Nexus

6 EXTERNAL CONDITIONS

"I'll do it," Kade told them.

"Good," Becker nodded. "You're making the right choice."

"So who am I spying on?"

Becker tapped his slate and the wallscreen came to life.

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING MATERIAL IS CLASSIFIED:

TOP SECRET CITADEL FOUR

DISCLOSURE OF THIS MATERIAL TO UNCLEARED INDIVIDUALS IS A FEDERAL OFFENSE PUNISHABLE BY UP TO 30 YEARS IN PRISON.

The twin logos of the Department of Homeland Security and the Emerging Risks Directorate within it bracketed the security clearance warning.

"You're about to receive top secret information. Do you understand that disclosure of this information, to anyone, is a felony with severe penalties?"

Kade swallowed. "Yes."

"Good," Becker said. He tapped his slate with a finger.

The wall screen advanced to the next slide. On it was a picture of a tall, elegant Asian woman in her early forties, caught looking to one side and smiling warmly at someone outside the image. Kade had seen her face before.

"Her name is Su-Yong Shu," Becker said. "You've probably heard of her."

Kade was momentarily speechless. Su-Yong Shu? A murderer?

Su-Yong Shu was perhaps the most impressive neuroscientist in the field. Asked to pick a working scientist who would one day win the Nobel Prize, Kade would have named her. She had done more to unlock the neural encoding of abstract reasoning, beliefs, motivations, and knowledge than anyone alive. Kade's work used statistical methods layered on top of models built in Su-Yong Shu's lab. She and her students put out a fire hose of top-notch papers. She was one of the most respected neuroscientists alive.

"You're calling Su-Yong Shu a murderer?" Kade asked. "Do you have any idea what you're talking about? Do you have any evidence to back that up?"

Becker tapped his slate. The screen changed again. Now it showed a picture of a man in the orange robes of a Buddhist monk, his shaven head bowed forward, kneeling in what looked to be a stone courtyard.

"This is a file photo of Lobsang Tulku, the Buddhist monk who shot and killed the Dalai Lama and two of his bodyguards in Dharamsala in 2037, and then took his own life."

Kade nodded. "I remember. He just snapped one day, right?"

"That's the story," Becker said. "We have reason to believe that's not what actually occurred. Instead, we believe that someone turned this man into a kind of puppet and used him to commit a political assassination."

Becker advanced the presentation again. The wall screen now showed a gruesome image of a twenty-something Asian man in monk's robes in a pool of blood, two bullet wounds in his head. The Dalai Lama. Kade felt his stomach churn.

"Lobsang had no history of owning or using firearms," Becker said. "So far as we know, he'd never even touched a gun until a week before this event. Yet his marksmanship was impeccable. He fired six times, twice for each of the two bodyguards, and twice for the Dalai Lama. Every one was a head shot. He didn't miss with a single bullet."

Holtzmann looked at Kade thoughtfully. "You could do something like this, couldn't you? Make a person into a robot?"

Kade stared at the photo. In theory… With enough time…

He said nothing.

Holtzmann watched him for a moment, then nodded.

Kade cleared his throat, trying to hold onto his skepticism. "Maybe there were things you didn't know about him. Maybe someone was training him all along, or planted him."

Becker cocked his head to one side. "Lobsang was a close associate of the Dalai Lama. They grew up together. He was an apparently devoted follower and friend of the Dalai Lama, an activist for Tibetan freedom, until one day he decided to kill his lifelong friend, and did so with the skills of a professional assassin."

Becker continued. "We know that Lobsang was detained in Tibet by the Chinese a few months earlier. He was in custody for forty-eight hours and was then expelled from the country. Lobsang claimed that he spent most of that time in silent meditation in his cell, but if someone used a neurotechnology to alter his memories…"

It's possible, Kade thought. Nexus would make a great assassination tool.

He shook his head again. Propaganda is the first tool of government, Wats had said. Skepticism. He would hold onto it.

"What does this have to do with Su-Yong Shu?"

"We'll get to that in a moment," Becker said.

He advanced the slide again. A ruined building appeared, obviously the site of an explosion. Bodies and wounded were strewn about, some of them in military uniform.

