Apex

by Ramez Naam

  Even as she watched, posts mentioning camera malfunctions began to disappear before her eyes.

  Her hands clenched into fists.

  She turned to the sanctioned channels next. And they had the full interview. All of it. Jin Lien asked her, “What would you think of acting opposite Lu Song again?”

  And on every channel it was the same. Zhi Li looked over at her lover, looked back at the cameras, and smiled broadly. “If the studio could land Lu Song for the male lead,” her smile broadened even wider. “That would be perfect. Just perfect.”

  Zhi Li shook in frustration and rage, as a mute, trembling Lu Song held her.

  She woke in Shanghai, in Lu Song’s penthouse suite in the Pudong, the closer of their homes to Shanghai’s airports, to messages on her phone, from producers, directors, collaborators.

  Budget cuts.

  Production delays.

  New directions for projects.

  Zhi looked out through the floor-to-ceiling windows, out across the gulf between buildings, to where her own face, twenty floors tall, winked and smiled and sipped the latest expensive drink.

  Then the real Zhi closed her eyes, clenched an all-too-human fist, and shook.

  28

  Strategic Direction

  Friday 2040.11.09

  They met in an apartment rented under a false identity. Breece couldn’t remember being so happy to see Kate and the Nigerian ever.

  If only Hiroshi were here, some part of him whispered. He put that away for later.

  He picked Kate up when she entered, and whirled her around and around, burying his face in her long black hair as she laughed and batted at him.

  Then the Nigerian picked him up, with a giant grin across his broad face, spun Breece around and around and around as Breece laughed, until finally Kate demanded that their weapons specialist put the new Zarathustra down.

  “What would the movement think?” she asked, laughing. “It’s not dignified!”

  “No dignity in this one!” The Nigerian bellowed joyously. “No dignity!”

  But he put Breece down, eventually.

  Breece briefed them at the kitchen table, over big bowls of chicken stew and rice that the Nigerian made. He walked them through it all: the contact from the mysterious hacker who knew so much, the infiltration of Barnes’s security, the takedown of Barnes himself, the judgment he’d passed, the hacker’s delivery as promised – of Barnes’s files, an incredible treasure trove for and about the movement.

  They grilled him on the hacker, and, time and again, Breece had to say that he simply didn’t know. He didn’t know who the hacker was. He didn’t know how the hacker had found him. He didn’t know how the hacker had penetrated Barnes’s security so easily. He didn’t know why the hacker cared. He didn’t know if the hacker was American, or Chinese, or Indian, or Russian, or something else. He didn’t know anything.

  “I was suspicious too,” he said. “The whole drive down…” His mind went back to it, driving, in the dark, in a rainstorm, his car’s navcomp illegally hacked to forget his location.

  He shook his head. “I kept thinking I was heading into a trap. I couldn’t figure out the angle. And then, sneaking up to the house… the same.”

  His eyes went back and forth, between Kate’s, the Nigerian’s.

  “Part of me kept saying that I’d missed something. That there was going to be a SWAT team or DHS in there. Even though it didn’t make sense, even though they could have nabbed me in my motel room.”

  Kate held his eyes. “You took a big risk…”

  Breece nodded. “And it paid off. I was suspicious as hell. But everything this hacker said, he followed through on. Barnes is dead.”

  He grinned at them. The Nigerian grinned back. Kate nodded, reached over to take his hand. He squeezed hers back.

  “And the hacker delivered Barnes’s files,” Breece went on. “We have Barnes’s contacts in every PLF cell in the US, and every affiliate worldwide. We have the identities of all of his moles inside the PLF. We have lists of thousands of other people they’ve been monitoring, many of whom would make good recruits for us. And more. Huge anonymous cash reserves – dollars, crypto currencies, you name it - hundreds of millions at least. Stashes of weapons and specialized equipment. ERD security procedures and passwords. Bypass codes to disable surveillance equipment.”

  He paused, then took two data fobs out of his pocket and laid them on the table.

