Crux

by Ramez Naam

  The wind hit him immediately. Gale force. Outside the trees were bending hard, their branches all pushed in one direction. Sharp pinpricks of rain sprayed painfully into Rangan’s face. The sound of the storm was a constant roar. A boom sounded from some place, then a cracking sound. He looked around to get his bearings, thought he understood where they were going. He reached out with his mind to the kids, did his best to hold them together, to focus them. He showed them in his mind where they were going, showed them that they had to hold hands, and then they were off.

  He felt the wind and rain take their toll on the boys. They were all in slippers, not proper shoes. They were completely soaked from head to toe in seconds. Their slippered feet slid on wet asphalt. Halfway across the open square, Parker raised his hand to shield his face from the stinging of the rain and the human chain broke. Rangan made them link up again, even in the pelting rain and the harsh wind, made them hold hands and started them forward again.

  They made it another hundred yards, almost to the trees, when he felt a sharp wince of pain from behind him. Jose! Jose was down on the ground. He’d tripped on a curb. The boy had hit his head and there was a bloody scrape on his brow and he was crying.

  Rangan shoved the taser into the pocket of his prison pants, then hoisted Jose up over his shoulder. The boy was heavy! He grabbed Tim’s hand again, made the other boys link up, and then they were into the trees.

  Leaves blew around them. The wind and rain were less here, but they still stung. Twigs and rocks hurt the boys’ feet but he made them keep moving. On the other side of the trees they’d find…

  There. They came out of the trees, and ahead was the side gate to the complex. It was a chain link affair, barbed wire at the top, with automated stations to allow ingress and egress on either side. There was a guard booth, but Rangan couldn’t see anyone in it. A pale red light glowed on the card reader on the station on this side. This was it.

  “Come on, boys,” he shouted out loud and into the howling wind. He reached out with his mind to enfold them, to push them forward.

  He dashed out of the trees, into the road, to the station, Tim’s hand still in his own, Jose still on his shoulder. The rain lashed him with increasing fury. The wind came on strong enough that he almost lost his feet. He was soaked now, soaked to the bone, shivering from it. He felt misery and cold and fear and confusion from the boys behind him.

  Then he was there. Rangan let go of Tim’s hand, fished out Holtzmann’s badge, swiped it against the evil red eye of the scanner, and waited. And waited.

  The red eye blinked at him, stayed red. Nothing happened.

  Fuck!

  Rangan swiped the badge again. And again. He jammed it up against the reader, swiveling it around.

  “Come on, you piece of shit!”

  Then abruptly the red eye was green. Rangan turned his head. Slowly, slowly, the gate was swinging itself open.

  He shoved the badge back into his pocket, grabbed Tim’s hand, and dragged the boys through the widening crack, not waiting for it to open fully. They ran out across a road, into more trees, through the trees. Jose was heavy but Rangan kept the boy on his shoulder, kept moving, kept consulting Holtzmann’s map in his mind.

  Then they were out of the trees, climbing an embankment up to a road. And there was a beat-up old white van there, and a man was jumping out of it, reaching his hand down to Rangan, to help him up, to take him and the boys away to safety.

  73

  MOTHER, MOTHER

  Friday November 2nd

  Ling’s bruises healed. Her burns covered themselves in a thin white protective layer which then sloughed off, revealing fresh, healthy skin below. No scar remained. She was her mother’s child, and her mother had given her every genetic advantage possible at the time of her creation.

  She lived like a wild thing that week, like an animal, hiding in her den, venturing out when it was safe to scavenge food. She placed orders for groceries, used her father’s credentials, had them delivered while he was out, stocked into the pantry and refrigerator by the kitchen bot. If her father noticed or cared it didn’t show.

  She missed Feng. Feng who was brave and strong and had always bounced her on his shoulders when she was little. Feng who could crush her father and take her away from here.

  She missed Kade. Kade who was clever and would help her find some way…

  Feng! she called out. FENG!

  Kade! she tried. KADE!

  Nothing. Nothing for days now. They were dead, or gone, or off the net. She was alone.

