Crux

by Ramez Naam

  And there. Walking through the doors. Target numero uno. The man they’d been waiting for. DHS Chicago Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge Bradley Meyers. The agent who’d stood by as an enraged mob had killed a pair of geneticists three years ago, and had done nothing to stop it. A man who should have lost his badge, should have been convicted, but instead went on to be promoted. Well, his career ended now.

  It was time.

  Breece tapped the surface of the slate to initiate the action. A thousand miles away the mule’s cell phone sent a signal to the Nexus OS in the man’s mind. The mule hoisted the package, walked across the square, waved his ID and put his eye to the retinal scanner, and then opened the doors to the secure building and stepped inside.

  Kade tried to make sense of the input from the man’s mind. He was indoors. People. A line. Multiple lines. Metal detectors. A belt feeding bags into a scanner. An airport, maybe. Dozens of people all around him.

  Assassination. This code was for assassination. A gun. He’d have a gun. Kade grabbed control of the man’s body, patted himself down, searching for it in the pockets of the suit jacket, in his pants, in the small of his back. Nothing.

  Someone bumped into him from behind as the line moved forward.

  He turned, reflexively. The woman in a blouse and skirt was wearing a badge around her neck. So was the next. Department of Homeland Security. Oh no. Not an airport.

  What were the assassins doing here? What was the plan? Kade could see doors back behind the people in line, darkened glass, a gleam of sunshine beyond. He could make a run for it, get away from these people, get outdoors.

  A voice came from behind him. “Sir, keep moving, and put your bag down on the scanner.”

  Bag. There was a backpack over one shoulder. He swung it around, tossed it onto the scanner. It landed with a hard thud. Heavy. Very heavy.

  Kade looked up and around himself. So many people. He had to warn them. “I think I have a bomb!” he yelled. “A bomb!”

  Shock registered from all around him. People jerked back. A security man reached for his gun. Kade moved this body’s hands, ripped open the zipper of the backpack. He caught a glimpse of wires, of something blinking red inside.

  Then pure chaos overwhelmed his senses.

  [CONNECTION LOST]

  Kade gasped in shock as he snapped back to himself. What? What?

  The jeep was stopped, he saw. Feng had pulled to the side of the road, was grimly watching over Kade.

  Kade turned to look at Feng, numb, disoriented. His mouth opened, but no words came out.

  But Feng understood. “You’ll catch them,” he said, putting a hand on Kade’s shoulder. “I know you will.”

  Breece stayed outwardly calm as he surfed sports scores on the battered slate. Inside, he was roiling.

  Someone got in there. Someone grabbed control of the mule and almost stopped us. Who? How?

  He drank coffee, played at the pathetic human sport of “spectating” on true competitors, and stayed in character. It was three minutes later that the waitress gasped and turned up the sound on the diner’s screen.

  “…Again, we have unconfirmed reports of an explosion just minutes ago at the Homeland Security building in Chicago. Witnesses are reporting scores of dead and injured. As we learn more…”

  Breece turned, played as shocked at the rest of them.

  “…statement from the Posthuman Liberation Front,” the newscaster on the screen went on, “…stating that this was a, quote, targeted assassination against Homeland Security Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge Bradley Meyers for his complicity in the murders three years ago of…”

  Only fifteen minutes later, after the details had started to trickle in and video of the explosion had been played again and again and again did he drop the enzymatic cleanser into what was left of his coffee to erase his tracks, pay his check, and then make his way out to the battered Hyundai in the parking lot.

  He was ten miles down the road when the encrypted phone rang. A phone that only one person in the world would call. Zarathustra.

  “I told you to stand down.” Even through the electronic distortion, the voice was hard, controlled, anger held in check.

  “I gave you three months. Then I stood back up.”

  “You’re out of line.”

  Breece smiled to himself, spoke calmly back. “Maybe you’re the one who’s out of line, Zara.”

  “This is your last warning. I won’t tell you again.”

