Apex: Nexus Arc Book 3 (35 page)

T
hursday 2040.12.20

Zhi Li hugged the housewife one more time.

“It was such a joy to finally meet you!” she told the woman.

There were tears on the woman’s face. Her arms stayed wrapped around Zhi, pulling her tight, clinging to her as if Zhi alone could save her from drowning. For a moment Zhi had an awful image of having to ask Qi or Dai to pry this stranger off her.

That would never do.

Finally the woman relented.

“I’ll never forget this!” she cried.

Zhi smiled.

Around them the cameras captured it all. That was the point, after all. Once a month or so, every celebrity in the Peace and Harmony Friends program paid a surprise visit to a “random” fan who conversed with their avatar.

It was an incentive for the people to chat with their Friends. The more time you spent with your Friend, it was said, the more likely it was that the real person behind him or her would come visit you.

More importantly, as the videos of these real-life visits were played over and over, it cemented the link between the actual persons and their simulated personas. It stamped the Friends with the imprimatur of the idolized celebrity.

Zhi had never relished these visits. At the best, she’d found them a necessary hassle, a frequently awkward task that paid for itself in continued fame and fortune.

Now she wondered if it wasn’t much much worse than that.

She smiled broadly and waved again, backing away from the woman’s house on the outskirts of Chengdu, before turning, and skipping off to her limousine.

H
er secretary Keylani
was waiting for her inside the limo.

“Keylani,” Zhi said. “You have the transcript of this woman’s dialogue with my simulacrum?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Of course she would. The transcripts were given to the stars, only of the people they were sent to visit, so they could perform more impressively in those conversations, heighten the illusion of actual intimacy.

Zhi looked out the window as the car started driving, Qi and Dai in the front again.

She thought back to what the woman had said. Something about Sun Liu, and how concerned she was about his health, and how kind Zhi Li was to care about him.

We could use a good man like that in office again.

It gave her a chill. Sun Liu was a non-person now. The former Minister of Science and Technology had publicly given his blessing to Bo Jintao, refused all the requests to return to the Politburo, and then simply vanished from the media. He’d been used and then purged. For all Zhi knew, the man was dead.

Why would this bored woman say something about him? Why would she insinuate that Zhi was a supporter of the fallen progressive?

Why would the Information Ministry use her simulacrum to say positive things about him?

She felt a chill of fear.

It was a trap. It must be. Bo Jintao was dangling bait before her, taunting her to say something imprudent.

Something that would be the end of her.

Her stomach knotted up, an image of Bo Jintao looming above her, reminding her to behave
responsibly
.

The memory of calls and messages the next day, of projects delayed, budgets cut.

The threat was still hanging over her. Another misstep…

“Did you need something from the transcript, ma’am?” Keylani asked.

Zhi Li brought one hand to her brow, felt perspiration there.

“Yes, Keylani. Would you search for conversations about…”

Not Sun Liu’s name, of course. Her queries would be watched. That name would raise alarms.

“Yes, ma’am?”

Zhi Li took a deep breath. “Conversations about health, Keylani,” she told her secretary. “Prepare an extract for me. All such conversations, for the last month. Sorted most recent to oldest. I’ll read them on the plane back to Shanghai.”

N
ot one of
the conversations in the transcript mentioned Sun Liu.

She closed her eyes, imagined herself as the heroine she’d played in
Rise of Qi’an
, tried to find that woman’s courage, claim it for herself.

S
he landed
in Shanghai hours later, and spent the night at Lu Song’s penthouse in the Pudong.

His chef made them a delectable dinner.

“Lu,” Zhi asked. “You did your Friend home visit last week, yes?”

Lu nodded in the affirmative, a soup dumpling in his mouth.

“Did you notice anything unusual?”

“Hah!” he said. “Didn’t I tell you about it? Fat, middle aged fellow in Xi’an, but he has this giant collection of swords all around his apartment. Every wall is covered in swords! And he actually knows how to use them! I’m talking about–”

“Lu,” she interrupted him. “I meant more… did it sound like your simulacrum had said anything… unusual to this fan?”

