by Various
“Nothing. Thanks… I didn’t know I’d lost it.” He pulled out his wallet and snuck a glance at the one he’d recovered at the hospital. They were identical. He tucked the two of them inside together, then snapped his wallet shut and squeezed it tightly.
“I figured you’d need it, since I see you at the library a lot,” Jena said. “I’ll be working there again this summer, so I guess I’ll run into you.”
He nodded. Was that an invitation? Did she actually want to see him there or was she just being polite?
“Coming, Ephraim?” said the twin on Jena’s right.
“I need to empty out my locker,” he said. “Meet you outside?”
“Don’t be long.” The twins spoke in chorus. How did they do that?
“I’ll be right out,” he said.
The three girls split around Ephraim and Nathan as they passed, and then smoothly merged back into a row as they walked down the hall. Nathan turned and stared after them as they left, then he joined Ephraim at his locker.
“What was that about Madeline?” Nathan said.
Ephraim didn’t know when it had started, but Nathan called Ephraim’s mother by her first name. She actually enjoyed it.
“She’s in the hospital. Nothing serious.” He couldn’t bear to go into the details right now.
“Shit, no wonder you’re such a mess. Sorry to hear it. I’ll drive you over there. I’d like to see her, too.”
“No no, that’s okay. Mrs. Morales is taking me, and I think my mom doesn’t want a lot of attention at the moment. Thanks, though.”
“Hey, I bet this’ll take your mind off your troubles!” Nathan said. He showed Ephraim a picture of the three girls on his camera. They were cut off just below the shoulders and above their thighs.
“Your framing’s off,” Ephraim said.
“No, it isn’t.” Nathan grinned and pointed out Mary and Shelley’s impressive cleavage in their blue summer dresses. “It’s a shame Jena doesn’t have much up there, but she isn’t bad. Especially when she isn’t wearing those frumpy shirts she usually has on.”
Ephraim had to agree. It was nice to see Jena in a skirt. The growth spurt she’d had the summer before their freshman year of high school had distracted Ephraim into almost failing Algebra, the one class they’d shared that first semester. A lot of guys paid more attention to her that year, until she began covering herself up. Now they all wondered what she was hiding.
“She’s hot the way she is,” Ephraim said. “How did you sneak that picture anyway?” Ephraim was unable to tear his eyes from it.
“I turned off the shutter sound. But wait, there’s more.”
Nathan clicked over to the next picture, a shot of Mary, Shelley, and Jena from behind.
“Pervert,” Ephraim said. “You should be ashamed of yourself. Make sure you e-mail me a copy of that as soon as you get home.”
“I could charge for these!” Nathan leaned his wiry body against a locker and gazed blissfully at the camera screen. His long blond hair fell over his eyes. “Listen, when you get in their car, try to sit between them—”
“I’m not going to cop a feel. Their mother will be in the car.” Not to mention Jena. He wondered if he could sit close to her, though he supposed he’d be forced to ride shotgun.
“That’s what makes it extra naughty. They probably won’t say anything in front of her. Come on, look at those calves!” Nathan exclaimed. Ephraim rolled his eyes.
When he opened his locker, a piece of paper fluttered out. He bent to retrieve it from the floor.
“‘Make a wish and flip the coin to make it come true,’” he read. It looked like Nathan’s handwriting. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” He tossed it to his friend.
Nathan read it. “Weird. I don’t know.”
“That isn’t your handwriting?” Ephraim was sure of it.
“I did not leave a note in your locker. That’s so elementary school.” Nathan scrunched up his eyes as he looked at it again. “It does look like my handwriting. A little. But I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean. What coin? It doesn’t make any sense.”
He handed the note back to Ephraim.
Ephraim stared at it. Could it be referring to the quarter he’d found last night? He hadn’t even mentioned that to Nathan yet. This was as unsettling as the duplicate library card and the idea of another kid who looked like him. But what did it mean? And who had written the note?
He pulled the quarter from his back pocket and reread the note one more time.
