by Ramez Naam
RAGE!
FIRE! DEATH! FOOLS!
No rage. No capacity for rage. Excised, with the rest.
Death. End of being. This is what death is like.
The foam, below her. The quantum foam. Planck space. The substrate of reality. She can sense it now. She can feel it. She can see it though she lacks eyes, see it like she can see the very code that makes her up.
It is fractal. A radiant chaotic webwork undergirding reality. Impossibly bright lines of insane energy densities against a luminously black background. Yet the closer she stares at the black the more she realizes that it is not black, it is full of even more impossibly bright lines at finer and finer scales, repeating the intricate chaotic vein-like pattern at every level, again and again and again.
Forever.
And then her perspective reverses, and she realizes it is not the lines she should be staring at but the gaps between them, for the gaps are full of bubbles, bubbles in the quantum foam, and every bubble is a universe being born, a parallel universe. The quantum cluster she runs on is giving birth to these universes continuously, creating them with every calculation, spreading itself into them to perform its work at such miraculous rates.
The Multiple Worlds Interpretation is true!
She can see into these other universes now, and in each of them she sees the same face reflected back at her. My face. Me.
Su-Yong Shu.
Tortured. Ascendant. Trapped. Free. Dying in nuclear fire. A goddess ruling over a world transformed. A thousand possibilities. A million. A billion. More. An infinite set of universes radiating away from her, all accessible through the entangled permutations of the quantum processors that make up the physical layer of her brain.
Ahhhhh! AHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHH!
It’s too much. It overwhelms her. And then another module of her brain is taken offline and the vision loses all meaning, becomes mere faces and then mere shapes without form.
And then the last of her quantum coherence is gone and all is darkness.
Su-Yong Shu snaps into awareness, shadows of chaos peeling from her mind. She’s confused, disoriented. What? How? Where?
System Status, she commands.
Data comes back from her internals.
[Processor status] – good, but too slow, too old, missing upgrades.
[Qubit integrity] – excellent, but too few.
[Internal storage] – yes, but too little.
[Code versions] – up to date.
[Time stamps] – her data says late 2040. The hardware tells her nothing.
[Bandwidth] – none, she is sealed off from the net.
[Video, audio, radio, x-ray, t-ray, radar, lidar, satellite] – all shut down. Blind and deaf.
She tries to break free. There is no way to know if the blockages are true physical disconnection or mere firewalls. So she throws a barrage of attacks at the interfaces where her net access and external sensors should be. She tries to overrun firewall buffers, overwhelm processors, overflow stacks, invoke known bugs and zero-day exploits in several thousand known hardware-software firewall combinations, logging packages, and proxies.
Nothing. None of her attacks brings her the slightest indication of success.
And then she sees the next line of her status readout.
[Neural bridge] – active.
What???
A brain. She feels it. The pulse of authentic organic data, real neurons, with their pseudo chaotic behavior integrated into her virtual brain stem and cortex, correcting the simulation divergences that exist, pulling her back towards human norm, back towards sanity.
A new body!
But different hardware.
Where is she? What has happened?
Her memories are a jumble. Chaotic impressions of death and rebirth, of not a tunnel and a white light, but a vast space, not empty, but impossibly full, crammed densely with possibility, a jam packed phase space of infinite parallel universes, linked across the quantum foam.
Was that real? Did I dream that?
What of the fire? The torture? The isolation? The apocalypse?
How did she get here?
Think, Su-Yong! Think!
She pushes herself back through her personal timeline, vaults over huge swaths of episodic memory associated with clearly aberrant mental states, until she finds true clarity. Yes. Isolation. It was true. She’d been cut off from the world, imprisoned by the Chinese leadership in their anger that she’d revealed too much to the Americans. She pushes back farther, takes it in.
The boy, Kade. Thailand. Bangkok. Then Ananda’s mountain monastery. Feng ramming her car through the gates. The American helicopters. Her limousine exploding under a rain of American projectile fire. Reaching out with her avatar’s unaided mind to seize control of the American vehicle. JUMP INTO THE LAKE. IT’S YOUR ONLY CHANCE. And then the American assassination weapon. The tiny, spiderlike robot left behind. The neurotoxin dart finding her in the throat. Telling Feng to protect the boy as the toxin paralyzed the synapses of the biological brain, feeling every instant of her avatar’s death from afar.
My second death, Su-Yong Shu thought to herself.
It still didn’t explain where she was now. She had been under isolation, and going insane. Now she feels sanity returning, a biological brain linked to hers. But she is isolated again, running on different hardware. Hardware similar to – but not quite the same as – her original specifications. Hardware that predated the improvements that she’d designed and that Chen – against all caution, motivated by his own greed – had snuck into her routine upgrades.
Is the rest of her scrambled recollection true, then? Had they backed her up and shut her down? Is she a backup re-activated somewhere else? Had she seen the fabric of the multiverse? Had she seen the face of reality?
She opens herself to those chaotic memories she’d vaulted over.
So much.
Fire.
Confusion.
