by Naam, Ramez
The eye was still gone.
It was still so much less than he should have lost. He should have been the one to die. Not Wats. Not anyone else.
His hand clenched around the fob hanging on a chain around his neck, beneath his orange robes. Its hard edges bit into his palm painfully.
You should have lived, Wats. This wasn't worth it.
He rose, crutched himself towards the meditation hall again. He'd learned much last night. The monks had learned to integrate Nexus 3 into their minds. They hadn't reprogrammed the Nexus cores, or scanned the radio spectrum and mapped Nexus's responses, or reverse-engineered its underlying instruction set.
No. They'd meditated. They'd sculpted their own minds to the Nexus, found ways of thinking and being that gave them deeper control over it. And in so doing, they'd learned to achieve a synchrony that he'd never experienced. They'd learned to let thoughts flow smoothly across the boundaries that separated individual minds. They'd learned to merge into something larger and more sentient than they were individually.
It impressed him deeply. He had much to learn here.
He reached the meditation hall early, situated himself in the back, closed his eyes, focused on his breath.
Monks filed in. He felt them. Heard them. They sat as they entered, cross-legged, spines erect. They breathed. Kade felt his own breathing synchronise with theirs. The connection between their minds firmed. The greater mind began to coalesce.
Kade could feel them all. He was aware of the tiny ripples of thought that passed through their minds. Every tiny thought, every word, every snippet of song, every momentary fancy, every thought of chores, every question of teachings, every itch, every urge to move… the room felt them all. Together their collective consciousness observed itself. As each thought or sensation arose it was perceived, acknowledged, released. Attention returned to the communal breathing.
It was hypnotic, serene, crystal clear and coherent. The room sparkled with their shared attention, with an almost physical sense of the collective mind they comprised.
Their minds were so quiet. Kade's was so loud in comparison. The same thoughts kept returning.
Wats. Ilya. Rangan.
Narong. Chariya. Niran.
Lalana. Mai.
The dead and the missing. The uncertainty of the future. The guilty who'd done this.
There was no grief. The software in his mind kept that at bay. His emotions were as hard and sharp and brittle as ice. Only anger. Only rage, cold rage, impotent rage.
Every time the thoughts arose, the collective mind observed them, acknowledged them, released them, returned its awareness to the rhythmic breathing of their bodies.
And every time they returned.
They meditated together until lunch. Kade ate in the mess hall in silence, lost in himself. The monks finished their meals, headed off to their afternoon chores.
Kade crutched painfully back to the meditation hall. There, seated at the far end of the hall, facing Kade, the giant golden Buddha statue behind him, was Professor Somdet Phra Ananda.
The old monk's eyes opened at Kade's arrival.
"Child," he said in his deep sonorous voice, "come and sit with me."
Kade crutched himself across the room, reached the pillow Ananda indicated, slowly lowered himself, ribs aching. He could feel Ananda's mind, buoyant, radiant with calm and clarity, fluid, flexible, relaxed. His own mind felt icy, numb, frozen in a single thought.
"How are you, child?" Ananda asked.
"I'm healing," Kade said. I'm angry, he thought. "Thank you for letting us come here. This must be a risk for you. We were out of options."
"Enough people died that night," Ananda replied.
Kade nodded. The memory of it was cold. There was nothing where grief or sorrow should be. Anger. Hatred. That was all.
"I felt you meditating," Ananda said.
"It's amazing what your monks have learned to do," Kade replied. "I'm hoping to learn more of it."
"To what end?" Ananda asked.
To kill them, Kade thought. To hurt them. To break the ERD.
He stared at Ananda blankly for a moment, struggled to control himself. "I don't know."
Ananda studied him. "Your thoughts are cold, child. They're rigid. You shield yourself from what's within you, even as you shield yourself during meditation."
Kade looked down. "I don't feel anything. Nothing feels real."
"You've shackled your own mind. Release it."
The serenity package.
Kade nodded. "Yes. It calms me."
"It numbs you," Ananda replied. "It freezes you. That is not the same thing."
Kade kept his eyes on the floor.
"Release the shackles on your mind, child. Then you'll experience what's going on around you."
"I think it's all that's holding me together," Kade said.
"Then perhaps you should fall apart," Ananda replied.
Kade felt the monk's mind touch his own. Could he do it? Could he turn off the serenity package? Horrible things lurked beneath the surface of his thoughts. He might burst from them. He feared his own emotions.
"There's no way forward for you without letting yourself melt," Ananda said.
"Or burn," Kade said softly.
"Yes. Or burn."
"People died because of me," he said.
