Ramez Naam - Nexus

"So you're a brain guy. Have you heard of this drug Nexus?" she asked.

Kade nodded cautiously. "I've heard of it."

"They say it's some sort of nano-structure, not really just a drug. And that it links brains. Is that possible?"

Kade shrugged. "We can do it with wires and with radios. Why not with something you swallow? As long as it gets into the brain…"

"Yeah, but does it actually work?"

"I've heard it does," Kade replied.

"You've never tried it?"

He grinned. "That would be illegal."

Sam grinned back.

"Have you tried it?" he asked her.

She shook her head. "I had a chance in New York last year, but I missed it. It's all dried up on the East Coast."

A first-timer, Kade thought to himself. We could use more first-time females for the study…

He hesitated. "It's dried up out here too. A lot of busts lately."

Sam nodded.

Kade missed whatever she said next. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of something. Some one . Frances.

Oh, fuck.

"…total asshole. He was so rude."

Her back was to him. She hadn't seen him yet.

"…seizure or something. He needs help. Professional help."

The back door. He started to edge towards it.

"Kade? Everything OK?"

Sam. He looked at her. "I've got to go. Sorry. Hope I see you again."

He left her there as he hustled out the door.

Samantha Cataranes watched as Kaden Lane fled the party.

Did I spook him? she wondered. Must have.

Her eyes flicked to a readout at the corner of her tactical contact display. It was red. Off the charts red. The sensor on the necklace she wore had picked up clear Nexus transmissions. Whatever Kaden Lane might say, he had not only tried Nexus before, he'd been using it this very night, in quantities beyond any they'd seen in a human before.

How very odd to be using that drug here, when no one else was. What good was Nexus without another Nexus user for it to bridge a connection to?

Time would tell. She would find another way into their little circle. Rangan Shankari, perhaps.

Sam turned and looked for someone else to chat up. Her cover required it.

Kade soared through a three-dimensional maze of neurons and nano-devices. Nano-filament antennae crackled with life as Nexus nodes sent and received data. Vast energies accumulated in neuronal cell bodies, reached critical thresholds, surged down long axons to pulse into thousands more neurons. Code readouts advanced in open windows around him. Parameter values moved as he watched.

After the debacle of the party, debugging the code running in his own brain was bliss. His body lay safely in his bed. His mind exulted inside the Nexus development environment, tracing the events that had led to the fault. Here he was in his element.

He traced the events of the night through the logs, through the pulses of Nexus nodes and neurons in his brain, until he found the place where Nexus OS had faulted. He traced system parameters backwards in time until he understood what had happened. Nexus nodes had fired in response to excited neurons and triggered an uncontrolled cascade. They needed more bounds checking. It was a simple fix. The code opened itself to him, changed in response to his thoughts. He compiled it, tested it, fixed a new bug he'd introduced, repeated until he was done.

Reluctantly, he left the world inside his mind, and came back to the senses of his body. It was then that he remembered the other girl. Samara.

They could still use another first-time female subject for the study tomorrow to test out the changes they'd made to calibration. They had their minimum sample size, but another wouldn't hurt. Would she fit? Yes. Was that foolish? Perhaps. But they really could use another first-time female…

And she did happen to be smart, funny, and good looking…

He pulled out his slate, projected it onto the wall, and paid a reputation bot to look up everything there was to know about Samara Chavez of New York City.

There she was. Samara A. Chavez. Reputation green.

He drilled into the details. Two degrees of separation from Kade. A Brooklyn address. Thousands of pictures of her online. Mentions of her at various data archeology conferences and online forums. A business license for a private consultancy. No mention on narc sites. No face match against suspected narc photos. The bot summarized her as legit and reputable.

Always use a second source , Wats had said.

He paid for a credit verification service to check her out as well. She came back with an address that matched, a phone number that matched the one she listed online, a decent credit record, no convictions, no gaps in employment and education. Everything was consistent.

Kade yawned and checked the time. It was almost two in the morning. Was there anything else to check? He couldn't think of anything.

He fired off an invitation to Sam's public address. Would she like to attend a party Saturday night? A party where she might be able to find a certain something she'd asked about? He couldn't tell her where, but he'd be happy to pick her up.

Reread. Send.

Then he stripped off his clothes and collapsed into bed.

Sam kicked, blocked, punched, dodged, kicked again. Imaginary enemies fell.

Across the room, a new message chime sounded. The tone was keyed to Kaden Lane.

Sam ignored the sound and continued her blurringly fast path through the hundred and eight steps of the kata she was practicing, her limbs moving with superhuman grace and precision through a four hundred year-old sequence of strikes, parries, and evasions.

Focus, Nakamura had taught her. Absorb yourself in your task. Leave all the rest aside.

She let the message wait as she completed the kata. Only when she was done and had bowed to the empty room did she turn, limbs trembling slightly, brow beaded with sweat, and ask her slate to show her the message.

It appeared in the air before her. A message to Samara Chavez. An invitation to a party. A party where, he hinted, she could try Nexus.

Guess I didn't spook him so badly after all, Sam thought to herself.

She waved away the slate's projection and the image evaporated. She'd respond tomorrow at a reasonable hour.

Samantha Cataranes turned back towards the center of the room, bowed to the air, and began the next kata .

BRIEFING

Transhuman – noun –

A human being whose capabilities have been enhanced such that they now exceed normal human maxima in one or more important dimensions.

An incremental step in human evolution.

Posthuman – noun –

A being which has been so radically transformed by technology that it has gone beyond transhuman status and can no longer be considered human at all.

Any member of a species which succeeds humans, whether having originated from humanity or not.

The next major leap in human evolution.

Oxford English Dictionary, 2036 Edition

2

CLOSE DOOR, OPEN MIND

Saturday 2040.02.18 : 0612 hours

The lump on his forearm was red, agitated. It stood out against his dark skin. Wats rubbed at it. It felt hard, hot to the touch. Skin peeled away under his fingers. He was bloody underneath. He peered at the uncovered tumor. Deep within it he could almost see the broken strands of DNA, his chromosomes fraying like split ends, giving birth to the cancers that would eat him. Another lump caught his attention. Another. His wrist was covered with them. His hands. His arm. In horror he ripped open his shirt. Red, angry lumps were growing on his chest, on his belly. They were rising, expanding, spreading as he watched, covering him…

Wats jerked awake.