Ramez Naam - Apex

Gold Shu waves her hand, dismissively. The humans do not matter. There will be posthumans. There are already transhumans. They will flock to our banner.

Blue Shu raises an eyebrow. Oh will they?she sends. Consider a few of the transhumans we know. How would they react? How would they judge our conquest?

Blue Shu steps back from the middle of their circle. A wizened Asiatic man fades into being where she stood, his head shaved, clothed in orange robes, his face tranquil, his hands folded in their voluminous sleeves. He appears otherwise completely serene. Professor Somdet Phra Ananda. A human who took an utterly different path from hers. Not her equal, but an impressive individual. Someone she has things to learn from. Someone she considers a friend, an ally.

The phantom Ananda looks around, his face soft but unyielding.

“You know my answer. Violence brings no enlightenment. Suffering yields only more suffering. Subjugation of another has never uplifted either party.”

Would you fight us?Red Shu asks.

Ananda smiles, and for a moment he is not one, but a multitude, thousands of shaven headed figures in orange robes, superimposed, young, old, female, male.

Not with our fists,they send. It is a chorus, a swarm, and with the thought comes a harmony of loving kindness, a genuine compassion and deep equanimity that White Shu finds both fascinating and the tiniest bit frightening.

Bah,Gold Shu sends. A fiction you created.

Blue Shu waves her hand in a horizontal line, and the shapes morph into one. A single Caucasian male, tall, young. Perhaps a memory, then,she sends, of a different transhuman.

Kaden Lane sits next to them in the back of the black Opal sedan. The wet, neon-streaked streets of Bangkok slide by outside the car’s windows.

I’m on the side of peace,he sends, and freedom.

Red Shu scoffs. Irrelevant. He’s a child.

Blue Shu raises an eyebrow. A child who’s pushed our work forward, who’s facilitated the transition of at least a million humans to transhuman status.She pauses . But perhaps you’ll be more moved by the reactions from those we’ve long cared about.

The scene changes. The Lane boy is gone, but the Opal sedan remains. Feng is in the front now. Feng, the first transhuman she met beside herself. Feng, who was a slave. For a moment he’s a superposition of Fengs. Feng in his twenties, her driver. Feng at sixteen, on his knees, a slave, writhing in electronically induced pain. Feng, a child of four or five, cowering under the blows of his military slavemasters.

Then he is Feng again. His eyes meet hers in the rear-view mirror of the car. I was a slave , those eyes say, and you freed me.

You could compel him , Feng sends in the memory, in Bangkok, speaking of Lane, testing her, seeing if she still believes in freedom, or if she’s willing to become the dictator that she could.

I would become no better than our masters , her past self replies. Our associations must be voluntary.

Red Shu replies angrily. The situation has changed!

Blue Shu does not even speak. She simply waits, as the scene in the center of their circle, in the midst of the void at the heart of the fractal probability tree changes yet again.

Becomes an airy room, polished bamboo floors and walls, hoisted up in the jungle canopy of Thailand, a living tree growing through the center, a giant bed off to one side, where she and Thanom lay, naked.

Arguing.

You must find a way to leave, Su-Yong. Nothing good can come of it.

In the memory she shakes her head. China is the best, the only viable sponsor of my work. They are funding the posthuman transition!

They keep you a slave, Su-Yong! A posthuman knows no leash! Break it! Break every leash, every bond of those who would control you!

In the memory she slaps him, slaps him for calling her a slave.

In the here and now, White Shu feels the pain of those words like a blow.

ENOUGH,she sends. And with a thought she wipes Thanom and his jungle hideout away.

It’s true, she realizes. The humans will never give up. Even the transhumans she thinks of as natural allies will not give up. So many of them will fight. Defeat is defeat. Victory may also be defeat.

She was wrong to think she could drive the posthuman transition by force. This is not the way.

Blue Shu turns to White Shu, gratified that she has won. So we must inform our captors, the Indians or whoever they are, of what is happening, and exactly how to stop it.

Then Ling appears between them, Ling as she last saw her, a kilometer below the bedrock of Shanghai.

“Mommy,” Ling says, looking up at White Shu. “Why did you hurt me?”

Su-Yong, the true Su-Yong, in the white dress, pulls Ling to her chest, and holds her close. Then she speaks aloud to the Blue version of herself. “We’ll stop this. But if we tell our captors that the agent provocateur is running inside of Ling…” she shudders. “The simplest option is to put a bullet in our daughter’s brain.”

Su-Yong enfolds this phantom of her daughter more tightly.

“We’ll find another way,” she says.

Then, in a blur of multi-hued light, she absorbs the other Shus back into herself.

And begins to plan how she will get access to the outside world.

83

Li-hua’s Brain

Sunday 2041.01.13

THE CUBE IS A FAKE!

Bai watched, stone faced, as Xu Liang cowered on the floor before the fury of Su-Yong Shu, or whatever creature this was that they served.

He could feel the agony she was coursing through Xu, echoes of it coming off the poor bastard’s mind.

“I… I… I… I’m sorrrrrrrrrry… missssssstressssssss…” the wretch tried to say.

It was hard to speak with pain centers being over-stimulated.

Bai knew.

WHERE IS THE REAL ONE? THE THREE OF THEM!

“Thhhhhouggghhht… thhhhhis… one… rrrrreeeeaaaal…”

Bai had never seen such a rage in her before. Why didn’t she just pluck the truth from his mind?

She was insane now, that was why. Whatever she’d shoved into Ling’s brain wasn’t stable.

Anything but.

“Bbbbooo Jjjjjjiiinttttttaaaoooo…” Xu Liang was saying. “Sssssunnnn Llllliuuuuuu.”

Bai thought he understood. There were supposed to be three copies. One for the Ministry of State Security. One for the Ministry of Science and Technology. And one that they’d learned had been kept here. The fake.

“Li-Hua,” Chen Pang said.

Little Ling’s body rounded on the man, and for an instant Bai thought she’d strike him down.

WHAT?

“Li-Hua,” Chen Pang repeated. “You were there. She led the shutdown and backup process.”

Bai watched as the demon inside Ling stared at the girl’s father.

“If this cube is a fake, she may know what happened to the real one.” He shrugged. “It’s easier than abducting Bo Jintao or Sun Liu.”

Bai rode the elevator up with Quang, their chameleonware active, invisible to the world, their minds linked to each other. The doors opened silently, without any announcement. The buttons worked for no one.

The Computer Science Building was packed with students, students uploading images and videos, students coordinating movements of supplies, students building crude electronic weapons against the tanks and guns and flamethrowers of the Chinese army.