  Breece held the smile. “Keep your eyes on the news.” Then he cut the connection.

  Three towns down the road he pulled the Hyundai into a rented storage building. He emerged twenty minutes later in a late model Lexus convertible, trim, clean shaven, unscarred, his hair a short sandy brown. The micron-thick gloves, mask, and lip liners that had captured most of his DNA were nothing more than an oil blot now. The slate he’d used was a smoldering hunk of plastic. The clothes and fake hair and fake belly were gone, burned, replaced by expensive slacks and a linen shirt. Inside the garage, DNA-destroying enzyme fog was even now erasing any traces of him from the car and building. In the unlikely event that FBI or ERD ever traced the signal back, it would lead them to the diner. And from there to nowhere. Even if, somehow, they got to this garage, they would still be no closer to him.

  Hiroshi and Ava and the Nigerian all reported just as clean.

  Breece retracted the top on the Lexus. The sunshine bathed him in its warmth and brought a smile to his face. What an excellent day this was shaping up to be.

  I teach you the overman, Nietzsche had written.

  Oh yes, Breece thought. I am the overman. Man is something I will overcome.

  He took manual control of the Lexus, put his foot down, and drove south in the brilliant morning sunshine, and towards the prep for the next mission.

  The man code-named Zarathustra stared at his phone with cold dark eyes.

  8

  A GOOD LIFE

  Mid October

  Sam saw the news from the US from time to time. Stories of the Copenhagen Accords crumbling. Vietnam and Malaysia following Thailand out. India, a rising superpower, caught red-handed encouraging research into Nexus and other prohibited technologies inside its borders.

  It’s about the money, Nakamura had taught her. Rich countries don’t mind Copenhagen. But for countries still wrestling with poverty, the technology can make a huge economic difference. The motivation’s higher.

  Well, now she could see that in action. And worse. Replays of the attempted presidential assassination. Stories of Nexus used for abductions, thefts, rapes.

  Sam’s blood pressure rose at every news report. They’d stick with her, troubling her for days as she turned them over in her head, wondering what they meant, how she thought about this. They tormented her until she was forced to turn them off, stop watching the news altogether.

  Six months ago, all those stories would have made sense to her. Nexus was a mind control technology, pure and simple. As bad as DWITY, the do-what-I-tell-you drug. As bad as the Communion virus that had taken away her childhood and everyone she loved with it. Worse, even.

  But now… All she had to do was touch a child’s mind, and she knew it was more than that. All it had taken was Mai, touching her just once, loosening that knot inside, and everything had changed for her.

  It’s all perspective, Sam thought. What I think of Nexus, of any of this stuff… It’s all just about what I’ve seen, what I’ve experienced.

  Sam lay in bed with Jake one night, talking about the children.

  “They learn so fast,” Jake said. “It’s off the charts.”

  “The Nexus makes them smarter?” Sam rolled towards him, head propped up on her elbow, the other hand on his broad chest.

  Jake shook his head. “Not individually. But when they’re together? Yeah. Sometimes. Two or three of them… they can juggle more things in their heads, together, than they can alone. Expanded working memory.” He paused. “And they learn from each o
ther. At least, when they’re not picking on each other.” He laughed. “But if I teach something to one of them, to Sunisa, say, it spreads. The next day, I can test any of them on it, and they’ll all have some of what I taught him. It consolidates while they sleep.”

  Sam ran her fingers through the reddish hairs that covered his torso.

  “The youngest ones are way beyond where they should be. Kit’s learning algebra now. They’re drafting on the older ones, picking up memories and skills...”

  Sam listened to his voice, the passion in it.

  “And sometimes,” he said, “you can feel it, at night, when…”

  She knew. She’d felt it.

  “When they merge.” She finished his thought for him.

  Jake nodded, temporarily speechless. She could feel the awe coming off of him.

