Crux

20 SHUTDOWN

Friday October 19th

“Help! Help me!” Chen pounded on the doors until his fists hurt, until his throat was hoarse.

It was no use. He was hundreds of meters from the surface. The status indicator continued to read

LOCKDOWN IN EFFECT

Its red glow provided the only illumination in the cavernous, darkened elevator.

What was going on? This was no mere mechanical failure. The change in status to lockdown meant that something had happened. Had his dead wife attempted to break free? Had he somehow facilitated that? He patted himself down furiously. Was there a hidden data device on him? Had she somehow succeeded in planting something on him to get something out?

No, there was a simpler explanation. The hardliners had won. The long stalemate between the proponents of liberalism and openness – of gong kāi huà – and the reactionaries who wanted to tighten control had been settled. He could see it in his mind’s eye. Liberal-leaning Politburo members suddenly falling ill, resigning their posts, exiling themselves to their country homes, never to return. Or perhaps worse – men dying, throttled in the dark. Perhaps bombs going off, like the one that had killed his wife, that would have killed him…

Chen shuddered at the memory.

So the hardliners were finishing what they’d started a decade ago, pruning the last fruits of the billion flowers period, ending this experiment in the posthuman, ending the life of his wife as they’d tried before, and taking him with her.

Was the nuclear battery going into meltdown even now? Would the radiation kill him? Would it travel up this shaft? Or would he be left here to suffocate, or die of thirst or hunger?

Was there any hope of escape? Chen looked up towards the top of the elevator. There was no obvious maintenance hatch there. Even if there was, would he have any hope of opening it, then climbing hundreds of meters to the surface? Opening a locked door there, and somehow evading the armed guards in the SCC who undoubtedly had orders to let no one pass? Could even Bai, his clone driver, fight his way through security and rescue him? And if so, then what? Flee to India? Bah.

Chen Pang retreated to the back wall of the elevator and sat down heavily. It was hopeless, then. He’d known this day would come. Ever since the limousine. Ever since the assassination attempt eleven years ago had brought gong kāi huà to an abrupt end. Neither he nor Su-Yong were meant to live that day. They’d been on borrowed time since then. Somehow he’d let himself forget that.

No. From the moment that Sun Liu had taken him aside and warned him not to get into the limousine that night, they’d been doomed. Ted Prat-Nung hadn’t understood, of course. He’d believed the lie that the CIA – and not hardliners within the Chinese government – was responsible for the explosion in the vehicle. Prat-Nung had pushed hard to try the emergency upload. Chen had no choice. Prat-Nung was dangerous, and madly in love with Chen’s wife. He couldn’t tell the man the truth. And the upload would surely fail. What harm in this bit of theater?

When it had worked? When Su-Yong had woken up in the cluster he’d designed, somehow sentient? Well, then he’d allowed himself to forget their doom. He’d let himself hope that the progressives would win, that gong kāi huà might return some day, that a billion flowers might bloom again, or that at least he could ride his wife’s coat-tails to even greater fame and wealth.

No. He should have put two and two together. Ted Prat-Nung was dead from American bullets in that Bangkok loft. Su-Yong was insane, would soon be functionally dead. He was the last of their triad, the last of the team that had turned his wife into the first true posthuman. It made sense. The hardliners would finish the job. They’d make sure that he died too.

Chen Pang bowed his head, and waited for the end to come.

Chen woke to a jolt, unaware that he’d fallen asleep. A loud noise clanged through his head. The elevator lurched unnervingly. Then it began to rise, with a new and unpleasant grinding sound. He waited for the lights to come back on, for the status indicator to change. Neither happened.

He came to his feet. What was going on? Scenarios ran though his head. Su-Yong had tried to escape, and had been stopped, and now they were rescuing him. Or the hardliners had attempted a coup, but had been defeated. Or it had been a power failure after all, and the lockdown nothing but a precaution.

