Crux n-2

by Naam, Ramez

  Sam stumbled further to wake the boys, to project love and safety, to break them out of their terror.

  The dream horror receded as the children woke, as Sam and Jake cuddled them, all together in one room now, where they could all see that everyone was safe.

  Sam breathed hard, Kit clutched to her chest, beaming out love and safety and assurance to these children, as her head cleared.

  Jake’s eyes met Sam’s, held them beseechingly.

  Sam just stared at him, her chest still heaving.

  The third night she sat on her bed, alone, the bed she hadn’t invited Jake into since he’d been attacked, and read up on the Mira Foundation.

  Founded by biotech billionaire Shiva Prasad. The legend who’d risen from his childhood as an orphan in one of India’s poorest and most violent cities – a Dalit, an “untouchable”, a member of India’s lowest caste – to become a ruthless biotech titan. He’d left competitors ruined and underlings scarred process of making his billions. Then in later life he’d suddenly changed, become a philanthropist– a sort of midlife turnaround common among ultra-rich capitalists thinking of their legacy.

  She read on. The Mira Foundation ran anti-poverty programs in India, Asia, and Africa. It backed education, nutrition, and vaccination efforts in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Nigeria, Kenya, dozens of other countries. They funded research into next generation bio-crops with higher yield and better nutrition, and open-sourced those they produced. They operated a network of extraordinarily effective orphanages in India and Asia.

  There were darker rumors online. She read about the brutal slaying of an Eritrean warlord whose troops had stolen Mira Foundation supplies meant to head off famine in his country. He’d been found crucified and tortured to death, the heads of a dozen of his men mounted on spikes around him. Further aid convoys had gone unmolested.

  A corrupt Laotian governor – who’d swapped medicines Mira delivered for fakes, sold the real ones on the black market, hanged in his living room.

  A criminal gang in Burma who’d abducted and gang-raped three female Mira Foundation workers. The gang members had been found hogtied and chained to the floor, face down on their knees, dead of massive hemorrhaging from the blunt objects they’d been violated with.

  No crime had ever been pinned on Mira. But across the net she found the quiet assumption that Mira had been responsible, and approval that they’d taken on the thugs that plagued the developing world.

  She reached the case she remembered last. The Dalit orphanage in Bihar, in northern India. A rumor had spread among villagers that it was the site of transhuman experiments, that loathed Dalit children inside were being turned into superhuman untouchables with black magical abilities. Tensions had run high. Then one night the orphanage gates had been chained shut from the outside and the whole structure had been burned to the ground. Thirty-five children and half-a-dozen orphanage staff had burned to death.

  Sam shivered reading it, thinking of her own childhood, of the suspicions of the villagers from Mae Dong, of the bottle throwing, the attack on Jake.

  There had been a trial, with a lackluster prosecution and a judge who’d dismissed all charges against the seven villagers charged with the murder.

  A week later, those villagers, the judge, and the prosecutor had been found dead, crucified and burned to death just outside the village.

  Sam turned off the slate and lay back in the darkness of her room. Could something like that happen here? Could the villagers turn violent? Could she blame Mira for being careful, for not wanting to include her, a stranger?

  And if something did happen… if someone did hurt these children she loved… would she react any less severely than the Mira Foundation had?

  Sam sighed. She was being selfish. She was resisting this plan only because she was being left out of it. She had to trust Jake. She had to trust that he would do the best for the children, that he would find a way to include her.

  She told Jake and Khun Mae in the morning. She apologized to Jake for how she’d treated him. He accepted it warily.

  Then she threw herself into enjoying the last few days she’d have with the kids for a while.

  They spent a last few perfect days together. Sam downloaded updates to Nexus 5, downloaded a music game, and on the last day they ran through the grass together, all nine children, and her, and Jake. And they jumped up to grab iridescent musical notes floating through the air, flailed their hands through rainbow-colored chords, and made chaotic, gorgeous sounds in each other’s minds. Sarai whistled and Mali played a flute and Kit banged a stick on a board and more notes appeared in the air around them, and little Aroon ran around, chasing the notes, catching them, holding them, and then letting them loose to make their sounds again.

