by Ramez Naam
It was incredible. Stan Kim had no Nexus. No fancy code. No nothing. The man had just talked to them.
Old school.
Then the hate hit.
[MULTIPLEX SIGNAL DETECTED]
It crashed over him like a wave, dragged him down into its red depths, so much darker, deeper, more violent than before. There were screams around him. Screams of rage. He felt the whole crowd surge forward, mad, a rabid beast.
[MESH NETWORK CALIBRATION UNDERWAY]
His eyes flew open and he found himself running, snarling, shoving, pushing, viciously trying to get through the press of arms and bodies ahead, so he could get to that goddamn barrier, tear it the fuck down, get to those pigs on the other side, rip their motherfucking arms off and use them to club the…
[FIREWALL CONFIG UPDATED]
Code sliced through the chaos. Digital filters blockaded specific signal patterns identified by peer-to-peer comparison across the Mesh. The filters reduced the identified broadcast to data, to mere bits, canceled out those bits at the firewall around his mind.
[AREA COUNTERMEASURES ACTIVATED]
Countersignals burst out from code in his mind, using the Nexus nodes in his brain as transmitters, coordinating with hundreds of nearby peers on the Mesh, shaping the countersignal to maximize destructive interference, to cancel out the hate broadcast over as wide an area as possible.
Rangan stumbled. His mind cleared. The crowd slammed into him from behind, forcing him forward. All around him he felt confusion, but still hate. His firewalls were keeping Breece’s broadcast from touching him, were suppressing Breece’s broadcast at least partially around him.
But the firewalls didn’t touch the secondary effects. People were growing enraged. Their own anger was being rekindled, and blaring out loud and clear.
So was fear.
He looked right and left, struggling to break free of the crowd. From the minds nearest him, where his active countermeasures were doing the most to cancel out Breece’s signal, he felt panic.
He felt men and women suddenly realizing they were being pressed forward by the hundreds of thousands behind them.
Whether they liked it or not.
BZZZZZZZZZZZT.
Rangan’s insides turned to jelly. He groaned as the sonic disruptor resonated in his chest, his jaw, his belly. He would have fallen but the crowd held him up.
Then the press in front of him was gone. He stumbled forward, fell to one knee, sweet Jesus he was going to get run over, and then somehow he was back up, and in front of him the barriers were bowled over, protesters were pushing back riot police. Tear gas was hanging in the air. There were screams ahead and behind. There was pain and confusion in his mind, even without Breece’s broadcast.
And there were the stairs to the stage, just ahead of him.
And enraged protesters hauling up those stairs.
Towards a totally alone Stan Kim.
Rangan charged forward, hauled up the stairs.
HELP! He sent in a broadband across the Mesh. The stage! Stan Kim!
There were three protesters ahead of him. He threw himself at the first, trying to tackle the man around the waist.
He fell short, grabbed the man by one leg instead. They both fell to the stairs. Rangan pushed himself up, ran over the man, up onto the main level of the stage itself.
Stan Kim was standing up, struggling with one of the men. The other was swinging the remnants of a sign at Kim, hitting him across the back.
Rangan ran full bore, charged shoulder-first into the man swinging what remained of a sign, sent him sprawling. He stumbled himself, caught himself on a railing at the edge of the stage, then turned.
The other protester was a big guy, more than six feet tall, muscle-bound. He had Stan Kim bent back over the edge of the rail.
Rangan ran at them, slammed into the man, meaning to knock him down.
The big buy moved maybe a foot, and stayed upright, but he did let go of Kim. Rangan bounced away. The big man turned and snarled at him, his fist drawing back.
Rangan reached in, boosted the Active Countermeasure strength to max.
The man hesitated.
“Someone’s fucking with your head!” Rangan yelled at him.
The man lowered his fist slowly, turned his head to the left, a confused look on his face. Rangan followed it. Stan Kim was up.
“Who the hell are you?” Kim asked.
Rangan was panting. There was a Rangan Shankari mask on his face. He dropped his hands to his knees.
“I’m a friend,” he managed.
Then he turned, and looked out, and saw and heard the chaos.
There were ranks of people at the bottom of the stairs to the stage. People using Mesh. Volunteers, who’d come at his call, sealing it off, keeping it safe.
But beyond that…
Clashes everywhere. Clouds of tear gas rising up. Molotov cocktails flying. Riot police struggling with protesters. Screams. Pain.
Oh, Jesus, Rangan thought.
We just have to get their attention, Angel had said.
Rangan turned back to Stan Kim. “You have a mic?”
Kim shook his head, warily, and pointed. “Just stand on the X.”
An X, made of tape, on the wood of the stage.
Rangan stepped onto it. He turned and faced the crowd. And then he could see the camera drones hovering out there, picking him up. He could see the cunningly hidden directional mics aimed to pick up his voice.
Rangan took a deep breath.
He reached out through the Mesh. He could feel the firewalls active, feel the active countermeasures fighting. It was doing some good. They were restraining some of the violence.
