Until Nita. Slender, elegant, and utterly captivating in her backless green gown, her long black hair done up in elaborate piles atop her head. Dark eyes dancing with mischief. Lips he wanted, needed to kiss. Hips he intended to grip as he took her in the night. An Indian woman who dressed and spoke like a brazen American. A software tycoon’s daughter who devoted her time and money to charity. He’d inquired about her, then approached her, knowing she’d be his. She’d rejected him instead, then and there, just shaken her head and walked away as he tried to speak to her. She’d walked away from him, Shiva Prasad, the most eligible man in India!
He pursued her across two years and three continents, lured by the self-confidence that allowed her to reject him. He gave to charity to impress her, started his own foundation, endowed it with tens of millions, invited her to sit on its board. And bit by bit she gave him tiny snatches of her time. Not in the boardroom, but in the slums. In the refugee centers. In the disaster zones. In the impoverished schools. On research vessels surveying the melting Arctic and the other dying oceans. She pulled him into her life, showed him a larger world, a world that needed him, a world where his mark could linger on long after his life ended, through the ripple effects of his good deeds.
And at the end of that process, she did not become his. He, a changed man, became hers.
That was the end of most of his luxuries of wealth – the cars, the clothes, the women, the vacations and yachts and jets and opulent chalets. It surprised the world. Hadn’t he come from the poorest of poor backgrounds? An orphan from the mean streets? An untouchable who’d become one of the most ruthless business tycoons of the decade? Surely with his billions he’d relish all the material pleasures life had to offer.
The changed Shiva knew better. Luxuries and indulgences were distractions from true greatness, tawdry and ephemeral baubles that dissipated energy that could be directed toward more meaningful and durable accomplishments in the world around him.
Yet one must wear the costume to play the role. And so it was that he absorbed the briefing in white cotton, but thousands of miles away, his avatar appeared in the semblance of gray silk Armani.
“We’ve clustered around eighty per cent of the Nexus users into three demographics,” Kenneth Dunn was saying. He was tall, forty-something, handsome in all the ways that money could buy, with a genetically squared jaw, broad shoulders, and perfectly black hair. He might even have bought those genetic tweaks from one of Shiva’s own companies.
“Cluster one: Mid-teens to mid-twenties of age, urban and suburban, medium to high income, roughly even gender split.”
“Recreational users,” Elizabeth Broadmoor piped in. “Party kids.” She was barely more than a child herself. In her late thirties still, incredibly successful for her age, able to afford the cosmetic gene modifications that gave her the glossy blonde hair, flawlessly tanned skin, and lithe figure of a woman ten years younger.
Dunn nodded. “Cluster two: Thirties to fifties, suburban, tilted towards high income, sixty per cent women. These are parents of special needs children. Autism spectrum, ADHD, etc...”
“And cluster three?” Shiva asked.
Elizabeth Broadmoor spoke up. “This is the one you asked us to look for. Highly educated, mostly high socio-economic status, fifty-five per cent male, urban and suburban. They’re highly international. What unites them most are the features you suggested: high scientific literacy, high IQ, careers in engineering, computing, and the sciences. These are people seeking out Nexus for themselves, to connect and enhance their own performance. These are the intelligentsia you thought we’d find.”
Shiva nodded. “And the numbers?”
“These are extrapolations, of course,” Dunn said. “We have only indirect data. There’s a wide margin of error.”
Shiva nodded. “Of course.”
“Around one point three million total Nexus users,” Dunn said, “plus or minus forty per cent.”
Shiva stroked his chin thoughtfully, and the suited avatar did the same. The numbers were similar to the other studies he’d commissioned. “And the long-term projections?”
“A year from now we expect five million total Nexus users,” Broadmoor answered. “Around one million in your cluster three. At three years and five years it gets much harder to predict. Media events, public perception, law enforcement effectiveness – those all affect the numbers.”
“Understood,” Shiva nodded. “Go on.”
Broadmoor took a breath. “Growth is strong. Consumer demand is high. Word of mouth spread is off the charts strong. By year five, we’re looking at anywhere from twenty million to one hundred million Nexus users, worldwide.”
“And the last number?” Shiva asked. “The children?”
We could have one of those, Nita, Shiva thought. A beautiful child. A posthuman child. Even now. You’re not too old, not with modern technology...
But Nita had always seen having a child as selfish. Why bring another soul into this world, she’d say, when there are so many out there that need our help?
And Nita was gone from his life.
Elizabeth Broadmoor’s façade cracked just a tiny bit as she answered. “Using the previous estimate,” she said, “by year five we expect half a million to two million children alive born to Nexus mothers.”
Later, Shiva stood on the inner balcony and looked down into the tree-lined courtyard. The boy he’d bounced on his knee was down there, along with a dozen more like him, their minds linked with each other and with three adults. Their linked brains were playing a game, or so they thought. A molecular design game, searching through genetic sequences that would yield a protein that would go even further in restoring the world’s corals, in protecting them from the acidification of the seas. Shiva closed his eyes and he could see the shifting protein shapes in the children’s minds, writhing, folding, refolding, transforming as the youngsters searched the possibility space for a new way to save the world’s reefs.
The expertise in this game came entirely from the adults – molecular biologist and biochemists with deep knowledge in the calcifying proteins used by corals. But the raw skill in the game, that came from the children, who tapped into that knowledge and then applied it together at staggering speed.
Shiva pulled himself back and focused his mind’s eye on the numbers floating in space above them. And then he nodded to himself. Tonight, on this game, these children were outperforming even the most sophisticated supercomputers.
They were learning to merge themselves into an intelligence that had no human equal. They were destined to exceed him, to exceed any solitary human, perhaps to exceed any computer that now existed on Earth as well. And they were just the beginning.
There would soon be millions of scientists and engineers running Nexus. Another million children born to Nexus mothers, as these had been. What could all of those minds be turned into, if linked together?
Humanity was failing. It could not solve the problems it now faced. But those millions of Nexus-augmented minds could. They could become a single posthuman intelligence of epic scale. A god forged out of humanity, finally able to manage the planet through its Anthropocene calamities. But those millions would not merge willingly or easily. Shiva would need to forge that god out of its component pieces, would need to give it direction, to turn it into the rightful governor of this world and the people on it.
And for that he needed Kaden Lane.
13
BO TAT
Friday October 19th