Ramez Naam - Apex

It left a bitter taste in her mouth. A taste of disappointment.

She made a mental note to put that in her memoir.

As for herself…

She imagined people thought she was quieter these days too.

How could you be anything else? After you’d learned that policies you’d pursued had been based on lies. She went home at night, to her empty condo, her empty life, that had once been filled with work she thought was meaningful.

People came up to her quietly, thanked her quietly, congratulated her for the role she’d played in averting a war. She nodded, thanked them, told them they’d have done the same in her shoes.

But what filled her nights were the years of mistakes. Years of blood. Years of ashes.

It weighed on her. It was all heavy on her shoulders. The things she’d done to people. For entirely false reasons.

She wrote to expunge her own guilt, now.

The weight of the world, the burden of defending freedom, while being a mere human in a job that only an inhuman could live up to; of fighting for what’s right; and especially, of living with yourself those times when you’re wrong, isn’t easy to bear. But someone has to.

Yes, she thought. That’d be a good way to start the memoir.

Lisa Brandt lay in her wife’s arms, mute, gagged by the thing Pryce’s people had injected into her brain, their perversion of Nexus. Even with her mind touching Alice’s, she couldn’t tell her, couldn’t tell her what had happened.

Shhhhh,Alice whispered to her, stroking her hair. I know you’re hurting. I know someone did something to you.

Lisa tried to respond. They did this to me. Homeland Security.

Nothing. Nothing.

I love you,she managed instead.

I know,Alice sent, smiling.

Dilan made a soft murmuring sound from his crib, in both throat and mind, rolling over in his sleep.

Lisa’s heart wrenched.

There’s a lab in Geneva,Alice sent.

Lisa looked up at her wife.

They’re doing work with people who’ve been… coerced with Nexus,Alice went on. Undoing the blocks. Retrieving memories.

Lisa pushed herself up to sitting, Alice’s hand in hers, excitement trilling through her.

I’ve pulled some strings,Alice said. They can see us next week.

Lisa nodded. Yes. Oh god, yes.

I think I know who did this to you,Alice said. And I want to help you. And to nail them to the wall.

Lisa threw her arms around her wife, and pulled her close, tears running down her face.

Stan Kim stood at the window, drinking coffee, staring out on Washington DC.

“We’ve got a huge campaign account surplus,” his former Campaign Manager Michael Brooks was saying. “We brought in sixty million the last weekend of the campaign, with no way to spend the bulk of it. We need to decide on the disposition of funds. If you’re going to close the account out, or…”

Stan Kim turned around to face Brooks.

The coffee wasn’t so bad now, not really.

“Roll it over,” he said. “Whether the House impeaches Stockton or not, I’m running again in four years.”

He smiled at Brooks then.

Coffee wasn’t so bad when you had NexusOS to do some real neural tweaking.

Anne Holtzman sat with Claire Becker, their arms around each other, weeping.

Vindicated.

Vindicated, but their husbands weren’t coming back.

And they were still going to see John Stockton burn.

Levi knocked on the open office door, in his best suit, missing Abigail and Ada something fierce.

“Please have a seat, Reverend,” the secretary said, guiding him to a chair.

Levi sat, nervously.

A few minutes later the inner door opened, and an important-looking man in a suit, a man he’d seen on TV, strode out, not even looking at Levi.

The secretary did look over, though. He smiled at Levi. “She’ll see you now, Reverend,” the young man said. “You can go right in.”

Levi stood, still nervous, and walked through the door, into the inner office, with its massive desk, and the famous woman behind it.

She stood, came around the desk, and took his hand.

“Reverend Levi,” she said, “I’m Barbara Engels. Thank you so much for coming. I understand you may be able to help me with questions of…” she paused, and then smiled. “Well, questions about my faith that I’m having right now.”

Levi smiled back. “Well, Senator,” he said. “I can sure try.”

“Well, it’s some progress,” Cheyenne said. “They’re rolling back the Nexus detectors. It’s a step in the right direction.”

Angel frowned. “Yeah, but the laws are still on the books. It’s still illegal to have it in your brain. Even though we all know most of the Congress has it in theirs.”

Tempest leaned back on two legs of her chair. “What if we could prove that most of Congress had Nexus in their brains?” she mused. “That most of them were actually using it , not just suffering through it? That would force some change, now wouldn’t it?”

The woman who called herself Kate stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon.

She’d needed to come here. Needed to get away from everything for a while. Needed to clear her head. Needed to mourn Breece. Mourn the Nigerian. Mourn Hiroshi properly.

Mourn the old her, the life she’d burned away.

She’d needed to purify herself. To be sure she was at peace with the things she’d done.

To be sure she wanted to take this next step.

A week of hiking, hiking down into the canyon, back up the steep and narrow trails that clung to its walls. Hiking where she could see the age of the planet, as clear as day; where she could see millions of years of history, written in broad stripes of rock and sediment along the sides of the canyon.

A place where you could glimpse the scale on which the universe operated.

A scale far bigger than the human.

A scale that dared humanity to think bigger. To lift its eyes. To reach for more.

And now Kate was certain.

She opened her hand and looked at what was there. Two data fobs. Breece’s. The Nigerian’s. She’d swapped them for fakes, moved the online trove, moved the contents of Barnes’s physical storage.

The data was safe.

The money was hers.

The weapons were hers.

The power was hers.

She hiked back to the van that was her mobile command center, rinsed herself off in the cold sun, changed into fresh clothes.

Then read over the messages one more time.

SEND.

A thousand kilometers away, a server received an encrypted command, woke up, logged on through a series of anonymizing cut-outs, and sent a flurry of messages to PLF cell contacts.

Contacts taken from Barnes’s files.

“Greeting, brothers and sisters of the Cause. The last month has been one of immense triumphs and substantial changes. The world is different than it was. And so, more changes are in order. Let me tell you about them.

“I am the new Zarathustra.”

Coming Home

Yuguo looked up from the wheelchair as President and Party General Secretary Sun Liu leaned down to put the medal around his neck.

The Medal of Freedom.

“Thank you, Wu Yuguo!” Sun Liu said, taking Yuguo’s hand, turning, striking a pose for the camera to capture them both.

Yuguo smiled slightly.

“Thank you,” he said.

Then Sun Liu was straightening, turning to the next recipient.

Yuguo looked out into the audience. His mother was there, weeping with joy, so proud.

But there were so many who weren’t here.

Xiaobo was dead. He’d told Yuguo to run in that first clearing of Jiao Tong – maybe he’d saved Yuguo’s life. But then he’d struggled too hard himself, or so they said. The State Security police had beaten him to death then and there. No one had known for weeks.