  In the end, they helped the children pack up their meager belongings and put them to bed. Sam put a sleeping Aroon down into his crib, then tucked Kit in with his precious Panda. She held Sarai’s hand and pushed the hair back from her eyes and kissed her brow, told her that Sam would be there with her soon, a big sister she could count on.

  “I love you, Sam,” Sarai said, and Sam smiled and said the same to her and told her she’d see her in their dreams.

  Then she turned, and Jake was there, and for the first time in a week, Sam invited him into her bed.

  “My name is Sam,” she whispered to him when they were alone, between kisses. “Please call me Sam.”

  She opened her mind to him, just the tiniest bit, and let him feel her pleasure as they made love, her tenderness, her trust that he’d find a way for them to be reunited.

  After, as they lay together, she showed him how she’d grown up, what she’d faced, showed him her sister and Communion virus and Yucca Grove. Jake held her and beamed out comfort and safety and acceptance.

  That was enough, right there. More would come, later, after they were together again.

  They slept, their naked bodies entwined. And the morning brought the men from the Mira Foundation.

  20

  SHUTDOWN

  Friday October 19th

  “Help! Help me!” Chen pounded on the doors until his fists hurt, until his throat was hoarse.

  It was no use. He was hundreds of meters from the surface. The status indicator continued to read

  LOCKDOWN IN EFFECT

  Its red glow provided the only illumination in the cavernous, darkened elevator.

  What was going on? This was no mere mechanical failure. The change in status to lockdown meant that something had happened. Had his dead wife attempted to break free? Had he somehow facilitated that? He patted himself down furiously. Was there a hidden data device on him? Had she somehow succeeded in planting something on him to get something out?

  No, there was a simpler explanation. The hardliners had won. The long stalemate between the proponents of liberalism and openness – of gong kāi huà – and the reactionaries who wanted to tighten control had been settled. He could see it in his mind’s eye. Liberal-leaning Politburo members suddenly falling ill, resigning their posts, exiling themselves to their country homes, never to return. Or perhaps worse – men dying, throttled in the dark. Perhaps bombs going off, like the one that had killed his wife, that would have killed him…

  Chen shuddered at the memory.

  So the hardliners were finishing what they’d started a decade ago, pruning the last fruits of the billion flowers period, ending this experiment in the posthuman, ending the life of his wife as they’d tried before, and taking him with her.

  Was the nuclear battery going into meltdown even now? Would the radiation kill him? Would it travel up this shaft? Or would he be left here to suffocate, or die of thirst or hunger?

  Was there any hope of escape? Chen looked up towards the top of the elevator. There was no obvious maintenance hatch there. Even if there was, would he have any hope of opening it, then climbing hundreds of meters to the surface? Opening a locked door there, and somehow evading the armed guards in th
e SCC who undoubtedly had orders to let no one pass? Could even Bai, his clone driver, fight his way through security and rescue him? And if so, then what? Flee to India? Bah.

  Chen Pang retreated to the back wall of the elevator and sat down heavily. It was hopeless, then. He’d known this day would come. Ever since the limousine. Ever since the assassination attempt eleven years ago had brought gong kāi huà to an abrupt end. Neither he nor Su-Yong were meant to live that day. They’d been on borrowed time since then. Somehow he’d let himself forget that.

  No. From the moment that Sun Liu had taken him aside and warned him not to get into the limousine that night, they’d been doomed. Ted Prat-Nung hadn’t understood, of course. He’d believed the lie that the CIA – and not hardliners within the Chinese government – was responsible for the explosion in the vehicle. Prat-Nung had pushed hard to try the emergency upload. Chen had no choice. Prat-Nung was dangerous, and madly in love with Chen’s wife. He couldn’t tell the man the truth. And the upload would surely fail. What harm in this bit of theater?

