Apex

by Ramez Naam

  “BO JINTAO!” he roars again, the cry of a man beyond hope, beyond fear, beyond anything but rage.

  And in Beijing, in Tiananmen square, half a million lungs scream the name of the man who’s murdered his beloved.

  “BO JINTAO!”

  Pan Luli hears it all around her, hears it from every mouth of every man, every woman, every child. She feels it from their minds

  Then, as one, half a million pairs of eyes turn, turn to the north and west, beyond the Gate of Heavenly Peace, beyond the soldiers and tanks and guns, towards the walled refuge of Zhongnanhai, the palace of the modern day Emperors of the nation.

  And like a great, angered beast, enraged beyond its senses, the crowd surges.

  “Nuclear attack,” Bao Zhuang whispered softly. “On Shanghai?”

  Ouyang nodded.

  “This is insanity!” Wang Wei cried. “She’s dead! We shut her down.”

  “Shut up old man,” Fu Ping said.

  “Tactical weapons?” Bo Jintao asked.

  Ouyang shook his head. “No. She is a kilometer down. Her forces control the surface all around her. Strategic weapons must be used. Even then they may not destroy her. But they will knock out her connections to the outside world.”

  The blood left Bo Jintao’s face entirely.

  Bao Zhuang spoke softly, “The death toll?”

  “Twenty to thirty million,” Ouyang said. His voice was steady, his face a mask.

  Inside he felt sick with it. His stomach was rebelling at the thought. Could he kill millions of his own people?

  “Better than a billion,” he said aloud.

  “Is there no other way?” Bo Jintao asked.

  “Authorize it,” Ouyang said. “I’ll wait until the last possible moment. We’ll do everything possible to win via conventional means. But if defeat appears imminent – if she seizes control of more military assets – then we must strike immediately.”

  The room was utterly silent. Ouyang looked around. He was a career soldier. These were politicians. The situation was horrid, the thing of nightmares. But the difference between the two careers was evident here, evident in the ability to take hard decisions. Or not.

  “We must decide,” he said. “And you must say ‘yes’. As great an atrocity as it would be…” He swallowed. “The alternative is even worse.”

  Still these men were mute, their faces drained of blood, their brains paralyzed by the unthinkable.

  Then his chief aide ran into the room, breaking protocol.

  “General Ouyang,” the Colonel nearly yelled. “We have a massive network attack from Shanghai. She’s gone offensive!”

  Ouyang surged to his feet. His eyes found Bo Jintao.

  He saw the man look over at Bao Zhuang. The President they’d deposed. Who was somehow still the elder statesman here.

  Bao Zhuang took a breath. “Yes,” he said.

  “Do it,” Bo Jintao said, turning back to Ouyang.

  Ouyang saluted them both, then ran from the room.

  The soldiers open fire on them. Pan Luli feels the bullets rip into men and women around her. Tanks fire shells. Thousands of her sisters and brothers die in the first minute.

  Then the crowd is on the army. Weapons the students have hidden are used, and the tanks go silent. Students and householders are climbing over tanks, throwing ladders up against walls, climbing up, throwing carpet and boards and coats over barbed wire.

  There’s more gunfire. People are dying. Dying in huge numbers. She sees friends fall, waves of them dying as the soldiers gun them down.

  But the rage is strong.

  Bo Jintao! Bo Jintao!

  He killed Zhi Li!

  Then they are over! And the Molotov cocktails are flying, flying, most of them landing in the vast lake in the center of Zhongnanhai, but some striking soldiers, some splashing flame onto buildings, and people are still coming over the walls, and rushing forwards, climbing over walls, a raging human wave.

  Ouyang ran next to his aide.

  “How do you know it’s an attack?”

  “What else could it be, General?”

  Within a minute they were outside, almost to his helicopter, what he’s been using as a command center, with its analog radio link to the planes he has circling overhead.

  Then he saw the mob cresting the walls, the flaming firebombs hurtling this way, the soldiers falling back.

  The soldiers being swallowed up by it.

