Ramez Naam - Crux

Chen shuddered at the memory.

So the hardliners were finishing what they’d started a decade ago, pruning the last fruits of the billion flowers period, ending this experiment in the posthuman, ending the life of his wife as they’d tried before, and taking him with her.

Was the nuclear battery going into meltdown even now? Would the radiation kill him? Would it travel up this shaft? Or would he be left here to suffocate, or die of thirst or hunger?

Was there any hope of escape? Chen looked up towards the top of the elevator. There was no obvious maintenance hatch there. Even if there was, would he have any hope of opening it, then climbing hundreds of meters to the surface? Opening a locked door there, and somehow evading the armed guards in the SCC who undoubtedly had orders to let no one pass? Could even Bai, his clone driver, fight his way through security and rescue him? And if so, then what? Flee to India? Bah.

Chen Pang retreated to the back wall of the elevator and sat down heavily. It was hopeless, then. He’d known this day would come. Ever since the limousine. Ever since the assassination attempt eleven years ago had brought gong kāi huà to an abrupt end . Neither he nor Su-Yong were meant to live that day. They’d been on borrowed time since then. Somehow he’d let himself forget that.

No. From the moment that Sun Liu had taken him aside and warned him not to get into the limousine that night, they’d been doomed. Ted Prat-Nung hadn’t understood, of course. He’d believed the lie that the CIA – and not hardliners within the Chinese government – was responsible for the explosion in the vehicle. Prat-Nung had pushed hard to try the emergency upload. Chen had no choice. Prat-Nung was dangerous, and madly in love with Chen’s wife. He couldn’t tell the man the truth. And the upload would surely fail. What harm in this bit of theater?

When it had worked? When Su-Yong had woken up in the cluster he’d designed, somehow sentient? Well, then he’d allowed himself to forget their doom. He’d let himself hope that the progressives would win, that gong kāi huà might return some day, that a billion flowers might bloom again, or that at least he could ride his wife’s coat-tails to even greater fame and wealth.

No. He should have put two and two together. Ted Prat-Nung was dead from American bullets in that Bangkok loft. Su-Yong was insane, would soon be functionally dead. He was the last of their triad, the last of the team that had turned his wife into the first true posthuman. It made sense. The hardliners would finish the job. They’d make sure that he died too.

Chen Pang bowed his head, and waited for the end to come.

Chen woke to a jolt, unaware that he’d fallen asleep. A loud noise clanged through his head. The elevator lurched unnervingly. Then it began to rise, with a new and unpleasant grinding sound. He waited for the lights to come back on, for the status indicator to change. Neither happened.

He came to his feet. What was going on? Scenarios ran though his head. Su-Yong had tried to escape, and had been stopped, and now they were rescuing him. Or the hardliners had attempted a coup, but had been defeated. Or it had been a power failure after all, and the lockdown nothing but a precaution.

Who would be there when the doors opened? Bai? The director of the SCC? His assistant Li-hua? Someone else?

The elevator stopped moving with a clang. Chen waited, his breath coming fast. Then the doors parted. Bright light hit him, and he fell back, a hand raised up to shield himself, blinded.

Even so, he caught the sight of the guns. Armed soldiers in insectile combat armor, matte black armored surfaces everywhere, bulging actuators and power packs, mirrored helmets obscuring their faces. They held assault rifles aimed in his direction, gaping wide muzzles ready to spew death at him. With them was a single young man in a dark suit, a briefcase in one hand.

“Professor Chen, please stay where you are,” the young man said. The mirror-faced soldiers rushed forwards, pointed their guns and shined lights into the corners of the elevator, up at its ceiling.

Two of them patted him down roughly. Their hands invaded his person, pressing against every part of his torso, grasping his ankles and sliding upwards along his thighs, even between his legs. An insult! But Chen bit his tongue, made no move to resist them.

“Clear!” a voice behind him said.

“Clean,” said one of the soldiers patting him down.

“Please come with me, Professor Chen,” the young man said. It wasn’t a request.

They walked through a red-lit Secure Computer Center. Flashlights and red emergency lights provided the only illumination. They passed rows and rows of workstations, abandoned. Tall metal equipment racks cast strange shadows against the wall. Two armored soldiers in their mirrored helmets went in front, then Chen and the young man in a suit, then two more armored soldiers behind them.

“I am Fu-han Zhao, Professor,” the young man in the suit said. “I’m an aide to State Security Minister Bo Jintao. I’m here to take you to him.”

Bo Jintao. One of the hardliners.

“Bo Jintao? What’s happened? Why is the power out here? Why was I stuck in that elevator for hours?”

“We’ve suffered a major cyber-attack, Professor. As for the rest, we were hoping you could tell us.”

They reached the emergency stairs that led from the Secure Computing Center to the surface, ten flights up. More mirror-faced soldiers in full battle armor were posted here. They parted to let them into the stairwell. Inside, emergency lights on their own batteries bathed them in red.

“How can the SCC power be out?” Chen asked as they climbed. “It has its own backup supply, good for days.”

“We have power here,” Zhao answered. “We fear to use it. The cyber-attack was pervasive. We fear bringing the systems back online until we know what could be compromised.”

At the top there were yet more armed and armored soldiers. The entire building was empty, lit only by emergency lights.

“The power is out up here?” Chen asked.

“Yes,” Zhao said.

“Where is my driver?”

“He’s been… temporarily relieved of duty, Professor. All of them have.”

“All of them?”

“Yes. All the clones.”

All the Confucian Fist clones, relieved of duty. This was about his wife, then. They thought she was behind the attack. And they feared her influence over the clones.

Damn.

He saw not a single student or faculty member in the red-lit computer science building. Outside, it was dark, sometime in the dead of night. Hard rain fell on them. Tank-like armored vehicles crouched on the street, huge guns and extended missile launchers pointed at the building. Between them, portable lights illuminated a military helicopter in the middle of the road. It sat there, waiting for them, rotors spinning, weapons mounted on its stubby wings, mirror-faced armored soldiers surrounding it. Its mottled skin glimmered in the rain and the sodium lights.

Chen heard more rotors up above. He raised his face, using his hand to shield himself from the rain. In the air above he could see dim red lights illuminating four smaller, sleeker, more deadly-looking helicopters circling around them, like birds of prey coolly regarding the ground, waiting for their moment to pounce.

And who knew what lethal weapons he didn’t see.

Zhao gestured for Chen to board the craft.

“My phone… my slate…” Chen shouted to be heard over the rain and the roar of the rotors.

Zhao nodded and yelled back, “They’ll be returned to you at the appropriate time.”

They suspect me too, Chen thought with dread.

He’d been ready to accept death hours ago, but now he very much wanted to live. And to do so, he had to persuade Bo Jintao that he wasn’t a threat. Chen boarded the helicopter, a chill sinking into him from more than the rain. Zhao boarded after him, and then they were aloft.