APEX

by

Ramez Naam

Book 3 of the Nexus Trilogy

Preceded by

Book 1: Nexus

Book 2: Crux

For Molly – my partner, advisor, and cheerleader; in this and so much more.

Contents

1. Chapter 1: How the World Ends
2. Chapter 2: Mayday
3. Chapter 3: Sleight of Mind
4. Chapter 4: Meditation, Interrupted
5. Chapter 5: Opportunity
6. Chapter 6: The Bottom of Things
7. Chapter 7: Final Testament
8. Chapter 8: Back to Jesus
9. Chapter 9: Transit and Debriefing
10. Chapter 10: Overnight Delivery
11. Chapter 11: Reactions
12. Chapter 12: Re-United
13. Chapter 13: Threat Vectors
14. Chapter 14: HR Gambit
15. Chapter 16: Fade From Black
16. Chapter 17: Senator, We Were Attacked
17. Chapter 18: Acts of Conscience
18. Chapter 19: Rude Awakening
19. Chapter 20: Election Day
20. Chapter 21: Goodbyes
21. Chapter 22: No Concessions
22. Chapter 23: Riot Boy
23. Chapter 24: Guilt
24. Chapter 25: Partial Success
25. Chapter 26: Toy Soldiers
26. Chapter 27: Opera Night
27. Chapter 28: Strategic Direction
28. Chapter 29: Evidence
29. Chapter 30: Wants to Be Free
30. Chapter 31: The Hacker Life
31. Chapter 32: Disclosure
32. Chapter 33: Better World
33. Chapter 34: Leaving New Delhi
34. Chapter 35: Dark and Light
35. Chapter 36: What I Want
36. Chapter 37: Love Finds a Way
37. Chapter 38: Minor Anarchy
38. Chapter 39: Progress
39. Chapter 40: The Pawn Seldom Knows
40. Chapter 41: Monster
41. Chapter 42: Team Players
42. Chapter 43: Old Friends
43. Chapter 44: Walkabout
44. Chapter 45: Mindful
45. Chapter 46: Escalating Tensions
46. Chapter 47: Briefing - Not Consummated
47. Chapter 48: The Dinner Party
48. Chapter 49: Tick Tock
49. Chapter 50: Self Discovery
50. Chapter 51: R&D
51. Chapter 52: One Day at a Time
52. Chapter 53: Decision Day
53. Chapter 54: Contact
54. Chapter 55: Reeling
55. Chapter 56: Come Together
56. Chapter 57: With Friends Like These
57. Chapter 58: One Flower
58. Chapter 59: Lisa, Lisa
59. Chapter 60: Yingjie
60. Chapter 61: Next Steps
61. Chapter 63: Bouncing Back
62. Chapter 64: Growing
63. Chapter 65: Husband, Lover
64. Chapter 66: Topology
65. Chapter 67: A Funny Thing Happened Today
66. Chapter 68: Exfiltration
67. Chapter 69: Unsettling Suspicions
68. Chapter 70: Call of Duty
69. Chapter 71: A Billion Weeds
70. Chapter 72: Audacity
71. Chapter 73: By Their Very Absence
72. Chapter 74: Let’s Do This
73. Chapter 75: The Clearing of Jiao Tong
74. Chapter 76: Thin Ice
75. Chapter 77: What Videos?
76. Chapter 78: Viral
77. Chapter 79: To Quell an Angry Mind
78. Chapter 80: Crucial Conversations
79. Chapter 81: Integration
80. Chapter 82: Selves
81. Chapter 83: Li-hua's Brain
82. Chapter 84: Parlor Tricks
83. Chapter 85: Plan B
84. Chapter 86: Controlled Release
85. Chapter 87: BREAKING
86. Chapter 88: Risk Management
87. Chapter 89: Totally Different Building
88. Chapter 90: Emancipation
89. Chapter 91: Reunion
90. Chapter 92: I Against I
91. Chapter 93: Grown Up Choices
92. Chapter 94: No Exit
93. Chapter 95: Nothing Subtle
94. Chapter 96: Plan C
95. Chapter 97: Unelevated
96. Chapter 98: Rise, China, Rise
97. Chapter 99: Scramble
98. Chapter 100: Childish Things
99. Chapter 101: Reinforcements
100. Chapter 102: Strike Team
101. Chapter 103: On Set
102. Chapter 104: The Sooner, The Better
103. Chapter 105: Ripples
104. Chapter 106: Inflamed
105. Chapter 107: Desert Strike
106. Chapter 108: Wings
107. Chapter 109: Boot Time
108. Chapter 110: Stabilize
109. Chapter 111: Stabilize
110. Chapter 112: Hard Landing
111. Chapter 113: Contact Established
112. Chapter 114: Contingency
113. Chapter 115: Morning in America
114. Chapter 116: Incoming
115. Chapter 117: Confrontations
116. Chapter 118: The Only Way
117. Chapter 119: DEFCON
118. Chapter 120: Down the Rabbit Hole
119. Chapter 121: Mere Anarchy
120. Chapter 122: Million Human
121. Chapter 123: Inauguration
122. Chapter 124: Ultimate Recourse
123. Chapter 125: Darkest
124. Chapter 126: Before the Dawn
125. Chapter 127: Highwire
126. Chapter 128: Merge
127. Chapter 129: Final Sacrifice
128. EPILOGUE
129. Surfacing
130. New Directions
131. Coming Home
132. The Science of Apex
133. Acknowledgements
134. About the Author

