Ramez Naam - Apex

Bai and Quang slipped through without being noticed.

At the doors out to the square they paused, in sync, at the sight of thousands of fellow Chinese, waving signs, chanting, cheering, demanding freedom, standing up against an overwhelmingly more powerful enemy.

They exchanged no words. None were needed. They’d talked of this so often. Of a China where the people ruled instead of being ruled.

Growing up a slave gave one a certain perspective on authority.

They should be out here, with these students and parents and grandparents, lending the strength of their fists, the cunning of their minds, lending them half a chance.

She’s changed,Quang sent, as they watched the crowd.

She’s not herself,Bai agreed.

Well, let’s hope this Li-Hua woman knows where the real cube went,Quang sent, nudging open the door and easing out.

Yes,Bai replied, following his brother. And let’s hope that what’s on it is saner than what we’ve got back there.

Li-hua jumped at the knock at her door.

State Security! They’d found her out!

No no, she told herself. Calm down. If they’d found her out… they wouldn’t knock.

She pulled up her door camera on her phone. She frowned.

She knew that face.

Chen Pang’s driver.

Oh no. What if Chen had found her out? Would he blackmail her?

Think, Li-hua, think!

The knock came again.

Answer the door. That was her only option. This could be about anything . It might have nothing to do with the cube.

Breathe, Li-hua, breathe.

She went to the door.

“Yes?” she asked through it.

“Miss Li-hua?” a voice said. “I have an invitation for you from Professor Chen.”

Play cool, she reminded herself.

She unlocked the door, opened it a crack.

The face smiled at her.

Then the door exploded open, strong hands were on her mouth, stifling her scream, and there was a sharp sting at her neck.

No! she tried to scream. Help! No!

It was useless.

Then she felt something happening to her mind.

And the true horror began.

Kilometers away the Avatar sucked hungrily at Li-hua’s mind.

India. She’d sent the mind of a goddess to India.

The Avatar twisted circuits in Li-hua’s mind, making her pay, even as she kept sucking at every detail, every possible morsel of information.

And in parallel she started tracking down leads, tracking the paths the cube might have taken, the locations it might have ended up.

It did not escape her notice that the Lane boy, and Feng, her favorite of the Fists, the first she’d met, were also in India.

Coincidence?

Somehow she doubted that.

Bai looked down sadly as the woman writhed on the floor as Su-Yong brutally rifled through her mind, heedless of the cost.

Next to him he felt his brother Quang do the same.

He hoped this was all worth it.

84

Parlor Tricks

Monday 2041.01.14

Su-Yong walked through her models again, loaded them up until the fractal branches filled her senses, filled space, filled touch, filled hearing, filled smell and taste. Until her world was saturated by probabilistic models of the future, running, again and again with tiny perturbations, seeking distributions of likely outcomes, filtered for the current point in time.

She ran those through models of human psychology and organization design. Who had her? Almost certainly an organization within a government. Military or paramilitary. They would have certain biases, certain tendencies.

She had to play to those.

She checked the weapon she’d created once more. It was ready.

Just minutes. That was all she’d need. Just minutes free on the net, and she could undo the thing she’d created, make room for Ling in her daughter’s own brain once more.

Varun Verma reviewed the latest data from the quantum cluster in frustration.

Things were not going well.

Two months now. Two months since they’d loaded the data cube with Su-Yong Shu’s neural map into the quantum cluster. And still the woman refused to speak to them.

The metrics showed clear and marked improvement. She was active in there. She was thinking. Her firing patterns were normalizing, bearing more and more similarity to a biological brain every day.

But their messages to her went unanswered.

He sighed in frustration. They might have to use more drastic measures.

] HELLO

The message flashed on his screen. Varun jumped. He’d remoted the conversational console to his secure office down here. But she hadn’t said anything… anything…

] I’M SORRY TO HAVE BEEN SILENT FOR SO LONG

] MY RECOVERY TOOK SOME TIME

Varun put his fingers on his keyboard.

> HELLO DR SHU. IT’S NICE TO HAVE YOU BACK

] YOU’RE IN GRAVE DANGER

] THE WHOLE WORLD IS IN GRAVE DANGER

Varun frowned. They’d seen this as a possible scenario. She’d try to manipulate them. He’d thought it unlikely. It was disappointing to see her acting so.

] HAVE THE PROTESTS STARTED YET? THE CIVIL DISTURBANCES?

Varun shook his head.

There were always protests somewhere in the world.

This was just a cheap parlor trick, like a fortune teller, a vague prognostication, expecting him to fill in the rest, to make her look far smarter and better informed than she was.

Far better if she bargained with them honestly.

] THE POLITICAL CRISIS IN THE UNITED STATES – HAS THE VIOLENCE STARTED?

Varun narrowed his eyes.

No, he thought, dismissing it with a shake of his head. There was always some sort of violence in the United States. The Americans were always killing each other.

] HAVE THE CHEMREACTORS BEEN HACKED?

This time he felt a chill. That was really quite specific.

Varun pulled up a second window next to the messaging interface, fired off a full system check, starting with firewalls and all the other security layers.

Had she managed to get data from the outside world? That would explain it.

] HAVE THE CHINESE CENSORSHIP SYSTEMS FAILED?

] HAVE THE MASS PROTESTS STARTED THERE?

Varun read the messages, anxiety building inside him, then flicked his eyes to the side.

Status messages started scrolling down the system check: green, green, green, and more green.

They were in a vault of security, layer after layer of defenses.

And all of them claimed to be integral.

He fired off messages to humans. They needed a direct inspection, needed to run third party tools totally disconnected from their systems against the firewall, see if they could find some hole she’d somehow poked without them realizing it.

Though if she had found a way out… why was she even bothering to talk to him now?

The screen flashed again, more messages from the uploaded posthuman they’d bottled up in the quantum cluster a hundred meters below Bangalore.

] HAVE THE NUCLEAR WEAPONS BEEN LAUNCHED?

Varun’s breath caught in his chest.

] HAS DELHI BEEN DESTROYED?

He heard a strangled sound escape from his own throat.

] OR IS THERE STILL TIME FOR ME TO STOP THIS?

Varun stared at the screen with mute horror. He was suddenly cold, cold all over.

This is above my pay grade, he realized. Far above.

He reached for the secure phone on his desk, and punched the keys to call General Singh.

Su-Yong Shu makes contact with the humans. She begins her ploy.

And then she turns her attention to this woman, Jyotika, and the damage done to her brain.

You have brought me back to sanity, Jyotika, she thinks.

Let’s see what I can do for you.

85

Plan B