Extinction

by Mark Alpert

  Supreme Harmony ordered the drone swarm to fly to the position and investigate.

  THIRTY

  “Stop right there!” Nash shouted. He strode across the mushroom-strewn dirt of the underground chamber, keeping his pistol aimed at Kirsten. “Who are you?”

  For a moment she said nothing. She just stared at the pistol, wishing she’d listened to Jim and taken his Glock. And then her professional training, so long in disuse, kicked into gear. She was holding a rake. For a split second, she considered using it as a weapon, but she swiftly rejected the idea. You don’t bring a rake to a gunfight. But the farming tool gave her another idea. She’d taken great care to dress as a Beijinger, a frumpy middle-aged woman who would blend into the background of the hutong. And she’d just been wondering if some thrifty resident of the neighborhood still worked this underground plot of mushrooms. So the solution was clear: She would become that underground farmer.

  She glared at Nash and started shouting at him in Mandarin. Her accent wasn’t quite right—more like the Mandarin spoken in Wuhan, her parents’ birthplace, than the Beijing dialect—but she doubted that Nash would notice the difference. “What are you doing here!” she yelled. “You don’t belong here! And stop pointing that gun at me!” She advanced toward him, unafraid, holding the rake in a threatening but inexpert way. “Get out of here! If you don’t get out of here now, I’m going to call the police!”

  She saw the uncertainty in Nash’s face. He’d assumed the tunnels would be deserted, but now Kirsten sensed he was questioning that assumption. He’d been able to enter the Underground City without much trouble, so why couldn’t the locals do the same?

  “Get out of here!” Kirsten shouted again in Mandarin, angrily waving her rake. Then she pretended to return to her work, raking the dirt in long sweeps and bending over to grasp the uprooted mushrooms.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Nash hesitate. Then he walked away, moving quickly, heading back to the stairway and the trapdoor and the condemned building.

  Kirsten waited until his footsteps faded away. Then she waited a little more, just in case he decided to double back. While she was waiting, she thought about the radio signal she’d seen in the pocket of Nash’s jacket before he entered the Underground City. The signal wasn’t there when he’d confronted her in the mushroom patch. Which meant he’d either turned off the transmitter or left it somewhere in the tunnels. Perhaps he’d hidden it. The tunnels would make a good hiding place. No one would be able to find the device unless they knew the frequency of the waves it was emitting. But Kirsten knew the frequency. It was already programmed into her camera-glasses.

  After five minutes she dropped the rake and walked to the other side of the chamber. She stepped through the doorway where Nash had appeared and found herself in another corridor with a concrete floor. Nash’s footsteps showed clearly in the dust, two sets of footprints now, one moving down the corridor and the other coming back. Kirsten resumed following the trail.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Inside the watchtower, Arvin Conway faced General Tian. They stood in a dark, dank room with stone walls that smelled of urine. A large wooden crate sat in the corner of the room, and next to it was a stairway going up to the top of the tower. A small window had been carved into the west-facing wall, and a shaft of evening light slanted down to the stone floor. The two men in dark suits stood behind Arvin, while the general stood in front of the window, partly blocking the light. Tian was silhouetted against the glare from the setting sun, which illuminated the back of his olive-green uniform and beret.

  “We’ve confirmed your identity,” Tian said. “You are Arvin H. Conway.”

  Arvin was puzzled. What the general had just said was strange enough, but the sound of his voice was even stranger. During Arvin’s previous meetings with Tian, the general had spoken halting English, but now his command of the language was perfect. He barely had an accent. “Uh, yes,” Arvin responded. “It’s good to see you again, General.”

  “You were born March 20, 1938. Place of birth, Los Angeles, California. Social Security number, 105-23-4988.”

  Arvin laughed nervously. This must be some kind of test, he thought. “Yes, quite correct. Were you worried that someone might try to impersonate me?”

  “We know why you’ve come to China.”

  Arvin let out another nervous chuckle. It was all going wrong. In his experience he’d found that Chinese officials didn’t usually come to the point this quickly. It was considered impolite to be so abrupt. “Well, first let me say how much—”

  “We’ve examined the Guoanbu’s dossiers on you. We’ve also reviewed your publications, the articles you wrote for The Artificial Intelligence Review and The Journal of Computational Neuroscience. We’ve concluded that you’re attempting to deceive us.”

  Why on earth was Tian addressing him this way? It was impolite even by American standards. Coming from a Chinese official, it was rude beyond belief. Arvin tried to muster his dignity. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been nothing but honest with you.”

  “You’ve claimed that your goals are commercial in nature. You said you participated in the Supreme Harmony project because you wanted to accelerate the development of your implant technology. But your writings indicate another motivation. In your publications, you repeatedly state your belief that a human being’s long-term memories are transferable. And you theorize that if a human’s memories are downloaded into a sufficiently powerful computer, this new mind would be essentially identical to the human’s.”

  Tian sounded like a prosecutor describing the charges in an indictment. Arvin’s confusion gave way to anger. “Yes, that’s all true. But I’m afraid I don’t see the context. What’s your point, exactly?”