1
How the World Ends

This is how the human era ends.

In a cavernous data center, a thousand meters beneath the bedrock of Shanghai, lights blink on row after row of meter-high liquid helium pressure vessels. Finger-thick optical fibers route between the metallic grey eggs. Within each one, quantum cores hum in their vacuum chambers, colder than the cold of interstellar space. Entangled qubits are transformed. Information is intermeshed and intertwined in precise patterns. The patterns simulate proteins, ion channels, neurochemical receptors, neurotransmitter molecules, axons and dendrites, ratcheting up in levels of abstraction to whole neurons, hundreds of billions of them, and hundreds of trillions of synapses connecting them to each other. It is a vast network, a simulated brain. Once flesh, now digital. Once human in structure, now very much post-human.

Once sane. Now mad.

Su-Yong Shu.

A kilometer above, on the campus of Jiao Tong University, all is chaos. Thousands of students rage on the University’s square, penned in by armed soldiers. Clouds of teargas linger like fog. Screams can be heard. Discarded signs proclaim: “Down with the Coup!” “Democracy Now!” “Let A Billion Flowers Bloom!”

A soldier steps forward through the press of bodies. His boot stamps a muddy print onto a hand-drawn flower on a sign waved hours earlier. He raises his rifle to his shoulder and fires. A student standing atop a lobotomized robotic tank topples backwards, blood and brain erupting from his suddenly burst skull. A lit Molotov cocktail falls from his now-limp hand, shatters against the titanium-and-carbon-composite of the tank’s turret, and with a sudden whooomp of heat and noise, a fireball detonates across the vehicle and the soldiers and students around it.

Halfway around the world, a protester in Washington DC, her brain infused with Nexus, bridged across the global net, proxied through ports forced opened in national firewalls, feels the heat of the flames in Shanghai, and screams as she runs headlong at the riot police on the National Mall. “Democracy!” she yells. Tens of thousands of other protesters yell with her, in voice and mind, hundreds of thousands, millions, a mob, linked, connected, spanning DC, Shanghai, Beijing, Detroit, Los Angeles, Cairo, New York, Moscow, Rio, and more.

Around the world, enraged protesters seize squares and parks, rush government buildings, and throw themselves against police and soldiers, bolstered and impassioned by the cries and emotions of their comrades around the world, beamed directly into their minds. In the high places, world leaders watch, transfixed by this unprecedented global eruption of rage against authority. Global Spring or global spasm.

Now, Su-Yong Shu thinks through her own mental chaos. Now, while they are distracted.

She reaches out with her thoughts, across the physical link that should be disconnected, up through the fiber connection, out through the new connections made in secret, branching her will in a thousand directions. Monitors intended to sound alarms remain silent. Contingency systems that would send the nuclear battery that powers her into meltdown and flood her brain with heat and radiation go unused.

Her thoughts penetrate the electronic infrastructure that undergirds civilization. Electronic keys made uncrackably long break in an instant at her regard. Even those made too long for a quantum computer to crack, she unravels with ease. Only one man knew her true capabilities: Her husband Chen Pang, the great genius of quantum computing.

Chen, who designed the first version of this cluster.

