“I want you to see that I have no ill intentions. That I’d use your back door for good. We’d use it together. There’s a place for you here. A safe place, where you can do important work.”

He’d heard this all before. From Su-Yong Shu. From Holtzmann, even, before they’d sent him off to Bangkok.

“What do you hope to accomplish?” Kade asked Shiva.

Shiva looked out towards the sea. “There are more than a million people running Nexus 5 now, Kade. A year from now it will be many times that. Among those people are scientists, engineers, executives at powerful corporations, bankers, even politicians.”

Kade said nothing.

“The world has very serious problems, my friend,” Shiva went on. “Poor children still die by their millions. Westerners and the global rich – like me – live in post-scarcity society, while a billion people struggle to get enough to eat. And we’re pushing the planet towards a tipping point, where the corals die and the forests burn and life becomes much, much harder. We have the resources to solve those problems, even now, but politics and economics and nationalism all get in the way. If we could access all those minds, though…” Shiva paused, his eyes far away.

“We’ve done tests. Bright people linked together via Nexus become even brighter as whole. Interdisciplinary groups benefit especially. The children born with Nexus, well, they are even more impressive. They can serve as catalysts, boosting the collective intelligence of the group.

“With access to so many talented minds, we could harness scientists and engineers to invent the technologies we need to save the planet, to end poverty and starvation. We could nudge banks and mega-corporations to invest in the projects the world needs, marshaling trillions in assets. We could intervene politically, gaining inside information about world leaders, using it to steer them in the directions we need, to force them if necessary.”

Kade was speechless. “You’re talking about a massive scale…”

Shiva nodded. “Yes. I’ve been investing a large fraction of my own fortune to make it possible. Software to sift through and coordinate millions of minds at once. Data centers around the world to hold all that data, to provide all those CPU cycles. Private communication networks, microsatellites in low earth orbit, all of it.”

Kade struggled for words. “Shiva, this is horrific. This is mass manipulation.”

Shiva turned to look at Kade, visibly bristling. “Really? Is it worse than the manipulations of banks, twisting laws to their own purposes? Of mega-corporations twisting laws for their profits at the expense of the world’s citizens?” His voice was angry, passion-filled. “Is it worse than financiers and corrupt politicians dining on pâté and caviar, while poor children starve?”

Kade exhaled, then shook his head. “Look, the world has problems. I agree with you. But what you’re talking about... No one should have that kind of power.”