Shiva

by Simon Sloane

  Tanguy smiled for the first time that day. Yogi had saved the best for last.

  Chapter 84

  Silver Chain

  Saturday, 7:15am CET (10:45am Indian time)

  Hugo shook hands with Jyran’s guests. He was keen to get away from the brunch. Some of them were pitching business projects to Jyran, who pretended to listen politely. Hugo didn’t need any of it, although Jyran insisted on him being there.

  Diana stood next to the heir, adding cosmopolitan flair. She responded to questions about her background with the poise of the ATF’s finest. She deflected invitations to candlelight dinners or seaside vacations in the smooth manner of an attractive woman who had been asked out by too many blokes.

  “You can sleep with her now,” Jyran said with a wink at Hugo when he managed to extricate himself from the crowd. “She’s no longer your business partner.”

  Diana responded with a laugh, touching Jyran’s elbow in a playful manner. Then she laid her hand on Hugo’s suit, earning a jealous glance from Maya. Fuming, the heiress withdrew from the sun deck.

  “You can’t talk your way out of this now, Hugo,” Diana joked. “You must follow your chairman’s orders.” She licked her lips before dragging him toward a cabana.

  “You’re winding me up,” Hugo said when Diana slithered seductively on the white mattress beneath a roof of silken sheets.

  “The cameras can’t spot us here,” she said, “but we mustn’t raise our voices.” She revealed a silver chain. “Isn’t that what you were looking for?” she asked, letting the access card to Shiva dangle in front of her décolleté.

  “Damn! You took it off him!” Hugo was relieved and impressed at the same time. “And I thought you were about to join the dark side.”

  “Unlike you, I can resist.” She chuckled. “But you’re right. We must hurry. While you were charming the Mumbai elite with your new boss, I received some disturbing news from France.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “They caught your friend, Khaled. He left quite a bloody trail across Paris.”

  “Surely, they’re framing him,” Hugo said, although he was aware of Khaled’s violent past. “He’d never—”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Diana placed her lips close to his ears. “Just do something to get Shiva under control. Stop the countdown!”

  Hugo thought about his drug-induced vision with Maya in the jungle. Had Shiva truly mapped the path to divinity, transforming the human race into superior beings through genetic engineering? In any case, it was clear that vast swaths of the population wouldn’t make the cut.

  Hugo took Diana by the hand and led her away from the pool area. They walked through the top-floor corridors, rushing past the interactive displays. One of them played a scene of a young woman sitting in the nude for a painter.

  Diana stopped for a moment. She pointed at it. “Isn’t that Akasha?”

  “I guess so,” Hugo said, noticing her resemblance to Maya.

  “She seems to have great chemistry with the artist,” Diana noted. “Look at how they stare at each other! I’m not surprised the film was such a big success.”

  “Brush of Desire.” Hugo read the caption in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. “I remember having seen the leading man somewhere too.”

  “I’d doubt that,” Diana said, “unless you’re secretly a Bollywood fan.”

  Hugo laughed as they walked toward the elevator.

  Diana pushed the button to reach the thirty-sixth floor. “We better hurry, before Jyran starts missing his access card.”

  Slowly, they glided down until the lift came to a halt.

  “There’s something else,” Diana said. “Sarah told me that Shiva wasn’t behind the assassination of Casimir-Perier. The Louvre blast just happened to drown out news of Shiva’s real action during that time slot.”

  “Really? What was it?” Even though they had progressed only a few yards, Hugo found that the austerity of the brushed-iron walls contrasted with the opulence in the remainder of the Singh residence.

  “Syngenetiq has developed a technology that uses a redesign virus to carry genetic cures. Guess what they could do if they combined their knowledge of human DNA with a delivery vehicle that could hit billions of people within hours?”

  “Hmm ….” Hugo stroked his chin. “I’ve always wondered what Shiva might have against the French president. And now we have the answer—nothing at all!”

