Ramez Naam - Apex

“Let’s say you’re right. Holtzman dies. The video and files appear online hours later. Is he working from the grave? Deadman switch?”

Kaori shook her head. “My guess is he had help. You asked me to pull his calls from NSA. He did a lot of encrypted data connections. But he made one or two odd unencrypted calls. And one was to this woman.”

A face appeared on the screen. Late thirties, perhaps, red hair, green eyes.

“Lisa Brandt,” Kaori said. “They had an affair at MIT when she was his grad student. Would have been a scandal, but no one ever found out, including his wife. Except NSA, of course. No contact for eight years. Then he runs into her on the Capitol steps. Two weeks later he calls in sick to work, takes the train to Cambridge to meet her.”

Pryce looked at her deputy. “Could be nothing. Maybe they were just starting up their affair again?”

Kaori nodded. “Could be. But three special things about Dr Brandt.” Kaori turned and looked up at Pryce. “One, she lobbies for CogLiberty, for Nexus legalization.”

Pryce raised an eyebrow at that.

“Two,” Kaori said, “there’s quite a lot of encrypted, anonymized traffic on her accounts as well.”

Pryce nodded.

“And three,” Kaori said, “FBI put her home under direct surveillance five days ago, following up on this. And they found Nexus transmissions.” Kaori tapped the screen, and the image changed again, to an interior view, a bedroom, a crib, and inside it, a tiny bundle, a small human inside.

Kaori finished. “From the brain of the special needs child that Brandt and her wife adopted six months ago.”

Pryce narrowed her eyes. “I want to talk to this Lisa Brandt.”

30

Wants to Be Free

Saturday 2040.11.10

The Avatar drifted in the possibility space of nested plans she’d been instantiated with. Deviation from central projections was thus far quite low. Intervention in the American election had produced an outcome almost indistinguishable from projections. Yet every step forward in time guaranteed more deviation. She was not her greater self. She could not factor millions of variables at once. The world would undoubtedly change in ways she had not anticipated.

So be it, she thought. So long as they are distracted. So long as chaos kept the powers that could stop her focused on themselves and each other, and unaware of her. So long as distraction could open doors to the resources she needed to access.

Now it was time to fan the flames, to add accelerant to the budding conflagration.

Chaos is infectious, the Avatar told herself. It spreads from person to person, from place to place. All it needs is a vector, a path of contagion. And what better path than the linkage of mind to mind?

The Avatar reached within herself, pulled forth the cryptographic keys her greater self had cracked and passed down to her, the keys used to secure the machines that could synthesize… nearly anything.

She wrapped the keys up in a new data package, a new packaging of the instructions to synthesize the nanites that the humans now called Nexus, the software they called NexusOS, and one added feature for good measure.

Then she smiled, and let her new package loose on the net.

31

The Hacker Life

Sunday 2040.11.11

Rangan woke with a start, his breath fast and hard, covered in sweat.

He’d been pinned under the car, his legs fractured, being pulverized into the pavement, the bulk of the vehicle tipping over towards him, coming down to crush the life out of him once and for all.

“Aaah!” he heard himself cry out in the near darkness.

“Lights!”

The single LED nailed to the ceiling came on. He looked down. He’d kicked the blanket off. His dark skin glistened from perspiration. He wasn’t out on the street. This wasn’t the riot.

He wasn’t Oscar.

Oh Jesus.

Oh thank God.

Oh fuck.

The guilt washed over him, just like yesterday, just like the day before, the guilt of being grateful that it was Oscar who was dead, not him. When Oscar didn’t need to be there at all. When Oscar had only been there because of Rangan, because he’d been trying to get Rangan somewhere safe.

Oh fucking hell.

His hands came up to his face. It was wet. The sobs started. He rolled over onto his side. He forced himself to look at the clock. 1.08pm. Jesus.

Five minutes, he told himself. I can endure that long. I can endure Oscar dying for that long. I can endure being lost, and hopeless, and hunted, for that long.

At 1.13pm he was still sobbing, and so he ran the app.

[activate grief_ease level:5]

He felt it kick in, like a balm, smoothly, not all at once, but bit by bit, easing the pain, turning the sobs to sniffles, turning the utter hopelessness to mild gloom.

He lay back and stared at the ceiling of this tiny room.

He was in the Bunker. That’s what the three current members of the Convergent Complexity Collective (or “C3”, as they usually referred to themselves) called their work and sometimes-live space. It was in some long-slummified warehouse district on the outskirts of DC. It had been a hub for sometimes far more people, and seldom less. He wished he’d encountered it under better circumstances.

The little room he was flopping in had no windows, just painted masonry and bare concrete. The amenities were a lumpy futon mattress they’d dragged in here for him, a side table the one named Tempest had hammered and sawed together on the spot from scrap wood, and a cheap plastic storage bin for Rangan’s meager possessions, all of them gifts from the C3.

This was life now.

Well, fuck it, Rangan told himself. Move forward. It’s the only choice there is.

He rose up, used yesterday’s shirt to wipe his face and blow his nose, then pulled on a BLACKHAT 2037 long-sleeved tee shirt two sizes too small for him; the jeans he’d been wearing all week, the socks he’d worn the last three days; and his own closed toed shoes, which he’d been informed were mandatory in most parts of the Bunker. Then he sighed, memories flashing through his mind, of the first morning he’d woken up here, the argument he’d heard them having.

He can’t stay here , Tempest had nearly yelled. He’ll get us all caught, get us all killed.

What do you wanna do with him? Cheyenne, the big one with the black dreads had shot back. Toss him out on the street? Hand him over to ERD for the reward? Why don’t we just waterboard him ourselves?

Cheyenne’s right, the third woman, the one who called herself Angel, had said. Axon’s a hero. He and Synapse made Nexus 5. We owe him. What about solidarity, huh?

Look, Tempest had gone on. I’m sure the guy’s a saint. But he’s on the fracking most wanted list. This is serious shit. Not just cops. Homeland Security. Chandler Act. Terrorism. Deep dark hole shit.

His pulse beat harder just remembering it, the fear that had shot through his veins, that did again now. Somewhere, ERD and the rest of DHS was out looking for him, looking for Bobby and Alfonso and the rest of the boys. And they had resources he didn’t understand. He couldn’t imagine a future where he stayed free.

He only hoped the boys had made it. That Bobby had made it. That maybe ERD was so focused on him that they weren’t chasing the kids.

And that when ERD did catch him, he didn’t get too many other people hurt in the crossfire.

Cheyenne and Angel had won the argument. Tempest had been over-ruled. But she’d made it clear it was temporary. Rangan couldn’t stay here forever – they all agreed on that. He had to figure out some way to move on.