But not enough. Not nearly enough.
Rangan lifted up his hands, and yelled, for the cameras, for the microphones, in his ridiculous Rangan Shankari mask.
“Listen to me!” he cried. “Someone’s messing with your heads!”
Holy frack, Axon, Angel sent, Is that you on the screens?
Chaos came through. He could tell she was in the thick of it.
He felt Angel’s attention. Tempest’s. Cheyenne was struggling, somewhere, with someone.
Across the mass of minds, he felt barely a flicker of change.
“There are people around you who aren’t angry!” Rangan yelled. “Tune into them!”
Nothing. Hardly any flicker, hardly any change. People barely noticed he was here.
“Thank you,” Stan Kim said from behind him. Rangan felt a hand land on his arm. “Let me try.”
Rangan moved to the side in a daze. Stan Kim stepped back onto the X, his hand outreached.
“Everyone!” the Senator said. “This is not the way! You need to…”
A lit Molotov cocktail rose from the crowd hurled straight at them.
“Shit!” Rangan yelled. He grabbed Kim, threw them both to the floor of the stage.
The cocktail kept flying, shattered into flame on the next block of E street behind them.
“Fuck fuck fuck,” Rangan said.
And then, before he could stop himself, he rose, and did what he knew he had to.
“My name,” he yelled, “is Rangan Shankari!”
He felt a flicker of something from the minds down there.
“I am DJ Axon! I helped invent Nexus 5.”
More attention. People were tuning in, looking.
Then Rangan reached up, and pulled the mask off his face, up onto the top of his head.
The crowd gasped. He felt it ripple from mind to mind, a stutter that paused the violence in all but the most intense locations.
“And someone is fucking with your heads!”
Carolyn Pryce’s phone buzzed again. The three short sharp buzzes of highest priority.
She looked down from the global calamity all around her, to the message.
[ERD_SECRETS: We’re PLF. The files we leaked are from Barnes’s personal data. That’s how I know. Events in China and the world are your proof. You must rela
y this upwards. China did not take offensive action against the US.]
She shook her head, and snapped out a new message.
[Not good enough. Give me something concrete!]
Breece narrowed his eyes at the screen.
Shankari.
He turned to the Nigerian. “Get a shooter in position.”
The Nigerian looked back at him for a moment. “There’s added risk,” he said. “We can let this go. We’ve distracted them. What does it matter?”
Breece slammed his palm onto the table. “It matters!” He yelled.
Then he closed his eyes, and continued, more softly. “Just do it, please.”
“You’re being hacked!” Rangan yelled. “That’s why you’re suddenly so angry! Tune in to the people who aren’t angry! Get close to them! They have an app for you! Install it, everyone!”
There was a commotion below. Rangan looked down, saw armed riot police crash through the wall of Mesh-running volunteers at the bottom of the stairs, saw one run full-tilt at him, a truncheon raised.
“Away from the Senator!” the cop yelled.
Oh shit, Rangan thought.
Then suddenly Stan Kim was in front of him, an arm outraised.
“This man’s with me, officers!”
“Senator!” one of them yelled. “We’ll get you out of here!”
“I’m staying here!” Kim yelled back. “We’ve got work to do.”
Rangan breathed again. In the corner of his mind’s eye, a counter was moving, it was scrolling, incrementing fast, the last digits changing in a blur.
They’d started the day with a little over 53,000 people running Mesh in this protest, out of six or seven hundred thousand people in total.
Now they were at 120,000, and still climbing.
Rangan tapped Stan Kim on the shoulder. Kim turned to look at him.
“You’re blocking my camera, Senator,” Rangan said with a smile.
Kim leaned in close to him. “Kid, you wanna see daylight after today?” He whispered. His eyes searched Rangan’s. “Put that mask back on.”
Then the Senator stepped back, out of the line of the cameras, a smile playing at his lips, not even close to reaching his eyes.
Rangan swallowed hard, pulled the mask down over his face, suddenly aware of all the police. And also aware that a majority of those 120,000… no, wait… 125,000 people were tuning in to him over the Mesh.
He stood up straight, raised his arms, and told them with word and thought.
“We can do this!” he told them, hope and optimism beaming out. “There’s a tipping point ahead! Keep bringing more people in, and we can cancel out the attack.”
There was still so much hate out there. They were still a minority, growing fast but still there were four people not running Mesh for every one person who was…
Then he felt another mind touch his. A mind he’d brushed in passing that day on the National Mall. The day everything went to shit.
He looked down and there was a bald man in orange robes climbing the stairs, threading his way between the imposing riot police, smiling slightly, his mind giving off tranquility.
This, this is what the crowd needed.
Rangan gestured and the monk came onto the stage without a word.
Rangan reached out and touched his mind to offer him Mesh, found that the monk was already running it, and smiled.
“Listen to this man,” Rangan said into the cameras, into the minds of those following him. “He has what we need.”
