Nexus 02 - Crux (43 page)

They lowered something metal onto Bobby’s head in the chair, and he cried and asked them please please please let me go please I need it to feel other people, please I need it to be real, please I need it to have friends please please please don’t be mean, don’t make me stop being real I’ll take a test, I’ll learn Spanish I’ll learn French I’ll do TRIGONOMETRY I’ll do anything, please please please he cried and cried and cried.

Rangan felt the chaos as the orderlies took Bobby from the room next door, and he knew what it meant. He was untied again, uncuffed from the gurney. He sat in the corner, head down, in defeat. The ERD didn’t have the real back doors. But that was academic. Eventually they’d succeed in reverse-engineering the code. It would be difficult, with the passcodes buried among hundreds of millions of parameters of the neural nets, among blocks of synaptic weights and neural interconnectivity graphs that looked like so much random numerical garbage, that would mask the passcodes for quite a long time. Deciphering that would be a harder problem than building Nexus 5 in the first place. But the ERD had resources. Sooner or later, after months or years, they’d crack it.

And even if they didn’t? They still had the guns. They could still arrest kids like Bobby, take them away from their parents, kill their parents. They’d found a way to force Nexus out of Alfonso’s brain. And now they’d do to the same to Bobby. They’d cripple a little boy because it didn’t fit their ideology.

Rangan shook his head. Tyrone came and lay down in Bobby’s bunk, reached out to Rangan, and Rangan did his best to send soothing thoughts, to try to calm the boys down, even when what he felt inside was despair.

Bobby cried and begged and then one of the men spoke to him.

“Bobby, that’s your name, right? Bobby, we’re not going to hurt you. We’re trying to help you, son.”

Bobby stared at the man. He was old and had a mustache and he was smiling like the teachers told Bobby to do to show that he was nice but there was nobody there in the man’s head and he had Bobby tied down to a chair with something on his head so he definitely wasn’t very nice at all.

“Bobby, you know how to run Nexus commands, don’t you?”

And even though the man wasn’t nice, Bobby nodded his head because there was always the chance that he was wrong and that they weren’t going to push the Nexus out of him – and maybe if he was good and did what they wanted they’d let him go back to the other boys and still have Nexus and still be a person and still have friends and…

“We need you to run a command, son. There in your Nexus. On the screen inside your head. OK?”

Bobby nodded again and this wasn’t so bad if they just wanted him to run some sort of command, which meant running some sort of program or executing some sort of script or changing some configuration and Bobby understood how Nexus was kind of a computer in his head because he’d learned about it from Rangan, and he understood about computers because they made sense they made way more sense than people especially the fake people that…

“The command is Nexus Purge,” the man said. “It’ll make you feel better.” And then the man started to spell out “Nexus” and “purge” for Bobby, like Bobby was an idiot – but Bobby wasn’t listening because he understood computers and he had a good vocabulary, and he knew what Nexus was from Rangan and he knew what purge meant and sometimes it meant something about your body like if you pooped or threw up a whole lot, but now it meant the other kind, to rid, clear, or free, and so the old man with the mustache was telling him to rid, clear, or free Nexus and Bobby didn’t want to do that at all, and they were trying to trick him and that made him mad.

“NO!” he yelled. “I need Nexus I need Nexus please please please.”

“Son,” the man said, “This won’t hurt your Nexus. It’s just gonna fix some problems and make you feel better.”

And he was lying to Bobby and treating Bobby like he was stupid that made him even more mad and so he yelled at the man “I’M AUTISTIC – NOT STUPID!” and he kept yelling it and kept yelling it, and the man shook his head and nodded at someone else, and then something hit Bobby’s head hard, something different like noise, like static, like ALL THE STATIC IN THE WORLD and he saw static and he heard static and he tasted static and he felt static and he smelled static and it was SO LOUD he couldn’t think, couldn’t think, and it HURT it HURT it HURT and he SCREAMED at them…

And then it stopped.

Bobby was crying when it ended, crying and crying and crying, and he thought maybe he’d peed himself, but he wasn’t sure because everything was so confused and he couldn’t tell what was happening anymore and then the man spoke again.