"Grozny, Chechnya, 2038. After nearly five years of peace, a young woman named Zamira Zakaev – a woman associated with a disarmed and peace accord-abiding Chechen independence group – blows up a nightclub popular with the Russian army. The event, which killed seventy-four civilians and thirty Russian soldiers, set off a wave of reprisals, which in turn set off more bombings. Russia moved three divisions of the Russian army back into the North Caucasus. The situation remains inflamed today."

"I don't see the connection," said Kade.

"Zamira Zakaev had traveled to China earlier in the year, and had also been held for two days by the Chinese authorities, for no obvious reason."

"Why would China want to bomb a club in Chechnya?"

"It distracts the Russians. Forces them to move their attention and their forces away from China."

Kade tried to absorb this. What did it have to do with Shu?

"One more," Becker said. "And then we'll get to why we think Su-Yong Shu is involved."

Becker tapped his slate again. The screen now showed an Asian man in a suit, fist raised in triumph or defiance above him, standing at a podium surrounded by a throng of people, some waving banners.

"This is Chien Liu, now president of Taiwan. This picture was taken on the eve of his election victory last year, in 2039. President Liu was the head of the DPP, the primary opposition party in Taiwan, and ran his campaign on an anti-Beijing platform. He pledged to roll back major pieces of integration. On the campaign trail he leveled sharp criticism at China on human rights, foreign policy, and its lack of internal reforms.

"In January of this year, President Liu went to Beijing for his first meeting with the recently installed Chinese premier." Becker tapped and the screen now showed Liu and an older Asian man, whom Kade recognized vaguely from the news, sitting side by side in ornate red and gold chairs. The men were smiling faintly, if at all.

Becker continued. "During the visit, President Liu became suddenly ill, apparently a case of the flu. He was admitted overnight to Beijing's Jade Palace Hospital, the best hospital in the country. He was discharged early the next morning, smiling and waving at reporters, everything apparently alright. Aside from that, the trip was a major success, at least for China.

"Liu returned from Beijing singing a new tune. He flipped on nearly every topic of Taiwan-China relations, supporting deeper and faster integration, and dropping all human rights and corruption objections. We believe Beijing turned him during that visit, though in a more subtle way than the previous two cases."

"He's a politician," Kade said. "Maybe he just changed his mind."

Becker smiled faintly. "That's a very reasonable suggestion. We wondered the same. And of course we wanted to be sure. Fortunately, during his trip to the US last month, President Liu also became ill." Becker smiled faintly again. "CIA took that as an opportunity to run a few tests on President Liu's blood and cerebrospinal fluid. His blood was clean, but in his cerebrospinal fluid, they found signs of something that looks suspiciously like Nexus. That there are no signs of it in the bloodstream suggests to us that the Nexus-like substance isn't deteriorating and being flushed out of his brain as normal. The technology has been permanently integrated. Something that you seem to have achieved as well."

Holtzmann spoke again. "We look forward to hearing the details of just how you've achieved this."

Kade felt ill.

Becker went on. "We have another two dozen events we think are cases of Chinese compulsion technology at work. Do you see why we're concerned?"

"Yes," Kade said. And he did. They'd built Nexus OS to give people new freedoms, new ways to connect, new ways to learn. Not to use it as a tool for control or assassination.

"You asked about the involvement of Dr Shu. We're now getting to that. First, we have human intelligence indicating that for the past several years, she's been working with the Chinese military on coercion technologies of some sort. Second, we have direct evidence linking her to part of the Chinese supersoldier program."

Becker tapped again, and the picture changed to a group of Asian soldiers in a parade. Something about the grain and focus suggested to Kade that the photo had been taken from very far away with a very long zoom lens.

"Do you notice anything interesting about this photo?" Becker asked.

Kade studied it, not sure what he was looking for. The soldiers were in their twenties, muscular and fit, with identical crew cuts, dress uniforms, and sophisticated rifles of some kind against their right shoulders. They were all poised in mid-step, postures erect and in complete synchrony, faces cold and blank. He wondered if he was supposed to recognize one of them? Asian faces all looked a bit alike to him. Though these faces looked extremely alike, a trick of the haircuts? Or…

"They're identical," he said.

Becker nodded. "This is a detachment of the Confucian Fist special forces battalion. They're clones, which is itself a violation of Copenhagen. We also have reports that this battalion, the most elite in China's armed forces, has been engineered for unshakable loyalty."

