Nexus n-1

by Naam, Ramez

  She did something then that Kade didn't understand. New pings emanated from her brain, in a pattern too fast and intricate for him to follow. Colors and shapes flickered in his mind. For a moment he didn't know what had happened, and then he felt the change, saw the errors. Starting somewhere near his midbrain, sets of Nexus nodes had dropped out of his control, were starting to broadcast a pattern of their own, against his will. And it was spreading.

  He flicked on one of the defenses that Rangan had created.

  [activate: aegis]

  Firewalls blocked out all external signals, descending like massive blast shields over his thoughts. Watchdogs activated, isolating the misbehaving nodes in his brain, inundating them with kill signals.

  Stay cool, he told himself. He smiled calmly back at Su-Yong Shu.

  More errors flashed across his vision. Watchdogs were faltering. Nodes in his mind were reaching out to touch Shu's. Their pattern was spreading within his mind. More and more nodes were rebelling, reaching out to Shu. The power of their broadcast was ratcheting up from microwatts towards milliwatts. Could she hear it yet? He had to stop it before she could.

  Kade pulled up the radio firewall's interface, flipped a switch to block out the signal coming from his own brain. It didn't make a difference. The foreign signal continued to spread within his brain, reaching out to Shu's. Nexus OS was faltering now. Errors were piling up. His Nexus nodes were becoming Shu's.

  He was losing. His blast shields were crumbling. Nexus nodes in his brain were starting to synchronize with nodes in Shu's. He could feel bits of her mind touching his. Vast and majestic, that's how she felt.

  He was fast running out of options. He would need to halt everything in his head.

  [system halt] he commanded. [system halt] [system halt]

  The command took. Processes collapsed. Windows closed. The serenity package code – which was bolstering his serotonin levels, regulating his pulse and breathing, and suppressing the fear signals propagating through his amygdala – ceased.

  The viral pattern didn't stop.

  Nexus nodes in his brain continued to reach out to Shu's. Sweat beaded on his brow. His heart jumped into his throat.

  Kade was well and truly fucked. Only a single option remained.

  Volcano. Mastodon. Cedar.

  Kade heard the words, visualized them superimposed. The mantra unfolded within him, a fractal persona expanding into the spaces of his mind, sweeping away bits of memory, identity, and conception, replacing them with, with, with…

  The world went blurry for just a moment, then snapped back into a new focus. Kade blinked. He was dizzy, suddenly – disoriented. He blinked again, lifted his glass of water to his mouth. His hand was trembling. Damn, he was nervous. What had they just been talking about?

  "I'm sorry, Professor Shu, what were you saying?" He looked up at her.

  19

  THE CONFUSION

  Wats patiently watched from afar. Dinner was all smiles and ooohs and aaaahs. Then something happened. The smile left Shu's face. She shook her head slightly… And something happened to Kade. A worried look crossed his face, he closed his eyes, his head nodded – like he'd nearly fainted. When he opened his eyes again, something was different. He took a sip of water and his hand shook visibly in the scope. His body language changed. He slumped, seemed to withdraw into himself.

  Shu seemed hyper-alert now. On a hunch Wats moved the scope down to ground level. There. The driver of the car that had dropped Kade off, walking briskly towards the restaurant.

  Wats judged the distance. No way could he get there first. He reached into his pack, pulled out the highly illegal rifle, screwed on the barrel, slid the scope he'd been using into the groove on top until it snapped into place. He looked at the assembled sniper rifle for a moment. Was he willing to do this? Was he willing to kill? He just didn't know.

  "…what were you saying?" Kade asked. He blinked again to try to shake this fog from his head.

  Su-Yong Shu was looking at him, her head cocked to one side, lips slightly parted, eyes narrowed, studying him like a particularly puzzling scientific specimen.

  "I was saying…" she spoke slowly, as if picking her words carefully, "that it's important to understand ourselves, and what makes us tick."

  "Ummm, yes, of course." Whatever had just happened, it was passing. His head was clearing. He must still be jet-lagged.

  Kade?

  Kade blinked in surprise. Shu's mind had just touched his. She'd just sent him verbal thoughts. Was she using Nexus?

  Kade, keep talking. Show no sign that we are communicating this way.

  Show no sign? Why? "I agree completely," he said aloud. "It's important to understand ourselves."

  How was she doing this? And what was going on in his head? Why wasn't Nexus OS running? How was she talking to him?

  Kade, you can talk to me this way as well. Like….

  He saw it. He felt it.

  Hello? he sent to her.

  Good, she continued. You've had some sort of minor… seizure, Kade. I'm trying to understand it. Relax for me. And keep talking as if nothing has happened.

  A chill went up Kade's spine. A seizure? Was it a side effect of the Nexus? Had all their playing with fire finally burnt him?

  OK, he sent back.

  He felt tendrils of her mind touch him lightly, insinuate themselves into him.

  He babbled something to her about his research.