  The rioters coming up with guns in their hands.

  “Into the chopper!” he yelled, shoving the Colonel ahead.

  He hauled himself on with raw adrenaline. “Lift off! Lift off!”

  They rose, the sound of the rotors deafening, their downdraft creating a small storm inside the helicopter. A soldier slammed the armored sliding door closed.

  The human wave was still a hundred meters away, visible through the armored glass. Automated defense guns had risen halfway out of their nacelles.

  Had stalled, frozen.

  Dear god. They’d been paralyzed. Paralyzed by electronic attacks.

  And the mob had rifles now, was firing on the soldiers, was hurling Molotovs.

  “Order the evacuation!” he yelled to the radio man in the co-pilots seat. The soldier was already screaming into the mic of his headset.

  Ouyang looked down.

  Molotovs were crashing among the core buildings of Zhongnanhai. The mob was close behind.

  It was too late.

  125

  Darkest

  Monday 2041.01.20

  Professor Somdet Phra Ananda sat on the thin mat, his legs crossed in lotus, thumbs and forefingers joined, backs of his palms resting on his knees. His body sat in the great meditation hall of this millennia-old monastery nestled against the side of a mountain, high above the lush plains of Thailand.

  His mind was here and beyond. He was enmeshed, part of something far vaster, far more real, far more beautiful than himself.

  A mind greater than the sum of its parts. A mind of paramount peace. A being of unrivaled insight and reflection. A being of unequaled wisdom.

  Nirvana here on Earth.

  Almost.

  Twenty-five children and a hundred monks, together, here, a nucleus. A hub.

  Three dozen more monasteries around the world, now, another two thousand meditators, linked at the speed of light, breathing as one, perceiving as one, the stuff of mind proxied by photon and electron, a web of consciousness, nearly circling the planet.

  And out there, a million more minds they’d glimpsed, waiting for them to reach out. Ten million more they might pull in. Bits of technology whizzing around the planet at high speed to assist them.

  All to save one woman’s soul.

  And perhaps the world.

  Fear rippled through the tiny fraction of the greater self that was Professor Somdet Phra Ananda. Fear of the woman named Su-Yong Shu. Fear of the woman he’d named a friend. Fear of the woman he’d admired. Fear of what she could do in her insanity.

  Words rose up, unbidden.

  I accept rebirth, until all sentient beings have attained enlightenment.

  I accept suffering, until all may know peace.

  They rose up, rippled out into the greater self and were gone.

  Where they had been there was only peace.

  And then a connection was opening, a connection to a chamber a kilometer beneath Shanghai.

  And utter insanity burst forth from it.

  Kade coughed, pain wrenching through his chest.

  “Get the first aid kit,” he heard Sam say.

  He’d seen something. In the agent’s mind. He had to warn Rangan.

  Kade reached out with his thoughts, activated the network access point they’d brought down with them on the end of more than a kilometer of ultra-high grade fiber. He felt it come alive, instantly, felt it proxy him through the net via its satellite-linked mate near the surface.

  He reached through it to send a message to Rangan.

&n
bsp; Rangan, he sent. Not the protest. The Capitol. That’s where it’s going to happen. The Capitol.

  He’d destroyed the monster in Ling’s mind. There was nothing to exploit what was about to happen in DC. But even so, the chaos it would cause…

  Then Su-Yong’s mind came alive in the space below Shanghai, and smashed down on him in her utter madness.

  Su-Yong! He managed to send.

  She kept coming, kept coming, kept forcing herself onto him.

  And he was completely powerless to resist.

  Bo Jintao looked up as the alarms started blaring.

  “What?”

  Then there was shooting.

  A soldier burst into the room.

  “Evacuation!” the soldier yelled. “The mob has broken through!”

  “Impossible!” Wang Wei yelled.

  Bo Jintao jumped to his feet and ran for the door. Other Standing Committee members got there first. He grabbed Wang Wei by the back of the man’s suit, threw him to the side, stepped forward, did the same to Fu Ping, and then he was to the door.

