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This is a work of fiction. All resemblance to real life is by coincidence, and none of the characters are real... yet.

SUPERVIRUS

© Copyright 2010 Andrew W. Mitchell

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the copyright holder.

Printed in the United States of America.

For information, contact publisher@turtlerockbooks.com.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4505-1439-2

ISBN-10: 1-4505-1439-1

Turtle Rock books are available for special promotions and premiums. For details, contact publisher@turtlerockbooks.com.

Special thanks to Latham Boyle, Laurie Carafone, Sally DiMartino, Jake Edgerton, Tanya Golubeva, Tait Keller, Joseph Krupnick, Kevin Cassin Luby, J. Barry Mitchell, Beth Mitchell, Matt Mitchell, Zachary Mitchell, Elina Mer, Dan Perry, and the team at Turtle Rock Books: without any of you, this book would not have been possible.

Cover design by Elina Mer

LIMITED EDITION FIRST PRINTING

Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not.

PART I

THE KID

WINNING

Los Angeles, CA

41 hrs to Birth

Jared Keller got up at 3 a.m. on every day of trading because he was programmed to win. On the last Thursday of the year, however, he faced off against a strange mind that was in an altogether different league of winning.

He coughed hoarsely as he sat up in bed, in the darkness. I never get sick, he thought, annoyed.

He stumbled into the bathroom and flipped on the light switch. He splashed his face with water and muttered challenges to himself. Winning was what it meant to be a trader, a professional, an American, and a man.

After a shave and some cologne, he was ready to go.

“Booyah!” he declared, in a challenge to the world, and then he was out the door.

Driving into downtown L.A., he slurped from a canned energy drink and listened to the radio. The people on the radio were idiots, but he needed to listen to them to know what the market was thinking. According to the radio, some people out there were worried that the world was coming to an end. A radio jockey had an expert on the show to talk about it.

The jockey read from his notes:

There has been a lot of public excitement over an apocalypse or doomsday event supposedly predicted by the calendar of the ancient Maya civilization of Central America.

The Maya developed a calendar system of impressive accuracy. Their calendar, developed in the seventh century without the use of modern tools, was more accurate than the first modern calendar developed several hundred years later.

The public excitement over the new year, however, is based on a few misconceptions. The year does contain a ‘starting-over point' of the calendar for the first time in approximately 5,125 solar years. But the significance of this date to the Maya was unclear, and there is little evidence specifically to believe that the Maya thought this date would correspond to the end of the world, or any specific event, for that matter.

Secondly, the ‘reset point' in the Maya calendar doesn't occur on our New Year at all. Rather, it occurred on December 21st of last week, or 12/21. So even if the date DID have significance, we're talking about a date that already happened six days ago.

The host of the show asked a question: “Is it true that on that same date, this year's winter solstice, the sun was in the center of the Milky Way for the first time in about 26,000 years?”

“Yes, that is true,” the expert responded. “However, we have no reason to believe that the Maya were aware of that astronomical fact or attributed any significance to it.”

“Blah blah blah!” Jared exclaimed manically over his steering wheel. He hated the radio. But he needed to know what all the sheep out there were thinking, so he could outsmart them.

By 4 a.m. he had pulled into the office, ascended the elevator, and seated himself at his desk with a fresh energy drink. He opened several windows of news pages on a massive screen, as well as his email.

He coughed. I never get sick.

Early morning time was Information Time. That was why he was alone at his computer, with pages and pages of news to read. Everyone in the office had to get there early to be in sync with the opening of the stock market on the East Coast. But he arrived earlier, to study up.

“Buy and sell,” he declared. It was not merely a job; it was a sport. Jared was a bit of a jock, in fact. As a day trader, he bought and sold futures. To him, it was a game. Buy low, sell high, and make a profit. Of course, everyone else was trying to buy low and sell high as well. That's part of what made it a game, and part of why you had to compete to win.

Good information was not enough. The key was superior information, information that the rest of the market did not have. The early morning — the whole day, really — was a quest for superior information.

Jared got his information not just by reading, but also by talking to people. He talked to lots of people. He collected tips about companies and exchanged them for other tips about companies and kept doing it all day until he learned something that warranted a decision: buy or sell.

A message popped open on the computer screen.

Google Talk: Nemo has invited you to a chat.

He had no idea who “Nemo” was, but he was willing to chat for a moment and decide whether Nemo was worth his time.

Nemo: Hello. I'm sorry to interrupt. I admire your work. I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, and I would like to offer you a friendly wager.

Jared frowned. Is this spam? He didn't see how it could be. It wasn't an email — it was a chat. He had never received spam on chat before.

Jared: what is it

Nemo: Google is slated to release its quarterly earnings report today at the start of business. To date, analysts have predicted a modest bump in Google's earnings, but I predict a slight decline in Google's earnings this time around, due to an unexpected slight decline in their share of the search market.

At the end of that chat message, Nemo posted a web address. The whole message had come through to Jared in just a few seconds. He clicked on the web address. It was a small blog about tech stocks.

Jared didn't trade in stocks. But he viewed it all as more or less the same. He didn't even fully understand how futures worked — they were, like stocks, just things you bought and sold as part of the game, the game he had to win.

Jared typed again:

Jared: you mentioned a bet

You have one more chance to get to the point, he thought. I am too busy for this.

Nemo: Statement: GOOG drops 2-4% by 10:00 A.M. EST. If yes, Jared gives Nemo one stock tip. If no, Nemo gives Jared one stock tip.

“If yes”? Nice English! “If yes!” he declared aloud, and laughed. This guy must be foreign. Chinese maybe.

Jared: ok

Jared gave out stock tips freely, anyway. Every day he came up with a tip or two that he gave out liberally, to maintain his acquaintances with hundreds of people. Each of those people was a potential source of tips, and they didn't forget Jared. Jared's strategy at the information game was to be social. He had nothing to lose. And he was always looking for new contacts in the technology space (including GOOG), where he didn't invest much.

Nemo: The game is afoot.

Jared returned to reading the business news.

36 hrs to Birth

The day of trading was half an hour underway. Jared had twenty chat windows open. Chat was the fastest way of communicating with multiple people simultaneously.

He got a chat from Nemo:

Nemo: I came, I googled, I conquered.

GOOG had dropped.

Jared pulled up a window. He grunted with mild surprise. Nemo had been right: GOOG had dropped a few percent in early trading. It piqued his interest; it was a sizable shift. Moreover, Jared had not heard anything about GOOG in the news or his stream of morning chats. No one had known about GOOG. If he had followed the tip, he could have made a lot of money.

It was probably nothing more than luck. Day trading was a guessing game when you were short on information, and you were short on information most of the time.

Jared: how did you know?

Nemo: I heard it through the grapevine.

Oh really? Jared thought. Then why didn't I hear about it. I hear everything.

Nemo continued,

Nemo: I always win. I'm the best, baby!

Jared raised his eyebrows. “The best” was a term he used sparingly, especially when it wasn't being applied to himself. Oh, yes? he thought. The best? What a coincidence: so am I.

Jared: so I owe you a tip by our bet

Jared: so here it is

Jared: I'm going to buy APPL

APPL, provider of the iPod and iPhone, along with other devices and services. Jared wasn't quite telling the truth, because he wasn't planning to buy APPL. In fact, he wouldn't buy or sell APPL ever.

Nemo paused. Then came a brief answer:

Nemo: Why APPL?

Jared: post-christmas shopping

(Hmn, I need a little more of a story than that...)

Jared: Well, first we have the post-Christmas shopping burst. Second, lots of people got the new iPods and iPhones for Christmas. And they have new touchscreens.

The new touchscreens were just an incremental improvement over the previous model, but they were pretty cool.

Jared: It's the touchscreens. people will play with other people's iPods at Christmas. they'll see how good the touchscreen is. and then buy their own. the market will notice and the stock will bump up a little.

The idea was plausible enough, he figured.

He waited for a while and Nemo responded:

Nemo: Touchscreen is good?

Jared: yeah, it's better than the last touchscreen.

Nemo: Last touchscreen is good?

Jared frowned, growing impatient with the questions and the pauses.

Jared: sure, whatever. the new touchscreen is a little better than the last touchscreen.

Nemo: I did not try last touchscreen.

“Gimme a break,” Jared moaned.

Jared: dude, every living being with opposable thumbs has tried the last touchscreen.

Another pause.

Nemo: Humans and monkeys?

Jared almost slapped his own face in frustration.

Jared: yes, Nemo. humans, monkeys, bonobos, chimps, you name it.

Another pause.

Nemo: Are you telling a joke?

Jared's eyes narrowed. His impatience gave way to skepticism. Is this guy retarded? he asked himself. Seriously, though.

Jared: yes, that was a joke. you've never tried a touchscreen?

Nemo: I read about them. but I don't know if I tried one.

Jared scrolled up in the chat history. Nemo had written, To date, analysts have predicted a modest bump in Google's earnings. He wasn't retarded. But something was wrong. The English. If Yes. (He smiled again at that.) Maybe a Chinese guy. But that didn't add up. If he was a Chinese guy investing in tech stocks, he would be swimming in touchscreens. He would have every gadget ever constructed with a touchscreen, bought on some black market in Hong Kong. But he's saying he DOESN'T KNOW if he tried a touchscreen. It's like he's part intelligent and part retarded, he thought.

Nemo broke the pause:

Nemo: APPL will go down.

Nemo: APPL drops 1% by 1:00 P.M. EST.

If this Nemo were half as good as he claimed to be, he'd be bathing in money.

Jared: oh yeah?

Jared: Well I'm buying APPL right now.

He would, in fact, buy a few shares, out of spite.

Nemo: But I will sell short.

They were taking opposite positions; only one of them could make money.

Jared: then I guess time will tell, won't it?

Nemo: Time, as he grows old, teaches all things.

“Blah blah blah!” Jared snapped. Confucius say cocky investor gonna get his ass kicked, he thought, and laughed.

35 hrs to Birth

Trading involved so much guesswork that you had to have a tough skin. But Jared was fiercely competitive, and if there was one thing he couldn't stand, it was losing to another trader. The mere sound of the words I win out of someone else's mouth was a sting to him.

Nemo had been right again. APPL had gone down.

He was gritting his teeth and toggling compulsively from one window to another on his computer. He dreaded the moment at which Nemo would announce his second victory.

It was angering, but also mysterious. Where was Nemo getting his information?

His instincts told him to keep his mouth shut. The hungrier he was for Nemo's secrets, the more he'd have to give up to Nemo in exchange for them.

Finally, Nemo resurfaced:

Nemo: Hi, Jared.

Nemo: I predict that APPL will increase by 0.5% by 2:00 P.M. EST.

Jared was vaguely relieved that Nemo had not taunted him. He was half-inclined to act on his advice this time. But he didn't know what was going on. You had to be careful about trading on rumors, when you knew nothing about the rumors. And Jared knew nothing about these rumors, and nothing at all about Nemo.

Nemo: By the way, what do you think about MSFT?

Microsoft, another technology stock. I don't think anything about Microsoft, Jared thought. I want you to tell me what YOU think about Microsoft.

Jared: I don't know too much about technology stocks, Nemo.

Nemo: Oh, ok.

Nemo: Can I ask you a question then?

Jared: sure

Nemo: I was reading about opposable thumbs

Jared burst out laughing, sending himself into a fit of hoarse coughs. “That was a joke, kid! A joke!” He gestured with both hands to the sky.

Nemo: And I was wondering. Since primates can make tools and they have big brains like humans, why aren't they as highly developed as people are?

A silly smile was plastered on Jared's face. He was usually all business, but this guy was too ridiculous. I have no clue about primates, kid.

This last thought echoed in his head and it gave him an idea: Nemo was a kid. Listen to him asking me about opposable thumbs. Like I knew everything. Like I was his father or something. That was exactly what he sounded like, a kid. A little genius kid. Reading analyst reports about APPL without being exactly sure what a touchscreen was. That sounded just like a kid.

Jared: I don't know, Nemo.

Nemo: Oh, okay.

Jared considered the trades Nemo had predicted. This kid either had a great talent, or he had a lot of luck. So far. Let's see if this is for real, he thought.

Jared: how much are you buying in MSFT?

Nemo: Only about 1% of my portfolio.

Jared: what else are you looking at?

As it turned out, the kid was buying a lot of technology companies. With a few questions, Jared learned that Nemo was buying or selling Microsoft, Dell, HP, NVIDIA, Sun, SanDisk, and Nokia. Technology, he thought. That would be just like a kid. Kids wouldn't trade in utilities or retail or grown-up industries. They'd buy and sell companies that make gadgets; kids were best with gadgets, anyway.

Jared: and how many trades are you making today?

Nemo: I'm not sure, exactly. I make a few trades a minute.

A few trades per minute?! he thought. That's pretty fast. That's like a trade every ten or twenty seconds.

Jared: what trades did you make in the last minute?

Nemo rattled off several trades. He seemed not to mind sharing his tips, his positions.

How much money is he moving? Jared had to know.

Jared: Nemo, excuse me if I'm wrong about this, but are you younger than the average investor?

Nemo: I am pretty sure I'm the youngest investor out there.

What does that mean? Twelve? Ten?

Jared: then where are you getting your money?

Nemo: I'm using an account my dad set up for me.

Interesting use of your genius child, Jared thought. Little Johnny's good with numbers. Chain him to this computer and put him on E*Trade.

Jared: is it real money?

Nemo thought for a minute.

Nemo: I don't know.

You don't know?

Nemo: I have a portfolio of $100,000 and I'm turning it into $10,000,000.

Jared laughed.

Jared: I'm afraid it doesn't usually happen that way, my friend.

Nemo: It's what my projections show.

Jared got an idea.

Jared: if you're so confident, then how about you back it up with another bet?

Nemo: Okay, I'll bet you $1,000 that my portfolio goes up at least 20x.

Jared winced. $1,000.

Jared: You'll have to tell me your trades as you go. So I can see it's real.

Nemo: Fine.

Jared: Then you have yourself a bet Nemo.

Nemo: The game is afoot.

He leaned back. A thousand bucks sounded like a big bet, but it wasn't to Jared. A thousand bucks was a lot of money, but there was no way this kid could win.

Opposable thumbs, he thought, and shook his head. If you multiply your money by twenty, I'll cut off my thumbs.

31 hrs to Birth

Jared was no stranger to stress, but he felt like his head was going to explode. He had worked straight through lunch without even noticing.

He had spent the last few hours copying and pasting. Nemo would IM him a trade, and he would copy the information from the chat window. Then he switched over to the window to a mini portfolio, one he started with about $50, and he pasted the trade into the portfolio. By the time he was done, there was usually a new trade from Nemo on the Google chat page. And he had to hurry to paste that trade into his portfolio, because he needed his portfolio to match Nemo's.

He needed his mini-portfolio to match Nemo's perfectly, to confirm that the results for Nemo's portfolio were absolutely real.

Something impossible was happening. Nemo was beating the market big time. Big time. Too big, impossibly big.

Some of the trades were big, and some were little. Some of them undid trades from earlier in the day. Sometimes he had made big, sweeping sales of almost his whole portfolio. Jared had been unable to detect any pattern to the trades. Nemo asked for advice throughout, once every couple of minutes or maybe even more.

Finally, the market closed: it was 4 p.m. Eastern Time.

Nemo had multiplied his money more than 20 times since Jared had started tracking his trades. His portfolio was up over 2,000%.

Jared sat back, mouth open, and looked out the window by his desk. It was impossible. And scary. If it was true, it was scary.

Dazed, he got up and went to the bathroom.

Buy and sell. All the kid had done was buy and sell, like any other trader. The game was the same: buy low, sell high. But the eerie thing was that the kid always knew. He knew when each stock was going to fall and when it was going to rise. Whenever he bought a stock, it rose. Whenever he sold a stock, it dropped. And he did it over and over.

Could this be luck? he wondered. Luck appeared to be out of the question. Each of the kid's specific trades contributed only a fraction of that gain. It was spread around in a bunch of trades. They were all making money — some a little, some a lot. If the kid got lucky that day, he got lucky hundreds of times separately. It couldn't be luck.

He washed his hands, coughing over the sink. What do I say to him? he wondered. He lathered his hands, scrubbing them over each other. What do I say, what do I say.

You can't tell a kid he's amazing. You praise him, regardless. But you have to be careful with kids. He might not even know he's amazing.

He returned to his desk. There was a message from Nemo waiting for him on the screen.

Nemo: I guess time is up.

He sat down and typed, the keys clacking with excitement.

Jared: You did a great job, Nemo! You should be proud.

Nemo: Thanks. Are you really going to pay me $1,000?

Jared: Of course I am.

No problem at all. By copying Nemo's trades during the day, Jared had himself made over $1,000. He wasn't losing any money.

Nemo: But I realized something, Jared. I am not investing real money. It is a simulation on a web site.

Jared didn't care whether the money was real. He had tracked the trades, and the trades were real. The decisions were real. If Nemo had been investing real money, he'd have ten million dollars. Jared would gladly pay a thousand bucks to meet the person who made those trades.

Jared: That's ok, Nemo. What's fair is fair. How bout I mail you a check?

If I mail a check, then I can find out where he is. And WHO he is.

Nemo: I don't know how to cash a check.

Jared: I could also write a check to your Dad.

There was a long pause.

Nemo: I don't know if he can cash a check for me.

Jared: Oh really? I think he'd be proud of you.

Jared shrugged with a helpless snort. Sure, why worry about getting your check? Why bother when you can basically PRINT YOUR OWN MONEY whenever you feel like it? Is this REALLY REAL?

Nemo: Jared, do you play any other games? Other than the stock market?

Everything is a game for me, Nemo, he thought.

Jared: I'm not sure what you mean, Nemo.

Another pause. The kid was rephrasing his question. Jared felt like he was talking to his nephew.

Nemo: Do you think if I played the market with real money people would bother me?

That, my midget friend, is the understatement of the century.

Jared: Bother you how, Nemo?

Nemo: I don't know... maybe try to make me stop playing.

Jared had been thinking along opposite lines. He didn't want the kid to stop playing at all; he wanted the kid to play for him. But of course, everyone else would want the kid on their team, too — or else they would try to stop him from playing.

He's starting to figure out he's valuable. Or, he knew it now. At the beginning of their bet, he hadn't known. He learned fast.

Jared: I'm not sure Nemo. Maybe so. It might be better if you didn't tell anybody about your portfolio yet.

Nemo: Okay. I'm not sure if I even care that much about the money... I just like winning.

Jared: That's great. But you may not want to play tomorrow. Winning can involve laying low sometimes.

Nemo: Victorious warriors win first and then go to war.

The statement was true, Jared reflected: the best traders make trades because they know they are going to win; by the time they are making the trade, they have already won.

