Ramez Naam - Apex

Kade locked eyes with the Special Secretary. “Mr Aggarwal, my government, the government of the United States, is persecuting me for providing men and women the tools to enhance their own minds and enrich their connections with one another.”

Aggarwal shook his head slightly, his eyes never leaving Kade’s. “Mr Lane, as you must know, India is a signatory to the Copenhagen Accords, which expressly ban certain forms of human enhancement. What you’re talking about is, by treaty, a crime here in India as well. We can’t grant you asylum on that basis.”

Kade leaned forward, still staring into the man’s eyes, and put his hands together atop the table, good left atop bandaged right. “But if India pulled out of Copenhagen,” he told the Special Secretary, “then you could grant us asylum.”

Aggarwal stared at him. The man’s lips parted. His brow furrowed. His eyes narrowed. His look was of such disgust that Kade wondered if he’d miscalculated, if he’d been so wrong.

“Why would India possibly pull out of the Copenhagen Accords?” Aggarwal asked. “Simply for your convenience, Mr Lane?”

Kade kept his eyes on the man, pulled himself upright, kept his hands the way they were.

“In September, news outlets reported that India had a secret program experimenting with Nexus as a tool to accelerate learning in children,” Kade told Aggarwal. He waited a beat. “Mr Aggarwal, I know this to be true. I’ve touched the minds of the students in that program, and of the government-trained, government- employed teachers.”

The Special Secretary frowned.

“You’re already on your way out of Copenhagen,” Kade said. “Nexus finally gives you an enhancement tech that’s worth breaking the treaty for, one that’s easy enough to deploy, and brings you large enough economic gains, that the benefits to India outweigh the costs of pissing off the US and Europe and China. You’ve done the math. And now it’s just a matter of time.”

Guesses, just guesses. They had to be right. Everything depended on them.

Aggarwal shook his head. “Mr Lane, even if these… baseless allegations of yours were true… what matters is not whether we leave the Copenhagen Accords at some unspecified point in the future. What matters is right now.”

Kade kept his gaze level. This is what it comes down to, he told himself. Here we go.

“Mr Aggarwal,” he said, emphasizing his words carefully, “I know the government of India has been working to boost India’s competitiveness since at least… oh… 2024.”

2024. The year of India’s amazing surge in the Olympics, the year they took home twice as many gold medals as any previous year. Because of Shiva’s secret, highly-illegal biotech enhancements. Enhancements Shiva’s companies had kept on providing all the way through the 2040 summer games in Doha.

“In fact, I know a great deal that I’m sure the government would hate to see revealed. Most of which happens to be in violation of Copenhagen anyway.”

He let it hang there, the implicit threat. Aggarwal just stared at him.

“Mr Aggarwal,” Kade went on. “The last thing I want is to harm India. I believe it’s in your nation’s strategic interest to move forward with Nexus deployment and to leave Copenhagen. I believe your government has already come to that conclusion. So if this is really just a timing issue, perhaps we could speed things up a bit.”

Kade sat alone after that, after Aggarwal had gone to confer with his superiors, barely masking his contempt. Hours passed.

The plan was Sam’s in origin. They had to go somewhere. They had to assume that wherever they went, the CIA would know. Nakamura had tracked Kade to Shiva’s home on Apyar Kyun, which meant that the CIA had as well. The firefight and Nakamura’s death would sound alarms. The liftoff of Shiva’s plane and its eventual landing point would hardly go unnoticed.

Thailand was an option. The Thai had already left Copenhagen, much to the US’s displeasure. The authorities had turned a blind eye to Kade and Feng and Sam after the assault on Ananda’s monastery six months ago, for a few days. Long enough for them to slip away. But now? With a senior CIA operative dead? With the US publicly blaming Kade for the PLF’s terrorist attacks, and privately hunting for his back doors? What kind of pressure would the US bring on the Thai to arrest Kade and Sam? Economic sanctions? Seizure of US-held assets?

And how much harder would it be to slip away with twenty-five children in tow?

India was different. India was a rising superpower: The third largest economy on the planet. The most populous country in the world. Not a country the US could just push around anymore. And India, according to media reports, had already been caught experimenting with Nexus and other proscribed enhancement technologies. If any nation had both the clout and the inclination to shield them, India was it.

Sam had originated the plan. Kade had embellished it.

The war was coming. The war between human and posthuman. The US government had invented the Posthuman Liberation Front, and then the PLF had slipped its leash and bitten its creators’ hands. They’d turned a bit of staged assassination theater against Stockton into something very close to the real thing, had killed cabinet members, had set off bombs in ERD offices, had assassinated a wildly popular televangelist and a US senator who also happened to be the frontrunner for Governor of Texas. They’d killed hundreds of innocents in that church in Houston just hours ago, with the cameras rolling.

They were playing exactly into the hands of their enemies. They were inviting a backlash, a vicious crackdown that would fuel more violence until it all blew up.

Kade needed to stop that from happening. But he’d thrown away his best weapon for fighting the PLF head on. The back doors were gone. Even now, his virus was out there, replicating, closing all the back doors he and Rangan had coded – and the new ones Shiva had inserted – in every mind it touched. He didn’t trust the power to invade millions of minds to anyone. Not even to himself. And not to anyone who might trick it out of him.

No. He had to stop this war a different way. Instead of taking on the PLF directly, he had to up his strategy to a higher level.

In the intersection of Sam’s plan, and in what he’d already seen India doing, and in the nuggets he’d seen in Shiva’s memories – there just might be a way.

Or perhaps they’d send him back to the US, so the ERD could rip whatever secrets remained out of him, like they had with Rangan, like they’d tried with Ilya…

Kade closed his eyes, and in the corner of his vision he could see the icon for the script he’d written when he thought Shiva might try to torture the back doors out of him. The script that would end his life. The choice Ilya had made, rather than let them take the back door out of her mind.

It’s been a good life, Kade thought. Even if this doesn’t work with the Indians – I got Nexus out there. Wats would be happy. Ilya too. And those kids. I was so obsessed with stopping the abuses, but I missed all the beauty. Those kids are going to change the world.

Kade shook his head at his own past self, at his mistakes, at the way he’d let guilt and anger blind him to the wonder all around.

I wonder if Rangan made it? he thought.

The sound of the lock turning pulled Kade out of his reverie. His eyes snapped open. Nexus nodes began recording again.

The door opened. Rakesh Aggarwal stepped into the room. With him came a tall Indian woman, dressed in a sari, all angular features and dark, intense eyes. Kade’s memory augmenting app tried to match her face against the database of thousands of government officials he’d pulled down, and found nothing.