  Diana in tow, he walked down the hallway toward the data centre.

  “No!” Diana exclaimed when a broad-shouldered man blocked their advance.

  “What took you so long, my friends?” In front of the iron gate stood Alexander. He smiled, his arms crossed in front of his chest.

  Chapter 85

  Good Man

  Saturday, 7:30am CET (11:00am Indian time)

  Diana was confused. She had never understood Alexander’s loyalty to Hugo. Hadn’t the Russian been hired by Yogi?

  But then Alexander hadn’t hesitated to terminate Yogi’s career by leaking the surveillance video of Shiva’s silence.

  “You’re making a mistake,” Alexander said, crossing his arms behind his back. “One step further, and Jyran will know you’re trying to go around him.”

  Diana wondered if one of Alexander’s cameras had spotted her stealing the golden access card.

  “You may have heard,” Hugo said impatiently, “that I’m the new CEO of Akasha Limited. I need access to the artificial intelligence. So, if you’re trying to be helpful ….”

  Diana could tell that Hugo’s approach didn’t impress the man from Saint Petersburg. “Please, Alexander!” she pleaded. “We can’t wait any longer.”

  “Is this Jyran’s card?” Alexander pointed at the silver chain in Hugo’s hand. “I’m glad you haven’t used it yet.”

  “Why?” Diana asked.

  “When Yogi got fired, Jyran installed two-step authorisation.”

  Hugo looked crestfallen. “Does that mean he receives a notification on his phone whenever the access card is used?”

  Alexander nodded. “He’ll be prompted to confirm access with his PIN code.” He gave Diana a suspicious glance. “And don’t even think of nicking his phone!”

  Diana was close to losing hope, but she had to admit that Alexander was right. “What do you think, Hugo?” She looked at his sullen face. “Shall we wait?”

  “When I confronted Shiva the first time,” Hugo said, “I asked a few questions to understand Shiva’s way of thinking. Then I changed a parameter to make Shiva more certain of its conclusions before taking action. Now I need to check what effect my actions might have had.”

  “Do you really think that could have turned an evil AI into a benevolent one?” Diana asked. It certainly was too good to be true.

  “How could we tell?” Alexander asked, leaning casually against the iron gate that was the final obstacle between them and Shiva’s bulletproof enclosure.

  “We can’t,” Hugo said. “Given what we know, it’s likely that Sorokan Singh uploaded his mind into the AI just before he died. His values and intentions seem to drive Shiva to this very day. So, what do we know about Sorokan?”

  Diana looked down. There was so much material about the self-made billionaire, but it didn’t reveal what sort of man he had been. He had never launched any large-scale philanthropic ventures, nor had he used his wealth in any destructive way.

  “I only talked to Sorokan a couple of times,” Alexander said. “He deeply loved his wife and children. But as I said, I worked a lot more with Yogi.”

  “Did Yogi love anyone?” Diana quipped, but she failed to lighten the mood.

  “What struck me about Yogi,” Alexander said, “was his curiosity about you, Hugo. He kept peppering me with questions about Sibyl, our work together and ….”

  A sudden unease crept through Diana’s veins, and it was mirrored by the twitching of Hugo’s facial muscles.

  “What questions exactly?” Hugo asked.
>
  “You know, the usual stuff,” Alexander said with a dismissive gesture that failed to conceal his nervousness. “How did we build Sibyl? Why were Sibyl’s forecasts one hundred percent accurate? Yogi seemed to wonder how any kind of quantum computer could remain entirely error free.”

  “What did you tell him?” Hugo asked, the hair on his neck standing up. He looked at Alexander just like Jesus must have stared at Judas when he received the traitor’s kiss.

  Chapter 86

  Platform

  Saturday, 7:45am CET (11:15am Indian time)

  Hugo followed Alexander down the stairs behind the emergency exit.

