by Ramez Naam
Kade loved what they were doing. He came within inches of telling them about his work with Nexus 6… but he stopped himself, for now.
The last big pillar was safety. What was the impact of Nexus on a brain over multiple years of life? Even decades? And here they were in the wilderness. They’d done whole-lifetime testing on multiple generations of fruit flies and nematodes, with no obvious ill effects, but that could only take you so far. What about mammals? Mice lived two to three years.
“We’d love to do some testing – all very safe, of course – on the children who came with you,” Lakshmi Dabir said. “It’d be to their benefit – we’d do very thorough checks and find any health issues that may be cropping up. And it’d help us get more early warning of any issues that may prevent deployment in India.”
Kade considered that. It made sense.
“We’d also,” Dabir continued, “love to do more analysis of how they do collaborative learning. We can see that they’re learning rate is off the charts, beyond that even of children who take Nexus at the elementary school age. We may be able to learn something from that which we could then use in software.”
The same thought had occurred to Kade, if we honest.
Even so…
“I’ll have to talk to Sam,” he said. “She’s also their legal guardian.”
Lakshmi Dabir inclined her head. “Of course.”
“And,” Kade said. “I want the kids to understand the request – and to agree to it.”
Dabir nodded at that as well.
After his first day of work, there was a reception for the various staff at the complex, who worked on a wide ranging set of projects in computing, neuroscience, computational biology, and related fields.
Kade was, he learned, the guest of honor.
Lakshmi Dabir took him around by the elbow, introducing him to various researchers and administrators, professors at the Indian Institutes of Technology, and so forth. He met a General Singh in the Indian Air Force, a tall man, with a thick Bollywood mustache, who Dabir said had given the order to save their plane.
“Thank you,” Kade said, as sincerely as he could.
Singh nodded at him. “Do good work for us. That will be more than thanks enough.”
Lakshmi Dabir led him around to meet yet more of the people here. Kade caught a glimpse of Sam, talking and smiling with an Indian woman in the corner, of Feng, his left arm still in a sling, gesticulating with a spoon in his right hand, making a crowd of young Indian men laugh and gasp in amazement, of Ananda deep in conversation with an Indian academic.
Almost everyone here was running Nexus.
He wished he’d worn his DJ Axon shirt.
He wished he still had it.
Just before 8.30pm the wallscreens came to life. The United Nations emblem appeared – two white olive branches surrounding a stylized map of the globe against a background of solid blue.
Silence descended on the reception. Kade could feel a rapt attention come to the minds of the men and women around him. This was the moment they’d been waiting for.
The map faded out, showing the General Assembly chamber.
UN Secretary General Beatriz Pereira was at the podium. A Brazilian. It was 10am in New York.
She struck her mallet ceremonially to bring the session to order.
“The Assembly will now hear from the Ambassador from India, regarding the motion to come before us,” Pereira said.
The Indian Ambassador to the UN, Navya Kapoor, took the stage, at the podium below the Secretary General’s.
She was younger than Kade had imagined, forty maybe, dressed in a grey business suit instead of a sari. She had no notes in evidence. But there was something in her eyes.
“Madame Secretary,” she said, and her voice was strong and clear. “Fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen. I come before you to speak of truth and deception; to speak of injustice done and the remedies that must be sought; to speak of oppression, and the equality we must replace it with.”
Kade felt his heart beating faster. He’d read the motion. He hadn’t read her speech. He felt excitement growing in minds around him.
“For the last decade, we have violated the principles of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights. We have oppressed those who are different, out of fear. And this fear has been based on deception and even the murder of innocents.”
Kade’s breath caught in his chest. He felt the same in a dozen others nearby. The UN Assembly burst into noise, into simultaneous applause and loud boos. The camera zoomed back to show delegates on their feet, some bringing their hands together, others getting up to walk out.
Beatriz Pereira banged her gavel hard, again and again. “Order!” she cried. “The delegate from India has the floor! Order!”
The Assembly quieted, bit by bit.
As the camera zoomed back in, Kade could see the determination on Navya Kapoor’s face, see that her chest was rising and falling as well.
You love her, yeah? Feng sent him in a tight band from across the room. I think she’s already married…
Kade laughed out loud. People looked at him funny. He turned around, found Feng looking at him from across the room, and winked.
“Thank you, Madame Secretary,” Navya Kapoor went on. “The United Nations Declaration on Human Rights states that, and I quote, ‘Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude’.”
A mind near Kade twitched nervously at that, then tried to calm itself. Six months ago he would have missed it, but he’d spent so much time in so many minds. Kade turned, looked, saw the side of the man’s face. Varum? Varam?
Navya Kapoor pressed on, her voice impassioned, drawing Kade’s attention back to her. “The Declaration states, and I quote again, that everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. That all are equal before the law.”