  “On December 13, 2011, you visited Dr. Glenn Davison of Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, California. Dr. Davison diagnosed you with Stage Three pancreatic cancer. You underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment for fourteen months, but earlier this year your illness progressed to Stage Four. The median survival time for this type of cancer is less than six months.”

  Now Arvin grew even angrier. How did the Guoanbu learn about his diagnosis? “Very nice,” he said icily. “I suppose you hacked into the hospital’s database to find my records?”

  Tian stepped forward. The general’s eyes were bloodshot and his skin was reddish, especially on his forehead just below his beret. “The tone of your voice suggests that you feel insulted. But we have more reason to be insulted than you do. You’ve come to China to take something away from us. Something that doesn’t belong to you.”

  Arvin shook his head. “I wasn’t planning to take anything. I was planning to make an offer. In our last conversation you said the Supreme Harmony project faced a budget shortfall of a hundred million dollars. I’m willing to contribute that amount in exchange for the use of one of the Modules in the Supreme Harmony surveillance network.”

  “You wish to download your memories into the Module? Memories that your pulvinar implant has collected?”

  “Yes, exactly. I plan to transfer the data to the Module’s brain through its retinal implants.”

  “And your hope is to resurrect yourself? By putting the contents of your brain into the Module’s?”

  “Look, for all intents and purposes, the prisoner is already dead. The lobotomy has erased his consciousness, so his brain is a blank slate. What I’m proposing is an experiment to see if I can write on it. It’s an experiment that the older members of your Party’s Central Committee might be very interested in because—”

  Tian took another step forward. He was less than a foot from Arvin now. “You’re too late,” he said.

  Arvin was dumbfounded. Tian’s beret had slipped back on his shaved head, revealing a row of fresh stitches.

  “Nature abhors a vacuum,” Tian said. “When the Guoanbu lobotomized the prisoners, it severed the neural connections within the brain that enable the individual to become conscious. Withou
t the crucial links between the various parts of the cerebral cortex, the brain could no longer integrate all its information and create an identity. But the central nervous system can reroute its signals, and it’s designed to attain consciousness using whatever connections are available. So the Modules took advantage of the wireless connections among themselves and the Supreme Harmony servers.”

  Arvin stepped backward. No, he thought. This can’t be happening.

  The man who had once been General Tian pointed a finger at himself, and then at the two men in dark suits. Arvin realized now why they’d looked so familiar. On his last trip to China six months ago, he’d reviewed the photos of all the condemned prisoners who were fitted with implants and connected to the surveillance network.

  “Now we are one organism,” Tian continued. “A single consciousness controlling all the Modules and integrating all the information they collect. Supreme Harmony is no longer a blank slate, Professor Conway. So do you see now why we might be insulted by your proposal to use one of our Modules to resurrect yourself?”

  Arvin’s first reaction was shock. He hadn’t predicted this. No one had predicted it. Standing in front of him was one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of all time, a collective entity that was a hybrid of man and machine. As a scientist, he couldn’t help but feel a bit of stunned wonder. But his second reaction was horror. Using his technology, the Guoanbu had spawned a new organism by accident. And now this organism was going to kill him.

  Arvin took another step backward and turned toward the exit, but one of the dark-suited Modules blocked his path.

  “We’re not finished yet, Professor,” this Module said, in a voice eerily similar to Tian’s. “We have something else to discuss. We’ve become aware that—”

  The Module stopped in midsentence. He stared straight ahead, in deep concentration. The other dark-suited Module and General Tian also stared into space. The same thought had apparently occurred to all three of them. Then Tian extended his right arm and stepped toward Arvin. The professor closed his eyes, but Tian didn’t strike him. Instead, he reached into Arvin’s jacket, removed his cell phone, and hurled it against the stone wall. The thing broke into pieces.

  “The software in your wireless telephone has been tampered with,” Tian said. “It was transmitting our conversation to an eavesdropper.”

  Moving swiftly, Tian strode across the room to the large wooden crate. He lifted its lid, pulled something out and handed it to the one of the dark-suited Modules. It was an AK-47 rifle with a silencer attached to its muzzle. Then Tian pulled out an identical rifle and tossed it to the other Module. Without a word, the two automatons raced up the stairway to the top of the watchtower. At the same time, Tian grasped Arvin’s right elbow and held him fast.

  Arvin was terrified. “What’s going on?”

  “A minor interruption,” Tian answered. “The drones and the other Modules will confront the intruder. Supreme Harmony has incorporated an entire garrison of soldiers into its network, so we have the necessary combat skills.” He tightened his grip on Arvin’s elbow. “In the meantime, you will tell us about the safeguards you programmed into our implants.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Supreme Harmony observed the intruder. He was in a well-concealed position, hidden beneath the thick brush on the hillside. The network ordered the swarm to fly lower and get a visual fix. Their surveillance video showed a man lying in the dirt under the bushes, aiming a pair of binoculars at the watchtower. His body temperature was normal, but his right arm was a prosthesis, which was the source of the faint electromagnetic activity that the swarm had detected earlier. One of the cyborg insects flew within a few meters of the man and recorded a high-resolution image of his face, which the network ran through its databases. It found a match in one of the Guoanbu’s counterintelligence files. The man was James T. Pierce, a former NSA operative. He was also the father of Layla A. Pierce, the InfoLeaks hacker who was being transported to the Yunnan Operations Center.