  “You must see this,” Alexander said. He passed the retina scan and kept the door open for Hugo and Diana. Staying close behind him, they passed a rack that was stacked with medical equipment. It was just one level below the server room, where Shiva brooded over the fate of the human race.

  “You don’t want to see this, Diana,” Hugo said, “if it is what I think it is.”

  She laughed. “If you’re talking about uploading your mind into an artificial intelligence, well, I’ve seen much worse than that.”

  “How did you guess?” Hugo wondered if Alexander had spread the secret beyond the Singh empire. His smile revealed there was more to it.

  “Call it female intuition,” she said in a mocking tone, as if she wasn’t quite convinced herself that such a thing even existed. “Anyway, I can’t imagine how it would work.”

  “You need to measure brain activity on the level of individual neurons,” Hugo explained. “You can build a structural blueprint of your brain if you record every neuron’s interactions with others. Every single transmission of its axons and every reception of its dendrites will become part of your artificial mental model.”

  “Does that work in practice?” Diana asked sceptically.

  “If done accurately, you’ll have saved your mind for eternity. It doesn’t matter whether the information is processed by neurons or silicon, as long as the same information is processed in the same manner. A quantum computer of Shiva’s capacity could store the memories and perform the processing of billions of brains.”

  “How much data are we talking about?” Alexander asked.

  “A single brain stores about two thousand five hundred terabytes,” Hugo said. “It’s close to the amount of information contained in every Hollywood movie ever made.”

  “That much?” Alexander seemed intrigued. “How come it always feels so empty in there?” He laughed, gently knocking his head with his fist.

  “Come on,” Diana said. “No one believes your silly-man act anymore.”

  Hugo laughed. “We also shouldn’t forget the brain’s interfaces with the senses—vision, hearing, touch, taste and scent. An AI replaces those with electronic feeds—fibre links, detectors, spectral analysers, cameras and microphones. Without them, even the most powerful computer would stew in its own sauce, unable to learn new things.”

  Alexander caressed his goatee, gazing at the ceiling lights as if he was on the verge of making a difficult decision. “That’s the theory,” he said. “And this is reality.”

  They entered what seemed like a broom cupboard. Only when Alexander switched on the lights did Hugo see the wooden door at its back.

  Diana pushed it open.

  A hidden room unfolded before them. At its centre stood an operating table made of brushed aluminium.

  “What is this?” Diana asked, examining the electrodes. They were bundled to a single strand of fibre cable that disappeared into the wall.

  “That’s where Sorokan passed away,” Alexander said, pointing at the burn marks that covered the table’s metallic surface.

  Chapter 87

  Chosen Caste

  Saturday, 8:00am CET

  Sitting in his private study in his top-floor apartment on Avenue Foch, Tanguy dialled into the videoconference. His conversation with Yogi Kapoor had renewed his interest in the secret circle. Also, he had to fight his boredom. Something told him that tonight had been his final tryst with Zoë. Charenton was about to win, and she would be stupid to continue their affair while working in the Elysée Palace.

  On Tanguy’s screen, the elliptic chamber’s walls were covered by a grid of monitors. Each one showed a face with a golden mask, although Tanguy wasn’t wearing one himself. Someone applied some sort of digital trickery to disguise the attendants of the clandestine meeting.

  For the third time in as many days, Tanguy listened to the sheik. Again, the Arab stood at the centre of what he referred to as the Room of the Three Gods.

  “Our enemies shall vanish like ash in a thunderstorm. However, that which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

  Tanguy wasn’t convinced. To him it looked as if Osama Bin Laden’s heirs were producing a low-budget thriller. He wondered whose faces might lurk behind the masks. During a previous congregation, the sheik had hinted that all of them were prominent citizens who had been unjustly spurned by society. The time had come to reclaim their lost glory, and the man in the white thobe was telling them how.

  “Let’s not hesitate. For if we gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into us. The era of homo sapiens is coming to an end. And you’re among the chosen caste to take the step toward divinity.”