And then he redirected those minds to the monk, and watched and felt as peace rippled out, as it flowed out of a hundred thousand minds, into all of those around them.
As peace flowed out of them like water, to meet the more numerous hot flames of anger.
Kate looked at the message on her terminal.
[Insider: Not good enough. Give me something concrete!]
Then she looked up at the wallscreen. At the chaos. At what Breece had done. At what he’d done to his own people.
He hadn’t listened at all.
“Damn you,” she whispered. “I loved you.”
Then she typed out the message.
[ERD_ SECRETS: The man who killed Barnes goes by the alias “Breece”. His real name is Andrew Marcum. He was behind DC, Chicago, and Houston. He’s in DC now. His current location and full bio follow.]
“Shooter’s in position,” the Nigerian said. “We’ll only get one shot before they triangulate.”
“Take it,” Breece replied.
Rangan watched the numbers climb.
263,000. 267,000. More than a third of the crowd running mesh, running firewalls cutting off the hate, broadcasting active countermeasures all around them!
They were doing it. Out there, he could see violence subsiding with his own eyes. They were approaching a tipping point.
He heard Stan Kim next to him, yelling to one of the cops.
“Get on the horn to your commander,” Kim was saying. “Tell him he needs to cease fire! The crowd’s calming down!”
“Senator, we have orders to clear the protest and get you out of here,” the cop replied.
“Officer, that crowd is being pacified by this young man right here! Shooting more teargas and rubber bullets is just going to make it harder. Now goddammit, put me in touch with your commander.”
Rangan just closed his eyes, tuned in to the peace coming off this monk, this man he didn’t even know.
290,000.
295,000.
Someone jostled him, and he opened his eyes. He looked over and the monk was half-collapsed on him, still smiling, still serene, his mind still giving off a deep tranquility.
There was red all over his robes.
“He’s been shot!” Rangan said.
Suddenly there were riot cops all around him, shields held high. Radios were crackling.
He felt other minds, protesters all around, climbing onto the stage from the sides, crowding around, shielding him with their bodies.
And this man. Rangan lowered him to the wood floor of the stage, surrounded by cops and protesters both.
The monk was still smiling, eyes closed.
A cop pushed Rangan out of the way, ripped at the monk’s robes. There was bright arterial red in the center of his chest. Rangan stared in horror.
The monk still smiled. His mind reached out. The tranquility was changing somehow. The peace growing more ethereal.
Turning to white.
Everything turning to white.
Beautiful, beautiful white.
It took Rangan’s breath away.
He felt hundreds of thousands of people gasp with it. Felt them all lose themselves in the complete absorption of this man’s mind.
Everything was this. This moment. This breath. There was no past. No future. Complete Samadhi. Complete absorption.
All white.
All peace.
All compassion.
Rangan lost himself in it. He wasn’t even sure how long it lasted.
And then it was fading.
And fading.
Dissipating.
Gone.
And all around him he felt stillness. Stillness everywhere.
Peace.
He opened his eyes, stood upright, craned his head over the forest of police shields and protesters who’d climbed up here to protect him, and looked out over the crowd.
Everywhere, people had stopped. The protesters had stopped. The cops had stopped.
They’d won. The riot was over.
Stan Kim put a hand on Rangan’s shoulder.
“Well done,” the Senator said quietly. “Now, get the hell out of here.”
Rangan nodded.
Time to get the hell out. Before the cops realized who they had here.
Then he heard a radio crackle, saw a police officer’s eyes go wide, the cop step back to create room, his gun fly out of its holster, aimed straight at Rangan.
“Down on the ground!”
Carolyn
Pryce stared at the message, at the data in the attached file.
She couldn’t breathe. A fake? So detailed.
“Dr Pryce,” someone was saying. “Dr Pryce!”
She looked up. People were staring at her. She focused on Admiral McWilliams, ignored everyone else.
“I need a secure line to the National Terror Response Center.”
McWilliams stared at her, like he didn’t understand what language she was speaking.
“Now!”
123
Inauguration
Monday 2041.01.20
John Stockton watched as Ben Fuhrman finished the Oath of Office as Vice President. Fuhrman looked over at him, his hand still on the Bible, and gave him a tight grin.
It was amazing they’d made it this far.
Stockton responded with a proud nod.
Ben Fuhrman stepped away from the podium, and so did Justice Rodriguez.
The musicians played. Musicians he loved. The program said five minutes. It lasted forever.
Then they were done, and it was his turn.
Chief Justice Aaron Klein stepped forward, with the Bible that George Washington had sworn his oath on.
Stockton stepped up in front of the Chief Justice, and put one hand on George Washington’s Bible.
And suddenly he was aware of the silence of the vast House Chamber all around and above him, of him nearly alone here in the center and the bottom of it, of the hundreds of Representatives, Senators, Cabinet Members, family, friends, and guests crammed into this place to watch. Of the cameras all around. Of the millions who might be watching.
Suddenly this wasn’t just a formality. Suddenly this wasn’t just another public event.