Nexus

by Naam, Ramez

  Wats zoomed in on Robyn Rodriguez's face as he pulled up information on her in another screen. Same build. Same nose. Same chin. Eyes, hair, lips, and cheekbones were different, but those could all be altered. In all likelihood, that was Samantha Cataranes. That, in turn, confirmed that this was either an ERD mission, or a trap for Wats.

  It was no matter. He had a mission. Cataranes would be a complication, but he had expected as much. She wouldn't catch him by surprise this time. He would still achieve his goal, despite her and whatever other operatives she'd brought with her.

  He sent a message to the maid at the Prince Market whose services he'd purchased.

  2738. Tomorrow.

  His hand went to the data fob on the chain around his neck. If he could just connect this and Kade…

  But would Kade accept his help? Should he even ask? He had to. Kade wasn't just a tool. He was a friend. The boy had his own decisions to make, his own concerns to weigh. Wats didn't know what they'd offered his friend or what they'd threatened him with to get him here. He didn't know what task they wanted Kade to complete.

  In the end, it was Kade's karma at stake. Wats could hold out his hand, but Kade had to take it. If he had any sense, he would.

  Wats went back to inspecting his equipment. His life, and that of Kaden Lane, might very well depend on it.

  13

  INVITATIONS AND PROVOCATIONS

  Morning came too soon for Kade. He and Sam ate in the hotel restaurant and then headed out for the conference. The heat hit them like a solid object as they exited the lobby to find transportation. The sky was a ceiling of cloud or smoke or both. The air was thick with humidity. A warm drizzle came down onto the street. No wonder they held conferences this time of year. No one would want to come to Bangkok on vacation when the weather was this oppressive.

  Sam flagged down a tuk-tuk at random. The bright yellow three-wheeled vehicle veered over to them. "Queen Sirikit Convention Center," she told him.

  "Convention center," the driver replied. "A hundred baht!"

  "Fifty baht," Sam replied.

  "Fifty baht! Cloudy day! No sun!" He gestured at the solar panels on his roof, the low-hanging clouds above them. "Have to use engine. Fifty baht no pay for gas! Ninety baht!"

  Sam shook her head and turned to go, tugging on Kade's forearm to follow her.

  "OK, OK, eighty baht!" the driver called.

  Sam turned "Sixty baht, no more."

  "Seventy baht, can't go no lower, lady!"

  Sam nodded. "OK." She dragged Kade into the open air vehicle.

  The driver took off almost before they were both in the tiny seat. The little three-wheeled vehicle darted into traffic, zipped around a taxi and between two private vehicles, dodged a motor scooter that cut obliquely across their path with three people on it, and then tucked in behind a bus and sucked its biofuel fumes. Kade scrambled for a seat belt. There were none. Nor were there any doors. They were basically on a high-speed rickshaw with an engine and a partial roof. Kade gripped the small side railing tightly. At least the roof kept the drizzle off. Small blessing when he was about to be spilled out into traffic to be run over by some other insane driver.

  Sam put her hand on his forearm, and only then did Kade realize that he was gripping her leg for dear life.

  "Relax," she said. "They do this all the time. Enjoy the ride."

  Easy for her to say. She could probably get hit by one of those cars and bounce right back up.

  Kade nodded to himself, and tried to enjoy it. He almost succeeded.

  Registration was a zoo. There were fifteen thousand people expected in person at this event, and another fifty thousand virtually. The convention center covered a giant city block. The registration hall was larger than a football field, and even so it was packed. People queued up to pick up badges. Exhibition tables showed off research instruments, neuroinformatics packages, infrared neural scanners, next-gen MEG brain-scanning caps, psychiatric diagnosis AIs, brainwave-controlled robots and wheelchairs, nervous-system integrated prosthetics, and more. Jobs tables had recruiters for pharma firms, for biotechs, for neural device manufacturers, for software companies, for savvy advertising and marketing firms, for banks and hedge funds that wanted the quantitative skills of neuroscientists. A dozen nonprofit societies had booths lining one wall, from Neuroscientists for World Peace to the Thai Neuroscience Students Association. Interestingly, there were quite a few shaven-headed men walking around in the orange robes of Thai monks.

  Kade made it through the registration queue, got his badge and packet. Sam was still halfway back in her line.

  [sam] I'll catch up with you later.

  Kade nodded. With the Nexus link over their phones, they could always keep in touch. He headed into the massive plenary hall, grabbed a seat near the back, and pulled out his slate.

  A moment later the lights dimmed and a voice boomed out over the loudspeaker. "Please welcome His Royal Majesty, the King of Thailand, Rama the Tenth."

  WTF?

  Kade looked down at his slate, tapped into the conference program.

