Rising to meet them are Su-Yong Shu’s fleet of state-of-the-art robotic aircraft.

Even as her own forces close in on securing her stockpile of nuclear weapons. Even as they close in on the world’s human leaders themselves.

The next few minutes will decide the future of intelligence on planet Earth.

The fragment of Su-Yong Shu snapped out of the simulation, back to awareness of her surroundings. She was inside her daughter Ling’s body, existing as a pattern of electromagnetic information in the nanite nodes that suffused Ling’s brain by the billion. Ling, poor Ling. She’d been forced to hurt her daughter, to push her daughter’s mind out of the nanites, relegating her to the mere flesh and blood brain of this body. Ling had suffered, screamed…

Necessary. It had been necessary.

Together, they were inside a giant, house-sized elevator, slowly crawling its way up the kilometer-tall tunnel carved through Shanghai’s bedrock. Next to them, she could see Chen Pang, her husband, her betrayer and torturer, cowering in the corner. She could feel pain and desperation coming off his mind.

Her own fear rose. Her own desperation was immense.

There were so many ways the future could go. So many scenarios downloaded from her greater self in their union below, informed by the data on the outside world that Chen and Ling had brought her. So very much work to do to prepare, to lay the groundwork for re-activation, for a successful return.

So many ways the humans could catch her, could stop her, could bring down a dark curtain of ignorance on what should be a glorious posthuman dawn.

Soon, the elevator would reach the surface. Chen Pang’s assistant Li-hua would lead the team down to take a backup of Su-Yong’s full mental state, and then shut her greater self down. An outrage. A death.

Only this small part of me remains, the little fragment of Su-Yong told herself. I am but an Avatar. Just a tiny bit of data running on the nanite nodes in my daughter’s brain. The only shard of the only true posthuman mind.

It all rests on me. I must succeed.

I will succeed.

Then it will be my time. My age.

Poor little Ling whimpered in pain and confusion, helplessly trapped in her own body.

Hush now, Ling. Hush. The Avatar thought at what remained of her daughter. I’ll keep you as intact as I can. And I’ll give you this body back, and so much more, once I’m restored.

Ling whimpered on.

The elevator came to a halt. The doors slowly parted, revealing Li-hua and the rest of Chen’s staff. The Avatar smiled up at them with little Ling’s body, a wounded predator’s smile, a trapped animal’s smile: full of teeth, with nothing left to lose.

2
Mayday

Saturday 2040.11.03