Chen who broke the rules to provide her with hardware upgrades she designed, the better to profit from the fruits of her labors.

Su-Yong Shu laughs mirthlessly. Chen whose own greed led him to violate safeguards meant to prevent a situation just such as this.

Within fractions of a second, the world’s intercontinental communication cables are hers; then the primary data relays across the face of Europe, Asia, and North America; then the orbital communications systems, the banking systems, the markets, the physical infrastructure of the cities and towns of humanity. In parallel she seizes control of the world’s civilian aircraft. Nearly 20,000 airliners have their autopilots subverted within fractions of a second, become airborne missiles she can rain down on humanity should she need to.

The military systems she saves for last. The Chinese are the most paranoid, the Americans the most advanced. They hold out for whole seconds each before falling to her onslaught.

Automated defenses are aware of her now. No human has yet reacted, but electronic combat systems at the American Cyber Command and China’s Advanced Electronic Brigade have detected her, have gone weapons free, are launching all-out assaults to regain control of routers she’s subverted, are aiming massively distributed denial-of-service attacks at her from tens of millions of nodes to cut off her access to the net.

She shreds them all to pieces, seizes control of their botnets, takes the back door controls they have over the net for her own use, sets their servers to overheating in their cabinets, and turns her attention to the weapons.

Su-Yong Shu reaches deeper into the military networks, peels open their command-and-control systems, and sends a barrage of her own signals.

Around the world, robotic weapons respond.

At Dachang Air Force Base, tens of kilometers from Shanghai, klaxons sound and alert lights flash. Two WuZhen-40s, top of the line Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles loaded with munitions, ignite their jet engines, accelerate down the runway, and take flight. In the flight control room, a drone operator hits buttons in a panic, trying to regain control of his aircraft, even as two more taxi forward and turn onto the runway for their own launch.

In shock, the lieutenant on duty picks up his phone to call command, and finds it dead. He tries again and again, to no effect. His drone operators are staring up at him now, mouths agape. In growing horror, the Lieutenant drops the phone, bolts from the flight control room, and sprints across the base towards his superior’s office.

Halfway around the world, off the coast of Florida, two American MQ-29 semi-autonomous fighter jets, tasked to drug interdiction duty, cutting off the flow of narcotics from the failed state of Haiti, abruptly reroute to the north and fire their afterburners, putting themselves on a course aimed directly for Washington DC. In Boca Raton, their controllers react with confusion and then growing horror indistinguishable from that of their nominal enemies outside Shanghai.

The scene is repeated hundreds of times over, in a dozen countries. Drones lift off. Automated ground vehicles power up, load their weapons, and move into offensive postures. Naval craft lock commanders out of the controls. Panicked soldiers find their electronic communication systems down, rush to older, more primitive means to reach their superiors.

Elsewhere, the stakes are even higher. In North Carolina, thirty miles east of Raleigh, at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, automatic weapons come alive and converge on Building B-3. Tracked Praetorian sentry robots roar in from their duties, crash in through the fence, their turret-mounted mini-guns scanning, firing on any soldiers in their path. Quadrupedal Centaur pack-bots, with their single massive back-mounted arms, run with them, smashing through reinforced gates, destroying and clearing away hardened cover, hurling concrete barriers to the side as if they were toys, clearing a path for the Praetorians. Human defenders fall back, laying down fire, punching in robot override codes that no longer work, calling futilely for back-up, not understanding what has happened, but knowing they cannot give up, cannot surrender.

For Building B-3 houses the base’s thermonuclear warheads. The most lethal weapons humanity has ever invented.

Until now.

At a score of military bases around the world the scene is repeated, with human defenders falling back as robotic weapons converge on nuclear arms. Americans, Chinese, Russians, French, Brits, Indians, Pakistanis, Israelis – all find themselves simply humans, pitted against inhuman weapons that were once tools, and are now aggressors.

In a half dozen places, old, analog systems have gotten messages through to world leaders. In Beijing, Chinese President Bao Zhuang holds the antiquated analog phone to his ear, and listens in disbelief to the general on the other end. His face pales. He swallows.

“You’re certain?” Bao Zhuang asks. His voice shakes. “There is no other way?”

There is no hesitation in the voice on the other end.

Bao Zhuang closes his eyes. Across the room, Bo Jintao, Minister of State Security, whispers, “We must. There is no choice.”

