by Sam Abraham
“What the hell is that?” she asked as a man in body armor entered the hatchery, carrying what appeared to be a squirming, autonomous hose. A lumbering battledrone surrounded by mechanical arms rolled in after him. The man and drone split up, flanking the newborn hybrid.
“Hornetbreed,” Shen said. “Experimental class of Xinren, a genetic hybrid. We engineer them for a range of duties, from reconnaissance to battle. Time to see what this one is made of.”
A shout brought Li’s attention back to the hybrid, which was now skittering between the canisters as the man approached it. Its wings buzzed and lifted it from the ground. The man whipped the hose towards the Xinren, and as he did, the tip of the hose came to life, homing in on the creature and wrapping around its hind legs. The hornetbreed chirped in surprise, wriggling against the lasso, but the more it struggled, the tighter the lasso bound its legs.
Then, faster than Li’s eyes could follow, the hybrid twisted around, aimed its abdomen at the man, and fired a stinger like a harpoon that pierced his armor and pinned him to the metal floor.
The man screamed, flailing at the barb penetrating his torso. Shen tapped his ear and called for backup as the hornetbreed descended with humming wings. It cocked its head as it scuttled toward the man, chirping with rising intensity. Then it opened its mandibles and plunged them into the man’s chest, burrowing a cavity beneath his sternum and eating him alive.
“This is what you wanted me to see?” Li asked, barely keeping her stomach straight. For a moment she was thankful that she hadn’t been hungry for supper the night before.
“It was one of several potential outcomes,” Shen said dispassionately as the battledrone’s cybernetic arms sprang out and grasped the hornetbreed at the joints between its head, thorax and abdomen, and ripped the Xinren in three pieces. Brown fluid bled out onto the floor. Shen frowned. “Clearly this model needs more work.”
“What’s the point of these Xinren if you can’t control them?” Li said as more men and drones arrived to clean up the mess. “Why not just use robots? Your creature just murdered that man!”
Shen looked at Li with surprise. “He volunteered for this position, Xuesheng,” he said, as if it should have been obvious. “Xinren techs are coveted positions with a lower risk profile than most other posts, and a fast track to rank promotion. This was unfortunate, of course, but he was serving his country, as I would if I were in his place. His family will be well compensated.”
Li began to protest, but Shen continued. “And as for their comparison to robots, genetically engineered hybrids have certain advantages over battledrones. Xinren can withstand wasteland environments better, since they eat to restore power rather than requiring batteries, and heal rather than needing repairs. Can you think of another reason they may be superior for military tasks?”
Li was pensive for a moment. “They can’t be hacked?”
Shen smiled. “Exactly. Hacking is a risk with any robot, which would place a weapon into an enemy’s hands. Now,” he said, as he led Li away from the hatchery, back to her quarters, “Xinren designs will be a focus of your midterm. Familiarize yourself intimately with them.”
Her teacher departed, leaving Li unsettled about how easily the Complex had grown and destroyed a biological organism. But she also couldn’t deny the logic, and found herself accepting these creatures as lab mice, sacrificed for the greater good. As the weeks flowed by, she became obsessed with Xinren phylogeny, memorizing the many classes of the synthetes, along with their strengths and weaknesses.
And every day, when her classes were done, she drilled in the art of the kill. She learned to spar with a blade, and felt the recoil of a pulse rifle on the firing range. One day, as she reported for combat training, she found Shen waiting for her.
“When you got here,” Shen said abruptly, “I promised that if you worked for me, I would teach you about your past. Tell me, when is the last time you were hungry? So starving that you felt faint?”
Li tried to remember. “Hunger doesn’t make people feel faint.”
He smirked, letting her awaken her hidden misgivings. “Being hungry doesn’t make you feel faint, because your cells are super-efficient energy harvesters. You were enhanced as an infant, funded out of the Xinren program to withstand severe environments. You barely need to eat to maintain your full strength. And that is just the beginning. Tell me, have you ever experienced strange shocks, or seen flickering light you can’t explain?”
Memories hit her of being submerged in the sea, of light enveloping her. “How did you know?”
Shen smiled. “The Xinren program used a technology called longshui to make every cell in your body a high-voltage battery. Longshui gives you strength and speed unmatched by any human.”
“How does it work?” Li said, enrapt.
“It’s too technical for me,” Shen shook his head. “You’ll meet its inventor soon enough. He will explain it to you. What I can tell you is this: flex your muscles, and you will build tension enabling you to jump ten times the length of your body, to lift a hundred times your weight. With the right training, you may learn to discharge current by launching tiny clumps of cells that create a voltage gradient relative to your body. If you’ve seen flashes, you may have released current unintentionally, like a reflex.” Shen saw Li’s eyes grow wide, and guessed that she had indeed experienced this. “Were you under stress at the time? Did your surroundings change unexpectedly?”
“Yes,” Li said, and of all the questions echoing in her mind, one screamed loudest. “Why me?”
