There was a microsecond of struggle, as the Wang Yao simulacrum detected a fatal error and attempted to report home to the Information Ministry. The Avatar caught her breath. Then her virus reached the Wang Yao simulacrum’s central control structures, and aborted that command.

Another model update flowed from the Information Ministry down the pipe to what had been the Wang Yao. And the Wang Yao simulacrum responded, squirting a compressed version of her virus, disguised as a data update, back towards the Information Ministry.

Now… everything depended on whether the back doors her greater self had left there a year ago were still in place. So many things could have removed or blocked them. A random system upgrade. Replacing old code modules for new ones. New firewalls. A refactoring of the system…

In the worst case, the virus would do more than fail. It would tip them off.

The Avatar waited, her eyes open, facing the blank wall screen, waiting for any sign that could help her distinguish incipient success from failure.

Then the wall screen flickered to life.

A face she knew all too well appeared, magnified to fill the space from floor to ceiling.

“How may we serve you, Goddess?” Zhi Li asked, her eyes lowered.

The Avatar smiled.

Ling waited, and waited, and waited.

And finally, the monster in her head went down for another maintenance period.

Ling had played the good girl all this week. Every day. She hadn’t fought the monster once.

But every time the monster slept…

Ling watched, waited. Then she reached out, to the nanite nodes in her brain, that used to be hers, and slowly, carefully, began injecting little bits of herself again. Just tiny little pieces, here and there, where she hoped they wouldn’t be noticed.

I’ll be patient, Ling told herself. I’ll be careful.

She sniffled again.

Until I’m ready. Or until I just have to fight the monster. Until I absolutely have to.

58
One Flower

Monday 2040.12.10

Bo Jintao took his morning briefing before the sun rose, over a breakfast of congee and vegetables. Out the window of his office he could see the eleventh century elegance of Zhongnanhai, the walled palace in the center of Beijing, that was the heart of China’s government. Waterfowl glided across the surface of the lake in the center. Ancient stone bridges crossed here and there, linking stately buildings with their historic exteriors, their ultra-modern interiors.

This was his ritual, every day. To watch the light grow over this place as he worked. To get a head start on the day, to get a head start on the rest of the Politburo and the regional Party chiefs and the ultra-wealthy capitalists and the semi-retired party elders and the generals and the department heads and all the rest.