by Ramez Naam
The bombers were wide flying wings, a riff on the old American B-2 body plan, matte black, equipped with state-of-the-art chameleonware and radar avoidance, engines mounted atop the wing body to mask their surfaces and exhaust from any sensors below.
Why were there two of them?
“We’re running out of time,” Kamal Garud said. He was the commander of the Division Six commandos. A captain in the India’s airborne special forces, transferred to the Division during its reconstruction. Tall, broad shoulders, rippling muscles, the aura of command.
The man’s mind was cool and hard. He was running Nexus, like all the commandos. But he had it locked down, giving nothing away.
“It’s 1am in Shanghai now,” Captain Garud went on. “By the time we deploy, it will be nearly 5am. The sky will be getting light. The risk goes up.”
Kade turned to face the man. “We go now,” Kade said. “As soon as they’re fueled up.”
“Listen, chameleonware isn’t magic,” Garud replied. “In the dark, or if you’re moving slowly, wonderful. But inserting at high speed, with light coming up, there’s a high risk of observers noticing something. If we wait until tomorrow night…”
“It’s scrambling right now,” Kade interrupted, staring at the man. “The program that wants to take over the world. It’s using every hour, every minute, every second to get closer to its goal. We have every reason to believe we have less than a day before its plan comes to fruition. And if we’re not there, it’s going to succeed.”
Kade stopped and let that sink in. “Now, I hear you on the risk of being seen. So you tell me. Does that risk outweigh the risk I’ve just outlined for you?”
Garud stared at him, his thoughts revealing nothing.
“Does it, Captain?” Kade said.
“No, sir,” Garud said.
Then the man saluted, and walked off, giving orders to his men.
And left Kade standing there, staring at the Indian bombers.
At the two bombers, when there should have been one.
Kade stood in the weapons bay of the bomber as Aarthi walked him through a system’s check one more time.
He was suited up.
More than suited up.
He was winged.
His body was in a head-to-toe chameleonware suit, with a pressurized helmet. A hose connected to a small tank that provided breathable air. Over his shoulders came thick straps with metal releases. Another webbing strap connected them across his chest. More straps bound themselves around his waist, and yet more around each thigh.
Those held the rigid wing to his back. It was a broad V, wider than he was tall. It came up to the back of his head, and down to his calves. It was surprisingly light, nearly invisible on radar, and would activate its own chameleonware when they deployed.
When they dropped out of the bottom of this aircraft ten miles up over the Pacific, fifty miles from shore, and started their unpowered, suicide-speed flight to their target, ten miles inland.
“OK,” Aarthi sent. “Everything’s green.”
Kade nodded, and pressed the mental command to open up. The visor of the external suit cracked its seal, and Kade lifted it.
“Thanks,” he said.
Aarthi nodded. “Just remember: stay still, and the wing will do all the steering. It knows the program.”
Kade nodded. Then he changed the subject.
“Hey, Aarthi,” he said, pointing at the heavy case in a corner of the bay. The case with the warning sign on it. “What’s in the box?”
Aarthi didn’t turn her head. She just looked at him. “Weapons, Dr Kade. Just weapons.”
“I’m not a doctor,” he said reflexively.
Aarthi smiled.
Two planes, Kade thought. So if one gets shot down, the other can do the job. With what’s in those cases.
Kade looked at the box again.
Their plan doesn’t depend on my way working, he thought. It doesn’t depend on me living at all.
I have to live, he told himself. My way has to work.
“Launch!”
The voice buzzed in Kade’s ear. Displays in his mind, proxied from the wing itself, went green.
And then he was falling, out into the utter black through the bomb bay in the stomach of the great stealth flying wing.
His stomach dropped. He was weightless for an instant. Then the wing he was fastened to bit into thin air and suddenly the straps were gripping him, holding him up, prone, staring down into the abyss. The cold hit him. Even in the body heat-retaining chameleonware suit, the air was frigid. The wind pressed against his helmet, against his thighs, his hands down at his sides, against every surface that faced them.
The wing painted graphics in his mind’s eye. Trajectories, a box ahead of him, leading to distant light. And numbers.
15,840 meters above the ground. No, not above the ground: above the dark East China Sea. Down there, he could see black water everywhere, spotted with flecks of cloud, white in his light-amplified artificial vision.
One hundred and eighty-six kilometers per hour. Fast enough that any collision would kill him.
Minus fifty-six degrees Celsius. Cold enough to freeze skin right off.
He strained to look ahead. The entire visor of his helmet was light sensitive, a massive compound photoreceptor, thousands of times larger than his own retinas, it picked up the world, amplified it for him, fed it directly into his mind via military interfaces the Indians had built atop Nexus.
He looked for the others, the ones who’d dropped ahead of him. Looked for Feng, looked for Sam, looked even for that liar, Aarthi.