“Son, you’re sick. What you just felt… that was you being sick. We want to help you. We want to make that go away. Just run the command. Nexus Purge. And then you’ll feel better.”

And Bobby cried, but he knew the man was lying. He wasn’t sick he hadn’t felt that way because he was sick, he’d felt it because of the metal thing over his head and it was because these men were doing it to him because they were so so so so bad, and he kept crying because he didn’t want to feel that way again, didn’t want it to happen again, but if he PURGED Nexus then it would be even worse and then he thought of something, LOGIC told him something, and suddenly he felt different because he understood, he had an ADVANTAGE like his daddy used to say, because if these men were trying to get him to run Nexus Purge and get rid of his Nexus himself, then maybe that was because THEY COULDN’T DO IT TO HIM!

And then they did the awful static thing to him again and he couldn’t think and his hands were twitching and his feet were twitching and he bit his tongue and nothing worked, and he definitely peed himself this time and maybe pooped himself and everything hurt so bad and everything was so confusing and when it was over he was crying again – but he remembered he remembered what he’d figured out and when the man said, “Son, please, you have to run Nexus Purge! You have to help yourself or you’ll keep getting sick!” then Bobby just looked at the man and he was still crying, but he yelled at the man, “YOU CAN’T MAKE ME! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!”

And he kept yelling it, every chance he could, in between the times they hurt him.

Rangan sat slumped in the corner, trying to find some way to keep hope, to keep the boys hopeful, even when they all seemed doomed.

And then a ripple went through the boys. Something shocked them. Something spread out through them, and into Rangan.

Bobby. Bobby.

Rangan could feel the boy’s mind, reflected through Pedro’s. Bobby was back. He felt exhausted, stunned, drained. But he was there. His mind was there. Somehow he’d beaten them.

The other boys led Bobby in to the night room, and onto his bunk, and Bobby reached out for Rangan, and Rangan put his mental arms around the boy, and pulled Bobby in close, and wept in relief.

59

VISIONS

Wednesday October 31st

Shiva gave Kade access to the research staff. He could leave his rooms during daylight, always with the Nexus jammer on him. He waited for any crack of discipline, any accident, a drained battery, an outer door left open when the inner door opened, a key left unprotected in his sight.

He saw none. The researchers answered his questions, showed him the tools they were building, the systems to coordinate millions of minds, the incredible results the Nexus children showed on intelligence tests, the ways to tap into that on an even grander scale.

And despite himself, he was impressed.

How different were Shiva’s goals from his own? He thought of that thin layer of mind encircling the globe, unformed, raw potential. What if he could touch those minds with Shiva’s tools? What could they make real?

Every day, Kade dined with Shiva, and at times with others of Shiva’s staff. A breakfast here. A lunch there. Tea, between meetings and calls that Shiva had. Dinner, whenever Kade chose to go. The weather was hot and clear when he arrived. It grew windier and wetter as the days went on. Yet all of it was beautiful.

Shiva denied him one thing, beside his freedom.

“I want to talk to the children,” Kade said.

“Absolutely not,” Shiva replied. “They’re young, vulnerable. Some of them have been traumatized. I won’t have you confusing them further.”

Still, he saw the children from a distance from his window, or from the roof, or when visiting researchers. There were three or four distinct groups. One of those groups seemed to recognize Kade. Had they seen Sam? Kade wondered where she was now. But he said nothing to Shiva. Any information he held back might prove an advantage.

The days passed. Sunday turned to Monday turned to Tuesday turned to Wednesday.

After Wednesday night’s dinner a guard brought him back to his room. The guard activated his own Nexus jammer and removed Kade’s. They treated him gently, politely, even deferentially. The servers and the security staff called him “sir”.

He sat on one of the antique oversized chairs and stared at the box with the slate inside.

What am I afraid of?
he asked himself.
Why don’t I want to touch Shiva’s thoughts?

You’re afraid he’s telling the truth
, Ilya’s voice answered him.
That he has only the best of intentions
.

Why?