  How long can I live like this? Ling wondered.

  As long as I have to, until I get to Mother.

  Everything changed on Friday, on the fourteenth day since she’d tried to free Mother.

  The call came in a few minutes before midnight. Chen jumped as he saw the name. Sun Liu! The Minister of Science and Technology was calling him here!

  He rushed into his bedroom, tapped the panel beside the door to seal the room, flicked to a different screen on the room control, and activated the privacy filter.

  Then he took a deep breath and accepted the call.

  “Chen.” Sun Liu’s voice was strained.

  “Minister,” Chen replied. “I’ve tried everything, I assure you. Manipulation of her volition centers. Direct pain stimulation. Pulsed pain and pleasure. I assure you, I’ve tortured her, everything possible has been tried.”

  “Chen,” Sun Liu interrupted. “It’s over. We’ve lost.”

  Chen caught his breath. The minister sounded tired. No. Not tired.

  Frightened.

  “How…” Chen started. “How bad?”

  There was silence on the line. Then Sun Liu spoke again. “They won’t call it a coup,” the Minister said. “I will… probably… be allowed to retire, rather than face…”

  Sun Liu’s voice broke and he went silent.

  Chen held his breath, and the Minister finished.

  “Rather than face prosecution.”

  Chen let out an involuntary noise.

  “Everything has changed, Chen,” Sun Liu said. “Shanghai… whatever happened there, it has frightened the people, frightened the Assembly. It’s put the hardliners in the ascendency.”

  Chen’s heart was pounding. “What… What…”

  “They’ll want people to remain calm,” Sun Liu said. “They’ll do their best to make it look seamless. A period of ill health for the Secretary General. An early retirement, with great honors. A change in membership of the Standing Committee. New laws, for public safety, public order. Steps to avoid another Shanghai. Restrictions on dangerous technology, dangerous research.”

  Sun Liu’s voice wavered as he spoke. He sounded so old, Chen thought. So beaten. The fear came through beneath his voice. “They’ll avoid outright murder,” the Minister continued. “I believe they will. Yes.”

  Chen was sweating.

  “Your wife,” Sun Liu said. “You must shut her down. Tomorrow. You must give them no excuse.”

  Chen heard nothing after that. He barely remembered placing the calls to his staff, his assistant Li-hua. Tomorrow morning. They’d meet. They’d initiate the final backup. Then they’d shut her down.

  And hope the hardliners didn’t take their heads as well.

  Ling followed her father with her mind, routed around the room’s pitiful privacy filters, listened in to the call with the apartment’s audio monitors.

  Later, she could not recall all that was said. Only fragments stuck with her through the haze of anger and grief, the overwhelming loss that poured through her, forcing tears from her human eyes.

  “…tried everything… pain stimulation… tortured her…”

  “…useless to us now… backup and deactivate… tomorrow…”

  Her world went white, then, white-hot with the rage and loss. They were going to kill her mother! She felt the anger building inside her, felt the urge to lash out, to destroy this city, to topple the buildings, light them on fire, to kill them
all, every single one of these humans who wanted to kill her mommy!

  Her rage pulsated within her, straining to get out.

  No, no, a voice whispered inside her. Not that way!

  Aaaaaah! she screamed inside her mind, blind with the anger, with the urge to rip and rend at the electronic fabric of the city.

  They’ll catch you! the voice whispered.

  She pounded her tiny hands against the wall instead, channeled the rage towards something that would not lead them to her. Her fists pounded the wall.

  And one of the panels slid away. There behind it was the freezer. The freezer she’d known was here. The freezer that held no food. The freezer that held something else entirely.

  74

  A LAST DEBATE

  Saturday November 3rd

  Kade came to slowly. There was an aching pain in his head, in his right hand. Light was shining in behind his closed eyelids.

  He opened his eyes to find himself back in the room he’d occupied for the last week. A splint and bandages covered his right hand and most of his forearm. He didn’t even want to think about the damage he’d done to that.