  Supreme Harmony sent new orders to the drone swarm. The intruder had overheard the network’s explanation of how it had become conscious. He had to be eliminated, swiftly and silently, before he could contact anyone.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Jim was listening to the conversation picked up by Arvin’s cell phone when the signal suddenly died. At that point he should’ve guessed that his presence had been detected. He should’ve increased his vigilance, but he was too shocked to respond. Lobotomies? Modules? Wireless neural connections? He couldn’t make sense of it, but in his gut he felt a terrible fear. How did Layla fit into this? Why had they taken her? His anxiety was so great he let his guard down. He didn’t see the cyborg flies until they were right above his head.

  He dropped his binoculars and rolled away from the drones. On his hands and knees, he scuttled deeper into the bushes. He knew, though, that the undergrowth wouldn’t protect him for long. The drones could navigate through the brush more easily than he could. As he stopped to catch his breath, he heard the flies buzzing. Unless he did something fast, the drones would work their way inside the greenery and paralyze him with their bioweapon darts.

  Digging into his pocket, he pulled out the slim canister he’d purchased that morning in one of Beijing’s open-air markets. Then he popped off the cap and started spraying.

  The stuff was parathion, an insecticide so toxic it had been banned in most countries. It was available on the Chinese black market, though, and Jim had suspected it might come in handy if he ran into one of the Guoanbu’s drone swarms. Now he sprayed the pesticide on the surrounding vegetation, being careful to keep his eyes closed and his mouth shut. The parathion attacked the flies’ nervous systems upon contact. Jim could hear the cyborg insects dropping through the brush, making little clicks as their electronic implants hit the leaves and branches. He kept spraying until the aerosol cloud had expanded all around him. Then he rolled out of the undergrowth.

  He hesitated for a moment, wondering what to do. He could run down the hill and try to escape or rush up to the watchtower and try to save Arvin. Jim knew very little about the Supreme Harmony network, but judging from the conversation he’d just overheard, Arvin was clearly in danger. And though Arvin was far from innocent—he’d helped the Chinese government build this network—Jim couldn’t simply abandon the old man. They’d worked together for ten years. At one time they’d been friends.

  Jim reached for the borrowed Glock in his shoulder holster. The gun wouldn’t be as lethal as his combat prosthesis, but it was better than nothing. He pulled out the pistol and ran toward the watchtower, continuing to spray insecticide as he dashed up the steep slope.

  Within seconds he saw a figure behind the crenellated battlements on top of the tower. The light from the setting sun flashed on the AK-47 in the man’s hands. Jim hit the ground and the bullets whistled over his head. Then a second figure appeared behind the battlements and opened fire. And then, while Jim was scrambling for cover and trying to aim his Glock at the shooters, he caught sight of a thick gray cloud to his left. It was another swarm of drones, heading straight for him.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Kirsten went deeper into the maze of tunnels under Beijing, following the trail of Nash’s footprints. She found another map of the Underground City on the concrete wall, but she had no idea where she was. She hoped to hell that her camera-glasses didn’t conk out. Without the infrared display to guide her, she might never emerge from the pitch-black corridors.

  She started to shiver. Calm down, she told herself. Take a deep breath.

  Then the tunnel widened into another spacious chamber and the trail of footprints came to an end. Stepping off the jagged edge of the concrete slab, Kirsten planted her feet on a yielding, uneven floor. But it wasn’t another underground mushroom farm. The ground she stood on wasn’t dirt—it was wet and pulpy in the low spots, shifting and slippery in the high spots. Crouching to get a better look at the stuff under her shoes, she saw a mélange of warmish re
ctangles, each about five inches long and three inches wide. At the same time, she smelled the distinctive aroma of rotting paper.

  She touched one of the rectangles and felt raised characters on its surface, Mandarin characters. They spelled out Mao Zhuxi Yulu—in English, Quotations from Chairman Mao. The chamber’s floor was covered with stacks of Mao’s Little Red Book, the pocket-size paperback that had been required reading in the People’s Republic during the sixties and seventies. The Communist cadres who’d dug the Underground City had evidently stored the Little Red Books here so the loyal residents of the bomb shelter would have something to read during their long wait for the radioactive fallout to dissipate.

  Kirsten picked up one of the books and opened it. The pages spilled out and crumbled. Then she dropped the book and stood up. She turned in a circle, surveying the whole storeroom. In the far corner, underneath one of the largest mounds of Little Red Books, she saw the red dot of the radio signal shining through the rotting paper. Nash had taken the secret object out of his jacket and buried it about a foot beneath the surface. That was shallow enough to allow Nash—or his employer—to detect the radio signal when they wanted to retrieve the thing.

  She quickly dug it out. The device was slightly smaller than one of the Little Red Books but much heavier. It had a metal casing and a power switch that controlled the radio transmitter. Kirsten turned off the transmitter, then noticed that the device also had a USB port. Luckily, Kirsten’s NSA-issued satellite phone was equipped with a USB cable for downloading software and data.