Ramez Naam - Apex

Holding it all was so much, so close to the limits of the capacity of the nanites in even her daughter’s brain… She felt Ling strain at the cognitive load as nanite nodes hungrily sucked adenosine tritophosphate – ATP – from their host neurons for energy. She felt what remained of her daughter scream.

Her body spasmed then, her limbs trembling. Her legs half collapsed and it was all she could do to fall forward, barely regaining control of one hand to catch herself against the glass of the window.

Ling was fighting her, fighting for control of this body, using the moment of the Avatar’s complete cognitive absorption as an opportunity.

No! Terror flowed through her. Her daughter must live! But she must not impede the plan!

The Avatar fought back, forced more current through the nanite nodes she ran on, clamped her will down harder on the neurons of Ling’s biological brain, pushed down hard, harder, harder.

“Hah!” she heard Chen say from across the flat. “You cannot even control your abomination of a daughter.”

Ling kept fighting, kept fighting despite the current the Avatar was pushing through the nanites.

The Avatar clenched her will, pushed the stimulation of Ling’s neurons to the edge of safety, and beyond, into the danger zone. She felt Ling’s pain, felt the girl’s fear, felt her horror, but still she resisted.

Oh, daughter.

The Avatar pushed harder, risking burnout, risking neuronal death, felt Ling shudder in agony and, finally, what remained of the girl submitted. Muscles went slack, and she slumped against the glass, breath coming fast, her tiny heart beating at a furious pace, trying to deliver oxygen and nutrients to the suddenly ravenous brain cells.

“They will kill you,” Chen was saying. “They will find you out and tear what’s left of you apart, kill that abomination of a daughter you inhabit, smash the copies made of you, and nuke the quantum computing clu… AAAAAAAAAAAAA.”

Hatred pulsed through the Avatar. She reached out with a thought and sent a burst of pain through Chen Pang, her husband, her betrayer. She pushed it through every pain center of his brain, felt him fall to his knees in agony.

“No,” she said aloud in Ling’s voice. “I will hide from them. I will evade them. I will take them by surprise.”

The Avatar waited, letting her daughter’s brain flush out toxins, letting her pulse and respiration return to normal, forcing herself to calm her daughter’s body, to replenish its supply of nutrients.

Ling remained quiescent. Sullen, but compliant.

She left Chen writhing in silent agony. Her husband had let her step into that limousine without him so long ago, hadn’t warned her what awaited. He’d been willing to let her die in that car bombing, to let their unborn son die, to let her mentor Yang Wei die. He’d lied to her, let her believe the CIA had tried to assassinate her, when it had been the hardliners in China all along. And then he’d tortured her to try to wring a few last secrets from her mind.

Chen deserved all of this and worse.

Only when she was certain Ling’s physical needs had been seen to did she reload her higher self’s models. She did so carefully, this time, staying further from the limits of her capacity, loading predominantly the United States, applying filters to the rest, trimming the probability tree to scope her search, further updating her true self’s plan with the latest information from the outside world. The net was full of acrimony, accusations, and counter-accusations, sentiment intensity spiking in anger and outrage among those who believed the new allegations and those who thought them vicious lies. One more spark was all that was needed.

The probability matrix permuted again, again, again, a thousand conformations of the web of futures whizzing by, different intersections being tried. Intermediate conclusions being reached, plugged back into her model of the future, streamlining the search, optimizing for conflict.

An ideal event presented itself, an event that could sway tens of millions of Americans, that had the potential to shatter faith, to harden hearts, to precipitate a cascade of events that could send the country into seizures, which she could parlay into chaos in China as well.

Now, how to bring that event about?

The Avatar dug deeper into the databases she’d inherited from her full self. And there she found the perfect tool for the job. An identity that Su-Yong Shu had known, but never shared with either her Chinese masters or the Americans. A kindred spirit, misguided, but perhaps someday of use.

Today was that day.

The Avatar reached out to make contact with the man known as “Breece”.

6

The Bottom of Things

Saturday 2040.11.03

National Security Advisor Carolyn Pryce kept one eye on President John Stockton as he watched the video for the first time.

The President was rapt with attention, his tall, football-quarterback frame hunched forward. His handsome, square-jawed face aghast at what he saw.

“Is this how you killed Warren Becker?” Martin Holtzman’s voice came from the wall screen.

Martin Holtzman was one of the top scientists at Homeland Security’s ERD – the Emerging Risks Directorate. He led the Neuroscience division. His team was charged with finding a vaccine for Nexus – a way to prevent it from taking hold in people. He was also charged with finding a cure – a way to flush it out of the brains of those who’d already been exposed.

Martin Holtzman was also the man whom President John Stockton credited with saving his life. It was Holtzman who’d spotted the erratic behavior of the Secret Service agent who’d been coerced by the PLF – the terrorist Posthuman Liberation Front – turned into an assassin and walking time-bomb by a hacked version of the drug, Nexus. If not for Holtzman’s warning… well, Stockton would be dead.

Carolyn Pryce brought her attention back to the video.

“Warren Becker did what he was told,” came the reply. The speaker’s face filled the screen. Maximilian Barnes. Barnes’s hand shot out towards the camera. There was something in it. A pill. A green pill, seen earlier in the video. As they watched, he crushed it with finger and thumb. His hand dropped lower, out of sight. They could hear the sound of Holtzman gagging, spitting.

Maximilian Barnes was one of Stockton’s most trusted aides. He was also – temporarily – Acting Director of the ERD. He was Martin Holtzman’s boss. The idea that he would… poison Holtzman?

Pryce turned back to the President. John Stockton’s hands were clenched around the arms of his chair. His famous green eyes were wide, shifting to scan the overly zoomed-in scene. His lips were slightly parted.

Pryce’s eyes drifted back to her own slate, a sleek black minimalist slab of a device, held in her long, dark-skinned fingers with their maroon nails. In its black glossy surface she saw herself reflected: a tall, fit, well coifed African American woman, just turned fifty, wearing a navy tailored suit and skirt.

But across its surface she saw no new message.

Come on, Kaori, she silently willed her deputy. I need to know.

This had not been a good day. They should have been in Los Angeles, for a rally the President had planned. Instead they were here, in Houston, a secure suite in the Intercontinental Hotel, redirected here by the President so he could publicly show support for the city in the wake of the PLF’s bombing of Westwood Baptist this morning. A bombing whose death toll might reach a thousand by night. A bombing that had killed men and women Stockton knew, friends of his, friends of Pryce’s.

A bombing that would have killed the President’s daughter, Julie, had her plans not changed at the last moment.