by Naam, Ramez
"Only a fool is always certain," the monk replied.
Kade nodded again. "Thank you for the advice," he said. "I'll think about that."
Ananda nodded. "I'm sure you will, young man."
He led Kade back towards the conference center, pointing out more plant species along the way, talking about the complex web of life that connected them, telling the stories of every statue, every small bridge, pointing out the beauty in the way the drops of rain pocked the surface of the ponds.
When Ananda had gone, when he'd left Kade, slightly damp, slightly sticky, alone in the convention center, Sam opened the Nexus bridge again.
[sam] Interesting conversation. What do you make of all that?
[kade] I have no idea.
But Kade knew he lied.
At 3.19am local time, a lone CPU in a subverted cluster in a data processing center in Kuala Lumpur multiplied two 512-bit prime numbers and found that they were the factors it had been seeking for a 1024-bit number it had been assigned. It communicated its result to a system in Rio de Janeiro, which passed it to a cutout in Detroit, Michigan, which anonymously forwarded it to a machine in Johannesburg, South Africa, which finally delivered it to a server in Mumbai, India. The result was checked and rechecked. Everything fit. It was the final piece in the puzzle.
Three minutes later, at 4.22am local time in Bangkok, Thailand, Wats' slate chimed. It was a message from Mumbai. After twenty-nine hours of cracking, and more than a hundred trillion processor-seconds of computation, the key had been unlocked.
Sleep vanished from Wats' thoughts. He applied the key, and the data he'd copied from Tuksin's terminal and phone opened for him. It was in Thai. He invoked a translating filter, searched the data for Kade's name.
The first hit told him much:
From:Tuksin, Phra Racha Khana Chan Tham
To:Suk Prat-Nung
Sent:Tuesday 1.38am local time (GMT + 7)
Subject:RE: something of interest
Suk,
The first half of the payment has reached my accounts. Here is the information.
The name is Kaden Lane. Ananda detected immensely strong Nexus activity from him and tasked me to investigate. He believes Lane has absorbed it permanently, but at levels far beyond any we have seen. He is no meditator. He may have the technology you seek.
Well, well, well.
An hour later he pushed back from his slate, whistling softly, piecing it together in his mind.
The tall angular monk named Tuksin that he'd encountered twice now, the special assistant to Professor Somdet Phra Ananda, was secretly on the payroll of Suk Prat-Nung. And what Suk PratNung wanted, more than anything, was upgrades to Nexus. Ananda had sensed the Nexus in Kade's brain, and assigned Tuksin to follow him. Tuksin had sold that data to Suk Prat-Nung. And Suk Prat-Nung had used it to arrange the ambush in the alley, unaware of Samantha Cataranes and her abilities.
But it was the last message, from Suk to Tuksin, that worried Wats.
The same luck that placed him in our grasp on Monday evening is returning him on Friday. He has struck a friendship with people I know. We will grab him, and the girl, as they leave the event.
The girl is dangerous, but we are now prepared. She will be of value, either alive or dead.
Suk
So Friday night was a trap. Could he use that to extract Kade? No, too dangerous. But he couldn't let Kade just walk into it, either. His first priority had to be keeping his friend alive.
He connected to a distributed anonymization service through an entry node in Switzerland. His signal was bounced around volunteered nodes around the world until it re-emerged on the public net from a node in São Paolo. From there he jumped to a throwaway machine in the Cayman Islands. From there he created a fresh email account on an anonymous mail service in Sweden.
The Friday night event is a trap. They'll try to abduct you, with more force this time. Leave Bangkok. It's too dangerous for you. A Friend
He set up daemons on the email account, to inform him of any attempt to hack it. Then he sat back and waited.
32
PREPARATIONS
Sam woke to someone paging her slate. Garrett Nichols. She padded into the bathroom, turned on the shower for background noise, and answered.
"What's up?"
There was another chime. Becker came online, his strong square face filling up half the screen. It was 6.24am Sam's time, 7.24pm Becker's time. They were on nearly opposite sides of the planet. She could see he was still in the office.
"What's the situation?" Becker asked.
Nichols answered. "Twenty minutes ago, Lane received an email from an anonymous account telling him that tonight is a trap."
The message appeared on screen.
Sam absorbed it.
"Who sent it?" Becker asked.
"We don't know, sir," Nichols replied. "Anonymous account. We can try to backtrack, but if they have any sense it'll be difficult, and it could also give us away."
"Do it," Becker said.
"Yes, sir."
"What's our operational strength for this mission?"
"Twelve combat assets in-country, not including Blackbird. All local contractors approved by CIA." Mercenaries, he didn't say. "Second-generation combat enhancements."