Lu frowned.

“I’m an action star. I don’t think the Lu Song-bots say much that’s complicated. It’d be out of character.”

Zhi told him about her own experience.

“Maybe she got that idea from someone else,” her lover said. “And was just confused. Just thought it was from your Friend.”

Zhi nodded. Maybe that was it.

Lu’s staff cleared the dinner away and then disappeared.

Zhi and Lu made love on the luxuriant mink rug in the middle of his living room, the curtains of the windows peeled away entirely, so Lu could see the giant face of her on the skyscraper across the street as he pleasured the flesh and blood reality here with him.

How she
did
indulge her lover.

After, as they lay naked, side by side, covered in sweat, the breath slowly coming back to them, Lu spoke again.

“My guy did say something weird,” her lover said. “He talked about fighting for freedom. He talked about taking up arms against oppressors. About how right I was about that.”

Zhi suddenly felt that chill again. She rolled on her side, to face him.

“I thought,” Lu said, “that he was trying to quote my lines from
Riders of the Gobi
, and just messing them up.” He shook his head. “But now I’m not so sure.”

F
riday 2040.12.21

Colonel Wang Rongshang ascended the stairs to his mistress Ma Jie’s flat, a smile on his face. Thoughts of surgery and medical responsibilities to the soldiers of Dachang were fleeing.

Ma Jie’s touch, her smile, her voice. They could chase any toil away.

He knocked at her door. It opened, and there she was, looking as radiant as ever. There was something in the smile. Something… wicked almost. Something he seldom saw.

Anticipation stirred within him.

“Come in, my love,” she beckoned him.

Wang Rongshang entered, closing the door behind him.

Then a strong hand clamped itself over his mouth.

He lashed back, reflexively, with an elbow to where the torso would be, hit something like steel. He kicked backwards, low and hard, to snap a man’s knee. His foot met empty air.

Something cold pressed itself against his neck, followed by the sting and hiss of a hypersonic injection.

He thrashed again, tried to scream, found it stifled by the hand over his mouth.

The injector fell at his feet, an ampule still loaded in it, empty now, but with a residue of something silvery, metallic.

Two strong arms gripped him, arms far stronger than his own.

Ma Jie watched him with eyes that were fascinated and without pity.

What was in that ampule? What sort of drug or poison was silvery and metallic?

Then he felt it entering his brain, felt Ma Jie’s thoughts brushing his own, and he knew.

For good and ill, he knew.

What followed was beyond Wang Rongshang’s wildest dreams, beyond his worst nightmares.

T
he Avatar nodded in satisfaction
. Yingjie was an excellent tool. Soldiers were so easy to use. They were already accustomed to command. She’d had to use primitive methods to stop Yingjie from killing Chen the first day, simply reaching into his motor cortex to disrupt his motion. But once the nanites had all taken hold she’d been able to reach in, resculpt existing cognitive structures, redirect his well-developed notions of loyalty so they all pointed solidly at her; install certain cognitive behavioral packages that could monitor his thoughts, redirect them in the ways she needed.

He’d done his work quite well since then. And now that he’d captured Wang Rongshang she had an asset ideally placed within Dachang. An asset that could administer drugs. Her drugs. Loaded with her software, to invade loyalty structures and resculpt them. To make her the command authority for Dachang Air Base.

The Avatar turned her attention to Dr Colonel Wang Rongshang and began to program him with what she needed done. To take key parts of the base. To free a few of her children. To liberate her Confucian Fist.

L
ing spied
on the monster’s thoughts from within.

The Confucian Fist? Her big brothers.

A tiny sliver of hope rose inside her.

She squashed it as fast as she could, before the monster had a chance to notice it.

S
aturday 2040.12.22

Kade sat alone in the darkened building, his mind flipping through news, images, and videos coming in from around the world.

Los Angeles.

Kiev.

Cairo.

Athens.

Moscow.

Caracas.

Mexico City.

Lagos.

Madrid.

London.

Sao Paolo.

