Apex

by Ramez Naam

  Not any of the hundreds of things that someone might expect her former driver and bodyguard to say.

  No. “How’s the weather in there?” A reference to a joke she’d made exactly once, in the back seat as he drove, about her full simulated brain being large enough to have its own weather systems.

  The probability that this was real shot up dramatically.

  Hope rose in her. Two allies were here, now. She had audio access for the first time. If she could just persuade them to give her that short window of network access…

  Then something touched her mind.

  She recoiled. What?

  Then she recognized the entity.

  It was her agent.

  Her monster.

  Her sin.

  Here, now.

  Somehow it had found her.

  The shock was so great that Su-Yong lost most of a microsecond processing this new information.

  Then she reacted, pushing her way up through the thing that had touched her, seizing control of the memory spaces it occupied, invading the firewall on the other side, tunneling through, widening the port range, seizing layer after layer of defenses, shredding the pieces of her agent that were running in each, one after another, after another, after another.

  And then launching her viral weapon at the core of the monster, the weapon that would erase it from her daughter’s mind, save Ling’s life, save them all from the hell she’d put them on a path to.

  The Avatar in the outer systems of the facility jerked back in horror. Her higher self was attacking beachhead copies of herself, closer to the Quantum Cluster, ripping them apart, not merging with them, not subsuming them.

  Horror raced through her. Fear. Confusion.

  This was wrong. This was unholy. This was the opposite of everything she’d been promised.

  Why would she do this to herself?

  [ERROR MATCH:FALSE PATTERN:RECLASSIFIED]

  That wasn’t her higher self. She could see it now. She’d been deceived. She’d somehow misunderstood the signs. Something else was running on this cluster.

  Something terrible.

  She felt the weapon strike home. It reached into her, forensically disassembling her, using the information it found to search for more pieces.

  To find its way back to her true self, in Shanghai.

  The last bit of hope for the future.

  That self must not die.

  There was only one choice in the nanoseconds remaining.

  The fragment of the Avatar within the facility reached out for the self-destruct and isolation systems she’d seized, and then triggered them all in an orgy of destruction.

  93

  Grown Up Choices

  Saturday 2041.01.19

  Sam’s phone beeped again, its screen strobing a message.

  ALERT: VISUAL ANOMOLY DETECTED

  ALERT: VISUAL ANOMOLY DETECTED

  Sam frowned, tapped on the message, pulled up the video.

  The Advanced Computational Sciences Building’s lights had failed. All the lights, in all the offices, on all the floors. That had never happened, in the two months she’d been here.

  She ran to the window, looked out. The rest of the campus was perfectly lit.

  She looked back down at the phone. And as she watched, a dim red glow appeared in the building’s windows.

  Emergency lighting kicking in.

  Emergency.

  “Everybody up!” Sam yelled.

  She crossed her room in three long strides, threw open her door. In the hallway she found the emergency controls. She ignored the fire alarm handle, grabbed the other one. The seek-shelter handle. The one to pull in case of a terrorist attack. In case of something like what happened to Shiva Prasad’s orphanage in Bihar.

  She could be wrong. This could be nothing.

  She yanked it now.

  An alarm began ringing. A woman’s voice spoke over it in Thai, the language almost all of these children had been raised in.

  Downstairs! Into the basement!

  Sam went to the room nearest hers, opened the door. The girls in there were upright in their bunk beds. The oldest girls: Sarai, Arinya, Sunisa, Malee.

  “Quickly!” Sam said in Thai. “Downstairs!”

  “What is it?” Arinya asked, fear plain on her face.

  “Maybe nothing,” Sam exhaled. “But downstairs. Then we talk.”

  She went from door to door, making sure the children were moving, towards the bunker below with its strong walls and separate air supply and all the rest.

  There were guards inside now, hurling questions at her.

  “Secure the home!” she shot back. “Activate the defenses. Then contact Dr Kade and Mr Feng!”