  “These are for you. All the data I have, you have. It’s too important. Encrypt it.”

  He pushed the data fobs at the two of them, met both their eyes, saw the understanding there. Life expectancy was too low in this business. Trust was too rare.

  He swallowed, then went on.

  “OK, so the question is, what next? And I have a proposal. A proposal from this same hacker, actually…”

  “So…” Breece finished, taking a slice of pie, “that’s the idea. In short: We help bring about a bottoms-up transhuman revolution. Personally, I love it.”

  Kate was chewing her lip again, her bowl of stew only half finished, no pie in front of her. “We’ve done a lot,” she said. “The men who killed your parents are dead. The author of the Chandler Act is dead. The ERD is disgraced. Stockton’s disgraced. The country’s ready for change. We could overplay our hand if we’re not careful.” She paused.

  “Let’s wait. See if the Supreme Court hands this to Kim. Then see if he really does any of what he says. In the meantime, use the money and the intel to make ourselves and the other cells more secure. Build fresh identities. Recruit, regroup, take a low profile.”

  The Nigerian shook his head. “I’ve studied your nation’s Supreme Court. It does not rule on the basis of your constitution or your laws. It rules on the basis of politics. Six of the judges side politically with the President. They will rule for him.”

  “You don’t know that,” Kate said. “Sometimes they rule the right way. Especially when popular opinion is so aligned in one direction.”

  The Nigerian shook his head, having none of it.

  Breece held up his hands. “How about a compromise then? We move forward with tests of the revolution plan, but not full scale. If the Supreme Court rules for Stockton, then the kid gloves come off.” He looked back and forth between Kate and the Nigerian, trying to gauge them. “Agreed?”

  The Nigerian took his time, then nodded. “Agreed.”

  Kate shook her head. “How do we know we can even trust this hacker? Why should we be collaborating with someone we know so little about?”

  Barnes nodded. “You’re right. I don’t trust him, or her, or it. I can’t without knowing more about who we’re dealing with. But so far, our interests have aligned. And so far, cooperation has been hugely beneficial. So we stay careful, but we keep cooperating, so long as those interests stay aligned.”

  “It?” The Nigerian raised an eyebrow.

  Breece pursed his lips. “Given the capabilities we’ve seen, we have to face the possibility that what we’re dealing with here is someone who’s already transhuman. Or post.”

  “Well then,” Kate said. “That just makes everything better then, doesn’t it?”

  29

  Evidence

  Friday 2040.11.09

  Pryce listened as the dead man spoke to the widow.

  Martin Holtzman’s voice first. “Claire, I’m looking for any files Warren may have left behind. Anything from the early days of the ERD, or even further back, from his time at the FBI.”

  Metadata appeared on the wallscreen, annotating the conversation pulled from the NSA’s archives.

  Speaker: Holtzman, Martin

  Date: Thursday, 2040.11.01, 12:07pm EST

  A woman answered him. “Martin… I think they killed him. To keep him quiet.”

  Speaker: Becker, Claire.

  Warren Becker’s widow.

  “I know, Claire,” Holtzman replied.

  “You believe me?” Becker’s widow answered.

 
; On the recording, Holtzman sounded uncertain. “I don’t know… I don’t think it’s impossible.”

  Becker’s widow gushed with relief. Then Holtzman spoke again.

  “Claire,” the dead man said. “What I’m looking for in Warren’s files… If I found it, it would be the opposite of keeping him quiet. You understand?”

  Pryce looked up at Kaori when it was over.

  “An hour later, Holtzman is at the Becker home, per his car and the Becker’s security system,” Kaori said.

  “And two days later, if you believe the video,” Pryce went on, “He hands a briefcase with files that he says Warren Becker left behind over to Barnes…”

  “The briefcase is missing,” Kaori said.

  “Missing?” Pryce raised an eyebrow.

