Crux

by Ramez Naam

  30

  BONDING

  Friday October 26th

  Rangan spent most of the next three sleep cycles on the floor in the corner of his cell. He sat there when they had the lights turned up. He slept there when they turned the lights down. It was hard and cold. It left parts of his body numb and asleep. But it was where the connection was clearest.

  Bobby. Bobby and a dozen others. They were on the other side of this wall, trapped like he was. Just kids.

  There was a flaw in the shielding. A loose wire, maybe, in the conductive mesh wall that separated his cell from Bobby’s bunk and the room beyond it. A place where radio waves could get through, where those radio waves could carry thoughts between them.

  The first night, when their minds had first met, Rangan’s thoughts had been selfish. He wasn’t alone. There was someone else here.

  Then he’d realized what was going on, and his mind had turned to anger.

  Kids, he thought. They’ve got kids locked up here. Motherfuckers!

  What kind of fucking monsters locked up kids? Locked them up just because they had something special in their heads that made them better? That helped them cope with what was wrong with them? That might just make them smarter than the rest of us?

  Rangan spent hours communing with Bobby, learning more about the boy, about the other boys over there. The kids took turns sitting in Bobby’s bunk sometimes. He got to know Alfonso, Jose, Parker, half-a-dozen more. They relived their memories for him. Being torn from their families. Seeing relatives arrested, beaten. Being beaten themselves when they resisted. He relived Parker being torn from his mother’s arms, seeing her dragged off. He relived Bobby’s arrest, seeing his dad gunned down in front of his eyes, then being beaten silly by the men who’d torn him from his father.

  His fists clenched and he wanted to hurt someone. Hurt them badly.

  Fucking assholes.

  The kids were scared, lonely. He did his best to hide his own anger, his own disappointment with himself, and be there for them. It was hard through the tiny link. But he did what he could, comforting them, trying to send hope, and humor.

  In exchange they amazed him. They were smart, hungry to understand the Nexus in their brains, understand what was going on around them. And the way their minds connected…

  Ilya had talked about group mind. The experiments she’d convinced them to try at parties and at each other’s apartments had been aimed at trying to create some of that. And sure, they’d had their trippy moments, those times when the barriers had seemed to drop and they’d felt like they were turning into one person.

  But it had all been short-lasting stuff, sometimes with the aid of Empathek or a little weed or whatnot. It’d felt cool as hell, but he’d never seen much practical coming out of it.

  These kids, though… Maybe it was because they were younger. Or maybe it was the autism. Something. Whatever it was, they were connected more deeply. Thoughts leaked between them, without them even trying. He showed Bobby things about Nexus and he could feel those thoughts ripple out to the rest of the boys, fresh questions come back almost faster than he could parse. Then the boys showed him the tests the ERD was running, and it was clear. They were learning from each other, mind-to-mind. Bobby had learned Spanish without even trying to, just because the ERD had given him a test of Spanish, had primed him for it, and then his mind had pulled what he’d needed from the Spanish-speaking kids around him.

  These kids were something else. This was a real step towards what Ilya had dreamed of. It was fucking awesome.

  If they weren’t locked up here in jail, anyway.

  There was one last thing he learned from these kids. It was obvious, really, but he poked around in their memories to be sure he understood it right. Nexus OS had gotten out, alright. Months and months ago. God only knew how many people were running it now.

  And he had given the ERD the back door to all those minds.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Rangan stared at the dull gray wall of his cell and contemplated just how badly he’d screwed up.

  – In Saigon

  Friday October 26th

  Nakamura stared again at the satellite image on his retinal implants. An open-top Tata jeep, on the road approaching Saigon, two shaven-headed figures in it. His hunch had been right. Kade and Sam had headed to Saigon. So Nakamura followed.

  With Lane’s back door access to Nexus, the boy could easily have amassed whatever financial resources he desired. He could be hiding in an exclusive hotel, eating room service. Or he could be in the tourist districts blending in. So Nakamura had no choice but to canvas all the parts of the city frequented by Westerners.