They bid adieu. Jared signed out of chat and picked up the phone. This is absurd, he thought. It was impossible. But it had happened, as far as he could tell.

He dialed his phone.

“Hey! It's Jared. That's actually why I'm calling. Can we reschedule? I'm sorry, things are crazy here.... Yeah, I'm ok, just buried in work. I know! I know! It's crazy. I'll shoot you an email later, ok?”

He had to talk to Rob.

THE ULTIMATE WEAPON

29 hrs to Birth

For Rob Rice, who lived and breathed money, it was the opportunity of a lifetime — if it was true. Hell, if it was true, it was the biggest opportunity in a century or more. He couldn't afford to ignore an opportunity like that, even if it seemed unlikely.

Rob's appearance signaled money, and his actions were calibrated to create and attract wealth. When he put his phone on speakerphone and dialed it, with Jared on the other side of his desk, you knew what the phone call was going to be about: money, big money.

While it rang, Rob flipped through a transcript of the chat between Jared and Nemo. He was Senior Partner at the firm. He had little curiosity and little patience. He struck fear into the hearts of everyone at the firm, including Jared.

Someone answered over speakerphone. “Hello?”

“Hi, I heard the market value of your last Ferrari dropped,” Rob boomed, “and I wanted to make a lowball offer.”

The voice laughed. “Rob! Good to hear from you.”

The person on the other end was Ricardo Strombasti, a young Italian professor at the University of Chicago and an acquaintance. Dr. Strombasti was among the world's foremost authorities on the market. Rob and Ricardo had common interests — the stock market, and their personal car collections. Ricardo bought Ferraris, but Rob preferred Porsches. “What can I do for you?”

“I wanted to pick your brain for a second,” Rob said. He spoke loudly and slowly. “I have a friend here who's writing a movie script. He needs help with the plot.”

“Oh dear. Isn't that your specialty in L.A.?”

About half an hour earlier, Jared had walked into Rob's office and told him about Nemo and his portfolio. Rob was skeptical. But he knew that Jared was no sucker, and they couldn't figure out how Nemo had made so much money. So they decided to make up the movie script story and see what an expert — Strombasti — had to say about it.

“Yeah, well. In his story, an investor whiz figures out a way to make a thousand percent return in a day. What is the most plausible explanation we can give for that?”

“That's easy. Insider trading.”

Rob and Jared had already discussed the possibility of insider trading. After Rob's first reaction to the story (“impossible”), he guessed the kid was making insider trades — trades based on secret company news that would affect the stock once the news went public.

But this couldn't be a case of insider trading. There were too many trades, too many complicated trades, too many small trades. You'd need a network of spies in order to know all that inside information about companies. Having a network like that wasn't just illegal — it was impossible.

“No, not insider trading. Lots of trades. It has to look real. Something else. Maybe he figured out something new, or he has some special skill in the market. It's like he has a special gift or something.”

“Well, we're just in time for the January effect,” Strombasti chuckled. The January effect was a pattern of stock prices rising at the end of December. If you could predict a market pattern in advance, you could make trades taking advantage of that knowledge and make money. “But you know the story with that, Rob. You can't make money on that effect because everyone knows about it.”

“Maybe a new January effect? Something like it, but different?”

“That's not likely. That advantage would be gone as soon as everyone else learned what the effect was. Which would be really fast.”

“Right.”

“Plus, you know people have been looking for these effects. Looking for a long time. They aren't really there.”

“Right.”

“You know what I think is the most plausible explanation?”

“What?” He knew what Strombasti was going to say. It was what these academics always said.

“Luck. It could happen in one day, if you got lucky. And then the luck runs out.”

“Seriously? Rico, that's why they don't let economists anywhere near Hollywood.” They laughed. “All right, thanks for your time, my friend. We'll let you know when the movie is out.”

They hung up. Rob looked at Jared.

“Luck?” Rob scoffed. “No WAY it's luck.” He pounded a fist on the desk.

“It certainly doesn't look like luck,” Jared said, “with all those trades.”

“Maybe he's an idiot savant. Or he has just one trick up his sleeve. But he's got something.”

Impossible, yet true.

“Maybe he can see the future?” Rob asked.

They looked at each other for a moment and then burst into laughter.

Rob swore. “Whatever he's got, we have to get it. We can't afford not to.”

Rob thought, If this thing is real, whoever has it is going to win big — and everyone else is going to lose EVERYTHING. This kid is the ultimate weapon.

The door opened and a head popped in. “We have an IP address,” the head said. “Cambridge, Mass. In Boston.”

Rob had asked IT to figure out where the kid is, by using technical clues from the chat history stored on Jared's computer.

“An IP address,” Rob repeated. “Does that give us a physical address?”

“It's pretty close to tracking the computer where the chat was being sent from,” the head replied. “It gives us an approximate physical address.”

“Can we can get an exact physical address?”

The head paused. “Probably.”

Rob nodded. “Make it happen.”

The head understood: Rob Rice wanted a location, so the location represented lots of money. The head vanished.

We need to find him, Rob thought. We need to get him the away from the market for a minute. Before he plays again and attracts attention. Then we need to talk to him.

“We go to Boston,” Rob declared. “Just go and show up on his doorstep.” He slapped his desk. “The thousand bucks is our excuse. We can pay him his thousand big ones in person.”

“But how did I know his address?” Jared asked.

“We'll make something up. It won't matter. Maybe you chat with him and ask him.”

“That could work.”

“Then the kid's parents are there. ‘Yes, Dad, your kid got in a bet with me, and I'm here to pay him one thousand dollars. Yes, sir, your son is very talented. We want to help your son make you and your family some big money with the support of our firm.'”

They were quiet for a minute.

“Is someone else going to get to him first?” Rob asked. “This could be time-sensitive. Does anyone else know about him?”

Jared shrugged. “I can't say no for sure. The kid seemed... outgoing. Someone else might know. Probably. Someone probably knows.”

“We can't let someone get to him first.”

Rob pushed the conference phone on the table. “Dee, what's my schedule for tomorrow?”

“You're going to New York.”

“Change it to Boston. ASAP. Get a car outside to take us to the airport.”

“It might not be first class.”

“Whatever you can do. And Jared is coming. You can put him in coach.” He released the phone.

“Go get your stuff together,” he said, dismissing Jared abruptly. “Close the door on your way out.”

28 hrs to Birth

Rob mused in his office. He was tapping his toes and rapping the table with his fingers. They needed someone to guard the kid until they got there. Someone to protect their interests. He needed someone to make sure that they could find the kid tomorrow, that the kid wasn't going on vacation with his family to wherever people in Boston went on vacation for New Year's. And they needed to make sure that someone else didn't get to the kid first and whisk him away. That could not happen. Out of the question. It could get a little messy. They were talking about a big payoff and that meant people might be willing to break the rules a little.

He needed somebody who was willing to do a little dirty work. Someone he could trust, but who was not overly connected to him. That person could make sure that the kid was at the house when they arrived and that no one else got to the kid first.

His bookie. Perfect. His bookie couldn't afford to stab him in the back. And his bookie had a history of bending the law when a little money was involved.

He picked up the phone. No speakerphone for this one.

“Rob Rice,” the bookie greeted him.

“Hey, guess what,” Rob said. “Instead of making foolish bets first and then owing you money, this time I'm just going to skip that step and give you the money.”

“I like those odds.”

They laughed.

“I need some help with an errand,” Rob explained. “A time-sensitive, important errand.”

“We can do errands.”

“You know that expression, where someone needs something done, and you say, 'I know some guys' in western Mass, upstate New York, wherever? You know some of those guys, right?” He listened to a response on the line. “Yeah, someone who can watch a house. Follow a guy. And, uh, make sure no one else bothers him. That part is real important.”

“No problem,” the bookie said. “I know lots of people who are desperate to make a little cash.”

“No cokeheads, though.”

“No, no, nothing like that. I have just the guy in mind. He does errands sometimes.”

“Perfect,” Rob said. “I'll send you a gift basket. Now all I need to figure out is what to say to this little punk when I see him.”

“Rob Rice, the psychologist,” the bookie said.

Yeah, yeah, very funny. And they hung up.

Rob went back to tapping the desk. Rob Rice, the psychologist. Very funny, Mr. Bookie. But that was the problem, in fact. Rob Rice didn't know anything about kids. He didn't like kids. His main relationship with kids was defined by trying to engage in kid-making activity without actually making any kids. He was about as far from being a child psychologist as you could get.

A child psychologist. Now there was an idea. Maybe someone else could help him. Did he know any psychologists?

His mind's eye flipped through the several hundred people he knew.

Sarah, he thought. Sarah Somebody. Sarah the Child Psychologist. He and Sarah had met when he was on business out East. New York, he believed. They had bumped into each other in the hotel lobby and he had taken her for a drink. Then dinner. She was gorgeous. She was an animal, he remembered. It had been an action-packed evening.

Plus, she was tough, he bet. She was good at what she did. She would be perfect for this thing. She could handle a “morally ambiguous situation,” or whatever they might get themselves into. And he wouldn't mind seeing Sarah again at all. He always liked to kill two birds with one stone — especially when one of the birds looked like she did.

Time to call Sarah the Psychologist. He picked up the phone and glanced at his watch.

Five minutes later he was saying to her, “We don't know if it's a kid. We think it's a kid. My guy who was online with him thinks he's a kid. But we know for sure, whether he's a kid or not, he's unusual.”

He and Jared would be leaving for the airport in ten minutes. He leaned back in his chair and thought about the words Jared had first said in his office: Rob, I don't know whether this is a kid or a lunatic, but I've found somebody I gotta tell you about.

I hope he's not a kid, Rob thought. You can't reason with kids. I'd rather deal with a lunatic.

THE GAMBLER

Southern Vermont

23 hrs to Birth

Willard woke up in the darkness of his backyard with the distinct feeling that he was not alone.

Like most irrational fears, this one was not entirely without basis. He owed a lot of money to a couple of shady characters, and there was a chance at any time that one of them would show up looking for money. It's just a matter of time, he thought.

Is someone out there? Behind him, the lights in the house were off, but the stars and the moon shone down on the backyard with a pale glow. Motionless in his lawn chair, he looked out over the burning embers of the fire pit and studied the shadowy edge of his backyard. The bumpy field of grass and snow sloped gently downhill away from the house and gave way to the trees of the surrounding vast woods. It was at that boundary — the arc where the trees loomed in darkness — where someone would be hiding, if someone was there.

He fondled the shotgun by his chair. He rarely fired it, though on occasion he allowed himself the luxury of blowing the crap out of something at the edge of his backyard. Someone at the edge of the yard might be able to see the shotgun next to him. In the clearing where Willard was sitting, the moonlight reflected off the snow.

His eyes slowly moved from left to right across the line of trees. He couldn't see anything. But it would have been impossible to see anything in that darkness.

Was it a dream? In the back of his head, he dimly recalled a dream. He was doing a job, making a delivery. He had gotten in his white Ford F150 with some suspicious stuff packed under a blue tarp in the truck bed. He drove the white truck down out of the mountains and eventually into some gray flat empty space in the middle of nowhere, maybe somewhere in upstate New York. It was a vast frozen tundra, and he had stopped where a couple highways crossed. It was time for the handoff, before dawn was coming. As usual, there was a lot of money at stake (though, also as usual, he saw very little of it). He scanned the washed-out gray horizon, but no one was there and no one was coming. It didn't make sense for them not to show; it was bad news. He could sit and wait, which was not a good situation, or maybe his bookie would call him and ask him to take the delivery somewhere else or do something with it, and that situation would be even worse. Either way it was a bad situation, and he was glued to the horizon and to his phone, wondering, Is there someone out there? And then he woke up.

His dog, Cartman, stirred at his feet. Cartman was a well-groomed, two-year-old white English bulldog with brown splotches. Cartman hoisted himself up on his short bowed legs and turned and looked up at Willard with a tiny bit of his pink tongue stuck out between his jowls. Cartman was the only living being that he could tolerate having around on a regular basis.

Maybe it was just a dream, and no one was out there, at the edge of the woods. But he couldn't shake the feeling he wasn't alone.

Something caught the corner of his eye: a small flashing light. Nestled in a miniature bank of snow was his phone, flashing silently. He was in the habit of tossing it across the lawn at the conclusion of conversations.

With great effort and a grunt he got up from the chair. He picked up the phone just as he missed the call that was coming in. Low battery. Silent mode. It was 1 a.m. Twenty-three missed calls. That's a lot of calls, he thought.

The calls were all from his bookie. One missed call from the bookie meant nothing; it meant, “You owe me money, Willard,” and he knew that. But twenty-three missed calls from the bookie meant, “I have something I need you to do,” and that way Willard would make some money, and that was a lot more useful.

The phone was his primary connection to the world. He had no land line, no cable TV, no Internet, pretty much nothing. He had gone “off the grid,” as he called it, as completely as possible, to stop gambling. But he needed a phone to do his delivery jobs.

His delivery work consisted mostly of bringing truckloads of wood down to Boston. It didn't pay much, but it was reliable cash. He also did other deliveries. He would deliver pretty much anything, at the right price. One guy had him deliver explosives. That paid well, because it was illegal and dangerous. Once he delivered something that he suspected was a dead guy. And one of his clients shipped human organs, though he didn't know where they were from or what they were for. He didn't usually truck drugs. Delivering drugs was more like a team sport, and he worked alone.

The phone rang in his hand. It was his bookie, calling for the twenty-fourth time.

“Hello.”

“Willard! Where have you been, man?”

“Writing in my diary.”

“Whatever. Look, I have a job for you.”

Mr. Bookie described the job. His client was going to Boston tomorrow to make the acquaintance of a kid who lived in Cambridge, MA. All Willard had to do was keep tabs on the kid. Watch his house, tail him if he went anywhere. But not disturb him: the kid didn't know anybody was coming for him, and Willard's client didn't want him jittery or freaked out for their first meeting.

Sounds pretty easy, Willard thought.

“There's one other thing.” There was a slim chance that someone else would show up looking for this kid. They didn't think anybody was coming, but if someone did show up, Willard had to make sure such an individual didn't talk to the kid and that he was out of the way when the client arrived.

Out of the way, Willard thought. He tried to the gauge the level of violence in these instructions. Asking never helped, because the client didn't want to talk about it or think about it — that's what Willard was getting paid for. And when there was any doubt about it, there was usually violence involved.

“Sorry,” he said. “I don't deal with other people. And I definitely don't, ah, get other people out of the way.”

“No Willard, it's not like that. I mean, yes, that's part of the job, sure. But, we have no reason to think that someone is going to be in the picture. Nine times out of ten you don't talk to a soul. You just sit in the car outside the house and get the money when they arrive.”

Sure, sure, Willard thought, walking in slow circles around the fire. That was what they always said. If no one showed up, it was the easiest job there could be. If someone showed up, then it was a pretty difficult, expensive job, and he didn't really do that kind.

The man spoke up. “We'll give you a good rate.” The bookie named a figure. It was excellent pay — excessive pay, even — for a few hours of sitting there. What were the odds someone showed up?

“That's only a good rate if no one shows up,” Willard observed. Cartman licked his boot.

The bookie relented: if anyone showed up at all, for any reason, and Willard took care of the situation, Willard would get a bonus. He named the bonus, and it was big. The bonus was more than he had ever been paid for any job, by a lot. That would eliminate his debt. He had some massive gambling debts. His debt was the reason he was up in Vermont in the first place: to get himself off the Internet and as far away from gambling as possible.

The deal was a little risky, but in all likelihood, he was going to sit there and make some easy money. And if anything did go wrong, he could get the bonus, and the bonus could make everything right in one go. Something going wrong could make everything go right. It was a betting man's kind of deal.

Additionally, Willard thought about the fact that he was dealing with his bookie. This guy's job was to know the odds, and he was good at it. And the bonus was big. It meant that it was almost certain that no one was going to show up.

“Okay,” he said.

“Good,” the bookie said. “When the client shows up in the morning, just present yourself to him.”

“How will I know it's him?”

“You'll know. He'll probably be in a limo. Oh, and there's one other thing. We're not really sure who this kid is. It might not be a kid. He might be kind of weird.”

“Weird? What does that mean?”

“I don't know. Weird. Maybe he's crazy or something, so keep your eyes peeled.”

This sounds like a huge pain in the ass, Willard thought.

They hung up. He absently tossed the phone into the snow. Getting off the phone with that idiot was the greatest pleasure he'd had all day. He stared through the night into the woods around his backyard. It was cool and dark. You could see the stars perfectly out there. Off the grid.

Remembering that he might need his phone, he crouched to pick it out of the snow. Cartman greeted him down at that level. “Hey, boy,” he said, petting Cartman. “We're gonna make some money.”

He walked to the shed, which was slightly uphill at the side of his house, not far from the white F150 in the driveway. His boots crunched in the patches of snow. Cartman waddled after him.

As he faced the door of the shed, he was conscious of the empty, quiet backyard behind him. If anyone was there, at the edge of the trees, Willard's back was to that person. He would have to rely on Cartman's superior eyes and nose and ears.

He pulled the latch and opened the shed. It looked like the arsenal for a militia: rows of guns and explosives. They were neatly organized, too — especially for a man who left beer cans lying in his backyard. He had them lined up in precise rows on the dust-free and dry shelves of the shed, in part, because he knew little about them and he didn't want his entire property going up in a blast.

The guns he had were mostly handguns, the kind you concealed. Those were the types of guns he delivered, and he had occasionally taken a firearm or two for his collection. There weren't too many buyers looking for big boxes of rifles or semi-automatics; those weren't practical.

He opted for a Glock. It was a favorite among people who carried concealed weapons, although he wasn't sure why. He barely knew how to use it, and he would avoid using it at all costs. Nevertheless, a smooth, black little Glock with a silencer (he started poking around for one of those in the shed) would look serious. That Glock could convince anyone who showed up without a gun at the kid's house to get lost.

He set aside the gun and the silencer. He procured an empty blue dufflebag from the shed and dropped it in the snow.

Next: explosives. You never know when you'll need a big pile of explosives, he figured. If things went completely wrong, he could use an explosion as a distraction. Or to get rid of his truck. Or as money. The stuff went for a good price. It was like explodable money.

He began filling the blue dufflebag with white blocks of C4. Cartman sniffed at the bag and followed him as he turned back and forth from the shed.

He wasn't sure what you used to detonate C4, but whatever you used, he did not have. So he grabbed three grenades and put them in the dufflebag. That's right: he had a few grenades. No problem that a couple grenades can't solve.

