Crux

by Ramez Naam

  Holtzmann pressed the button, and Nexus forced his own neurons to pump sweet opiates into the rest of his brain.

  He emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, calm, smiling, a little dreamy, but awake enough. A little bump of norepinephrine kept him moving even as the opiates made the pain and stress go away.

  “You doing OK?” Barnes asked him.

  Holtzmann smiled. “Better.”

  They filed out to the Rose Garden and lined up for the ceremony. Holtzmann smiled at the TV cameras and waved at a staffer he knew. Then they waited. And waited.

  The opiate calm faded. He felt a chill seep into his bones, even in the sweltering October sun. His breath was coming fast again. The hip ached. His hand started to tremble.

  God, he could use another hit.

  His head was pounding now. When would this start? He felt weak in the knees.

  Another? he wondered. Even smaller?

  No. Absolutely not.

  Just a tiny, tiny little dose?

  And then the door opened, and President Stockton walked out into the garden.

  Holtzmann straightened himself. His throat was dry. The President gave a speech on courage and self-sacrifice and the need to stand up against those who would use violence to win their way. It was easy for him now. The assassination attempt had changed the race completely. Stockton was ten points up with just weeks to go.

  I should have let him die, Holtzmann thought.

  Stockton walked down the line, thanking the wives and children of the Secret Service men killed. Saying kind words and shaking hands and patting heads of the children for the cameras.

  Holtzmann’s anxiety grew as the President came nearer. His heart was a jackhammer, beating faster and faster. He wiped a hand against his brow and it came away wet with his sweat. He felt so very cold and his muscles were cramping and all he wanted was another small surge of the opiates that would take this pain away.

  No.

  Then the President was in front of him. And Holtzmann stared at the man, his heart in his throat.

  He’s going to know, Holtzmann realized. How could he not know? How did I spot the assassin? They’re going to figure it out.

  “Dr Holtzmann, your keen eye and quick wits saved my life three months ago. The nation owes you a huge debt. I owe you a huge debt. In recognition of your service, I now award you this Distinguished Civilian Service Award. You’re a hero, Doctor. Thank you.”

  The President put the ribbon around his neck and Holtzmann almost choked around his thank you and nearly flinched when they shook hands. He smiled a rictus smile for the cameras and he thought it was over, but the President kept a firm grip on his hand, and then pulled him close, so close Holtzmann could smell his aftershave and feel the football hero size of the man. Then the President spoke, his voice pitched for Holtzmann’s ears alone.

  “I’d like you to brief me on the Nexus situation, Doctor. And especially those Nexus children you’re investigating. Two weeks. You, me, and Director Barnes. My chief of staff will set it up.”

  Holtzmann swallowed, and then the President was past, and it was over.

  He nearly collapsed into the men’s room stall, after, and pumped a tiny bit more into himself. He felt the sweet relief of tension leaving his body, of the anxiety he’d felt before the President evaporating.

  Just this once, Holtzmann told himself. A special exception.

  He let the fear fade, then chased the endogenous opiates with another boost of norepinephrine to get himself moving again.

  Barnes was waiting for him when he emerged.

  “Everything OK, Martin?”

  Holtzmann smiled, and waved vaguely at his head, the skull fracture he’d received that day. “Just… still some aftereffects. Almost gone.”

  Barnes nodded.

  “Any luck tracking down the source of the Nexus yet?” he asked.

  Holtzmann shook his head. “I have a team on it full time. We’ll find an impurity. Something will tip us off as to where it came from.”

  Barnes nodded. “Keep looking.” Then they were off to the Capitol to make the case for the bills the President wanted.

  Holtzmann told a dozen legislators that they needed tighter controls on chemreactors and precursors that might lead to Nexus. In between he passed through half-a-dozen more Nexus detectors, all of his team’s design, all with the holes he’d put there for himself. He swore to another senator that giving an autistic child Nexus was clear child abuse, as bad as giving a child heroin. The senator shook their hands and said she’d consider her vote. By that time all Holtzmann wanted was to find a bathroom and give himself another jolt of his own opiates to drown his sick self-loathing.