  “At night,” he repeated. “When they’re sleeping. Or sometime, when they’re playing or studying. When they’re calm and not fighting. When they just kind of fall in sync, and it seems like they’re just one mind…”

  They were silent for a moment.

  “It’s like,” Jake started, haltingly, “the big picture, OK? It’s like the next step in our evolution. Going from one mind, to many minds, all linked… Group consciousness. That we’re just parts of. That’s the real posthuman.”

  Sam looked into the middle distance. She loved these kids, but she wasn’t sure what she thought of that.

  “There was this woman,” Jake said, “this PhD in the states, who used to write about this all the time. Her dissertation was about how we’re already group minds, how we’ve been evolving in that direction already – from animal cries to language to writing to the internet, and now Nexus. How it’s collective thinking makes us special. Ilyana Alexander.”

  Sam stiffened. Ilya.

  Jake noticed it. “You know her?”

  “I’ve heard the name,” Sam said. She kept her voice neutral, let her muscles loosen again.

  It seemed to satisfy Jake. He placed a hand on hers on his chest, gently stroking it. “She was arrested, they say. They say she’s one of the people who built Nexus 5. And she’s locked up, with no parole, no trial… For building this.” His thoughts took in her, him, the children, their potential.

  “And these kids? In the US? The President invoked the fucking Chandler Act, Sunee. By law these kids aren’t even human in the States.” Jake sighed in frustration. “It’s a fucked-up world.”

  Sam nodded, her thoughts far away. “It’s a fucked-up world,” she agreed.

  Later, when Jake had fallen asleep, Sam lay awake, and opened herself, and felt the minds of the children, dreaming and breathing in unison. So very human, to her. And maybe more.

  Nine minds that dreamt as one... She’d felt something like that, in Bangkok, in that loft, when she’d felt like she was part of the Buddha. She’d felt it that night, when she and Kade had fallen asleep together, had dreamt each other’s dreams. She’d felt it with Ananda’s monks, meditating as one mind.

  But all of those had been temporary, fragile states. These children… they did it naturally, automatically. Was it really possible to become part of something larger? For minds to meld together for more than just fleeting moments?

  The idea terrified her at some level. These were posthumans. Everything in her life had trained her to fear this. They’d sweep across the globe, outcompeting humans, enslaving them, driving her own species to extinction. The enemy, she would have called them a few months ago. An existential risk. Monstrosities.

  But the reality… when she felt these children, when they played or cried or fought, or when their minds flowed together and embraced her into that whole...

  Then something softened inside her, and she thought the future might not be so bad after all.

  October was hot beyond all reason. The heat got to everyone. The children were more short-tempered, bickering with each other. Khun Mae was stricter and more prone to snap than ever. Even Jake seemed on a shorter fuse.

  Sam brought in a harvest the second week of the month, while Jake made a run to get supplies from a friendly store three villages away. In the afternoon she sat and meditated with the children, guiding them through anapana and vipassana, the techniques of observing the mind itself, of quieting it. They struggled at first, their minds chaotic and pulled a dozen ways. But once they sat and brought their minds together, they fell into the unity she’d felt with Ananda’s monks, so readily, naturally, and deeply. It lifted her to some egoless state herself.

  Nine children. One mind.

  In the early evening she taught them English, sitting together in a circle, minds linked as they spoke the words that should have seemed strange, but which came off their tongues so smoothly. Jake’s comments echoed in her mind. They did learn so very quickly, each of them learning for every other.

  Jake returned after nightfall, the pickup truck laden with supplies. They did chores with Khun Mae and the two other women, fed the children, put them to bed, and unloaded the truck.

  Afterwards, they washed off the sweat and heat of the day in the small pond. The water was low from the drought, but there was enough to splash around in, to submerge themselves in. They emerged from the pond naked and pleasantly cool, and lay on the grass, hidden from the house by the copse of trees, bathed in the light of the full moon.

  Sam put her head on his chest and stared up the stars. It was so peaceful here. So different from the life she’d known.

