Nexus n-1

by Naam, Ramez

  The cab drove them to Simonyi Field, formerly the site of NASA's Ames Research Center, and dropped them in front of the giant Hangar 3. It loomed above them, longer than a football field, taller than a seven story building.

  "Welcome to our party space." Kade grinned.

  Sam nodded her approval. "Impressive. How'd you score this?"

  "Our lab leases it for experiment space. And, well, this is kind of an experiment."

  Sam raised an eyebrow.

  "You'll see."

  Kade led them to a back door into the hangar. He knocked quickly three times, and the door opened.

  Inside an entryway, a large sign read "Welcome! Please turn off data connections on all phones, slates, pens, watches, specs, shades, rings, etc… No active transmitters, please!"

  Below that, another sign: "Close Door and Open Mind As You Enter."

  To her right, the man who'd opened the door for them. Six feet tall, black, muscular, and lean, with a shaved head and a relaxed posture. Watson Cole. Data spooled across her tactical contacts in pulsing red. Threat level: high.

  Watson "Wats" Cole (2009 - )

  Sergeant 1st Class, US Marines (ret 2038)

  Deployed: Iran (2035), Burma (2036-37), Kazakhstan (2037-38) (…)

  Specialist: Counter-intel, Hand-to-Hand Combat

  Augments: Marine Combat & Recovery Boosters (2036, 2037, 2038)

  Approach with Extreme Caution

  Cole clasped hands with Kade. "Kade."

  Kade responded. "Good to see you, Wats. This is my friend Sam. She should be on the list now."

  Wats raised an eyebrow, eyes still on Kade. Then, slowly, he nodded. Calm, dark eyes turned towards her. "Samara Chavez. You're on the list. I'm Wats." He extended his large brownskinned hand.

  Sam had read Cole's bio already. A refugee from war-torn Haiti, brought to the US by a Marine who'd met and married his mother. Cole had enlisted in the Corps at age eighteen, distinguished himself in missions across the globe, been handpicked for augmentation and promotion. Then he'd been captured by rebels in Kazakhstan. The man who emerged from that months-long ordeal was different. A peace activist. A Buddhist. A pacifist. Had captivity changed him? Or something more?

  Sam took his hand. "Nice to meet you, Wats."

  His grip was firm but not forceful. Those hands could crush steel. They'd killed men across two continents. Even with her newer, top-secret fourth-generation enhancements, Sam wasn't sure she wanted to mess with Watson Cole.

  "Please turn off any radios," he said.

  Why?

  "Sure," she answered.

  She pulled her show phone from her jacket pocket, flipped it to standby, used the motion as cover to blink the surveillance gear on her body into passive mode.

  Kade was returning his own phone to a pocket. He turned and smiled. "Wanna go see the space? We're still a little early."

  "Absolutely," she answered. "Lead on."

  Lane led her through a large heavy door, the kind Sam suspected might be EM shielded, and closed it behind them. On the other side was a hallway. Kade opened the door at the far end and they stepped through into a large open space, the true interior of the original hangar. It was at least two hundred feet across, with a vaulted ceiling seventy or eighty feet tall – a space you could fit an old 747 into. A circle of couches occupied one end of the hangar. Along one wall was a bar. A dozen people were milling about, apparently setting up for the party. At the other end she saw a DJ platform with four large screens. Behind them was the DJ, dark-skinned, bleached blonde hair, in multicolored Sufi robes.

  Data scrolled across her vision in yellow. A person of interest.

  Rangan Shankari (2012 - ) aka "Axon" (stage name)

  PhD candidate, Neural Engineering, Sanchez Lab, UCSF

  Technology R&D Risk Level: Medium [human intelligence enhancement]

  Rangan waved at them across the room. "Hey, Kade, can you give me a hand?" he yelled out. "Got a weird glitch in the repeaters here."

  Kade nodded. "Sure, give me a minute."

  He led Sam in another direction, towards a cluster of people at one end of the space.

  "Hey, Ilya," he called out.

  An earnest-looking woman of Russian descent looked up at her name. Dark hair, large thoughtful eyes, a simple green dress accented by a gauzy purple scarf around her neck. She smiled charmingly at Kade as they approached her.

  Ilyana "Ilya" Alexander (2014 - )

  Post-doctoral Fellow, Janus Lab, Systems Neuroscience, UCSF (2039-)

  Published works on meta- and group intelligences

  Technology R&D Risk Level: Medium [post-/non-human intelligence]

  Ilyana Alexander. Another of their little group. A refugee of the 2027 Pudovkin purges in her native Russia. A theoretical neuroscientist whose work focused on cognition in groups and networks.

  Alexander hugged Kade in greeting. "Hello, Kade."

  Kade smiled. "Sam, this is Ilyana Alexander, aka Ilya. Ilya, could you get Sam started?" Kade asked. "I need to help Rangan with something."

  Kade touched Sam's arm. "We have a dose for you. Ilya will set you up. I'll see you in a little bit."

  "Thanks," Sam replied. "See you soon."