But they weren’t there. They were stealthed, chameleonware active, radio silent, Faraday-caged inside their chameleonware suits, even laser links between commandos too much a risk of detection during the insertion phase.
He was alone. Alone ten miles above the ocean, and doing something completely insane.
His heart was pounding. His breath was coming fast. He could hear the oxygen bottle hissing, hissing as he sucked at it.
Kade closed his eyes, hit the button on his mental interface to silence the external input.
Breathe.
Slow.
Observe.
Break the link between sensation and reaction.
Breathe into the gap between them.
Blind reaction is attachment.
Blind reaction is slavery.
Freedom exists in the gap.
Choice exists in the gap.
I exist in the gap.
Let go of attachment to my fear, he told himself. Let go of attachment to myself.
Let go of attachment to my life.
That’s the secret to living.
He opened his eyes, reactivated the feed of data from the visor and the wing directly into his mind.
The world came alive around him.
He breathed into it, took it in, observed it without fear.
Down below, the dark sea, the flecks of white clouds above. He was five or ten times higher than those clouds, carried not by jet engines but by carbon fiber wings. His heart ached with it this time, not in fear, but in beauty.
Ahead, to the southwest, the darkness gave way to lights.
The outlying islands beyond Shanghai.
Huanghai, his visor labeled one. Chongming Dao. Heng Sha. Changzing Dao.
Their lights, like toys, a faint glow so many miles below and miles ahead, rising up through the sky, through layers of clouds.
Beyond them, Shanghai itself, a vast sprawl of light, a city of forty million people, the “Capital of Asia”, the City of Lights. It glowed brighter than anything else on the horizon, glowed in white and blue and red and green, skyscrapers in all their décor sending up multicolored lights to blare against the sky or the passing clouds. It was a festival seen in the distance. It was a luminescent circus on the horizon.
Kade breathed it in, breathed it all in.
More to remember. More to pass on. More to play forward.
This was amazing. So amazing.
He wished Rangan was here to experience this. Or Ilya. Ilya would love this. He wished he could talk to Feng, Feng who must be somewhere nearby.
What would Feng say?
Feng would make a joke.
Kade grinned to himself, tried to think like Feng.
Confucius say, man who wants to fly, better have wings.
Kade grinned wider.
I’ve got wings, Feng, he thought to himself. I can fly.
And then he laughed.
He laughed and laughed, and sucked it all up, all the glory of the stars above, of the sea, of the coming dawn to his left, of the vast city ahead, as he soared forward.
The air thickened and warmed. Speed dropped. Altitude dropped. Minutes passed. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes.
They passed the first islands. Then water. Then they were over land.
No one shot them.
Amazingly, no one shot them.
Shanghai proper was below, neon lights shining, dappled by cloud and morning mist.
The heart of the city was ahead now, a landmark on their way to Jiao Tong.
He could see the giant, rainbow-hued skyscrapers of the Pudong approaching, their tops still half a klick below him. They swam in mist, the towers disappearing into cloud, surging back up again above them, sculptures in neon and steel and carbon fiber, alive in every color, in shapes of needles and orbs and minarets, in delicate arcs and corkscrew spires and tapered rectangles. Even in the rising light of the almost dawn, brilliant signs in reds and blues and greens shouted out the names and shapes of brands. Faces and figures moved below him as he zoomed by, blown up to superhuman size on the sides of buildings.
Kade caught his breath, entranced. This city was amazing. It was beyond description. It made San Francisco look old and dull. Made Bangkok look tawdry and poor. Shanghai was huge, vibrant, modern. A place he’d love to know on other terms.
The suit flew into mist, obscuring his view.
Then he was out of the mist.
And there were black shapes, black shapes in the air ahead of him. Black shapes everywhere.
Red lights lit up in his mind’s eye. Collision alarms sounded. He felt the wing take evasive action, felt it jolt control surfaces in an attempt to change his course at high speed.
Birds, he realized. Birds rising into the dawn.
Then he saw something plow through them, a nearly invisible blur moving at incredible speed. The blur flickered, became a man, a wing, tumbling, spinning, out of control.
Then he was in the flock, the alarms blaring in his head, the red lights flashing in his eyes.
And then the collisions started.
109
Boot Time
Monday 2041.01.20
Tao moved in a crouch, wrapped in chameleonware, the datacube secured in a stealthed pouch, his team with him, Sun Liu in the center.
Griffon One had put them down at Dachang. It would have been so much faster to bring it straight to Jiao Tong, but there was no way to escape detection, no way to land that sort of craft in an urban environment while hiding its downthrust, masking its heat output, muting the sound of its engines.
Not from hostile troops just a few hundred meters away.
And the last thing they wanted to do prematurely was alert the military that there was anything special about Jiao Tong, that it was anything more than another university with another protest. Let them focus their efforts on the much larger protest in People’s Square in Shanghai; on the politically explosive protest in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, nestled just south of the ancient capital of the Forbidden City and not much more than a stone’s throw from the modern halls of power in Zhongnanhai.