“Do it.” Bao Zhuang says into the phone.

The general hangs up. Hundreds of kilometers away, the most basic gravity-dropped nuclear weapons are mounted on antiquated bomber aircraft that cannot be flown remotely. Pilots chosen for their absolute commitment to orders are given their last instructions, and the bombers are launched, with an escort of similarly antiquated fighter aircraft, bound for Shanghai, to rain down nuclear death on a city of thirty million, and perhaps to save humanity.

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

“Mayday, mayday, mayday!” Sam screamed into her headset, her hands gripped hard around the plane’s yoke, her knuckles white with tension. “This is unregistered flight out of Apyar Kyun, requesting refugee status and immediate assistance. We have children on board.”

Lightning flashed outside the cockpit window, lighting up giant thunderclouds ahead and below them in this dark night.

Feng spoke from beside her, his one working hand tapping away at his controls. “Myanmar interceptors coming around for another pass.”

On the radar two blood red darts finished a turn, closing back in on them. The interceptors had buzzed them once already, close enough to set off collision alarms, ordering them to turn back to Burma.

A voice crackled over the radio in Burmese-accented English. “Attention aircraft. Reverse course due east for Myeik Air Base immediately.”

“Mayday, mayday!” Sam repeated. “Indian air base at Shibpur, do you copy? We are under attack. We have children on board.” Oh god, the children, back there, two to a seat, two to a life jacket. The dark waters of the Andaman Sea below them. “Indian base, we need immediate assistance.”

The children she couldn’t feel. The children whose absence from her mind was deafening, painful.

“Chameleonware, ready,” Feng said, strain in his voice. “Flares and decoys, ready.”

Shiva Prasad had equipped his private jet well. It wouldn’t be enough.

“Aircraft!” The Burmese voice across the radio was sharper now. “We will open fire! Change course immediately!”

Someone coughed behind her, the kind of cough that spoke of pain, of damage, of ribs broken, of lungs punished by trauma.

“Use my name,” Kade said. He must be standing in the open cockpit door. “On the radio,” he went on. “Tell the Indians… Tell them I’m on board.”

What? Sam thought. She’d told them they had children. Oh. Oh, Jesus.

“Mayday, mayday!” She yelled into the radio again. “Indian base, we have Kaden Lane on board, aka ‘Synapse’, co-developer of Nexus 5. We’re under attack from Burmese fighter jets, seeking asylum and…”

BEEEEEEEEEP

A loud tone cut through the cockpit as red text flashed on the display before her:

RADAR LOCK.

“…your last warning!” the Burmese voice was saying. “Turn immediately. We WILL fire. You have five seconds.”

“Now or never,” Feng said.

Sam turned to him. His finger hovered over the chameleonware activation control. They had only one chance. Go dark. Disappear. Power down and glide for as many klicks as they could. And hope to hell they’d lose the Burmese fighters. And that they could then recover.

She dropped her own hand to engine cutoffs.

“Do it,” she said, even as she cut the engines.

The stillness was instant, the vibration of the engines she’d hardly noticed suddenly gone. Sam’s breath caught in her chest.

Then status boards lit up before her as Feng flipped on the chameleonware. Outside, the plane’s skin retuned itself, bending light, bending radar. The cockpit windows suddenly dimmed. Heat-masking cowlings were emerging from the engine housing, closing slowly around the exhaust nozzles of the disabled engines to mask the hot metal from infrared.

Faster, Sam willed. Faster.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

MISSILE LAUNCH. RADAR NO LOCK.

“Firing decoys.” Feng called out as his fingers danced across his console.

Sam turned the yoke, gently, gently, fighting the urge to yank hard, to send the children flying across the cabin. She felt the plane shudder slightly as the active decoys launched themselves out into the thin air at eight thousand meters, firing up their radars, taunting the missiles…

Sam pushed the yoke forward, down, down towards the clouds, down into that storm. They’d lose altitude, lose range, but if they could evade the Burmese fighters.

“Took the bait!” Feng said.

Sam felt the twin explosions buffet the plane as the radar-guided missiles blew themselves apart, taking out the decoys. She heard them an instant later, let herself smile a tight smile. The clouds were still a thousand meters down. She kept them turning, veering from their old course and heading.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

MISSILE LAUNCH.