Shen grew serious. “Our country is in the grips of the deadliest famine in generations. Few people appreciate just how dangerous and destabilizing it has been for this nation. Your father is a great man, a true patriot who has devoted his life to resolving this crisis. It was he who suggested that you be enhanced with a unique profile, so that you can help heal our land where the famine is most severe. I was to groom you for this work, but of course you were taken — well, anyway,” Shen smiled warmly when he saw Li grow anxious. “Trust me when I say that when you complete your training, you will be able to do this country a great service.”
Li looked at Shen with wonder. “I had no idea,” she said, overwhelmed.
Shen gave her a friendly laugh. “Don’t worry, Xuesheng. I promise you won’t be expected to handle anything you’re not trained for. Now, are you ready for a lesson in how to harness your power?” She nodded, and Shen clapped his hands. “Excellent!” he said, “I have a friend I’d like you to meet.”
A wall slid open, and a drone entered the combat room. Hidden in shadow at first, Li soon saw its lithe humanoid figure. The robot’s body was fabricated plastic, its head wrapped with cameras and sensors.
“This is a mirrordoll,” Shen said, backing away. “We uploaded your combat style, so it can anticipate your moves.”
Li barely had time to dodge its first punch, and then the robot came after her, launching into a combination of crescent kicks that pummeled her arms as she blocked them. Li tried to bounce back, jabbing to get in close, but the drone was too fast. Just as Li got a grip on it, it splintered into pieces, transforming, each drone unfolding rotors and hovering around her. Holes opened in the drones, shooting rubber pellets at Li that stung as they struck her.
“It’s too fast,” Li whined as she covered her face and cowered from the shooting pellets.
“For a human,” Shen grunted. “Discharge voltage from your arms and fry them.”
Li concentrated, pointing her arm at a drone, but could not figure out how to do what Shen asked. The mirrordoll did not wait for her, its pieces reuniting into a humanoid in midair. Dropping to the ground, it rolled at her and kicked Li in the ribs with such force that she dropped from the blow. Planting a metal boot on her chest, it pinned her to the ground, pressing until she cried out in pain.
Shen called out a command, and the mirrordoll released Li. It knelt, dormant. Shen sighed as Li caught her breath. “You won’t have me t
o save you when you’re in the field,” he said.
“Maybe you’re wrong about me,” she groaned. “Got me mixed up with someone else.”
“Do you really believe that?” Shen said, studying her with a long look before he left.
Thus the days went. Li was given tests that she failed again and again, and if that had been all this new life held for her, she might have fallen into despair. But there was also new knowledge. While other cadets specialized in surveillance nanonetworks or cybernetic implants, or learnt languages to listen for secrets abroad, Shen nurtured Li himself, training her in the principles of mass psychology.
They held class in a small garden on the roof of the Complex, overlooking the neon giants of Guangzhou. Li would ice whatever new lump she’d received in the combat room, ignoring her pain as she listened to Shen teach her the art of creating an enemy.
Li learned that although Shen had served in the Army, he was not an officer, but rather a Centrist who specialized in propaganda. As powerful as the ranking colonel in the Complex was, Shen had the final say. After all, the only military that remained chained was one that answered to a higher power. For Shen and other Centrists like him, that supreme power was ideology. Even the term Centrist, an homage to Lenin and the Party, the progenitors of the current regime, implied that there was no alternative to its own autocratic doctrine.
Shen held that controlling society from the center required maestros, for sovereign states were inherently brittle, weaker than most people assumed. The Ghost Lands, and the need for Nationalization, were proof of that. For him, the Complex was a way to train leaders in the ways of subliminal statecraft holding the country together.
“There are two types of enemies,” Shen said one day with a pinch of theater, “the decided enemy and the created enemy. The decided enemy chooses you for conflict, they are determined to do battle. The decided enemy has many faces, and you will learn their culture and habits, where they sleep, their sexual taboos, how their navies make formations. Who is your decided enemy?”
Li shrugged and gazed out over the towers of the megalopolis, caught in low clouds as if they were supporting the sky. “Microblogger instigators?” she guessed.
Shen nodded curtly. “True, but they are easily seen and contained. Anyone else?”
She thought through it again. “Japanese holobead manufacturers?”
“Yes. Good. Spies for the Xinkuomintang are everywhere. They lay for years among us, vipers waiting to strike if the State sleeps. Can you tell me what determines whether or not you will vanquish these decided enemies? I will give you a hint. It is not their numbers.”
“How much we know about them?” Li blurted out.
Shen smiled. “Exactly. So what does this mean?”
“We should learn as much as possible about our enemies?” she guessed.
“Obviously,” Shen snapped. “But think more strategically. It means that by definition, there can be no greater likelihood of success than in conflict with a created enemy, an unwitting scapegoat attacked proactively.” He paused, letting his eyes rest on Li. “I will teach you to manipulate people to hate. All the suffering of life can be funneled into a symbolic image that triggers their fears. By influencing the thoughts and voices of the people, by filling the public herd with unthinking rage, you will defeat your enemies before they know they are even embattled.”
When grades were posted, the half of the class that failed packed their bags and left. Li was alone in the medialab, deep into a holo of combat tactics, when a callout pinged her field of vision and informed her that she was in the top three percent.