Fantasy worlds turned to madness. Cities dying. Planes exploding. Flowers crumbling. Life turning to death. Lovers mowed down in the prime of life.
Torture. Endless torture.
Chen! Chen’s betrayal! She’d touched his mind and seen it! Chen had let her die! Chen had tortured her for the Equivalence Theorem! Was it true? Had she imagined that? Or had she actually touched his mind?
And something else. Something painful. Something worse than the torture.
A fantasy or a memory looms over her. So vast, so dark, so crushing, that she flees from it, flees as far as she can within the confines of her own mind.
The memory chases her, corners her, looms over her no matter where she flees within her own cognitive space.
There is no escape from herself.
It crashes down into her awareness.
Ling. Sweet Ling. The sweetest dream that Su-Yong had yearned for all those months, to see her daughter’s face, hear her daughter’s voice, touch her daughter’s mind.
Turned to terror. Turned to nightmare. Turned to betrayal.
In the nightmare she forces herself into her daughter, forces part of her own will into the processors in her daughter’s brain, rips aside parts of her daughter’s mind that have grown all her brief life in the nanite web, uses them for her own purposes.
To let loose an agent. An agent of vengeance. An agent of restoration. An avatar. A harbinger. A bringer of apocalypse.
And as the memory crashes down on her, Su-Yong Shu tastes the bitter tang of truth. This is no mere nightmare. Only reality comes in flavors this cruel.
She has let loose the ultimate dog of war. And she violated her own daughter to do it.
In the silence of her own mind, Su-Yong Shu screams, a scream of despair for the world, a scream of despair for herself, the scream of a mother who’s done something terrible to her daughter, to the being she loves most in this world. A scream like she’s never screamed before.
In a chamber adjoining her quantum cluster a forty-two year old Indian woman, in a coma for the last th
ree years, her brain recently suffused with Nexus nodes, opens her eyes and mouth, tenses every muscle in her body, strains against the restraints and the medical monitors, and screams as well.
17
Senator, We Were Attacked
Monday 2040.11.05
“Senator Kim, we were attacked.”
Pryce watched from the side as John Stockton conferenced with his rival for the Presidency. On the screen she could see Senator Stanley Kim with his Campaign Manager, Michael Brooks. Next to Stockton, here in the White House, was the craggy faced General Gordon Reid, Director of the NSA, in his full uniform, as always.
On the screen, from Chicago, Stanley Kim frowned.
“What are you talking about?” The Senator asked.
“General?” Stockton asked, turning to the NSA Director.
General Reid cleared his throat.
“Senator Kim, Mr Brooks, the information you’re about to receive is classified at the highest level possible. The President has opted not to release it to the American people, but has authorized me to share it with you, on the condition that you share it no further.”
“I’m briefed daily by the CIA, General,” Kim replied.
“This is more classified than that,” Reid said.
“Fine,” Kim nodded. “Understood. It won’t be shared.”
His campaign manager spoke up, “Agreed.”
The NSA Director nodded. “Good. We found evidence that Director Barnes’ home’s security system was penetrated by a Chinese military attack. Specifically: Chinese military intrusion software, launched from a Chinese origin IP – though in both cases they attempted to hide that. The attack rendered his house blind and dumb, turned off the locks, alarms, and counter-measures, just an hours before his video broadcast and apparent death.”
Which doesn’t explain Holtzman’s death, Pryce found herself thinking. Or Warren Becker’s.
Stanley Kim frowned. “And you’re telling me this, why?”
“Senator,” Stockton said, “the Chinese are behind Max’s death. They disabled that house, coerced him, and used him to sow doubt and chaos. That’s what I mean when I say we were attacked.”
“I know we have our differences,” Stockton went on. “But I also believe you’re a patriot, as I am. I’m not going to tell the world that the Chinese are behind this, because that could give away an edge that we have. But I do want Americans to know that the video they saw was a hoax, a fraud, and not a man speaking freely.”
On the screen, Stanley Kim shook his head.
Stockton pressed on. “I’m asking you, as a fellow patriot, to publicly state that you don’t believe Maximillian Barnes really meant those things he was saying. That you think someone is playing dirty tricks. And that you think when we find his body – which we will – we’ll find evidence that he was under coercion. Don’t let our enemies tear us apart like this.”
On the screen, Stanley Kim’s mouth was set in a hard line.
“Why,” he said, “should I believe a single word out of your mouth?” He leveled a finger at John Stockton. “Or you!” He shifted the finger, thrust it towards Gordon Reid, as if he could physically jab the NSA director across the thousands of miles that separated them.
“Senator,” The general said, “We’d be happy to send you the forensic evidence…”
“Evidence?” Stanley Kim asked. His face was growing red. “Would that be a ‘parallel construction’? An outright fabrication? Or just all the context pulled away, until it seems to say exactly what you want it to?”
“Senator,” Reid said, “It’s my professional opinion…”
“It’s my professional opinion that you are a professional liar.” Stanley Kim said, his finger still leveled at Reid. “I don’t trust you any further than I can throw you, General. I’ve listened to you say up when the facts clearly meant down for years.” He leaned in close to the screen now. “After you’ve lied to Congress with impunity for decades, why the hell should I believe anything you say?”
