Ramez Naam - Crux

Lo Prang’s two razor-nailed slave bitches watched her, still in their party dresses from the night before, their blades extended. Murder was in their eyes. The claw marks one of them had cut down her back ached. This was personal for them. If she crossed their paths again, they’d do their worst.

“Time to go,” Sam said. She stood, dragged Lo Prang up with her, propelled him forward towards the low cigar of a vessel, her free hand on the cuffs that bound his wrists behind his back. Now was the time of maximum danger. Transitions are points of vulnerability , Nakamura had taught her. If they were going to try to take her, it was now or never…

But she and Lo Prang made it onto the boat unharmed.

Sam pushed Lo Prang forward, away from her, towards the driver’s seat. “Drive,” she said.

An hour later they were past the island of Koh Phayam, a few hundred yards off shore, and on their way towards the Burmese border.

“You could have done this the easy way, Jade,” Lo Prang told her. “I meant what I told you. If you joined my household, you’d be happy.” He gestured with his cuffed hands towards his head. “A little tweak here and there. All this stress? All this hardship? I could have taken care of whatever problem you have. And you’d have contentment, the satisfaction of having a purpose in life, of knowing what it was, of having a master who loved you.”

Sam stared at Lo Prang and shook her head.

Lo Prang smiled. “Trust me, Jade. I’ve never had happier staff than I do now. They come to me willingly, for what I can give them, for the satisfaction, the peace and contentment. Even the whores are happy.”

Sam shuddered. “There are more important things than happiness,” she told the man. “Doing the right thing. Doing what matters.”

Lo Prang smiled at her. “The right thing? What matters? Those are just patterns in your brain, Jade. A few tweaks, and your right thing would be mine.”

“Not in this lifetime,” Sam told him.

Lo Prang shrugged. “You’ll change your mind one day. I’ll be waiting.”

They were leaving Koh Phayam behind now. It was time to make a choice.

Only kill when you have to , Nakamura had taught her. Spare the lives you can, even of your enemies. You never know when someone might do the same for you.

“Do you swim?” Sam asked Lo Prang.

The mob boss turned to look at her again, and snorted in amusement.

“And here I was looking forward to a vacation in Burma with you, Jade,” he replied.

“You’d just slow me down.” She smiled at him, sweetly, then tossed him the keys to his wrist and ankle cuffs.

Lo Prang snatched the keys from the air, snorted again, then killed the boat’s engine and uncuffed himself.

He stood, afterwards, the cuffs in his hand, weighing them. Weighing the option of attacking her, Sam suspected. She shook her head ever so slightly, and Lo Prang smiled, dropped the cuffs, and took off his shoes and shirt.

He stood at the edge of the boat, looked into those waters and towards the shore. Then he turned to her. “I’ll see you again, Jade.”

“Not if I see you first,” Sam replied, gesturing with the gun once more.

Lo Prang smiled. Then he dove into the blue waters, and started swimming for shore.

Sam watched until he was a dozen yards away, then she steered the boat further out to sea, towards the string of small uninhabited islands on the horizon. She’d need to find a place to hide until the sun went down. Perhaps to sleep. Then, when night came, she’d be on her way, and toward her target, Apyar Kyun, three hundred miles up this militarized coast.

53

PERSPECTIVE

Sunday October 28th

Kade received Shiva’s summons the next morning, after they’d brought him breakfast. A guard locked the Nexus jammer around Kade’s throat, escorted him to the rooftop where Shiva waited, reclining on a wooden chair. The older man gestured to the chair beside him, and Kade sat.

The view was glorious, straight out to the west over an uninterrupted expanse of sea. The nearest waters were jade green, turning to deeper and deeper shades of blue further to the west. In the other direction, to the east, Kade could see the wings of the mansion encircle the courtyard visible from his window. Beyond that was rolling land, then more water. An island.

“You haven’t viewed my memories yet,” Shiva said.

“I’ve been awfully busy,” Kade replied.

Shiva chuckled at that.

“I want you to see that I have no ill intentions. That I’d use your back door for good. We’d use it together. There’s a place for you here. A safe place, where you can do important work.”

He’d heard this all before. From Su-Yong Shu. From Holtzmann, even, before they’d sent him off to Bangkok.

“What do you hope to accomplish?” Kade asked Shiva.

Shiva looked out towards the sea. “There are more than a million people running Nexus 5 now, Kade. A year from now it will be many times that. Among those people are scientists, engineers, executives at powerful corporations, bankers, even politicians.”

Kade said nothing.

“The world has very serious problems, my friend,” Shiva went on. “Poor children still die by their millions. Westerners and the global rich – like me – live in post-scarcity society, while a billion people struggle to get enough to eat. And we’re pushing the planet towards a tipping point, where the corals die and the forests burn and life becomes much, much harder. We have the resources to solve those problems, even now, but politics and economics and nationalism all get in the way. If we could access all those minds, though…” Shiva paused, his eyes far away.

“We’ve done tests. Bright people linked together via Nexus become even brighter as whole. Interdisciplinary groups benefit especially. The children born with Nexus, well, they are even more impressive. They can serve as catalysts, boosting the collective intelligence of the group.

“With access to so many talented minds, we could harness scientists and engineers to invent the technologies we need to save the planet, to end poverty and starvation. We could nudge banks and mega-corporations to invest in the projects the world needs, marshaling trillions in assets. We could intervene politically, gaining inside information about world leaders, using it to steer them in the directions we need, to force them if necessary.”

Kade was speechless. “You’re talking about a massive scale…”

Shiva nodded. “Yes. I’ve been investing a large fraction of my own fortune to make it possible. Software to sift through and coordinate millions of minds at once. Data centers around the world to hold all that data, to provide all those CPU cycles. Private communication networks, microsatellites in low earth orbit, all of it.”

Kade struggled for words. “Shiva, this is horrific. This is mass manipulation.”

Shiva turned to look at Kade, visibly bristling. “Really? Is it worse than the manipulations of banks, twisting laws to their own purposes? Of mega-corporations twisting laws for their profits at the expense of the world’s citizens?” His voice was angry, passion-filled. “Is it worse than financiers and corrupt politicians dining on pâté and caviar, while poor children starve?”

Kade exhaled, then shook his head. “Look, the world has problems. I agree with you. But what you’re talking about... No one should have that kind of power.”

Shiva snorted. “No one but you .” He pointed an accusatory finger at Kade. “Isn’t that what you mean?”

Kade felt a flush rise to his cheeks, felt his face go hot.

He’s right, Ilya whispered in Kade’s ear. No one but you.