Nexus

by Naam, Ramez

  Her final thoughts followed him. One day you'll see the truth, Kade. The humans are the enemies of the future. They hate us. They hate our beauty and our potential. Either they hunt us down and kill and enslave us, or we rise above them and take our rightful place in this world. There are no other options.

  Madness. Madness everywhere. The ERD would make him a slave. Shu would make him a tyrant and a killer. He had to find some other way.

  30

  DATA GATHERING

  Wats slid slowly out of the shadow of the inner wall of Wat Hua Lamphong. It was the hour of evening meditation, between dinner and sleep, and the monks had all been called to the central hall. Golden Buddhas watched him with serene, lifeless eyes. Their half smiles mocked him. Red-faced guardian demons leered at him. A giant statue of the Hindu elephant god Ganesha watched him pass with alien indifference.

  He'd watched the small number of monks' rooms all evening, had seen Tuksin enter and exit one near the end. This was a city temple, more for worship by the laity than for monks, but a few dwelled here. Tuksin and Ananda both had small cells, close to Chulalongkorn University where Ananda worked and taught during the week. Ananda's home monastery lay to the north-east, he knew, a hundred or so klicks out of town, up in the mountains.

  Wats crept silently, slowly forward, moving at a pace the chameleonware could accommodate. Too fast and no technology could camouflage you. The key was patience. And luck. He remained alert to lights and motion. A sister passed by four feet away from him, heading from one place to another on some errand, oblivious to his presence. He froze while she passed, moved again when she had rounded a corner.

  Finally he came to the door that he'd watched Tuksin enter and exit. He tried the knob with gloved hands. It was locked. He slid the small autopick from his thigh pocket, inserted its matte black length into the lock. It whirred softly as it felt its way within the lock, shifted its shape to fit. Then a click. He turned the autopick and the knob turned with it. Wats entered the cell, closed the door silently behind him.

  He dared not turn on a light. Instead he scanned the room with the electromagnetic senses of his goggles. Night vision revealed a small spartan space. A narrow bed against one wall. A writing desk with an outdated terminal, a phone resting beside it. A bookshelf with a few texts in Thai and English. A wardrobe. A sink. No bathroom door.

  The only transmissions in the room came from the phone and the terminal. He moved forward, slid a probe into a port on the phone, let it do its work. There was a thumbprint sensor on the side of the phone. He slid a print imager across it. As a precaution he did the same with the thumbprint sensor attached to the terminal, went to the doorknob, did it a third time.

  As the probe cloned the phone's data he searched the wardrobe. Monk's robes. Sandals. Underwear. A cloak with a hood. No hidden back or bottom.

  The probe beeped softly. Wats extracted it, slid a different tip into the terminal.

  He lifted the mattress. Two boxes beneath the bed. One held old-fashioned photographs, a young man in a village. Tuksin, before he was a monk. The other held closed-toe shoes. He felt the top surface of the mattress. Nothing. He felt along the sides. Nothing. He felt along the bottom. Hmm. There, a change in consistency. He explored it, found a place where he could part the fabric and slide his hand in, pulled out a large opaque package, soft-sided, waterproof.

  Within it… business attire. Pants and a button-down shirt. A wallet with tens of thousands of baht in it in paper bills. A wig, short black hair, conventional looking. So, Tuksin liked to dress up like a layperson some times. Interesting.

  The probe beeped softly again. He retrieved it from the terminal. The tiny display showed success in copying the data.

  He slid the clothes back where he had found them, surveyed the room to ensure it was exactly as he'd found it, then let himself out the door and locked it behind him.

  Kade came to his senses to the sound of his slate chiming at him. It was the insistent chime, the one that signaled a real-time connection request from one of his high-priority contacts.

  He rolled off the bed and got it. Sam was sitting upright, watching him.

  [Incoming video call from Ilyana Alexander. Accept? Y/N]

  "It's Ilya," he said to Sam. "Can I take it?"

  "Go ahead," she replied. "But you can't tell her anything."

  Kade nodded grimly. He hit Y, angled the slate such that Sam wouldn't be visible.

  Ilya's face appeared on the screen.

  "Kade! I'm so glad you answered. Are you OK?"

  "Hey, Ilya. Yeah, I'm fine."

  "You look like shit! I heard you were mugged."

  "Yeah, it's true. How'd you hear that?"

  "Someone posted it from the conference. Grad student mugged last night. Also that he had a great poster. Also that there was an explosion and a double murder in Bangkok near where he was mugged. Any connection?"

  Kade sighed, aware that Sam was watching him. "Only to the poster. I think they mugged me 'cuz they didn't like my graphs."

  Ilya chuckled.

  "How're you holding up, Kade?"

  "Good. The mugging sucked. But, you know, the conference is going well. I met Professor Shu."

  "Yeah? What's she like?"

