Ramez Naam - Nexus

Canyon, parakeet, cherry.

She saw it, felt it. Awareness awoke within his mind. Denial. Confusion. Realization. He thrashed mentally and physically. She covered his mouth with her hand, held him tight, as gently as she could, blanketed his mind with comfort, with hushes, with reassurance. There was no danger. They were safe. Safe. She had to tell him something. About her. It was wonderful. It was awful.

He quieted after a while. She pulled her hand away.

"Sam… What the hell? What's going on? What are you doing?

"Shhh… Kade… I'm sorry to pull you away. I just have to get this out. You're the only one."

"Get what out?" He saw some of it then. The horror. The violence. The deaths. "Oh no… oh no… Sam…"

She sent comfort. "No, Kade… It's OK. Really. It's all long long ago. It was awful. I was young. But… I'm better now. I'm the best I've ever been. I think I'm OK for the first time, maybe ever."

He stared at her, not comprehending.

"Kade, I just have to share this with someone, please. It's overwhelming. I have to get it out. Will you listen? Please?" She released her grip on him, opened her mind to him, sent him her need, her longing, the overwhelming urge to release the demons from her head, from her heart, to show him what she'd learned.

He nodded, slowly, looking into her eyes. He felt troubled, surprised. The drugs were riding him hard with empathy as well. He felt compelled to connect, to understand.

"OK. I'll listen."

• • • •

On the Boca Raton Jane Kim listened to the conversation. This was not good.

"Sir," she said to Garrett Nichols. "We have a problem. Blackbird has dropped cover. The false persona is down. She's brought Canary's down as well."

"What?" Nichols asked. He checked the time. There were still many hours of Nexus effects left for them. "Get her back in character."

In the living room, old Niran rubbed his chin thoughtfully. The Lane boy had said many interesting things. Most of them were beyond his understanding.

Still, the capabilities he'd hinted at were clear. And he knew someone who would be very interested in learning more. He considered, decided.

Niran went into the other room, found his phone, made the call. The conversation was brief. Yes, the person he'd called was indeed interested. He understood that the boy was leaving Thailand in a few days. Yes, he was in Bangkok. He was occupied at the moment, but would come by in a few hours.

Niran hung up the phone, smiled to himself. It would be wonderful to see Thanom again.

35

ROOTS

"I wasn't born Samantha Cataranes. I was born Sarita Catalan. I grew up in southern California, in a little town near San Diego. My parents were Roberto and Anita. They both worked in bioinformatics, had met on the job. I had a sister, Ana." Sorrow welled up from her. Tears began to flow again, silently running down the side of her face. Kade felt troubled, concerned, empathic. He stroked her hair, sent kindness.

"My parents were hippies. The kind of hippies who worked in tech but went camping with the family, had singalongs with friends. There were always a lot of friends around the first few years. I think my parents smoked pot." It made her laugh, even through the tears. Kade kept stroking her hair.

"When I was eight, and my sister was four, the company where they worked was acquired by a bigger company. They had the option of relocating to Boston, or cashing out with a big severance payment. They took the latter." Her voice took on a faraway quality. She began to show Kade with her mind as she told him.

"Some friends of theirs had moved to a place in New Mexico. They'd joined a kind of white collar commune. Everyone did some sort of work they could do remotely. Computer people, consultants, analysts, visual design people, some radiologists and lawyers. They all lived on this ranch. The idea was to raise kids together, to live in a place where they could share parenting duties, where they could be a little shielded from the law, maybe do some hippie things together."

The images came across as bright and colorful. Kids running around in the New Mexico sunshine, smiling grownups picking them up and swooping them through the air, pushing them on the swings.

"They had some shared rules and rituals. There was a Sunday night thing all the families had to go to. Somewhere between a church service and a town hall. It was a hippie thing." Her tears had stopped. She was trembling, though, anticipating something to come.

Annoyance flashed across Sam's face. They were hailing her. Her superiors. Her eyes flicked to one side, silenced a notification.

She looked back at Kade, became present with him again.

"The place was called Yucca Grove." She swallowed.

She saw Kade frown, the name familiar, reaching for the memory… "Yucca Grove? Isn't that where…?" His eyes went wide. Something chilled him. He pulled her closer. "Oh no, oh, Sam, I'm so sorry."

"Shhhh. It's OK. I have to finish this."

He held her as she spoke, as she showed him with her mind.

"The first couple years were good. Really fun." Laughter. Carefully contained bonfires in the back. Two dozen "cousins" and playmates. Hiking in the green Sangre de Cristo mountains. And love, love, love. Her mother's kind face and melodic voice. Her father's mischievous sense of humor. Her sister's squeals of delight at each new prank and trick they played together.

"Then it started to change." A listlessness in her parents. Laughter draining out. Smiles only during the rapture of Sunday nights. A rapture she didn't share. A rapture Ana didn't share. Then the bad men.

"It was called the Communion virus. It tweaked the brain. It was supposed to bring people closer together, make them less selfish, more empathic. It did something to the temporal lobe, one of the circuits involved in religious experience. It was supposed to put people closer to God. It did that. It also made them slaves." Anger rose up in her. The bad men. The ones who were immune. The way they took over the enclave. The way they made everyone else serve them. Stole their money. Crushed their spirits. The control. The abuses.

"Some of the survivors claimed that the whole commune had chosen to take it together. Some say they never took it, that someone used it against them as a weapon. I can imagine my parents trying it voluntarily. They weren't scared. They loved the idea of group living, of altruism, of harmony." It came out bitter. She was still angry with her parents. Angry that they'd failed to protect her. No… not her. That they'd failed to protect Ana.

"I don't know. I can't ask them. They died." Kade was numb, horrified, concerned, just watching, listening, empathizing, trying to comfort her with his mind, with his arm around her and his hand stroking her face.

"There were thirteen of them that ran the place after that." Their faces filled her mind. The memory of their cruelties, their abuses. The cigarette burn on her thigh. The blow that had knocked a tooth out of her mouth. Worse. Much, much worse…

"The prophet and his twelve disciples. All men."

She flicked her eyes to one corner to dismiss another message from her superiors, brought her eyes back to his.

Kade swallowed. He wanted to look away, wanted to not hear this, not know this. He endured. He held her and listened, sent her what comfort he could.

"The prophet. He was a bastard. He was naturally immune. It didn't drag him down. He figured out that he could make all the rest do what he wanted. He found the others, the ones with the most resistance, all men. Made them his disciples. Let them have anything they wanted, as long as they reinforced his control."

"They set themselves up as gods. The Sunday night meeting… it became worship. The virus made everyone want to believe. They used every trick in the book to set themselves up as gods and everyone worshipped them."