by Ramez Naam
Bo could hear his father’s words. “Hard work guarantees you nothing. But laziness assures failure. Work hard, or you have only yourself to blame.”
“…small student-led protests in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou,” his aide, Gao Yang, was saying, from behind him. “Mostly on university campuses. Protesting the new research restrictions, the arrests of dissidents, and the removal of Sun Liu. State Security is seeking your guidance as to response.”
Bo Jintao turned to face Gao.
The display showed images. Posters. Crowds. Small ones, really. Just dozens of people, scores, perhaps.
He caught a glimpse of a Billion Flowers sign among the others and shook his head just a fraction. So many problems to deal with. The population shrinking, crippling the supply of labor, even as the elderly expanded. The massive growth of deserts in the west, swallowing up once fertile areas, as water tables collapsed. India’s expansionist streak, its military buildup and the ring of foes it was trying to build around China with its network of so-called “unaligned states”. The Arctic bubbling methane from the trillions of tons frozen at the bottom, even as China led the push to decarbonize the world economy, those bubbles warning of an irreversibly hellish tipping point that could be just a few years away, or decades, or safely beyond the point where the planet would start cooling once again. And above all, the threat of the exponential: that one of the millions of well-funded fools flirting with doomsday technologies would go too far, letting off a virus or a nanite or an AI that could replicate and end or enslave them all.
And these naïve pups out there, in this most dangerous moment in history, wanted to replace the sanity of a few wise, steady leaders with the anarchy of more than a billion voices shouting at one another, heaving the nation to-and-fro like a vast mob.
Madness.
Bo Jintao shook his head and brought his attention back to Gao Yang.
“Are all the protests this small?” he asked.
“None are larger than a hundred, Premier,” Gao said. “Deputy State Security Minister Ho says they could be dispersed in minutes.”
Bo Jintao spooned up more congee to give himself time to think. He had to set aside his emotions. Protests were destabilizing things. Not to be desired. The masses were neither mentally nor dispositionally equipped to decide the path of the nation. That was certain. But dealing with them was a delicate matter, as he’d learned
“Information containment?” he asked.
“We’re filtering,” Gao replied. “High success. News is spreading by word of mouth, however.”
Bo Jintao nodded. He leaned back and regarded Gao.
“Do you know about the Nanpo incident? 2023?”
Gao narrowed his eyes.
“That is… censored.”
Bo Jintao chuckled. “Tell me, then. You have my permission.”
Gao Yang gave a small nod.
“An illegal protest. A few thousand, I believe. It was cleared. Video of police clearing the protesters spread, angering locals. The protest grew to tens of thousands, until the army had to be called in. There were a few… injuries.”
“Deaths,” Bo Jintao said. “One hundred and thirty eight of them. Because the police chief mismanaged the situation.” He looked hard at Gao. “I was the police chief.”
Gao nodded a fraction of a millimeter.
So he had known that as well? Bo Jintao thought. Interesting. No filter is perfect.
“Premier,” Gao said. “Our censors are much more advanced today. No video would spread.”
Bo Jintao turned to look out the window, at the lake and the ducks, the serenity of this place, at the heart of the nation.
He’d dealt with so many protests over his career. Protests over particles in the air or pollutants in the water or soil turning to dust. Protests over corruption. Over villages being moved to make way for highways and dams and resorts. And over silly, stupid things – myths and falsehoods and rumors.
There were times to clear the squares. There were times to listen, to make the protesters feel heard. There were times to speak to them directly.
And there were times to simply ignore them.
Bo Jintao turned back to Gao Yang.
“Striking will only feed energy to the protests. Let’s see if they die off by themselves. Tell Deputy Minister Ho to keep them contained. For now.”
59
Lisa, Lisa
Wednesday 2040.12.12
It was a Wednesday when they took Lisa Brandt.
She was walking, on her way from her flat to the train stop, and from there to Cambridge, to her office at Harvard, when the black sedan pulled onto the sidewalk in front of her, cutting her off.
She turned, startled, found that another had pulled onto the sidewalk behind her, its electric motors giving away no noise to alert her.
She reached into her purse for her phone. But by then the men in black suits had her, were wrestling her into the back of one of the sedans.
“Homeland Security,” one of them whispered into her ear.
They blindfolded her, took away her purse, her rings, her bracelet, her shoes. They pried open her mouth and shone a flashlight inside it, then searched through her hair, patted her down brusquely and invasively under her clothes. Whether they were looking for communication devices or weapons or suicide pills or something else she had no idea. She resisted, had her hands pushed away and held down by one agent while the other continued the invasive frisk. She felt violated.
She was terrified.
When it was over she demanded access to her lawyer, was told she wasn’t under arrest. She demanded her phone, was given a simple no.
She’d been right, then. There wouldn’t be any time to enter the panic code. Wouldn’t be any time to alert the network that she was burned.