They'd existed. They'd had thoughts, emotions, plans. Gone, all gone.
"Yes. That is your karma," Ananda replied.
"I want to hurt the ERD. I want it so bad."
He could feel the bloodlust, feel the anger, feel the rage, the only thing that got through the serenity package any more.
"But it was also my fault," he said. "If I'd made different choices, those people would still be alive."
Ananda nodded. "Perhaps it was your fault."
Kade trembled.
My fault.
"Those shackles… They're there because I don't know if I can face it. If I can face really feeling what happened."
"The past is gone, child. Those men and women are gone, dead or imprisoned. You cannot change what has already happened."
Kade nodded.
Ananda continued. "But you can choose what you make of it. You have a choice to make. Will you make their deaths mean something? And if so, what?"
Kade nodded again. His fists were clenched.
"That's what I've been thinking about."
Rage or emptiness. Nothing else.
"But you will make no headway until you allow yourself to feel. Until you can face your pain, you will not go past it. I will be here with you. We will face it together."
Kade took a deep breath, shook his head. "I can't."
"You can," Ananda replied.
"It's too much. I can't."
"If not now, when?" The old monk gestured around himself. "If not here, then where?"
Kade pulled up the control panel for the serenity package in his mind. It would be so easy. Just a flick of a switch.
He shook his head. "I can't."
"Then your friend died for absolutely nothing."
The words were like a slap to the face. Kade went red. His fists clenched.
He flicked off the serenity package with a thought. The grief surged up around him, came over him like a wave. It bowled him over. It found the cracks in him and suffused every corner of his mind. It filled him up until there was room for nothing else, until he would burst with it, with the pain, with the sorrow, with the heartache, with the despair of all that he'd lost, all the death that he'd brought about.
Wats… Wats…
The faces of the dead and lost to him rose up in his mind.
Ilya. I'll never see you again, Ilya.
The loss of all that had been good in his life threatened to destroy him. It threatened to wash him away in a flood and leave just a husk where he had once been.
Rangan. I'm so sorry, man. I miss you.
The pain of knowing that he had doomed innocents permeated him.
He felt Watson Cole die again. Felt the man's mind burrow into Sam's.
Protect him.
He felt Wats' last urging to him.
Set it free. Give it to the rest of the world. Give them what it gave me.
He heard Wats' last words before the explosion.
"You got shit to do, brother. Go do it."
He saw Narong go down with a burst of bullets in his belly, felt the boy's fear and confusion, the way he'd died because of Kade, because Kade had given those bastards a tool to coerce him with.
He felt Lalana wink out of existence in a hail of bullets. He felt Areva burn to death, felt Loesan die in pain, felt old Niran cut down as he'd tried to save Lalana, felt Chariya mourn her dead family. He felt magical little Mai fade away with Sam crouched above her.
Will you make their deaths mean something? Ananda had asked him.
Yes, Kade answered. Yes.
He felt the gentlest of mental touches from Ananda, a feather brush of mind against mind. Ananda was breath. He was awareness. He was untroubled, undiluted awareness.
Breathe. Breathe. Watch the breath go out. Watch the breath come in.
It was sweet. It was solace. It was emptiness and silence. Wats faded slowly from his mind. Breath expanded in his ears, his sight, his sense of his body, grew and grew to fill his mind.
Breathe. Breathe. Let go.
Breathe. Watch the breath go out. Watch the breath come in.
In. Out. Breathe. Observe.
Ananda was tranquility. Ananda was peace. Ananda was awareness. His mind was Kade's lamppost when the darkness and confusion of guilt and remorse and despair came over him.
Observe the thoughts. Let them pass. Bring your attention back to the breath.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Spider BR-6-7-4 crawled silently along the roof of the hall, its skin the same color as the ceiling it clung to. It had been exploring for almost twelve hours now. It had identified 43 unique individuals. Its sisters had identified another 227 in total, seventy-eight percent male, twenty-two percent female. So far there had been no sign of any of its primary or secondary targets.
Spider BR-6-7-4 had observed a large number of individuals emerging from a doorway in this building, all together, earlier in the day. It had accordingly increased the priority of a search of this building and broadcasted that fact to its sisters. Three of them now crawled through it. There was another door ahead of BR-6-7-4. IR showed two human forms within, seated. BR-6-74 considered the door for a moment, telescoped a foreleg to explore the gap between door and doorway. It would do.
BR-6-7-4 clung close to the ceiling, flattening its shape, and crept between the door and the doorway it was set in, into a large open room. Two human-shaped objects, alive in IR, sat on the floor at one end of the room. The one facing it was a Person of Interest. It logged that fact. The other faced away from BR-67-4. It began the long trek across the room.
