and awe.

“Radiation detected, sir. The signature matches.”

“Stand down,” Minister of Defense and Acting Chairman of the State Military Commission Ouyang Fan ordered.

For the love of all, stand down.

“Chinese silos are closing, sirs.”

“Stand down,” US Secretary of Defense Bernard Stevens breathed. “DEFCON Two.”

Applause greeted him.

Carolyn Pryce lowered herself into a chair in relief.

EpilogueSurfacing

January 2041

Rangan came to the surface in the mid-afternoon of Inauguration Day, in the trunk of a car driven by a terrified aide of Senator Barbara Engels, Chairwoman of the Senate Select Oversight Committee on Homeland Security.

The young woman had led him through a warren of tunnels, out into a garage in an office building, into the trunk.

As the car rose, he felt minds touch his. Minds everywhere. Minds in bliss, in contact with one another like he’d never felt, never imagined.

It was fading even as he came into it. It was something special, something that people couldn’t hold onto all the time, every hour of the day. But it would be back.

He caught glimpses of minds he loved out there. He felt Angel and Cheyenne whoop in joy and relief that he was alive. Angel was in pain, hurt, but alive, and happy to know he was safe.

He felt Tempest too, who’d so distrusted him, suddenly relieved and happy.

He felt Levi and Abigail, still alive, still safe, despite all the risks they’d taken to save others. And a baby! Ada, her mind so tiny and bright, linked in with them now, somehow, touching the face of god, or one of the faces of god. And in the darkness, in the stuffy trunk of a car, still unsure of his future, Rangan felt tears on his face, tears of joy.

Then he felt Bobby. Bobby and Alfonso, Tim and Parker, Jose and Tyrone, and all of them. Rangan started shaking in the trunk of the car, crying, because he could feel them and he hadn’t known how much he’d missed them and how worried he’d been. But now he could feel their minds and he could see through their eyes and they were OK. There was a stretch of beach and the sun was warm and there were new things to learn and their minds told him that they wanted him to come, wanted him to find a way to Cuba.

I will, he swore. I’ll call the number. I’m done. I’ll come.

All those minds. All that beauty.

Wats should have lived to see this. To see Nexus bringing people together.

Ilya should have seen this. A mind greater than the sum of its parts.

It was glorious. It was amazing.

But he didn’t feel Kade. Didn’t feel Kade anywhere at all.

New Directions

February 2041

Carolyn Pryce leaned back in the White House Cabinet Room as the Secretary of State Pamela Abrams briefed them on the Bangalore Treaty under negotiation.

The treaty countries were leaving Copenhagen for.

“… would allow enhancement of human abilities,” Abrams was saying, “while increasing penalties for bio-, neuro-, and nano-weapons, and imposing stricter requirements for cross-national verification.”

“What about AI?” the Secretary of Defense asked. “What about this idea of ‘uploads’?”

Pamela Abrams nodded. “They’d allow both, under strict constraints. They also argue that requirements for ethical treatment of intelligences will act as a brake on research…”

Pryce tuned out of Abrams, studied John Stockton instead.

A lot had changed.

ERD research on Nexus vaccines and cures had been shut down, except of course, for research on how Congress could get root access to the Nexus in their own brains. Nexus children had been sent from ERD centers to child protective services, and Stockton was pushing to send them back to families. Nexus scanners at train stations and airports and public buildings were being switched off. An involuntary-exposure exception to the Chandler Act had been rushed through, conveniently excusing Congress of any crime. There was talk of passing a medical exception as well, with Stockton’s support, perhaps of repealing other small parts of it.

If the Chandler Act held together at all, that was. If the Democrats didn’t rout them completely in ’42, take the Congress, overturn the Chandler Act, pull out of the Copenhagen Accords, and impeach John Stockton.

Pryce shook her head. It was going to be a rough ride.

In the meantime, Jameson’s role in creating the PLF had been revealed. Safe, now that he was dead, the cynic in her said. But revealed nonetheless.

Pryce kept studying the President.

It wasn’t just the world that had changed.

This man had changed.

John Stockton sat there, his eyes on Abrams, but his gaze far away. He looked years older than he had a month ago, his hair greyer, deeper lines evident on his face.

He was quieter now. More somber. More reflective. Slower to answer. More prone to question himself.

Funny how the experience of one person could have such an impact on billions of others.

Pryce wondered what that said about the way the world was run.

Nothing good, she was sure of that.

All politics is personal, Pryce thought. It turns out all policy is personal, too.

She’d thought once that policy was a rational thing. That it could be decided based on logic and analysis, optimized to maximize the likelihood of best outcomes, either for the world, the nation, or at least for one side or the other.

But no. None of those could compete with the personal experience of one man.