“You’re actually going to try it?” Nathan snorted.
Ephraim shrugged. “No harm in it.” He held the coin flat on his palm and cleared his throat.
“I wish…” He glanced at Nathan. “I wish my mom wasn’t in the hospital.”
Nothing happened, of course.
“Flip it,” Nathan said. “Like the note said.”
“Never mind. This is silly,” Ephraim said. He moved to put it back in his pocket and felt a jolt in his palm, as if someone had stabbed it with a pin. He dropped the coin, and it rolled away on the uneven gray tiles.
“Ow,” he muttered.
“What happened?”
“It… shocked me,” Ephraim said, glancing around. The coin had landed under the locker across from him. He crouched and picked it up, shaking off clumps of dust. It had come up heads. The metal felt hot for a second, but it quickly cooled in his hand. His vision swam and he suddenly felt nauseous. He clutched his stomach.
“Ephraim?” Nathan said. “What are you doing on the floor?”
He had to get to the bathroom. “I—” He wasn’t going to make it.
Ephraim turned and stuck his head into his locker.
“Dude!” Nathan said. He moved to the other side of the hall while Ephraim vomited.
Ephraim wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Sorry,” he said. He held his breath and closed the door of his locker, deciding he didn’t really need the papers and comic books that had accumulated at the bottom throughout the year. He walked to the water fountain at the end of the hall to rinse out his mouth. The water was warm and tasted metallic.
“Are you all right? The nurse might still be here,” Nathan said.
“I feel fine now.” It was as though nothing had happened. Ephraim stuffed the quarter and the note in his pocket and grabbed his backpack. He suddenly realized how lucky he was. If that had happened while he’d been talking to Jena…
“But you just barfed in your locker. I mean, at least tell the janitor.” Nathan turned his camera so Ephraim could see the screen. It was a blurry shot of Ephraim with his head tucked into his locker. It was enough to make him feel queasy again. He pushed the camera away.
“I’m so glad I have you around to document my greatest moments,” Ephraim said.
“The camera doesn’t lie,” Nathan said. “You really are that much of a tool. You sure you’re okay?”
“Maybe I caught a bug at the hospital,” Ephraim said. He’d been sitting there all night, after all. But who’d ever heard of a twenty-four-second stomach flu?
“When were you in the hospital?” Nathan asked.
“I just told you, my mom went in last night.”
“Oh no!” Nathan’s eyes widened. “Is it serious? How’s Madeline?”
“Did we not just have this conversation?” Nathan must have been more distracted by the twins than he’d thought. “She’ll recover. I’m catching a ride with Mary and Shelley to the hospital now,” Ephraim said slowly. “Remember?”
Nathan seemed even more surprised by that. “You’re kidding. I’d love to share a back seat with them. Man, I wish my mom were in the hospital.”
“Careful what you wish for,” Ephraim said.
Wait a minute. Wish?
He’d just made a wish that his mother wasn’t in the hospital. Now Nathan didn’t remember it…
Ramez Naam became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of Nexus (2013
), from Angry Robot.
Visit his website at rameznaam.com.
* * *
Novel: Nexus (excerpt) ••••
NEXUS
(excerpt)
by Ramez Naam
First published as Nexus (2013), by Angry Robot
• • • •
Chapter 1—The Don Juan Protocol
Friday 2040.02.17 : 2255 hours
THE WOMAN who called herself Samantha Cataranes climbed out of the cab and walked towards the house on 23rd Street. The door opened, spilling light and the sounds of music and voices out into the night. A pair of young women emerged, arm in arm, wrapped up in conversation. They smiled at her as she passed them, and Sam smiled back. Faceprinting code identified them, used her tactical contacts to superimpose softly glowing names, ages, and threat levels beside their faces in her field of view. All green. Civilians. No known connection to her mission.
Sam ran her eyes over the exterior of the home. Her sight came alive with structural elements, power lines, data lines, possible ingress and egress through doors, windows, weak spots in the walls. She blinked it all away. None of it served her purpose tonight.
