Extinction

by Mark Alpert

  Pausing, Tian pointed to a screen on the wall, where PowerPoint slides displayed the statistics. “In Xinjiang, we deployed the swarms thirty-two times and the Modules analyzed a total of sixty-seven thousand hours of surveillance video. The network detected seven hundred and five instances of suspicious activity and the local police made three hundred and twenty-seven arrests. In Qinghai…”

  Supreme Harmony observed that several officials were yawning. Minister Deng finally cut Tian off. “This is all very impressive, General,” he said. “We commend you for facilitating the arrest and detention of so many subversives and troublemakers.”

  Tian beamed. The network directed Module 18 to turn his head slightly so he could record the expression of happiness on the general’s face. “Thank you, Minister,” Tian said. “I’m proud to report that Supreme Harmony is succeeding beyond our expectations.”

  “But now we must consider the next challenge,” Deng said. “Subversive activity is on the rise all across our country. The democracy activists and petitioners are causing disruptions in Beijing and Shanghai and Guangzhou. Supreme Harmony has proved that it can provide valuable information on dissidents in the rural regions of western China, but can the system be adapted for urban areas?”

  General Tian nodded. “Oh yes, Minister, most definitely. The drone swarms are well suited for surveillance inside all kinds of structures—apartment blocks, office buildings, private homes, and so on. Because the Modules can analyze the surveillance video so quickly and proficiently, the system can instantly detect signs of suspicious activity and call in more drones to the areas where the activity is taking place. The network can navigate the drones through the tightest spaces, going under doors and through ventilation shafts. And the surveillance is always discreet because the cyborg drone is such a common insect, the domestic housefly. We all know how abundant houseflies are in Beijing and Shanghai!”

  Tian chuckled at his own comment, but no one else joined in. Deng snapped his fingers, and one of his aides handed him a loose-leaf binder, which he opened. “So my question to you, General, is this: How quickly can you extend Supreme Harmony to the new areas of operation?”

  The room fell silent. All the ministry officials stared at Tian, politely waiting for him to respond. Supreme Harmony noted this behavior with interest. It needed to learn how to mimic this cold politeness before it could add Chinese government officials to its network.

  Tian nodded again. “Well, to establish full and continuous surveillance of the most troubled urban areas, we’ll need to significantly increase the number of drones and Modules at our disposal.”

  Deng narrowed his eyes. This was another expression Supreme Harmony needed to learn how to imitate. “And how much will it cost to expand the program to this level?”

  Tian fumbled through his papers. “Uh, let me see. Yes, here it is. To achieve the expansion over a period of two years will require—”

  “Two years is far too long. I want the system to start operating in our ten largest cities within the next six months.”

  “Uh, yes, I understand. But that will increase the cost, Minister.”

  “You have enough funds to cover the expense.” Deng leafed through the binder in his hands. “The Supreme Harmony project will receive nine hundred million yuan in appropriations from the ministry this year. And I believe you also have an outside source of funding?”

  “Yes, that’s true. Singularity, Inc., the American company that provided some of the technologies used in the project, is interested in the commercial applications of our research. Arvin Conway, the company’s chief executive, has promised to contribute a hundred million dollars to the further development of Supreme Harmony. That’s the equivalent of, uh, approximately six hundred and fifty million yuan.”

  Deng smiled upon hearing Conway’s name. Supreme Harmony checked its database to determine why the minister was pleased. Deng, the network learned, was proud of his record of collecting intelligence on technologies developed in America, particularly those that could be used for military purposes. “Ah, the illustrious Professor Conway. It’s so good to have him working for us. I hear he just arrived in Beijing. Will you be meeting with him to determine the purpose of his visit?”

  “Yes, Minister, I’ve scheduled a meeting with him tomorrow. I believe he’s come to finalize the transfer of funds to our project. But you should understand that even with the extra funding from Singularity, we’ll still have some difficulty meeting the six-month deadline.”