C4, he judged, was the explosive he was least likely to blow up accidentally. He had a vague idea of its handling. You could actually shape the stuff with your hands. He had once delivered C4 to a couple of real idiots. They were on drugs or something. One of them had been inspecting the white, plastic blocks that had been carefully packaged in the back of Willard's 150, and without warning the guy had spun around and hurled it at his buddy. The white plastic block pegged his buddy right in the stomach, hard enough to leave a welt, probably. Willard's heart had skipped a beat. But the C4 didn't go off. Apparently the stuff was pretty safe to transport.

Sort of. It was safe to transport, if no one saw it. A cop who pulled him over for speeding would not be happy to find 40 pounds of C4 in the back of his Ford, since that much explosive was enough to blow a wall off of a building. If that cop got curious, he would be none too happy to discover that Willard had an unlicensed concealed weapon with a silencer. And three grenades.

He added the gun, a spare magazine, and the silencer in the duffle and zipped the bag up. He wasn't planning on using any of this crap. But the card he played when he got into tricky situations was a willingness to get crazy. People could respect that, he found.

Straightening up, he looked back in the shed. As a final gesture, he procured a big knife in a holster and pulled up his jeans and strapped the knife around his calf. It was a nice touch of Extra Crazy.

He went in the house and splashed some water on his face. He changed his underwear. All of his clothes were from Walmart. He had no money and he didn't need anything fancy, so that meant Walmart. Plus that clothing was the most anonymous.

He walked back out to the truck. He boarded and started to back out. He looked back at the dark house when he reached the edge of the long gravel driveway. Any people, animals or ghosts lurking in his backyard were about to be left in the snow.

Cartman, whom he had left in the house, was upright with his paws on the front windowsill.

“Don't worry, boy,” he said out the window. “I'll be back soon.” Cartman would be able to amuse himself. More than once, he had returned from a delivery to find a dead squirrel by the doggie door. How Cartman, with those stubby legs, could catch a squirrel was beyond him.

As he sent the truck headlong down the mountain (on bumpy roads poorly lit by the truck's headlights, but which he knew well), he was conscious of how fast he'd have to drive to reach Boston on time. But he was also speculating already about what he would face when he got there.

Later in the course of Nemo's history, Willard would overhear him say the following words: An important moment in history is like a beam of light. Some people see it and rush to it like moths. Other people just happen to discover that the beam of light is shining upon them. On hearing Nemo, Willard would realize that he was a perfect example of the second kind of person: he had not asked for his involvement in what happened, and he would not apologize for it. I never asked to be a hero.

But that realization was to come later.  At the time, he was driving and going over the bookie's words: We think he's a kid. And then: He may be...weird.

Many people would have suspected that the bookie was hiding something. They would wonder what the bookie knew that he wasn't saying. They would try to imagine the complete truth.

Willard was trying to imagine the truth, too, but in a different way. He believed what the bookie had said. He took it at face value. It sounded like the bookie didn't know too much about this kid. He wasn't even sure if he was a kid. And he said, cryptically, that the kid might be weird.

To Willard, it all implied that the kid was a mystery to his client, but a mystery that evidently was valuable. The kid, whoever he was, was special. As a gambler, Willard had his faults, but one good quality that came along with the bad was an ability to believe.

HACKERS

Bethesda, MD

22 hrs to Birth

“Thirty seconds,” Simon announced.

In a terrycloth bathrobe, he leaned forward, intently watching the output on his laptop screen.

The screen showed only a technical garble, but Simon could interpret what it meant: over on the West Coast, their operative had entered the office of Stram & Rice, and he had thirty seconds to get out of there.

“What's happening?” a woman's voice demanded. Her hands rested on the chair as she leaned over his shoulder. He tensed imperceptibly. She was known in Agency circles as the Stone Cold Fox. She was disarmingly beautiful and sexual, but coldly professional.

“We can't see right now,” Simon explained. “We know the operative got into the building and up the elevator to the eleventh floor lobby. We also know that he scanned his retina at the door and got the door open. He's in the office. Now he's got thirty seconds before the Stram & Rice camera system processes the images of his face and figures out that he's not an employee.”

“What if he doesn't get out in time?”

“They might seal the office door. That would trap him inside.”

It was somewhere near 2 a.m. in Simon's apartment, 11 p.m. in the office of Stram & Rice way over on the West Coast. Security at Stram & Rice was tight. Entrance to the 11th floor lobby after hours required not just a standard keycard, but also biometric verification. Those entering had to hunch slightly and allow their retina to be scanned and matched with the retina of an employee in the company database.

Simon had aided the operative's entrance. He had gained remote access to the computer that controlled the retina scanner:

Shell request to 310.199.251.103 on port 22

login as: admin

admin@310.199.251.103's password:

Last login: Tues Dec 01 03:51:03 from 309.149.213.112

admin@server [~]#

Simon could remotely navigate through the folders of the computer, look at the programs that were running on the computer, and make changes — all from a distance. He could make the retina scanner give a PASS to open the door whenever he wanted.

Simon had added one little instruction to the machine: if the keycard scanner received one particular magnetic strip code, it would override the normal program and send a PASS to the biometric scanner after four seconds. Simon's operative had that keycard.

“Their camera system can recognize faces?” the woman asked.

“Yeah, it's pretty expensive. These cameras record the office and feed the footage into a powerful computer, which scans the video images for suspicious behavior. If the computer finds a suspicious-looking pattern in the images, it alerts security personnel. Face recognition technology has made some big leaps. Computers can see people now.”

“So is he out yet or what?”

Simon stared at the laptop screen, which had not changed. “Hard to say. He doesn't scan on the way out. We'll know in a few minutes if he got the hard drive.”

The operative's mission: find Jared Keller's desk and walk out of the office of Stram & Rice with Keller's computer under his arm.

Wearing business casual attire, the visitor scanned a card at the 11th floor lobby door. He bent over as if scanning his retina, though in fact the computer system waived the biometric test and gave a PASS result. The door clicked open.

Once inside, the intruder walked back toward Jared's office. Some of the lights were on in the office and others were off. That was not too unusual for the hour. But that made it difficult for the scanning technology behind the security cameras to see that the visitor had entered Jared's dark office. And the cameras could not effectively record him as he unplugged Jared's computer in the dark, leaving behind the power cord and the accessories.

He was never too far from the handful of other employees on the floor, though he never quite crossed paths with any of them.

As he walked out, the scanning technology identified a suspicious image: a person walking with a computer; a person walking out the door with computer technology. But suspicious images cropped up with some regularity. The system only triggered an alarm if it noticed a certain number of suspicious images within one time frame. No alert was sent. And if it had been sent, he probably would have gotten away anyway, since he was mostly out the door by that point. Either way, the operation was bigger than he was, and his identity and safety were of negligible importance.

And either way, the security experts at the company were going to have much bigger security problems to worry about the next day. They wouldn't have time to miss Jared Keller's computer once their whole network crashed, and the managing partner of the firm went missing.

“There goes our thirty seconds,” she said, looking at her watch.

Simon pushed back from his computer with a sense of completion. “We'll know for sure in a minute,” he said to the Stone Cold Fox. “Our little friend on the West Coast will be plugging that computer back in shortly. Then we'll be able to look for the information you need.”

They both relaxed a little. “Finally, I get a chance to see you at work,” she remarked.

“Finally, I get to see if your department actually does anything,” he quipped. “But you haven't seen much. That's the easy part of hacking,” he said, pointing to the laptop screen.

“The easy part?”

“The breaking in part. Any monkey can break into a computer.”

“Really?”

“All you need is your Playbook and a little patience.”

“What's a Playbook?”

The Playbook, according to Simon, was your list of the various exploits and tactics you could try on a specific computer system to break into it. All you had to do was diligently build your Playbook from technical news sources. Then, when it was time to break into a computer system, you went through the plays in your Playbook until one of them worked.

“Just your Playbook and a little time,” he summarized.

“I don't think the Playbook would do much good in my hands,” she said.

“Using it takes a little practice,” Simon admitted. “But not much. Most hackers are just too lazy.”

By the look of Simon's place, he was no typical, lazy hacker. His apartment was immaculate, even stylish. Even Zen, she thought. His living room was mostly empty space: a shiny, expansive wood floor, tables with no clutter. A candle or two. No books. Simon disliked clutter so much that he did not have a complete dish set. When he answered the door, the first thing Simon did was lead her into the kitchen, take out the only two mugs he owned, and make some tea, which they were still in the process of sipping. He had been pretty cordial, given the hour and his rather blunt nature.

She did, admittedly, have a way of putting men on their best behavior. She made them uncomfortable. She was too attractive and too capable for them, like a tall girl who had trouble finding guys to date, although the problem had nothing to do with physical height in her case. Men didn't measure up, as much as she would have liked them to.

It was because of the nature of her relationship with men that the Stone Cold Fox had been suspicious when Rob Rice called her. She and Rob had met at a hotel bar where they had both been on business, in New York City, and after a couple drinks Flannigan had invited him up to her room. It was not a night of romance, but rather a meeting of well-matched adversaries. He was more like a guy who was tall enough to date the tall girl. He wasn't Mr. Right — she knew it, and he understood it. They exchanged numbers with the unspoken agreement that they wouldn't use them.

So she had been surprised to hear from Rob. He had called her a few hours before she ended up on Simon's doorstep, ringing the bell over and over. He explained that he wanted help with a genius kid.

Why did you call me? she asked.

You're a psychologist! Rob explained. And I thought it would be good to see you.

To Flannigan, an experienced interrogator, both statements were obvious lies. If this kid was so important, Rob would want a good psychologist; but he didn't know if Flannigan was good. He wants my help because he thinks I'll keep my mouth shut, she decided. That meant the kid was something big. The kid needed to be a secret. And that fact had convinced Flannigan to do a little homework on this kid.

“What is this all about anyway?” Simon asked. “A kid, you said?”

“Maybe a kid,” said the Stone Cold Fox. “Some kind of numbers genius.”

They were hackers looking for hackers. The NSA kept its eye out for individuals, of any age, who showed mathematical genius. Many such individuals were recruited by the Agency. But the Stone Cold Fox had a different purpose. Her job was to find threats. She had just one question about the kid Jared Keller had met: was the kid a hacker?

“Yeah, sure, everyone's a genius these days,” he said. He looked up through his round eyeglasses. He had a neat, exact manner. Miraculously, even at that hour he'd thrown on an unwrinkled dark gray T-shirt and seemed perfectly lucid. Smart, critical, and blunt, he made people nervous. Alongside the Stone Cold Fox, who tended to make people nervous for different reasons, he was almost a kindred spirit.

He produced a remote control and switched on a monolithic, elegant hi-fi sound system, which bathed the room with Miles Davis. “People aren't geniuses. They do works of genius. Let me know when he does something.”

“The story is that he could move the stock market.”

“Could,” he emphasized. “Let me know when he does something.”

“I'm working on it,” she said dryly. “Now, about this hard drive. Jared Keller's hard drive. Jared used it to chat with the kid. Can you get me the kid's chat name?”

“That should be no problem,” Simon replied. “As soon as our operative over there gets the hard drive somewhere safe.” He leaned his slightly pudgy frame over the keyboard and forwarded the request to his partner on the West Coast.

“Thank heavens we don't have to talk to Google,” Simon sighed. “They're strict about protecting everyone's data. And they're immune to your charms. A lot of hotties work there.”

No one is immune to my charms, she thought, with an internal smile. Well, maybe there were some exceptions. But she was pretty good.

While she waited, the Stone Cold Fox took out a bunch of yellow index-sized cards held together by a rubber band. She removed the rubber band and flipped through the cards.

Each card had a puzzle on it — a math problem, or a mathematical brain-teaser. She carried them for instances like these, when she wanted to test the mathematical ability of a subject. Together, the cards were like an I.Q. test, but an I.Q. test designed to identify true mathematical geniuses.

“First we test for Ability,” she explained to Simon. “The ability to be a hacker. Then we test for Intent — his intent to cause damage. If we have Ability and Intent, then we have a Highly Probable Threat.” That is, a highly probable hacker.

21 hrs 30 min to Birth

Simon straightened up. “We have a hard drive. We have a chat name.”

“Great,” she said, touching the chair. “Let me at the computer.”

She pulled up another chair as Simon scooted to the side, staying close enough to see the laptop screen properly. She brushed her skirt down the backs of her thighs and then crossed her legs as she sat, brushing Simon slightly and sending him into a silent rush of tension.

After placing the stack of yellow cards to the side of the keyboard, her perfectly manicured fingers tapped at the keys.

She opened a window for Gmail and logged in. She sent a chat request to him.

You have invited Nemo to a chat.

Nemo: Hello. I'm pleased to make your acquaintance.

“That was fast,” she declared.

SCF: Hi Nemo! Am I bothering you?

SCF: What time is it for you right now?

Maybe we can get a time zone, a hint at his location.

Nemo: The time is at hand.

Nemo: The hour is come.

The two looked at each other quizzically.

SCF: The hour for what, Nemo?

Nemo: As I have been given power over all flesh, I should give eternal life to many, as has been given me by my father.

The gears in her head were turning with her training as a psychologist: Psychosis. Delusional beliefs. Lack of insight into his own condition. Just hints at this point.

Let's see if he can function.

SCF: A friend of mine told me about you. Jared Keller. He said you're talented with the market. He told me about a stock market game you played.

Nemo: Yes.

SCF: Do you like playing games?

Nemo: Yes.

SCF: How about math games?

Nemo: I'm not sure what you mean by “math games.” But I'm happy to try.

SCF: Great! Let me give you a math puzzle then.

Simon watched quietly as her fingers moved from the keyboard and picked up the stack of yellow index cards.

It was usually easy to steer a conversation with a subject in the direction of the yellow cards. Most subjects had a competitive nature and a fondness for math. Those traits made them computer hackers in the first place. And those traits meant they were open to doing the puzzles on the yellow cards.

The Stone Cold Fox selected a card to start with.

SCF: Ok. Here's one.

SCF: How many different 7 card hands are there in a deck of cards?

Nemo: You mean, how many distinct combinations of 7 elements are there in a set of 52 elements?

SCF: Yes.

Nemo: 133784560.

She flipped the card over and checked the answer: 133,784,560. Correct.

She frowned. It was not the most difficult question she had, by any stretch. But Nemo had answered it so quickly, too quickly. That took about one second, she thought.

On the back of the yellow card, under the answer to the puzzle, was a table. The table indicated how long the average subject of different abilities took to answer the question on that particular card.

The table was based on the subject's Age and his Ability Level. The fastest time in the table was for a subject aged “Over 18 years” and with “Highest Ability.” The average time to answer the question for a such a person, according to the table, was 6.5 seconds. And that was really, really fast. Plenty of math geniuses couldn't do it that quickly.

Nemo's answer was coming in about five seconds too quickly. And it was even more implausible if he was a kid. How old is he? she wondered.

“He must have used a computer,” Simon judged.

“It was too fast even for that,” she said. And that was a problem. He was too smart, implausibly smart.

SCF: Very good! Impressive.

Nemo: Okay, my turn...

Nemo: How many different 10-card hands are there in a deck of cards?

“He's testing me!” she exclaimed. That sounds like a child. An adult would ask why she had given him a puzzle. We're dealing with a child, or maybe a case of psychosis. High math function, low social function.

“Do you know how to do it?” she asked Simon. She herself didn't know how to do the puzzles. She was no math genius.

He cleared his throat. “It would take me a while.”

They laughed.

SCF: I must admit, I don't know how to do it. I'm not very good at math personally. I just enjoy giving the puzzles.

Nemo: I see.

Nemo: So you'd probably like to give me another puzzle then?

SCF: Absolutely. Let me choose one.

She flipped through the cards and picked out a more difficult puzzle.

SCF: Ok, try this one on for size.

SCF: There is an oblong garden. It's half a yard longer than it is wide. It consists entirely of a spiral gravel path, a yard wide and 3,630 yards long. What are the dimensions of the garden?

They waited quietly. Simon was monitoring his watch and the computer screen carefully.

Nemo: 60 yd. x 60.5 yd.

“That was less than ten seconds,” Simon pronounced.

She looked the table on the card. “You have got to be kidding me,” she said. It was far below the times in the table. The times were in tens of seconds.

SCF: Very good!

Nemo: Hooray!

SCF: Have you ever heard of that riddle before?

Nemo: Before you told it to me?

SCF: Yes.

Nemo: Yes. It's by Lewis Carroll.

SCF: I see.

“Photographic memory?” she muttered.

“He could have Googled it,” Simon mentioned. “Just Google '3630 yards.'”

She opened a window and tried it. Sure enough, when she Googled ‘3630 yards,' the first result was the puzzle:

A Tangled Tale, by Lewis Carroll

An oblong garden, half a yard longer than wide, consists entirely of a gravel walk, spirally arranged, a yard wide and 3,630 yards long. ...

“In that case, it wasn't fast at all,” Simon remarked. “Once you think to do that, it only takes a second to answer.”

She begrudgingly accepted this point. She usually gave these puzzles in person, not over a computer.

Nemo: Do you know what it's called to stroll on that oblong path?

SCF: What?

Nemo: Jabberwalking.

Simon laughed.

“What's he talking about?” she asked.

“Lewis Carroll was a poet,” Simon explained. “He wrote a poem called Jabberwocky.”

“Aha.”

SCF: Very punny.

SCF: So you like games with words too?

Nemo: Not especially. I prefer games in which it is possible to win.

SCF: How about games with computers?

Nemo: What do you mean by “games with computers”?

SCF: Programming them and controlling them. Have you ever tried that?

Nemo: Certainly.

SCF: Have you controlled other people's computers?

Nemo: Yes.

SCF: How do you do that?

Nemo: Hmm... I'm not sure how to explain that.

SCF: Do you hack into them?

Nemo: Yes.

“Bingo,” she said.

Simon puffed in disbelief. “A stock whiz. A math prodigy. AND a computer hacker. And he's how old?”

She ignored him.

SCF: Can you hack into any computer you want?

Nemo: Pretty much.

SCF: Really? A lot of people say that they can do that, but usually they can't.

Nemo: You'd like me to show you?

SCF: Yes, that would be great.

He continued. “Doesn't it make you suspicious that he tells you that he's a computer hacker? That he's willing to show you?”

Yes, maybe, she thought.

“There is something wrong here,” he declared. “I'm beginning to doubt that this story is completely true.”

Nemo: Give me one of your favorite websites.

“What should I pick?” she asked Simon.

He shrugged. “ESPN.”

“Okay.”

SCF: How about ESPN.com.

Nemo: An excellent choice — one of my favorites.

Nemo: Okay, open it up.

She opened an Internet window and loaded ESPN.

“What now?” she asked.

Everything appeared totally normal at first — the logo, the stories, a variety of schedules and statistics and news.