  I should let him touch me, Sam thought. Let him feel my mind. Let him know who I am.

  The thought frightened her. At first she’d kept herself sealed off from him as a security precaution. But now… Now she trusted him. So why hold back? Because she wasn’t sure how he’d respond if he really knew her… If he knew the things she’d done. The blood on her hands.

  Maybe tomorrow, she told herself.

  “Who are you, Sunee?” he asked.

  She snorted, amused at the synchronicity.

  “What, I don’t get to know?” Jake asked, mock offended. “You think I can’t figure it out?”

  His fingers found her clavicle, the long line where she’d been cut open, years ago. “You have this scar,” he said, gently. “And these here…” His hand traveled down her belly, to the circular pock marks bullets had left long ago. “And you’re stronger than I am. A lot stronger.”

  She rolled to look at him, her face a mask.

  “And the kids… They don’t call you Sunee. They call you Sam. Who’s Sam, Sunee?”

  She came up to her knees.

  Not tonight, she decided. Maybe tomorrow.

  “Who do you think I am?” she asked him, a smile on her face.

  He grinned. “I think you’re a spy,” he said, conspiratorially, a hint of humor in voice and mind. “You’re a secret agent.”

  She smiled and put a leg over him, straddling his chest. His eyes roamed over her breasts and stomach, still wet from the pond, gleaming in the moonlight, and he made a low growl of approval deep inside. She could feel his desire for her rising in his mind.

  “Who are you, really?” he asked, his hands coming to her thighs, moving up to her hips and waist, gripping her hungrily. “Who did you work for? How did you get those scars? What’s your name?”

  Sam lifted up off his chest, an impish grin on her lips, and moved herself forward until her hips obscured the lower half of his face.

  “Why don’t you do something more useful with that mouth?” she said lightly, as she slowly lowered herself. “Then maybe I’ll tell you.”

  Jake laughed.

  And then he did exactly as she asked.

  It was a good life. A peaceful life. She couldn’t ever remember being this happy.

  9

  CONSEQUENCES

  Thursday October 18th

  Martin Holtzmann woke with a gasp. An alarm was blaring. His skin felt clammy, drenched in sweat. The world was spinning. The room was on its side. His face was pressed up against something.


  Where am I?

  Then he remembered. The wave of pleasure. The opiate surge from his brain… The Nexus theft from his lab.

  He groaned as it came together.

  He was on the floor. He pushed himself up to one knee. The world spun more vigorously, then started to go gray. Holtzmann barely caught himself against the desk in time.

  He waited there for a moment as the blood returned to his brain and the world stabilized ever so slightly. He felt starved for air and forced himself to breathe. He put a finger to his wrist and found his pulse faint and slow.

  The finger on his wrist was blue from lack of oxygen.

  I overdosed, he realized. I could have died.

  The alarm was still blaring. There was a voice over it.

  “A level three lockdown now is in effect. All non-essential personnel must evacuate. Repeat: An explosion has occurred in the Chicago office. A level three lockdown is now in effect. All non-essential personnel must evacuate.”

  Explosion. Lockdown. Evacuation.

  That meant him. He didn’t think he could get to the exit. And he couldn’t let anyone find him like this.

  Opiate overdose. Dear God.

  He needed something to counteract it. Holtzmann racked his confused brain. Was there anything in the lab that could help him? Naloxone? Some opiate antagonist?

  Dammit, he thought, I can’t even make it to the lab.

  He’d have to settle for a stimulant, try to counteract the massive opiate concentration in his brain.

  He tried to pull up the interface to the neurotransmitter release app, and fumbled the command. He tried and failed a second time. He stopped himself, took a deep steadying breath, and succeeded on the third try. Once the app was up, he selected a release of norepinephrine. How much? He was still so woozy. Too little wouldn’t help. Too much and he’d risk a heart attack or worse.

  The alarm kept blaring in his head. He could hear people in the hallway outside his door. If someone came in to look… He couldn’t be found this way.