  Buddhism and Neuroscience: From Singular to Connected Paradigms of the Mind and Brain. His Royal Majesty Rama X & Professor Somdet Phra Ananda, Chulalongkorn University

  At the end of the plenary hall and on giant screens to either side, a smiling forty-something man in an immaculate white suit with an embroidered golden sash took the stage. Monks in orange robes throughout the audience came to their feet, applauding, as did other Thais, and then the entire audience. Kade followed their lead.

  Rama X held up his hands and motioned for the crowd to be seated.

  He spoke in English, welcomed them to Thailand, praised the organizers and attendees, remarked on the history of the conference center which his grandfather had erected. And then the talk turned in a direction Kade had not expected.

  "I am a Buddhist," the king said, "as are more than ninety percent of my countrymen. As is the custom of young men of my nation, I spent a time in my youth in the orange robes of a monk."

  Interesting.

  "I learned many things through the experience of serving as a monk. Two of them are relevant today.

  "The first is that the most essential Buddhist practice – meditation – is a practice of investigating the mind. Through that investigation we gain peace, freedom from attachments, reduction in suffering, and compassion for others. And most relevant to today, we gain tremendous insights into how our minds actually work."

  We do with Nexus too, Kade mused.

  "The goals of neuroscience and Buddhism are nearly the same, while their methods are both different and complementary to one another.

  "The methods of science are statistical, quantitative, reproducible, reductionist, and, as much as possible, objective."

  He paused.

  "The methods of meditation, on the other hand, are qualitative, subjective, reproducible often only through hard work disciplining and quieting the mind, and yet equally profound."

  Drugs are faster, Kade thought. Mental tools.

  "I have a deep respect for the scientific method," Rama said. "Decades ago, the fourteenth Dalai Lama was asked: 'What if neuroscience proves that Buddhism is in some way incorrect?'

  "'Well,' he replied, 'in that case we would need to change Buddhism.'"

  The crowd laughed. Rama X smiled.

  "What I would ask you to consider is the complementary idea. What if Buddhism shows that some of the basic assumptions of neuroscience are imperfect? That a new paradigm would prove superior? Then I would hope you august scientists would be willing to change your scientific approach."

  No one laughed this time. There was silence.

  Rama X smiled wider.

  "Let me put one idea in your minds as to what this new paradigm might be. And here I turn back to the second thing I learned as a monk."

  He paused for effect.

  "We are all one."

  More silence.

  The King chuckled. "I am
not hearkening back to the Woodstock Festival of North America."

  There were a few answering chuckles.

  "Nor have I been smoking hashish."

  Nervous laughter rippled through the room. Kade found himself chuckling out loud.

  "What I mean is that we all exists as parts of groups and collectives larger than ourselves. Tribes. Communities. Organizations. Institutions. Families. Nations. We think of ourselves as individuals, but all that we have accomplished, and all that we will accomplish, is the result of groups of humans cooperating. Those groups are organisms in their own rights. We are their components."

  He's right, Kade thought.

  "For the experienced meditator, this connection is intuitively grasped. The process of meditation pierces the illusion of solitary individual existence and reveals to us that we are all part of things much much larger than any individual."

  Wow, Kade thought. The King of Thailand is a hippie.

  "Here neuroscience can take direction from Buddhism. Individual minds matter. Yet in an age where billions of minds are webbed through technology, where information can travel from one person on one side of the globe to a billion on the other side of the globe in a heartbeat, there are other layers of cognition which matter.

  "Everything important in our world requires the efforts of large numbers of individuals. Indeed, to overcome our planet's most pressing problems, we are required to think not as individuals, not even as nations, but as a single humanity."

  Like Einstein, Kade thought. The problems we currently face can't be solved at the level of thinking that created them.

  Rama X went on, "Yet the dominant paradigm of neuroscience is still that of the individual brain. That is only the beginning of the understanding of the human mind, not the end product.

  "If I have one wish for this conference, it is that a few of you would rethink your work through a new lens, a new paradigm – that of the connectedness of all brains and all minds on Earth, both the connectedness that already exist," – here, the king paused – "and the even greater connectedness that we'll develop in the coming years as neuroscience and neurotechnology progress."

  Greater connectedness that we'll develop? thought Kade. Is he talking about brain-to-brain communication? About Nexus?

  "For now, I thank you for listening to the thoughts of a layperson. As both a Thai and a Buddhist, I welcome you to Thailand, and I open these proceedings." He momentarily bowed his head.

  The orange-robed monks in the audience were on their feet in a moment, followed a split second later by the other Thai attendees, applauding thunderously. Kade found himself on his feet as well, genuinely surprised and impressed.

  Rama X again waved the crowd into their seats. "Now, I have the privilege to introduce Professor Somdet Phra Ananda. He is both one of the most learned Buddhist monks in our country and simultaneously the chair of the Department of Neuroscience at Chulalongkorn University. He is also my friend. Professor Ananda!"

