Nexus (23 page)

  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

 

 

 

 

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.

 
 

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.

  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. 

  Her mind hardened in anger.

  The hand on his shoulder. 

  Feng's voice echoed laughter in Kade's mind.
Robot! I like it. Robot's strong, made of titanium and carbon fiber. Bulletproof!

  "Feng," Shu said aloud, "why don't you sit and help us with this food? We seem to have more than we need."

  Feng sat next to Kade, heaped a plate up with food, radiating appetite and amusement.

  Feng laughed in Kade's mind again, his mouth full of noodles. 
Clone, yeah. Like I told you, big family! Lots of brothers. Slave? That's what they wanted. But I'm free. My brothers too. Thanks to her. 

  "Mmm, good noodles!" 

  Shu cut in.
I could not tolerate the thought of posthumans as slaves to mere humans.

  Shu sipped her tea, her face turned towards the lightning coming down east of Bangkok. "I think the storm's coming closer," she said. "Don't you?"

  Kade felt some control of his body return. He turned to look. Maybe the lightning was a little closer. It was hard to say.

  Kade said nothing. They sat in silence for a moment.

  Come to my lab,
she sent him.
Accept the postdoc. Let the ERD think you're spying for them.

  That hatred for the ERD. He could feel it at every thought of them.

  Shu continued.
We can feed them enough to keep them at bay. And in the meantime, we'll do some remarkable things of our own.

  It washed over him. Images and plans from her mind. Mere glimpses. Paths towards boosted intelligence. Uploading minds from brains and into computers. Savant-like cognitive powers. Super memory. Pattern recognition that would put any data miner to shame. Knowledge banks shared mind to mind. True merger into group beings. Transformations of politics, economics, art… Intelligence and creativity that could pry apart the deepest mysteries of physics, of math, of every science known to man.

  She would change the world. She would lift the human mind to new heights. He could be part of it. A posthuman, upgraded through her knowledge, empowered to help build this new world.

  It was intoxicating. It was everything he wanted. How could he possibly say no?

  
Never swallow what they're selling whole.
Ilya had said that. He had to fight to hang onto his skepticism, to push back against this seduction.

  Would your government pervert my science as well?
he asked her.
Would they turn my discoveries into weapons?

  Shu looked out at the horizon. He could feel the edges of her thoughts. She was thinking of something that had happened a long long time ago.

  We hide the most important work,
she said.
But we have to give them some progress. For now.

  And when does it stop?
he asked.

  Soon,
she sent him. She sounded cold and distant in his mind. 
There is a war coming. A world war. Not between China and America. Between humans and posthumans. You see it all around you. The humans are doing everything they can to prevent the posthuman transition from occurring. While we are struggling to be free of their controls.

  It did. She knew it did.

  Isn't that something worth making some sacrifices for?
she asked him. 

  He struggled for the right words, the right way to explain it.

  Shu shrugged mentally.
The world has more than eight billion people on it
, she sent.
Surely we can afford to lose a few. 

  That's what it came down to then. Would he be willing to let a few die to make the world a better place? A few dozen? A few thousand? A few million? Where would he draw the line?

  Who would he kill for the freedom to improve his own mind? Who would he kill to rise to new heights? Who would he kill so that posthumans might be born?

  Shu caught the thrust of his thoughts.
This is directed evolution, she sent. How many generations would this take natural selection? Millions? The faster we uplift ourselves, the fewer who need die. Join me. Help move the work forward.

  War. War over the human condition. War for the right to change oneself. War to create humanity's successor species. War to usher in a utopia. Had it begun already? Was the ERD an army, fighting to keep posthumans from coming into existence?

  And evolution. Evolution was a bloody process indeed. War would mean epic numbers of dead.

  It was too much for him. He was in over his head. He needed to step back, collect himself.

  I need to think about this, Dr Shu.
 

  He did his best to stay calm. This was too much, too much. 
It's a lot all at once, he sent.

  She looked him in the eye. He could feel her evaluating him, feeling out his mind.

  
Of course,
she replied.

  Shu nodded, picked up the thread of their out-loud conversation. "Feng, what do you think of the weather?"