Ramez Naam - Crux

The call came in a few minutes before midnight. Chen jumped as he saw the name. Sun Liu! The Minister of Science and Technology was calling him here!

He rushed into his bedroom, tapped the panel beside the door to seal the room, flicked to a different screen on the room control, and activated the privacy filter.

Then he took a deep breath and accepted the call.

“Chen.” Sun Liu’s voice was strained.

“Minister,” Chen replied. “I’ve tried everything, I assure you. Manipulation of her volition centers. Direct pain stimulation. Pulsed pain and pleasure. I assure you, I’ve tortured her, everything possible has been tried.”

“Chen,” Sun Liu interrupted. “It’s over. We’ve lost.”

Chen caught his breath. The minister sounded tired. No. Not tired.

Frightened.

“How…” Chen started. “How bad?”

There was silence on the line. Then Sun Liu spoke again. “They won’t call it a coup,” the Minister said. “I will… probably… be allowed to retire, rather than face…”

Sun Liu’s voice broke and he went silent.

Chen held his breath, and the Minister finished.

“Rather than face prosecution.”

Chen let out an involuntary noise.

“Everything has changed, Chen,” Sun Liu said. “Shanghai… whatever happened there, it has frightened the people, frightened the Assembly. It’s put the hardliners in the ascendency.”

Chen’s heart was pounding. “What… What…”

“They’ll want people to remain calm,” Sun Liu said. “They’ll do their best to make it look seamless. A period of ill health for the Secretary General. An early retirement , with great honors. A change in membership of the Standing Committee. New laws, for public safety, public order. Steps to avoid another Shanghai. Restrictions on dangerous technology, dangerous research.”

Sun Liu’s voice wavered as he spoke. He sounded so old, Chen thought. So beaten. The fear came through beneath his voice. “They’ll avoid outright murder,” the Minister continued. “I believe they will. Yes.”

Chen was sweating.

“Your wife,” Sun Liu said. “You must shut her down. Tomorrow. You must give them no excuse.”

Chen heard nothing after that. He barely remembered placing the calls to his staff, his assistant Li-hua. Tomorrow morning. They’d meet. They’d initiate the final backup. Then they’d shut her down.

And hope the hardliners didn’t take their heads as well.

Ling followed her father with her mind, routed around the room’s pitiful privacy filters, listened in to the call with the apartment’s audio monitors.

Later, she could not recall all that was said. Only fragments stuck with her through the haze of anger and grief, the overwhelming loss that poured through her, forcing tears from her human eyes.

“…tried everything… pain stimulation… tortured her…”

“…useless to us now… backup and deactivate… tomorrow…”

Her world went white, then, white-hot with the rage and loss. They were going to kill her mother! She felt the anger building inside her, felt the urge to lash out, to destroy this city, to topple the buildings, light them on fire, to kill them all, every single one of these humans who wanted to kill her mommy!

Her rage pulsated within her, straining to get out.

No, no , a voice whispered inside her. Not that way!

Aaaaaah! she screamed inside her mind, blind with the anger, with the urge to rip and rend at the electronic fabric of the city.

They’ll catch you! the voice whispered.

She pounded her tiny hands against the wall instead, channeled the rage towards something that would not lead them to her. Her fists pounded the wall.

And one of the panels slid away. There behind it was the freezer. The freezer she’d known was here. The freezer that held no food. The freezer that held something else entirely.

74

A LAST DEBATE

Saturday November 3rd

Kade came to slowly. There was an aching pain in his head, in his right hand. Light was shining in behind his closed eyelids.

He opened his eyes to find himself back in the room he’d occupied for the last week. A splint and bandages covered his right hand and most of his forearm. He didn’t even want to think about the damage he’d done to that.

Breakfast was laid out for him already. His body was hungry, but he couldn’t bring himself to eat.

So stupid, he thought. He played me so easily .

Now Shiva had one of the back doors. And with that… he’d become a tyrant. Kade had seen it. A well-intentioned tyrant, at first. But that sort of power. It would corrupt anyone.

Like you? Ilya asked in his mind.

Yes , he told Ilya. Like me .

Shiva came to see him an hour later, a Nexus jammer around his neck. Smart man. Even now, he didn’t think he’d plumbed Kade’s depths. And he was right.

“My hand is still extended to you, Kade,” Shiva said. “Join me. We can save the world together.”

“Don’t do it,” Kade pleaded with him. “This can’t work. People have to find solutions on their own. It has to be from the bottom up.”

Shiva shook his head. “You’re naïve, my young friend. The world has no time left. Your way is a luxury we can’t afford. My way is the only option left to us.”

Kade shook his head. “You can’t keep it a secret,” he told Shiva. “They’ll find out what you’re doing. They’ll catch you. They’ll hate you for it. You’ll go down in history as a monster.”

Shiva held Kade’s eyes. “Let them call me a monster. At least they’ll have a future to do it in.”

Shiva stood atop the roof of his home. His eyes drank in the magnificent sea and sky. He spread his arms wide and the cool breeze blew his white cotton robe behind him like a cloak, like the wings of some supernatural being.

The code he’d captured from Kade had passed every test. Now vast machinery, long prepared in anticipation of this moment, leapt into action. Data centers around the world began humming. Microsatellites in low earth orbit began transmitting. Software tools flipped into an active mode.

Shiva closed his eyes, his arms still spread, his robe billowing behind him, and savored the feel of the sun on his skin and the wind in his hair. His thoughts spread across the island, up through uplinks to the constellation of satellites above, and out into the minds of thousands, tens of thousands, more every moment as the software agents his team had built spread out, replicated, infected every Nexus mind they found.

He could feel them. He could feel their intellect, their need. His vast computing machinery processed their inputs, collated it for him, coalesced it into a gestalt that he could wrap his own mind around. They were him. He was them.

He was a god, entwined with a spreading congregation of humanity. He was the burning spearpoint of a new planetary intelligence, a new superorganism.

And together, bit by bit, they would save this world.

75

SANCTUARY

Friday November 2nd

Rangan accepted the outstretched hand, pulled himself up with it to the road. He put Jose down, then he and this other man hauled the rest of the boys onto the muddy embankment, then into the ancient-looking white van.

“Get in front,” the man yelled to Rangan over the wind. Rangan nodded, opened the passenger side door and hauled himself in. Free!

He slammed the door as this man did the same on the driver’s side. The boys were in a stunned state of excitement in the back, babbling at each other, their minds giving off chaos and disbelief. Rangan studied the man who’d rescued them. Early thirties. Dark hair. Average build. Clean shaven. In a raincoat, with jeans and hiking boots showing beneath it.