Kade shuddered. He had a flash of memories of newscasts from his teens, the Nazi clone kids, the ones who'd tried to wipe out all of humanity. Rows of them, filing out from the compound, eyes totally cold. Killers at age ten. He tried to suppress it.

Becker saw the reaction. "You're thinking of the Aryan Rising case. We haven't seen any major cloning projects since then. Nothing at this level. Not until now."

Kade shook his head, forced himself to think like a scientist.

"They're just twins," he said. "That's all cloning is. The Nazi kids… they had programming beyond that. Just because someone's a clone doesn't make them evil… any more than any twin is."

Becker nodded thoughtfully. "Sure. You're right. Just twins. But you have to ask yourself, why would someone create a couple hundred copies of the same twin?"

Kade shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe they want blood transfusions to be easier. Or organ transplants."

Becker nodded again, seeming to consider this. "Or maybe they want conformity. Control. Maybe they want predictability. Maybe they want to do really invasive neuro-coercion, and making the brain structure as similar as possible makes that easier, eh?" Becker raised an eyebrow at him.

Kade looked at the cold, hard, identical faces of the clone soldiers again. Becker's answer was all too plausible.

"And indeed," Becker went on, "you can see them deployed in a number of the situations where absolute, unquestioning loyalty would be most demanded. You can see two of them here." The wall flipped to an image of the Chinese premier, with two bodyguards in view. They had the same face as the soldiers he'd just seen. "Another one here, with Dr Shu." The screen showed a picture of Su-Yong Shu entering her car. The driver holding open the door was one of the clones. "And another one here, with Su-Yong Shu's husband, Chen Pang, head of the artificial intelligence program at Jiaotong University." A shot of a no-nonsense looking Chinese man in a suit, crossing a plaza, caught in the middle of a purposeful stride, a dark-suited bodyguard at his side, again with the same face.

"That Dr Shu and her husband have Confucian Fist bodyguards isn't damning in and of itself. But take a look at this." The screen showed four rows of Confucian Fist soldiers, arms clasped behind their backs in parade rest. In front of them, facing the camera was a smiling Su-Yong Shu, her arms spread as if to point out the young men behind her. Unlike the other photos, the soldiers were smiling in this one.

"This was a graduation ceremony for a class, or batch, of Confucian Fist. Why is Dr Shu there if she wasn't involved in the program? And given that she's a neuroscientist who's been fingered for working on coercion technologies, and that these soldiers are reputed to be engineered for unshakable loyalty… Well, it doesn't take much to connect the dots."

Kade opened his mouth to interject, but Becker kept talking.

"One more piece of evidence," Becker said.

The screen changed again. Now it showed a market, somewhere in the tropics, perhaps Southeast Asia. Su-Yong Shu was in the middle of the photo, delightedly holding an exotic fruit of some sort to her nose. Next to her was a lean, tall Asian man wearing dark sunglasses.

"This photo was taken in Chiang Mai, Thailand, two years ago. The man next to Dr Shu is Thanom 'Ted' Prat-Nung. Ted PratNung is an American-educated Thai synthetic chemist and nano-engineer. Forty-two years old. PhD from Stanford in 2024, where he focused on self-assembling nano-structures. Postdoc at Jiaotong University in Shanghai from 2024 through 2026, where it's possible he met Su-Yong Shu. His whereabouts between 2026 and 2034 are unknown. After 2034 he re-emerges as a major source of Nexus 3. We believe he synthesizes it in a facility or set of facilities in the eastern provinces of Thailand, close to the border with Cambodia. He's someone we'd very much like to get our hands on, but the Thai government has not been cooperative. Prat-Nung and Shu's research interests essentially do not overlap at all. Seeing them together is provocative, to say the least.

"To summarize, we believe that Su-Yong Shu is one of – if not the primary – scientist behind China's neurotech program focused on coercion, and that in this work she's somehow adapted Nexus 3. We're concerned both about what China could do with this technology and, perhaps even more so, what knowledge SuYong Shu might pass back into the black market via her connection with someone like Ted Prat-Nung."

Kade took a deep breath.

Don't buy into what they're selling, he told himself. These people will lie or distort the truth to convince me. Stay skeptical. Learn for yourself.