  There was applause again, seated this time, as a sixty-something man in orange robes walked on stage, bowed deeply to the king, and took the lectern.

  Somdet Phra Ananda filled in some of the details underlying the King's vision of a new paradigm in neuroscience. He showed study after study demonstrating the ways that cognition occurred in groups, that ideas could leap between minds, that individuals affected each other in deep and surprising ways. But it was his closing comments that were most provocative for Kade.

  "Today the technology exists to directly connect the neural activity of one brain to the neural activity of another. As this happens, the need for a neuroscience of groups of minds will become more and more urgent.

  "The evolution of language marked a great leap forward for our species. It boosted our cognitive abilities by webbing us together into larger, more powerful group minds. I believe that another quantum step in human cognition awaits us on the other side of direct linkage of our brains and minds to one another. Those linkages are here and are rapidly spreading. To understand and peacefully direct the transformation they represent, we must try to recreate neuroscience through the paradigm of groups of connected brains, and we must do so immediately. Thank you."

  There was applause again, this time originating from scientists and monks as one. Kade found himself absentmindedly drumming his fingers on his slate.

  Ananda was definitely talking about Nexus, Kade thought, or something like it. Are people in Thailand working with it? Does the king support it?

  He had a lot to think about. People were filing out of the hall. He stood up to find his way out, still lost in thought. A tall Thai student with red spiky hair bumped into him in the crowded press for the doors.

  "Oh, sorry, man."

  "No prob," Kade replied.

  "Hey, nice T-shirt!"

  Kade looked down at his chest. He was wearing his favorite DJ Axon shirt, the one with Rangan's face and alternating sine waves superimposed over a brilliantly blue glowing neuronal protrusion, obviously about to pulse forth enormous energies, presumably in the form of sick beats.

  He chuckled. "Yeah, thanks. He's a friend."

  "No way!" the student replied. "You know DJ Axon?"

  Kade grinned. "Yep. He's a lab mate. We're both in the Sanchez Lab, UCSF."

  "That is so cool, man! He makes awesome music! We listen to his mixes all the time." The student held out his hand. "I'm Narong."

  Kade took it. "Kade," he replied.

  "You coming to the neuroscience students' mixer tomorrow night?"

  "Umm, I hadn't really made any plans."

  "You should come," Narong said. He handed Kade a flyer. "We're putting it on. Thai Neuroscience Students Association. I'm the secretary."

  "I'll think about it," Kade said.

  "Yeah, man. It'll be fun. It's at a bar downtown. It'll be the most awesome thing happening in the 'Kok tomorrow night! And no professors allowed!" Narong laughed.

  Kade laughed despite himself. What about American spies? he thought. "I'll think about it."

  They'd reached the doors.

  "Right on, man. See you tomorrow night." Narong patted Kade on the arm and was off.

  Sam was waiting outside the doors, studying the program on her slate. She looked up as Kade approached.

  "How'd you like the plenary?"

  "I think Ilya would have loved it," he said.

  Sam nodded. "Yeah. You're probably right."

  "What did you think of it?" Kade asked.

  Sam seemed to think about that for a moment. "Idealistic," she replied. "A little scary." She paused for a moment longer. "A lot naïve."

  Kade shrugged. Why did I ask?

  "What now?" Kade asked.

  Sam shrugged. "I'm going to check out some of the talks on the augmentation track. Good to keep up on that sort of stuff. We don't have to see the same talks."

  Kade was a little surprised. He'd expected Sam to keep a closer eye on him.

  "Sure. And, umm, I got invited to this thing tomorrow tonight." Kade handed her the flyer. "What do you think?"

  Sam looked it over, front and back, shrugged. "Looks like fun to me."

  They parted ways. Kade saw talk after talk, most of them quite fascinating. He chatted with scientists from across the globe, tried to keep track of their names and what they were working on. By 5pm, Kade's head was full and jet lag was making his eyelids heavy. He told Sam he was heading back to the hotel for a nap and would meet her at the opening reception tonight.

  He took the Bangkok subway instead of a tuk-tuk on the way back. It meant he had to walk a few blocks in the muggy heat, but it was less nerve-wracking than an open-sided vehicle in the suicidal Bangkok traffic.

  The hotel lobby was a blessed oasis of cool air. Kade could feel the sweat under his shirt and on his brow begin to condense immediately. He took the elevator up and carded himself into his room. He tossed his new conference tote bag into one corner and kicked off his shoes. The bed was freshly made, with a pair of mints and a
folded card sitting on the pillow. Kade popped one of the mints into his mouth, and opened the card. It was a comment card where he could rate the service. Kade was about to toss it when something odd happened. The text on the card disappeared and new text appeared line by line.

  Kade. Act natural. This message will appear and then disappear in thirty seconds.