Ramez Naam - Nexus

Outside, neither Peter North nor Kade were in control of his body. His hips jerked forward spastically, again and again. His hands gripped hard on Frances's shocked head. His still-clothed crotch was banging into her face on every pelvic thrust. His mouth was wide open, his eyes unfocused. An incoherent sound was escaping his throat.

"Ug. Ug. Ug."

[interface warning – max spikes per second > parameters]

[interface warning – max spikes per second > parameters]

[interface ERROR...]

Fuck fuck fuck.

[system halt], he commanded.

Nothing.

[system halt], he repeated.

Nothing.

[system halt] [system halt] [system fucking halt!]

Neuro-muscular stimulation ceased. Kade's inner displays went blank. His muscles relaxed. Hips stopped moving. Hands eased on Frances's head. Success!

Kade drew breath.

And then another hard spasm rolled across every muscle in his body, and another, and another…

What? Oh shit.

Kade was ejaculating.

He threw himself back from Frances, collapsing on the bed behind him, back arching and toes curling as some side effect of the stimulation threw him into a whole-body ecstasy. Laughter burst forth. Tears rolled down his face. He turned onto his side in bliss and confusion and hilarity and some deep warm sleepy sense of peace. Ahhhh.

"What the fuck was that?" Frances was on her feet, yelling at him. One hand was on her face. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Kade rolled over in a haze, opened his mouth to apologize, to explain, tried to pull himself up onto his feet. "Frances…"

"You stay there, jerk!" She leveled an accusing finger at him. "I'm walking out of this room, and if you so much as twitch, I'm gonna scream for help!"

She was backing towards the door.

"Hey, wait, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to… umm…"

"Shut up! Stupid ass one-minute wonder. Next time you wanna play rough, you ask first , asshole."

She opened the door, slammed it behind her. Through the door he heard, "Hey, there's some sicko freak in there…"

Well, he thought, that didn't work so well.

• • • •

Friday 2040.02.17 : 2347 hours

They were coming for him. The Corps. His brothers. He could hear the choppers, hear the small arms fire. They'd found the place he'd been taken to, the place he'd been held, the place where he'd gotten a long clear look into the pits of hell. You never leave a man behind. They were coming for him, and God help anyone who stood in their way.

Watson Cole woke with a start, drenched in sweat, his heart pounding in his chest, a lump in his throat. He was half upright in the bed, one massive dark-skinned arm raised as if to ward off a blow. He was shaking.

Fuck. Just a dream. Just another nightmare.

"Lights," he said aloud.

The small room lit up around him. The light pushed the terror back. This wasn't the KZ. This wasn't that war. This was his apartment in San Francisco.

He let his weight sink back into the mattress. The sheets were soaked in his night sweats.

Breathe. Relax. Breathe.

It had been the rescue, this time. The rescue and the girl. Lunara. He dreamt of all of them. Arman, Nurzhan, Temir. Most of all, Lunara. The ones who'd imprisoned him. The ones who'd used the drug called Nexus to pry open his mind, force themselves and so many others into him. The ones who'd jammed his head full of the hellish memories of the victims of that war. It had been two years, but still he dreamt of them. Still he dreamt their lives.

Why me? Why'd it have to be me?

He'd been at the wrong place at the wrong time. It was as simple as that. If he hadn't been…

I'd still be out there now. Killing for my country. Murdering. Ignorant. Blind. Happy.

And someone else would have this hell inside them.

Breathe. Relax the body. Breathe.

His heart was slowing now. The tremors were nearly gone. He glanced at the clock beside the bed. Not even midnight. He'd been asleep for just an hour. He looked at the nightstand, considered the bottle of pills in the top drawer. He could medicate himself into dreamless unconsciousness. But it was getting harder every time. The doses were increasing.

He hadn't asked for this hell, but it had come to him. He hadn't asked to have his eyes opened, but they had been. He hadn't asked for a chance at redemption, but it had been offered. Offered in the form of these young, idealistic kids that had made him a part of their family. Offered in the form of their modifications and improvements to Nexus, improvements that made it an even more powerful tool for touching the minds and hearts of others.

Nexus had changed him. It had shown him his actions through others' eyes. It has shown him the evil that he and all the other men like him had done. It had given him the urge to find a better way, to make a better world. And if it had done that to him, the hardest of men, what could it do for others?

Watson Cole rose and dressed for a run. He would push his superhumanly fit body to exhaustion. He wouldn't succumb to dependence on the meds. He would keep himself fit and hard. He had things to do before he paid for his crimes.

The drug that had transformed him could transform the world. He would make it happen.

Friday 2040.02.17 : 2355 hours

Damn, Kade thought. Bad time for a bug. He splashed water on his face in the bathroom, tried to collect himself. Time to sneak out of here, see if he could debug the crash he'd run into.

He opened the door from the washroom and into the crowded party. The back door would be the safest way out. He was halfway there, studiously avoiding eye contact, when he heard his name and felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey, Kade!" It was Dominique, the hostess. Shit.

"Kade, I want you to meet someone," Dominique went on. "This is Samara. Sam, meet Kaden Lane. Kade, meet Samara Chavez. Sam was telling me about an article she'd read that reminded me of your work."

Sam was in her mid to late twenties, with olive skin and straight black hair that fell to her shoulders. She was dressed in stylish black slacks and a clinging grey sweater. There were muscles under that sweater. She had the build of a swimmer.

"Nice to meet you, Kade. Dominique says you're getting your doctorate in brain-computer communication?"

Kade looked towards the back door. So close… "Yeah. Sanchez Lab at UCSF. What article was this?"

"Two monkeys, with parts of their brains wirelessly linked. One could see out of the other's eyes."

Warwick and Michelson. That one got some press.

"Yeah, that was a good paper," he said. "I work with those guys occasionally. They're over at Berkeley."

"Cool," Sam responded. "Is that what you work on too?"

Dominique made her exit.

Kade shuffled his feet a bit, keenly aware of the stain on the front of his trousers.

"A lot of our grants are for interfaces to control body functions – muscle control and so on."

Kade had a flash of his hips thrusting out of control at Frances's face. He hurried on.

"You know, to help paralyzed people move again. My thesis is on higher-level brain functions. Memory, attention, knowledge representation."

Kade paused, unsure how much she wanted to hear.

Sam picked up the thread. "Interesting. Did you see the one where they taught a mouse the layout of a maze, and other mice could learn it too, just by being wired up to its brain?"

Kade chuckled. "That was my paper. First one I wrote as a grad student. No one thought we could do it."

Sam raised an eyebrow. "No shit. That was impressive. Where are you going from there? Do you think that…"

Sam turned out to be surprisingly interested in neuroscience. She peppered him with questions on the brain, on his work, on what they planned next. Kade found himself forgetting the fiasco he'd just had and his plans of escape. And along the way he learned a few things about her. She worked in data archeology, helping companies mine old and disorganized systems for missing information. She lived in New York, and she was here in SF on a contract assignment for the next few months. She'd just arrived and was looking to make friends. She was funny, smart, and good looking. She laughed at his jokes. And it turned out that she shared one of his interests.