  As he did, Kade could feel her in his mind, going deeper, going broader, tendrils of thought branching and spreading throughout him. She felt unlike any other human being he'd ever touched through Nexus. Her mind was everywhere inside his.

  Keep talking, she sent him. He rambled, distantly aware that she was nodding, replying.

  Stay calm, he told himself. Shu's mind permeated his. She touched memory after memory. It frightened him. He should be resisting. There was something he couldn't let her see…

  He was sweating. Her scrutiny was terrible. Her mind was vast, her tendrils everywhere.

  Take a deep breath, Kade. Keep calm.

  Calm. Yes. He took a breath. He had some way of calming himself… some software he'd written…

  Kade, I think someone has been manipulating your memories. They're somehow hiding things from you.

  His memories? Oh, fucking fuck. What the hell was going on?

  Relax, Shu sent to him. Open to me fully. I think I can undo what's been done.

  She exuded peace, compassion, tenderness.

  It may be a bit disorienting, she went on, like waking from a dream.

  Kade was confused. His memories were hazy. Things didn't make sense. What could have happened?

  Shu chattered at him, covering the moment. Something about animal studies. He could barely follow.

  I'm restoring your memories… Now, she replied.

  He felt her expand even further within him then. She suffused his mind, touched every part of him at once. It was beyond anything he could imagine doing.

  He could see links between his memories as she explored them. She was sifting through his thoughts and memories faster than Kade could follow. It was as intense an experience as a Nexus calibration. How was she processing so much information? How could her mind be so vast?

  Wait… he remembered now. The memories started to flood back in as Shu unlocked them. The briefing with the ERD. The mission. The defenses Rangan had built. The training. False memories… The panic code. On his phone. A code to call in help. In case he was in danger.

  He reached for his phone. Nothing happened. His hand refused to obey. He tried the other. No good. He tried to yell for help. Nothing. Shu had paralyzed him. He was under her control.

  Kade, stay calm. We need to understand what's happened to you.

  Oh no. He remembered why he was here now. If she saw what was in his mind, she'd know he was a spy. He had to get out of here.

  He had one last weapon left. The weapon Rangan had given him. He needed Nexus up
and running.

  [restart]

  Boot sequences scrolled across his mind's eye. As he drew his attention Inside, Kade became more aware of Shu's presence.

  Shu had synchronized millions of Nexus nodes in his brain to hers. She'd configured them in thousands of complex circuits, each a sensor, each a manipulator. He could feel her fascination as she observed his transformation. Thousands of the circuits were trained on the Nexus OS, studying it, analyzing its parts.

  The circuits were in his brain. His mind. He would take it back from her.

  He remembered nights playing push/pull with Rangan, with Ilya, with Wats. They'd use the Nexus synchronicity between their minds to try to maneuver each other's bodies with their thoughts alone. Reaching out with Nexus to try to move Ilya's hand, blink Rangan's eyelid, make a word come out of Wats' mouth. If you could send enough of the right signals into someone else's brain via Nexus, if your signals could be stronger and more coherent than their own, then you could overcome the signals coming from within their own brain. You could control them. That's what Shu was doing to him now.

  But no one was better at that than Kade.

  He pushed at the circuits she'd built in his mind, aiming to disrupt them, to free his neurons from her invading signals. The circuits flexed, bent, but didn't break. He drew in a breath, pushed harder, gave it everything he had. Circuits snapped, frayed, decohered. Coherence from within his brain squeezed out her foreign signals. For a moment he was almost free of her.

  Outside, Shu closed her body's eyes for a moment, continuing with some story. "It was a priceless moment, let me tell you. I find animal subjects just fascinating."

  I'm not your enemy, she sent him. Stop fighting me.

  He paused to get his mental breath, and in that break Shu's mind infiltrated his own again. Her circuits began to reassemble inside him. She was putting out an incredible volume of radio traffic, swamping the Nexus nodes in his brain with it. Sensors reformed. Manipulators reformed.

  Kade gritted his teeth. If he gave in, she would discover that the ERD had sent him. And when she did…

  He clenched his mind with all the effort he could muster, disrupted her circuits once more, pushed her fractionally out of his head. He grunted from the effort. Pain blossomed in the front of his skull. His vision wobbled.

  Kade, she sent, stop. We have much to talk about.

  He couldn't maintain the effort of forcing her out. His mental push faltered. Her thoughts bored back into him, spreading, expanding, going deeper. She was analyzing him, analyzing his thoughts, trying to get into his memories, trying to pry apart his mind, trying to absorb the complexity of the still booting Nexus OS.

  How was that possible? Her mind was so vast. She was what Holtzmann had said – a superhuman intelligence, a posthuman. His life would mean nothing to her.

  There. The OS was up. A sense of calm descended on him as the serenity package restored his equilibrium. The weapons Rangan had built were his to use once more. He had a momentary flicker of doubt. Should he be doing this?

  He saw no other way. Attack her to break her hold on him. Pound the emergency code on the phone. Flee.