  He walked through the lobbies of the international hotels as an expensively dressed business traveler – gray suit, briefcase in hand, smart glasses feeding him financial reports and top news. He went around Saigon Square as a smartly dressed European tourist – expensive navy slacks, Italian leather shoes, a sharp white polo, trendy watch, and mirrored shades. He hung around Bến Thành Market as a backpacker – khakis, T-shirt, hair past his shoulders.

  He saw Sam in the streets around Bến Thành. A tall slender girl in jeans and a tank top, strong shoulders, erect posture, long black hair down her back. She turned and Nakamura saw the line of jaw and nose. Her name rose on his lips, against all orders, against all protocol.

  Then it wasn’t Sam at all. Just a young teen girl, coltish, fourteen maybe. Her parents emerged into the street and went off with her. Sam as a girl. Sam as he remembered her.

  He shook his head at his sentimentality, at his evolution into an old man, searching for a girl that wasn’t his daughter, but was as near to that as he’d ever come. Then he went back to his walking.

  Everywhere he went, Nakamura sprinkled smart dust. The micro-scale sensors dropped to the ground, spread on the wind, attached themselves to clothing, to shoes, to bags. And everywhere they went, they searched for Kade’s face, for Sam’s face, for a hint of either’s DNA, for the telltale emanations of Nexus. And then they meshed together, each quietly sending data to its closest neighbors, piggybacking until it eventually found its way to Kevin Nakamura.

  He swam in that information, overlaid on his vision by his retinal display. Maps showed him the spread of the smart dust as it rode on bellhops and hotel guests to the upper floors of the Hilton and the Sheraton, as it blew through the mall at the heart of Saigon Square, as it was blown or washed into the river and the sewers beneath the city, as it was tracked by bicycles and shoes into the alleys of the maze around Bến Thành Market. A running stream showed face after face after face, flickering by, hundreds of faces so far, none noted as a high probability hit. Further to the side, another stream, of gene sequences this time, just as devoid of true hits.

  A layer of the map showed him the Nexus emanations. The area around Bến Thành was inundated with it. Even a few of the less drug-soaked tourists near Saigon Square and the business travelers in the heart of downtown gave off Nexus frequency transmissions. Nakamura shook his head at their audacity, surprised at the prevalence of the drug.

  A final map layer showed him police and emergency services data for the city, mined from CIA systems. If the prey can’t be found, he’d taught his pupils, hunt the hunters.

  There was always the risk that Sam and Kade would move on, of course. He kept a National Reconnaissance Office AI busy, searching for more matches on that twenty year-old Tata jeep. It threw some at him every few hours, but all were false hits.

  He’d love to point a dedicated NRO bird at Saigon. But queries were one thing, retargeting birds was another. The latter would alert the National Reconnaissance Office that CIA had a high level of interest in Saigon. And that was a no-no.

  Why? he wondered again. Why so much secrecy?

  One way or another, it was boots-on-the-ground time. His boots. And his dust. For five days Nakamura walked, and tracked, and analyzed. And still he had no matches on Sam or Lane. So he walked and walked some mo
re.

  31

  STUCK IN A MOMENT

  Friday October 26th

  Holtzmann limped out of the White House proper, supporting himself heavily with his cane, feeling years older than he had when he’d entered. Barnes walked next to him. Neither man said anything. Only after they were past the security guards and T-rays and Nexus scanners and metal detectors, waiting for their cars, did Barnes turn to him and lean in close. Holtzmann took an involuntary half step back, and Barnes took another forward. He’d never realized how tall Barnes was, but now, looking up into that cold face with its dead black eyes, he was acutely aware that the man was younger, taller, stronger, more powerful in every way.

  Barnes put a hand on Holtzmann’s shoulder and squeezed, just enough to hurt. Holtzmann froze in fear.

