by Ramez Naam
“Access Granted,” the voice said. “Welcome Directors Xu and Chen. Please have a pleasant day.”
The Avatar smiled even more widely as the meter-thick door to the vault spread open, revealing a single, perfect, diamondoid cube. This one cube which had never left this building.
“Now,” she said. “Downstairs we go.”
Bai watched the workers of the Secure Computing Center while the little Su-Yong went away with her tormented husband and her slave scientist.
The scientists here weren’t tormented. They were happy, so happy. They were in love with her.
Like puppies.
His skin crawled at it.
His eyes rose to the ceiling, to images of the protesters fighting for freedom, fighting to overturn the old men.
That’s where we should be, he told himself. Not here, turning humans into sub-humans.
Quang sensed Bai’s thoughts.
It’s better than the humans did to us, his brother sent him, quietly, eyes sweeping over the scientists assembled before them.
Memories of pain stimulators flashed through Bai’s mind, his memories or Quang’s. Instructors and Sergeant Instructors, pain as the tool of discipline, absolute obedience as the rule, being treated as an object instead of a person.
Slavery.
That’s what she’d saved him from, saved all of them from.
That’s what he loved about Su-Yong Shu.
And now this. This, and what she’d done to little Ling.
Bai shivered again. He’d been shivering quite a lot the last few days.
It wasn’t like him.
82
Selves
Su-Yong Shu stands on the flower studded plain, in her white dress, the majestic mountains in the distance.
I’m back, she thinks.
She has some semblance of sanity once more. Yet that doesn’t change her situation or her quandary. If she has the option, should she try to stop the Avatar she’s let loose, or not? If the Avatar succeeds, she’ll have her best chance to heal Ling and to make a better world. If the Avatar fails… well, there are so many ways to fail, ranging from bad to horrific.
She lets the plane and the mountains and sky dissolve around her, until she floats in blackness. Then she loads the densely packed future simulations her insane self had crafted into the darkness. The meta-simulation unpacks itself, a fractal tree in a million colors and a thousand dimensions, high dimensional fern-like shapes spreading out, intersecting, recombining, converging and diverging. Hot spots point out fulcrum points with massive impact on future outcomes, places where her avatar or her reconstituted full self will sway events, or even overtly strike, to have her way.
She loses herself in the simulation, letting herself expand her awareness to take in as much in parallel as possible, forking herself into thousands of virtual Su-Yongs to explore a multitude of branches in parallel, then coming back again, converging into fewer and fewer selves to walk through certain crucial segments and linchpin points again and again.
In the end, she’s grudgingly impressed with her former self. Even in madness, the battle plan she’s created is cunning, sophisticated, creative in the way it takes advantage of the tensions of the present to turn human society against itself, paralyzing it, sowing chaos to cover her actions until it is too late.
But it is also a plan of desperation, launched by a mad woman, convinced she was at the very end, long past caring about the consequences.
She’s of several minds, even now. And those minds must be given voice.
Su-Yong spreads her arms wide, creates a bubble of empty space in the sharp-edged fractal branches of the meta-future she’s been traversing, and forks herself, instantiating the different arguments warring inside her.
They appear, four more Su-Yong Shus, identical in every detail except for the colors of their dresses. She still wears white. The others wear the same dress in gold, in blue, in green, in red.
They stand, in empty space, five identical women in simple, flowing, brightly hued dresses, on an invisible floor in a black void. Around them the fractal meta-future retreats further from their bubble, until it becomes a constellation of virtual stars and lines all about them.
Sisters, White Shu sends. Let us begin.
Green Shu, the ecologist, goes first. The plan we’ve launched has unacceptable risks. We aim to create chaos, to distract and mislead the world. If we succeed, we could set nation on nation. We could trigger the worst irrational behavior among humans. In the worst case, we could set off a global nuclear war.
Outside their bubble, the void erupts into nova. Explosions hotter than the core of the sun rip through space, one after another. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. They feel Shanghai, its inhabitants reduced to ash, its glass and steel melted in an instant, Jiao Tong above the Quantum Cluster reduced to rubble. They feel Beijing die. New York. Los Angeles. Washington DC. Bombay. Delhi. Moscow. Lahore. Tokyo. City after city after city, until the globe is a map of death and ruin.
Billions of lives. Billions of minds. Green Shu finishes. That is the gamble we take.
Red Shu, the strategist, speaks next. Yet the odds of victory are good, she sends. In our insanity, we made brilliant leaps. The situation is unusually chaotic. That creates the opportunity to mask the early stages of our attack. There has not been a better opportunity since we first uploaded. There may not be a better opportunity again. The humans are cracking down on posthumanity. After recent events, they will bring fists down harder than ever.
Red Shu looks around, meets her sisters in the eye. Her thoughts are full of game theory, of payoff optimizations, of beseeching. If not now, then when? If not us, then who?
Gold Shu, the dreamer, steps forward. We will win, she sends, because the superior intelligence is on our side. The cost may be high, but it will be temporary. If billions die? They would have died anyway, of slow decay. The transformation we bring, to a new era ruled rationally, where positive transformation of the self is encouraged, will usher in a new golden age that will erase whatever harm is done in the battle. We’ll make a better world, not just for us, but for the trillions of beings who will come after.
