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."
7
EXPLANATIONS
TRANSCRIPT: RANGAN SHANKARI, TECH BRIEFING, "NEXUS 5"
Sunday February 19th 2040 0951 hours
[NOTE: Subject should be considered hostile.]
INTERVIEWER: OK. Let's start again. Tell us about Nexus 5.
SHANKARI: [inaudible, likely profanity] Fine. Nexus 5 is Nexus, but with software layered on top.
INTERVIEWER: What does that mean?
SHANKARI: We found a way to program it. We found a way to get data in and out. To get instructions in and out.
INTERVIEWER: What kind of data?
SHANKARI: Neural data at first. We were using it as a way to measure neural firing in the motor cortex. Individual neurons, but millions of them at a time.
INTERVIEWER: This was for your research?
SHANKARI: Yeah. The goal was to get the data from the brain, decode it, and use it to control a robot arm.
INTERVIEWER: Systems like that already exist. Why the research?
SHANKARI: Existing systems get implanted surgically. That limits them. The procedures are long. You can get infections. And you can only tap into tens of thousands of neurons. The motor cortex has maybe ten billion neurons. With Nexus, we could tap into more of them. Millions. Tens of millions. We could get finer control over robot arms. You could catch a ball, write with a pen, do stuff you can't do with current systems.
INTERVIEWER: Go on.
SHANKARI: Well, we knew we could get data in too. Nexus nodes talk to each other by radio.
INTERVIEWER: How do they talk by radio?
SHANKARI: I dunno. Fucking nanotubes are little radios all by themselves, man. There's a lot of nanostructures in Nexus.
INTERVIEWER: OK. Software.
SHANKARI: Software. Yeah. So, anyway, they talk by radio. They sync up. Every node has some way of saying what part of the brain it's in. Every node listens for broadcasts addressed to its part of the brain, so it knows when to fire. If we could crack that, we could listen in on brain activity, and we could make neurons fire in whatever part of the brain we wanted.
INTERVIEWER: Why would that be relevant to your work?
SHANKARI: There's a million reasons. More than that. But for us it was about feedback. Sending the brain information on what the arm was touching, where it was relative to the body. Without that, an artificial limb is useless.
INTERVIEWER: So again, systems like that exist. Why your work?
SHANKARI: Same reason. More neurons. Higher bandwidth. Higher sensitivity, more precision, no surgery. Next question?
INTERVIEWER: Software. How did this lead to software?
SHANKARI: Yeah. Well, we dosed up some mice, started recording all the signals…