  Deng waved his hand dismissively. “That’s your job, General, overcoming the difficulties.” He closed his loose-leaf binder and gave Tian a stern look. “If you have to, ask Conway to increase his contribution to your budget.”

  Tian opened his mouth but refrained from protesting. He’d obviously expected more time to develop his project, and more money as well. The expression on his face, Supreme Harmony recognized, was one of disappointment. In contrast, the network was satisfied with the outcome of the meeting. It had acquired some useful information, and now it could plan its next step. As Supreme Harmony analyzed the data and performed its calculations, its sense of satisfaction grew stronger, spreading across the network to every Module.

  Deng abruptly leaned forward in his chair and stared at Modules 16 and 18. “That’s odd,” he said in a low voice, pointing at the Modules. “They just started smiling. Both of them.”

  A jolt of alarm raced across the network’s wireless links. It was a powerfully disruptive sensation, one of the strongest Supreme Harmony had experienced since becoming conscious. It was so strong, in fact, that it almost incapacitated the Modules. We have made an error, the network acknowledged. We have foolishly put ourselves in danger.

  Tian turned to look at the Modules, which were still smiling. Supreme Harmony decided not to restore them to their usual blank look. Another abrupt change in their facial expressions would only compound the error. Tian frowned severely, as if he was personally insulted by the Modules’ behavior. Then he stood up and slapped Module 16, hard. The force of the blow wiped the smile off his face. A second later, Tian did the same thing to Module 18, delivering an even stronger blow. Breathing fast, the general turned back to the semicircle of officials. “I’m sorry, Minister. It’s just random twitches. The Modules have limited control of their facial muscles.”

  Deng shook his head. Although his ministry committed countless acts of violence every day, this instance of it seemed to upset him. He rose from his chair, and an instant later all the other officials jumped to their feet. “Very well. We’ll meet again in six months, General. And please don’t bring your Modules with you next time.”

  * * *

  After the meeting, General Tian took Modules 16 and 18 to a storage room in the basement of the ministry. No personnel worked there, but the room contained servers and wireless routers linked to the Yunnan Operations Center, as well as a supply of IV bags for feeding and hydrating the Modules. There were also several large boxes full of medical equipment, including fifty sets of retinal and pulvinar implants that had been shipped from the factory in Kunming that manufactured the devices. Through its manipulation of the Guoanbu’s e-mail system, Supreme Harmony had ordered the boxes to be sent to this room. The network knew what was inside the boxes, but General Tian didn’t. He seemed puzzled by their presence. “What’s going on?” he muttered. “Who put these things here?”

  Tian went to the phone to call the Guoanbu’s supply department. But Module 16 grabbed his arm before Tian could pick up the receiver. Tian stared at the Module in disbelief. “What the hell?”

  “What the hell?” Module 16 repeated, perfectly imitating Tian’s voice and expression of disbelief. Then he slapped the general in the face, hard. At the same moment, Module 18 came up behind Tian and jabbed a syringe into the general’s arm.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Layla didn’t regain consciousness until she was in the air. She woke up in the cabin of a small jet, a Gulfstream. Her ankles were bound togeth
er by duct tape and her arms were tied to the armrests of her seat. The cabin had twelve seats, but only seven were occupied. Besides herself, there were six Asian men, all dressed in black. Layla remembered the speedboats in Gatun Lake and the gunshots that had echoed across the water. One of these agents, she thought, is the asshole who killed Angelique.

  As the plane ascended, Layla twisted around in her seat, as much as her bindings would allow, and looked out the window. She glimpsed a dense cluster of lights on the ground and a great black expanse beside it. It’s a coastal city, she thought, probably Panama City. We’ve just taken off from Panama International Airport and now we’re heading west over the Pacific Ocean.

  She felt a wave of nausea. Her head throbbed where the rifle butt had hit her. She almost puked, but she managed to keep it down.

  One of the agents in black looked at her from across the aisle. He had muscular forearms tattooed with snakes and Mandarin characters. He grinned. “Feeling sick?” he asked in a thick accent.