  Tanguy would have thought the man deranged if he wasn’t receiving a rather generous monthly stipend from the circle. The electronic statement of his offshore account only showed a three-digit number as the origin of the funds: 108.

  Maybe the cash came from a trust fund left behind by Yogi’s former boss. Tanguy remembered his first invitation to one of the virtual gatherings having arrived shortly after Sorokan Singh’s death.

  The dark figure behind the circle was clever to use an Arab sheik as a front for his endeavour. The Gulf states held some kind of cultural cachet as well as nearly unlimited financial resources. Tanguy might not have responded had he been approached by an Indian with a funny accent from a slum-ridden town.

  He sighed with relief as the sheik wrapped up. “If you have qualms, take solace in the fact that morality is the herd instinct in the individual. Our dream comes true today, and glory will be ours.”

  The tasks that Tanguy had received on his phone were so simple that he must have been one of the smaller cogs in the sheik’s engine. Last time he had sent the sheik a list of names of the 108 finest women he knew. Maybe the circle’s organisers had planned a private party in the coming days or weeks in order to reward their followers. It was Tanguy’s consolation prize, considering how unlikely it was for him to become president of France.

  Once again, he checked the instructions on his mobile to see if he was missing something. But no, all he had to endure this time was a bit of boredom. He picked up his keys and embarked to morning mass.

  Chapter 88

  Charred

  Saturday, 8:15am CET (11:45am Indian time)

  “Thanks for showing me this, Alexander.” Hugo caressed the electrodes. Something about the operating theatre perturbed him. If only he had known the man who had transferred his mind to Shiva right there! But Hugo’s lack of insight into Sorokan’s desires meant he didn’t understand Shiva’s either.

  Alexander nodded. “I thought you would want to see it.”

  Diana stared at her mobile. She turned away when Hugo was about to talk to her.

  “We still need to question Shiva directly.” Hugo turned to Alexander. “Do you see a chance to get hold of Jyran’s phone?”

  “Brunch should be over in … fifteen minutes or so,” Alexander said with a glance at his watch. “Don’t tell me you can’t wait that long!”

  Hugo sat on the aluminium platform where Sorokan had died. He waited for Diana to finish whatever she was doing on her phone. “Was Sorokan cremated right here?” Hugo pointed at the burn marks.

  “Of course not!” Alexander said. “This is where he passed away, but the cremation took place in the mausoleum at the southern tip of the compound. It
was family only.”

  Hugo rubbed the dark spots on the aluminium before sniffing his fingers. The burnt substance didn’t have a distinctive scent. Most importantly, the electrodes and the fibre connection still seemed intact. If he failed with Shiva, there was still one final desperate act. He shivered at the thought, but maybe it was the only way.

  “You won’t believe this, Hugo!” Diana turned around to show him her phone. “Sarah picked up another transmission from the Room of the Three Gods.” Hugo looked at the screen with the sheik surrounded by the wall of monitors.

  “What did he say this time?”

  “Deranged conspiracy talk. But that’s not why I’m showing it to you.”

  Alexander glanced over Hugo’s shoulder, but he merely shrugged.

  Hugo wasn’t sure what to look for until he saw the list of internet addresses scrolling through the lower half of Diana’s screen. “Are those—”

  “Unique identifiers of the one hundred and eight participants.” She sighed. “If only I could get in touch with Vauxhall! The ATF would find them in a heartbeat.” Her face revealed her regret of having severed ties with the unit that had been her family.

  Hugo, however, felt more confident than he had since their arrival in Mumbai. Instead of launching one hundred and eight city-flattening nukes, they might able to dispense with Shiva using a few packs of C4 per location. However, they couldn’t afford to give away the locations before they fully understood Shiva. “Don’t contact Vauxhall just yet,” he said. “They must keep thinking that we’re dead. If not, they’ll send in their teams before we’re done here. Surely, Shiva will notice what they’re up to.”