It was then, after exams, that recruits were asked to write a term paper. There were rumors that a cadet’s future was built or broken by how the school officers judged this task. Many students were eager to be assigned to cyber warfare or cryptography or financial countermeasures, and crafted briefs showing their acumen for these positions.
Shen ordered Li to write about a cultural weakness that could be exploited. But she had no such passions. She wanted only to learn about her past. All she could do in scraps of spare time was paint tiny daydreams of her newfound father and mother. Nothing fancy, just the three of them laughing in a lantern-lit parlor. An apartment with a warm bed down the hall from them, and the smell of home.
When she complained to Shen that she had nothing to write about, he suggested she find something that made her angry.
Anger was easy. She thought of the man who posed as her uncle, who forced her to go a school she hated. She thought of St. Christopher’s and its hypocrisy of faith, preaching the words of a man who gave away all his possessions to the children of the modern aristocracy, and the words flowed from her mind. And at the end of her thirty-page essay was the following diatribe:
The truth is that faith is weakness.
Across the globe, billions of people look to others to save them. Rather than find salvation in themselves, they cling to fairy tales of benevolent forces ensuring they find reward beyond the poverty, mundanity and mortality of their short lives. Perhaps the best example of this, though by no means the only one, is the story of a man who sacrificed himself to save his followers from damnation. This delusion of faith is understandable, especially for the poor, for life is cruel. When we are children we have guardians to protect us, but children grow up to find that the violence of nature and politics control our destiny. Still, rational or not, faith remains a delusion that waives the power of choice, placing it in the hands of others who are no less frail or mortal, but merely better storytellers.
For millennia, people have chosen to turn a blind eye to the truth that talk of Heaven and Hell is only a trick used to manipulate the masses into abject devotion. Emperors have learned the hard way that to rule by an iron fist in this life will only make people rise up and demand freedom. But rule them with fear in the afterlife, and they will gladly pay for the privilege.
So rather than demonize faith for proclaiming a higher master or creating elites, the State can exploit it for the greater goal of social harmony. By positioning its operatives as prophets with the power to save, the masses will seek order without enforcement. A mask of humility must be kept, for the very perception of accumulating power would undermine an agent’s credibility. And if institutions of faith are to be infiltrated, this must be done by agents who can convince true believers of their authenticity. But a sage with the right mask can save the people from themselves.
So the question remains: how can we manipulate faith to gather the flock?
She wrote the last words and submitted her paper, disgusted with herself.
Days passed. She watched students leave to take their studies with the masters. A new class of cadets came, and many assumed she must have been too dumb to graduate. Li would catch a lecture on particle physics or behavioral neuroscience and not recognize anyone except the professor. She ate the same slimy noodles in the cafeteria, where none of the new faces wanted to hear her complain.
Finally, Li did the unthinkable, and went to Shen’s office uninvited.
“Ah, Xuesheng.” Shen said. “I should give you twenty lashes for insubordination. What is so important that you must barge in here?”
“Laoshi, forgive me,” Li replied, playing his game and calling him ‘teacher’ through gritted teeth. “Why have you not put in my transfer?”
Shen looked offended. “You failed your combat lessons, and you demonstrated nothing useful in your brief. You have neither the intellect nor the strength for leadership.”
Li sat down, distraught. “But I thought — “
Shen slammed his hand on his desk. “You don’t think!” he yelled. “I think. And I see now that you are nothing but an impertinent mouse from Hong Kong. Get out of my sight.”
“You can’t do this!” Li shouted back, her eyes flashing silver. A man came to Shen’s door in uniform. He put his hand on her shoulder, but she shook it off, screaming. Then strong hands grabbed her, she felt the pinch of a needle i
n her neck, and everything went black.
Chapter 9 - Xiao Chu (小畜)
The Moon Is Nearly Full
By the time Li woke the rain had broken, leaving the air musty. Pinholes of light pierced the clouds, floating over the earth like ethereal lanterns, and the air smelled of decaying flesh. She had been sleeping on the ground. Groaning, she stood and looked down at the dirty smock that had replaced her clothes. Her toes were crusted in filth. Somehow her shoes had disappeared.
Squinting against the daylight, she found herself in a work yard. A metal fence stood before her, ten meters high and topped with barbed wire. The fence circled around, attached to the walls of a decrepit concrete bunker. Distant silhouettes of towers scratched the skyline.
Around her were endless piles of trash. Porcelain rubble and bent rebar, plastic appliance parts, shattered glass and emulsified rubber. Everywhere was the discarded exoskeleton of humanity. Figures clambered over the garbage, rooting through the piles. They were all women, Li saw, a few with infants across their bellies or young children knee deep in refuse. Some stirred brews of toxic solvents without masks, dipping discarded motherboards and holobeads into the vats carefully to avoid acid burns.
A man with a black helmet approached her, cradling a rifle. The helmet’s visor hid his eyes, reflecting the gray trash dunes. “Good, you’re awake,” he said, his voice muffled. “Now get to work.”
“Where am I?” Li said, still groggy. “What city is this?”