  “Why bring me?” he asked Barnes.

  “You’re a respected scientist, Martin,” Barnes replied, smiling that unnerving smile of his. “You have far more credibility than anyone I could bring from enforcement division. And, of course, you’re a national hero.”

  Holtzmann grunted and got on with the day’s hypocrisy.

  Holtzmann’s part was done at 4 o’clock, while Barnes went on to another meeting. He was tired and achy and clammy and jonesing, but he’d gotten through it, and now it was done, and he was absolutely not going to use the opiates again except for pain or sleep.

  He’d exited the Capitol, was limping down the outside stairs on his cane, on his way to the passenger load point, when he saw her approaching. Red hair. Fair, freckled skin. Lisa Brandt. It had been years. Her green eyes met his, and she rushed towards him. Her face showed not delight, not hatred, but urgency.

  “Martin!”

  “Lisa… It’s so good to see you.” He reached out with his free hand to touch her arm. “What are you doing here?”

  “Lobbying with CogLiberty. Martin, we’ve been hearing these rumors.” Her eyes burrowed into his and he remembered the intensity he’d always felt at that gaze, the passion, when their eyes had met, when... “Autistic children with Nexus, taken…”

  Holtzmann searched those eyes. Did she still feel anything for him?

  “…to ERD facilities, Martin. For research purposes. Not child protective services! ERD!”

  He stared at her, and all he wanted was to kiss her again or to curl up in a ball or flee.

  “Are you listening to me, Martin? Kidnapping children! Do you know anything about this? You have to help.”

  The words she was saying caught up to him, and he blinked.

  “I… Lisa… I…”

  “You do know.” She took a breath and he could see her pulse moving in her lovely throat. She was as beautiful as she’d been fifteen years ago, when he’d been a young professor of forty and she his much younger grad student of twenty-five.

  “Martin.” Her voice grew firmer. “How stupid am I? You’d have to know, wouldn’t you?” Lisa shook her head. “Help us. Even you can’t buy into this crap. Help us make the case to Congress. These children are human beings, no matter what the President or the Chandler Act say. Kids, Martin. Help us.” Her voice dropped, softened. “Please.”

  Finally her words caught up with him. Holtzmann took a breath, closed his eyes. He let his hand drop from her arm. When he opened his eyes again, she was still there.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her, “There’s nothing I can do.”

  He turned and limped away, the self-loathing rising like bile through his chest.

  “Asshole,” he heard her mutter to his back.

  His car picked him up at the passenger load point, a bomb blast radius away from the Capitol itself.

  Holtzmann slid into the front seat and put his cane on the passenger side. “Office,” he told it, then reclined his seat. He felt the allure of the opiate surge but he ignored it. Instead he used his Nexus to dial up a thirty-minute nap while the car drove through DC afternoon traffic.

  An hour later he watched the children from the observation room, watched them socialize in ways that children with this degree of autism never socialized, watched them weave the
mselves together into something more than just a group of mentally handicapped kids.

  Who are you? he wondered. What will you grow up to be?

  Nothing, if he did what he’d been told to do. Nothing, if he produced a vaccine and a cure the way that Barnes and the President wanted.

  He and the ERD were committing a crime here, Holtzmann knew. A crime against the future. He felt it in his bones. They were Neanderthals, trying to stop the arrival of modern humans. They were dinosaurs, trying to eradicate the mammals lest they one day proved a threat. They were stripping these children of their human rights when they were more than human, when they were beautiful and precious and should have more protections.

  He was a hypocrite and a coward, fighting against a technology that he himself embraced. Finding ways to purge it from the brains of children who’d lived with it their entire lives. Consulting on the design for “residence centers” that were little more than concentration camps, just in case the “cure” failed. All while terrified that they’d spot the Nexus in his own brain.

  The hypocrisy was acid inside him. The risk of being caught was a cold dread.