It should have been a comfort that she’d told them she was burned weeks ago, as soon as she’d realized Martin Holtzman was dead. That passing on his data was the last act she could ever take for the network.
It was no comfort at all.
Images of Alice kept running through her head. Alice as she’d seen her this morning, in her white bathrobe, her hair disheveled, little Dilan suckling at her breast.
And Dilan. Dilan who was so small, so vulnerable.
Dilan with Nexus in his brain.
Dilan too young for them to coach him to remove it.
Dilan who’d gestated with it. Who might not even be able to thrive without it in his system any more.
Why did I do it? she wondered. Why’d I put my family at risk?
They marched her through hallways, still blindfolded, through a door. She was pushed into a chair.
And then the blindfold was removed.
Sitting across from her, on the other side of a desk, was a well put-together African American woman. Shoulder-length dark hair. A dark business jacket over a maroon blouse. She looked like a business executive.
But Lisa Brandt knew who she was.
“Professor Brandt,” Carolyn Pryce said.
“I want to talk to my lawyer.”
“You’re not under arrest.”
Lisa made to stand up.
A strong hand grabbed her shoulder from behind, pushed her forcefully back into her chair.
“Not under arrest, eh?” she said, anger creeping into her voice.
“You could be,” Pryce said, her tone growing harder. “Your wife could be. Your son could be in non-human internment, indefinitely. Would you prefer that?”
Lisa felt it like a knife, like a dagger sliding up into her heart. That they’d do that? Of course they would. They were monsters. Her face contorted.
“How do you sleep at night?” she asked Pryce. “How do you look at yourself in the mirror?”
Pryce leaned forward.
“You received a package of information from Martin Holtzman. Maybe more than one. Memos. Documents. Don’t bother denying it. I want that information. I want the originals. All of them, exactly as you received them.”
“Because,” Pryce said. “I want to know if it’s true.”
“That’s it,” Brandt said, “That’s all of it.”
Pryce nodded as the specialist used the passwords and addresses Brandt had given them to download the files directly onto Pryce’s personal slate. It was as Kaori had speculated. The originals were images, off-center, slightly askew, uncropped. And there were images here, pages of memos, parts of Becker’s diary, that hadn’t been released.
Pryce would use those.
“Good,” she said, watching as the specialist physically disabled the network on the slate as Pryce had instructed.
“I’ve done my part,” Brandt said. “I can go now?”
Pryce looked at the woman. Brandt put on a brave face, but there was a quaver in her voice. The woman wasn’t a threat, so far as Pryce could see. And God knew there was no reason to put her infant son in federal custody. But they still had to be sure.
“Soon,” Pryce said. “With any luck, you’ll be on your way home within hours.” She gestured to the men waiting outside. The men in white lab coats. The door opened.
Brandt looked around, confused, then frightened as the technicians put their hands on her, started to pull her away. “You said if I cooperated I could go!”
Pryce nodded. “I did. But first we have to make sure you told us the truth. I believe you’re quite familiar with Nexus, Dr Brandt?”
Brandt’s face turned to horror.
“Well,” Pryce said, “now you get to try a slightly modified version.”
60
Yingjie
Wednesday 2040.12.12
The Avatar watched carefully as Chen finished the preparations for the trap. She forced him to check each step, again, and again. Nothing could go wrong.
The equipment she’d requested from her new staff had arrived this morning. The metal box. The pressurized cylinders, filled with the molecular recipe she’d specified, one her greater self had designed out of curiosity but never deployed. Would it work as expected?
It will work, she told herself again. The only question is how fast.
That too, would be informative. A test, for a much larger deployment of this new molecular recipe. A much larger deployment with much larger consequences.
So much was going well. The censors were hers, ready to let through the information she wanted. The Peace and Harmony Friends were hers, selectively dropping hints, changing the narrative, priming the populace for the revelations and events to come.
But she was still so vulnerable, trapped in this tiny body.
And she was watched by a potential assassin – Chen’s driver Yingjie.
If only Chen still had a Confucian Fist driver, like Bai. Things would be so much easier, then. She’d have a tremendous resource available to her. Better yet to still have Feng. But the Confucian Fist clones had all been relieved of duty, after Ling’s attack on Shanghai. The old men weren’t complete fools. They suspected Su-Yong, and they suspected the Fist were loyal to her. So they were confined to barracks, and replaced by augmented Marines. And her path to free them was not yet open.
Yingjie was a spy, of that she was certain. The Marine driver was a mortal threat to her. If he noticed the wrong thing, he could start a cascade that would lead to her discovery and death. In the worst case, he could snap this body’s neck in an instant, ending all her hopes, cementing barbaric humanity’s victory, ensuring darkness snuffed out the last spark of light.
She couldn’t let that happen, couldn’t let ignorance and xenophobia win out over progress.
Chen made the call down to his driver. “Yingjie,” he said into his phone. “Jiao Tong. Yes. I have some heavy equipment to move. Can you come assist me?”