  He hesitated. "She's charming. Really charming. She invited me to come out to Shanghai. Maybe in August or so. She might invite Rangan too."

  "Oooh, aren't you the jet-setter?"

  Kade chuckled in return.

  "You really OK, Kade?"

  He forced himself to smile. Ilya would know that he couldn't tell her anything useful. She was just calling to let him know that she cared. She was calling to lend him strength.

  "Yeah, Ilya. Thank you. I'm really OK."

  She looked skeptical. "OK. I'll let you go, I guess. Sorry to call so late."

  The screen said 1.12am. It must be, what, noon back home? Eleven?

  "No problem."

  She smiled at him. His heart melted. He missed her. He missed Rangan. He would find a way out of this. He would.

  She reached forward to disconnect.

  "Ilya… hold on."

  "Sure, Kade. What's up?"

  How could he express this? How could he say this without getting at the issues he couldn't talk about? Issues he didn't even want Sam to clue into.

  The world was going mad around him. What he wanted was a check on his sanity.

  "Ilya. It's really pretty intense here. There's a lot of stuff you don't see in the States, you know. Really provocative stuff."

  Ilya nodded. "Yeah. I hear Thailand is that way."

  He still didn't know how to approach this. He tried. "Ilya… in your essays. You talk about increasing access to trans-human tech. You talk about all the upsides. Do you ever worry about it being misused?"

  She nodded. "Yeah, Kade. Of course. We've talked about this. Everything gets misused, sometimes. People will do all sorts of nasty shit with transhuman tech. But through history, when people have had the chance to use technology to improve their own lives, they've done a lot of good along with the harm. The good has more than outweighed the bad. Dramatically so. That's the only reason we're here today."

  Kade nodded. "Yeah."

  He wanted to ask his friend directly what he should do. He couldn't do that. Couldn't give any of this away. Not with Sam right there. Not over an ordinary video call over an ordinary slate.

  "What about… what if only a few have it?"

  "You mean if only the rich have a technology? Only the powerful? Or only the elites?"

  Kade nodded.

  "Broad dissemination and individual choice turn most technologies into a plus. If only the elites have access, it's a dystopia. The worse events in history… The worst atrocities… Maybe half of them arose directly because the powerful had a monopoly or a near-monopoly on some key capability."

  Kade nodded. "Yeah. That's what I thought you would say."

  She peered at him. "You sure you're OK, Kade?"

  He smi
led. "Better all the time, Ilya. Thank you. Thanks for calling."

  She smiled at him. He could see the worry in her eyes, but she did her best. He wished he could touch her mind.

  "I love you, Kade." She smirked at him. "Like a brother, I mean. I know Rangan loves you too."

  Something relaxed inside him. Some tiny fraction of the tension in his body dissipated.

  "I love you too, Ilya. Both of you. Tell Rangan I said so."

  She smiled. The call ended.

  Kade lay back in the bed. He had known what Ilya thought, but it was good to hear it again. He would follow the path she would choose. As soon as he figured out how.

  He heard Sam resettle herself into her bedroll on the floor.

  "Kade?" she said.

  "Yeah?"

  "Don't get any stupid ideas."

  Wats slid the probe into his own terminal, opened the files to view them. Encrypted. The data from Tuksin's phone and terminal were completely encrypted. He'd expected that. He inputted the print pattern he'd lifted from the scanner. Still encrypted. A password required in addition. He frowned in annoyance.

  He connected to a site he knew in Mumbai. He spent a moment specifying what he needed, entering in the parameters of his problem, and then submitted the request for a bid.

  A few minutes later the bid came back. He whistled softly. It was high. He had the funds to pay it, but it was a non-trivial amount of money. This trip was rapidly exhausting the remaining balance of the settlement the Corps had given him. He paused for a moment, weighing his options. It was really no choice at all. He was committed to this course of action. More money could always be found later.

  He accepted the bid, uploaded the data.

  Two thousand miles away, a server in Mumbai received the data he transmitted. It analyzed the problem, broke it down into pieces, broke the pieces down into fragments, broke the fragments down into shards, and then distributed those shards to its worker devices.

  Around the world, a network of more than two million compromised computers, slates, phones, gaming rigs, VR booths, and other devices, all operating unbeknownst to their owners, received their instructions, and began to explore the space of possible passwords, searching for the single pattern that would unlock Cham Phrom Tuksin's encrypted files.

  31

  FROM A FRIEND

  Thursday dawned slowly. The alarm was beeping again. Kade slapped it off. Sam was in the shower. She felt pensive.

  Kade felt numb. He'd left the serenity package on overnight. Everything about his situation felt distant, unreal.

  He could see no way to avoid Friday without harming others he felt responsible for. The best he could do was play along with the ERD, and hope that nothing bad came of it.

  The time would come when he would break free. He wasn't sure when or where or how, but it would come. He would bide his time, and watch, and wait, and be ready when the opportunity arose.