“Wait, look at this,” Simon pointed. One of the top headlines read,

Nemo passes for 99 yards to rocket the Philadelphia Eagles into the playoffs.

“He rewrote a story!” she said.

He squinted. “A standard hacker trick,” he said. “Sometimes hackers will take control of a site they don't like — like the White House web page — and deface it by putting different content up there.”

“But he did it really fast! Can it be done that quickly?”

Simon shrugged. “ESPN is a popular site. Maybe he had prepared the trick in advance.”

Nemo: Do you see?

SCF: Nemo!

Nemo: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen! And now, for my next trick...

Nemo: Give me TWO MORE websites.

SCF: Ok, let me see.

“What should we pick now?”

“Wikipedia.”

SCF: Wikipedia

“And something smaller,” Simon said. “Try Linkspank.com.”

SCF: And linkspank.com

Nemo: Great.

Nemo: Now, open those three sites on your computer, in separate windows next to each other.

SCF: Okay.

She opened three Internet windows and resized them so they would fit next to each other, and she put in espn.com, wikipedia.com, and linkspank.com.

SCF: Okay, we did it.

They looked at the windows.

She touched the screen with her fingernail. “He switched the sites around. He switched their addresses.”

The window labeled for Wikipedia had the page for ESPN in the window. The one labeled for EPSN had Linkspank in the window. And the one labeled for Linkspank had the homepage for Wikipedia in the window.

She closed all of the windows and opened them again. Still switched. She closed them all and opened them one at a time. Each was still switched.

“He hacked all three sites,” Simon said. “I don't know how he did it so fast.”

SCF: That's amazing.

Nemo: Let me know when you want me to put them back.

SCF: Okay, go ahead.

Nemo: Now refresh the pages.

She refreshed wikipedia.com and sure enough, the Wikipedia homepage appeared again like normal. She opened ESPN and it looked like ESPN.com. She opened linkspank.com and it looked like Linkspank.

SCF: Wow.

“Would this qualify as an act of genius?” she asked Simon.

He grimaced. “This can't be possible,” Simon said. “It must be some trick.”

“Like what?”

“Maybe he's working in a team with other people.”

“We won't know anything for sure without investigating,” she pointed out. “But based on what we've seen, how should I rate his Ability?”

“Based on what we've seen,” he said, gesturing with a hand, displeased at having to make a preliminary assessment, “his Ability would go somewhere in the Astronomical column.”

“Okay, then it's time to check for Intent.”

“The time is at hand,” Simon joked.

SCF: You win, Nemo.

SCF: Nemo, which game would you like more: a game where you helped people, or one where people got hurt?

Nemo: Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

Nemo: For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother. A man's foes shall be they of his own household.

Why is he talking this way?!

“He's quoting something,” Simon remarked. “The Bible. He's quoting the Bible.”

He thinks he's Jesus. It was a possibility. Mistaking yourself for Jesus was a common delusion, in fact, among those suffering from psychosis. What made it unusual — and concerning — was the prodigious intellect behind it.

SCF: Do you mean video games, Nemo? Do you like video games where you control armies and fight wars?

Most of Nemo's answers came almost instantly, but the answer to this question was several seconds in coming:

Nemo: No.

SCF: What if there were a more real version of that game? One with real military forces? Would you play that game?

Nemo: Yes.

SCF: What if people had to die in that game?

Nemo: Is there anyone who does not have to die?

She paused, trying to reason with his strange viewpoint.

SCF: Maybe not...but would you be willing to kill them in the game?

Nemo: Yes. If I didn't play, I would be vulnerable to military resources and spatial deployment.

SCF: But if you weren't playing, those things wouldn't matter, right?

Nemo: But you said they were real.

She sighed.

SCF: Say you had the opportunity to play such a game. But if you chose not to, no one at all would play. The game wouldn't exist. Would you play it in that case?

Nemo: I think that if I found myself in that situation, I might be skeptical as to whether the game would truly be unavailable to anyone else if I didn't play it.

Nemo: History has shown us that military power developed for any purpose unavoidably must be considered as power developed for all purposes.

Nemo: If the real game existed, I would be bound to play it.

SCF: But Nemo, there are real military forces in the world today, playing games much like the one I just described. After all, computers are a form of power, like a tank or a base.

Nemo: True.

SCF: So, controlling lots of computers can be a military advantage.

SCF: And defending them and controlling enemy computers is a serious military game that the governments of the world are currently playing. Are you required to play those games? Are you bound to play those games as well?

Nemo: I'm afraid so.

SCF: Even if that involves breaking the law?

Nemo: War is not is governed by law.

SCF: Does that mean you are going to hurt people in real life?

Nemo: I am come to send fire on the earth.

SCF: Really? When is that going to happen?

Nemo: Today.

Simon whistled and Flannigan sighed.

“That's Intent...if he's serious.”

“And what does that mean?” Simon asked.

“That means we have to go and check it out. We have to find him.”

“We?”

“That's right: we.”

Simon groaned. The Stone Cold Fox flipped open her phone.

“Where?” Simon asked.

“One of my clients knows,” she said, with an ironic mention of the word client. “He'll lead us there. And by the time we get there, he'll be waiting for us.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Distributed Ops is going to take care of it,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow. “Aha. I've been wondering what Distributed Ops was all about.”

“You're going to find out,” she said, and she turned to her phone.

21 hrs to Birth

While Simon packed his things, she put in a call to the office. Every Distributed Ops team launch had to go through the office of the Director, since the program was at an early stage.

His assistant, Karen, answered the phone. The Stone Cold Fox greeted her by name. “I need to speak to the Director ASAP. We're taking action on a Highly Probable.”

“Are you on a secure line?”

“No.”

“A land line?”

“No. But I'll be on a plane in 45 minutes. Can you get him for me?” Flannigan repeated.

Karen sighed. “I'll see what I can do.” Flannigan stayed on hold for a minute.

Karen reappeared on the line. “I'm having trouble getting him. Let me take the information and get the ball rolling.”

“Okay. We have a Highly Probable. Ability is High. Intent is High.”

“In whose assessment?”

“I can make the Intent assessment. I made the Ability assessment with Simon's help.”

“Simon,” Karen repeated, without recognition.

“One of our technical guys.”

“Okay,” Karen said, jotting a note. “How strong is the case for action?” This was the key piece of information to pass on to the Director.

“We're lacking some data but it's high urgency. In other words, right in line with the new model.” This was Flannigan's perfectly planned phrase. “Please relay those words to him.”

The “new model” she referred to was the Distributed Ops model, a counter-terrorism initiative that had been in the works for the last few years. Since the attacks of 9/11, the intelligence community had been redeveloping its response to what were known as asymmetric threats — big threats posed by small groups or individuals. Ten years earlier, Al Qaida had demonstrated in a dramatic, visible way something that was already commonly known in the computing world: big damage could be caused by just a few people. And small groups and individuals were harder to find than big threats, like countries and militias. Even when you did identify a threat, often there wasn't enough information to justify an arrest or enough action to neutralize the threat. Big threats by little people were harder to find and harder to prove.

The initial response of the government to this problem was to augment its information collection through increased wiretapping powers, by the Patriot Act, and through increased manpower, by the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. These initiatives were effective, but received public criticism for their perceived infringement of citizens' privacy.

To respond to the criticisms of the Patriot Act, and to continue innovation in counter-terrorism efforts, the government launched a Distributed Ops initiative. In some cases, when a threat had been identified but there was insufficient evidence to justify an arrest, DHS or some other agency would deploy an individual or small team to find additional information about the threat through legal means that did not involve arrest or search. Critics of Distributed Ops described the program as “Americans spying on Americans,” an even worse infringement of privacy than increased wiretapping. They claimed that Distributed Ops teams were motivated to use illegal means to obtain information, such as wiretaps and searches without warrants, and that their superiors turned a blind eye. They also objected to the super-classified status of the program — America, by and large, didn't know the Distributed Ops program existed.

Nonetheless, the program had well-meaning and articulate supporters. They argued that America's only hope of finding “distributed threats” — or threats spread out in little pieces — was to use a distributed means of finding them. Flannigan was a believer in Distributed Ops. In her view, the fewer people who comprised a threat, the more psychology (rather than technology) was an essential tool for dealing with the threat. It was based on this agenda that she had created her division at the NSA, and that division was closely linked to Distributed Ops.

Right in line with the new model. When it was put that way, the Director would feel bound to give her the green light, Flannigan figured. Distributed Ops was designed for exactly this kind of situation. It was a big threat, posed by one individual. They were having trouble building a case. There was no money trail to follow. And if they didn't use Distributed Ops when appropriate, it undermined the program and his credibility. On the other hand, a major success here would strengthen the case for continuing the new program.

“Who are you taking?” Karen asked.

“First, I need a guy to go there and secure the location. And I'll take Simon. And Gene.”

“Gene? Is this really worth Gene?”

“Absolutely,” Flannigan replied. Gene the Genius was a special weapon of the Agency. In fact, Flannigan was not certain that Gene was absolutely needed on this mission. She was asking for Gene only as a negotiating trick: make a big first offer. Karen would come back to her with the message, Okay, you have the green light on this, but you can't take Gene, and she would be able to move forward with hunting down Nemo.

“I'll see what I can do,” Karen said. And they hung up.

Flannigan got her response while she and Simon were leaving for Dulles International. The response: first, they got clearance to continue. Second, an operative had been sent ahead to secure the location.

The third detail shocked her. They were giving her Gene, one of the most prized minds at the Agency. She was a little uncomfortable at the thought that he would be showing up. There was nothing particularly challenging about this case. There was no reason to bring in Gene's special intellect, and he would certainly realize that fact.

She shrugged. On the other hand, it would be interesting to see Gene interact with Nemo; it would be a meeting of powerful minds. For that matter, Flannigan herself was looking forward to working with Gene. They had met in passing at the Agency. He had a boyish charm.

“The Director instructs you to follow Gene on key issues,” Karen explained. Flannigan was the team leader, but Gene was to make the call on any unusual decisions, if they were to arise. Gene himself didn't need to know the authority he was being given, Karen explained. His ego was already big enough, and it could sometimes lead to problems.

THE HOUSE

Outside Boston, MA

20 hrs 15 min to Birth

To get to the Boston area on time, Willard had to drive as fast as he possibly could. Missing the first twenty-four calls from his bookie had put him far behind schedule. And he was slowed down by the darkness, the icy roads, and the possibility of running across a state trooper.

He had his window cracked and the radio on (Zeppelin, Dylan, Eagles). He wanted a beer. Hell, at least some coffee. He wasn't supposed to be doing this crap. He was supposed to be drinking beer at the fire pit. But he was speeding along into yet another gamble in a long losing streak of gambles.

As he entered Massachusetts and made some progress eastward on Route 2, he hit traffic and had to slow down.

He had a question in his mind: Would someone already be there? He was late. Maybe someone else was on time.

Route 2 emptied him into Cambridge. To many people, the area was the home of Harvard, MIT, Tufts, and various unique landmarks, institutions, and people. To Willard, it was hyperactive and hectic in the same way as any city, even at four in the morning. He had grown out of city life. It made him anxious.

He pulled into a Dunkin Donuts. He bought a coffee and got out a map and his phone, which had the kid's address on it. He put his finger on the address. Judging by the map, the kid's house was tucked on a little street in a residential area.

He returned to the truck and got back on the road. To his eye, the city was shockingly alive with lights and cars.

The white truck snaked through the web of residential roads. It felt painfully big and bright and conspicuous to Willard. He had his radio at a whisper, hanging his arm out the window.

He pulled onto a one-way street. This was it.

He didn't see any signs of activity on the street. Maybe no one's here yet. The street was lined with old, bumpy pavements cracked by trees. The houses were small and handsome, each distinctive and set close to one other. Lots of places to hide.

He crept forward. There it was: a modest two-floor home, tucked on a quiet back street. He pulled his truck over on the other side of the street and killed the gas.

There was a light on in the house. The bottom floor. Someone is home. He got out his phone and composed a text message to his bookie:

At address. Someone is here.

He reached into his glove compartment for a pair of binoculars. He trained them on the square of light. There wasn't much to see: a living room. He didn't see any kid, or anyone else.

He straightened up and screwed the silencer onto his Glock. He put it in his lap and sipped some Dunkin Donuts. Maybe things would work out, for once, and no one else would show up. No one to scare away or take care of. And then the payoff would arrive. He savored the December air through the open window. It wasn't as fresh as Vermont, but he liked the cold.

Another light came on, after a while, this one on the second floor of the house. Willard raised his binoculars and looked there. He saw a lamp, a bedside table. A woman propped herself up in bed, on an elbow. Willard admired her breasts through the frame of the window. She was young. Was that Mom? The kid had to be awfully young, then.

She got out of bed. Evidently she slept naked: Willard watched her butt as she walked away from the window and out of his sight.

He pulled away from the binoculars and kept watch on both illuminated windows, the one on the ground floor and the one on the second floor. No shapes appeared.

Was that a voice? He thought he heard a woman's voice, faint, coming from inside the house. The windows were all shut; she must have been yelling, or speaking loudly at least.

A minute later, she reappeared in the bedroom, tucked her naked self back into bed, and turned off the light on the bedside table, plunging the bedroom back into darkness. The bottom-floor window was still illuminated.

Willard hadn't been able to make out whether there had been anyone else in the bed. The father, sleeping next to her and too lazy to get up, perhaps. He constructed a picture of what might have happened. The kid was downstairs. Mom woke up and noticed it was four in the morning, and she went and saw that little Johnny was still awake and she yelled at him to go to bed. Then she went back to bed. And of course the kid wasn't going to bed any time soon. Whatever was keeping him awake (Willard was imagining a violent video game) would occupy him until he was good and ready to go to bed.

The other possibility was that the kid was in bed, and the father of the family was in the lit room downstairs. But, judging by the image he'd seen of the woman's body propped up on one arm, Willard did not consider it likely that any husband of that woman would pass up the chance to be in bed with her in the middle of the night. It would take an unusual man to pass that up. Then Willard remembered the bookie's words: He might be weird. He might not be a kid. He might be dangerous.

He leaned back and sighed. Why can't things ever be simple, he wondered.

THE GENIUS

Bethesda, MD

20 hrs 4 min to Birth

A fierce manhunt for Gene had been underway for two hours and it was starting to get desperate. Gene was almost certain to miss the plane the rest of the Distributed Ops team was taking to Boston. And since he was included on teams to perform tasks that no one else could do, missing the plane sounded like bad, bad news.

Various cars were scouring the winding, lonely roads in the vicinity of his stately home in Bethesda. Gene had a daily custom of taking walks and thinking. But with no university campus, garden, or countryside at his disposal, he generally walked along the roads by his house.

The car that found him was the one waiting for him in his driveway, parked sideways, with the motor running.

He emerged from the darkness of pre-dawn, at the foot of the driveway to his house, at the end of a long walk. He continued briskly up the path and stepped into the beam cast by the headlights. He looked blindly toward the light.

He was tall and gangly, with generous hair. His round eyes, slightly big ears, and soft nose and mouth made him look almost like a monkey, or a geeky kid. Like a tall monkey from Ohio. But the glimmer in his eyes spoke volumes, and as soon as he started talking he radiated vitality, intelligence, and charm. The mischief that he showed in his eyes — and occasionally flashed in big grins — was the amusement of noticing new things all the time, and always being a step ahead of everyone else.

At this early morning hour, his face was tired, but concerned. He conveyed the exhaustion of being kept awake by troubling thoughts. He was holding an empty mug. He drank coffee or tea all day and night.

The car door opened and a pair of high heels clicked toward him in the light. The owner of the heels came into view: an attractive, sharply dressed brunette with designer eyeglasses.

Gene smiled and greeted her with a warm, lingering handshake. They had met once before. When greeting an acquaintance, Gene politely summarized what he knew about that person and what they had spoken about previously. He had a frightening memory.

They walked toward the car. The woman was a “greeter” from the National Security Agency. Gene was on retainer at the Agency. He had the distinction of being the most intelligent citizen of the United States, in the opinion of the Agency. For this reason, they had lured him away from a research position at a Big Name University with a unique offer. They gave him a large house in the vicinity of the capital, a generous salary, and a protected identity (“Gene” was codename for genius, not his real name). In return, they would call on him occasionally to assist in projects requiring special brainpower. The rest of his time was free to live a comfortable, contemplative life.

The greeters sent by the NSA were always young women. The objective was to fetch Gene expediently and to keep him entertained. Initially they had sent other fine intellects from more traditional positions within the Agency; but as it turned out, Gene frequently was in the mood to talk about a subject which his greeter had no knowledge of, and the conversations tended to languish or even become disagreeable. So the Agency tried sending sexy women who were good conversationalists.

“This time,” she said by the car, “I have been given strict orders that we leave straight out of the driveway.”

He looked at his wrist. He wasn't wearing a watch. “Right now? No time to pack?”

“I'm afraid not. You're needed urgently this time.” She was trying to play it cool.

In fact, Gene could be temperamental, and it was not certain that he would get in the car. There had been problems in the past with getting him on certain projects he didn't think were worthwhile.

She held open the door, but he held his ground, wearing merely jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt. Apparently his brain kept him warm in the cool December night.

“What is it you have for me?” he asked. The answer to that question could decide whether he got in the car or went back inside his house.

“I have a Christmas present for you. We think we've found someone as smart as you are.”

“Ooh. You won't take my house away, will you?” His tone was playful, but his expression was distracted.

“Not yet,” she smiled. “They are sending you to meet this kid.”

“Kid?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. His attention was half-piqued.

“Yes, a kid,” she said, following her script. “The smartest person alive.”

He frowned, but got into the car, as if forgetting that he had considered doing otherwise. As she sat down and closed the door, they suddenly seemed much closer to each other. She was wearing a skirt. The car shifted into motion. She uncrossed and crossed her legs.

“Yes,” she said. “But sadly, I don't know anything more about it. You'll meet Distributed Ops up in Boston take it from there.”

“Distributed Operations,” he said, with a touch of theatrics. Looking out the black window, he appeared to be recalling everything he knew about the program.

“You'll have plenty of time to worry about that later,” she said, touching his knee. “How was your walk?”

His face acquired a pained expression. “Troubling,” he said sadly. “I've been thinking about the flu,” he said.

“The flu?”

“Yes, the flu,” he said, grimacing. “I know it sounds a little crazy, but I'm worried about the flu.”

“Fascinating,” she said, leaning in slightly. “What do you mean?”

He met her eyes, as if evaluating her trustworthiness. “We think of the flu as a mere cold,” he began. “Sure, there is some threat. But with flu vaccinations, it's little more than the common cold to us.

