Crux

6 Q & A

Thursday October 18th

Rangan Shankari flinched as the door to his cell burst open. The first light he’d seen in ages flooded in, backlighting the burly guards. He blinked at the intensity of it. Then they jerked the hood over his eyes, and the world dropped to muted grays.

They wheeled him from his cell on the gurney, arms and legs strapped down. He heard doors open and close, felt turns, and then they stopped. A door closed behind him.

The gurney tilted abruptly backwards, so his head was a foot lower than his feet. He wasn’t surprised. The liquid diet of the last few “meals” was a giveaway. This always followed, as sure as day had once followed night.

He could feel his pulse racing. His breath came fast. But they wouldn’t break him. Rangan went Inside.

[activate: serenity level 10]

Code modules activated in the Nexus nodes of his brain. Fear signals through the neurons of his amygdala were suppressed. Serotonin levels rose throughout his brain. Nodes in his medulla oblongata seized control of his pulse and respiration and stabilized them.

Calm descended, slicing through Rangan’s fear like a knife. Confidence rose. I can do this, he thought. I can do this.

A voice spoke into his ear.

“Mr Shankari. I know it’s been rough on you in here. We can make your life a lot more comfortable. Or a lot worse. So I ask you again. How do we activate the back door into Nexus 5? What’s the code?”

“Fuck you,” Rangan spat out through the muffling hood.

A fist slammed into his guts, and all the air rushed out.

His diaphragm spasmed and he couldn’t breathe. His dark world turned red. Then something unclenched and sweet air rushed back into his lungs.

“Towel,” the voice said.

Something heavy and soft landed on his face. The world went from merely dark to pitch black. He knew what came next. He was ready for it.

The water came down on the towel. He felt the pressure a second before he felt the wetness on his face. Then it was in his mouth and his nose and he couldn’t breathe. He was being suffocated. His body jerked and spasmed on the table, reacting involuntarily, trying to free itself from whatever was smothering it.

He felt it all from a distance, buffered by the serenity package.

They’re not gonna kill me, Rangan told himself. Just a trick, a bluff, a head game.

And then the water was gone and the weight of the towel was gone and Rangan forced himself to gasp, like any normal person would, like anyone who didn’t have a piece of code controlling his reactions would. Gasp. Breathe. Fill up on oxygen. Breathe.

Stupid fuckers, he thought. You’re not gonna break me.

Then he heard another voice. Female this time.

“Pulse sixty-five. Galvanic skin resistance… unchanged. He’s suppressing.”

What?

Then the first Voice. “Naughty naughty, Rangan. But we’ve figured out how you’re holding up against us.”

What?

Then his shirt was being tugged up, and something cold and hard was pressed into his side and then

AGGGHHGHG!

Electricity coursed through him. His body jerked again, spasming and straining.

AGGGHHGHG!

They shocked him a second time. A third. Garbage scrolled across his mind’s eye as Nexus nodes were disrupted and Nexus OS suffered critical faults. The serenity package failed with the rest of Nexus 5. His shield against fear was gone. Sweat beaded on his brow instantly. His pulse raced again, his stomach knotted up inside.

“Pulse jumping,” the woman’s voice said, emotionless. “Suppression eliminated. Clear to proceed.”

No. Oh no. No no no no no.

Then the wet towel was on Rangan’s face again. He held his breath, instinctively, terrified now, and they punched him. He gasped as the air left him and he couldn’t breathe couldn’t fucking breathe and when he could he gasped in again – but it was water not air, choking him, filling up his nose and mouth and lungs and he was coughing it out, his whole body convulsing and his arms and legs pulling so hard he was cutting himself on the straps and the water kept coming down and he couldn’t breathe and his heart was pounding and he panicked and tried to breath harder and oh my fucking God I’m going to die.

Then the water was gone and he was coughing and coughing and thought he was going to puke into the mask and the towel and then finally sweet air between the coughs.

“You like that, Rangan?” the Voice said. “Because I can keep doing this all fucking day.”

Fuck you.

He tried to say it through the fear and the water in his lungs but all that came out was a long fit of coughing. The Voice laughed. Rangan gasped for air. He reached through his terror for some witty insult and they punched him again and the air rushed out of his lungs and when he sucked back in it was only water and he was fucking drowning again and please God, please, fucking God, please motherfucking God.