  Barnes leaned in until his mouth was inches from Holtzmann’s ear. He spoke slowly, his voice just above a hoarse whisper.

  “If you ever do that to me again, I will fucking destroy you.”

  Then Barnes’ car was there, and the man was all smiles. “Great job today, Martin. See you back at the office. I’m looking forward to new results in those things the President asked about.”

  Holtzmann collapsed into his own car, exhausted and shaking. His fingers clenched around his cane of their own accord. Even through his boosted dopamine and serotonin levels all he could feel was the bitter disappointment of defeat, the yawning crevice of hypocrisy.

  He’d tried. Somehow, boosted as he was, he’d found the courage to do something quite unlike himself. He’d spoken his mind to the President, to tell him what he truly thought. And he’d been casually rebuffed, rebuffed in a way so basic, so primitive, so tribal, so very human, that it left no doubt in his mind as to the course that humanity would take.

  The Titans ate their young, he thought. No one wants to be usurped.

  There was no safe ground underneath him anymore. There was just a chasm opening wider and wider. There were only two ways forward for him. He could do the moral thing, the right thing, and quit the ERD, face the audit and the discovery of the Nexus he’d stolen, face the imprisonment, in all likelihood for the rest of his life. Leave his wife and sons alone, and ashamed. Or he could do the weak thing, the expedient thing, and do his job, be party to the forced abortion of this new breed of humanity, and maybe, just maybe, stay free.

  Both paths led straight into the abyss. He could feel himself falling now. The world was spinning around him.

  “Phone,” he managed to say. “Clear my calendar and turn on my autoresponder. I’m sick.”

  The phone beeped in the affirmative.

  “Car,” he choked out the words. “Drive to the park.”

  “Which park would you like as your destination?” the car asked in its silky feminine voice.

  “Any,” he said. “Any of them will do.”

  “I have twenty-seven parks within…” the car began.

  “Aaah!” Holtzmann slammed his cane against the car’s dash in frustration and the car went silent.

  His breath was coming fast. He was panting in anger.

  Stupid man, he told himself. Yelling at a car.

  He let his breath calm. A memory came to him. A happy day, with Anne. Fine.

  “Montrose Park,” he told the car. “Montrose Park.”

  “Yes, sir,” the car answered, more deferentially, some affective computing algorithm now modulating its interactions with him.

  Holtzmann barely noticed. He leaned his seat back, brought up the neuromodulation interface app in his mind, the panel of dials and switches with neat labels and dry academic names. Then he dialed up a large opiate release, hit the button, and felt it course through his brain. It was sickly sweet, not glorious and ecstatic as it had been once, but even so the opiates pushed the fear and unmooring back away from him, pushed the anxiety and panic into the background, until he just didn’t care about the President or his predicament or anything else.

  The car drove him to Montrose Park in a languid dream. Trees and buildings moved by in a blurring, surreal molasses. His pulse thrummed slow and low through his veins. Haltingly he told the car to park and to darken the windows. Somewhere in the Caribbean, the radio told him, a tropical storm called Zoe had thrashed Cuba, leaving buildings destroyed, fields flooded, and hundreds dead. Here, in the park beyond his car windows, it was a gorgeous hot sunny day. Thought and memory returned as the opiate surge faded. He and Anne had come here, when they were younger. They’d brought the boys here to splash around in the pool. He had hazy, happy memories of it. Heat and crowds of parents and children. Cool water on a hot day. Hot dogs bought from the snack bar.

  From the parking lot he could see that pool, where he and Anne had brought the boys. Mothers and toddlers and a few young people splashed about there now. Inside his car, Holtzmann was in his own private cocoon.

  He stayed there for hours. Every so often the opiates would start to wear off and the chasm would yawn wide open beneath his feet again and he’d start to panic, his breath coming fast and his heart pounding and his stomach feeling sick, and he’d dose himself once more to push it away. The doses he was giving himself were large, now, but there was no bliss in them. His tolerance was growing. At best the doses made him care less, care less that his life was reduced to this, a choice between imprisonment and something akin to genocide.