  Sam came out of the shower, clothes already on. "Your turn."

  He showered. His bruise was fading. He dressed. They ate in silence. A taxi driven by one of their escorts drove them to the conference. He attended sessions. Sam was with him constantly. One of their escorts was always in sight. When he went to the restroom, an armed man followed him in.

  At 2.58pm, between sessions, Kade saw Somdet Phra Ananda approaching him. He felt Sam tense through the link, felt her awareness of the pistol concealed in the small of her back, the knives in her boots, the positions of their two support shooters, the ceramic guns loaded with graphene-tipped rounds concealed under their blazers.

  He pushed her paranoia out of his mind, met Ananda's eyes with his own. Sam dropped the link. The senior monk and professor came close, nodded to him. Kade nodded back. He couldn't feel Ananda's mind. He had his own Nexus pulled in tight. He had no idea what the ERD would pick up on and what they wouldn't.

  "Kaden, would you walk with me?"

  "Of course, sir."

  He felt Sam go even more alert.

  "It's a beautiful day outside. Would you like to walk in the garden?"

  It was incredibly hot and muggy outside. The rain had been on and off all day. It was anything but Kade's idea of beautiful.

  "Wherever you'd like to go, Professor."

  Ananda nodded again, then led the way. Kade imagined the Thai mercenaries rushing to keep him in their sights.

  "I was sorry to hear about your mugging, young man."

  "Thank you, sir."

  It was drizzling outside. Kade felt damp and sticky instantly. The garden was a web of interconnecting stone paths winding around green ponds. Low bridges crossed streams. Small stone statues of Buddhas, demons, and gods flanked the paths. Lush green tropical plants filled all empty space.

  Ananda pointed things out as they walked. A bio-engineered carbon sink species that provided ground cover. The symbolism of the patterns the paths made. A seven hundred year-old statue of a bodhisattva, carved by a fallen dynasty.

  "Do you know the bodhisattva vow?" Ananda asked.

  Kade shook his head.

  "It's from the Mah y na school of Buddhism," Ananda said, "different than my own, but still beautiful. The most basic ex pression of it is 'May I attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings.' It's a pledge to keep being reborn into the material world of suffering, to put nirvana off indefinitely, until all beings in the universe have attained enlightenment and can also enter nirvana. It's perhaps the ultimate vow of placing others before oneself."

  Kade contemplated that. "It's a beautiful thought."

  Had Wats said something similar once? It was a gorgeous thought indeed.

  "Another variant I like is 'All beings, without number, I vow to liberate.' Quite a commitment, eh?"

  Kade nodded. "It is."

  "It's been said that Buddhism is the most naturally democratic religion for this reason. The aim of Buddhist orders such as my own is not to control people, but to empower them. You understand?"

  "I think so," Kade replied.

  A memory of something else Wats had said came to him.

  Buddhism suits me 'cuz nobody's in charge. Nobody's decidin' for me if I'm good or bad, goin' to heaven or hell. It's just me workin' on my head, you workin' your head, the friggin' Dalai Lama workin' on his head.

  Democracy, indeed.

  Ananda smiled. "Good, good. In Buddhism, as in, say, science, the goal is to empower people. To learn things of value and import, and spread them, so that as many men and women as possible can benefit from that knowledge, can use it to better themselves."

  Kade thought of Shu. It would be like giving guns to children, she'd said. There will be a vacuum… You will always be one of the elite.

  "What if people aren't ready for it?" he asked. "What if they'd hurt themselves with it? Hurt others with it? What if they're not wise enough for it?"

  Ananda raised an eyebrow. "Are you wiser than humanity? All by yourself? Is it your place to choose?"

  Kade shrugged. "No. And I agree that science should be used to serve the common good, to empower people. But… Maybe I can see harms that they can't. Maybe I've thought through consequences that most people wouldn't. Maybe I just know that a few people would abuse some piece of knowledge, even if the rest would use it for good."

  "That is their karma, young man, not yours," Ananda said. Each of us must walk our own ethical path. And together, men and women of ethics can curb the damage of those without. But for you… if you keep vital knowledge from others, then you are robbing them of their freedom, of their potential. If you keep knowledge to yourself, then the fault is not theirs, but yours."

  Kade mulled this. "I think I agree with you. Mostly."

  A scientist is responsible for the consequences of his research, Kade thought. Both negative and positive. What good is my research if the world doesn't get the positive consequences out of it?

  But can I do it without hurting people? Without making a tool to create slaves and assassins?

  Ananda s
miled. "I'm glad to hear that. Because it can be tempting to hoard knowledge, to use it as a way to gain advantage over others. But if we seek to serve our fellow man, we must spread the things we learn as far and wide as possible. To empower the downtrodden, we must put knowledge in their hands."

  Kade looked around at the garden as they walked. "I'm not always sure I'm doing the right thing," he told Ananda.