Host: Let's move on the situation in Turkmenistan…
[ END TRANSCRIPT ]
Viper 6 banked after its sixth drop, circling to the left to come around north by north-west towards the mountains north-east of Bangkok. It flew low, barely five meters over the rice paddies and sugar cane plantations, under the radar. Its AI steered it clear of villages and farmhouses.
It flew past Rop Mueang, past Nakhon Nayok, past Phrommani, paralleled Highway 33 at a safe distance until it saw the village of Ban Na, then curved around north and east, hugged the terrain as it went from flat to rugged, followed a ravine carved into the stone millennia ago up towards greater heights.
At twelve hundred meters it popped out of the ravine, acquired its target with its onboard optics, calibrated against its internal GPS. This was target seven, its AI confirmed.
Viper 6 opened Weapons Bay 2, flew low and slow over the monastery, and launched a spray of tiny eight-limbed surveillance robots out and into the night air.
One by one they drifted down and onto the target.
43
JUST BREATHE
Kade woke to the sound of dawn bells. Sunday morning. Just over a day since everything had gone wrong, since Wats had died, since Narong had died, since Ilya and Rangan and so many others had been arrested.
The meditation had soothed him last night, for a while.
Then had come sleep, and with it, dreams. Dreams of rage, of destruction, of breaking Warren Becker in half, of burning Martin Holtzmann alive at the stake, of tearing black-masked agents limb from limb as they charged into that apartment. They'd been cold dreams. The death he'd meted out had been cool, methodical, satisfying.
He was cold inside. Cold and full of rage. That was all he could feel.
There was a knock at his door. "Come in," he replied.
Bahn entered. The young monk had brought him a bowl of porridge for breakfast. He placed the bowl on the table, then made a wai to Kade with this hands, smiled, said something in Thai which might have been a joke or a happy comment.
There was so much joy in this place. What did it feel like?
Was there joy for him, on the other side of this rage? On the other side of this numbness? Was there anything?
Perhaps destroying the ERD would give him joy. The thought brought a small smile to his lips.
The doctor came to see him shortly thereafter, changed his dressings, checked his wounds, injected new growth factors to knit bone to bone, heal skin, restore damaged lung tissue.
The eye was still gone.
It was still so much less than he should have lost. He should have been the one to die. Not Wats. Not anyone else.
His hand clenched around the fob hanging on a chain around his neck, beneath his orange robes. Its hard edges bit into his palm painfully.
You should have lived, Wats. This wasn't worth it.
He rose, crutched himself towards the meditation hall again. He'd learned much last night. The monks had learned to integrate Nexus 3 into their minds. They hadn't reprogrammed the Nexus cores, or scanned the radio spectrum and mapped Nexus's responses, or reverse-engineered its underlying instruction set.
No. They'd meditated. They'd sculpted their own minds to the Nexus, found ways of thinking and being that gave them deeper control over it. And in so doing, they'd learned to achieve a synchrony that he'd never experienced. They'd learned to let thoughts flow smoothly across the boundaries that separated individual minds. They'd learned to merge into something larger and more sentient than they were individually.
It impressed him deeply. He had much to learn here.
He reached the meditation hall early, situated himself in the back, closed his eyes, focused on his breath.
Monks filed in. He felt them. Heard them. They sat as they entered, cross-legged, spines erect. They breathed. Kade felt his own breathing synchronise with theirs. The connection between their minds firmed. The greater mind began to coalesce.
Kade could feel them all. He was aware of the tiny ripples of thought that passed through their minds. Every tiny thought, every word, every snippet of song, every momentary fancy, every thought of chores, every question of teachings, every itch, every urge to move… the room felt them all. Together their collective consciousness observed itself. As each thought or sensation arose it was perceived, acknowledged, released. Attention returned to the communal breathing.
It was hypnotic, serene, crystal clear and coherent. The room sparkled with their shared attention, with an almost physical sense of the collective mind they comprised.
Their minds were so quiet. Kade's was so loud in comparison. The same thoughts kept returning.
Wats. Ilya. Rangan.
Narong. Chariya. Niran.
Lalana. Mai.
The dead and the missing. The uncertainty of the future. The guilty who'd done this.
There was no grief. The software in his mind kept that at bay. His emotions were as hard and sharp and brittle as ice. Only anger. Only rage, cold rage, impotent rage.
Every time the thoughts arose, the collective mind observed them, acknowledged them, released them, returned its awareness to the rhythmic breathing of their bodies.
And every time they returned.
They meditated together until lunch. Kade ate in the mess hall in silence, lost in himself. The monks finished their meals, headed off to their afternoon chores.
Kade crutched painfully back to the meditation hall. There, seated at the far end of the hall, facing Kade, the giant golden Buddha statue behind him, was Professor Somdet Phra Ananda.
The old monk's eyes opened at Kade's arrival.
"Child," he said in his deep sonorous voice, "come and sit with me."
Kade crutched himself across the room, reached the pillow Ananda indicated, slowly lowered himself, ribs aching. He could feel Ananda's mind, buoyant, radiant with calm and clarity, fluid, flexible, relaxed. His own mind felt icy, numb, frozen in a single thought.
"How are you, child?" Ananda asked.
"I'm healing," Kade said. I'm angry, he thought. "Thank you for letting us come here. This must be a risk for you. We were out of options."
"Enough people died that night," Ananda replied.
Kade nodded. The memory of it was cold. There was nothing where grief or sorrow should be. Anger. Hatred. That was all.
"I felt you meditating," Ananda said.
"It's amazing what your monks have learned to do," Kade replied. "I'm hoping to learn more of it."
"To what end?" Ananda asked.