  [activate nd*]

  The Nexus disrupter signal blared out of his skull. Filters dampened it within him. Shu's mind recoiled, spasming. She flinched as if she'd been slapped. Kade winced at the pain inside his own skull. Even through the filters it was intense.

  He tried to move his hand. Still no good.

  He cranked up the disruptor and its matching filters, let them consume all the Nexus nodes they wanted. Static invaded his mind. Not so bad. He could handle it. Not so bad. He ground his teeth together at the pain.

  A hand descended on his shoulder. It didn't matter. He could do this. He must do this.

  ENOUGH!

  Shu said the word aloud and inside him at the same time. He felt her mind shift. The signals she sent out cohered, a solid continuous pulse of data from billions of nodes at once, pulsing out at whole watts. It overwhelmed him. His control over the nodes in his brain faltered. They became Shu's. They pulsed, pulsed, pulsed…

  All went white. Every sense overloaded, not in static, but in a single coherent wave. Everything was one single pulsing rhythm.

  Thought evaporated.

  Time evaporated.

  Space evaporated.

  Identity evaporated.

  There was nothing.

  Nothing

  but

  this

  white

  beyond

  white.

  Wats tensed. The driver with the all-too-familiar face came up the stairs to the roof. Kade's back was to him. The driver crossed the distance between them at a walk, careful to not alarm the serving staff. Wats flicked the safety off of his rifle.

  The driver's back was square in the center of his sights.

  If he did shoot… would one shot take him down? It had taken many, many bullets to take down the last man he'd seen with that face.

  He had to decide. Fire now, on a bad hunch? Kill on incomplete data? Or watch the situation?

  Wats took a deep breath. They were in public. Kade had been seen with Shu. If they were going to kill him, they wouldn't do it in plain sight.

  He watched the driver's hand come down on Kade's shoulder. Wats tensed. Then… nothing. He exhaled, but kept the crosshairs on the back of the driver's head.

  20

  ONLY HUMAN

  Consciousness returned slowly, in fragments. He was alive. His name was Kade. Kaden Lane.

  Vision faded back in, slowly, disorientingly. Shu was looking at him. How long had he been gone? How long had he been back? He tried to speak, found that he could not. His heart pounded in his chest. He tried to throw his mind at hers, found that it was just as restrained. He willed his hand to move towards the phone in his pocket, and it would not obey him. The Nexus disrupter was no longer running. He tried to start it again. The Nexus OS ignored him.

  A chill went up his spine. Just like that, he'd lost. Su-Yong Shu controlled him.

  This is what we did to Sam, he realized.

  He could feel Shu rifling through his mind, his memories. The creation of Nexus OS. The party. The bust. The briefing about her. The mission they'd sent him on.

  You're a fool, Kaden Lane.

  I didn't want to be here, he sent. I was blackmailed.

  He felt no pity from her, no sympathy. You could have come to me, she sent. You could have told me. I would have protected you. You and I, we're alike. We're on the same side.

  Are we? he wondered.

  They accused you of things, Kade sent back to her. They showed me evidence. You used Nexus to kill people an to coerce them. You took over their minds like you're taking over mine.

  She struck him then, with her mind. It hurt like hell. He could feel the stinging across his face, as if she'd reached out with her right hand and slapped him. Harder. Like she'd broken bones in his face, left him bleeding and bruised. He couldn't even flinch. He blinked, breathed in through his nose. His face ached. Tears welled up in his eyes.

  You arrogant child, Shu sent to him. How dare you lecure me on morality. Do you know the things those monsters you serve have done? Here. See them!

  He saw images from Shu's mind. A Chinese scientist found dead in a Saigon brothel; a Range Rover, found at the foot of a cliff in the Australian outback, bodies charred beyond recognition; a famous Indian AI researcher, no identifiable pieces of her remaining after a car bomb in Delhi; an American geneticist, found in an apparent suicide in his home; more.

  The worst. Yang Wei, her mentor, the Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist who'd trained her, one of the greatest minds she'd ever known, burning to death, trapped in his limousine after the Americans had attacked it, dying in agony as Shu watched helplessly.

  Her mind was full of rage, full of hate. She despised them.

  They kill to stop progress, she sent, to stop science that frightens them. To stop our evolution. How could you work with them? />
  Kade trembled. They called you a killer. They said you helped your government assassinate people. You built the tools.

  Su-Yong Shu sighed mentally. She emanated regret. They used the tools I built, yes. My government is little better than yours. They take science, and they pervert it.

  So it was true, then. They'd used her tools to kill.

  They'll do the same to you, Shu sent to him. They'll use your tools in ways you never intended.

  I won't let them, he replied.

  Shu mentally scoffed at him. They won't ask your permission.

  I'll stop them, he told her. I will.

  Another image bubbled up in Kade's thoughts. Su-Yong Shu in front of rows of identical Confucian Fist soldiers, arms spread widely as if to say "ta-da!" They said you helped China make soldiers. Clone soldiers. Human robots.