  When it had worked? When Su-Yong had woken up in the cluster he’d designed, somehow sentient? Well, then he’d allowed himself to forget their doom. He’d let himself hope that the progressives would win, that gong kāi huà might return some day, that a billion flowers might bloom again, or that at least he could ride his wife’s coat-tails to even greater fame and wealth.

  No. He should have put two and two together. Ted Prat-Nung was dead from American bullets in that Bangkok loft. Su-Yong was insane, would soon be functionally dead. He was the last of their triad, the last of the team that had turned his wife into the first true posthuman. It made sense. The hardliners would finish the job. They’d make sure that he died too.

  Chen Pang bowed his head, and waited for the end to come.

  Chen woke to a jolt, unaware that he’d fallen asleep. A loud noise clanged through his head. The elevator lurched unnervingly. Then it began to rise, with a new and unpleasant grinding sound. He waited for the lights to come back on, for the status indicator to change. Neither happened.

  He came to his feet. What was going on? Scenarios ran though his head. Su-Yong had tried to escape, and had been stopped, and now they were rescuing him. Or the hardliners had attempted a coup, but had been defeated. Or it had been a power failure after all, and the lockdown nothing but a precaution.

  Who would be there when the doors opened? Bai? The director of the SCC? His assistant Li-hua? Someone else?

  The elevator stopped moving with a clang. Chen waited, his breath coming fast. Then the doors parted. Bright light hit him, and he fell back, a hand raised up to shield himself, blinded.

  Even so, he caught the sight of the guns. Armed soldiers in insectile combat armor, matte black armored surfaces everywhere, bulging actuators and power packs, mirrored helmets obscuring their faces. They held assault rifles aimed in his direction, gaping wide muzzles ready to spew death at him. With them was a single young man in a dark suit, a briefcase in one hand.

  “Professor Chen, please stay where you are,” the young man said. The mirror-faced soldiers rushed forwards, pointed their guns and shined lights into the corners of the elevator, up at its ceiling.

  Two of them patted him down roughly. Their hands invaded his person, pressing against every part of his torso, grasping his ankles and sliding upwards along his thighs, even between his legs. An insult! But Chen bit his tongue, made no move to resist them.

  “Clear!” a voice behind him said.

  “Clean,” said one of the soldiers patting him down.

  “Please come with me, Professor Chen,” the young man said. It wasn’t a request.

  They walked through a red-lit Secure Computer Center. Flashlights and red emergency lights provided the only illumination. They passed rows and rows of workstations, abandoned. Tall metal equipment racks cast strange shadows against the wall. Two armored soldiers in their mirrored helmets went in front, then Chen and the young man in a suit, then two more armored soldiers behind them.

  “I am Fu-han Zhao, Professor,” the young man in the suit said. “I’m an aide to State Security Minister Bo Jintao. I’m here to take you to him.”

  Bo Jintao. One of the hardliners.

  “Bo Jintao? What’s happened? Why is the power out here? Why was I stuck in that elevator for hours?”

  “We’ve suffered a major cyber-attack, Professor. As for the rest, we were hoping you could tell us.”

  They reached the emergency stairs that led from the Secure Computing Center to the surface, ten flights up. More mirror-faced soldiers in full battle armor were posted here. They parted to let them into the stairwell. Inside, emergency lights on their own batteries bathed them in red.

  “How can the SCC power be out?” Chen asked as they climbed. “It has its own backup supply, good for days.”

  “We have power here,” Zhao answered. “We fear to use it. The cyber-attack was pervasive. We fear bringing the systems back online until we know what could be compromised.”

  At the top there were yet more armed and armored soldiers. The entire building was empty, lit only by emergency lights.

  “The power is out up here?” Chen asked.

  “Yes,” Zhao said.

  “Where is my driver?”