"So why me?" he asked.

Becker answered, "You're about to get an invite to a special workshop on decoding higher brain functions, to be held immediately after the upcoming International Society for Neuroscience conference in Bangkok. Su-Yong Shu arranged the invitation. You'll be the only grad student at the invite-only workshop. Everyone else is a tenured professor. That indicates some degree of exceptional interest in you. We know Shu has open postdoctoral positions in her lab, and you're going to get your PhD in the next year. Your work already builds on some of hers. It seems like a good fit."

Now Kade was nervous. "So you're asking me to spy on someone who could, conceivably, have me killed or something if she finds out?"

Becker smiled slightly. "Rest assured we'd pull you out immediately if we perceived you as being in any danger. And you'll have support with you at the conference. If something long-term emerges in Shanghai, you'd have support there as well."

I don't have much choice, do I? he thought. Maybe Ilya was right. We could have gone to the press, to the public…

No. It wouldn't have worked. How many stories like that had Kade heard about in the past? Had he done anything? He'd signed some online petitions. Had he rushed to people's defenses? Had scientists around the country risen up in protest? Fat chance. Everyone just kept their head down, massaged their research proposals, tried to skirt as close to the edge of what was allowed as they could without endangering their federal grant dollars. He felt sick, ashamed of himself, ashamed of his profession.

Becker closed the cover on his slate and looked at Kade.

"For the last topic, and for the technology briefing we'd like you to do for us, I turn to Dr Holtzmann. And now I must attend to other matters. Dr Holtzmann will see to your transport back to San Francisco. We'll send someone with you to confiscate any Nexus materials you have there. Aside from that, we'll be in touch shortly. We have two months until the ISFN meeting, and we'll be asking a fair bit of preparation from you, most of it to ensure your safety." With that, Becker got up, took his slate, and exited the room, closing the door behind him.

Kade's head was spinning. Technology briefing. Confiscate Nexus materials. He was having trouble breathing again. He could feel his heart beating in his chest. They were taking Nexus away from him. They were taking it for themselves. He was handing them this power, and giving up on it himself. He had to find a way to limit the damage they could do.

But how could he?

He was dimly aware of Holtzmann saying something to him.

He missed it for a moment. The idea came to him whole. Was it possible? Yes. Was there time? He had no idea.

Holtzmann said something again.

Kade snapped back to the room.

"Sorry? I missed that."

"I asked if you're well," the elder scientist replied.

No. I'm not well. But I'm not going to roll over, either. "Umm, yeah. Sorry. It's just a lot to take in."

Holtzmann nodded. "Do you need a break?"

Kade blinked. What was done was done. He could only move forward.

"No. I'm fine now. Let's go on."

Holtzmann nodded again, opened his own slate, tapped on it for a moment, and the wall screen transitioned to a new slide, showing a single graph, labeled "Su-Yong Shu: Impact Factor of New Publications."

Holtzmann spoke. "We have one last piece of background on your mission for today. It concerns Su-Yong Shu. She's an exceptional scientist. From the very beginning of her career that has been apparent. A number of years ago, however, something changed."

Kade absorbed the graph as Holtzmann spoke. Shu's impact factor rose rapidly, solidly through her early career. Then there was a break, three years gone from science, while she took time off to raise her daughter. When the line reappeared, it was markedly higher than it had been when it dropped off. And it had a new, steeper slope – rising faster and faster every year.

"As you can see, Kade, the career trajectories before 2029 and after 2032 appear quite different. Those three years represent a discontinuity. The early Su-Yong Shu showed every sign of a successful career. The Su-Yong Shu of 2032 and later goes beyond that. She shows signs of almost… superhuman brilliance."

Kade considered for a moment. "Maybe she did a lot of thinking while she was at home? Came up with new ideas?"

Holtzmann nodded. "That would produce a temporary boost upon her return. Instead, what we see is a long-term acceleration. Every year after 2032, she diverges further and further from her pre-2032 trajectory. This sort of change is unprecedented."

Kade tilted his head. "You think something changed about her. That she got smarter. Augmented."

"We have no proof…" Holtzmann said slowly. "But this is very suggestive."