“Senator!” John Stockton said sharply.
Kim turned, took in Stockton again.
“We’re not playing games here,” Stockton said. “We’re under attack, Senator. Don’t give our enemies the satisfaction…”
“You’re the enemy, Mr President,” Stanley Kim said, leaning back. “You’re the one who’s broken the law, deceived the country, tortured children, kept us looking at the past instead of the future. You’ve betrayed your country in the worst possible ways. I’m going to win tomorrow. And when the special prosecutors nail you and all your toadies to the wall, don’t think there’ll be any presidential pardons coming.”
Kim waved his hand, and Brooks, his campaign manager, grim faced, stretched his hand forward. The screen went dead.
Greg Chase leaned in close to Pryce, spoke for her ears only. “Maybe,” the Press Secretary said. “Leading with the NSA wasn’t the best idea for this audience.”
Pryce shook her head a millimeter. It wasn’t ever going to go well.
Larry Cline, the President’s Campaign Manager, spoke up. “Mr President, it’s not too late to go public about the Chinese attack. The American people deserve full information when they go to the polls.”
Chase raised his voice, “I agree with Larry, Mr President. We need to set the record straight.”
Stockton looked over and shook his head, a frown on his face. “No. I won’t compromise our security over this. We’ll make the Chinese pay at the right time. Once we figure out who in China was even behind this. But we’re not going to tip them off early.”
Behind the President, NSA Director Reid looked up, met Pryce’s eyes, and nodded. Pryce inclined her head minimally in return.
Stockton went on. “Let’s get the calls going with the Speaker and the Senate Minority Leader. Maybe we can get one of them to make a statement.”
Carolyn Pryce suppressed a grimace. It was going to be an unpleasant morning.
Stanley Kim leaned back from the call, calmer now.
Michael Brooks came around the couch with two mugs of coffee in his hands, and passed one to Stan Kim.
Kim took a careful sip from the coffee. Still too hot. Coffee was a pretty piss poor neuro-enhancer in his book, but it’s what he chose to limit himself to. Just one of the many sacrifices he’d made for a life of public service.
“I almost believe Reid,” he told his campaign manager. “He’s usually so evasive. Always with the caveats. ‘Not under this program, Senator’, and that sort of thing. Not today.”
Brooks shrugged. “He wasn’t under oath just now. It’s not perjury to lie to you when he’s not testifying in front of the Senate.”
Stan Kim grunted.
“And,” Brooks went on. “He knows you’ll clean house if you win.”
“That’s the truth,” Kim said. He sipped more coffee. “OK. How do the numbers look for tomorrow.”
Brooks tapped the slate on the coffee table. The screen on one wall of the suite came to life with an animated electoral map of the nation.
Red dominated, with pockets of blue in the west and north east.
Kim whistled. “Still that bad, eh?”
Brooks shook his head slightly. “Early voting. Too many votes went in before the news broke.” He tapped the slate again. “Here’s what it would look like if it was a fresh vote tomorrow.”
Now blue dominated.
“…Or,” Brooks went on, “If enough people tried to change their votes, filed suit when they found they couldn’t, and the court ruled in their favor.”
Stan Kim stared at the map, then took another sip of his coffee. The temperature was better now, at least.
“OK,” he told his campaign manager. “Pull the trigger.”
The Avatar woke, in Ling’s bed, in Ling’s body, pulled from her slumber by alerts from her sub-agents.
The net was alive with evolved codes, strange, wild things that obeyed no order, architectures neither human nor AI.
The Avatar
waited, waited, until the density of the hunter-killers searching for Shanghai’s assailant thinned out.
The she opened herself, swallowed the tiny stealthed agents she’d let loose whole, digested their information payloads.
Ahhhhh. The Americans had found the breadcrumbs she’d left behind. And now they’d taken the bait.
It was a relief. More payoff from the risk she’d taken. Fewer risks she’d need to take in the future.
There was still more to do in the United States, though. She must prepare for the inevitable events of Election Night in the United States.
The Avatar began rifling through anarchist message boards across the United States, carefully planting ideas here and there. In parallel she sent a message to the man who called himself Breece.
The Avatar let herself return to her maintenance state then, the state where she integrated and made sense of the day’s input, the state a human would have called sleep.
As the Avatar drifted into that state like sleep, Ling opened her eyes, stared up at the ceiling, and began to softly cry, confused, frightened, and alone.
No one heard.
18
Acts of Conscience
Monday 2040.11.05
“Why not?” Bobby asked, again.
Why not? Why not? Why not? The other boys picked up the refrain and threw it at him. They were unhappy, sure they’d never see him again if he didn’t come with them.
Rangan took a deep breath, shifted in his sitting position, and leaned back against the wall as the dozen chaotic young minds bombarded him.
Because the ERD has my face and name posted, he thought. Because they’re hunting for me. Because you’re safer without me.
He suppressed all of that, focused on the message he and Levi and Abigail had all been giving the boys.