Ramez Naam - Nexus

Becker smiled faintly. "That's a very reasonable suggestion. We wondered the same. And of course we wanted to be sure. Fortunately, during his trip to the US last month, President Liu also became ill." Becker smiled faintly again. "CIA took that as an opportunity to run a few tests on President Liu's blood and cerebrospinal fluid. His blood was clean, but in his cerebrospinal fluid, they found signs of something that looks suspiciously like Nexus. That there are no signs of it in the bloodstream suggests to us that the Nexus-like substance isn't deteriorating and being flushed out of his brain as normal. The technology has been permanently integrated. Something that you seem to have achieved as well."

Holtzmann spoke again. "We look forward to hearing the details of just how you've achieved this."

Kade felt ill.

Becker went on. "We have another two dozen events we think are cases of Chinese compulsion technology at work. Do you see why we're concerned?"

"Yes," Kade said. And he did. They'd built Nexus OS to give people new freedoms, new ways to connect, new ways to learn. Not to use it as a tool for control or assassination.

"You asked about the involvement of Dr Shu. We're now getting to that. First, we have human intelligence indicating that for the past several years, she's been working with the Chinese military on coercion technologies of some sort. Second, we have direct evidence linking her to part of the Chinese supersoldier program."

Becker tapped again, and the picture changed to a group of Asian soldiers in a parade. Something about the grain and focus suggested to Kade that the photo had been taken from very far away with a very long zoom lens.

"Do you notice anything interesting about this photo?" Becker asked.

Kade studied it, not sure what he was looking for. The soldiers were in their twenties, muscular and fit, with identical crew cuts, dress uniforms, and sophisticated rifles of some kind against their right shoulders. They were all poised in mid-step, postures erect and in complete synchrony, faces cold and blank. He wondered if he was supposed to recognize one of them? Asian faces all looked a bit alike to him. Though these faces looked extremely alike, a trick of the haircuts? Or…

"They're identical," he said.

Becker nodded. "This is a detachment of the Confucian Fist special forces battalion. They're clones, which is itself a violation of Copenhagen. We also have reports that this battalion, the most elite in China's armed forces, has been engineered for unshakable loyalty."

Kade shuddered. He had a flash of memories of newscasts from his teens, the Nazi clone kids, the ones who'd tried to wipe out all of humanity. Rows of them, filing out from the compound, eyes totally cold. Killers at age ten. He tried to suppress it.

Becker saw the reaction. "You're thinking of the Aryan Rising case. We haven't seen any major cloning projects since then. Nothing at this level. Not until now."

Kade shook his head, forced himself to think like a scientist.

"They're just twins," he said. "That's all cloning is. The Nazi kids… they had programming beyond that. Just because someone's a clone doesn't make them evil… any more than any twin is."

Becker nodded thoughtfully. "Sure. You're right. Just twins. But you have to ask yourself, why would someone create a couple hundred copies of the same twin?"

Kade shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe they want blood transfusions to be easier. Or organ transplants."

Becker nodded again, seeming to consider this. "Or maybe they want conformity. Control. Maybe they want predictability. Maybe they want to do really invasive neuro-coercion, and making the brain structure as similar as possible makes that easier, eh?" Becker raised an eyebrow at him.

Kade looked at the cold, hard, identical faces of the clone soldiers again. Becker's answer was all too plausible.

"And indeed," Becker went on, "you can see them deployed in a number of the situations where absolute, unquestioning loyalty would be most demanded. You can see two of them here." The wall flipped to an image of the Chinese premier, with two bodyguards in view. They had the same face as the soldiers he'd just seen. "Another one here, with Dr Shu." The screen showed a picture of Su-Yong Shu entering her car. The driver holding open the door was one of the clones. "And another one here, with Su-Yong Shu's husband, Chen Pang, head of the artificial intelligence program at Jiaotong University." A shot of a no-nonsense looking Chinese man in a suit, crossing a plaza, caught in the middle of a purposeful stride, a dark-suited bodyguard at his side, again with the same face.

"That Dr Shu and her husband have Confucian Fist bodyguards isn't damning in and of itself. But take a look at this." The screen showed four rows of Confucian Fist soldiers, arms clasped behind their backs in parade rest. In front of them, facing the camera was a smiling Su-Yong Shu, her arms spread as if to point out the young men behind her. Unlike the other photos, the soldiers were smiling in this one.

"This was a graduation ceremony for a class, or batch, of Confucian Fist. Why is Dr Shu there if she wasn't involved in the program? And given that she's a neuroscientist who's been fingered for working on coercion technologies, and that these soldiers are reputed to be engineered for unshakable loyalty… Well, it doesn't take much to connect the dots."

Kade opened his mouth to interject, but Becker kept talking.

"One more piece of evidence," Becker said.

The screen changed again. Now it showed a market, somewhere in the tropics, perhaps Southeast Asia. Su-Yong Shu was in the middle of the photo, delightedly holding an exotic fruit of some sort to her nose. Next to her was a lean, tall Asian man wearing dark sunglasses.

"This photo was taken in Chiang Mai, Thailand, two years ago. The man next to Dr Shu is Thanom 'Ted' Prat-Nung. Ted PratNung is an American-educated Thai synthetic chemist and nano-engineer. Forty-two years old. PhD from Stanford in 2024, where he focused on self-assembling nano-structures. Postdoc at Jiaotong University in Shanghai from 2024 through 2026, where it's possible he met Su-Yong Shu. His whereabouts between 2026 and 2034 are unknown. After 2034 he re-emerges as a major source of Nexus 3. We believe he synthesizes it in a facility or set of facilities in the eastern provinces of Thailand, close to the border with Cambodia. He's someone we'd very much like to get our hands on, but the Thai government has not been cooperative. Prat-Nung and Shu's research interests essentially do not overlap at all. Seeing them together is provocative, to say the least.

"To summarize, we believe that Su-Yong Shu is one of – if not the primary – scientist behind China's neurotech program focused on coercion, and that in this work she's somehow adapted Nexus 3. We're concerned both about what China could do with this technology and, perhaps even more so, what knowledge SuYong Shu might pass back into the black market via her connection with someone like Ted Prat-Nung."

Kade took a deep breath.

Don't buy into what they're selling, he told himself. These people will lie or distort the truth to convince me. Stay skeptical. Learn for yourself.

"So why me?" he asked.

Becker answered, "You're about to get an invite to a special workshop on decoding higher brain functions, to be held immediately after the upcoming International Society for Neuroscience conference in Bangkok. Su-Yong Shu arranged the invitation. You'll be the only grad student at the invite-only workshop. Everyone else is a tenured professor. That indicates some degree of exceptional interest in you. We know Shu has open postdoctoral positions in her lab, and you're going to get your PhD in the next year. Your work already builds on some of hers. It seems like a good fit."