Kade nodded. Her work was indeed very very good. Awe-inspiring even. "The kind of augmentation you're talking about… That's not just a little memory boost or concentration aid. It's better pattern recognition. Better creativity. You're talking about enhancements beyond anything known about in the field today…"

Holtzmann nodded. "Yes. She shows signs of being augmented in ways that surpass anything that we know of. That is something which concerns us." He paused, then continued. "And it's interesting that the first report of Nexus 1 came in 2033, just seven years ago… and one year after Dr Shu's return to science." Holtzmann let that hang in the air.

Kade frowned. "You're saying Su-Yong Shu may have created Nexus? She's not a nano-engineer."

"Do you know any nano-engineer who could have designed Nexus?"

No. Not even close. "A team of engineers…" Kade suggested.

"We've had teams of nano-engineers look at Nexus, try to reverse-engineer it," Holtzman said. "The Japanese, Germans, Brits, and Indians all have as well. No one has more than scratched the surface."

"So what are you saying?" Kade asked.

"I'm saying that Nexus may defy human understanding because it is not the product of normal human thought," Holtzman said. "It is the product of posthuman thought."

And you're sending me spy on her? Kade thought.

Holtzmann tapped his slate. The wall screen went dark and the room lights rose. "Now it is time for you to brief us on your Nexus 5 work, and transfer to us all materials you have on it – all design notes, experimental results, all of it."

Kade swallowed. "The materials are in SF."

Holtzmann raised one white bushy eyebrow.

"It's a precaution we took," Kade said. "The master code is on a system that's kept offline."

"Very well. We will do the first stage of the technology briefing now. And we'll send an officer with you back to your lab to retrieve this data. You'll hand all data and physical materials over to our officer, and he'll return them to us."

Kade bowed his head in assent. Here we go.

Warren Becker opened the door into the room where Sam stood, silently observing the briefing Kade was receiving through a viewscreen. Becker walked up to her, placed his hand on her shoulder.

"Sam. How's that injury?"

Sam nodded, put a hand on her side. "Healing, sir. The growth factors are doing their work. I should be fully fit for service in a week."

"Good," Becker said. "What did you think of the briefing?"

Sam shook her head. "There's a lot there. I wish I'd known the whole picture before the mission last night."

"Some of it was need-to-know, Sam. We didn't expect things to go the way they did last night."

Sam nodded. "Yes, sir. I understand." She paused for a moment, then continued. "Sir… I'm not sure that I'm the right person for the next phase of this mission."

Becker snorted. "Sam, you're the perfect person for this mission. You have more experience with Nexus than any field agent. And you have a great alias that fits the mission needs."

"I know. It's just…"

Becker waited a moment and then prompted, "The failure of your memory implants was a valuable lesson, Sam. We'll improve the implantation process from that. You'll be better prepared for a Nexus 5 connection than any agent who hasn't experienced it."

"That's not it, sir. It's that… It's that I… I enjoyed it, sir. I question my objectivity."

Becker chuckled. "If drugs weren't enjoyable, people wouldn't abuse them. There's nothing new there."

Sam looked down at her hands. How to get through to him? "Sir, when I was being held captive, and no longer part of the Nexus… connection that they'd established, I missed it. I wanted to be back in that loop. I wanted… something that goes against everything I stand for." Sam was faltering now.

"Agent Cataranes." Becker said it in a tone of command.

Sam snapped her eyes to him.

"Samantha, I know how you were raised. I know what happened to you and your family at Yucca Grove. I know about Communion virus and the things you were exposed to. It's exactly because of those experiences that I have complete faith in you. You, among all people, understand the dangers of this tech. I know you won't falter in your duty. You're going on this mission because you're the available field agent with the best relevant experience and positioning. You're going because I have one hundred percent confidence in you. And you're going because it's an order. Is that understood?"

Sam let go of the breath she was holding. "Yes, sir. Understood."

Becker smiled fractionally. "Good. Now, we have an additional briefing for you. Tell me what I haven't told Kaden Lane."

Sam turned her eyes back to the briefing room, where Kade and Holtzmann were finishing up. "At a guess… This mission isn't just to learn what we can from having someone close to Su-Yong Shu. If possible, you want more. You want her to try to turn Kade, with whatever techniques she's been using. So we can study them in depth."

Sam paused for a moment, then finished her thought. "Which means that Kade isn't just a spy," she said. "He's bait."