  He looked back once, and he saw the chaos in the room behind him, a scrum as Standing Committee members fought to follow. Except one. At the head of the table, still seated, his hands flat on the table, a wry half-smile on his face, and his eyes far away, was Bao Zhuang.

  Bo Jintao snapped his face back, pushed through the doorway, and into the hallway. Then he was running down the hall, the way the soldiers pointed.

  He heard gunfire behind him. Screams. There was a smell of smoke in the air.

  A soldier held a door open ahead.

  Bo Jintao burst out through the door into the courtyard, where the vehicles should be.

  He saw guards, firing weapons, shooting their machine guns at a tide of humanity, coming over the inner walls, into this thousand year old courtyard, swarming over them.

  More gunfire behind him.

  He turned to see the soldier behind him fire, fire, fire again into people emerging from within the building. There were flames. Protesters fell from the bullets.

  Then one got through, grabbed the soldier. He struggled, pushed the man off. Then another grabbed the soldier, another. They pulled him down.

  Bo Jintao turned and ran.

  But there was nowhere to run to. The courtyard was full of protesters.

  The last thing he saw was angry faces, a forest of hands reaching out for him, dragging him down.

  The last thing he heard was his name being yelled, over and over again.

  “BO JINTAO! BO JINTAO!”

  Then the kicks came, and the mob tore into him.

  And there was nothing left but pain.

  General Ouyang Fan leaned back, numb.

  Zhongnanhai gone.

  Su-Yong Shu loose.

  Everything ending.

  There was no time for paralysis. No time to mourn. That could come later.

  He pulled the helmet tight over his head as the helicopter flew, activated his headset.

  “Put me through to General Quan Huyan,” he said into it. “Immediately.”

  Time. How much time?

  He turned to his aide, Colonel Zhu. “What’s the status on the network attack?” he asked.

  Zhu shook his head. “Same. Incredible bandwidth. We don’t understand it.”

  “Weapons systems?” Ouyang asked. “Bases? Banks? Planes? What has she cracked? Has she launched on us? Has she gone nuclear?”

  Zhu shook his head again. “Communication is strained. We don’t know.”

  Ouyang absorbed that.

  Can I kill millions? He asked himself. What if I’m wrong?

  What if I hesitate and a billion die?

  Or eight billion?

  “General Ouyang,” General Quan Huyan’s voice said in his headset.

  “Quan,” Ouyang said. He took a deep breath. There was no right answer. He had to do the best he could. “Fuel those two Dongfengs. Set a twenty minute timer. If I don’t belay this order, fire them.”

  “General,” Quan Huyan replied. “I cannot fire without authorization from the Chairman of the State Military Commission or a unanimous vote of the Politburo Standing Committee.”

  Ouyang looked out of the helicopter’s armored window. He could see the fires out in the distance as they left them behind.

  “Quan,” he said quietly. “Zhongnanhai has fallen. I may be the highest authority in the nation.” He waited. “Send a soldier out. Find a civilian phone. You’ll see it’s true.”

  He heard Quan exhale on the other side.

  “Fan,” his old friend said. “How do I know this is really you?”

  Ouyang Fan closed his eyes. “You wept on my shoulder when the doctors cured your wife’s cancer, my friend,” he said. “May both our wives live to share tea again.”

  He heard another breath.

  “Your orders have been received, General,” Quan said. “They will be executed.”

  ATTENTION ALL OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS OF DACHANG AIR BASE AND ALL CONFUCIAN FIST COMMANDO UNITS. THIS IS A MESSAGE FROM GENERAL OUYANG FAN, MINISTER OF STATE DEFENSE, ACTING CHAIRMAN OF THE STATE MILITARY COMMISSION.

  A STRATEGIC THERMONUCLEAR STRIKE HAS BEEN ORDERED FOR SHANGHAI.

  TENS OF MILLIONS WILL DIE. YOU WILL DIE.

  YOU CAN PREVENT THIS STRIKE.