Kade felt the excitement rise all around him, felt the room in Bangalore grow in passion to match Kapoor.
Navya Kapoor looked around the Assembly room in New York and spoke again, her voice carried across the world at the speed of light.
“We have violated these principles. In our fear, based on false information, we have denied the recognition as a person to those who most clearly are persons. We have denied equality before the law.”
There was silence in the Assembly, hope and solidarity in Bangalore.
“Today,” Navya Kapoor said. “India introduces a motion to the United Nations General Assembly that recognizes all thinking, feeling beings of human origin or human descent as persons, and explicitly grants everyone the full protection of all international laws and human rights accords, and classifies laws and crimes which unfairly target individuals based on their genetic, neurobiological, or other differences, as the discrimination and hate crimes that they are.”
She took another breath.
“Madame Secretary, delegates, people of the world! I urge you to look into your hearts. Understand that our daughters and our sons will be better than we are. Do not hate them for it. Love them for it, and vote for this measure which grants them the rights and freedoms they deserve every bit as much as you do yours!”
There was wild applause, then, and as the camera zoomed back, Kade saw that it was from the observation galleries, to the sides of the Assembly, where people were standing, clapping ferociously, whistling.
And also from the Assembly itself, where there were at least twenty delegates on their feet, applauding.
And applause in this room in Bangalore as well, everyone clapping and cheering, every mind exulting.
Kade whooped and clapped and laughed. There were tears in his eyes, he found.
There was no chance it would pass, of course. Too many nations would be afraid of pissing off the US and China. And even if it did
pass the Assembly, the US would veto it in the Security Council.
But this, this moment, with delegates of twenty countries on their feet applauding.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, felt Ananda’s mind behind him.
“You’ve done well, young man,” his teacher told him.
Kade laughed. He’d been just a tiny part of it, just the irritation in the oyster.
Ananda picked up on the thought.
None of that, my boy. You did a very good thing, and that’s the end of it.
Kade turned and grinned. Around them, drinks were being passed out in celebration. Musicians were taking their places. This would soon become a full blown party.
“Thank you, Ananda,” he said out loud. “Now I have a question.”
The eminent Buddhist scholar and neuroscientist raised an eyebrow.
Kade grinned wider. “Do monks dance?”
Sam cheered through the speech. There were tears in her eyes.
Jake. Jake would have loved to see this moment. He would have loved to see the kids safe here. To see even this voted-down gesture acknowledging the humanity of Sarai, and Kit, and Aroon…
Oh Jake.
She raised her glass of ice water, toasted the moment, clinked glasses with those around her.
Yet she was who she was. And so some part of her never stopped watching, never stopped taking stock.
And so she noticed when a man twitched, not far from Kade, at something the Indian Ambassador said. Youngish. Clean shaven. His smile looked pained, forced.
She noticed that another man, in uniform, was watching the crowd even more intently than she was, a smile on his lips, but cold calculation in his eyes: General Singh.
And she noticed that the youngish man who’d twitched made an early, nervous exit from the event.
Sam memorized his face for later.
Then she did her very best to enjoy the night.
For the children.
And for Jake.
40
The Pawn Seldom Knows
Tuesday 2040.11.19
Sam listened as Kade passed on what the Indians wanted. To study how the children used Nexus. And to look for any signs that Nexus had harmed them. To try to spot the risks of deploying it to millions of Indian children.
He had a million things to say, as usual.
She had one question.
“Is there any risk to our kids in this?”
Kade looked her in the eye. He was tense around her. She could see it in the way he sat with his body closed off. The way he froze up. Anger, too. She couldn’t blame him for either.
His very presence sent her pulse shooting up. Sent memories her bullets smashing into the outline of Kevin’s face, his body tumbling out into the night cascading through her brain.
“I’ll approve every step,” Kade said. “I won’t allow anything that’s invasive.”
Sam nodded. “OK then.”
She stood to go.
Kade blinked in surprise. “That’s it?”
She cocked her head. “You got what you wanted, right?”
She turned to leave.
“Sam,” he called after her. “The kids would love it if you took Nexus again, if they could…”
Blood bubbled up through the wound in Jake’s chest. “I wish I’d known you,” he said. His mind collapsed into chaos and then nothing.
She stopped in the doorway, her fists clenched, breathing hard. She turned.
Kade was standing, looking at her, like she was broken.
“I will. I’m going to. Just not yet.”
“There are other drugs,” Kade started. “That can help with traum…”
“I don’t want your fucking help,” Sam snapped.
He flinched, visibly.
Sam closed her eyes.
“Shit,” she said.
“I just…” Kade started again.