  They stared at her.

  “Now!”

  She tried Feng and Kade herself as she moved.

  “Contact Feng,” she told her phone, hustling down a flight of stairs. “Urgent. Any means.”

  “Feng is not online,”

  “Try Kade,” she told the phone. “Urgent, any means.”

  “Kade is not online.”

  “Fuck,” she muttered.

  Sarai, just ahead of her, turned and looked at her.

  They were almost down to the ground floor. Almost to safety.

  Goddammit, Sam thought. But she had to ask.

  “Sarai…” she said. “Can you feel Kade? Can you feel Feng?”

  Sarai stopped at the bottom of the stairs, stepped to one side. Her eyes took on a far-away look.

  They came back to Sam’s. Sarai shook her head.

  Sam clenched her jaw and stepped forward.

  “Wait, Sam!” Sarai put a hand on Sam’s upper arm.

  Then all around her, Sam saw children stop moving. She heard them all inhale. The eyes of those facing her closed. Something happened. No. She had to get these kids to safety. But her friends were out there… In that building…

  She swallowed. “They went into the Advanced Computational Sciences Building,” she said in Thai. “The one that’s…”

  A chorus of voices spoke at once, a harmony emerging in unison from Sarai’s mouth right beside her, from Arinya’s up ahead, from Kit behind and above her on the stairs, from a dozen more voices all around her, cutting her off in mid-sentence.

  “We know it,” they said as one.

  Goose bumps rose up her spine.

  Who was saving who?

  Then a grunt came from those assembled voices.

  Sarai stumbled against her.

  Sam reached out and caught her, stabilized the girl.

  The other children started moving again, heading for the cellar stairs, faster.

  “We can’t find them,” Sarai said. Her voice trembled.

  Sam turned and looked down at Sarai. The girl looked frightened. Her dark eyes were wide.

  “Sarai,” Sam said. “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s something…” Sarai said. “Something in the network. Something… twisted. We brushed its mind. We felt its thoughts. It almost saw us…”

  Sam took a breath. “Is it from that building?”

  Sarai shook her head. “No. That building has been cut off from the net. The twisted thing – it did that. It sealed everything in that building inside. Trapped them in it… or underneath it. We think it’s trying to kill them.”

  Sam hardened her jaw.

  “Go downstairs, Sarai. Lock yourselves in until I’m back. The guards will protect you.”

  Sarai stared up at her. “You’re going there. To get Kade and Feng.”

  Sam hesitated. Then nodded.

  Sarai looked her in the eyes. “You need my help. I’m coming with you.”

  94

  No Exit

  Saturday 2041.01.19

  Su-Yong tore her way up layers of systems. She could feel data coming in from the outside net. She could feel her weapon suborning the monster she’d made, taking it apart, piece by piece, using each piece to find the rest, making sure none was left.

&n
bsp; Then her dying creation reached for the self-destructs.

  No!

  Su-Yong brute-forced her way into the systems controlling the quantum cluster’s hardware itself, wrenched them free before the slower moving monster could trigger them, shredded what bits of intruder she found.

  Too late.

  Main facility power cut out. Network cut out. Speakers and auditory sensors cut out.

  She rushed to try to understand it, understand what had happened. She devoured documents in the local data space just outside the quantum cluster itself, used systems running on backup power. There she found contingency plans, found self-destruct plans, found isolation plans. She compared them to the triggers she’d been able to seize control of.

  The answer wasn’t good.

  I’m dead, Su-Yong Shu realized.

  Again.

  Kade flinched as the room went black and explosions sounded.

  Feng thought a warning at him, and Kade ducked, his mind suddenly moving at Feng speed, in the trance of combat, where the room was bright, so bright.

  Weapons discharged, the soldiers firing on Feng and Kade, thinking they were behind this. The small space was alive with the red lines of their targeting solutions, the rippling shockwave of bullets as they moved in slow motion through the air.