  Kade turned and headed off towards the DJ table.

  Ilya led her out of the main hangar, through a door labeled "Crew," and then beyond that to a cozy chill space.

  They sat together on a couch. From out of her bag Ilya produced a small glass vial. Inside was a dark, silvery fluid.

  Sam felt her pulse quicken.

  "You've never used Nexus before?" Ilya asked.

  "Never," Sam lied. Only in training, she thought.

  "This is Nexus 5."

  Nexus 5?

  Nexus 3 was the most common Nexus formulation on the street. Nexus 4 had been a flash in the pan out of a lab in Santa Fe, put down quickly in a joint mission between the ERD and the DEA. Something called Nexus 5 was rumored to exist, but until this point had never been confirmed.

  "Where do you guys get it?" she asked Ilya.

  Ilya hesitated just a moment too long. "We have a friend on the East Coast who gets it for us."

  She's lying, Sam thought.

  "You have experience with psychedelics?" Ilya asked.

  "The usual. Experimentation in college. Not a regular thing."

  "How'd you tolerate them?"

  "Fine. I had fun. Just nothing I needed to do too often."

  Ilya nodded. "Good. Experience with psychedelics always makes this easier. The first time people try Nexus can be a little disorienting, especially the first hour or so. Your brain is learning how to interface with the drug and other brains. With a whole party full of people pressing up against your mind, it's going to be even more intense."

  Sam frowned. "I thought Nexus only worked at short range, like arm's length maybe."

  "Usually." Ilya's gaze flickered away for a moment. "But there are ways to increase the range."

  Pieces clicked together for Sam. The "no transmitters" rule. The "repeaters" Rangan had mentioned. These kids had found a way to extend Nexus transmissions.

  Dear god.

  "Sounds great," she replied. "I'll take your lead."

  Her pulse was quick now. Her stomach was a knot.

  Ilya popped the top of the vial. Sam caught a glimpse of a metallic liquid swirling through the glass. Brownian motion mixed tendrils of grey and silver. For an instant she had the impression of the drug as a living thing, aware, alert, purposeful.

  The moment passed. Ilya handed her the vial, followed closely by a glass of juice from the table.

  Sam downed the drug. The liquid tasted strongly metallic, slightly bitter. It felt heavy on her tongue, oily as it flowed down her throat. She sipped the juice. It was orange-guava. It cut through the taste and feel of Nexus instantly, leaving her mouth just slightly sweet, tart, and tropical.

  Now for the other part I hate.

  Samantha Cataranes closed her eyes, recited the mantra that would
rearrange parts of her memory, make her believe she was someone else.

  Elephant. Skyscraper. Maple.

  She saw them as she thought the words, superimposed them on each other. Mental tumblers clicked, knowledge that should not leak out of her mind was suppressed. Fictions became reality.

  Samara Chavez opened her eyes.

  3

  CALIBRATION

  Saturday 2040.02.18 : 2314 hours

  Samara Chavez was flying. Eyes closed, reclined on the couch, she soared above a landscape of shapes and emotions, senses and experiences. Below her a pulsing red sea of arousal lapped against a sharp and glistening black shore of mathematics, which gave way to green and brown hills of Spanish, Mandarin, and English. She dove into those hills, let the ground accept her and pass through her, burrowed into the earth, tasting tones and verbs and conjugates, feeling the shape of letters, words, characters, feeling their meanings and sounds coalesce. It felt gorgeous.

  Sam was aware that she was high. She was tripping more intensely than any time since… since… And at the same time she felt clear-headed. Every sensation was sharp. Everything fit together just so. She understood where she was and what was going on.

  Nexus is learning me, she thought. This is the calibration phase.

  She penetrated through the dense earth of languages into a cavern of abstraction, filled with a soaring, brilliant city of concepts. Broad lanes of Time and Space cut the city into quarters. A bell tolled from within the towers of the delicate crystal and steel Temple of Self in the center of the city. The sound of the bell was the sound of everything she'd ever tried to communicate. It pulsed in the air, almost physical, spreading outwards in concentric waves she could see, resonating through city blocks where ideas crashed together. Open public squares of contemplation, serene parks and elegant symphony halls of harmony and synthesis, wrecked bombed-out shells of discord, confusion, misunderstanding. Her thoughts spread out into suburbs full of memories and beyond them into the dark forest of Other which wrapped the city, isolated it.

  With delight she dove down into a public pool of Laughter, pulled herself out and walked a street of Beauty, turned down the lane and entered the vast museum of Animate Things, exited from its rear door onto a street of Actions, and soon came to the great open plaza around the Temple of Self. Everywhere she looked in the plaza she saw the faithful come, called to prayer. The faithful were her. A hundred of her, a thousand, ten thousand, all kneeling, praying, paying homage and sending prayers to herself.

  She spun around then, taking in this city, her city, her mind. She whirled once, twice, three times, until the spin had a perpetual motion of its own, and then she found herself rotating faster and faster, the city blurring by too fast to see, but her mind spreading out to encompass it, the centrifugal force of her dervish-whirl sending the edges of her thoughts and senses outward from her, spread out and held taut to her by the line of her will.