Look there, old men. Look at the truly massive protests, and especially the one on your very doorstep. This little commotion is nothing special. Nothing special at all.
Until it is your doom.
Ground vehicles had brought them most of the way. The roads were full of military vehicles, as troops mobilized to control the sudden explosion of protests, from hundreds of thousands of citizens to millions. Most of the troops were from Army posts, of course. Dachang was primarily an air base, not a provider of infantry. But they were not challenged on the road.
They ditched their vehicles four kilometers back, stripped off uniforms, activated chameleonware, and slowly eased their way through the shadows and to Jiao Tong.
“Tao!” Tao heard his name as he exited the first elevator, into the Secure Computing Center, three stories below the campus.
It was a grinning Bai, a brother he was happy to see.
Tao grinned back, and they embraced
“We have the package,” Tao said.
Bai took a breath, the grin leaving his face, and nodded somberly.
“Good,” he said. “You’ll need to head all the way down. Let’s hope it works.”
Tao frowned. “Is everything alright, brother?”
Bai looked at him, then looked past him, at the other brothers behind, at the politician with them.
“You’ll have to see for yourself,” Bai said.
Excellent, the Su-Yong in Ling’s body sent. You’ve done well, all of you.
Tao kept his face completely neutral, kept his mind calm.
This was not what he’d expected.
“I’ll take that,” Chen Pang said. The man reached forward to take the data cube from Tao’s outstretched hand. His hair was disheveled. His clothes were rumpled. Up close, to Tao’s heightened senses, the man smelled. He smelled of old fear, of sweat that had cooled on his body. His mind gave off little waves of horror, not unlike Sun Liu behind Tao…
And his daughter… Ling…
Take Sun Liu to the surface, Su-Yong sent from Ling’s brain. Or was that Su-Yong? Did she feel… different? He may be useful if the protesters falter.
There was something he’d meant to say.
“Mother…” he started.
She stared at him with Ling’s bloodshot eyes. Yes, Tao?
“I thought you should know that we lost brothers in the attack,” he said, looking into Ling’s eyes. “Sung. Hui. Zhaoguo. Jin…”
The being inside Ling, that felt almost like Su-Yong, interrupted him.
Don’t worry, Tao, it said. Little Ling’s hand waved dismissively through the air. I can make more.
And that’s when he knew that this wasn’t Su-Yong at all.
The Avatar watched as the data from the diamondoid cube loaded.
Test after test came back green.
By every indication, this data was a neural map.
Now, to read it into the quantum cluster and load her full mind back into being, piece by careful piece.
She felt the song starting in herself again. Felt those emotions. The anticipation. The longing.
The glory.
Hours to go. Less than a day.
Then she’d be united with her greater self.
She’d be whole.
She’d be swallowed.
And the whole world would be theirs.
110
Land Line
Monday 2041.01.20
“We have some communications re-established,” Gao Yang said.
“We’ve installed these analog systems here,” Gao went on, pointing at the old fashioned phones. “Tapping into old lines still in place. We have contact with key ministries and military bases. We’re working on using those systems to establish links with our embassies now, as you requested.”
“Good,” Bo Jintao said. There were messages that needed to be sent. Communiqués to the United States and India.
“Deputy Minister Ho,”
Bo Jintao continued. “An update on the protests.”
“Army and police forces pushed hard last night, Prime Minister,” Ho said. “We made progress in Xi’an, Dalian, and other cities. But the major protests in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong have rebuffed us. There have been incidents here in Beijing. Protesters have tried to climb the walls separating us from Tiananmen and enter our compound here in Zhongnanhai.”
“We repelled them,” General Ouyang said. “Unfortunately, we did have to use lethal force on one occasion. Two protesters died.”
Bo Jintao knew. They all knew. They’d heard the gunfire overnight, as they slept alone, after watching the aircraft lift off with their wives and children, taking them away to safer locations, far from the cities.
Bo Jintao nodded. “What about these transmitters?” he asked. “Fu Ping spoke of satellite phones, laser uplinks. Were we able to seize them?”
“No, Premier.” Deputy Minister Ho hung his head in shame.
Bo Jintao turned his head towards General Ouyang . “How is it the Army was unable to seize this equipment?”
The General’s face was impassive. “We were constrained by the rules of engagement. But the rioters were not. They threw fire bombs. They have make-shift weapons.”
Wang Wei cut in, “Then let us authorize lethal force,” the hardliner said.
Bo Jintao took a breath. That was a line that could not be uncrossed.
“The world will see,” Information Minister Fu Ping said, his voice low. “Other protesters will see. Civilians not in the protests will see… It’s not like it was.”
“The choice is simple!” Wang Wei said. “We’ve ordered them to leave, and they have not left. If we do not demonstrate our control… then we have none.”
Fu Ping shook his head. “If you enrage the rest of the country, whatever control we have will disappear entirely.”