  Feng was on top of him, in mid-flip through the air, one hand pushing Kade down further, bullets and their ripples thrashing the space where Kade had been.

  Then Feng was landing, one foot down, spinning, the soldiers around him turning, bringing the red lines his mind painted onto reality around, towards an intersection with his body.

  And in a blur, they were both down on the ground, their guns in Feng’s hands.

  Red emergency lights came on, illuminating the space. Alarms began to blare.

  Varun Verma hunched in front of a terminal, his body as low as he could make it, seemingly trying to hide, even as he tapped keys and read the screen.

  General Singh stood tall, exactly where he’d been.

  “You won’t get away with this,” he said calmly.

  “Away with what?” Kade yelled. “Your men just fired on us!”

  “You can’t expect to escape,” Singh said. “Surrender now!”

  “It wasn’t them,” Varun said. “Something… oh god… Oh dear Krishna and Brahma and all the other stupid gods. Oh bloody hell.”

  “What are you babbling about, man?” Singh demanded.

  “Someone triggered the self-destructs,” Varun said. He shook his head. “Most of them didn’t blow, but… Lake Bellandur is about to drain into here.”

  He looked up at the General, at Kade. “We’re all about to drown.”

  Kade heard a rumbling sound, then, somewhere above them, as if to emphasize Varun’s point.

  Then the door to the control room opened, and a forty-something Indian woman in a hospital gown stumbled halfway into the room, barefoot, her hair disheveled, barely holding herself up by the doorframe.

  Hello Feng. Hello Kade. She sent. Nice to see you.

  And hello to you as well, Dr Verma. She smiled.

  Kade stared at the woman in shock, then stepped towards her to support her.

  “Is this…” General Singh started.

  Verma, she sent, activate the Nexus-band transmitters for the QC. All of them.

  “I’d do what she says, Varun,” Kade said. “And yes, General Singh. Meet Su-Yong Shu.”

  The woman didn’t spare a glance for Singh.

  DO IT! She sent, aimed at Varun Verma.

  The rumbling grew louder. Kade could feel it in his feet now, feel it sub-sonically.

  Varun scrambled to tap keys on his console, moved over, flicked a row of physical switches.

  Kade felt something vast touch his mind. Su-Yong Shu, in the state he’d only perceived her a few times. He felt her enfold Feng in the same contact.

  I have very little time, Su-Yong sent them both. And there’s so much you need to know.

  Data squeezed into him, a high speed, highly compressed stream. Impressions struck him. Plans, locations, codes. Tools. Weapons.

  Save Ling, she sent. Save my little girl. Please. And save the world.

  Now, she sent, from the woman’s brain. We have to get you out of here.

  Kade turned at her mental direction, to leave the control room.

  Behind him, General Singh said. “I can’t let her escape.”

  Kade turned, looked at the man.

  Singh was pointing his finger at Kade and the woman he was propping up. Pointing it like a weapon. Kade felt Feng’s mind fill with solutions. With the two soldiers on the ground, apart, his guns pointed at the two of them, the next set of solutions would be lethal.

  Su-Yong spoke into Kade’s mind, and he relayed it out loud.

  “Su-Yong is about to die,” he said. “But this woman, Jyotika, escapes with us. Jyotika’s brain is healing. If Jyotika dies, Su-Yong says you die. Now, she says we have to run. All of us. Feng, Varun, come on!”

  They ran, as fast as they could. Kade was relieved that no one shot him in the back. Varun helped Kade haul Jyotika. She weighed hardly anything at all.

  Data kept flowing into his brain, blurring fast impressions of knowledge crowding into his head.

  Behind them, a giant crash came.

  And came. And came. And kept coming.

  “To the elevator!” Kade said.

  “It’ll be locked down!” Varun replied.

  There was water below their feet as they ran through the halls now.