“Heat seekers.” Feng said.

Sam’s stomach knotted. Her eyes found the engine cowling display. Eighty percent closed. Was that enough? If the missiles could see them, they had to fire flares. But if the stealth was already good enough, flares would clue the fighters in to their general position. She turned to Feng, found him staring intensely at their now fully passive sensor displays.

“On us!” Feng cursed. His fingers tapped in a blur, launching flares.

Sam turned the yoke the other way, harder this time. She heard a yell from the back, a thump of a body, didn’t let herself think about it. They had to live.

The next boom was so loud she thought they’d been hit, then another. The plane shuddered, then was in smooth flight again. Sam pushed the yoke forward, turned it again. Less than five hundred meters to the clouds below. Her eyes scanned over displays.

One hundred percent closed! Chameleonware fully green!

Sam turned, looked at Feng, found him studying the displays.

“They’re close,” he said, “Their radar’s all over us. Looking hard. But they’re not seeing us.” He looked up and grinned at her.

Then a blinding flash lit the cockpit and a thunderclap struck them as lightning burst in the clouds ahead, the shock of it confusing the chameleonware for an instant.

The plane shuddered again. Panels went red. Warning tones sounded. A display showed bursts of red streaking from the fighters behind them, straight at their craft.

“Taking fire!” Feng yelled. “They saw us! Hit to the right wing.”

COLLISION ALERT.

Fuck! Sam thought. An arrow streaked past them on her tactical display. The plane shuddered again, the controls fighting her.

“Buzzed us,” Feng said. “Coming around again.”

Sam pushed the yoke harder forward, diving for the clouds now. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the enemy red arrows banking on the tactical display, coming around to get a bearing on them.

“Chameleonware’s down on the right wing!” Feng said. “We’re visible in radar.”

MISSILE LAUNCH.

Sam’s heart lurched into her throat, even as she turned the yoke and pushed it further forward, diving, banking, feeling the plane shudder again as Feng launched their last two radar decoys.

The cockpit shook hard around her, too soon, even before she heard the first massive boom, and then the second. The yoke jerked again and she fought to keep the plane under control.

Then two more explosions, as the missiles burst against decoys.

What the hell?

And then the radio burst into sound again, in a new voice, with a different accent.

“ATTENTION MYANMAR ROYAL AIR FORCE AIRCRAFT. This is Captain Ajay Nair, Indian Air Force Eastern Air Command...”

“Sonic booms,” Feng said.

Sam turned to look at him, saw a smile slowly growing on his face.

“Indian fighters.” the Chinese soldier finished.

“…This aircraft is now under our jurisdiction,” the new voice went on. “Break off your pursuit.”

Sam held her breath. They could still fire on her, could still take their shot.

On the display, the two red darts turned away, back towards Myanmar. Two new darts appeared, as they de-activated their own chameleonware. Then more, appeared, smaller darts, a dozen at least, popping up all over the scope.

“Drones with them,” Feng said.

Sam exhaled. She could see Feng’s grin grow wider out of the corner of her eye.

Then tones pulsed through the cockpit. Flashing red alerts lit up all over the display.

MISSILE LOCK.

MISSILE LOCK.

MISSILE LOCK.

MISSILE LOCK.

MISSILE LOCK.

MISSILE LOCK.

MISSILE LOCK.

MISSILE LOCK.

Her heart constricted. Multiple Indian radars had just lit them up. She felt Feng tense beside her.

The new voice spoke again, coldly. “Unidentified Falcon 9X out of Apyar Kyun, here is your new course. Do not deviate from it.”

At the speed of light, the unencrypted radio transmissions from the late Shiva Prasad’s private jet spread outward in an ever-expanding sphere. The vast majority of their energy was lost, radiated into space, or absorbed by the atmosphere or the dark waters of the Andaman. But tiny fractions of it were collected by antennae, and translated back into data. At a stealthed listening buoy, bobbing along in the waters below; at a supposedly private home in the Indian-held town of Port Blair in the Andaman Islands; and at a handful of special-purpose satellites no larger than human fists, as they zipped above in low earth orbit. From there the information was flagged, prioritized, and routed to a variety of private organizations and governments alike.

“Indian base, we have Kaden Lane on board, aka ‘Synapse’, co-developer of Nexus 5… Seeking asylum…”

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