Who would be there when the doors opened? Bai? The director of the SCC? His assistant Li-hua? Someone else?

The elevator stopped moving with a clang. Chen waited, his breath coming fast. Then the doors parted. Bright light hit him, and he fell back, a hand raised up to shield himself, blinded.

Even so, he caught the sight of the guns. Armed soldiers in insectile combat armor, matte black armored surfaces everywhere, bulging actuators and power packs, mirrored helmets obscuring their faces. They held assault rifles aimed in his direction, gaping wide muzzles ready to spew death at him. With them was a single young man in a dark suit, a briefcase in one hand.

“Professor Chen, please stay where you are,” the young man said. The mirror-faced soldiers rushed forwards, pointed their guns and shined lights into the corners of the elevator, up at its ceiling.

Two of them patted him down roughly. Their hands invaded his person, pressing against every part of his torso, grasping his ankles and sliding upwards along his thighs, even between his legs. An insult! But Chen bit his tongue, made no move to resist them.

“Clear!” a voice behind him said.

“Clean,” said one of the soldiers patting him down.

“Please come with me, Professor Chen,” the young man said. It wasn’t a request.

They walked through a red-lit Secure Computer Center. Flashlights and red emergency lights provided the only illumination. They passed rows and rows of workstations, abandoned. Tall metal equipment racks cast strange shadows against the wall. Two armored soldiers in their mirrored helmets went in front, then Chen and the young man in a suit, then two more armored soldiers behind them.

“I am Fu-han Zhao, Professor,” the young man in the suit said. “I’m an aide to State Security Minister Bo Jintao. I’m here to take you to him.”

Bo Jintao. One of the hardliners.

“Bo Jintao? What’s happened? Why is the power out here? Why was I stuck in that elevator for hours?”

“We’ve suffered a major cyber-attack, Professor. As for the rest, we were hoping you could tell us.”

They reached the emergency stairs that led from the Secure Computing Center to the surface, ten flights up. More mirror-faced soldiers in full battle armor were posted here. They parted to let them into the stairwell. Inside, emergency lights on their own batteries bathed them in red.

“How can the SCC power be out?” Chen asked as they climbed. “It has its own backup supply, good for days.”

“We have power here,” Zhao answered. “We fear to use it. The cyber-attack was pervasive. We fear bringing the systems back online until we know what could be compromised.”

At the top there were yet more armed and armored soldiers. The entire building was empty, lit only by emergency lights.

“The power is out up here?” Chen asked.

“Yes,” Zhao said.

“Where is my driver?”

“He’s been… temporarily relieved of duty, Professor. All of them have.”

“All of them?”

“Yes. All the clones.”

All the Confucian Fist clones, relieved of duty. This was about his wife, then. They thought she was behind the attack. And they feared her influence over the clones.

Damn.

He saw not a single student or faculty member in the red-lit computer science building. Outside, it was dark, sometime in the dead of night. Hard rain fell on them. Tank-like armored vehicles crouched on the street, huge guns and extended missile launchers pointed at the building. Between them, portable lights illuminated a military helicopter in the middle of the road. It sat there, waiting for them, rotors spinning, weapons mounted on its stubby wings, mirror-faced armored soldiers surrounding it. Its mottled skin glimmered in the rain and the sodium lights.

Chen heard more rotors up above. He raised his face, using his hand to shield himself from the rain. In the air above he could see dim red lights illuminating four smaller, sleeker, more deadly-looking helicopters circling around them, like birds of prey coolly regarding the ground, waiting for their moment to pounce.

And who knew what lethal weapons he didn’t see.

Zhao gestured for Chen to board the craft.

“My phone… my slate…” Chen shouted to be heard over the rain and the roar of the rotors.

Zhao nodded and yelled back, “They’ll be returned to you at the appropriate time.”

They suspect me too, Chen thought with dread.

