Ramez Naam - Apex

Now at least, he could escape, escape into Ma Jie’s arms for a few hours.

His private car came to a stop, and Wang Rongshang climbed out. No driver tonight. Only software.

Wang ascended the stairs of the modest building until he reached the third floor. He knocked on Ma Jie’s door, and it opened, and there she was, in a long silken gown that made him hunger for what was beneath.

“I’ve missed you, my love,” she said.

Wang smiled and stepped into his lover’s embrace.

A hundred kilometers away, the Avatar smiled. This, at last, looked like a way to reach her children.

38

Minor Anarchy

Saturday 2040.11.17

“I wish I was going with you,” Rangan said again.

“You want to get caught?” Tempest snapped, her face a checkerboard of black and white. “You want to take us all down with you?”

“Leave off, Tempest,” Cheyenne sighed, hoisting a bag from the floor, her face similarly painted. “Not like you wanna be recog–”

“Hey!” Tempest interrupted.

Something flashed between their minds. Rangan caught the bare edge of it. Tempest silencing Cheyenne, before she revealed something.

Rangan grimaced.

These three knew almost everything about him.

He didn’t even know their real names.

Beggars can’t be choosers, he thought.

“I just want to see how the mesh works,” he said.

“You want to make yourself useful?” Tempest asked. “Check what I told you about the chemreactor hack. I don’t trust it.”

Rangan opened his mouth.

“The mesh is going to work great,” Angel said from behind him, before he could speak. She patted his arm as she walked by. “Thanks for your help.”

Rangan closed his mouth and nodded. He’d been able to help a little. He wasn’t quite as horribly rusty as he’d feared. Coding was still coding.

Angel walked over to the one blank wall, next to Tempest and Cheyenne.

They were dressed and face-painted as court jesters, costumes that gave them an excuse for the high contrast blocks of white and black across their faces that conveniently threw off most of the cues that facial recognition software looked for. The rest of their costumes were made up of flamboyant patchwork clothes in matching and horribly clashing patterns and colors that went with the face paint; no wigs this time, but tall pointy hats that covered their real hair and conveniently contained the Nexus-boosting antennae they’d built.

And juggling balls and pins, which in turn necessitated gear bags, which in turn created plenty of space for doses of Nexus. Many, many doses of Nexus.

“Alright, Axon,” Tempest said. “Camera three.”

Rangan nodded, stepped back to the table with surveillance cameras, and picked up the one she’d specified.

“Alright,” he said, as brightly as he could, trying to ignore the obvious tension coming off their minds, to make this a moment of fun, of lightness. “Time for your close-ups!”

Tempest scowled.

“Come on,” he said, panning the camera across their faces. “You are undoubtedly the hottest three-person, all-female, DC-based, hacker collective with the goal of bottoms-up neural-software based–”

Angel laughed at him.

Cheyenne rolled her eyes.

Tempest flipped him off.

The camera display superimposed a grid of vertical and horizontal lines over each woman’s face. Layers of meaning appeared atop the grid immediately. Facial feature recognition. Eyes-nose-mouth. Then second level features appeared – cheekbones, jawlines, chins, brows, hairlines – seemingly at random, thrown off by the alien facial planes added by the strong contrasts of the face paint.

NO MATCH the face recognition software on the camera said.

He played it over their faces again, slowly, as they turned and gave him more angles, more facial expressions.

NO MATCH it repeated.

He moved the camera over their faces again, as they cranked up and down the lighting, as he zoomed in closer.

NO MATCH it told him one more time.

Rangan looked up at the three women, about to venture out into this protest, these three women who, for reasons of their own, didn’t want to be identified. He could feel the tension coming off them. They were taking their own risks. They were risking a lot, just to have him here.

He nodded.

“You’re good to go.”

Minutes later they filed out the door, and he was alone.

Breece rocked his head in time to the chanting, the long, natty hair of this wig moving to the rhythm; the fake scar, the fake tan, the brow and cheek and jaw implants all morphing his face. Signs and banners flew above the crowd of thousands on the National Mall. More every day. More every hour , it seemed. He’d been here for three days, himself, and the ever increasing density was palpable.

Out of the corner of his eye he watched another Nexus dose handed out. The mules didn’t know that he was out here, had no idea what he looked like. They had simple instructions. Go to a locker. Pick up a backpack or duffel full of vials. Go to the protest. Hand them out. Concentrate on certain areas, particularly the double fence-line, where the anti-Stockton protest was squared off against the pro-Stockton loyalists: just ten feet of empty space and a few dozen cops between them.

The mules were low level PLF wannabes, most of whom had never seen field experience, eager to show off their skills, maybe earn a real mission.

Hell, some of them were probably cops or feds. But those could be weeded out later.

He scanned the crowd. Kate was out there somewhere. Not the Nigerian, though. He was a bit too distinctive with his height. Too easy to remember.

His tactical contacts told him it was almost time. He reached his hand into his pocket, found the button, waited… waited… and then pressed.

Angel did her best to hide her surprise as they were funneled into the Mall at 17 th Street. There was Nexus here already. Lots of Nexus. She’d expected some, but this much…

Police officers in mirrored glasses tracked her and the rest of C3 as they pushed in with the crowd through the side streets. She smiled her widest entertainer smile, moved juggling clubs up in the air in a jaunty little dance, never letting go of them, wiggling her hips in time.

I’m just a girl , officer, she thought at the cop. I’m no threat to you.

No Nexus transmissions until they were out in the middle of the Mall. That was the plan. The entrances were the most likely places for Nexus scanners. And while they had to get within a couple feet of you to detect Nexus in your brain if you were in receive only, they could pick you up from thirty, forty, fifty feet away if you were broadcasting.

Though, frankly, if they were scanning, they’d be running out there to bust what must be hundreds of people running Nexus on the Mall already.

Of course, if that were tens of thousands …

They broke radio silence minutes later.

…feel all that?

…hundreds of them…

…mostly that way…

…let’s head that way then…

…think they came dosed, or someone else handing it out here?

…one way to find out…

They headed west, on the south side of the Reflecting Pool, towards the Lincoln Memorial, where there seemed to be the greatest concentration of people.

The concentration of Nexus grew stronger as well. Denser. The minds felt fresh, inexperienced. Some of them disoriented, even, in the rush of a synesthetic blur as Nexus 5 learned them.

…newbies…

…dosed here…