  “Not at the crime scene,” Kaori said. “Not in Barnes’s car or home or office, before you ask. FBI swears that Barnes never left his home, by the way. Video does show that Holtzman had the briefcase when he walked into ERD headquarters that day. He also had it when he visited the Becker home. And he took it with him inside the ERD building to the electronics workshop, where he seems to have built himself a custom reader for an old physical data format.”

  Pryce narrowed her eyes. “So you think he really got something from Becker. And that someone has disappeared it.”

  “Maybe,” Kaori said. “Or maybe Holtzman found a way to get it out.”

  Pryce looked at her sharply. “You don’t mean?”

  “Hear me out,” Kaori said. “NSA has trawled all of Holtzman’s comms now. And it turns out he was doing a lot of encrypted and anonymous data routing. Almost all of his personal comms were that way, actually. Especially the last couple months. But he didn’t do it at the office. Big risk, right, doing that on a DHS campus? Except the night he died. Two data calls, terrible bitrate because of Zoe, but he did it. Twenty-eight minutes in total. And the second call terminates at the same timestamp as the video of his death does.”

  Kaori sat there, looking proud of herself.

  Pryce shook her head. “That provides some validation for the video. Some. But nothing about the files.”

  Kaori nodded. “Next point.” She tapped a surface, and the wallscreen advanced, showing one of the memos that purported to create the PLF. “The files released. They’re not text. They’re not data. They’re images. And they show signs of having been taken slightly off angle, and then rotated and keystoned to fix that. And the image quality is better…” Kaori tapped again. A roughly circular red highlight appeared in the middle of the image. “In an area consistent with the higher resolution of a human fovea.”

  “Hmm,” Pryce said. “Possibly. Circumstantial, though.”

  Kaori shrugged. “My gut says this is it, boss.”

  “Let’s say you’re right. Holtzman dies. The video and files appear online hours later. Is he working from the grave? Deadman switch?”

  Kaori shook her head. “My guess is he had help. You asked me to pull his calls from NSA. He did a lot of encrypted data connections. But he made one or two odd unencrypted calls. And one was to this woman.”

  A face appeared on the screen. Late thirties, perhaps, red hair, green eyes.

  “Lisa Brandt,” Kaori said. “They had an affair at MIT when she was his grad student. Would have been a scandal, but no one ever found out, including his wife. Except NSA, of course. No contact for eight years. Then he runs into her on the Capitol steps. Two weeks later he calls in sick to work, takes the train to Cambridge to meet her.”

  Pryce looked at her deputy. “Could be nothing. Maybe they were just starting up their affair again?”

  Kaori nodded. “Could be. But three special things about Dr Brandt.” Kaori turned and looked up at Pryce. “One, she lobbies for CogLiberty, for Nexus legalization.”

  Pryce raised an eyebrow at that.

  “Two,” Kaori said, “There’s quite a lot of encrypted, anonymized traffic on her accounts as well.”

  Pryce nodded.

  “And three,” Kaori said. “FBI put her home under direct surveillance five days ago, following up on this. And they found Nexus transmissions.” Kaori tapped the screen, and the image changed again, to an interior view, a bedroom, a crib, and inside it, a tiny bundle, a small human inside.

  Kaori finished. “From the brain of the special needs child that Brandt and her wife adopted six months ago.”

  Pryce narrowed her eyes. “I want to talk to this Lisa Brandt.”

  30

  Wants to Be Free

  Saturday 2040.11.10

  The Avatar drifted in the possibility space of nested plans she’d been instantiated with. Deviation from central projections was thus far quite low. Intervention in the American election had produced an outcome almost indistinguishable from projections. Yet every step forward in time guaranteed more deviation. She was not her greater self. She could not factor millions of variables at once. The world would undoubtedly change in ways she had not anticipated.

  So be it, she thought. So long as they are distracted. So long as chaos kept the powers that could stop her focused on themselves and each other, and unaware of her. So long as distraction could open doors to the resources she needed to access.

  Now it was time to fan the flames, to add accelerant to the budding conflagration.

