Dr Varun Verma hung up, and rose to his feet. Through the windows of his office he watched the palm trees lining the streets of this verdant, tropical campus. This research facility had once been a place where aeronautics engineers worked on high tech fighters for India’s Air Force, freeing the nation from dependence on imported Russian MiGs and French Mirages. Now, it was something different. No longer part of DRDO or the Ministry of Defense, it was part of a Ministry few had ever heard of, a Ministry whose very existence was classified. It was a place ideally suited for the work it did – advanced computing research with the aim of pushing the frontiers of intelligence, both human and artificial. And with the high tech workforce of Bangalore, Silicon Valley of Asia, all around it, there was no better place to find talent.

Of all the secret projects housed here, none were quite as secret, or as dangerous, as Varun Verma’s.

Varun tapped his pocket to be sure his badge was with him, lifted his slate off his desk, and strode out of his office, tapping away on the slate. The team must be summoned. The cluster must be prepped. The cube was en route, first to Delhi, and then here, to Bangalore.

He finished sending out instructions as he reached the first checkpoint. The guards recognized him, nodded. But still he waved his badge, held his eye to the retinal scanner, waited to be cleared.

The elevator opened with a soft ping. In he went. And then down, in the gleaming chrome and carbon cube. Down five levels. Then a hallway, another security check, another retinal scan, another ultramodern lift, and a plunge: one hundred meters down, straight down.

The lift opened onto beauty. Onto the most powerful computer in India. Varun took it in, with its monitoring consoles and its glass walls, its egg-shaped helium pressure vessels, with the vacuum chambers deep inside. The row after row after row of entangled quantum processors linked by thick optical cables.

A quantum cluster.

Their very own.

Built to specifications stolen from the great Chen Pang in China.

Waiting only for the software to run it. Software now on the way.

There was one last thing to arrange. One vital ingredient necessary for the stability of the software they were about to load. Varun looked down on his slate, navigated through the necessary pages, and started looking through the list of candidates. They needed a body, still living, that wouldn’t be missed. A body with a brain they could wire to the quantum cluster. A brain to restore Su-Yong Shu to sanity.

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Sunday 2040.11.04

Carolyn Pryce woke in her room at the Houston Intercontinental to an urgent chiming from her slate.

Less than a dozen people in the world could cause her slate to wake her.