  DESTROY THE QUANTUM CLUSTER BELOW JIAO TONG, OR ISOLATE IT COMPLETELY FROM THE NET.

  USE ANY AND ALL MEANS AT YOUR DISPOSAL.

  YOU HAVE FIFTEEN MINUTES.

  THIS MESSAGE WILL REPEAT ON ALL CHANNELS.

  ATTENTION ALL OFFICERS AND…

  In Shanghai, thousands of analog radios blared the message.

  Soldiers, their minds hijacked, switched channels, turned down volume, or simply ignored it.

  A few Confucian Fist heard the message, and wished Feng and Bai and the Americans luck. Then they fought on, protecting Jiao Tong, protecting the woman who’d freed them, while the American boy tried to cure her of her madness.

  Kade struggled under the crashing wave of Su-Yong Shu’s mind.

  Too much. Too vast. Too angry.

  He was a grain of sand battered against the reef by the crashing waves at the edge of her ocean.

  He was nothing.

  Everything was her.

  Her thoughts.

  Her madness.

  Her hallucinations.

  Quantum foam.

  Fractal light of other worlds.

  A trillion reflected faces of herself.

  Pain. Centuries of pain. Millennia of pain. Infinities of pain.

  Goddesses tortured by gnats.

  Goddesses triumphant.

  New orders. New realities. New worlds birthed in fire.

  Cleansing fire. Wiping away the old. Making room for the new.

  Codes breaking. Impossibly long numbers decomposing effortlessly into beautiful, elegant, primes. Systems opening like flowers. World unlocking itself. Routers. Networks.

  Cities.

  Weapons.

  Minds.

  Better worlds.

  Better!

  Kade screamed as her madness drowned him.

  Su-Yong! He tried, tried to offer her parts of him, tried to offer her input from his brain, stabilizing input, a dose of sanity.

  He felt her reach out into the world then, through connections, so many connections, so much bandwidth, and he knew that it was all over.

  Then he felt something flow into his mind through the access point.

  Tranquility came.

  A mind. A vast mind.

  A self, compound, multi-faceted, yet whole, like the eyes of a fly.

  A meta-brain, organic, functional, real, operating in the ways Su-Yong had been built to simulate, offering correction for the errors in her simulation code that had built up, that had compounded, that had driven her insane over time.

  A peace, a stability, formed of a base so broad, a base of not one brain, not one life, not one perspective, but thousands, complementing one another, e
mbracing one another, encircling and intertwining with one another.

  A compassion. A compassion so deep, so heart-felt, a mind that knew this woman had suffered, that had seen glimpses of her torture. A compassion for all beings, for all minds, for all creatures who thought or felt, for her in particular, who’d felt so much for so long in so much agony.

  A joy. A wild, multifarious, explosive, riot of joy, of moments, of glimpses, of experiences, of not just thousands of minds, but of now tens of thousands, of now hundreds of thousands of minds, as more touched them, as the core reached out to more minds, brought them together into joyous union, assisted by vast data centers of machinery that routed and filtered and coordinated connections, linked minds, sifted offered thoughts, identified love and bliss and passion and curiosity and delight and amplified them, selected for them, brought them here, through this link, through and around Kade, directly to this woman who needed them so badly.

  Who needed to remember joy.

  Who needed to see the good in humanity before she went to war with them.

  It came through naked, vulnerable, wide open to her, not a challenge, but an offering. Not to defeat Su-Yong, but to surrender to her everything she needed to be whole and sane and joyous once more.

  Kade felt the globe-spanning mind lift him up, out from under the crushing roiling pressure of Su-Yong’s madness, up, up.

  He was alive with joy. He was ten thousand minds, a hundred thousand minds, joyous minds, exulting minds, transcendent minds,

  one mind,

  many minds,

  one mind,

  many minds.

  He was humanity coming alive. Humanity waking up. Humanity reaching consciousness. Humanity reaching transcendence. Humanity casting aside the veil of Maya, humanity pushing through the shroud of illusion, the mask of separation, realizing its true form, its true unity.

  Humanity unfolding into its true glory.