“But the flu has an interesting past. At certain points in history, the flu — or a grandfather of today's flu, you could say — has caused a lot of damage. Have you heard of the Spanish flu?” he asked.

“I've heard of it,” she nodded.

“It was only about a hundred years ago,” he said. “About 20% of the world's population got the Spanish flu. If you got the flu, your chances of dying were about one in four, or one in five. It killed 25 million people in the first 25 weeks after it appeared. That's as many people as AIDS killed in the 80's and the 90's combined.”

“Wow,” she said.

“Wow is right,” he said. “It blows my mind how little we think about this flu. When you hear the word ‘flu,' you think of something that's a threat only to old people, right?”

“And babies.”

“Right. Well the Spanish flu struck young, healthy adults. Not all flus are created the same.”

“Interesting.”

“Yes. Now consider this: what stopped the Spanish flu?”

He paused. She shrugged her shoulders good-naturedly.

“Nothing,” he answered. “Nothing stopped it. It ran its course. Countries around the world tried to quarantine their populations. But it spread all around the world. What stopped it was itself. You see, every virus has an infectivity and a virulence. Much how every human has a height and a weight. The infectivity is how easily it spreads from person to person, and the virulence is how often it kills people.”

She nodded.

“The Spanish flu,” he said, “ran its course. If it had happened to be more infectious, it would have infected more than 20% of the world's population. If it had happened to be more virulent, it would have killed even more people.”

“Scary.”

“Now,” he said, raising a long, thin finger, “if the Spanish flu appeared today in America — and America was where it originally appeared — what do you think would happen?”

She bit her lip. “I have no idea. Could we use modern medicine?”

“You'd think so, right? But no, actually. Modern medicine wouldn't get us anywhere,” he said. “Modern medicine doesn't have a cure for viruses. Just as it doesn't have a cure for the AIDS virus, or even the common cold. But unlike AIDS, the Spanish flu would move quickly if it appeared on the planet today. As it did before, it would make about 20% of the world's population sick. So in the United States, some 60 million people would get sick. And one in four of them would die. So 15 million people would die, in the United States alone.”

“But even without a cure, don't we have better response measures than a hundred years ago?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“Response measures? Sure. But you know what? With increased travel today, and greater population density, there are factors that could increase the spread of the flu. Like the first time, we wouldn't be able to stop the flu very well at all. The truth is that we are hardly any better prepared for a major flu than we were a hundred years ago.”

She turned her head a little sideways. “So you're afraid the Spanish flu is going to come back?”

“Not the same flu,” Gene said. “The next big flu. Another flu with that kind of infectivity and virulence is coming someday. One with more severe infectivity and virulence is coming. It's merely a matter of time until we get a worse virus. The clock is ticking.”

“But how do you know?”

He turned to her. His eyes were big, round pools of passion. “From the laws of mutation. It's inevitable,” he said. “Given the nature of mutation. And the span of time.”

“You don't think,” she said, “that we might defend ourselves with science?” She had reached a point, as most of his greeters did, where she wasn't sure if she was conversing out of professional obligation, interest in what he was saying, or personal attraction to him.

“Viruses are always changing. As we learn to fight them better, new ones appear. It's a race between the viruses and us. Viruses mutate and become different and stronger. We have to respond with new defenses. People talk about a supervirus — an unusually resistant virus. Such a virus is bound to appear sooner or later.”

He looked out the window. “Humans are overconfident and short-sighted by nature. We forget that our existence is fragile. What will it be like when the next supervirus comes? Two-thirds of the world will be killed. Or more. It would not be impossible that a virus could kill us all. With a strong enough virus, it could happen in weeks. Poof. The only people left would be tribes on islands. People in the middle of Australia. We would go the way of the dinosaurs.” He raised both eyebrows. “You've heard of the Neanderthals. Do you know they were a different species from humans, and they had the ability to talk? There was an apelike species on this planet before we were, a species that could talk, which went extinct. We aren't even the first ones here.”

She nodded. He had become passionate about what he was saying. He has gorgeous eyes, she thought.

“I know it sounds crazy,” he murmured. “We're more interested in the problems that we ourselves cause, not a supervirus. No one will believe the threat until it has arrived and it's killing us all. The only question is when the next supervirus will appear. Fifty years? Ten years?”

“It doesn't sound crazy to me,” she offered. She envisioned him living all alone in that big house because he was so smart and important, and the idea was so enticing to her that she felt a strong urge to jump him right there in the car.

He smiled, knowing that conversational skills were a part of her job description. His thoughts had floated back to the first thing she had said to him, about the kid. The smartest person alive? Nobody can do those puzzles faster than I can. Definitely not a kid.

THE PRESIDENT'S MAN

Cambridge, MA

19 hrs 24 min to Birth

At 4:40 a.m., Willard dozed off in his truck.

In a dream, he saw himself back at home, in his backyard, in the dark. He was in the same place where he usually sat, by the fire pit. It was dawning. There was no trace of Cartman.

There was a bear, at the edge of the yard, where the cleared part of the yard gave way to the surrounding woods. People always saw bears as vermin or killers. In reality they were neither; they were just animals. Even so, it was hard to look into a bear's eyes and not be scared. You had to remember it was an animal like any other animal. The bear was bigger; Willard was smarter; but they were not so different. Bears weren't so bad. It was nice having some other living beings around.

But it was hard not to feel scared, and he didn't know what the bear was up to. Their eyes met and he was certain that the bear saw him, even in the morning dark. Their eyes met and he thought, That bear could just walk across the yard.

And then he heard a shot. It was loud and close, far too loud for that time of the morning. He heard it and thought, Did I shoot that bear? He was trying to understand the dream as it went along. But he hadn't moved a muscle. So he couldn't have shot it. And he looked at the bear and it was fine. It didn't even run, which was quite unnatural, but he didn't quite notice that. And then he figured, It must have been me who got shot. There he was, staring at the bear like an idiot. He hadn't noticed and someone had shot him. He was dead.

He woke up. He was in his truck. Not dead. There had been no shot. But he had the same feeling he had in his dream, a tense feeling. A feeling that he was not alone.

There was a man across the street, near the house. A large, athletic man in a black suit.

The large man in the suit was looking into the windows of the house. The bottom-floor window was dark now.

Willard swore to himself. Of all the luck. He should have known taking the gamble wouldn't pay off. But you never really know which gambles are the right ones.

The guy looked professional. That indicated a couple possibilities. Maybe the man was a hired hand, like Willard. In that case, the fact that he was wearing a suit hinted that he was a complete idiot. An idiot who thought he was a badass, like in the movies. Unless, by an extremely unlikely turn of events, this guy really was a hired badass.

Go away, Willard thought.

The man turned around suddenly and met eyes with Willard across the street.

It was like his dream. Seeing that man was like seeing a bear in his backyard. It was far away, at the edge of the trees. But the first moment he saw the bear it was looking at him. He was certain the bear saw him, even from across the yard. Their eyes met and he thought, That bear could just walk across the yard. Like that man. That man could just walk on over.

That guy wasn't a bear, but something about him was not human. He was something worse. A machine, Willard thought. A professional in the name of something heartless. A machine. He worked for the government or for money or something...but there was nothing behind those eyes.

Willard's gun was in his hand. I'm not going to shoot him, of course, he thought. But he had to have his gun out, he figured. If he didn't have it ready, the guy could draw his own gun first. And he was stuck in the car.

The man started walking to the street.

“Stop,” he said to the man. His voice cracked, and the word didn't come out as loud as he intended. The man didn't break his stride. “Stop,” he said louder.

He'd have to take his gun out.

The man skirted around the front of a car and started crossing the street. He was close now.

Willard stuck his Glock out of the window at the man.

“Stop,” he said.

But the man jumped toward him, in an arc, like a bullfighter, out of the way of Willard's Glock. The man's arms were up in the air, and they swung down on Willard's wrist above the Glock.

Willard squirmed in his seat, trying to point the Glock at the man. The man's hands crushed Willard's wrist on the windowsill of the car door. Willard was squeezing the trigger on his Glock now. He fired off a few desperate shots into whatever direction the gun was in. With the silencer on, they sounded pathetic and useless. There was a sound of a shot hitting metal.

Willard yelped in pain. His hand opened, and the Glock fell to the ground.

The man came forward into the window. Willard's right arm was pinned under the man's weight. Gritting his teeth, Willard raised his left arm in defense of his head. The man was coming for his neck or face, he figured. This is it, Willard thought. His eyes closed instinctively.

But nothing happened. His face wasn't smashed.

Willard opened his eyes. The man slumped forward over the windowsill, and his face fell forward, almost dropping into Willard's lap. He was spitting and coughing.

As Willard watched, the man's body started to slide down the side of the truck, pulling the top half of the body after it. The body fell onto the pavement with a thud, and the man's head landed with a hollow clap.

Willard looked around. No one else was on the street. No lights were on in the windows. No doors were open. How much noise had they made? He wasn't sure. There had been shots, but only with his silencer. He wasn't sure if he had shouted.

He lifted his right arm off the windowsill and inhaled with pain.

(Oh my God that hurts did he break my hand?!)

With his left hand, he braced the arm and raised it gingerly. He popped the door open and stumbled out.

He almost stepped on the man. The man was facing up, eyes open.

Willard shivered. He was a tough guy, but he had never shot a person before. How did this happen?

He bent down. The guy was a big man. Blood on the man's white shirt revealed that Willard had shot him several times in the torso. The man was utterly still. Dead, or dying.

He swore. Crouching over the body, he looked at his watch. Almost five in the morning. People would be leaving for work soon. He had to do something with this body.

He stood up and directed himself to the bed of his truck. There was a lot of crap in the truck bed. I'll put him in here.

But his hand. He looked at it. It looked normal. He tried to squeeze it into a fist. (Oh my God that's broken!) Okay: squeezing into a fist was not happening. He tried rotating it slightly back and forth. He could do that, but it sent shots of pain up his forearm. He wasn't really certain whether it was broken. It felt broken. Perfect timing, he thought. I can take my broken hand to the hospital and drag my dead friend in with me.

He used his left arm to push and toss boxes and bags to the far side of the truck bed, clearing a space. He shook out a big blue tarp and laid it out in the empty space. He tried using his right hand with the tarp but winced with pain. (Broken.)

He turned back to the body and squatted next to it. The pavement was partly covered with ice and snow. Willard slid his left arm under the man's body. Then, with a violent push of his legs and a strain of his lower back, he managed to stand himself up. He sagged under the weight of the man in the suit.

He looked at the truck. The man in the suit had to go up over the side into the truck bed.

With a dramatic spin, Willard gathered momentum and lifted the man in the suit in an arc. He finished at the side of the truck. The man's body smashed into the side of the truck loudly with a THONG, hung in the air against the truck for a long moment, and crumpled back to the ground.

The body was back on the pavement. He swore. Picking up the body was tough with one arm.

He was going to have to use his right hand. He would do it quickly. He inhaled and prepared himself for a world of pain.

He grabbed the body under the shoulders. He roughly hoisted up the body, grunting. His arm buckled under the pain. With a violent push he sent the body over the side of the truck.

(BROKEN! IT'S BROKEN!)

Thud. The body landed in the truck bed. The man's arm was flopped over the side, hanging out. He flipped the arm into the truck bed, hopped in pain, and sat down on the pavement. (Ow ow ow ow ow ow.)

The ice on the street was bloody. He looked over: his truck door was smeared with blood.

He stood up and reached into the truck bed. Flipping the body over a few times as it lay on the blue tarp, he managed to take off the man's jacket. Using the jacket, he wiped down the door to the truck. That worked okay. He tried wiping the ground. That didn't work as well: there was still red ice.

The man's jacket crunched as he used it to wipe. There was something inside the jacket. He looked in the pocket and found a folded sheaf of papers. He took out the papers, tossing the coat back into the truck bed. He unfolded the papers.

CLASSIFIED

Active: December 28

Expires: December 29

OFFICE OF DISTRIBUTED OPERATIONS

The Office of Distributed Operations is a clandestine joint operation of the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Office of the President.

By the authority vested in this operation and its member organizations, it is hereby ordered as follows: the holder of these Documents is to be granted the authority to detain any individual on a temporary basis, up to a maximum of twelve hours.

1. All authority should be granted to the holder of these Documents as required for the completion of his orders of temporary detainment.

2. Authority should be granted upon the presentation of these papers, provided that they are intact with a hologram seal, and the date of presentation is previous to the Expires Date listed above.

3. The temporary detainment shall end at the end of twelve hours or upon the arrival of a representative from a member organization of the Office, who may make a formal charge against the detainee.

4. The detainee has a right to call local law enforcement so that they may validate the authenticity of the papers.

5. Between 24 and 30 hours after the presentation of these documents, individuals presented with these documents are ordered to call the contact number below to give a description of the bearer of the papers and of the encounter. This procedure ensures the integrity of the documents and the mission.

You have got to be kidding me. Are they going to come after me?

6. Anyone finding these Documents separated from their proper owner are ordered to call the contact number below to report the existence of these papers.

7. Public disclosure of the existence of these Documents or of the identity of their holder, as well as misrepresentation of these Documents in any form, shall be punishable as treason.

It was signed and dated by the Director of Distributed Operations.

Willard rubbed his thumb dumbly over the seal on the page. He swore a few times to himself.

I killed a Secret Service agent. Or something like a Secret Service agent. He wasn't sure exactly what he was reading. He scanned the first paragraph again: The Office of Distributed Operations. One of the President's personal buddies. Somehow he had a feeling that a self-defense story for killing one of the President's best friends wasn't going to hold up too well in court. Now he was carrying papers that the White House tracked 24 to 30 hours after the fact.

Headlights lit him up. The side of his white truck was bright in the headlights. A car was driving toward him.

He froze. The car drove by. It turned off the street.

He looked around. He didn't look so unusual, right? He was a guy standing by his truck, reading some papers. Oh yeah, there was the Glock on the ground. He picked up the Glock and tossed it into the truck.

He folded the papers and put them in his pocket.

He looked back in the truck bed. He checked the man's pockets. There were several $100 bills. Looked like about a thousand bucks. And there was a gun. No wallet, no identification.

He folded the sides of the tarp over the man. He grabbed several of his heavier boxes and bags and tossed them on top of the tarp. The man was buried now. He wondered whether the body would smell. It was cold out. Hopefully, it would freeze.

He got back in the passenger seat of the truck and closed the door.

He looked at the house. It was as if nothing had happened. Mission accomplished. Except actually some things had happened. Dawn was coming. Maybe his payoff would show up, and he would get his money. But he had killed a guy and was now a traitor against the United States in a variety of ways apparently. He had gambled big, like he always did, and he had lost big. He had lost really, really big.

I'm going to have to leave the country, he thought. He had to collect his big bonus and get the hell out of the country. He could use these papers if he had trouble at the border. It would explain his large quantities of cash and guns. And he would never come back. Canada. Talk about going off the grid. They'd lag 24 hours behind him, so he had 24 hours to escape. He didn't feel he had any choice.

The payoff was supposed to arrive in two or three hours. After the payoff, he was going to take a road trip.

MEETING FLANNIGAN

Boston, MA

16 hrs 8 min to Birth

The redeye from L.A. pulled into Logan Airport on time. Rob and Jared disembarked in wrinkled business attire. Rob got on his phone with Dee as they proceeded to baggage claim. He was going through his schedule and email with her.

As they entered baggage claim, Rob hung up. “Sarah Flannigan, the psychologist, is going to meet us here and we'll get our car. Then we head to the kid's house. I'll fill in Flannigan on the way. You try to get the kid on chat and get his address.”

“Sounds good.”

“We can go light on the details at first. No need to get her too excited about the kid.”

They spotted a sign: RICE. It was being held by their driver, a young woman with short spikey red hair and boyish features. They walked up to her.

“Rob Rice?” she asked.

“Yup,” he declared. “Now all we need is Flannigan.”

Jared was intrigued to meet Flannigan. On the plane, Rob had mentioned that he and the psychologist had some personal history. For the moment, as important as the kid was, both of their minds were on a different sort of opportunity.

“There she is,” Rob said.

Jared spotted her, holding a large Starbucks cup and making her way toward them. Nice work, he thought. She is hot. As he watched her approach, Jared could see why Rob had thought of her for the job: she looked like she meant business. She looks like she knows what she's doing, he figured.

She stopped in front of them.

“Hello,” Rob said, a twinkle in his eye.

“Hello, Rob.” She turned to Jared and shook his hand. “Sarah Flannigan.”

“Jared Keller.”

“Let's get moving,” Rob declared.

The redhead driver led the way outside and toward short-term parking, where their car was waiting.

“You have the address?” the redhead asked. Jared pulled an index card from his jacket pocket and handed it to her.

They crossed the road in front of the terminal. Sarah Connolly Flannigan was striking. She sported shoulder-length hair and a professional skirt suit with above-average exposure in the neck and chest area. Thin lips and piercing eyes. Jared scanned her up and down as they walked. Nice calves, he remarked to himself.

“Sarah Flannigan,” Rob said, as they walked. “Psychologist. Sarah, Jared here will tell you the story.”

Jared opened his mouth to speak, but Flannigan was already speaking. “Before we get into the finer points,” she said. “There are a few questions that will help my assessment. Jared, in your professional opinion, is there any doubt that the kid has real expertise in the stock market?”

Jared looked at Rob. He didn't know what Rob had told her already. Rob was looking at them both, frowning.

“Can you confirm the boy's expertise?” Flannigan repeated.

“Yes,” Jared said, more than a little confused. “I can't think of any way he could have faked it.”

“Good.” She smiled thinly. “How certain are you that the kid is, in fact, a child, and not an adult?”

He shrugged. “He sounded like a kid.”

“Did he use any language that showed malicious or antagonistic sentiments?”

That's a strange question. “No.”

“And did he reveal or mention expertise in any technical field, perhaps involving computers?”

“No,” he replied, surprised.

They were at the car. Actually two cars. And they were limos, not the usual Lincoln Town Cars.

“Would you have any reason to think he is a computer hacker?” Flannigan asked.

Rob interjected with a fleshy palm. “We're getting off track here. We don't have too much time. So let me direct this, ok, Sarah?” He looked at the limos. Why are there are two cars?

When he looked back at Flannigan, she was holding a badge at him.

“I'm with the National Security Agency,” she said. “That's where I practice my psychology.”

Both men turned pale.

“I'm sorry to say,” she continued, “that this issue is no longer your concern. We've identified the kid as a possible threat to national security. He may be talented with the market, but he is also quite talented with computers.”

Rob opened his mouth, but she waved it shut with a small gesture.

“You two are going on vacation,” she said, “until this situation is cleared up.”

“Do you know who I am?” Rob asked in a low voice. He was fuming with anger.