Nairobi.

Jakarta.

Mumbai.

Baghdad.

Protests. Demonstrations. Riots.

In all of them.

The disturbances glowed on a map of the world. More than a hundred cities in all.

Protests against Stockton in the US. Protests for women’s rights in the Arab world. Protests
against
the use of Nexus here in India. Riots over energy and food prices in Jakarta and Lagos and Karachi. Demonstrations over corruption in Athens. Pro-democracy marchers clashing with police day after day in Moscow. Sectarian and ethnic clashes in Baghdad.

The reasons were all different.

But the outbreak of global anger against authority was remarkable.

Rage was contagious. Courage was contagious. Outrage was contagious. This had happened before. It would happen again.

That’s what the talking heads said.

He wasn’t so sure.

A screen inside his mind flashed, asking for his attention.

Kade flipped over to it. His analysis had completed.

He’d used Shiva’s tools again. He’d fed them all the most popular Nexus real-time feeds and shared memories of the past week from the most popular mind-to-mind sharing hubs. What were people sharing? What were people looking at? What were they using Nexus to communicate and consume?

Analyze for content type. Weight by number of views. Slice and dice by region.

And he’d done the same for the most popular shared memories from a week in October, from before the chemreactor break, from before the near quadrupling of the Nexus user base that had happened in the last two months, from one million minds to four million.

Compare and contrast.

He pulled up the visualizations.

It was a more rapid switch than he’d expected.

Two months ago, sex had topped the list. After that had come athletic feats and recreation, a host of first hand experiences of beautiful places and events, music, humor, and even some actual transfer of knowledge from mind to mind.

Now… Now it was rage, or outrage, that dominated. Scenes from protests, from clashes with police and the military, of witnessed brutality, even sometimes of brutality done to authority figures, topped the list. Sex had been pushed to number two.

Do I have the causality wrong? he wondered. This doesn’t prove that someone’s using Nexus to create chaos.

But then he thought again of the chemreactor hack, released just in time to fuel high quantities of Nexus to the protests in the US. He thought of Breece, and the Nexus-based chaos he’d wreaked on the National Mall.

Rangan had shown him memories of the trial run for that. Breece or someone had tested that attack on a small level, before taking it to a higher scale.

What if the National Mall was itself a test for a higher scale attack?

Something else is going on,
the group mind of the children had said.

He pulled up the global map again, the hot spots scattered across so much of it.

What if the National Mall was a test run for a
global
attack?

Kade grimaced, and turned back to the even more paranoid tools he was building.

Tools that integrated Shiva’s systems, and more.

Tools designed for battle.

Tools designed for war.

S
aturday 2041.01.05

Bai’s fist whipped out at Quang’s temple in a blur, faster than any human could react. His clone brother darted to the side, a ferocious grin on his face, on Bai’s face, on all their faces, a low kick snapping at Bai’s knee. Bai lifted his leg, took the kick on his shin, turned the backfist into a grab for Quang’s short hair, jabbed forward with his other hand in a rigid finger strike at his brother’s plexus. Quang turned his kick into a half-spin, sliding out of Bai’s way, then coming at him with a vicious fist to the head.

Li-Jiang’s mental projection showed an image of Peng coming at Bai from behind.

Bai dropped to the ground, both hands shooting out to catch himself, his right foot lashing back and up. Quang’s fist sailed through the air where his head had been. And his own foot slammed solidly into his brother Peng’s midsection.

He rolled before Quang could come down onto him with a hard elbow, saw Li-Jiang fend off a flurry of blows from Lao. Everywhere it was brother on brother, five teams fighting for supremacy in this twenty-five Fist melee, minds and fists fully engaged, fully intent on beating each other senseless, as almost a hundred other brothers watched.

It was the best fun he’d had in weeks!

“CONFUCIAN FISTS, TO ATTENTION!”

The melee ended in an instant. The hundred plus brothers in the gymnasium came to attention, in perfectly ordered ranks. Sweat dripped from brows and noses, beads of it dropping to the wooden floor. Curiosity rippled through minds. They’d been confined to barracks for almost three months. The loudspeakers seldom went off except at the pre-ordained times for meals.