Becker nodded. The Boca Raton held a platoon of marines, but deploying them would require authorizations they didn't have. The mercenaries would have to do. "Deploy them all. I want as many of the assailants as possible taken alive. They could lead us back to Prat-Nung."
"Yes, sir."
"You said you can stop them from self-destructing?"
"It's possible, sir. Based on data picked up by Agent Cataranes' phone, we think we know the self-destruct frequency and code. We can jam that."
"Good," Becker said. "Anything else?"
Nichols spoke. "Sir, I think we should reconsider Lane's role in this."
Becker narrowed his eyes. "Don't tell me you're going to give me the Lane-is-a-civilian line as well?"
Sam kept her breathing steady. Becker wasn't going to get a rise out of her today.
"No, sir," Nichols answered. "But he's an important asset. He's key to getting closer to Shu. It may not be wise to risk him tonight."
"And you, Cataranes?" Becker asked.
"Sir, Special Agent Nichols took the words right out of my mouth."
Becker's eyes flicked down, scanned the message again. "Acknowledged. We have to balance that against the possibility of capturing or neutralizing Ted Prat-Nung. And Lane is not irreplaceable if Shu is going to invite Shankari as well."
He paused for a moment, drummed his fingers. "Agent Cataranes, your top priority is to keep the asset alive. This message advises of us another abduction attempt. That should make your job easier. Special Agent Nichols, make sure the assault team also understand the priority of keeping Lane alive. We should be starting with non-lethal rounds and escalating to lethal fire only if absolutely necessary."
Nichols nodded.
Sam remained silent.
Becker went on, more gently this time. "They'll be expecting just you, Sam. They'll up their firepower to be sure they can handle you. They won't be expecting a dozen fully armed operatives. The advantage will be ours."
"Yes, sir," Sam said, her tone completely flat.
"And delete that email from Lane's account. There's no reason to spook him. You both have your orders. Becker out." His face disappeared.
Sam rubbed her eyes.
"All right, let's talk details," Garrett Nichols said.
At 6.47am, Watson Cole's daemons alerted him that the email account he'd used was under attack. A reply had been received from Lane's account. It contained a known Trojan Horse attack. Opening it would hand over control of his account and systems to the attacker. Forty-five seconds later, a bank of servers began issuing logon attempts to the account, thousand of them per second. Someone was trying to hack into his accoun
t. Disappointing.
Wats disconnected from the mail system in Sweden, then issued the commands to completely wipe the machine in the Cayman Islands.
The cyber-attack meant that the ERD had read his mail first. And their response suggested that they didn't mean to heed his warning.
Wats stood up to his full height and stretched. Joints cracked in his thick neck, his beefy shoulders. He looked down at his massive arms, his dark brown skin, his superhumanly strong hands with their light palms, and contemplated his near future.
These hands had killed before. Many times.
Was he willing to kill again?
Yes. If he needed to, he would kill.
What would that do to his karma?
It was too late for that. His karma was as dark as could be. If he would suffer so that Kade might live, so be it. If he would send himself into an even deeper pit of hell that the world might be a better place, so be it.
He turned his hands over, studying them. Somewhere beneath his skin, DNA was slowly unraveling. Somewhere, the seeds of cancers were being sown.
We're all born dying, Wats told himself. What matters is only what we do with the instant we're given.
He'd doomed himself already. The world could still be saved.
It was time to collect his weapons and make his preparations. This was going to be a loud and bloody night.
In the command center aboard the Boca Raton, an hour after he'd signed off with Cataranes, Nichols received another call from Becker.
"Sir."
"I wanted to confirm with you: The other asset, the November asset. He's operational?"
"Yes, sir, though…"
"Yes, Special Agent Nichols?"
"I still think Agent Cataranes should know about the November asset, sir."
"What she doesn't know she can't spill," Becker replied. "The November program may have a very long lifetime. We're under strict orders to keep it to a minimum of disclosure."
"Yes, sir." Nichols bowed his head.
"Good. I've cleared my Friday schedule. I'll be online with you and your team for most of it. Get some rest. Tonight I need you at your best."
"Yes, sir."
Becker signed off.
Nichols sat alone in the command center, restless and troubled.
Kade sat on the bed in their room at the Prince Palace Hotel. It was 9.20pm. Soon, he and Sam would activate their implanted memory-sets. His had been updated by two rounds of hypno today. He'd forget that he was here on false pretenses, that Sam was an ERD agent, that his friends back home were in danger, that someone had attempted to kidnap him two nights ago, that Su-Yong Shu intended a posthuman revolution against humanity, and more. He would be the Kade of two months ago, innocent, unbloodied, shy, nervous, optimistic. That idea should appeal, he thought. It didn't in the slightest.
