Ramez Naam - Apex

Awesome. It was all so awesome. Kade asked question after question, kept telling people how cool their work was.

Eventually they seemed to get that he wasn’t just faking it, that he was genuinely excited.

The excitement was echoed back.

Security was another major prong. Hunting down security bugs, looking for ways malicious code could enter and exploit Nexus to spy on or control an unwitting person. They’d already found and fixed quite a few vulnerabilities, and checked their fixes back into the major code repositories around the net. They had ambitious plans here to build more provably secure sandbox layers and simpler models to prevent users from accidentally giving away too much control.

Kade loved what they were doing. He came within inches of telling them about his work with Nexus 6… but he stopped himself, for now.

The last big pillar was safety. What was the impact of Nexus on a brain over multiple years of life? Even decades? And here they were in the wilderness. They’d done whole-lifetime testing on multiple generations of fruit flies and nematodes, with no obvious ill effects, but that could only take you so far. What about mammals? Mice lived two to three years.

“We’d love to do some testing – all very safe, of course – on the children who came with you,” Lakshmi Dabir said. “It’d be to their benefit – we’d do very thorough checks and find any health issues that may be cropping up. And it’d help us get more early warning of any issues that may prevent deployment in India.”

Kade considered that. It made sense.

“We’d also,” Dabir continued, “love to do more analysis of how they do collaborative learning. We can see that their learning rate is off the charts, beyond that even of children who take Nexus at the elementary school age. We may be able to learn something from that which we could then use in software.”

The same thought had occurred to Kade.

Even so…

“I’ll have to talk to Sam,” he said. “She’s also their legal guardian.”

Lakshmi Dabir inclined her head. “Of course.”

“And,” Kade said, “I want the kids to understand the request – and to agree to it.”

Dabir nodded at that as well.

After his first day of work, there was a reception for the various staff at the complex, who worked on a wide ranging set of projects in computing, neuroscience, computational biology, and related fields.

Kade was, he learned, the guest of honor.

Lakshmi Dabir took him around by the elbow, introducing him to various researchers and administrators, professors at the Indian Institutes of Technology, and so forth. He met a General Singh in the Indian Air Force, a tall man, with a thick Bollywood mustache, who Dabir said had given the order to save their plane.

“Thank you,” Kade said, as sincerely as he could.

Singh nodded at him. “Do good work for us. That will be more than thanks enough.”

Lakshmi Dabir led him around to meet yet more of the people here. Kade caught a glimpse of Sam, talking and smiling with an Indian woman in the corner, of Feng, his left arm still in a sling, gesticulating with a spoon in his right hand, making a crowd of young Indian men laugh and gasp in amazement, of Ananda deep in conversation with an Indian academic.

Almost everyone here was running Nexus.

He wished he’d worn his DJ Axon shirt.

He wished he still had it.

Just before 8.30pm the wallscreens came to life. The United Nations emblem appeared – two white olive branches surrounding a stylized map of the globe against a background of solid blue.

Silence descended on the reception. Kade could feel a rapt attention come to the minds of the men and women around him. This was the moment they’d been waiting for.

The map faded out, showing the General Assembly chamber.

UN Secretary General Beatriz Pereira was at the podium. A Brazilian. It was 10am in New York.

She struck her mallet ceremonially to bring the session to order.

“The Assembly will now hear from the Ambassador from India, regarding the motion to come before us,” Pereira said.

The Indian Ambassador to the UN, Navya Kapoor, took the stage, at the podium below the Secretary General’s.

She was younger than Kade had imagined, forty maybe, dressed in a grey business suit instead of a sari. She had no notes in evidence. But there was something in her eyes.

“Madame Secretary,” she said, and her voice was strong and clear. “Fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen. I come before you to speak of truth and deception; to speak of injustice done and the remedies that must be sought; to speak of oppression, and the equality we must replace it with.”

Kade felt his heart beating faster. He’d read the motion. He hadn’t read her speech. He felt excitement growing in minds around him.

“For the last decade, we have violated the principles of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights. We have oppressed those who are different, out of fear . And this fear has been based on deception and even the murder of innocents.”

Kade’s breath caught in his chest. He felt the same in a dozen others nearby. The UN Assembly burst into noise, into simultaneous applause and loud boos. The camera zoomed back to show delegates on their feet, some bringing their hands together, others getting up to walk out.

Beatriz Pereira banged her gavel hard, again and again. “Order!” she cried. “The delegate from India has the floor! Order!”

The Assembly quieted, bit by bit.

As the camera zoomed back in, Kade could see the determination on Navya Kapoor’s face, see that her chest was rising and falling as well.

You love her, yeah?Feng sent him in a tight band from across the room. I think she’s already married…

Kade laughed out loud. People looked at him funny. He turned around, found Feng looking at him from across the room, and winked.

“Thank you, Madame Secretary,” Navya Kapoor went on. “The United Nations Declaration on Human Rights states that, and I quote, ‘Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude’.”

A mind near Kade twitched nervously at that, then tried to calm itself. Six months ago he would have missed it, but he’d spent so much time in so many minds. Kade turned, looked, saw the side of the man’s face. Varum? Varam?

Navya Kapoor pressed on, her voice impassioned, drawing Kade’s attention back to her. “The Declaration states, and I quote again, that everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. That all are equal before the law .”

Kade felt the excitement rise all around him, felt the room in Bangalore grow in passion to match Kapoor.

Navya Kapoor looked around the Assembly room in New York and spoke again, her voice carried across the world at the speed of light.

“We have violated these principles. In our fear, based on false information, we have denied the recognition as a person to those who most clearly are persons. We have denied equality before the law.”

There was silence in the Assembly, hope and solidarity in Bangalore.

“Today,” Navya Kapoor said, “India introduces a motion to the United Nations General Assembly that recognizes all thinking, feeling beings of human origin or human descent as persons, and explicitly grants everyone the full protection of all international laws and human rights accords, and classifies laws and crimes which unfairly target individuals based on their genetic, neurobiological, or other differences, as the discrimination and hate crimes that they are.”