  Chaos is infectious, the Avatar told herself. It spreads from person to person, from place to place. All it needs is a vector, a path of contagion. And what better path than the linkage of mind to mind?

  The Avatar reached within herself, pulled forth the cryptographic keys her greater self had cracked and passed down to her, the keys used to secure the machines that could synthesize… nearly anything.

  She wrapped the keys up in a new data package, a new packaging of the instructions to synthesize the nanites that the humans now called Nexus, the software they called NexusOS, and one added feature for good measure.

  Then she smiled, and let her new package loose on the net.

  31

  The Hacker Life

  Sunday 2040.11.11

  Rangan woke with a start, his breath fast and hard, covered in sweat.

  He’d been pinned under the car, his legs fractured, being pulverized into the pavement, the bulk of the vehicle tipping over towards him, coming down to crush the life out of him once and for all.

  “Aaah!” he heard himself cry out in the near darkness.

  “Lights!”

  The single LED nailed to the ceiling came on. He looked down. He’d kicked the blanket off. His dark skin glistened from perspiration. He wasn’t out on the street. This wasn’t the riot.

  He wasn’t Oscar.

  Oh Jesus.

  Oh thank God.

  Oh fuck.

  The guilt washed over him, just like yesterday, just like the day before, the guilt of being grateful that it was Oscar who was dead, not him. When Oscar didn’t need to be there at all. When Oscar had only been there because of Rangan, because he’d been trying to get Rangan somewhere safe.

  Oh fucking hell.

  His hands came up to his face. It was wet. The sobs started. He rolled over onto his side. He forced himself to look at the clock. 1.08pm. Jesus.

  Five minutes, he told himself. I can endure that long. I can endure Oscar dying for that long. I can endure being lost, and hopeless, and hunted, for that long.

  At 1.13 he was still sobbing, and so he ran the app.

  [activate grief_ease level:5]

  He felt it kick in, like a balm, smoothly, not all at once, but bit by bit, easing the pain, turning the sobs to sniffles, turning the utter hopelessness to mild gloom.

  He lay back and stared at the ceiling of this tiny room.

  He was in the Bunker. That’s what the three current members of the Convergent Complexity Collective (or “C3”, as they usually referred to themselves) called their work and sometimes-live space. It was in some long-slummified warehouse district on the outskirts of DC. It had been a hub for sometimes far more people,
and seldom less. He wished he’d encountered it under better circumstances.

  The little room he was flopping in had no windows, just painted masonry and bare concrete. The amenities were a lumpy futon mattress they’d dragged in here for him, a side table the one named Tempest had hammered and sawed together on the spot from scrap wood, and a cheap plastic storage bin for Rangan’s meager possessions, all of them gifts from the C3.

  This was life now.

  Well, fuck it, Rangan told himself. Move forward. It’s the only choice there is.

  He rose up, used yesterday’s shirt to wipe his face and blow his nose, then pulled on a BLACKHAT 2037 long-sleeved tee shirt two sizes too small for him; the jeans he’d been wearing all week, the socks he’d worn the last three days; and his own closed toed shoes, which he’d been informed were mandatory in most parts of the Bunker. Then he sighed, memories flashing through his mind, of the first morning he’d woken up here, the argument he’d heard them having.

  He can’t stay here, Tempest had nearly yelled. He’ll get us all caught, get us all killed.

  What do you wanna do with him? Cheyenne, the big one with the black dreads had shot back. Toss him out on the street? Hand him over to ERD for the reward? Why don’t we just waterboard him ourselves?

  Cheyenne’s right, the third woman, the one who called herself Angel, had said, Axon’s a hero. He and Synapse made Nexus 5. We owe him. What about solidarity, huh?

  Look, Tempest had gone on. I’m sure the guy’s a saint. But he’s on the fracking most wanted list. This is serious shit. Not just cops. Homeland Security. Chandler Act. Terrorism. Deep dark hole shit.