[ID]entity

by PJ Manney

  “You want we should lose? All that work?” chastised Ruth. “Those robots. Masterpieces of technology!”

  “Ruth,” said Major Tom. “They’re mechanical representatives, and therefore, expendable.”

  “It’s a w-w-w-waste!” wailed Ruth. “And they can hack them. And find out things. They’re not p-p-puppets! They’re you!”

  Major Tom realized that they were also the only version of him that she could bear to touch. “Then we can’t let anyone get them,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  While awaiting the promised information from Cai, Tom 2 lay on a bed with a shabby bedspread in an abandoned hotel room that needed a new layer of wallpaper and a deep cleaning. Lying supine was the least mechanically stressful position for a sexbot. The dust on the windowsill looked like it was a year thick. A sooty and rain-smeared window faced the ocean, and he looked out every thirty seconds to see if anything had changed. Nothing had, except the position of the sun, the clouds, and the flights of birds.

  Meanwhile, Major Tom did some thinking. Why China? Why cryptocurrencies? And why him?

  Start with first principles. The most desired state in economics was stability, with growth and reliable markets, which decreased the likelihood of internal insurrection. Add vigorous trade, and it decreases the potential for war between nations. Every attempt at economic innovation throughout history had been an attempt to achieve that desired state. Whether it was indeed the best state was not the point. Only that it was assumed to be, and had been for millennia.

  Once upon a time, the big technological change in currencies was paper money. Introduced during China’s Song dynasty in the eleventh century, the paper currency had no intrinsic value, but backed by a government and the faith of a community, it was used as a value placeholder in exchange for goods and services. No need to carry heavy gold or silver coins or to barter with a cow or its milk. A banknote was a magical thing. People could accumulate and exchange wealth without having to lug it around. Or hide it in a hole in the ground. Or feed it. People needed only a pocket or purse to hold it. A government could print more when inflation was desirable, or remove it from circulation when not. It made the trade for goods and services easier, more efficient, more likely to spur growth.

  Marco Polo brought the idea back to Europe in the thirteenth century. He was so astounded by the notion that he titled a chapter in his travel book “How the Great Kaan Causeth the Bark of Trees, Made into Something Like Paper, to Pass for Money All Over his Country.” It took a few centuries for paper money to catch on in the West.

  A millennium passed before a new concept for currency was developed, beginning with a digital currency called Bitcoin. As with most technologies, it wasn’t the front-end tech—in this case, the currency itself—that became the killer app. Instead, the decidedly unsexy mechanics on the back end made Bitcoin work: the blockchain, which recorded transactions in permanent, sharable, provable, and retrievable digital forms.

  But it didn’t remain that way for long.

  As with so many powerful technologies before it, the creators assumed that an endless revolution in creative, economic, and personal freedom would miraculously continue unabated. With cryptocurrency, money was finally democratic, no longer beholden to powerful, oligarchic, national entities. But technologies never turn out as rosy as they first appear. Eli Whitney thought the cotton gin would free Southern slaves of difficult labors, but it enabled the growth of one of the most successful and brutal slave economies in history, leading to a civil war that took the lives of seventy-five thousand soldiers and left its mark for the next two centuries.

  Unintended consequences were hard to predict and prepare for. Major Tom’s would-be Buddhist enlightenment clearly hadn’t stuck the landing.

  Revolutions did result from the births of these technologies, but they weren’t all about freedom. The booster’s naive faith in rational economic actors; optimism for the future; confidence in their own intelligence; and finally, a lack of understanding about complexity, supersystems, cascading effects, and the unpredictability of human nature fueled a resistance to making such a revolution impenetrable to corruption. Creators of cryptocurrency technologies liked to claim that their systems were theoretically foolproof, because they couldn’t imagine anyone going to the incredible trouble of gaming their systems. But they weren’t foolproof. Their systems proved only that they were fools.