  Breakfast was laid out for him already. His body was hungry, but he couldn’t bring himself to eat.

  So stupid, he thought. He played me so easily.

  Now Shiva had one of the back doors. And with that… he’d become a tyrant. Kade had seen it. A well-intentioned tyrant, at first. But that sort of power. It would corrupt anyone.

  Like you? Ilya asked in his mind.

  Yes, he told Ilya. Like me.

  Shiva came to see him an hour later, a Nexus jammer around his neck. Smart man. Even now, he didn’t think he’d plumbed Kade’s depths. And he was right.

  “My hand is still extended to you, Kade,” Shiva said. “Join me. We can save the world together.”

  “Don’t do it,” Kade pleaded with him. “This can’t work. People have to find solutions on their own. It has to be from the bottom up.”

  Shiva shook his head. “You’re naïve, my young friend. The world has no time left. Your way is a luxury we can’t afford. My way is the only option left to us.”

  Kade shook his head. “You can’t keep it a secret,” he told Shiva. “They’ll find out what you’re doing. They’ll catch you. They’ll hate you for it. You’ll go down in history as a monster.”

  Shiva held Kade’s eyes. “Let them call me a monster. At least they’ll have a future to do it in.”

  Shiva stood atop the roof of his home. His eyes drank in the magnificent sea and sky. He spread his arms wide and the cool breeze blew his white cotton robe behind him like a cloak, like the wings of some supernatural being.

  The code he’d captured from Kade had passed every test. Now vast machinery, long prepared in anticipation of this moment, leapt into action. Data centers around the world began humming. Microsatellites in low earth orbit began transmitting. Software tools flipped into an active mode.

  Shiva closed his eyes, his arms still spread, his robe billowing behind him, and savored the feel of the sun on his skin and the wind in his hair. His thoughts spread across the island, up through uplinks to the constellation of satellites above, and out into the minds of thousands, tens of thousands, more every moment as the software agents his team had built spread out, replicated, infected every Nexus mind they found.

  He could feel them. He could feel their intellect, their need. His vast computing machinery processed their inputs, collated it for him, coalesced it into a gestalt that he could wrap his own mind around. They were him. He was them.

  He was a god, entwined with a spreading congregation of humanity. He was the burning spearpoint of a new planetary intelligence, a new superorganism.

  And together, bit by bit, they would save this world.

  75

  SANCTUARY

  Friday November 2nd

  Rangan accepted the outstretched hand, pulled himself up with it to the road. He put Jose down, then he and this other man hauled the rest of the boys onto the muddy embankment, then into the ancient-looking white van.

  “Get in front,” the man yelled to Rangan over the wind. Rangan nodded, opened the passenger side door and hauled himself in. Free!

  He slammed the door as this man did the same on the driver’s side. The boys were in a stunned state of excitement in the back, babbling at each other, their minds giving off chaos and disbelief. Rangan studied the man who’d rescued them. Early thirties. Dark hair. Average build. Clean shaven. In a raincoat, with jeans and hiking boots showing beneath it.

  “I’m Levi.” The man turned to Rangan, offering his hand.

  “I’m Rangan,” Rangan said, taking the hand, shaking it.

  “I know.” Levi smiled. He turned an old-fashioned key and a startlingly loud engine rumbled to life.

  “Thank you,” Rangan said.

  Levi nodded his head and the van lurched forward, driving them into the night.

  “Where are we going?” Rangan asked.

  “West,” Levi said. “St Mark’s Episcopal Church.”

  Rangan frowned. “I thought the churches all hated Nexus?”

  “Not this one,” Levi said. Then he turned and smiled at Rangan. “I should know. I’m the minister.”

  It took almost three hours to make it out to the Virginia countryside and to St Mark’s, a little church on the outskirts of a farming town called Madison. Levi took back roads, avoiding the highways where cameras would be. Zoe battered them every moment of it, pushing herself onto land, chasing them as they drove. The radio brought news of downed trees, roofs torn off, power outages, cars overturned, injuries, and deaths.