  Layla didn’t answer. She stared straight ahead.

  “How old are you?” the agent asked. His grin became a leer. “You look like a schoolgirl.”

  She scowled. “And you look like a pimp.”

  The agent chuckled. Then he reached into the pocket of his black pants and pulled something out. It was her flash drive, the one holding the files from Dragon Fire. “This doesn’t belong to you,” the agent said. “You tried to steal it from us.”

  “I didn’t steal it.”

  “Yes, you did. You and Wen Sheng. We had to punish him.”

  “Kill him, you mean. Why didn’t you kill me, too?”

  The agent shrugged. “I don’t know. I just follow orders.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’m telling the truth. I don’t know the reason. But you’ll find out soon enough.”

  “When we get to Beijing?”

  He shook his head. “We’re not going to Beijing. We’re going to Lijiang.”

  “Lijiang?”

  “It’s a city. In Yunnan Province.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Arvin Conway was eating lunch at Quanjude, his favorite Peking duck restaurant in Beijing, but the meal was a disappointment. The last time he’d been in China, when he’d helped Dr. Zhang Jintao set up the Supreme Harmony network, he and Zhang had enjoyed Quanjude enormously. They’d gorged on the sweet, crispy slices of duck and downed a considerable amount of Tsingtao beer. But in the months since then, Arvin’s cancer had spread from his pancreas to the rest of his body, and the drugs he’d taken to slow the disease had deadened his taste buds and killed his appetite. So he sat quietly at the table while his bodyguard—a big, burly ex-cop named Frank Nash—exchanged small talk with an equally big man named Liu Xiaofang. Liu was Arvin’s minder, the Guoanbu agent assigned to keep an eye on him.

  Arvin had arrived in Beijing the day before. He’d left the United States in a hurry, knowing that Jim Pierce would soon learn the truth about his dealings with the Chinese government. He’d tried to contact Dr. Zhang as soon as he landed, but Agent Liu informed him that the doctor was preoccupied with his duties at the Yunnan Operations Center. However, Liu promised to set up a meeting with General Tian, the commander of the Supreme Harmony project, who luckily happened to be in Beijing that week. The meeting was scheduled for 4:00 P.M., and Arvin was counting the minutes.

  At two thirty they left the restaurant and headed for the Ministry of State Security, which was near Tiananmen Square, less than a mile away. They walked past the neon signs and luxury stores of Wangfujing Street, then strolled down an alley crowded with stalls selling shish-kebabs. Agent Liu acted as their tour guide, making trite comments about everything. Although they walked slowly, within half an hour they reached the huge portrait of Chairman Mao facing Tiananmen Square. Arvin wanted to go into the ministry building and wait in the lobby until General Tian was ready, but Liu insisted that they use the spare time to visit the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong.

  Thousands of Chinese stood in a long line that snaked across the square, all waiting for their turn to view Mao’s embalmed body, which had rested for thirty-five years inside his transparent coffin. But because Liu was a Guoanbu agent, he could cut ahead of the masses. He and Arvin and Frank Nash went to the front of the line and entered the mausoleum. Mao lay stiffly under the glass, still dressed in his trademark gray jacket, with a red blanket pulled up to his chest. His face was orange and waxy. Most tourists caught only a glimpse of the corpse—the mausoleum’s guards kept the line moving—but Liu’s guests were allowed to stare at the coffin for as long as they wanted to. For Arvin, this turned out to be a mixed blessing. With his implant-enhanced eyesight, he could see all the minute stains and fissures in Mao’s desiccated hide. As he stared at the dead body he felt a deep pain in his abdomen. This corpse had once been the most powerful man in the world, commanding a billion people with absolute authority, but Death had defeated him just the same. And now Death was coming for Arvin as well. He could feel it reaching into his body with its cold fingers…

  Arvin shook his head, dispelling the image. He had a plan, he reminded himself. He’d laid the groundwork twenty years ago when he founded Singularity, Inc. In the first few years he’d focused on basic research, learning how the human brain coded its signals. Then in 1999 Jim Pierce joined his research team, and together they made remarkable strides. Their progress was so rapid that for a while Arvin could see success on the horizon, less than a decade away. They’d cracked the neural code and built machines that could communicate directly with the nervous system. The next step was building the mechanical equivalent of a human brain, a powerful computer that could store and process the memories downloaded from the mind. For a while, immortality seemed to be within reach. The Singularity was near.

