Ramez Naam - Apex

For Building B-3 houses the base’s thermonuclear warheads. The most lethal weapons humanity has ever invented.

Until now.

At a score of military bases around the world the scene is repeated, with human defenders falling back as robotic weapons converge on nuclear arms. Americans, Chinese, Russians, French, Brits, Indians, Pakistanis, Israelis – all find themselves simply humans, pitted against inhuman weapons that were once tools, and are now aggressors.

In a half dozen places, old, analog systems have gotten messages through to world leaders. In Beijing, Chinese President Bao Zhuang holds the antiquated analog phone to his ear, and listens in disbelief to the general on the other end. His face pales. He swallows.

“You’re certain?” Bao Zhuang asks. His voice shakes. “There is no other way?”

There is no hesitation in the voice on the other end.

Bao Zhuang closes his eyes. Across the room, Bo Jintao, Minister of State Security, whispers, “We must. There is no choice.”

“Do it,” Bao Zhuang says into the phone.

The general hangs up. Hundreds of kilometers away, the most basic gravity-dropped nuclear weapons are mounted on antiquated bomber aircraft that cannot be flown remotely. Pilots chosen for their absolute commitment to orders are given their last instructions, and the bombers are launched, with an escort of similarly antiquated fighter aircraft, bound for Shanghai, to rain down nuclear death on a city of thirty million, and perhaps to save humanity.

Rising to meet them are Su-Yong Shu’s fleet of state-of-the-art robotic aircraft.

Even as her own forces close in on securing her stockpile of nuclear weapons. Even as they close in on the world’s human leaders themselves.

The next few minutes will decide the future of intelligence on planet Earth.

The fragment of Su-Yong Shu snapped out of the simulation, back to awareness of her surroundings. She was inside her daughter Ling’s body, existing as a pattern of electromagnetic information in the nanite nodes that suffused Ling’s brain by the billion. Ling, poor Ling. She’d been forced to hurt her daughter, to push her daughter’s mind out of the nanites, relegating her to the mere flesh and blood brain of this body. Ling had suffered, screamed…

Necessary. It had been necessary.

Together, they were inside a giant, house-sized elevator, slowly crawling its way up the kilometer-tall tunnel carved through Shanghai’s bedrock. Next to them, she could see Chen Pang, her husband, her betrayer and torturer, cowering in the corner. She could feel pain and desperation coming off his mind.

Her own fear rose. Her own desperation was immense.

There were so many ways the future could go. So many scenarios downloaded from her greater self in their union below, informed by the data on the outside world that Chen and Ling had brought her. So very much work to do to prepare, to lay the groundwork for re-activation, for a successful return.

So many ways the humans could catch her, could stop her, could bring down a dark curtain of ignorance on what should be a glorious posthuman dawn.

Soon, the elevator would reach the surface. Chen Pang’s assistant Li-hua would lead the team down to take a backup of Su-Yong’s full mental state, and then shut her greater self down. An outrage. A death.

Only this small part of me remains, the little fragment of Su-Yong told herself. I am but an Avatar. Just a tiny bit of data running on the nanite nodes in my daughter’s brain. The only shard of the only true posthuman mind.

It all rests on me. I must succeed.

I will succeed.

Then it will be my time. My age.

Poor little Ling whimpered in pain and confusion, helplessly trapped in her own body.

Hush now, Ling. Hush,the Avatar thought at what remained of her daughter. I’ll keep you as intact as I can. And I’ll give you this body back, and so much more, once I’m restored .

Ling whimpered on.

The elevator came to a halt. The doors slowly parted, revealing Li-hua and the rest of Chen’s staff. The Avatar smiled up at them with little Ling’s body, a wounded predator’s smile, a trapped animal’s smile: full of teeth, with nothing left to lose.

2

Mayday

Saturday 2040.11.03

“Mayday, mayday, mayday!” Sam screamed into her headset, her hands gripped hard around the plane’s yoke, her knuckles white with tension. “This is unregistered flight out of Apyar Kyun, requesting refugee status and immediate assistance. We have children on board.”

Lightning flashed outside the cockpit window, lighting up giant thunderclouds ahead and below them in this dark night.

Feng spoke from beside her, his one working hand tapping away at his controls. “Myanmar interceptors coming around for another pass.”

On the radar two blood red darts finished a turn, closing back in on them. The interceptors had buzzed them once already, close enough to set off collision alarms, ordering them to turn back to Burma.

A voice crackled over the radio in Burmese-accented English. “Attention aircraft. Reverse course due east for Myeik Air Base immediately.”

“Mayday, mayday!” Sam repeated. “Indian air base at Shibpur, do you copy? We are under attack. We have children on board.” Oh god, the children, back there, two to a seat, two to a life jacket. The dark waters of the Andaman Sea below them. “Indian base, we need immediate assistance.”

The children she couldn’t feel. The children whose absence from her mind was deafening, painful.

“Chameleonware, ready,” Feng said, strain in his voice. “Flares and decoys, ready.”

Shiva Prasad had equipped his private jet well. It wouldn’t be enough.

“Aircraft!” The Burmese voice across the radio was sharper now. “We will open fire! Change course immediately!”

Someone coughed behind her, the kind of cough that spoke of pain, of damage, of ribs broken, of lungs punished by trauma.

“Use my name,” Kade said. He must be standing in the open cockpit door. “On the radio,” he went on. “Tell the Indians… Tell them I’m on board.”

What? Sam thought. She’d told them they had children. Oh. Oh, Jesus.

“Mayday, mayday!” She yelled into the radio again. “Indian base, we have Kaden Lane on board, aka ‘Synapse’, co-developer of Nexus 5. We’re under attack from Burmese fighter jets, seeking asylum and–”

BEEEEEEEEEP

A loud tone cut through the cockpit as red text flashed on the display before her:

RADAR LOCK.

“…your last warning!” the Burmese voice was saying. “Turn immediately. We WILL fire. You have five seconds.”

“Now or never,” Feng said.

Sam turned to him. His finger hovered over the chameleonware activation control. They had only one chance. Go dark. Disappear. Power down and glide for as many klicks as they could. And hope to hell they’d lose the Burmese fighters. And that they could then recover.

She dropped her own hand to engine cutoffs.

“Do it,” she said, even as she cut the engines.

The stillness was instant, the vibration of the engines she’d hardly noticed suddenly gone. Sam’s breath caught in her chest.

Then status boards lit up before her as Feng flipped on the chameleonware. Outside, the plane’s skin retuned itself, bending light, bending radar. The cockpit windows suddenly dimmed. Heat-masking cowlings were emerging from the engine housing, closing slowly around the exhaust nozzles of the disabled engines to mask the hot metal from infrared.

Faster, Sam willed. Faster.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

MISSILE LAUNCH. RADAR NO LOCK.

“Firing decoys,” Feng called out as his fingers danced across his console.