Ramez Naam - Crux

Had they told her that he’d broken? Would they go easier on her now? It was something to hope for. What would she think of him, once she found out? Would she despise him? Hate him?

And Kade? Wats? What would they think of him?

He’d always had the easy life. Rich parents. Good looks. Success came easy, in school, in music. The Indian golden boy. Boy wonder scientist by day, hot DJ by night.

And the women. God, how he loved women. And they’d loved him. Woman after woman after woman. He could leave a club most weekend nights with a party girl, sometimes two. He’d jerked himself off to sleep so often the first few weeks here, calling up memories of their faces, their bodies, the kinky things they’d done for him. Memories remembered naturally. Memories he’d recorded with Nexus, without ever asking their permissions.

Such an easy life. Rangan Shankari, international playboy.

Yeah, right.

He was pathetic, he saw now. What had he ever done for anyone else? He’d lived his whole life as a taker. Taking money from Mom and Dad. Taking sex from girls whose names he barely remembered, girls that he honestly didn’t give a fuck about, except that they were hot and fun in bed and good for his rep.

The only thing he’d ever done that was worth a damn was Nexus. His one impact on the world. And had he fought for that? When they’d busted the party in SF he tried to run. And now, in this stinking cell, they’d given him a second chance. He could show this time that he had the strength of his convictions. But no. They tightened the screws a bit and he folded, just like that.

What did it even matter that he was going to die here? His whole life was a self-obsessed joke. He’d been so goddamn self-centered that he might as well not have existed at all.

Fucking pathetic.

Fuck!

Rangan slammed his hand against the concrete wall of his cell and then swore as he felt the pain.

Then he felt something else.

Another mind.

Faintly. A young mind, weird and warped, and reaching out for him…

Bobby closed his eyes and he could feel his new friends in his head – Tim and Tyrone and Alfonso and Pedro and Jason and Jose and Parker and all the rest. They were like him, autistic . But more than that. He could feel them in his head. They were real .

There were grownups here who came in and gave them tests, but he couldn’t feel the grownups in his head at all and he knew why it was because they didn’t have NEXUS and so they were stupid and they weren’t real people at all.

Sometimes the grownups took one of his friends away to give them a test, but Bobby and the others could still feel whoever they’d taken, like when they took Nick and gave him tests on Math and English and Bobby could feel him taking the test and even though Nick didn’t know some of the answers, Nick got them right because he had his friends there in his head.

But then later they took Nick further away and he was GONE from Bobby’s head and Bobby was scared that they had HURT him or KILLED him but they brought Nick back and Nick said they’d only given him special tests and so Bobby felt better.

The next day they took Bobby away and gave him tests on Math and English and Science, and made him play games and solve puzzles and he could still feel all his friends, but then after that they took him to a special room and they closed the door and he COULDN’T FEEL HIS FRIENDS and he started to get scared, but he remembered that Nick had come back and Tim said that all the other boys came back, and so he’d probably come back too.

Then they put a cap over his head and gave him a test of Spanish, at least he thought it was Spanish, because he didn’t know Spanish and he just guessed and did really badly at the test, but that wasn’t his fault if they were testing him on something he hadn’t studied.

And then they took him back to the room with all the others and he was glad when he could feel them all in his head again and they asked him to tell them all about it and he SHOWED them the and the and the where you couldn’t feel your friends in your head and the and he was happy he had friends – friends that could understand him and he wanted to always have friends like this.

And that night he dreamed in Spanish and dreamed he was Pedro or Alfonso or Jose and the next day they took him away to the special room again where he couldn’t feel his friends and tested him in Spanish only this time he KNEW THE ANSWERS and even when they asked him questions they hadn’t asked yesterday he KNEW THE ANSWERS TOO.

And he knew it was because of Pedro and Alfonso and Jose and the Nexus in all their heads.

And that night, when they made him go to bed and he lay down and closed his eyes he felt something, another person, far far away, a sad person, alone, a person who felt less like his friends and more like his daddy. And Bobby reached out to that person so sad and so far away and tried to say hello.

19

THE LONG GOODBYE

Mid October

Sam and Jake argued for half the limping journey home.

“But I can be useful,” she said. “I know these kids. I love them. They love me!”

“I know, Sunee,” Jake replied. “I told them. I want you there. But the Mira Foundation is really careful. They’ve had… incidents.”

“There has to be another way.”

“Look, I think I can talk them into it, but it’s gonna take a while.”

“And what, I just wait for you to call? Not knowing when? Or if ?”

“You know I want you there.”

“No,” Sam said. “I don’t!”

“Well maybe if you’d fucking let me in, you would,” Jake snapped.

Sam almost dropped him. “Fuck you. There has to be another way!”

Jake took a deep breath. “Sunee, we just have to do what’s best for the kids.”

“What, and that’s ripping away someone who wants to be there for them?”

“Jesus, Sunee, it isn’t just about you!”

“What about Khun Mae? She’s the one in charge, really.”

Jake sighed. “Khun Mae said yes.”

“You asked her before me? ” Sam’s voice rose.

“Yeah,” Jake replied. “Because you’re taking it exactly how I expected.”

It was after dawn when they reached the home atop the hill. Silence filled the hours. They spoke just enough to agree on a story for the children. They put on their game faces at the end, smiled and projected happy thoughts.

And the children saw right through them.

Sam begged Jake and Khun Mae for a few days to come up with alternate ideas, then forced herself to think them through.

She could appeal to Ananda for money to keep the orphanage going.

She could go back to Phuket, take Lo Prang up on his offer, start a career as a prize fighter to raise funds.

She could start a charity, ask for donations.

She could sell samples of her own cells and their fourth-generation enhancements on the black market.

She considered each idea, and others, and discarded them all.

Ananda would be watched by the ERD.

She knew nothing about running a charity.

Winning fights for Lo Prang would raise her profile and increase the risk of the ERD finding her. And how long before the mobster asked her to hurt men outside the ring?

And her genetic tweaks… Selling them would mean deaths, somewhere, far away. Deaths of men and women like her, doing their jobs, trying to protect their country or save the innocent. She wouldn’t have that on her conscience, not even to save the orphanage.

In the end she had nothing.

The second night she woke to terror, to thoughts of faceless men bursting in, ripping her away, ripping Jake away, taking the children.

Nightmare!

It pressed down on her even after she woke. She looked at the doorway to her room and masked men appeared – bad men.