But now… All she had to do was touch a child’s mind, and she knew it was more than that. All it had taken was Mai, touching her just once, loosening that knot inside, and everything had changed for her.

It’s all perspective, Sam thought. What I think of Nexus, of any of this stuff… It’s all just about what I’ve seen, what I’ve experienced.

Sam lay in bed with Jake one night, talking about the children.

“They learn so fast,” Jake said. “It’s off the charts.”

“The Nexus makes them smarter?” Sam rolled towards him, head propped up on her elbow, the other hand on his broad chest.

Jake shook his head. “Not individually. But when they’re together? Yeah. Sometimes. Two or three of them… they can juggle more things in their heads, together, than they can alone. Expanded working memory.” He paused. “And they learn from each other. At least, when they’re not picking on each other.” He laughed. “But if I teach something to one of them, to Sunisa, say, it spreads. The next day, I can test any of them on it, and they’ll all have some of what I taught him. It consolidates while they sleep.”

Sam ran her fingers through the reddish hairs that covered his torso.

“The youngest ones are way beyond where they should be. Kit’s learning algebra now. They’re drafting on the older ones, picking up memories and skills...”

Sam listened to his voice, the passion in it.

“And sometimes,” he said, “you can feel it, at night, when…”

She knew. She’d felt it.

“When they merge.” She finished his thought for him.

Jake nodded, temporarily speechless. She could feel the awe coming off of him.

“At night,” he repeated. “When they’re sleeping. Or sometime, when they’re playing or studying. When they’re calm and not fighting. When they just kind of fall in sync, and it seems like they’re just one mind…”

They were silent for a moment.

“It’s like,” Jake started, haltingly, “the big picture, OK? It’s like the next step in our evolution. Going from one mind, to many minds, all linked… Group consciousness. That we’re just parts of. That’s the real posthuman.”

Sam looked into the middle distance. She loved these kids, but she wasn’t sure what she thought of that.

“There was this woman,” Jake said, “this PhD in the states, who used to write about this all the time. Her dissertation was about how we’re already group minds, how we’ve been evolving in that direction already – from animal cries to language to writing to the internet, and now Nexus. How it’s collective thinking makes us special. Ilyana Alexander.”

Sam stiffened. Ilya.

Jake noticed it. “You know her?”

“I’ve heard the name,” Sam said. She kept her voice neutral, let her muscles loosen again.