  There’s another way, he thought. I could end my own life.

  He pushed that idea away with another opiate surge, larger than the last.

  His phone buzzed, again and again, calls from the office, video messages, text messages. He refused to answer, refused to check his messages on phone or slate.

  Dusk came. Teenagers – released from the prisons that masqueraded as schools – joined the mothers and small children at the pool. He was hungry. He had to piss. He should be home soon. He was tempted to stay here forever, to just lay in his car taking dose after dose after dose of opiates until his neurons were squeezed dry of them or until he accidentally killed himself.

  But something else prevailed. Habit, perhaps. Some shred of dignity. He forced a jolt of norepinephrine through his system, pushed himself up, and shambled on his cane to the restroom by the pool. Children and parents stared at him. A mother pulled her toddler aside, protectively. He had some vague notion that he was a mess, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

  He pissed in a room that smelled of chlorine, and struggled back to his car, limping on his cane. He ordered the car to take him home, and did the best he could to clear his head with more norepinephrine, with acetylcholine, with more dopamine. His brain was a neurochemical witch’s brew. Some part of him whispered that he couldn’t go on like this, that he’d push himself too hard soon, push himself into another opiate overdose or serotonin syndrome or a deadly seizure or some other cataclysmic neurochemical collapse.

  Despite that, his brain tinkering worked. He reached his own home in some semblance of order. He could pass his state off as fatigue from a long day, perhaps. Maybe. Above all else, he wouldn’t tell Anne where he’d been, or why.

  He came in through the door. Anne was home already, files in her lap. She looked up. “Martin!”

  Holtzmann smiled, and then shots rang out from the screen. He looked over in time to see a video of his nightmare – two Secret Service agents clobbering Steve Travers. He caught his breath, reflexively waiting for the moment when the screen exploded with chaos, when the explosion hurled him through the air, took the life of Joe Duran standing just inches from him.

  The screen went blank instead, as Anne clicked it off.

  “I’m sorry, Martin,” she said. “Didn’t mean to make you watch that again.” She was up and had her arms around him, was kissing him on the side of his face.

  Holtzmann was frozen stiff, his whole body suddenly racing with adrenaline.

  Anne frowned.

  “You know what frustrates me?” she asked.

  Holtzmann shook his head, mutely, his mind trapped in that endless m
oment six months past.

  The Secret Service man’s gun came out out out, and fired, and fired. Human missiles leveled the shooter, and Holtzmann turned, looking for the President. Joe Duran screaming in his ear, “How did you know, Martin? How did you know?”

  Anne was speaking, saying something. “Stockton was losing until the PLF tried to kill him,” she said. “He’s going to win because of the assassination attempt, and now Chicago.” She shook her head. “They could’ve at least been better shots.”

  He grabbed hold of her, suddenly panicked. “Don’t say that, Anne! Don’t ever say that!” They were watching him. A stranger in the car. Nakamura raising his hand for the killing blow…

  She looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “It was a joke, Martin! It’s still OK to make jokes in this country!”

  “Just please,” he pleaded. “Please don’t ever say that.”

  They slept on opposite sides of the bed. Anne seemed annoyed, put off by his behavior. She drifted off to sleep without their customary “I love you.”

  Holtzmann lay there on his back. He was close to something. Some realization was working its way through his mind. He’d been close to it that night after Nakamura had surprised him, and then he’d been distracted, had dropped it. Bits of memories and conversations went through his head.

  The Secret Service man’s gun came out out out, and fired, and fired. Human missiles leveled the shooter. The gun flew from his hand.

  Anne talking to him. “They could’ve at least been better shots.”

  Wait. Wait. That made no sense. Travers had missed because the other Secret Service agents had hit him before he could fire. They’d thrown off his aim. Or he’d flinched as they approached. That was why.