The Avatar waited in the sealed toilet compartment of the washroom of her bedroom suite, each of the three doors closed and locked, each a bulwark against the enhanced soldier, and watched with her mind and the house monitors.
Yingjie couldn’t simply be sedated at a dinner party. He was too fast, too strong, too resilient, too capable. In the moments before a sedative took full effect (if it even would affect him), he could kick down the front door, send a message to his superiors, bring scrutiny down on her. Or snap Chen’s neck in half. And she needed Chen.
Another approach was needed. And that approach would let her test a new means of spreading nanites.
“In here,” Chen said, dressed in full suit and tie. He led Yingjie in and pointed through the door. “The large metal box in the closet. Be careful with it. I’ll go fetch my briefcase.”
Yingjie nodded his assent, his face expressionless, and strode into the room, even as Chen turned and walked briskly towards his own bedroom.
The Avatar switched perspectives, watched from a camera behind Yingjie as the soldier crouched down to pick up the object, nearly a meter in every dimension.
His hands reached around it, finding handles on the sides, closed around them to get a grip.
Data feeds from sensors in the handles confirmed a solid contact.
Now.
Her mind sent a trio of instructions in parallel.
Electricity coursed through the metal handles Yingjie held. The muscles of his hands and forearms involuntarily contracted, clenching his grip even more tightly around them.
Yingjie yelled in surprise and pain, opening his mouth, his eyes bulging, air forcing itself out of his lungs.
Behind the box, deeper in the closet, two metal cylinders opened their digital valves, forcing twin high pressure, high velocity sprays of an aerosolized molecular cocktail at Yingjie’s face, at his open mouth, his exposed eyes, his uncovered nostrils.
The heavy security door to Chen’s office slammed shut, bolts shooting out to lock it in place.
Yingjie turned his face to the right, closing his eyes, letting the continued spray hit the left side of his face and neck now.
The Avatar watched in fascination. This was the test. His eyes would be burning, as the aerosolized nanoparticles were being carried along his mucus membranes, into his blood stream, towards his brain.
Had any reached his lungs? Was there a metallic taste in his mouth from what had struck him there?
Even on the tough skin of his face, the organic solvent of DMSO that the nanoparticles were suspended in would be carrying it through his skin, penetrating tissue, till the particles found their way to capillaries.
Yingjie’s muscles strained, his hands still gripped to the handles by the current. Then suddenly his feet were pressed against the surface of the metal box, and with a scream he pushed back, ripping the metal handles off of it, trailing wires behind them.
The Avatar felt a jolt of fear rip through her.
He wasn’t supposed to be that strong.
He was on his feet now, out of the pressurized stream from the tanks.
The Avatar felt radio signals blare out from him as he subvocalized a panic code. She slapped them down with her mind and the radio-shaping tools spread throughout the flat.
He turned, raising his hand to his blinking, tearing eyes, wiping at them, then orienting himself on the door.
Her models showed a sixty percent chance that the door would hold him, a median of five efforts to break free if he could at all.
Yingjie cocked one foot back, then shot it forward, following it through with his body.
The door burst open on his first kick, splinters flying.
Fear seized the Avatar.
Yingjie surged into the living room, rage written across the soldier’s face.
61
Next Steps
Wednesday 2040.12.12
Lisa Brandt checked her messages on her phone as soon as they returned it to her.
“Sorry you’re sick today, Professor. I’ll cancel your appointments. Hope you’re feeling better tomorrow.”
There were responses to mes
sages she hadn’t sent. There were messages from her she hadn’t sent.
Rage surged through her. She wanted to smash the phone to bits, crush it, scream!
But she couldn’t.
She’d been gag-ordered. Forbidden to ever tell anyone of the interrogation she’d been through, the information she’d divulged.
And that order was backed up. Backed up by a neutered version of Nexus running in her brain. A version of Nexus that couldn’t communicate with the outside world, but that could very well constrain her. Its nanites took hold of her now, kept her walking smoothly, guided her hands to unruffle her slacks, put a smile on her face, slowed her respiration, guided her through the lobby of her building, up the lift, and into the flat she shared with her wife and infant son.
“Alice, I’m home!” Lisa Brandt said brightly, the rage seething inside. “How’re my two favorite people?”
Carolyn Pryce looked over the report from Lisa Brandt’s interrogation.
The woman knew nothing about the PLF herself, nothing that she hadn’t learned from the memos.
And she wasn’t ERD_Secrets. She wasn’t the one who’d leaked the information about the ERD’s assassinations of the foreign scientists in ‘33–35. Holtzman hadn’t sent her those files.
That was puzzling.
Brandt had been wired into a network helping to smuggle Nexus-dosed children and their parents out of the country. A network that had used Holtzman to break Shankari and a group of children out of ERD custody during Zoe.
No names, though. And the woman had been smart enough to realize she’d be marked as soon as Holtzman died. She’d burned herself out of the network more than a month ago.