  What can I do? he asked himself. Resign? Resignations trigger audits. And any audit would turn up missing Nexus. Nexus that I’ve taken…

  He was between a rock and a hard place. Follow his heart, and go to jail? Or do the disgusting things they asked of him, and stay free?

  They’d just find someone to replace me, Holtzmann told himself. I wouldn’t help anyone by going to jail.

  His own cowardice turned his stomach.

  He was there, pondering his own weakness when he got the news. Ilyana Alexander was dead. Heart attack.

  Damn it! Holtzmann slammed his fist against the one-way mirror separating him from the children in frustration.

  Those bastards from Enforcement had pushed her too hard. Constant interrogation. Searching for that damned back door. What did they expect?

  And God help them all, God help everyone running Nexus, if the ERD ever got the back door out of Alexander or Shankari. No one should have that power over so many minds.

  He ended the day at his desk, clearing the backlog of work that had built up while he’d been at the White House and on Capitol Hill. It had been a long, stressful day. It would be so easy to wipe it away with one more little bump…

  No. Anne expected him home. The house was so empty now, with their sons off at college, an ocean away in Germany and France. Why had he ever let them go? To sclerotic, stagnant, backwards-looking Europe of all places? They should have gone to Asia if anywhere, to a place that looked towards the future instead of fetishizing the past.

  Holtzmann shook his head and pushed himself up with his cane to head home, just as Kent Wilson barged in.

  “Dr Holtzmann,” Wilson said. “I’m so glad I caught you.” The young postdoc looked anxious, skittish.

  “Kent,” he replied. “I was just heading home. Can this wait until tomorrow?”

  “No, sir.” Wilson closed the door behind him.

  Holtzmann frowned. “What is it?”

  “Sir,” Wilson. “It’s the Nexus from the assassination attempt. I found something…”

  Holtzmann perked up. “You found an impurity! We can identify the source!”

  Wilson blanched. “Sir, no, I didn’t find any impurities, but…”

  “What?” Holtzmann cut in. “You just have to keep looking, Kent.”

  “I found something else, Dr Holtzmann,” Wilson said. “A chemical barcode.”

  Holtzmann frowned. “Why would they have put a barcode in?”

  Wilson shook his head. “It’s our chemical barcode, sir. It came from here, from this lab. We made it.”

  Then Holtzmann’s sight narrowed, and the world receded. Because if the Nexus had been taken from inside the ERD, then they’d come looking. And when they came looking… they’d find out about all the Nexus that he had taken from their supplies, for his own use, in his own skull…

  And then his life would be over.

  Holtzmann sat at his desk, after Wilson had gone, and stared at nothing. He’d extracted a vow of silence from the boy, snowed him with a claim that he would take this to Internal Affairs himself, that they had to keep it quiet so the thief would never know they were on his trail.

  Now his hands shook. His mind wouldn’t focus. It was all coming down around him. He knew what he needed. Not a little one. More. Enough to make this pain and fear and nausea go away.

  Holtzmann pulled up the interface, turned the dial, and stared at it. There must be a better way. For a moment he hesitated. Then he thought of what would happen when they caught him and it took his breath away. He turned the dial higher and pressed the mental button.

  The relief was instant. It washed through him, taking away all his cares. Then behind it came more. A deep deep satisfaction. An ocean of pleasure. An epic wave of bliss rose up, higher and higher, and crested over him, and he was loose on that ocean, drifting in nothing but endless bliss. For a moment it was perfect. Then another wave crested over him, and another, and another, and he wasn’t floating on an ocean of pleasure, he was drowning in it, falling down, down, all thought washed away by the enormous weight of the opiate deluge crashing through his brain.

  His last conscious thought was that he’d taken too much. Too much. And then the opiate sea swallowed him whole.

  Lisa Brandt quietly opened the door to her Boston flat. It had been a long, discouraging day. Fucking politicians. They had no balls. Nexus was synonymous with suicide bombers now, with terrorists. They wouldn’t dare back legislation to decriminalize its use among autistic children, or to recognize children born with it as human. Not this close to the election.