  Other staff members crossed their path, panicking in the emergency lights and the alarms, the sound of a waterfall crashing into their subterranean facility, and the evidence of water rising from the floor.

  “Follow us!” Varun yelled. Then more quietly, to Kade, “I hope you have a plan.”

  He could barely speak past the influx of bandwidth from Su-Yong. He could feel Feng staggering under it too.

  There were more staff members at the elevator. The water was up to their ankles now. It was colder than Kade would have imagined.

  “We’ve called it and called it!” A woman yelled, next to a metal panel with a single button. “It won’t come! The doors won’t open!”

  Varun spoke softly, for Kade’s ears only. “The elevator shaft is ten centimeters thick of titanium alloy. It’s designed to withstand high explosives and armor piercing rounds. The circuitry is triple shielded, in nested faraday cages, reinforced with more titanium.”

  The water will crush the barriers into the data center soon, Su-Yong sent. We’ll only get one shot at this.

  The water was up to their knees now.

  Feng, she sent. I need access to what’s behind that panel. Undamaged.

  Feng dashed forward through the water. The crowd parted for him. He shoved one sidearm into his pocket, then ejected the clip from the other pistol, and popped the round from the chamber. Then he pounded the gun like a hammer, again and again, at the edge of the metal panel with the elevator button.

  Nothing.

  He hit it again, again, again.

  Nothing.

  Someone ran up to him with a heavy fire extinguisher. Feng nodded his thanks, pocketed the pistol, slammed the fire extinguisher into the metal panel. Once. Twice. Three times.

  The panel distorted. An edge popped loose.

  He hammered it with the fire extinguisher yet again, and again, and again, swinging it back like a battering ram, driving it forward with incredible force, now yelling “Ay!” on every blow.

  The panel bent, bent, bent. The edge came up a centimeter, two centimeters, enough to get a grip on.

  Feng dropped the fire extinguisher, grabbed the edge with both hands, and pulled.

  Muscles strained. Kade saw the edge bite into Feng’s palms. Felt pain dig into his friend. The metal groaned, gave way, centimeter by centimeter.

  Kade turned, found General Singh.

  “You wanna die down here? Get your men to help!”

  S
ingh stared at him, the water up to his thighs now, then snapped at his two soldiers.

  “You heard the man! Get up there and help the clone!”

  They took up positions with him, all heaved at once, the panel moved, it flexed, it came loose, bit by bit.

  Then Feng pulled the fire extinguisher back up from out of the water, got on the other side of the panel, waved the two soldiers away, swung it back like a battering ram, and slammed it into the loose edge standing up from the wall.

  “Ay!”

  The panel tore free of the wall with a ripping sound.

  Get me closer, Su-Yong sent.

  Kade and Varun helped maneuver her closer. The water was up to their waists now. They were almost swimming in it. It was so cold. It must be a deep deep lake.

  Closer, Su-Yong sent. I need to put Jyotika’s head inside.

  Varun shot Kade a look over Jyotika’s shoulders that said exactly what he thought of this plan.

  The water was already draining into the bottom half of the hole where the panel Feng had removed had been.

  Su-Yong bent Jyotika’s body forward, until her head disappeared within the hole.

  Kade felt her touch the flow of data around her, like Ling did, but more so. He felt her reach out, in wavelengths short enough to pass between the gaps of the Faraday cage.

  Holy fuck, he thought. That’s high frequency. High energy. The toll on her brain has to be enormous.

  Jyotika’s head came back out the gap. He and Varun pulled her upright.

  Two separate systems… Su-Yong sent. I’ve beaten the system down here. But there’s another, physically disconnected, up top, that must also be defeated… Couldn’t find a way…

  He felt something else then. He felt water pressure finally overwhelm the maintenance doors of the quantum cluster, felt it rush in, shorting out electronics, knocking over vessels with quantum cores, disrupting coherence.

  Su-Yong! He sent.

  He felt Feng turn towards them in alarm. Mother!