  Their gullible assumptions that the rest of the world possessed the same values and goals was touching. Major Tom was endlessly fascinated by the failure of the supersmart and technologically cloistered to understand how the world worked, again and again and again, regardless of the disastrous examples of history. But perhaps that was for the best. Without their blind trust in the future, technological innovation might not happen at all. Inventors would be too scared to innovate.

  He had been one of them, once. As Peter Bernhardt, he had found it impossible to imagine weaponizing his lifesaving technologies. Instead, when the Phoenix Club stole his Alzheimer’s cures to use as mind-control on Americans and the world, he had watched as his plowshares were smelt into swords.

  But now the eternal battle was swinging back. In short order, blockchain technologies were replicated and privatized by the biggest companies and nations on earth, all in the name of cost reduction and efficiency. Millions of jobs had disappeared. The tools of freedom had become the tools of control. And too-big-to-fail enterprises were all about control.

  The Chinese had figured out how to manage the digital, cryptocurrency, and blockchain revolutions early on. Control the production of the cheap electronics that run the blockchain, and you control the world. And the Chinese government owned the land, much of it unusable for anything other than isolated concrete bunkers, powered for free by local hydroelectric plants. And the Chinese loved mining for cryptocurrencies. They had a proverb: —in English, it meant, “A day without mining is like a day without kung pao chicken.”

  In no time, China had controlled much more than 51 percent of the world’s blockchains, which meant enough for a coordinated 51 percent attack. The decentralized processing of cryptocurrencies was, in fact, extremely centralized inside a single nation. That’s why seasteads took up the business so aggressively, to combat Chinese control with an alternative to a system too easily gamed by national players with national agendas. The seasteads wanted to put the “trust” back into “trustless” systems.

  That explained “why China?” And “why cryptocurrencies?”

  The question the world was asking was, Which side will succeed? He wondered what the human cost would be. What was the emotional and practical fallout of another economic crisis, much bigger than the last? How many knocks could civilization endure before collapsing?

  Major Tom might help with that.

  Cai knocked on the door and walked into the hotel room.

  “We found the boat,” he said. “And we intercepted a message. They are coming to the Qi Jiguang statue tonight.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Edwin Rosero’s body lay on the Zumwalt’s operating table, connected to life support and a gaggle of monitoring machines. While Major Tom and Ruth still had much of the medical equipment they had used for Tom’s previous surgeries on the Pequod, they added newer robotic machines to complete tasks that would otherwise require a larger medical team. Instead of a pair of superskilled hands, a surgeon was more a robot driver and process overseer, knowing where the robotic hands and tools would go through analysis of hi-res 3-D brain images. The robot would place the instruments in the necessary locations with uncanny accuracy.

  Major Tom had paid Dr. José Irizarry to come back. Irizarry had helped with Thomas Paine’s transformational surgery, implanting an intravascular nanowire neural-enhancement system into his body and brain. No longer on the run from Cuba’s involuntary medical servitude in Venezuela since both countries’ collapses, Irizarry was an interventional neuroradiologist in Miami. With Florida poorer than e
ver and President Conrad’s SSA Army on the march south through the state, patients were hard to come by. Irizarry was more than willing to come and try Major Tom’s latest crazy idea in exchange for lots of cash in his new Swiss bank account and a new identity in California.

  They had moved one of the 3-D domes and desks into a corner of the operating room so both Irizarry and Steve could feel like they, along with the robot, were inside a giant version of Rosero’s brain.

  Steve looked at the dome with dread. He pulled Talia aside. “I wish the robot could do it all.”

  “Not so fast,” she said, putting her arm around his shoulders. “You thought that image system was amazing yesterday. I saw you playing and practicing in there. Looked like you were enjoying it.”

  Steve sighed.

  “I know,” said Talia. “But just like last time, I don’t know how to do this without you.”

  Ruth said to Major Tom, “Yes. Too much déjà vu. All over again.”

  “Sí,” said Dr. Irizarry with a giggle.

  Steve smiled. “You still don’t know when you make a joke, do you, Ruth?”

  Ruth’s eyelids fluttered as she tried to squint at Steve.

  Talia studied the vials on the table. “I thought you said no more nanobots?” she asked.