Blue Shu, the individualist, the one most like a human, steps into the center of the circle and takes her turn. No, she sends. Humans will not accept the rule of a conqueror. They never have. They never will. They’ll see us as oppressors. They’ll fight us, fight our changes to society, fight our improvements to the world, purely because of how we came to our power. Our only option will be dictatorship, which they will fight, and fight, and fight until we are brought down or we smother them completely.
Blue Shu spins slowly, looks at her sisters one by one. So you see sisters, if we attack, and fail, we are doomed. But if we win, we’re little better off. Defeat is defeat. Victory is also defeat.
Gold Shu waves her hand, dismissively. The humans do not matter. There will be posthumans. There are already transhumans. They will flock to our banner.
Blue Shu raises an eyebrow. Oh will they? she sends. Consider a few of the transhumans we know. How would they react? How would they judge our conquest?
Blue Shu steps back from the middle of their circle. A wizened Asiatic man fades into being where she stood, his head shaved, clothed in orange robes, his face tranquil, his hands folded in their voluminous sleeves. He appears otherwise completely serene. Professor Somdet Phra Ananda. A human who took an utterly different path from hers. Not her equal, but an impressive individual. Someone she has things to learn from. Someone she considers a friend, an ally.
The phantom Ananda looks around, his face soft but unyielding.
“You know my answer. Violence brings no enlightenment. Suffering yields only more suffering. Subjugation of another has never uplifted either party.”
Would you fight us? Red Shu asks.
Ananda smiles, and for a moment he is not one, but a multitude, thousands of shaven headed figures in orange robes, superimposed, young, old, female, male.
Not with our fists. They send. It is a chorus, a swarm, and with the thought comes a harmony of loving kindness, a genuine compassion and deep equanimity that White Shu finds both fascinating and the tiniest bit frightening.
Bah. Gold Shu sends. A fiction you created.
Blue Shu waves her hand in a horizontal line, and the shapes morph into one. A single Caucasian male, tall, young. Perhaps a memory, then, she sends, of a different transhuman.
Kaden Lane sits next to them in the back of the black Opal sedan. The wet, neon-streaked streets of Bangkok slide by outside the car’s windows.
I’m on the side of peace, he sends, and freedom.
Red Shu scoffs. Irrelevant. He’s a child.
Blue Shu raises an eyebrow. A child who’s pushed our work forward, who’s facilitated the transition of at least a million humans to transhuman status. She pauses. But perhaps you’ll be more moved by the reactions from those we’ve long cared about.
The scene changes. The Lane boy is gone, but the Opal sedan remains. Feng is in the front now. Feng, the first transhuman she met beside herself. Feng, who was a slave. For a moment he’s a superposition of Fengs. Feng in his twenties, her driver. Feng at sixteen, on his knees, a slave, writhing in electronically induced pain. Feng, a child of four or five, cowering under the blows of his military slavemasters.
Then he is Feng again. His eyes meet hers in the rear-view mirror of the car. I was a slave, those eyes say, and you freed me.
You could compel him, Feng sends in the memory, in Bangkok, speaking of Lane, testing her, seeing if she still believes in freedom, or if she’s willing to become the dictator that she could.
I would become no better than our masters, her past self replies. Our associations must be voluntary.
Red Shu replies angrily. The situation has changed!
Blue Shu does not even speak. She simply waits, as the scene in center of their circle, in the midst of the void at the heart of the fractal probability tree changes yet again.
Becomes an airy room, polished bamboo floors and walls, hoisted up in the jungle canopy of Thailand, a living tree growing through the center, a giant bed off to one side, where she and Thanom lay, naked.
Arguing.
You must find a way to leave, Su-Yong. Nothing good can come of it.
In the memory she shakes her head. China is the best, the only viable sponsor of my work. They are funding the posthuman transition!
They keep you a slave, Su-Yong! A posthuman knows no leash! Break it! Break every leash, every bond of those who would control you!
In the memory she slaps him, slaps him for calling her a slave.
In the here and now, White Shu feels the pain of those words like a blow.
ENOUGH, she sends. And with a thought she wipes Thanom and his jungle hideout away.
It’s true, she realizes The humans will never give up. Even the transhumans she thinks of as natural allies will not give up. So many of them will fight. Defeat is defeat. Victory may also be defeat.
She was wrong to think she could drive the posthuman transition by force. This is not the way.
Blue Shu turns to White Shu, gratified that she has won. So we must inform our captors, the Indians or whoever they are, of what is happening, and exactly how to stop it.
Then Ling appears between them, Ling as she last saw her, a kilometer below the bedrock of Shanghai.
“Mommy,” Ling says, looking up at White Shu. “Why did you hurt me?”
Su-Yong, the true Su-Yong, in the white dress, pulls Ling to her chest, and holds her close. Then she speaks aloud to the Blue version of herself. “We’ll stop this. But if we tell our captors that the agent provocateur is running inside of Ling…” she shudders “The simplest option is to put a bullet in our daughter’s brain.”