Sam held up her hands. “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”
Kade was shaking his head. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Stop,” Sam said. “Let me finish. I tense up when I see you. I’ve got a bad case of PTSD. I’ve got some serious hell to go through.” She looked him in the eye. “And it isn’t just about you.”
Kade was looking at her.
“I’m through with killing, Kade.”
She saw the shock go across his face.
“Do you remember Lee? Head of our security squad in Bangkok? Ordinary guy, doing his job, maybe saved both of our lives?”
Kade swallowed. “Wats killed him. Not you.”
“I’ve killed plenty,” Sam said. “Some who deserved to die. Shiva did.”
She saw him want to object. She raised a hand to forestall it. “Plenty of them didn’t deserve to die. Lee’s men in Bangkok. The marines at Ananda’s monastery, though I tried like hell not to kill any of them.”
“They would have killed me,” Kade said. “Or taken me to deep dark hole…”
Sam shook her head. “I’m through making the choice of who deserves to live and die. It takes too much out of you. I want to build something. I want to nurture things.”
She saw him draw a breath. She kept going. Things needed to be said.
“Sometimes, though, I do blame you, Kade,” She said. “I blame you to hell for putting that back door in there.”
Kill them all, Shiva Prasad whispered in her brain. She was sweating. She was trembling. Kade was trembling in front of her.
“But…” she forced herself to press on, shaking her head. “I don’t know that I would have done a damn thing different.”
She looked down, looked at her own hands, clenched and unclenched them. She’d wanted that back door. She’d wanted to rip open the brain of the soldier who’d killed Jake, wanted to learn every goddamn thing he knew.
Move past that. Back to the thread.
She looked back up at Kade.
“I’m glad Nexus exists.” She said. “I’m glad you put it out there. Even after everything. I think the world’s better this way.” She swallowed. “What happened to me was evil. But evil’s always happened, long before Nexus. There’s good now too. The damage is in my head. I’ll beat it.”
Kade smiled sadly. He spoke softly, gently. “Why don’t you accept some medical help with that?”
Sam nodded. “At this stage, after the trauma has set in. The protocols here are memory malleability drugs plus psychotherapy. I’d be letting one of their shrinks into my head, in a situation where they could literally rewire me.” She shook her head. “I can beat it on my own. It’ll take longer. But I can.”
Kade shook his head. “Why, Sam? Why not let them help you?”
Sam laughed. “Because I don’t trust them, Kade. I’m grateful, but I don’t trust them.”
Kade frowned, searching for the right words. Looking for some way to tell her she was being paranoid.
He didn’t get it. He didn’t really know the level this game was played at.
“If Kevin Nakamura were here now…” she paused. Kevin. Oh, Kevin. “He’d want you to understand. The Indians? You’re still just a tool to them. You, me, Feng, the kids. We’re pawns. They’ll use us. They’ll sacrifice us if it furthers their goals.” She stared hard into his eyes. “Don’t forget that.”
Kade shook his head, closing off to her. “I don’t think it’s that simple. We’re using each other. That’s what cooperation means.”
Was I ever this naïve? Sam wondered. I guess I was once. When I had a family, when I had a normal life.
“Kade,” she said. “You may think it’s symmetric, you may think you know how they’re using you, but in this game, the pawn seldom knows what the king has planned. Remember that. The pawn seldom knows.”
41
Monster
Su-Yong Shu stares down at her own face, sculpted out of the cityscape of Shanghai, in this future she dreams of, this posthuman future, where she has cleared away the obstacles to enhancing the human mind, where she has ended the incessa
nt war and stupidity, where she has replaced mere capitalism with a new economics born of quantum game theory, where she has ended poverty, where she has broken the iron laws of death and biology and scarcity that have ruled humanity for so long, where she has unleashed an intelligence explosion like nothing since the dawn of homo sapiens sapiens.
Where victory has given her back her daughter.
Her mind is spinning. The world is spinning below her. The landscape is transforming. The lines of her face are no longer buildings, but the trajectories of virtual particles. The blacks of her eyes are bubbles in the quantum foam. Shanghai is a lens into other universes.
Mad. I’m still mad.
She splits the air with a silver portal, steps through into another virtual world, a safer world, a grounding world, with its wide grassy plain ringed by the massive purple mountains.
She is in the white dress again, barefoot. The tall grass is soft against her feet. The golden chrysanthemum boreale, her favorite flowers since youth, are in bloom, dotting the plain with brilliant yellow, filling the air with their sweet perfume. The sun is perfectly warm against her skin, the sky a deep deep blue, the sun directly overhead. The mountains are glorious giants, capped in white, ringing her in majesty, comfort, and hints of adventure.
She drops to her knees, cups a flower in her hands, inhales its scent.
Could it work? She wonders.
She inhales again, savoring the sweetness, the sun on her back, the grass below her knees.