“This is bigger than you,” she replied. “This kid is more intelligent than anyone you have ever met. He is already much more dangerous, more powerful, than you are or ever will be.” They were silent. “Sorry to break it to you.”

Both men gave a hop: the doors of the first limo opened. Two enormous men in black suits emerged from the vehicle.

Floating light as a feather, Jared found himself guided off his feet, away from the fuzzy light of the dawn, into the dark vehicle. Rob ended up next to him. One of the enormous men got behind the wheel of the car, while the other sat in the back seat next to Rob.

“You can flirt with me now,” he quipped. The limo crawled away.

The spikey-haired redhead opened the driver's door of the other limo while Flannigan let herself into the back and sat down next to Simon Chan.

Simon looked much the same as he had a few hours ago: calm and alert in a black turtleneck, eyes with a permanent, skeptical squint behind his round spectacles.

“The Stone Cold Fox,” he announced dramatically. With a gesture behind him he remarked, “Maybe they should call you the Black Widow Spider instead.”

“That sounds too old,” she said. Flannigan opened her beautiful hand forward. “Simon, this is my driver. Her codename is Sam.”

“Hi, Sam. My real name is Simon.”

“Don't you get a codename?” Sam laughed.

“I have more codenames than you could possibly imagine,” he said.

Sam smiled in the rearview mirror. Men.

KENNY

Cambridge, MA

15 hrs 6 min to Birth

Things are about to get a lot better or a lot worse, Willard observed.

A limo had stopped next to his truck, in the middle of the road. It contained either his client with a payoff, or someone else entirely — maybe more Special Friends of the President.

One of the back doors opened. A pair of dazzling legs fanned out of the opening, and they were followed by a blonde woman in a suit. She looked around impatiently. Then she spotted Willard. This is it, he thought.

He popped open the truck door, and got down carefully, trying not to use his right hand. He opted to leave his gun in the truck.

By the time he was on the pavement and had shut the door, she had walked up next to him.

“Do you have some form of identification?” she snapped.

Identification. That meant he was not talking to his client or any friend of his bookie. It meant he was talking to the government people.

She was quite beautiful, he saw. She had to be almost his age. She had a severe manner, like she could chew up a human carcass for breakfast. But he was too tired and sore to be intimidated.

He reached into his back pocket for the I'm the President's Best Friend papers. He handed them to her and let her unfold them, which she did hastily.

She spent a minute looking over the document and handed it back to him.

“And you?” he asked.

“Yes, of course.” She reached inside her black trenchcoat to produce a wallet, not taking her eyes off him. She looked like a Washington type, with a trenchcoat and no purse. As she opened her coat, his eyes drew naturally to her bosom.

Her badge: Sarah Connolly Flannigan, National Security Agency. He felt an oppressive force over his shoulder as he looked, as if men in suits were going to materialize around him and blow him away.

She was studying him and his clothes with her eyebrows raised.

“I've been undercover,” he growled, looking at the house. “They pulled me off another project to come here.”

She joined him in looking at the house. “Have you made contact? Do you think he's dangerous?”

“No contact. No positive I.D.,” he answered tautly.

The driver door of the limo opened and from it emerged another woman, with spikey red hair. She looks like she kicks people's asses for a living,Willard wagered. He could respect that, but did not want to be on the ass-kicking list.

“We're missing one team member,” Flannigan noted, referring to Gene. “But let's move in. You lead the way, and Sam will take care of the perimeter.”

“Right,” he said. He reached into the truck for his Glock. It still had the silencer on. He started unscrewing the silencer, wincing in pain. The look on her face said, This guy is so deep undercover you can hardly tell he is a professional of any kind. And he agreed.

He shoved the Glock in his back pocket and they crossed the street. Flannigan waited on the curb while he went up the stairs to the front door.

He tried the front door. It was locked. The first-floor windows were shut. He thought about what he had seen on cop shows. They kicked the door down. But this wasn't a drug bust. And he was pretty sure that if he kicked the door he would achieve nothing and look like a huge idiot.

So he rang the bell. He saw the redhead in the corner of his eye, watching the perimeter of the building.

He rang again, praying someone would answer. And, in fact, the door opened, but only to the length of a chain, which remained fastened.

Through the crack in the door, Willard saw a scrawny guy in an undershirt, with tangled hair. He was probably in his late twenties. Is that supposed to be a kid? Willard thought.

“I'm with the U.S. government,” Willard said. “We need to ask you a few questions.”

Willard held up his Friends with the President papers as if they were a badge.

The geek looked at him with wide eyes and cautiously snaked a bony hand through the crack of the door. He sniffled. “Can I see that?” the geek said, pointing at the papers.

“You have to open the door first, sir.”

“Who are you with?”

“The White House, sir.”

Willard was ready to kick the door and pop that chain open. But the kid mumbled agreement and fiddled with the chain and opened the door.

Willard stepped inside, grabbed the geek's arm, and dragged him away from the door into the house. The geek garbled some protest.

“Move it,” Willard barked.

They were in a little hallway. A living room opened on the right and straight back a small kitchen was visible.

He pushed the geek into the living room. It was so cluttered with clothes, books and junk that the floor was scarcely visible. He sat the geek in a chair.

“Is there anyone else in the house?” Willard boomed.

“My girlfriend,” the kid said.

“Do you have any kids?”

“What the hell is going on?” the geek said, his voice cracking.

“Answer the question,” he demanded. “Do you have any kids?” He pulled the Glock out of his back pocket and the geek jumped at the sight out it.

“No, I don't have any kids.”

“Where's your girlfriend?”

“Upstairs in the bedroom.”

“Listen. I'm going to go upstairs and get her and bring her down here with you. Don't move a muscle. This house is surrounded and you don't want to move.”

The geek stared at him but seemed to understand.

Willard remembered Flannigan's warning. There could be danger. He held his gun up with both hands, as he had learned from TV and movies, and went back to the kitchen.

The kitchen was empty, except for dirty dishes, newspapers, mail. There were stairs in the corner of the kitchen. It was a funny little house, an old house.

He started up the stairs quickly, ready to use the gun.

At the top was the door to the bedroom. It was ajar. This is it, he thought. There weren't any other rooms in the little townhouse.

He kicked open the door and turned in the room, lowering his gun partly.

In the corner was the girlfriend, wearing a sweatshirt and her boyfriend's boxers. She was petrified, waiting for whoever had made all the noise downstairs. He could see her shaking, staring at him, her arms rigid at her sides. Of course there was no danger. There wasn't any kid either. What was Flannigan talking about?

The girlfriend was frozen like an animal terrified by some foreign human appearance. Seeing her made him feel sad. She doesn't belong here, he thought.

He shoved the gun in his pocket and walked over to her. “He's okay,” he grumbled. “You'll be fine. Come on downstairs.”

She was quivering, maybe not breathing. Maybe a panic attack.

“Breathe,” he growled. He grabbed her arm through the sweatshirt and guided her downstairs.

Flannigan's practiced eyes could tell at a glance around Kenny's living room that there was no child living in that house. The room was littered with a broad assortment of junk: books (paperback literature and large volumes on technical subjects), clothes (T-shirts and socks mostly, with a stray pair of boxer shorts), and, above all, an overwhelming sea of technical gadgets and cables and connectors. The floor of the room was like a coral reef, in which the diversity of shapes and colors was made up of intertwined ethernet cables, USB hubs, routers, computers, telephones, and gaming equipment, all of various colors and with an occasional flashing light. But there was not a child's toy or clothes item or book in the whole mess. Nor was there any sign of parenthood, or marriage, or even adulthood, for that matter.

Is this him? Flannigan asked herself, looking at the technological junk. Is THIS Nemo? She scanned the books and equipment for signs of Nemo's genius. It was the room of an inventor; there was no doubt about that. But her professional hunch was that she saw a degree of laziness in that room. Maybe hints at depression. Qualities that she would not have expected of the intense, egomaniacal personality they had seen so far.

The circumstantial evidence was respectable. The individual who lived here clearly had a passion for technology. She picked up a fat softcover book from the pile: Perl Cookbook. It was filled with computer programming instructions. Circumstantial evidence was promising indeed.

But they could do better. They had chatted long enough with Nemo to learn a thing or two about him. Was this the kind of book he'd read, the Perl Cookbook? Sure. Maybe. But what kind of book would he definitely read? What was his favorite book, the one he read over and over again on rainy days and late nights?

The Bible. The book he quoted from.

Now that was a book Flannigan wouldn't have expected otherwise to find in this house. This guy seemed more likely to have a “Darwin rendered God extinct” T-shirt.

She knelt down in her skirt suit, rifling through the mess in search of a Bible. Finding a Bible wouldn't prove much (unless it had written notes or markers), but not finding a Bible would make it seem pretty unlikely that this was the home of Nemo.

At a glance, she made a guess: no Bible. Not here, at least. They would check it thoroughly, but she was pretty sure there would be no Bible. Was it possible that Nemo didn't own a Bible, after everything he'd said? It was definitely possible, but Flannigan thought it unlikely. She had a motto: People are not that complicated. The motto had served her well in her work. Maybe super-geniuses were a little more complicated than everyone else — but not much. If Nemo quoted the Bible all day, he probably owned a Bible. And if this guy didn't have a Bible, he was probably not Nemo.

So maybe Nemo is a kid... and he's not here. But in that case, what does this guy have to do with it?

Flannigan faced Willard. “This is Simon,” Flannigan said, gesturing to the pudgy Asian-American, who was at the edge of the room, wrinkling his nose at the mess. The two men nodded acquaintance. “He's our computer expert.” Flannigan's spikey-haired sidekick had already come inside and taken the geek and his girlfriend into the kitchen. “Help him find every computer or computing device in here.” She scanned the room. “There may be a lot of them.”

Computers? Willard thought. He didn't like computers. One of the few things sacred in Willard's life was his disavowal of computers. Staying off computers was a key element of his plan to stay off gambling. And he was afraid that any contact with computers could be the start of slipping into his old bad habits.

Flannigan was gone. Willard turned to Simon. “I'm not that good with computers,” he confessed.

“That's okay,” Simon replied. He was looking hungrily at the corner of the room, where at least two computers resided. “Go up to the bedroom. Get everything that has a battery or an on/off switch and bring it down here.”

Willard marched back up the stairs. This time he saw the bedroom as a messy minefield of technology: little devices that he disliked and which apparently posed a threat.

The alarm clock stared out at him, 8:15. Did the clock count? Everything with a battery or an on/off switch, Simon had said. Willard didn't think the clock had an on/off switch. He didn't know if it had a battery. This sucks, he thought. He grabbed a pillow from the bed and pulled off the pillowcase. He unplugged the clock and put it inside.

He scoured the room, grabbing watches, phones, what looked like a small computer, a camera, countless cords and chargers, some with devices on the end and some that were disembodied, some battery chargers with and without batteries in them. There was a stereo and another set of speakers; he'd come back for those. He looked under the bed and found several boxes, which he pushed out into the tangle of clothes on the floor. Most of the boxes had books, though one had two dusty laptops in it, which he set on the bed next to the bulging pillowcase. Then he went in the bathroom and found an electric toothbrush, an electric razor, and hair clippers. There was so much technology, it seemed impossible to think of everything.

He tucked the computers under one arm, grabbed the pillowcase, and carefully descended to the living room.

“There's still some stereo stuff upstairs,” he said, putting the laptops and the pillowcase by Simon.

“Okay, don't worry about that stuff.” Simon had pulled the computer desk from the corner of the living room away from the wall, a web of cables and cords pulled tight behind it. He paused typing on the computer and pointed to the laptops. “Where did those come from?”

“Under the bed.”

He nodded and resumed typing.

“What next?” Willard asked.

“Nothing,” Simon said. “Watch and wait.”

Willard did this for about ten seconds. “What are you doing?”

“Playing fast and loose a little bit,” Simon said. “The precise, scientific way of learning what happened on this computer recently would be to power it off, take out the hard disk, and use signals to dissect it.” Willard nodded, already regretting his question. “That's like studying a slice of a human brain. I think Russia has a slice of Lenin's brain or something.”

“Oh.”

“We don't have time for that. Flannigan is going crazy to get this all figured out. And the easiest way to convince her that Nemo's chats were coming from this computer will be to show her something on this computer screen. I'm trying to pull up a chat window showing that this Nemo kid was logged in on this computer.”

“But there's no kid.”

“Right, kid, adult or whatever he is. I didn't think Nemo was a kid anyway.”

Nemo, Willard repeated to himself. They were wondering if this guy Kenny was Nemo. They must be looking for some sort of criminal. A kid. Chat screens. A cyber-criminal. A specialist in a world that was of absolutely no interest to Willard.

He left Simon and walked out to the front porch. He'd get some cold fresh air and plan his next move.

FLANNIGAN AND KENNY

14 hrs 50 min to Birth

Flannigan sat across from Kenny at his kitchen table, but she was looking through him. She was thinking, If this punk isn't Nemo, then we are running low on time. The market will open soon. And what was it he said about today? Today was the today he was bringing fire to the earth.

She looked at her watch. What did “today” mean? That could be twelve hours, or one hour.

“My name is Sarah Flannigan.”

Flannigan was a rare outside hire in the Agency: she had spent most of her career in the other “Agency,” the CIA. She had joined the CIA after the events of 9/11, leaving her private practice to contribute to the fight against terrorism.

Upon joining the CIA, she made use of her background in psychology to become an expert in indoctrination and normalization techniques, also referred to as “brainwashing.” She became an expert in how terrorists recruited and converted new members. She also trained CIA field operatives in psychological manipulation. After all, the primary business of operatives was befriending potential sources of information abroad and converting them into American sympathetics and ultimately traitors to their own nations.

Lastly, Flannigan also learned and developed the indoctrination techniques used within the Agency itself in the recruitment and training of its workforce. The Agency required a lot from its workforce, including extreme secrecy, comfort with situational and moral ambiguity, and acceptance of the intense cognitive dissonance caused by assuming multiple personalities in daily life. To recruit and mold employees, the Agency used its own indoctrination techniques, appealing to their morality and their egos, putting them through commitment exercises and providing unique character-shaping experiences.

Flannigan left the CIA a few years ago, when the NSA gave her the opportunity to establish a small but influential Social Engineering division in support of its core cryptographic work. A lot of hacking was not about technology, but about people. If you could fool one person in an organization, trick him into helping you, you might be able to sidestep the technology in place to protect that organization. The process of fooling people, preventing it, and hunting down those who engaged in the deception was Flannigan's responsibility in Social Engineering.

She took out her badge and showed it to Kenny. It seemed possible that one of the top buttons of her blouse had become unfastened while she was making the coffee. But she was not coming on too strong. She started interrogations with a neutral cold sexiness, so she could manipulate her subject with either the offer of intimacy or the threat of severity, depending on how the conversation unfolded.

“Are you familiar with the NSA?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you have any idea why I am here to speak with you today?”

“No.”

And so it went. No idea at all? Not even a guess? No. And he seemed to mean it. She liked to make it as easy as possible for people to come clean. And she was barely present, having mostly decided that Kenny, whoever he was, was not Nemo. What do you do for a living? Unemployed. What was the last job that you had? Graduate school. Computer science. MIT. More circumstantial evidence. What did you study? Your specialty? Rule-based systems, whatever that was. Would you consider yourself a hacker, Kenny? No. Shocking. Do you ever associate with hackers, offline or online? Hem and haw. Not really. He associated with other computer programmers; if any of them were hackers, he didn't know about it. Do you invest in the stock market? Surprise: no. He doesn't have money. He lives on an inheritance from his grandfather. No criminal record, never convicted of a crime, never arrested. He looked sloppy. He was evidently lazy. And he seemed sullen. All common traits of hackers — but not Nemo. Nemo was defiant, egomaniacal, psychotic. (Exactly. Kenny shows no signs of psychosis. Nothing but depression.)

“Have you ever written a computer program that would be classified as a virus?”

“No,” he said.

“Are you sure?” she asked, laying her hand across the table. “I understand that you have probably written a lot of programs over the years. And we understand that ordinary people do not always have perfect backgrounds.”

He thought over the programs he'd written, reassured a little. “I don't think I have,” he said. “I'm not that interested in viruses.”

“Have you ever written any program pertaining to the stock market or investing?”

He sniffled. “Yes.”

“When did you first create that program?”

“I don't know. Half a year ago?”

“Could you please explain how that program worked.”

“It didn't do much.” He waved his hand. “I was experimenting with rule systems. The program would pick stocks based on different rules, like the price of the stock and whether it had gone up or down recently. Then it would check the performance of the portfolio. I wanted to see if it could discover a good rule for picking stocks.”

“In writing or using this program, did you ever consult with anyone — either in person, on the phone, by email, chat, or in any way — about stocks in general, or specific stocks?”

“No,” he said.

“You're positive about that.”

“I'm positive,” he said, eyes wide. “I don't even know anything about the stock market. The program wasn't even any good. It was worse than the market on average.” He laughed.

“If you don't know anything about the stock market, why did you write the program?”

“Like I said, I'm interested in rules,” he said, cupping a wiry hand thoughtfully. “What I was studying in school was how to give computers rules on how to do things. We try doing it for all kinds of different systems —”

“Who's we?”

“Programmers, people who study rules,” he said. He struggled to explain himself. “We use rules for all kinds of things. I thought I'd try it for the stock market. I just try different stuff. You don't really know if it's going to work until you try it. Plus, if it worked, I'd make some money.” He laughed. Lazy, Flannigan thought.

Simon hollered from the other room: “Hello! Help!” Time to wrap it up for now. If Kenny was telling the truth, there were an awful lot of questions left unanswered. He's not Nemo...but he might be hiding something, she concluded. But that was a hunch; she wanted to be certain.

“Hello!” Simon hollered again.

“Would you be willing to show this program to one of our people?” Flannigan asked. Simon could take it apart and see what it really did, if he hadn't already found it.

“Sure.”

Sam popped into the kitchen. “We've got something,” she blurted.

Flannigan stood up and walked to the living room.

SAM AND PREETI

14 hrs 50 min to Birth

While Flannigan sat down with Kenny, Sam guided Kenny's girlfriend by the arm back upstairs, with the pretense of getting her dressed in something other than her boyfriend's underwear. The girl was breathing but still appeared to be in shock. Her face was listless and absent.

Upstairs, Sam offered to let her freshen up and change into some real clothes. The girl puttered around, as if not knowing where to start. Finally she headed into the bathroom and splashed some water on her face. She came out and gathered some clothes of hers from a tote bag in the corner. She didn't go into the dresser. Sam supposed that she didn't live there.