He’d been ready to accept death hours ago, but now he very much wanted to live. And to do so, he had to persuade Bo Jintao that he wasn’t a threat. Chen boarded the helicopter, a chill sinking into him from more than the rain. Zhao boarded after him, and then they were aloft.

From the air Chen got his first look at Shanghai. Then he understood.

They flew through the urban canyons between lifeless skyscrapers, their escort helicopters flanking them. The city was a wasteland. Where there should have been light, there was darkness. A dim flicker of candles or flashlights shone in some windows. Down below, on the streets, there were fires. The immobile hulks of cars littered the roads. Water flowed around them. Soldiers manned checkpoints, directed spotlights from place to place. As they passed over an expensive block an explosion sounded, and then the sharp report of automatic weapons.

He saw people in the street, a mob of them pressing against a store front. Looters. The mob moved forward, and from the doorway he saw the flare of gunfire.

Then the chopper was past and he lost sight of them.

Face pale, Chen turned to Zhao next to him. “What happened?”

“The most damaging cyber-attack of all time, Professor. It disabled the on-board computers of hundreds of thousands of cars, sent electrical surges that destroyed hundreds of power substations, knocked out the trains, the ferry terminal, the public safety surveillance systems. Even the sewers. The intelligent water routing that separates waste water and rainwater has failed, and so now we have raw sewage flooding the streets.”

Chen couldn’t breathe. Could Su-Yong have done this?

“My daughter?” he asked.

“Safe,” Zhao said. “We have men with her.”

Chen nodded.

“Deaths?” he asked.

“Hundreds so far,” Zhao said. “Car crashes. Fires. We have thousands trapped in subways that are filling up with water. And violence. People know the delivery trucks will not be running tomorrow. So they loot the stores, steal from each other. Billions of yuan of damage, at least.”

Chen watched the wrecked city go by beneath him, numb with shock.

The helicopters flew north and west, towards the outskirts of the city. Chen saw homes ablaze, a mob of looters carrying off goods from an undefended store, an explosion, the flare of more gunfire. Shanghai was in tatters.

They landed at a military airfield. Dachang, he thought. Here there were lights. Zhao hurried them out of the helicopter and to the executive jet waiting on the runway, its chameleonware skin cycled to neutral gray, a red Chinese flag emblazoned on its tail. Chen barely had time to take his seat in the opulent cabin before they were taxiing down the runway, then taking off, a pair of deadly-looking fighter aircraft taking off with them. He watched the fighters out his window for a moment, before they activated their own chameleonware and became faint distortions, then nothing at all.

They landed at a military airfield outside Beijing an hour later. Another helicopter ferried Chen and Zhao into Beijing proper, armed escort choppers flanking them. Chen had time to appreciate the lights of the city, all looking as it should be. Then they were setting down on the roof of the State Security Building, and armed guards were escorting him and Zhao into the elevator.

A last pair of guards frisked him in front of a doorway, and then it opened for them, and suddenly Chen was in the office of Bo Jintao, Minister of State Security, member of the Politburo, and one of the hardest of the hardliners.

“Professor Chen.” The minister was behind his desk, looking at something on his display. There was a man seated in a chair across the desk from him, facing the minister. “You may sit,” the minister said without looking at Chen.

“Thank you, Minister.” Chen crossed the room. As he did the man across from Bo Jintao turned, and Chen recognized him with relief. Sun Liu, Minister of Science and Technology. A progressive. And Chen’s patron.

“Chen,” Sun Liu said in greeting. His face was grave. Chen nodded his head in return, and sat in the other chair. Zhao stayed at the door.

What is going on here?

“You’re aware of the attack on Shanghai,” Bo Jintao spoke, looking at him for the first time. “Could your wife have done it?”

“Minister, I… I’m sure that she would have no reason…”

“Could she?” the minister repeated.

Chen swallowed. “If she were connected? Yes. But she’s in isolation, Minister, I don’t see how…”

Zhao spoke. “Could she have left a program behind to do this, Professor?”