  “Well,” muttered Ruth, “Prometheus’s respirocytes and microbivores.”

  “It’s a good idea,” said Steve. “So the body heals quickly. And if he gets in trouble later. You can’t object, since we sold those bots for the past two years.”

  Talia rolled her eyes and pointed. “And those?”

  “Neural dust,” said Ruth. “Much safer than macrosensors and carbon nanowires.”

  “There are no wires or infection issues that I can see,” Steve added. “The dust uses ultrasound for diagnostics and communications, they’re smaller than nanobots, and they fit anywhere. Remember, love, ‘first do no harm.’” He tried to smile.

  Ruth leaned in, in a stage whisper to Talia and Steve. “And he,” she said, jerking her head toward the monitor, “can’t mess with them. As much. No more psychic drek. Like he had last time. With macrosensors. Hopefully. That scared me.”

  “Me, too,” said Talia. “I thought he was insane.”

  “And you think this isn’t?” said Steve.

  Ruth pointed at a large syringe. “And inside this. Neural lace. Same as Carter.” Neural lace was a flexible mesh of electrical circuitry that could be injected by a syringe between the cortex and the brain membrane. From there it spread to the surface of the brain, making contact, training neural pathways to connect to it, communicate, and learn.

  Major Tom spoke from the monitor, “Carter showed us the surgery video for a reason. He wants a human version of me out there with him. Embodiment gives us both agency in the physical world, but it also fulfills some fantasy or obsession he has. I’ll take the bait.”

  “Please don’t say you think like Carter now,” said Steve. “He’s insane.”

  “Ruth and I are both trying to think like Carter,” said Major Tom. “I understand in theory how he did the surgery. I’m betting he hasn’t invented anything new. That’s never been his talent. We’re both taking bits off the shelf and putting them together. So, in theory . . . ”

  “In theory, this could all go horribly wrong,” said Steve.

  “Like any surgery,” said Tom. “This young man wasn’t going to live anyway. If we succeed, it’s a miracle. If not, he’s no worse off.”

  Steve sat on a surgeon’s stool with his head bowed.

  “You know what’s at stake, Steve,” said Major Tom. “He’s tried to destroy all of us. We need to stop him. And I need your help to do it.”

  Talia approached Steve from behind and wrapped her arms around him. She whispered, “I’m here. Just remember how much I love you.” She kissed his ear.

  He grabbed her arms around his chest and held them tight. “I only do this for you. You know that, right?”

  Major Tom had other things on his mind. He knew Steve would stay and complete the surgery. He knew it would work. Lives depended on it. Winter was proof-of-concept. He played the Flaming Lips’ “Brainville” and dreamed of enlarging his space into a human.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  After driving through a scenic park, Cai parked the old-model autonomous BMW. He pointed to the Qi Jiguang statue in the distance. “I cannot come with you. I may be recognized, since I do not know who you are meeting. Follow the path and the bridge to the statue. Send me a message when you are finished here, and alone, and I’ll come to get you. Good luck.”

  “Thank you,” said Tom 2, getting out of the car.

  The robocar pulled away.

  The ticket booth for the Qi Jiguang’s statue was closed. The Chinese were strict about visitors’ hours, and the area was deserted. The sun shone low over the mainland. Shadows lengthened. An owl hooted. Switching his view to infrared, Tom 2 saw more animals. But no humans. He trod carefully past some pagoda-shaped structures. As far as his sensors could tell, they were empty.

  A path led down the hillside along a crenellated concrete wall to two heavy concrete posts with attached steel cables. In front of Tom 2 lay a steel cable and plastic-plank, pedestrian suspension bridge, approximately two hundred feet long. The planks looked like large, flat Lego blocks: primary blue, red, and yellow. They led over the rocks and the East China Sea to a tall, rocky outcropping topped with the massive concrete statue of China’s great military leader, Qi Jiguang.