  “He’s been… temporarily relieved of duty, Professor. All of them have.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yes. All the clones.”

  All the Confucian Fist clones, relieved of duty. This was about his wife, then. They thought she was behind the attack. And they feared her influence over the clones.

  Damn.

  He saw not a single student or faculty member in the red-lit computer science building. Outside, it was dark, sometime in the dead of night. Hard rain fell on them. Tank-like armored vehicles crouched on the street, huge guns and extended missile launchers pointed at the building. Between them, portable lights illuminated a military helicopter in the middle of the road. It sat there, waiting for them, rotors spinning, weapons mounted on its stubby wings, mirror-faced armored soldiers surrounding it. Its mottled skin glimmered in the rain and the sodium lights.

  Chen heard more rotors up above. He raised his face, using his hand to shield himself from the rain. In the air above he could see dim red lights illuminating four smaller, sleeker, more deadly-looking helicopters circling around them, like birds of prey coolly regarding the ground, waiting for their moment to pounce.

  And who knew what lethal weapons he didn’t see.

  Zhao gestured for Chen to board the craft.

  “My phone… my slate…” Chen shouted to be heard over the rain and the roar of the rotors.

  Zhao nodded and yelled back, “They’ll be returned to you at the appropriate time.”

  They suspect me too, Chen thought with dread.

  He’d been ready to accept death hours ago, but now he very much wanted to live. And to do so, he had to persuade Bo Jintao that he wasn’t a threat. Chen boarded the helicopter, a chill sinking into him from more than the rain. Zhao boarded after him, and then they were aloft.

  From the air Chen got his first look at Shanghai. Then he understood.

  They flew through the urban canyons between lifeless skyscrapers, their escort helicopters flanking them. The city was a wasteland. Where there should have been light, there was darkness. A dim flicker of candles or flashlights shone in some windows. Down below, on the streets, there were fires. The immobile hulks of cars littered the roads. Water flowed around them. Soldiers manned checkpoints, directed spotlights from place to place. As they passed over an expensive block an explosion sounded, and then the sharp report of automatic weapons.

  He saw people in the street, a mob of them pressing against a store front. Looters. The mob moved forward, and from the doorway he saw the flare of gunfire.

  Then the chopper was past and he lost sight of them.

  Face pale, Chen turned to Zhao next to him. “What happened?”

  “The most damaging
cyber-attack of all time, Professor. It disabled the on-board computers of hundreds of thousands of cars, sent electrical surges that destroyed hundreds of power substations, knocked out the trains, the ferry terminal, the public safety surveillance systems. Even the sewers. The intelligent water routing that separates waste water and rainwater has failed, and so now we have raw sewage flooding the streets.”

  Chen couldn’t breathe. Could Su-Yong have done this?

  “My daughter?” he asked.

  “Safe,” Zhao said. “We have men with her.”

  Chen nodded.

  “Deaths?” he asked.

  “Hundreds so far,” Zhao said. “Car crashes. Fires. We have thousands trapped in subways that are filling up with water. And violence. People know the delivery trucks will not be running tomorrow. So they loot the stores, steal from each other. Billions of yuan of damage, at least.”

  Chen watched the wrecked city go by beneath him, numb with shock.

  The helicopters flew north and west, towards the outskirts of the city. Chen saw homes ablaze, a mob of looters carrying off goods from an undefended store, an explosion, the flare of more gunfire. Shanghai was in tatters.

  They landed at a military airfield. Dachang, he thought. Here there were lights. Zhao hurried them out of the helicopter and to the executive jet waiting on the runway, its chameleonware skin cycled to neutral gray, a red Chinese flag emblazoned on its tail. Chen barely had time to take his seat in the opulent cabin before they were taxiing down the runway, then taking off, a pair of deadly-looking fighter aircraft taking off with them. He watched the fighters out his window for a moment, before they activated their own chameleonware and became faint distortions, then nothing at all.