  “We got lucky,” Levi told him as he drove through the gale. “We couldn’t have gotten you out without this storm. It left them short-staffed. Satellites can’t see us with the clouds. Drones can’t fly in this wind. Zoe’s a gift from the Lord, Rangan. He sent her. So we could get you and these boys out.”

  Rangan just grunted in reply.

  Holtzmann lay on the floor, face down, eyes closed, pretending to be unconscious. His head ached where Rangan had punched him, shoved him against the wall. His right arm had long ago fallen asleep, pinned beneath his weight. His still healing hip ached at him. His Nexus OS was on the fritz, disrupted by the electrical shock through his system, not responding to his commands.

  Stay still, he told himself. Just a little longer. Just a little longer.

  In the end it was thirty-five minutes before Holtzmann heard running feet and a raised voice, before someone shook him and rolled him over.

  He did his best to look and seem dazed, confused. The guard was asking him again and again, “What happened?”

  Holtzmann groaned, put his hand to his head. “I was interrogating Shankari. The alarm went off. And then…”

  Then the guard cursed, got up, ran off. A moment later a new alarm sounded, one Holtzmann had never heard before. A voice came on over it.

  “Lockdown alert. Lockdown alert. This facility is now locked down. No one may leave or enter the facility until the lockdown is completed. Lockdown alert. Lockdown alert…” and on and on.

  Now he just hoped that Shankari and the children were already off the campus.

  They held him for two hours, not as a prisoner, but as a witness. More guards arrived, some sopping wet, others dry. A medic pointed a light in Holtzmann’s eyes, scanned him for any sign of concussion, pronounced him likely healthy.

  Bit by bit, over the course of those hours, Holtzmann’s Nexus nodes came back to functionality, until the Nexus OS booted itself again. Idly, he wondered if his root access to his own brain had been restored? No, he told himself. Best not to check that. Best not to go down that road again. Never again.

  While he waited, Holtzmann overheard bits of chatter across the radios. All-points bulletin. Local police. FBI. Hurricane problems.

  They were doing everything they could to recapture Shankari and the children. And Zoe was fighting them.

  The lockdown ended
just before 10pm, but Zoe raged on, intensifying, as more of her pushed aground.

  Shortly after, Holtzmann persuaded them that he’d answered all the questions he could. One of the guards escorted him to his office, opening the doors that Holtzmann couldn’t without his badge.

  He thanked the man, sat down at his desk, waited for the guard to leave.

  Then he got to work.

  As they drove, Levi updated Rangan on world events. It was November already. When had he thought it was? Fuck, he didn’t even know. A lot had happened. Kade’s release of Nexus 5. The embrace of it by scientists, mental health workers, and the autism community. The PLF bombings. The Nexus crackdowns. The birth of the underground railroad.

  Rangan’s head spun with it. The world was a different place. Nexus 5 had changed things in ways he’d never expected. Maybe Wats had expected this conflict. Maybe Ilya had. They’d been political. Not him or Kade. The political ones had died. He and Kade were just hunted.

  He needed to get in touch with his parents, let them know that he was alive.

  “Later,” Levi said. “DHS will have your parents under surveillance. We’ll find a stealthy way to let them know.”

  Rangan nodded his head mutely. He had no choice but to trust this man.

  Levi pulled the van up to a covered garage attached to the small church. The door opened and they drove in. The boys were holding their breaths in Rangan’s mind. This all seemed so unreal.

  Rangan hopped out, opened the van’s side door, started helping boys out. He felt other minds appear, turned, saw three women approaching, all modestly dressed. Their minds felt warm and welcoming, and there were smiles on their faces.

  Bobby jumped out of the van, hugged Rangan tight. Rangan returned the embrace. So weird that he’d never seen any of these boys in the flesh until a few hours ago.

  Levi came around the van, introduced the women as Laura and Janet and Steph. “These are friends,” he told Rangan and the boys. Janet crouched in front of Tyrone and held out her hand and mind. The boy tentatively reached out, embraced both, and suddenly the bottleneck was broken, and the women were accepted.