He'd pushed through the final day of the conference today, Sam and a member of their backup team constantly near him. He'd seen Narong, finally. The Thai student had greeted him and Sam and said he was looking forward to tonight.
Kade had the urge to warn him, even with Sam there. He didn't. He found the logic inescapable. If he warned Narong, friends back home would be harmed for certain. If he didn't warn Narong or the others, they might all still come through this unscathed.
I have to think strategically, now, he thought. I have to wait for my chance. It'll come.
Cataranes came out of the bathroom. She had make-up on. They'd have extensive support, she'd assured him, but he could tell that something about this mission didn't sit well with her. She claimed it was just normal pre-mission adrenaline.
Soon, he wouldn't remember or care. He'd be a different Kade altogether.
"Time to go," Sam said.
BRIEFING
We find that the Constitution guarantees protections only to human persons. Non-human persons such as those created by the combination of non-human genes with human genes, by the integration of technology that affords non-human abilities, or by any significant deviation from the existing spectrum of human characteristics, are afforded no special protections. As such, Congress and the states may legislate the status of nonhuman persons without regard to the Constitutional protections afforded to humans.
Dyson v Department of Homeland Security,
Supreme Court of the United States, 2036
This court has committed a great crime today. To assert that a living thinking being, of any sort, is deserving of no rights is to ignore the lessons of two hundred and sixty years of democracy. We invite tyranny, atrocity, and slavery with this judgment.
Justice Elena Martinez,
Dissent in Dyson v Department of Homeland Security, 2036
33
SYNCHRONICITY
The cab dropped Kade and Robyn off near Soi Sama Han. Narong and Sajja met them, walked with them to the Buddha's Kiss. Everyone was in a good mood. He could feel Robyn's mind buzzing, excited. He couldn't wait for the Synchronicity trip to begin.
Sajja led them up a flight of stairs to a heavy door. Bolts unlocked. Chuan grinned and waved them in.
They filed into a spacious living room. Low furniture surrounded an open center space. A patterned carpet in gold and browns covered most of the floor. A half-dozen men and women from the previous night at the club sat on small cushions arranged in a circle. A low altar occupied the center of one wall, under a gorgeously ornate window. One side of the room connected to an open kitchen and a hallway. Buddha paintings took up another two walls.
A wizened Thai woman came in from the hall, a warm smile on her face.
"Aunt Chariya," Narong said. Their hostess. He introduced them. There were hugs all around. A ritual would start the trip. They were waiting for just one more person. Chariya suggested they take seats in the ring of cushions on the floor.
They found two open cushions between Narong and Lalana. They sat with Robyn on the left, by Narong, and Kade on the right, next to Lalana. Lalana giggled and said hello to them both. Her hand lingered as she clasped Kade's. There were eleven of them in the circle now, including Kade and Robyn, five young men and six young women. Kade recognized them all from the party at the Buddha Kiss on Monday night. Chuan, Sajja, Narong, and Loesan were the males. Lalana, Rajni, Sarai, Ning, and Areva were the females. One spot in the circle was empty. In the center of the circle there were two cushions. An old man sat on one, in lotus position, facing the altar, away from Kade and Robyn. Chariya came and sat in the other, back to back with the old man, facing towards Kade and Robyn.
"Come closer, everyone," she beckoned. "Bring the circle in as close as we can."
They shuffled forward until the circle was snug and close. Kade's knees touched Robyn's, touched Lalana's. It was delicious, distracting.
He could feel Chariya's mind, just barely. A whisper of peace and calm. And just beyond her…? Niran. Her husband. Strong, proud, tranquil.
"Empty your mind of all things," Chariya intoned. "Close your eyes. Feel your breath as it enters your body. Feel your breath as it leaves your body. Seek not to change it, simply observe."
Kade breathed with her, felt and heard the room breathe also.
A sound came. The door opened. He kept his eyes closed.
"Suk," he heard Chariya say. "How nice of you to join us."
"Hello, Auntie," said the new voice. "It's nice to see you too."
Kade felt a flutter of displeasure from Chariya.
"Since you haven't taken a seat yet," she said, "you can serve the rest of us."
"Yes, Auntie."
He heard footfalls. Someone walked past him. There was a tinkling. More footfalls. Someone made a swallowing sound. The tinkling was just in front of him. "Here," someone whispered. The new voice.
Kade opened his eyes. The newcomer was crouched in front of him, offering him a small glass filled with a silvery metallic liquid.
Kade nodded his thanks, took the glass, and drained it. More Nexus, mixed with Empathek.
He closed his eyes again, w
ent back to focusing on his breath.
"Watch your breath leave your body," Chariya intoned slowly. "Watch it enter again. Let your breath fill your attention, let it expand to take up all of your mind. When thoughts arise, simply smile, and bring your attention back to your breath."