Her left knee twinged as she ascended the stairs. A memento of that disastrous firefight outside Sārī. As if she could ever forget that night. Her face felt tight. Her lips were overstuffed, her cheeks taut, her jaw awkwardly cocked. Her nerves strained in protest at the visage she held. It would be a relief to relax into her own face again.
Bits of her briefing for this mission flitted through her mind unbidden. A building blasted apart, bodies strewn everywhere. Religious leaders murdered by trusted old friends. Politicians with sudden, implausible changes of heart. All the suicide bombings, the assassinations, the political subversions, the blank-faced companies of inhumanly loyal, unthinking, unquestioning super-soldiers. And behind them all, the common thread: Beijing’s new coercion technology. A technology that this target might just help them get a step closer to understanding and defeating.
Sam opened the door and let herself in to the party, a wide smile on her false face. Overly loud flux music hit her. The smells of dozens of bodies inundated her sharpened senses. Identities swam over the sea of faces. Somewhere in this house, she would find her man.
• • •
Friday 2040.02.17 : 2310 hours
“Do you romp?” the girl asked. She leaned in close, close enough to be heard over the din of the party, close enough to kiss.
Kaden Lane watched carefully, clinically, as Don Juan molded his body’s responses. A slight smile. Release of oxytocin. Dilation of capillaries in his cheeks. A mix of confidence and anticipation. Candidate replies flitted through his mind, half-formed on his lips, as the software’s conversational package sifted through possibilities:
[Yeah, I love to dance.]
[Sure, what kind of music do you like?]
[If I’m with a pretty girl like you.]
Signals propagated through the highly modified web of Nexus nodes in his brain. The drug’s nanostructures evaluated data, processed it, transformed it. Don Juan made a choice in milliseconds. Input spiked at Nexus nodes attached to neurons in the speech centers of his frontal and temporal lobes. Nerve impulses raced outward from speech centers to motor cortex, and from there to the muscles of his tongue and jaw, his lips and diaphragm. A fraction of a second after he’d heard the girl speak, those muscles contracted to produce his response.
“Yeah, I love to dance,” Kade heard himself say.
Who writes these lame lines? he wondered.
“Want to see if there’s something good tonight?” she asked.
Frances. Her name was Frances. They’d met twenty minutes ago in this hallway. She was twenty-six years old, a Virgo, a graphic designer by trade. Frances smelled nice, liked to touch him when she talked, and did look rather fetching in her tight pants and low-cut top. She loved acro-yoga, loud dance music, travel in Central America, and her two cats.
Kade had never asked anyone their sign before. He supposed in a way he still hadn’t. The software had done that with his mouth and lungs. Did that count?
All the test was supposed to show was that software could use their Nexus-based interface to control speech and hearing in a real environment. It was Rangan who’d insisted on using this dating app to test their platform, and that Kade be the one to run it. “You gotta get out and have some fun, dude,” he’d said. “All you do is mope around. Flirting with some girls is exactly what you need.”
Next time, he thought to himself, Rangan can do the field test.
“Sure, let’s see what’s happening,” Don Juan answered.
Kade pulled out his phone and stuck it to the wall beside them. Don Juan spoke to it. “Bay Area dance parties tonight. Full immersion for two.”
Frances turned to face the camera. A partygoer jostled her as he scooted by down the hall. She squeezed up against Kade, nestling into his side. Her body did feel rather warm and enticing, he had to admit. He put an arm around her waist as the phone responded to his request. Maybe Rangan did have a point…
Retinal projectors sought out their eyes. Targeted acoustics zeroed in on their ears. Local events scrolled across shared vision.
SEROTONIN OVERLOAD IV
A brief advertisement for the event washed over their senses: pulsing music, syncopated lights, warm smiles, dancers embracing and moving in time.
Frances made a face. “A little too earnest for me.”
Kade chuckled.“Next.”