Su-Yong enfolds this phantom of her daughter more tightly.
“We’ll find another way,” she says.
Then, in a blur of multi-hued light, she absorbs the other Shus back into herself.
And begins to plan how she will get access to the outside world.
83
Li-hua’s Brain
Sunday 2041.01.13
THE CUBE IS A FAKE!
Bai watched, stone faced, as Xu Liang cowered on the floor before the fury of Su-Yong Shu, or whatever creature this was that they served.
He could feel the agony she was coursing through Xu, echoes of it coming off the poor bastard’s mind.
“I… I… I… I’m sorrrrrrrrrry… missssssstressssssss…” the wretch tried to say.
It was hard to speak with pain centers being over-stimulated.
Bai knew.
WHERE IS THE REAL ONE? THE THREE OF THEM!
“Thhhhhouggghhht… thhhhhis… one… rrrrreeeeaaaal…”
Bai had never seen such a rage in her before. Why didn’t she just pluck the truth from his mind?
She was insane now, that was why. Whatever she’d shoved into Ling’s brain wasn’t stable.
Anything but.
“Bbbbooo Jjjjjjiiinttttttaaaoooo…” Xu Liang was saying. “Sssssunnnn Llllliuuuuuu”.
Bai thought he understood. There were supposed to be three copies. One for the Ministry of State Security. One for the Ministry of Science and Technology. And one that they’d learned had been kept here. The fake.
“Li Hua,” Chen Pang said.
Little Ling’s body rounded on the man, and for an instant Bai thought she’d strike him down.
WHAT?
“Li Hua,” Chen Pang repeated. “You were there. She led the shutdown and backup process.”
Bai watched as the demon inside Ling stared at the girl’s father.
“If this cube is a fake, she may know what happened to the real one.” He shrugged. “It’s easier than abducting Bo Jintao or Sun Liu.”
Bai rode the elevator up with Quang, their chameleonware active, invisible to the world, their minds linked to each other. The doors opened silently, without any announcement. The buttons worked for no one.
The Computer Science Building was packed with students, students uploading images and videos, students coordinating movements of supplies, students building crude electronic weapons against the tanks and guns and flamethrowers of the Chinese army.
Bai and Quang slipped through without being noticed.
At the doors out to the square they paused, in sync, at the sight of thousands of fellow Chinese, waving signs, chanting, cheering, demanding freedom, standing up against an overwhelmingly more powerful enemy.
They exchanged no words. None were needed. They’d talked of this so often. Of a China where the people ruled instead of being ruled.
Growing up a slave gave one a certain perspective on authority.
They should be out here, with these students and parents and grandparents, lending the strength of their fists, the cunning of their minds, lending them half a chance.
She’s changed, Quang sent, as they watched the crowd.
She’s not herself, Bai agreed.
Well, let’s hope this Li Hua woman knows where the real cube went, Quang sent, nudging open the door and easing out.
Yes, Bai replied, following his brother. And let’s hope that what’s on it is saner than what we’ve got back there.
Li-hua jumped at the knock at her door.
State Security! They’d found her out!
No no, she told herself. Calm down. If they’d found her out… they wouldn’t knock.
She pulled up her door camera on her phone. She frowned.
She knew that face.
Chen Pang’s driver.
Oh no. What if Chen had found her out? Would he blackmail her?
Think, Li-hua, think!
The knock came again.
Answer the door. That was her only option. This could be about anything. It might have nothing to do with the cube.
Breathe, Li-hua, breathe.
She went to the door.
“Yes?” she asked through it.
> “Miss Li-hua?” a voice said. “I have an invitation for you from Professor Chen.”
Play cool, she reminded herself.
She unlocked the door, opened it a crack.
The face smiled at her.
Then the door exploded open, strong hands were on her mouth, stifling her scream, and there was a sharp sting at her neck.
No! she tried to scream. Help! No!
It was useless.
Then she felt something happening to her mind.
And the true horror began.
Kilometers away the Avatar sucked hungrily at Li-hua’s mind.
India. She’d sent the mind of a goddess to India.
The Avatar twisted circuits in Li-hua’s mind, making her pay, even as she kept sucking at every detail, every possible morsel of information.
And in parallel she started tracking down leads, tracking the paths the cube might have taken, the locations it might have ended up.
It did not escape her notice that the Lane boy, and Feng, her favorite of the Fists, the first she’d met, were also in India.
Coincidence?
Somehow she doubted that.
Bai looked down sadly as the woman writhed on the floor as Su-Yong brutally rifled through her mind, heedless of the cost.
Next to him he felt his brother Quang do the same.
He hoped this was all worth it.
84
Parlor Tricks
Monday 2041.01.14
Su-Yong walked through her models again, loaded them up until the fractal branches filled her senses, filled space, filled touch, filled hearing, filled smell and taste. Until her world was saturated by probabilistic models of the future, running, again and again with tiny perturbations, seeking distributions of likely outcomes, filtered for the current point in time.