  Fifty feet tall, Qi Jiguang bravely lunged forward, reaching for his sword in its sheath. The warrior was backed by a loaded cannon, poised to defend the Wenzhou coast from another onslaught of pirates. The Ming dynasty general was legendary. Five hundred years ago, his tactics were relentless and surprisingly modern. He created martial arts that were not pretty, but they were practical and deadly. He trained a nation to grow into a great global power. With his martial skills, China overcame a scourge of piracy from both foreign and domestic enemies. Qi Jiguang fought most of his career from the stronghold of Zhejiang province, including Wenzhou and Dongtou Island. But in an irony not lost on the modern Chinese, Qi Jiguang drew his sword at the island and the mainland, not toward the ocean. The general and his cannon aimed inward, at his fellow Chinese, not out at seafaring, foreign invaders.

  Planks of the footbridge jiggled unsteadily under Tom 2’s heavy footfalls. Gripping the steel cables with each step, his gyros whirred loudly. He tried in vain to compensate for the complicated physics. If a small child could master this instinctively, why couldn’t he?

  The bridge swayed slightly, then increased its swing rapidly. His movements were too metronomic and amplified the bridge’s mechanical resonance. He stopped after ten steps, trying to imagine jazz syncopation, African cross rhythms, humming a riff, concentrating on matching his movements to the changing beats.

  His stiff movements looked like the Tin Man dancing across a bridge to the Emerald City in The Wiz. And that was a song with great syncopation. So he danced to “Ease On Down the Road.” The concrete Qi Jiguang made a good Wizard in his throne room.

  As he skipped, a ping from his automated search on Cai Shuxian rang. After more than twelve hours, even at his servers’ fastest processing speed, only one photo had appeared, with tangential links and possible connections. Cai Shuxian’s other name was Ye Rongguang. He was indeed from the Ministry of State Security, a high-level operative in the bureau of counterintelligence.

  He reached the concrete pylons at the end of the bridge and searched the viewing platforms around the base of the massive statue. More crenellated concrete walls, a play castle by the sea. He wondered if Peter Jr. would enjoy it here.

  But it posed a security problem.

  He circled the statue, checking over the walls, a precipitous drop, over one hundred feet—and he knew he’d been had. There was no one here. It was a trap.

  Strategically, it would be better to head back over the bridge and monitor from a safer locati
on near the park’s entrance. But why this place? Why Qi Jiguang?

  He studied the statue again. Qi Jiguang was still and silent, ready to attack.

  Tom 2 started back over the bridge, dancing to America’s syncopated oldie “Tin Man.” Maybe there was nothing to gain from the wizard of Qi Jiguang. Like the Tin Man, either he had everything he needed already, or the wizard had given him something of value he didn’t know he wanted.

  He was fed up with knowing so much but understanding nothing.

  Two men approached the bridge. Through his infrared image, they appeared to be Chinese. Tom 2 didn’t recognize them. Perhaps these were his contacts. He hurried toward them.

  The shorter man broke into a run, pulled a handheld rotary saw from behind him, and slammed it into the first set of steel cables.

  With the bridge swaying, Tom 2’s gyro core shook. He froze.

  The cable handhold on his left side would snap in seconds. He grabbed the one to his right and ran. The friction melted his silicone-skinned hand against the steel cable, then tore his skin away, exposing the metal and joints underneath. It didn’t hurt. His sensors only alerted him to stresses or disturbances in his system. There was no pain feedback loop to make him stop.

  The railing on his left collapsed.

  Rotary Saw concentrated on the steel cable immediately below it.

  Tom 2 was only fifty feet away. He took photos of the men and sent them to Ruth and Miss Gray Hat.

  With a giant shrug, the bridge fell away beneath his feet. He hung on to the remaining cables with all the strength his awkward body had. The only way out was down, and the two men above him were now intent on finishing the job.

  “Nǐ shì shuí? Who are you?” Tom 2 shouted.

  “Bùyàojǐn!”

  Mandarin—It doesn’t matter!—didn’t prove whether they were Wenzhou locals or not. Not helpful, Tom 2 thought. He sent SOS and location messages as the men above him worked on the final cable.