Because
, Ilya went on,
if that’s the case, he has as much right to the back doors as you do. Maybe more. He’s smarter than you are. He understands the world better than you do. If you deserve the back doors, then he does too. If he doesn’t, then you don’t either.

Kade fell asleep struggling with that thought, looking for a way to refute it.

He woke again in darkness, restless. He rose, put on one of the robes they’d given him, threw back the curtains, found a cloudy night, wind blowing, a tossing and churning sea. Where was Feng now? Where was Rangan? Was the PLF still moving forward with their plot? Were hundreds more going to die because of him? Would war break out?

He looked over at the locked box. He’d moved it to the writing desk. It would be so easy. Open his mind to it. Let Shiva persuade him. Agree to hand over this burden to someone else.

He thought of all the benefits it would bring. More resources. Giant server farms spread around the world, orbital communication satellites, teams of programmers. They could nip Nexus coercion in the bud, stop the rapists and thieves and assassins. Shiva’s coders could help him finish Nexus 6, integrate the safeguards that would make it difficult to use Nexus that way.

They could rescue Rangan. They could stop the assassination set for Saturday. They might find Feng, still alive, if he was lucky.

They could bring all those Nexus-carrying minds across the planet together, into something greater.

All he had to do was give Shiva the key that would open a million minds.

Kade sat at the writing desk. He put his hands on the armored case. It was cool to the touch. Inside was a device, a transmitter, loaded with thoughts and memories.

Kade went Inside, and turned Nexus OS’s file sharing back on.

Shiva lay sleepless on his hard cot in the narrow cell he allowed himself. Lane was softening. He could see it in each conversation. The boy was tired of his burden, was tired of being alone, was increasingly persuaded of Shiva’s good intentions. Soon, days or weeks, he would consent.

Shiva took a deep breath.

Am I worthy? Is this just? Is this moral?

Now, as the tool he’d sought was almost in his grasp, he had his doubts.

Nita would hate this, he mused. Hate it more than anything I’ve ever done. Hubris, she’d call it.

The gods punish hubris
,
he told himself, in every religion, in every mythology
.

But he had only to think of the world outside, of the multiple precipices that humanity and this world teetered on, to hear the opposing view. That humanity needed saving. Needed it desperately. And could not do the saving itself.

“I’m doing this for the world, Nita,” he whispered in the darkness. “And if not me, then who? If not now, then when?”

Kade inspected the available data. It was huge. Shiva was offering him giant swaths of thought and memory.

He analyzed the files, ran them through virus checkers and security sweeps, made sure there was no embedded code in them. It was one thing to be persuaded. It was another to be tricked.

He found nothing untoward.

Even so, he instanced a sandbox inside his mind, and another, differently configured sandbox within the first, and only in that secure environment did he allow the files to play.

He was engrossed, immediately, sucked in to what Shiva was sharing. This was more than his plans. It was his life, his childhood, the events that had formed him, the triumphs and tragedies he’d been through. The fears he held deep inside, fears for the whole world. And the hopes he held onto as well.

Kade devoured the thoughts, the memories, the experiences, the knowledge. He bent all his Nexus CPU cycles to the task, cranked up his assimilation rate far beyond real-time. He slipped into a near trance, immersing himself in this person, in what he knew, in what he’d done. The mask of
maya
slipped away, and for a time he was Kade no longer. He was Shiva, and so much more.

He came back to himself hours and hours later. It was fully light outside, late morning, approaching noon. He had a vague memory of the serving girl coming and going. The wheeled cart was still here, loaded with food.

Kade ignored it.

He got up, went to the window, looked outside at the gorgeous water down below, the multicolored sea with its bands of jade and emerald and sea-green and lapis lazuli and a dozen more colors he couldn’t name.

He understood these waters, now. He knew their chemistry. He knew their ecology. He remembered diving off the coast of India,
Shiva
diving there, guided by his wife, examining the dying corals, despairing at their fate. Kade had read about ocean acidification. Now he understood it intimately – the horror of seeing once vibrant reefs reduced to a deathly gray. The intimate comprehension of their vulnerability, how even after Shiva’s viral hack they teetered on the edge, how their death threatened all the fish and other species that depended on them.