And then he was coughing, and coughing, and coughing and then he retched and the awful chocolate drink they’d been feeding him came back up with the sick taste of bile and he was drowning in his own fucking chocolate puke.

They ripped off the towel and mask and he retched and convulsed again, puking to the side into a bucket and squinting his eyes against the intense white of the bright, clinical room. And before he could turn his head to see, finally see, the face of the Voice, the mask was down over his face again, smelling of chocolate and bile.

He lay there panting for a while, the vomit buying him a reprieve.

They’re not gonna kill me, he told himself again as he panted. He tried to cling to that, even without the serenity package. Motherfuckers want me alive. Won’t let me die. Just hold on, hold on.

Then the towel came back and then the water came again and it would be better if he didn’t even try to hold his breath but God help him he couldn’t fucking help it, and so he did and then the fist came down like he knew it would and the breath exploded out of him and when finally the air rushed back into his lungs it wasn’t air at all, it was the ocean drowning him like when he’d swum out too far from the beach at Goa and he’d started panicking and going under and didn’t know which way the shore was or which way was up or down and he was sure he was going to die this time and the water kept coming and he was retching and convulsing and pulling at the restraints and his wrists were burning with the pain as he yanked and yanked and his eyes were bulging and the water just kept fucking coming and he couldn’t breathe God I can’t breathe I can’t get to shore I can’t breathe I’m drowning here and it kept coming and every time he coughed he just sucked more water in and no air until he wasn’t coughing, wasn’t coughing, wasn’t breathing, and the world was going gray and he was going under the waves now and he couldn’t fucking breathe and God help me I’m going to die I’m going to die I’m going under, going to drown here can’t get to shore can’t get up to the air going to drown going to die and then the world jerked around him and even as he was dying he felt the gurney snap all the way to upright and his head snapped back and he was vertical – the emergency position emergency dear God I’m really dying.

They’ve lost it they’ve fucked up I’m really gonna die.

A fist slammed into his gut and he still couldn’t fucking breathe.

Gonna die here gonna die.

The fist slammed into him again and he tried to cough the water out but he still couldn’t fucking breathe and he tried to let go and give into it and live his last seconds on earth in peace but he just couldn’t do it.

Sweet Jesus I’m sorry I’m so sorry. Please I don’t wanna die.

Then the fist slammed into his gut a third time and he coughed out fluid and gasped for air and then he retched and his stomach convulsed and he was puking again, puking into the mask, into the mask, still dying.

Then it was off him, and he was heaving and coughing and gasping for breath. And even though he was trying not to he was crying and he was whispering something…

“Please… Please… You win… Please… No more…”

They cleaned him up, brought him clean clothes and hot soup, and questioned him for three hours.

Nexus OS came back online as the Nexus nodes restored themselves. He thought about launching the serenity package again, but he trembled just thinking about it. That way led pain. That way led torture. That way and sooner or later they’d kill him for real.

Instead, he told them everything. How the back doors worked, all three of them. The hacks in the compiler to bake them into Nexus even though they didn’t exist in the source code. The obfuscation tricks that hid the back doors and passwords as random ones and zeros scattered among billions in the binaries, indistinguishable from the parameters that governed millions of neurons, nearly impossible to reverse-engineer.

And of course, the passwords themselves.

He told them how they could build a new compiler from scratch to evade the back doors, but he could tell they didn’t care. All they wanted was the current passwords, and how to use them.

Which meant that they wanted to break into minds already running Nexus 5. Which meant that it had gotten out.

Which made him scum.

They walked him back to his cell this time, blindfolded, but unrestrained. When he got there the blindfold went away, and there was light in his cell, and a bed that didn’t have straps, and a viewscreen. And as he sat down, the door opened again and an orderly walked in with a tray of hot food.

His stomach rumbled at the smell and sight of a warm, solid meal, even as something inside him broke at the understanding of just how badly he’d sold himself out.

He looked down, not able to meet the orderly in the eye, and as he did, he heard a sound, a door opening somewhere down the hall and he felt something, something incredible.

Minds. Many minds. Children’s minds. He felt them and they felt him and they were weird and warped and full of chaos and he was trying to understand who they were and what they were doing here.

Then the door clanged shut, and the minds were gone, and he was alone with his traitor’s meal.