It took nine minutes for BR-6-7-4 to cross the room in full stealth mode. The two warm human-shaped objects remained roughly stationary in that time. The Person of Interest's eyes were closed. Its chest rose and fell, consistent with respiration. BR-6-7-4 consulted its decision tree and provisionally labeled the Person of Interest as "Alive", consistent with body temperature and respiration, and "Asleep", consistent with a long duration of eye closure and silence. It left a flag indicating possible re-evaluation due to seated position.
Finally BR-6-7-4 reached a position where it could see the facial area of the second human-shaped object. This human-shaped object also respirated, also with eyes closed. More interesting was the face. Facial recognition routines identified a possible match with one of its Primary Targets, but a number of the details were different in unexpected ways.
Spider BR-6-7-4 hunkered down, double-checked that it was functionally invisible, and broadcast a burst of data to its masters.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Kade had lost track of the hours he'd spent here. Ananda was tireless, the rhythm of his mind as flawless and eternal as ocean surf against a beach. Kade on the other hand… he was tired. More at peace, but so so tired. His concentration was fraying, random thoughts sneaking back in around the absorbing tranquility of his breath.
And then he felt it.
All around him, behind him, throughout this room. Scores of minds unmasked themselves, sitting calm and silent in rows and columns. How long had they been here?
And then, as one, the monks began to breathe, in time to Kade and Ananda.
The effect was electrifying. Kade felt himself buoyed by it. He was not just one. He was many. He was all. The minds in the room were a web, a tapestry, an orchestra of thought without thought. The room breathed in. The room breathed out. A thought occurred in the mind of a novice. It rippled across the mind of the room. All observed it. All brought attention back to the breath.
It lifted Kade up. It filled him with a peace and clarity he'd never felt. He felt utterly clear, sober, grounded, balanced. All fatigue left him. Shadows vanished from the corners of his mind. As one they brought their collective attention to their symphony of breath, let go of the anchor of attachment to the past, to what had been, to what might have been.
There was only here.
There was only now.
There was only breath.
There was only mind.
44
FINDINGS
Aboard the Boca Raton, an icon on a screen turned yellow, began to flash for attention. Jane Kim tapped the icon, expanded the alert. One of the spiders at target 67. A possible match. There. That face. Kaden Lane, in monk's robes, shaven head, a bandage across his face. And across from him, Professor Somdet Phra Ananda, personal friend of the King of Thailand.
Kim paged Nichols in his stateroom. He would want to see this.
While she waited, she turned her attention to the other spiders at target 67. If Lane was there, Cataranes might be there too. She updated the target profile for Cataranes to include the possibility of a shaven head, bandages, and monk's robes, and redirected all of them towards finding Primary Target Beta. Find Blackbird.
Two and a half hours later, they did. She was still alive.
Becker answered the phone at 4.13am Sunday morning, DC time. Sunday afternoon in Thailand. The Boca Raton. They'd found Lane and Cataranes. Monastery. Undefended. Within range of retrieval. The data was spooling to his slate now.
"Get the ball rolling," he told Nichols.
"Do we have clearance to launch?"
"You will in four hours."
White House, National Security Advisor's Office
"This operation was a complete clusterfuck, was it not?" Senator Barbara Engels asked. "And now you want to follow it up with an armed invasion? This is crazy."
Becker wanted to rub his temples. The senator's voice made his head hurt. The meeting had stretched on for more than an hour already, going round and round on the same topics.
"Thank you, Barbara," National Security Advisor Carolyn Pryce said. "We appreciate the input of the oversight committee."
The senator shook her head. "You're looking at a lot more than input here. If this blows up in our faces, you're going to see hearings in my committee. Hearings during an election year. Does that register with you? You people are off the deep end."
Secretary of State Abrams nodded his head in support. "I agree with Senator Engels. We can't further provoke the Thai."
"They're harboring a criminal," said Becker's superior, ERD Director Joe Duran. "A possibly posthuman being who's coerced and abducted our agents, used them to kill our men. We have to go in."
Duran's boss, Homeland Security Secretary Langston Hughes, nodded his approval.
Pryce turned to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Stanley McWilliams had been largely silent throughout the meeting, studying the details of the plan that Becker had sent him on his slate. "Admiral McWill
iams? What's your view on this?"
The silver-haired admiral looked up from his slate, met Pryce's eyes, held them steadily. "This mission is a crock of shit."
Becker felt himself bristle. People around the table straightened themselves in surprise. Becker opened his mouth to reply.