Chen blinked. “Why would she want to…”

“You will answer my aide’s question,” Bo Jintao said.

Chen sighed. “Probably. But what would she gain from disrupting Shanghai?”

Zhao replied, “Our analysis shows that the cyber-weapon infiltrated the Secure Computing Center first, searched through vast reams of data, and then attacked the Secure Computing Center’s computers, before going on to disrupt civil systems throughout Shanghai. We believe that the intruder was seeking to free your wife from the Physically Isolated Computing Center, and only attacked Shanghai’s civil systems to cover its tracks when it failed to do so.”

“How did you learn this?” Chen asked, turning to look over his shoulder at the aide.

“Your slate and your phone, Professor,” Zhao said. “They’re how the intruder entered the SCC.”

Chen went white as a sheet. He turned back to Bo Jintao. “Minister Bo! I had nothing to do with this! I assure you, I knew nothing!”

The State Security Minister stared at him impassively. Chen felt the cold dread creeping up his spine. This man had tried to kill him once. He could have him killed now with just a word.

“I believe you, Chen Pang,” the minister said softly. “If I did not, you would not be here now.”

Chen stared at the man as the words sank in. Another reprieve. For how long?

“Zhao, continue,” the minister said.

Zhao spoke again. “We believe that this was an attack created by your wife and left behind as insurance in the case of her disconnection. A bot she created to break her out of her imprisonment.”

Chen shook his head. “It isn’t possible for any software to reconnect her. It requires a physical reconnection of the cable, one thousand meters down.”

“We know that,” Zhao said from behind him, “but she does not. The layout of the PICC has been deliberately left out of any electronic records. She might have believed that a software agent operating outside her cage could break through a software firewall imprisoning her.”

The State Security Minister spoke. “Given the probability, we consider it prudent to order an immediate wipe of the Shu upload from the Quantum Cluster.”

Chen bowed his head. It was the end of his dreams. The Equivalence Theorem. The Nobel Prize. The Fields Medal. The billions in commercial licensing. All of it. He had to try one more time.

“But, Minister, her capabilities, the Ministry of Defense depends on them. It’s not too late. We may still be able to stabilize her personality, a clone, even a prisoner, fitted with an interface…”

“No,” Bo Jintao said curtly. “Defense now tells me that their other quantum clusters, thanks to you, Chen, have all the capabilities they need. My own people say the same.”

Thanks to Su-Yong, Chen thought. Not me. My wife has made herself replaceable.

“The rest was closed months ago,” Bo Jintao said. “She revealed our capabilities in quantum cryptography, proved herself a national security risk. And now she attacks us. It is time to shut her down.”

“Minister Sun.” Chen turned to his patron. “Please…” Please, let me wring one more discovery out of her… You’ll get your piece of it…

Sun Liu spoke at last. “I’m sorry, Chen. I agree with Minister Bo. Your wife has proven too great a risk.”

Chen’s heart fell. He lowered his head in submission and defeat.

“But…” the Science Minister continued, “shutting her down does not guarantee an end to these attacks.”

“Our cyber defense team will stop them,” Bo Jintao said.

Sun Liu shrugged. “Perhaps. But we know she is capable of things human programmers are not. The attacks may continue for some time. Perhaps the agents she left behind will target Beijing next?”

Bo Jintao frowned. “What do you suggest?”

“We break her,” Sun Liu said. “We force her to tell us what agents she’s left behind, and how to disable them.”

Chen looked up. Sun Liu knew. He was the only one who knew where Chen’s discoveries truly came from. And what he was really saying now… He wanted to force Su-Yong to tell them something else. The Equivalence Theorem. Despite himself, his heart raced.

“You can do this?” Bo Jintao asked.

“Yes,” Sun Liu said. “Chen can.”

Bo Jintao turned to Chen. “You could do this, Chen? To your own wife?”

Chen sat up straighter in his seat, looked the Minister for State Security in the eyes.

“For the good of the state, I can, and I will.”