  She was this city. She was the million hers within it. She tasted a hundred thousand memories. Memories of places and times and things and words. Her sixth birthday, falling off her bike, blood running down her knee, she'd dipped her finger in it, brought it as close to her face as she could, wanting to see those tiny cells inside. Her college graduation, unexpectedly meaningful to her, a flush of excitement, visible pride on the face of her aunt and uncle, wishing her parents could be there if not for… for… Her first taste of sushi, incredible texture of raw albacore, followed by intense wasabi flavor overwhelming her sense of smell. A rainbow in the desert, seen alone. A lover's kiss on her neck. The sharp joy of sparring. Childhood games. And data archeology – the 3am discovery of the key that cracked the Watzer archive, the way the pieces of the puzzle fit together perfectly to decode the message Venter had encoded with his genome.

  All of this is you – the words came unbidden to her. The memories came not one at a time, but in parallel, overlaid with one another, interleaving in ways she'd never seen, the timeline of her life becoming three-dimensional.

  She felt she would explode with joy, with the sheer intensity of being, with the incredible largeness she felt. She wanted to grow ever larger, to spread beyond this city and cavern, to encompass this entire psychedelic planet of self, to experience every instant and morsel and potential of her being at once. To spread beyond this one planet, to experience everything of everyone!

  "Sam?"

  Her eyes opened. She was flush with excitement. Her chest was heaving. Her heart was pounding. She was damp between her thighs. She had never felt so turned on or so alive in her life. Except… except…

  "Sam?"

  It was Kade. Kaden Lane. The boy who'd brought her here, given her this chance to try Nexus for the first time. (first?) That beautiful, tall, confusing, shy, naïve young man, with a mind like fire and a boyish disregard of the consequences of his curiosity. He was standing at the foot of the couch she reclined on, looking at her tentatively.

  "Kade." It came out husky. She tried again, more casually. "Hi."

  "Hey, how're you feeling? Sorry I couldn't get here sooner, I was trying to help Rangan track down that glitch."

  Rangan. Right. The DJ. She was at a party. OK.

  Get it together, Sam.

  "Kade." She held his gaze with her own, took a deep breath. "This is amazing. I was just lost, swimming, deep inside… I can't even explain."

  Even as she spoke she felt the whirlwind, felt the assimilation and calibration continuing inside her. Her skin was sensitized. Every word and every breath felt electric with potential.

  Kade smiled. "Tell me. What are you feeling?"

  Sam closed her eyes, spoke with them closed. "I'm inside myself. Inside my mind. I see how the pieces of me fit together. The different concepts. The different kinds of concepts I can hold. And I can see all these scenes from my life. Patterns between them, connections I never noticed. I feel incredible. If I was like this when I was working… I could just suck up anything." She paused. "And I'm really, really aroused."

  She opened her eyes. Kade was blushing, looking away now, down at his shoes, over at the wall. And Sam had the apprehension that he had been looking directly at her until her final words. And that he was aroused. By her. She got a flash of how she must seem to him, skin flushed and radiating heat, nipples hard, chest rising and falling, breath audible – and knew that flash was more than intuition, that it came from Kade himself.

  Really? Had he dosed?

  "Kade. Have you taken the Nexus already?"

  And then his eyes snapped to hers again, directly, not shyly at all. He came around the couch without speaking, sat next to her, close, and put one hand on her brow. And she felt something. His mind brushing against hers. An invitation, followed by an opening, and then Kade unfolded before her.

  She caught another glimpse of his arousal. Of his interest in her. Of his shyness. His insecurity with women.

  But those were peripheral. In the center she caught full on a view of his intellect, diamond sharp and clear, the restlessness of his mind, his ever churning set of questions, his lust for answers… and what he'd done. He and Rangan and Ilya.

  She took a sharp breath as she understood. "You're like this all the time? You've done this permanently? To yourself?"

  Of course. Last night. So, so dangerous.

  Last night? Dangerous?

  Kade spoke. "The potential is there. The Nexus core is permanently integrated. But it's not active all the time. Not broadcasting. And we're definitely not experiencing the rush of the first mapping that you're going through now."

  Sam understood it as he spoke. She caught the sense of the linked thoughts behind his words. Semantic mapping. Sensory mapping. Emotive mapping. Calibration and assimilation. All the things they needed to enable mass Nexus connectivity.

  Because they'd made it, Kade and Rangan and a few others. They'd taken Nexus 3 and they'd cracked some of its code. They'd learned to program Nexus cores, to tell them what to do. They'd added on layers of logic and fu
nctionality. They'd turned it into a platform for running software inside the brain. They'd brought this thing in her mind to fruition.

  It took her breath away. She felt Kade's pride. She felt her own awe at his brilliance, at their accomplishment, at their audacity. She wanted him then. Wanted to swallow his mind up like the city inside her, experience all of him at once, know what he knew, feel what he felt, really understand what was happening inside her.