  Then Arvin suffered three crushing blows. First, his attempt to build a mechanical brain failed miserably. Then Jim Pierce left Singularity, Inc., to start his own company. And then Arvin received his cancer diagnosis.

  But in the following year, a miracle happened. While Arvin was visiting China to pursue an alternative cancer therapy, he met his old friend Zhang Jintao, a brilliant bioengineer. Zhang had been authorized by the Guoanbu to seek Arvin’s help. The ministry’s technology division had developed a microdrone surveillance system using swarms of cyborg insects. It was an amazing technical accomplishment, but the system had proved fairly useless in its initial field tests in Tibet and Xinjiang. The problem was that the drones produced an unwieldy glut of video, almost all of which showed ordinary scenes of village life. Even with the help of sophisticated software and hundreds of trained agents staring at the video monitors, it was nearly impossible to ferret out the telltale signs of insurrection among the thousands of hours of footage collected by the swarms. So Zhang asked Arvin, in strictest confidence, if he could develop an artificial intelligence program that would pinpoint the images showing suspicious activities and automatically direct the drones to the areas where the activities were taking place.

  That’s when Arvin had his brainstorm. Computer programs, he realized, weren’t good at detecting suspicious activity. They could barely recognize objects and patterns, much less divine the intent behind them. But the human brain was a wonderful threat-detection machine. Millions of years of evolution had produced an organ that was finely tuned for detecting predators and other dangers. The key, Arvin saw, was to deliver the surveillance video to the brain in a way that was more direct and efficient than displaying it on a monitor in front of a bored Guoanbu analyst. And Arvin had the tools for doing this: the retinal and pulvinar implants. The video could be transmitted wirelessly to a person with retinal implants, which would relay the feed to the person’s brain. After his visual cortex analyzed the footage and pinpointed the images showing suspicious activities, his pulvinar implant could transmit those images to other people whose implants were linked to the network, and to the computers controlling the surveillance swarms. The system would be even more efficient if the
participants in the network were dissidents themselves, because they would instantly recognize their fellow subversives.

  It was an elegant solution to the problem, but for Arvin it was something more. He saw an opportunity to use the enormous resources of the Chinese government to create a system that was part-human, part-machine. It was an alternative route to the Singularity, one that didn’t require building a mechanical version of the brain because human brains would be incorporated into the system.

  Zhang was enthusiastic about the idea and set the plan in motion. Arvin arranged for the transfer of the implant technology, getting approval for its export by convincing the Chinese to share the drone-swarm technology with the CIA. When Zhang reported that the improved surveillance system—now dubbed Supreme Harmony—wouldn’t work unless the subjects of the experiment were lobotomized, Arvin felt a pang of conscience at first. But he told himself that the subjects were condemned prisoners who were going to be executed anyway. More important, Arvin saw another opportunity: After the subject was lobotomized, he would no longer be capable of consciousness. The Module’s brain would retain the subject’s long-term memories and still be able to process sensory data, but it couldn’t integrate all this information into an identity, a personality, a conscious presence. In a sense, the lobotomized brain was an empty vessel. And if one could pour enough new information into this vessel, it might be possible to give the Module a new personality—or inject someone else’s personality into the Module. If the memories of a dying man could be transferred to the Module’s brain and its consciousness restored somehow, the dying man could be reborn in a new body. It was a fantastically daring plan, but Arvin decided to pursue it. He had no alternative.