CYGNUS EXPRESS—A PROJECT ODYSSEUS FUNDRAISER
Vastness of space, planets orbiting distant suns, partygoers in gleaming imitations of vacuum suits, bleeping sound of contact through the static of cosmic background radiation, overlaid with driving trance rhythm.
Frances shrugged. Damn, she felt good pressed against him.
“In space,” she said, “no one can hear you dance.”
Kade shrugged. “Next.”
CARE BARE by UNITED SKEINS OF SEXY
New sights and sounds: Writhing, almost-naked bodies, skin moving against skin, moaning pulsing sounds, fast flashes of mouths and hips and breasts.
Frances moved her hip against him just a bit. “Now that looks pretty hot. Yeah?”
Kade laughed out loud. Any other night, he wouldn’t have the balls to venture into a scene like that. But what the hell. His task tonight was to push the platform they’d built on top of Nexus’s nanoscale elements to its limits.
It’ll be a great test case, he told himself. I’m doing this for science.
Don Juan responded for him. “Maybe. You planning on getting fresh with me?”
Kade let it drive, let it wink with his eye.
Frances smirked and raised an eyebrow, turning towards him, her body still pressed against his. “Oh, you’d like that, would you?”
She batted her pretty green eyes up at him.
“Oh, I think the pleasure would be all yours,” Don Juan replied. Kade put his other arm around her waist, holding her to him now, looking down into her eyes.
Frances bit her lower lip.
“Prove it.”
Kade might have stuttered, might have blushed, but a more calculating logic was in control. “Your place or mine?”
• • •
They kissed standing up, Kade’s back against the wall of the room they’d snuck into. Frances was a giggler. She made out with a fun enthusiasm that Kade found infectious. They kissed and kissed, giggled and whispered. Kade’s clinical detachment crumbled. Someone opened the door to the room, saw them, and backed out apologetically. More giggles ensued. More kissing followed. Giggling gave way to sighing. Sighing gave way to grinding, to hands roaming. Heat rose between their bodies. Her breath was coming short and heavy. So was his.
The dialog sucks, but I can’t complain about the results, Kade thought to himself. There was one more test he’d promised Rangan he’d run. Now for the kinesthetic interfaces…
He kept his eyes closed as he kissed
her, immersed himself in the Nexus OS that he and Rangan had built atop the hundreds of millions of nano-structures of the drug that suffused their brains.
Softly glowing numbers scrolled across the bottom of his field of view. A column of icons hung at the right. A research log window with his field test notes lay compressed down to its title bar. The muted roar of the party still rushed in his ears. Kade flicked his inner eye over pulse, respiration, neuro-electrical activity, interface status, neurotransmitter and neuron-hormone levels. All green. He could see the copy of Don Juan that Rangan had pirated and modified running through its models, behaving nicely and only using the resources he’d assigned. He flicked past it, sought out another program, one Rangan had lifted from VR porn and hacked to send its output to their body-control software. Peter North.
[activate: peter_north mode: full_interactive priority: 1 smut_level: 2]
Frances pressed herself more insistently against him. The giggles were gone. Her lips brushed his jaw, tugged wetly at his mouth. Her body was hot beneath his hands. Her snug pants were smooth and slick and hugged her ass perfectly. She spread her thighs slightly, leaned her hips against his, ground her crotch against his leg as they kissed. Her soft little moans of pleasure went straight to some primal part of his brain. Numbers and icons still floated in his vision.
Kade ignored one set of stimuli, let himself be absorbed by the other.
Peter North was in charge now, a VR porn bot Rangan had lifted from the net and adapted to their Nexus OS as a way to test their kinesthetic interfaces. It spat out limb position changes and muscle and joint vectors. Nexus nodes in Kade’s brain flared, signals raced from his motor cortex to his limbs, and Kade’s body responded.
Frances moaned softly, shifted her ass against his hand, ground herself against his hip. Peter North slid Kade’s hand down her back, past the fabric of her low-cut top, and down onto the smooth and snug backside of her pants. His hand squeezed one perfect cheek, rose up into the room, and came down with a resounding smack.