What was this about?

“SOLDIERS BAI, QUANG, PENG, AND LAO – REPORT FOR DEPLOYMENT.”

Curiosity became surprise, rippling across the minds of a hundred of his brothers.

Well, well.

B
ai waited his turn
, then stepped into the secure egress, alone. The heavy titanium door behind him closed. He heard the solid thunk of thick metal bolts locking into place. He was now in a titanium box, a “man-trap”, a tool of control, a mechanism to ensure that they could selectively let one Confucian Fist out without risking all of them escaping.

That it was still in use told him that they weren’t yet free.

He heard the sound of the bolts in front of him unlocking. The door swung open. There in front of him, pulled almost up to the door, was the back of a covered truck. Wasn’t this the truck that offloaded their meals?

Lao was in the back already, grinning widely. Next to him were two base soldiers, and a man Bai recognized as the base’s chief surgeon.

And from all of them, Bai felt the emanations of thoughts, the telltale indication of nanites in their brains, the nanites their mother had created.

Bai grinned. Now he understood.

Su-Yong was coming back.

Time to party. Like only a Confucian Fist could.

T
he truck took
them only as far as a garage on base, where they transferred to a limousine, driven by a marine who introduced himself as Yingjie. Thoughts came from his mind as well.

Bai understood the garage, the quick transfer to the truck normally used to bring them food. They were staying out of sight of the satellites. Su-Yong was still only partially through her conquest. Of course, that’s why she needed them. He grinned wider.

They pestered Yingjie with questions, but he ignored them, told them only that their mother would explain.

Bai leaned back, tried to contain his anticipation. It would be so good to be with Su-Yong again. Had she found another clone, somehow? Or would she be tunneling through to their minds?

He supposed this meant seeing Chen Pang as well, but he could tolerate that. He’d driven the man for years. He understood Chen Pang. The man simply didn’t comprehend how insignificant he was beside Su-Yong. He would with time.

On the plus side, it
would
mean seeing little Ling again. That he looked forward to. The girl was adorable, a little sister to every Fist who’d ever met her, full of her questions and her mix of ancient wisdom and childish
naïveté
. Bai grinned wider. Yes, it would be good to see Ling again.

B
ai smiled
as Yingjie drove them into the garage of the exclusive tower in the Pudong. He’d driven here so many times himself. The limousine took them to the bottom floor of the garage, where it was completely deserted. Yingjie pulled up directly to a lift, which opened immediately.

Of course. Su-Yong would want no one to see them yet, and she would be in complete control of the infrastructure of the building.

Bai piled out of the limousine with Lao and Peng and Quang. They hustled into the elevator, and then it was rising, rising, rising.

Long seconds later, the lift opened, directly onto the spacious upper-floor flat Su-Yong shared with Chen Pang. Bai’s eyes took in the wide-open room, so unlike the rest of China, the incredible visage of Shanghai beyond. He saw Chen Pang, saw Ling. His mind
felt
Su-Yong, felt…

What?

Ling smiled at him, smiled at him and Quang and Lao and Peng.

“It’s so good to see you all again,” she said.

And her thoughts were not Ling’s. They were Su-Yong’s. Or something
like
Su-Yong’s.

Bai felt consternation flow from his brothers. And he felt something else. A mind where no mind had been before, where there had been a man who steadfastly refused the nanites, a man who viewed himself as superior to them all.

Now there was a mind, a mind trapped, a mind tormented, a mind enslaved.

“Hello again, Bai,” Chen Pang said.

The thing in Ling’s body turned and smiled at what had been her… father? Husband?

The smile and the thoughts that came with it sent a chill of fear down Bai’s spine.

She turned back to Bai and the others.

“I can see you’re confused by the… changes,” she said.

This is my mother, Bai told himself. This woman gave me freedom. I owe her everything.

But… Ling… and even Chen Pang…

You’ll get used to it,
the thing before him sent them all.