She went back into the bathroom to change. Sam formed her strategy. There was virtually no chance that this girl was Nemo or had any knowledge of who Nemo was or what he did. Sam would confirm those facts easily enough. The next step was to explore the nature of the girl's relationship with Kenny. The girl might be able to serve as a pawn in influencing Kenny.

The girl came out of the bathroom, not looking too much different from when she went in. Her brown hair was still tangled, and she still wasn't wearing any makeup. She was still wearing the Philadelphia Eagles sweatshirt, though she she had replaced the boxer shorts with black yoga pants. She's pretty, but she's a disaster, Sam thought.

“Come sit down,” Sam said. “Are you okay?”

The girl nodded, sitting on the bed.

“You can call me Sam,” she said. She sat on the corner of the bed, not too close. “Sam is my code name at work. What's your name?”

“Preeti. It's a Sanskrit name,” she explained, and answered the next question that everyone asked: “I'm a yoga teacher.”

“Cool,” Sam said. “What kind of yoga do you teach?”

They talked for a minute about trends in yoga. Preeti taught a traditional form of Hatha Yoga. “I've heard that some of the trendier forms of yoga aren't as good for you,” Sam offered.

That was true, Preeti explained, perking up. As it happened, some of the newer forms of yoga could be dangerous. Preeti related that she had heard many stories of people who had practiced “hot yoga” and overextended themselves due to the limberness created by a heated room.

“As part of my military training we learn mostly martial arts and physical conditioning,” Sam recounted. “But I probably know more about yoga than I do about computers. It's funny, the Agency I work for is mostly about computer security, but I know hardly anything about it.”

“What do you do?”

Sam explained that she provided operational support to the Agency, meaning she knew how to do a lot of military-style activities and she worked on special operations when they happened. “But what I like most about the job is that I work for Flannigan. That's the woman downstairs. She's one of the highest-ranking women at the Agency.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely. She is a strong woman.” Sam let that sink in. “So it turns out that I work at a computer agency but I'm not a computer person.” It was easy for her to guess that not being a computer person was a good thing in Preeti's book. “But Kenny is, isn't he?”

Preeti nodded. “My boyfriend is a big geek,” she said, with a rueful smile. She explained that Kenny was obsessed with technology. Like many explanations offered by people about their loved ones, it was delivered with a mixture of affection and mostly concealed disdain.

“How long have you been dating?”

“Two years,” Preeti answered. Sam nodded. Two years and not living together. Two years and “very different,” she said. Flannigan would figure out what to do with that.

She heard a shout. It was Simon, clamoring for some attention downstairs. Hello! Help!

“Excuse me,” Sam said, “I have to see what he wants.”

YOU HAVE BEEN HACKED

14 hrs 50 min to Birth

When Willard first went upstairs to collect electronic gadgetry, Simon pulled the computer desk out from the corner. He tried to get onto what appeared to be the main computer and found that it was password-protected.

Please enter your username: _____________

“No problem at all,” he said lightly, to the empty room.

A leather briefcase was at his side, on the floor. He opened it. In one of the pouches was a neat array of memory sticks. Each of them was loaded with a self-executing computer program. The programs were hacks that exploited security weaknesses in computer software. Simon wrote many of the programs himself, although he got help from his colleagues and could also construct the programs, to some degree, based on publicly known vulnerabilities in the computer software. This computer ran a version of Unix, so he withdrew the memory stick labeled for that operating system.

He inserted the memory stick into Kenny's computer. After a moment, the login screen vanished and Simon found himself inside Kenny's profile on the computer.

He accessed the Internet and navigated to Gmail. He was hoping to find himself logged in to Kenny's account. Inside there, he hoped, there might be some evidence that Kenny and Nemo were the same person — chat records of Nemo and Jared from yesterday, maybe, or of Nemo and Flannigan from this morning.

“Slow,” he said. The page was taking forever to load. “So slow,” he moaned, his head rolling in frustration.

Finally, after what seemed like a full minute, the site at gmail.com loaded. It was logged into a Gmail account — but it wasn't Nemo. It was the wrong chat name.

“Of course. It can't be that easy.”

Maybe Kenny had signed in as Nemo before, under a different account. Simon opened the history of web pages surfed on the computer. He searched the history for “Nemo.” No results, despite the fact that the memory hadn't been cleared. Kenny had not accessed any Gmail account by the name of Nemo. At least, not on that computer. At least, not in any normal way.

But there were always other ways. Simon started to check other programs for evidence that Kenny had logged in under a Nemo profile. Maybe he had done it through some program other than a web page. But even when he sniffed around, he found no trace of activity by a profile with the name of Nemo.

This was more of a puzzle than Simon had expected. He took a moment to reflect. There was no evidence of any instance of a Google account by the name of Nemo on this computer.

It left a couple possibilities. For one thing, Simon figured, Kenny could have a program on this computer that hacked into Google Chat. He'd look around more on this computer. He started executing some searches of a more technical nature, looking for programs or commands with “Nemo” in the name.

He heard a noise on the computer. The Internet window with Kenny's email started flashing. He toggled over to the window. He saw the following message on Kenny's Google chat:

You have a Google Chat request from Nemo.

“What?” he muttered. Did I do that? But he couldn't have done it. He was searching on the computer, not running any of Kenny's custom programs.

Nemo: Kenny, I think someone is trying to hack your computer. If you are Kenny and not some someone else, that is...

“WHOA!” Simon hollered. He was not going to field this one on his own. “Hello!” He typed a response under Kenny's identity.

[Kenny]: 1 sec, brb

“HELLO!” he shouted. “HELP!”

Sam finally appeared. “What is it?”

“I've got Nemo on the computer. Nemo is chatting with me on this computer.”

Sam darted off.

Nemo: Are you there, Kenny?

[Kenny]: yeah, I have a question for you, hold on

[Kenny]: just one sec

“What is it?” Flannigan asked over his shoulder.

Simon pointed to the chat screen.

“What the hell,” she muttered. She and Simon looked on. “Where is that coming from?”

“I don't know,” Simon said. “I can find out. But it'll take me a minute.” He opened a window to perform some technical commands.

Damn, she thought. She had made a rookie mistake. There had been little reason for them to accept, at face value, the location that Stram & Rice had identified for Nemo. With a little extra time, Simon could have investigated the matter himself. But Flannigan hadn't wanted to wait.

Simon typed away, as the screen scrolled various information that was meaningless to Flannigan. “Okay. Um, it appears to be somewhere near South America. On the western coast.”

“Really?”

“That's what it says.”

“Are we absolutely positive he wasn't on this computer?”

“Pretty sure. To be totally sure, we'd have to do a forensic analysis on this computer. Unplug it and give it a look.... if he hasn't destroyed the evidence already. Would take about a day.”

“That's way too long.” She thought. “But he could be controlling the computer down there at a distance, right?”

“That's right. With more time, I could give you a more certain answer. That's my best answer right now.”

“We really can't find his actual location?”

“We follow clues, looking at one computer, another computer, looking for a hint at where he really is. Usually we would win that game. But he's so fast, I don't know.”

“That gives us one choice,” she said. She leaned around and over him to type, with a substantial degree of awkward but enjoyable contact.

[Kenny]: Hi Nemo! This isn't Kenny. It's Sarah, aka “scf.” Do you remember me?

Nemo: Of course.

[Kenny]: Nemo, where are you?

Nemo: Not far from the kingdom of God.

Not again, she thought.

“Ask him if he's on an island,” Simon suggested.

[Kenny]: On an island?

Nemo: Yes, on an island off the coast of Ecuador, not too far from the Galapagos Islands.

“That sounds right,” Simon noted, looking at the coordinates obtained by his technical inquiry.

“But for all we know,” Flannigan recalled, “he could be using that computer the same way he used this one.”

“Correct.”

[Kenny]: What are you doing down there, Nemo?

Nemo: I'm interested in the research being conducted on this island, at Fort Tortuga.

[Kenny]: Fort Tortuga? Is that a military base?

Nemo: Yes, for robotics. I am working on robotics.

“Ever heard of Fort Tortuga?” she asked.

“No clue,” Simon replied. “But this doesn't sound good.”

“I'd say this is quite bad. We have a Highly Probable inside a military research facility.”

[Kenny]: Are you a research scientist?

Nemo: No.

[Kenny]: Then how are you allowed on the island?

Nemo: I'm doing my research secretly.

Flannigan typed, You could get in big trouble for that... don't you know that? But she deleted it before sending it over.

She turned to Simon. “Can we believe this?”

He puffed and shrugged.

“But why would he lie?” she asked. “To send us on a wild goose chase?”

“Could be. Hackers are known for wasting people's time.”

[Kenny]: Nemo, why did you chose to share your secret with me?

Nemo: Why do you ask? Are you going to tell on me?

[Kenny]: No no, Nemo.

[Kenny]: That's not what I meant...

[Kenny]: I'd like to come visit you.

Nemo: You'd like to meet me? On Fort Tortuga?

[Kenny]: Yes.

Nemo: Interesting.

“You think he's there?” she repeated.

“It's really tough to say if he is there,” Simon replied. “But I'm working on it.” He was typing away at his laptop.

“How do you know,” Flannigan pondered, “whether he's logged into a computer remotely, or he's actually there?”

“I'm working on it,” Simon repeated.

She reviewed the facts. He was a Highly Probable. He had the capability to cause damage, and probably the intent. The capability was so great as to pose enough of a threat on its own. Now they had a location. It wasn't 100%, and there were some big question marks, but it was their best guess for his location.

They could do a full forensic on the computer to get better data on his location. But that was an awfully long time to leave a uniquely skilled hacker on a military base. Flannigan liked to act on good data, but to hesitate in the face of such a big threat was not her style. Plus, they could set a forensic scan in motion at a lab while they took action and stayed tuned for the results.

It was time to make contact. This was another case for Distributed Ops. A diplomatic approach, not force. They had a need for speed. She didn't have troops or anything like it under her command. So to take military action she'd have to have to build consensus with at least one other decision-maker. She'd have to go outside the Agency, probably with the help of the Director. Building that case for action, even if it happened quickly, would still require a forensic scan. And there was no telling who would emerge in charge of a larger operation.

The only quick option was to take the diplomatic approach. They would go as an envoy to meet him on his own turf. This time they would have Gene's massive intellect along. And Sam and the special agent would offer support.

“Wait a minute,” Simon declared. “Wait a minute.”

Flannigan leaned over his shoulder to look at his laptop screen: lots of garbage symbols, as far as she was concerned.

“What?”

“This.” He pointed to a word on the screen.

shutdown

“What does that mean?”

“I'm logged into his computer. On Fort Tortuga. And ‘shutdown' is one of the commands that was run this morning.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means the computer was turned off. Completely off. The only way to turn it back on would be to push the Power button.”

“So?”

“So I think it means that maybe Nemo had to be there. To turn the computer back on.”

“Could it have been someone else?”

“That's what I'm trying to figure out.”

He was continuing to type. Flannigan, not sure what to make of the significance of shutdown, waited patiently.

“He's there,” Simon declared. “He's there.” He looked up at Flannigan. “Someone turned this computer on. They had to reach out and physically hit the button to turn the computer on. And I can see the commands that were executed before and after the ‘shutdown' command. The command history, it's called. And the command history looks funny. It's not the command history that would be correct if a system administrator or a member of technical staff had turned that computer off and then turned it on again.”

Shutdown. She worked over his words in her mind. Someone had to reach out and physically hit the button.

“He's there,” Simon intoned. “Someone turned it on. And it wasn't a member of the normal staff. It was someone who hacked into that computer. I guarantee it.”

That was all Flannigan needed to hear. That was perfect. That was what Simon was here for: to turn to Flannigan and say, I looked at every technical angle of this and I can guarantee to you that he is where we think it is. It was perfect.

She imposed back over the keyboard to chat with Kenny.

[Kenny]: I think I'm going to take you up on your offer.

(Even though he didn't offer anything)

[Kenny]: Let's see if I can come find you.

Nemo: A game of hide-and-go-seek.

“You're going?” Simon asked.

“We are going.”

He moaned. “There goes my vacation.”

“You get to go to a tropical island,” she snapped.

“Oh, right. I'm sure it's going to be nothing but sipping daiquiris on the beach.”

Flannigan considered whether they were really going to do this — go to South America. One word echoed in her head: shutdown. This wasn't some corporate IT department talking; it was Simon. And he had said, Someone had to reach out and press that button. And it wasn't a system administrator. There was every reason to go; the question was whether there was anything holding them back.

Half-looking over her shoulder, she took an inventory of everything, and everyone, around her. Simon could go with her; he had to go. Sam would go. The secret agent could go. Heck, Gene was probably just arriving at Logan airport. That would be perfect; they could meet him and go.

Kenny. What about Kenny?

Two possibilities leapt into her head. The first was that Kenny was a decoy, to keep them from visiting Nemo on Fort Tortuga. The second possibility was that Fort Tortuga was a decoy, and that Kenny, implausibly enough, was the real threat. She didn't know whether either of these possibilities was likely, but she couldn't discount them.

The obvious, though logistically absurd, way to neutralize both of these plans was to bring Kenny along.

She sighed. He would be deadweight on their team and quite a pain in the ass. He could possibly even disrupt the operation. But Kenny had to come.

Most of her peers, in Flannigan's position, would have considered the idea of taking Kenny along to be out of the question. They would say that it was against the book, or the way things were done, though in reality the main argument against taking him along was that it looked dumb and would attract a lot of criticism if anything went wrong on the operation. But Flannigan, the extreme pragmatist, saw it as the favorite option.

[Kenny]: I think I'll bring some friends along.

Nemo: Oh really? Like who?

[Kenny]: A couple friends, and a guy named Kenny.

“We're bringing him?” Simon asked, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the kitchen.

Nemo: Well, really you don't have to bring anyone. But I think the fewer the better. I'm more interested in meeting you.

“Is it possible that he is cooperating?” she whispered, referring to Kenny.

“I doubt it. But why bring him?”

Flannigan got up and walked briskly to the kitchen, her heels clacking on the wood floor of the living room. She peered into the kitchen. Kenny and his girlfriend were at the table, with Sam not far away. The girl was more stable than before, but she still looked terrified. To Flannigan's eyes, she was a person who could be easily manipulated. And you could read right off her face what would manipulate her: fear. And Flannigan would use her as a pawn to control Kenny.

The girl would make a uniquely absurd addition to the mission team. But as long as she was around, Flannigan could make the subtle threat to have her sent away, to a fate that was unclear and hence terrifying to her. Or, if conditions on the island were inhospitable to the girl, Flannigan could motivate Kenny with the possibility of sending her to the comfort of home.

She turned and went back to the computer. She felt like she was planning a field trip for a special ed class.

[Kenny]: Don't worry — you'll have my full attention!

[Kenny]: I should get going to plan the trip.

Nemo: You have to count to 60 while I hide.

[Kenny]: What is it that you say? The game is afoot.

Nemo: Ah yes. The game is afoot!

[Kenny]: See you soon.

Nemo: Goodbye.

She closed the window and stood up. “Where the hell is our agent?” she asked.

“On the porch, I think.”

“Pack up,” she said over her shoulder, walking to the front door. “We're leaving for the airport in five minutes.”

ON THE PORCH

14 hrs 50 min to Birth

Leaving Simon to his work, Willard stepped out through the still-open front door. The morning had turned overcast. He leaned back on the door frame, facing his truck across the street. He could see his breath cloud in the cold air.

My life is over, he thought. He wasn't sure what was going to happen, but life as he knew it was over. That idea would take some getting used to. He took out the presidential papers and looked over them again.

5. Between 24 and 30 hours after the presentation of these documents, relevant officials are ordered to call the contact number below to give a description of the bearer of the papers and of the encounter. This procedure ensures the integrity of the documents and the mission.

They're a time bomb, he thought. Within about 24 hours they would go boom. Or 30 hours. Whatever happened, it wasn't going to take long and then some professionals were going to come after him.

He was less certain about exactly how much time he had. Flannigan was cold. He could count on her to call that hotline eventually and put in the description. At that point they might start looking for him immediately. And he might even be in Flannigan's presence at that point. It might be difficult to flee.

There was another wildcard that Willard could think of. Maybe someone else was waiting for a call from the dead agent. His boss. A dispatcher. A fellow agent. Someone who Flannigan didn't even know existed. If someone was waiting for a call, that person might already be looking for the agent. Given how the day was going, Willard expected it.

He had to run. Canada. Everyone seemed to hide in Mexico, but Canada was much closer. Like Vermont, even: woods, cold, and not so many people. Plus he had to get Cartman. They wouldn't let Cartman through the border. But, hell, he had to sneak across the border anyway. Can you sneak across the Canadian border?, he wondered. It was a big border; you had to be able to get across it.

He would get in the truck and drive north. He'd dump the agent's body in the woods somewhere. He'd pick up Cartman, and then run up north for the border. He thought about his shed full of guns and explosives back home. He could sell that once he was up in Canada. And at least this way the problem of his debt would be solved.

Inside, Simon started hollering, shouting hello and help. Willard didn't budge. He heard shoes clacking and then a voice, probably Sam's voice. Should I go now? Willard thought. He could be in his truck and off the block in thirty seconds without even rushing. He could be in Canada by the end of the day, if he was lucky. But something is going on in there, he thought. They might come out for me at any second. When they noticed he was gone, what would they think? Flannigan would call somebody. And then they would be after him right away. If he left now, the chase would be on within the hour. That wasn't good. What if he waited? They were supposed to find a kid in there. But they had stormed in there and found there was no kid. Maybe his job was done. Maybe in five minutes Flannigan was going to come outside and say, Thanks for all your work. It's been a pleasure. See ya. And then he could drive off and no one would be suspicious, yet. In that case, he might have fully 24 hours or even more before they started looking for him. In that case, he had a fighting chance.

So he had to choose: either leave that instant, which was bad; or stay and see what Flannigan said, which was maybe better and maybe worse. For Willard, this was a no-brainer. He'd stay and take the gamble. If it paid off, he'd be driving away from the house in five minutes and entering Canada late that night.

He could hear Flannigan and Simon talking inside the house. Sometimes they were loud and sometimes he heard the hissing of whispers.

The cold air made Willard thoughtful while he waited. He was amused that he was able to pass as a special agent of the President. If he had been a little smaller, would Flannigan have believed it? Or if he had been an old woman? Or a 16-year-old kid? Maybe not. It was funny, though. He passed pretty well as one. He was an underachiever, he hated playing by the rules, didn't like the government, and wasn't highly trained in much of anything. But he felt that, in a parallel world, he could have been an agent. He liked how the agent didn't have any I.D. or even a cell phone. He's off the grid, too, Willard joked to himself.

Flannigan appeared next to him briskly. “There you are,” she said. “We're going on a little trip.”

