Ramez Naam - Crux

A layer of the map showed him the Nexus emanations. The area around Bến Thành was inundated with it. Even a few of the less drug-soaked tourists near Saigon Square and the business travelers in the heart of downtown gave off Nexus frequency transmissions. Nakamura shook his head at their audacity, surprised at the prevalence of the drug.

A final map layer showed him police and emergency services data for the city, mined from CIA systems. If the prey can’t be found , he’d taught his pupils, hunt the hunters .

There was always the risk that Sam and Kade would move on, of course. He kept a National Reconnaissance Office AI busy, searching for more matches on that twenty year-old Tata jeep. It threw some at him every few hours, but all were false hits.

He’d love to point a dedicated NRO bird at Saigon. But queries were one thing, retargeting birds was another. The latter would alert the National Reconnaissance Office that CIA had a high level of interest in Saigon. And that was a no-no.

Why? he wondered again. Why so much secrecy?

One way or another, it was boots-on-the-ground time. His boots. And his dust. For five days Nakamura walked, and tracked, and analyzed. And still he had no matches on Sam or Lane. So he walked and walked some more.

31

STUCK IN A MOMENT

Friday October 26th

Holtzmann limped out of the White House proper, supporting himself heavily with his cane, feeling years older than he had when he’d entered. Barnes walked next to him. Neither man said anything. Only after they were past the security guards and T-rays and Nexus scanners and metal detectors, waiting for their cars, did Barnes turn to him and lean in close. Holtzmann took an involuntary half step back, and Barnes took another forward. He’d never realized how tall Barnes was, but now, looking up into that cold face with its dead black eyes, he was acutely aware that the man was younger, taller, stronger, more powerful in every way.

Barnes put a hand on Holtzmann’s shoulder and squeezed, just enough to hurt. Holtzmann froze in fear.

Barnes leaned in until his mouth was inches from Holtzmann’s ear. He spoke slowly, his voice just above a hoarse whisper.

“If you ever do that to me again, I will fucking destroy you.”

Then Barnes’ car was there, and the man was all smiles. “Great job today, Martin. See you back at the office. I’m looking forward to new results in those things the President asked about.”

Holtzmann collapsed into his own car, exhausted and shaking. His fingers clenched around his cane of their own accord. Even through his boosted dopamine and serotonin levels all he could feel was the bitter disappointment of defeat, the yawning crevice of hypocrisy.

He’d tried. Somehow, boosted as he was, he’d found the courage to do something quite unlike himself. He’d spoken his mind to the President, to tell him what he truly thought. And he’d been casually rebuffed, rebuffed in a way so basic, so primitive, so tribal, so very human , that it left no doubt in his mind as to the course that humanity would take.

The Titans ate their young, he thought. No one wants to be usurped.

There was no safe ground underneath him anymore. There was just a chasm opening wider and wider. There were only two ways forward for him. He could do the moral thing, the right thing, and quit the ERD, face the audit and the discovery of the Nexus he’d stolen, face the imprisonment, in all likelihood for the rest of his life. Leave his wife and sons alone, and ashamed. Or he could do the weak thing, the expedient thing, and do his job, be party to the forced abortion of this new breed of humanity, and maybe, just maybe, stay free.

Both paths led straight into the abyss. He could feel himself falling now. The world was spinning around him.

“Phone,” he managed to say. “Clear my calendar and turn on my autoresponder. I’m sick.”

The phone beeped in the affirmative.

“Car,” he choked out the words. “Drive to the park.”

“Which park would you like as your destination?” the car asked in its silky feminine voice.

“Any,” he said. “Any of them will do.”

“I have twenty-seven parks within…” the car began.

“Aaah!” Holtzmann slammed his cane against the car’s dash in frustration and the car went silent.

His breath was coming fast. He was panting in anger.

Stupid man, he told himself. Yelling at a car.

He let his breath calm. A memory came to him. A happy day, with Anne. Fine.

“Montrose Park,” he told the car. “Montrose Park.”

“Yes, sir,” the car answered, more deferentially, some affective computing algorithm now modulating its interactions with him.

Holtzmann barely noticed. He leaned his seat back, brought up the neuromodulation interface app in his mind, the panel of dials and switches with neat labels and dry academic names. Then he dialed up a large opiate release, hit the button, and felt it course through his brain. It was sickly sweet, not glorious and ecstatic as it had been once, but even so the opiates pushed the fear and unmooring back away from him, pushed the anxiety and panic into the background, until he just didn’t care about the President or his predicament or anything else.

The car drove him to Montrose Park in a languid dream. Trees and buildings moved by in a blurring, surreal molasses. His pulse thrummed slow and low through his veins. Haltingly he told the car to park and to darken the windows. Somewhere in the Caribbean, the radio told him, a tropical storm called Zoe had thrashed Cuba, leaving buildings destroyed, fields flooded, and hundreds dead. Here, in the park beyond his car windows, it was a gorgeous hot sunny day. Thought and memory returned as the opiate surge faded. He and Anne had come here, when they were younger. They’d brought the boys here to splash around in the pool. He had hazy, happy memories of it. Heat and crowds of parents and children. Cool water on a hot day. Hot dogs bought from the snack bar.

From the parking lot he could see that pool, where he and Anne had brought the boys. Mothers and toddlers and a few young people splashed about there now. Inside his car, Holtzmann was in his own private cocoon.

He stayed there for hours. Every so often the opiates would start to wear off and the chasm would yawn wide open beneath his feet again and he’d start to panic, his breath coming fast and his heart pounding and his stomach feeling sick, and he’d dose himself once more to push it away. The doses he was giving himself were large, now, but there was no bliss in them. His tolerance was growing. At best the doses made him care less, care less that his life was reduced to this, a choice between imprisonment and something akin to genocide.

There’s another way, he thought. I could end my own life.

He pushed that idea away with another opiate surge, larger than the last.

His phone buzzed, again and again, calls from the office, video messages, text messages. He refused to answer, refused to check his messages on phone or slate.

Dusk came. Teenagers – released from the prisons that masqueraded as schools – joined the mothers and small children at the pool. He was hungry. He had to piss. He should be home soon. He was tempted to stay here forever, to just lay in his car taking dose after dose after dose of opiates until his neurons were squeezed dry of them or until he accidentally killed himself.

But something else prevailed. Habit, perhaps. Some shred of dignity. He forced a jolt of norepinephrine through his system, pushed himself up, and shambled on his cane to the restroom by the pool. Children and parents stared at him. A mother pulled her toddler aside, protectively. He had some vague notion that he was a mess, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.