  And Martin Holtzmann. What a disaster. God, to think that he’d appealed to her once. He’d seemed so smart and distinguished.

  Yeah, when I was twenty-five. Before I figured out what a slime-bag he was.

  Lisa sighed as she closed the door behind her. A nightlight illuminated hardwood floors, a carpet she’d brought back from Turkey, vibrantly colored paintings she’d picked up on trips through Central America. She quietly crept down the hall to the bedroom and peered in. Alice was fast asleep in the bed they shared. Across the room, in the crib, little Dilan slept soundly. Lisa went quietly over to him, looked down at the rise and fall of his small chest, the impossible frailty of his tiny clenched fists and scrunched eyes. Their son, now. Their adopted son. Their very very special adopted son.

  Did he and Alice dream together even now? Was his infant mind enveloped in the caressing thoughts of one of his mothers?

  How could this be wrong? How could anyone look at this tiny, precious, helpless baby, and see anything but sweetness?

  Oh, there were so many good reasons to embrace Nexus. The progress against Alzheimer’s, the incredible strides with autism, the scientific breakthroughs that Nexus-enhanced researchers – their minds deeply intertwined – might make.

  But there was no reason as good, as heartfelt, as true, as the touch of the ones she loved.

  Lisa pulled herself away from the bedroom by force of will. In the kitchen, she emptied a shelf of the refrigerator, reached into the back, and slid away the hidden panel, retrieving the vial stored there. Carefully she put everything back the way it had been, and then padded into the office.

  She slid the illegal connector card into her home slate, navigated its interface to find her most recent backup. Her finger hovered over the button. How long could she keep this up, backing up her data and purging herself every time she traveled, putting up with the aches and confusion and disorientation as the Nexus nodes decoupled from her neurons and broke into their component parts, smelling the metallic tang of Nexus each time she pissed for days, then spending hours redosing herself and restoring from backup each time she came home?

  It was frustrating. It was time-consuming. It was a risk.

  I could stop, Lisa Brandt thought. Give up Nexus altogether.

  Then
she thought of the minds of her wife and her son in the next room, of the solace of touching them, and she knew she’d keep doing this as long as she had to.

  Lisa Brandt tilted her head back and poured the metallic silvery liquid dose of Nexus down her throat. She entered the command that told her slate to restore her Nexus apps and data from before this trip. Then she leaned back, closed her eyes, and waited to touch the ones she loved most.

  6

  Q & A

  Thursday October 18th

  Rangan Shankari flinched as the door to his cell burst open. The first light he’d seen in ages flooded in, backlighting the burly guards. He blinked at the intensity of it. Then they jerked the hood over his eyes, and the world dropped to muted grays.

  They wheeled him from his cell on the gurney, arms and legs strapped down. He heard doors open and close, felt turns, and then they stopped. A door closed behind him.

  The gurney tilted abruptly backwards, so his head was a foot lower than his feet. He wasn’t surprised. The liquid diet of the last few “meals” was a giveaway. This always followed, as sure as day had once followed night.

  He could feel his pulse racing. His breath came fast. But they wouldn’t break him. Rangan went Inside.

  [activate: serenity level 10]

  Code modules activated in the Nexus nodes of his brain. Fear signals through the neurons of his amygdala were suppressed. Serotonin levels rose throughout his brain. Nodes in his medulla oblongata seized control of his pulse and respiration and stabilized them.

  Calm descended, slicing through Rangan’s fear like a knife. Confidence rose. I can do this, he thought. I can do this.

  A voice spoke into his ear.

  “Mr Shankari. I know it’s been rough on you in here. We can make your life a lot more comfortable. Or a lot worse. So I ask you again. How do we activate the back door into Nexus 5? What’s the code?”

  “Fuck you,” Rangan spat out through the muffling hood.

  A fist slammed into his guts, and all the air rushed out.