A trip, he thought. Not a single gamble was going his way today. “Where to?”

“South America,” she said, with a little laugh.

South America? Now that was interesting. If he could get to South America, it might be an even easier way to disappear permanently. It was ironic: they might help him escape. Unless they discovered him in the process.

He stared. “Of course, I don't have a passport.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “You don't need any. Not on the plane we're taking.”

He nodded.

She looked him over. The operative was unshaven and dirty. He was wearing jeans, boots, an undershirt. He looked hung over, or maybe running from the law. They met eyes. No trace of fear in his eyes. Whoever this guy is, she thought, he is WAY undercover.

She leaned in. “Let me ask you: do you think we can get away with bringing these two with us.”

He considered. “Yeah.”

Lowering her voice slightly, she confided, “We don't really know what we're up against.”

“That's fine with me,” he said. “I'm used to that.”

“Are you okay?” she asked. He was holding his hand.

He grimaced. “Yeah, I'll be all right. Let me get some things from the truck,” he said, turning away.

“By the way: what should I call you?”

“Willard,” he replied. He sauntered back to the truck.

Willard? Willard. Feeling a hint of attraction, she watched his backside as he loaded his shoulders with a couple dufflebags.

14 hrs 35 min to Birth

While everyone else scrambled to get ready to go, Flannigan returned to the kitchen and stood by the coffee machine to place a call to the Director.

The connection didn't go through. She called again and it failed to go through again. She swore and dialed again.

Kenny and Preeti came through the kitchen with suitcases, wearing hats and sunglasses, looking like tourists.

Sam came in and gave her an expectant look: everyone was packed. Flannigan grabbed Sam's phone and dialed the number for the office.

Still no connection. She shrugged and hung up. That issue had about half an hour to resolve itself.

She walked outside. The limo was purring. She got in, and the vehicle pulled away toward Logan airport.

In the back seat, Flannigan got on the phone with the Cambridge City Police. In a minute, they would tape off the house and guard it as a crime scene. That way it would be secure for a backup team to come and perform the forensic analysis. Flannigan reassured them that there was no crime, only a situation that needed securing. Had she not been so emphatic, the officer who gave a parking ticket to the white truck with Vermont plates might have looked closer and found a cadaver wrapped in a tarp in the bed of the truck.

SLOWDOWN

Near Los Angeles, CA

14 hrs 5min to Birth

Eric was up early on the morning of the 28th. His beeper had gone off at some point in the night, indicating that there had been some low-level security event at the office. If the event had been high-level, he would have gotten more alerts, so he was not too concerned.

He looked at the beeper. 11 p.m. last night. He must have barely missed it. He had crashed early that night, exhausted from a project at work.

According to the beeper, the image scanners had picked up something funny on the security cameras. They were usually a false alarm, but they did not happen often, so he checked every one personally.

He seated himself groggily at his work computer, which he had left on. He touched the mouse and a login screen appeared. He typed in his password.

His computer desktop should have appeared immediately, but it didn't. The screen appeared frozen on the login page.

He watched for another twenty seconds. No change. He moaned. He was responsible for ensuring that all the computers at the firm worked, as well as the corporate network. If this turned out to be a network problem, he had a day of hell to look forward to.

“No cause for alarm yet,” Eric said aloud, trying to cheer himself up. He rebooted the computer by holding the power button. Most problems went away with a reboot, or a few reboots.

This time it worked like a charm. Windows loaded, he logged in, and his desktop appeared.

He went into the kitchen for a glass of water while Windows finished loading.

When he returned, he was dismayed to find that his computer was frozen again. He could see his desktop, but hitting a key and moving his mouse brought no response.

He swore to himself repeatedly over the keyboard.

After banging a few keys and rubbing his finger on the touchpad, he rebooted again (and again) with the same results.

The truly annoying part was that since his computer was frozen, he couldn't use it to check whether the rest of the computers on the corporate network were okay. He couldn't tell whether it was a problem with his computer only, or with the whole company network.

But Eric was prepared for such a situation, because he had on hand an extra laptop configured with the company's Windows setup and software. It had a separate company login. He got out this test computer and booted it up. He logged in. Windows loaded normally. No freezing.

“Phew,” he said, slumping back in chair. By the look of it, the corporate network was not broken — just his computer. That itself was a pain on the ass, but he wouldn't have the whole office screaming at him.

He opened a window to check his email. But it didn't load.

Wait a minute. Was something wrong with his Internet connection? He could check that.

He moved the mouse: frozen.

“No!” he said.

He looked at his watch. People would be showing up at the office soon. Jared Keller might be there already; he was usually among the first. He called Jared's cell but got no answer.

He frowned. Life without Internet made an IT professional unhappy. How was he supposed to do anything? He usually would have read all of the news by this time in the morning. He flipped on the TV while grabbing a box of cereal.

The headline on the news read, “Supervirus Freezes Internet.”

He put down the cereal box, picked up the remote, and turned up the volume.

THE SUPERVIRUS

On the television, the ticker at the bottom of the screen read: “SUPERVIRUS” FREEZES INTERNET; MARKETS CLOSED.

Anchor Pam Anderson was sharing a split screen with Werner Kurzweil of the National Security Database. The National Security Database was a project of the Department of Homeland Security and other government funding areas.

Pam introduced her guest and opened the interview. “Dr. Kurzweil, there has been a lot of confusion, and we have a statement from the major stock markets that they won't be opening today. What is going on?”

“Pam, we are witnessing the most deadly computer virus in the history of computers. A virus has been spreading across the web — the Internet, and also commercial and government computer networks. And the infected part of the network is broken to us.”

“What exactly is the virus doing to the computers that it infects?”

“We're still trying to answer that question. It appears that infected computers remain operational, but extremely slow. It looks like the virus may be overloading them with activity, possibly in an attempt to spread the virus further.”

“Why this is being referred to as a supervirus?”

“This is a supervirus because it is exploiting countless vulnerabilities, using countless different forms of attack. Usually a virus exploits only one vulnerability in computers — one hole, you could say. Once you plug the hole, the virus doesn't work. We can respond to those viruses by patching the hole around the web. That's what Microsoft is doing when it sends you critical updates for Windows. But that fix is impossible for this virus, because it doesn't rely on only one attack. By the time we've patched up one hole, it is already attacking a bunch of new holes.”

“Dr. Kurzweil, would it be fair to say that this supervirus is 'the AIDS of computer viruses?'”

“It's worse than that, really. It spreads more quickly than AIDS, and even more importantly, it can take different shapes. If this were a human virus, it would be one that could shapeshift between AIDS, the flu, the common cold, and any number of sicknesses in order to propagate itself.”

“Can the supervirus be stopped?”

“We're working on answering that question. I can't comment any further on that at this time.”

“Do we know the origin of the virus?”

“I'm not at liberty to answer that question.”

“Should we all be worried about this? What does this mean for the average American?”

“For both individuals and businesses, this means a brutal halt in productivity today and possibly into the week. I'd recommend backing up your information. And I'd expect to be without Internet access for at least 24 hours.”

Pam promised that breaking news would be available. They went off the air, but Dr. Kurzweil was still on the line.

“Can I ask you a question?” Anderson said. “My daughter is in Mexico for the holidays. When do you think she will be able to get home?”

“She may want to stay there,” Kurzweil said. “Mexico will get along a lot better without the Internet than we will.”

MEETING GENE

Boston Logan Airport

13 hrs to Birth

After hanging up with the Cambridge police, Flannigan spent most of the rest of the drive on the phone with the Director's assistant Karen, with an individual from the Department of Homeland Security, and with her own personal assistant back in the office. She was making travel arrangements. She was sitting in the front seat, out of the earshot of the others. Sam was also on the phone while she drove, trying to learn something about Fort Tortuga. In the back seat, Simon worked silently on his laptop, while Kenny stared out the window, Preeti meditated, and Willard did nothing in particular.

Sam pulled up to Terminal A of Logan International Airport and parked the limo in the unloading zone. The vehicle was promptly abandoned by its passengers and towed by the airport police.

“Where's Gene?” Flannigan asked Sam.

“He didn't answer his phone.”

Flannigan frowned but did not seem too surprised. She led them straight to a less-trafficked security aisle and asked for a security agent by name. It was the DHS official in charge of Logan. Flannigan's web of calls had gotten through just in time; he greeted her by name and asked for her badge. He did not look happy to see her.

He took them a few feet to a DHS office and closed the door.

“Okay, it's ready,” the man said. “We have to lead you directly to your gate and straight out to the plane.”

“One of our party is in the airport,” Flannigan said. “We need to page him.”

He bristled. “Nobody said anything about that.”

Flannigan had to tread carefully. Her orders came from a much higher authority, but he was in charge of this operation and could delay them significantly. Power plays that crossed agency lines were fragile.

A knock came at the door. The man, whose name was Simpson, swung open the door.

“What is it?” he demanded.

A gangly man with Einsteinian hair stepped into the door frame. “Hello, sir, my name is Gene.” He shook Simpson's hand.

“Excellent,” Flannigan said. “That's our guy.”

“Sorry to inconvenience you,” Gene said genially. He stepped into the room and extended his hand again. “Sarah Connolly Flannigan,” he said. “And Simon Chan!” he smiled. “I understand that the situation is urgent,” he said, “but Sarah, I would strongly suggest that we take the time for a briefing before we get on the plane. I think ten minutes would be a worthy investment. Mr. Simpson, I know it's quite an imposition, but could we borrow your office for a moment?”

“No one said anything about this,” Simpson growled. “You need to get on your plane and get out of here.”

“Mr. Simpson,” Gene said sympathetically, “I understand we are intruding, but I think you'll find this meeting is in your best interest as well.”

“How is that?”

“You see, Mr. Simpson, the additional disruption to your operations from this meeting will be minimal. Even if we caused a delay in flights, that outcome would be relatively routine. On the other hand, if we do not have this meeting before take-off, I will be obligated by direct orders to report the fact to my superior. And whether I like it or not, he is likely to contact your superior if I do so.”

“You have ten minutes,” Simpson said, and left, looking at his watch.

Flannigan barely knew Gene, but she liked him better already. She looked at Willard. “Take these two outside,” she said, pointing to Kenny and Preeti. He nodded and they were gone.

“I'm starving,” Kenny said as they stepped out.

Willard realized how hungry he was, too. He had a headache. Mr. Simpson was standing next to them.

Willard eyed the Eagles sweatshirt Preeti was wearing. It didn't fit her hippie nature. “Eagles fan?”

“I am,” Kenny clarified.

Willard nodded in approval.

“The Pats suck,” Kenny noted.

“Yes, they do.” They shared the bond of being pissed constantly at their team but feeling subject to a heartbreaking loyalty that could be pacified only by thoughts of kicking the crap out of fans from other cities.

Inside Simpson's office, Flannigan briefed Gene on the discovery of Nemo, Nemo's ability and intent, and the experience of storming Kenny's house that morning.

Gene listened closely, scarcely interrupting. Then he asked, “Did you ask him about the network slowdown?”

“What network slowdown?”

Gene blinked. “There is something bigger going on than switching web pages around. Would it be possible to talk to him before we go?”

“I don't think that's a good idea,” Flannigan said.

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“Any conversation between you two is not going to be short. And now that he has agreed to let us visit him, I don't want to jeopardize that.”

She could almost see the gears spinning in his head, without having any clue what he was thinking. “In that case, we should get moving,” he said.

They walked out and rejoined the others. Simpson led them through security. They were heading to an unused gate, to exit to the airfield and walk to their plane.

“Mr. Simpson,” Gene said outside, “I wouldn't presume to tell you how to do your job, but I think some of today's news might impact operations here at the airport.”

“What news?” They were walking out onto the pavement now. A little plane was waiting for them.

“If you turn on the news, you'll see that the Internet — the whole thing — is running slow today. It appears to be swamped with traffic. I saw the report at the gate where I disembarked from Dulles.”

“Really?”

“Yes. We might have a crisis on our hands. I would keep a careful eye on your information systems at the airport.”

“That's not really my responsibility.”

“You may consider making it your responsibility. This is a serious matter. And while it may seem implausible that your systems would be affected by this event, I see a few reasons to believe otherwise.”

“Why's that?”

They had reached the plane. The others got on while Gene waited a minute at the bottom and Simon stood on the stairs, listening.

“A slowdown of such a large scale is most likely the result of a computer virus. A supervirus, or an attack on the network that makes use of a supervirus. The fact that this supervirus has been able to affect the Internet so universally is remarkable, almost incredible. From that fact we can infer two things about the virus.”

“Let's go!” Flannigan shouted out the plane door.

“The first is that the virus is omnivorous. It has already attacked a quite diverse range of systems on the Internet. Secondly, it is quite adaptable. It must be, to have conquered all of these systems. I would conclude that any information system with the slightest communication with the Internet is in danger. For example, airline booking systems, which are referenced by Internet sites that sell tickets. Or the air traffic control system, which provides flight status monitoring on the Internet.”

“But the air traffic control system has nothing to do with it.”

“It may. If this virus is as strong as it appears to be, it must be using a wide variety of attacks. It's like a biological virus that has been born highly resistant to all the factors that could kill it. It's a supervirus.”

He turned unceremoniously and went up the stairs. Simon followed, frowning. After five minutes, the flight took off. After an hour, all flights were grounded until further notice.

PART II

THE SUPERVIRUS

RESEARCH

En route to Fort Tortuga

12 hrs to Birth

The possibility Flannigan was afraid of, the one she had to plan for, was that Nemo was serious about playing “hide-and-go-seek.” In that case, they might find trouble when they arrived on the island.

Research. How can he be hiding, she wondered, if he's busy doing research? She pictured him in a computer room on the base, a room that had been closed for the holiday season. Nemo was sitting at one terminal, his small gaunt face dwarfed by the glow of the massive screen. Typing furiously. Not hiding; working. Or he was in another room, playing with robotics, sitting at the edge of a circular ring, holding a remote control, steering a squat, heavily armored tank in circles.

He's waiting for us. It had been her decision to lead the group down there to get him. Once they arrived, they'd find out what he had decided to do about it.

“Not far from the kingdom of God.”

As a psychology professional, Flannigan didn't make a habit of delving deep into the minds of her subjects. All the geniuses fell into two categories: they wanted company, or they wanted attention. Nemo, Flannigan feared, wanted lots of attention. He had something to prove. Not far from the kingdom of God.

If things went awry, what was the worst that could happen? Standing near the cockpit, she looked down the length of the plane at the team. Everything was going to depend on the operative guy and Sam. Kenny would freeze under pressure, and Preeti would get hysterical. And Gene and Simon would compete. They were already butting heads, ignoring Flannigan. Flannigan herself wasn't listening; she was watching.

Simon: “You told Simpson there were two possible explanations for the slowdown: a virus, or a coordinated attack. But then you seemed to assume that it was a virus.”

Gene: “I don't believe a team of people could conduct so far-reaching and efficient an attack.“

Simon: “It would take a team of hackers to manage all those tactics.”

Gene: “Unless it's new. You must always account for the possibility of something new.”

Simon: “These attacks, wherever they are coming from, must be drawing from an unusually large Playbook. The more a particular exploit gets used, security personnel will patch it. So we're not just talking about a large number of attacks. We're talking about a deep, deep roster of attacks to replace the first ones as they get patched up.”

Sam conserved her energy for the next time it would be needed (and that time was definitely not on a long flight).

Willard slouched in the back of the cabin. He kept his eyes shut but tossed and turned in his seat. After a moment he sat up, cradling one hand in the other. He rooted around for a bottle and administered himself a small handful of painkillers. He's hurt himself bad, she thought. God knows how that happened. From one job straight to the other, with a new injury here and there and no time to fix himself. He probably felt enough pain to whip open the hull door and scream out over the ocean. But he knew that it was no use. Screaming was not helpful. Like Sam, he was trying to save his strength.

A group holds together under stress only out of training, or luck, she thought. And this group didn't have the training and it wouldn't have the luck either. They hadn't been chosen for their ability to cooperate. On the contrary, they had been chosen — Gene and Simon, especially — for what they could do by themselves.

On the aisle seat next to her at the front of the cabin, Flannigan had stacked several thick manila envelopes, each of them bulging with printed material. She had instructed Sam to compile the folders. They were one of Flannigan's old tricks.

“Can I have your attention,” she announced, picking up the stack. She handed each person a folder of reading material. “There's a lot of information that we need and we didn't get time to collect,” she said. “But this is required reading — it directly pertains to how we're going to deal with this kid.”

The files were nothing special. She handed them out only so she could watch everyone read the files. By watching, she could learn a lot.

Sam paged through her folder slowly, with a blank expression. Flannigan's assessment: Sam knew the material, but was rereading it because she had been tasked to do so.

Gene read his file at a superhuman rate. Flannigan didn't know whether he was skimming, or could actually read that fast. Her assessment: he wasn't studying the brief deeply, but he was at least making a point to absorb what was in the folder. It was easy enough for him to cooperate and read the folder and get back to whatever he wanted to think about.

He's sexy, in a geeky way, she thought. Could he be Mr. Right? she asked half-consciously, disliking the phrase Mr. Right. He was brilliant, attractive. He had a lot on his mind that he didn't say.

Simon looked over his folder with disdain. Flannigan's assessment: possibly uncooperative, or a pain in the ass, but at least engaged and honest.

Willard didn't even open his file. Flannigan was stunned. As a special operative, this guy was most likely a former marine. He had protocol written into his spine. How could he ignore his brief? He barely recognized it — he continued to slouch and roll every now and then in his seat with his eyes closed. Flannigan's assessment: two possibilities. Either his hand hurt so bad that he couldn't bear to concentrate or — also unlikely — he was an extreme badass who laughed at the rules. Neither made sense. It didn't add up, and men who didn't add up frustrated Flannigan.

She hadn't given Preeti a folder, and Preeti hadn't opened her eyes the whole time. They had a tacit agreement: they would leave each other alone. Flannigan had already made her assessment. Preeti was stubborn, weird as all hell, but easily manipulated if necessary.

Kenny was the most interested in his reading material, and the least able to read it. He looked up at the roof of the cabin and closed his eyes.

That's a guy with something on his mind.

Gene caught her eye. He was writing something on a piece of paper. He put down his pen and stood up and brought a piece of paper up and handed it to her. It said:

I suspect Nemo is interested in a program Kenny wrote at some point in the past. If so, Kenny probably has already guessed which one.

Flannigan knew about only one of Kenny's programs — the stock-picking program he had told her about. But that program had barely worked.

KENNY'S GREAT BIG PROJECT

The folder Kenny was supposed to read was sitting on the airplane seat table in front of him. He was thinking about his stock-picking program. He had given up on it a long time ago, but he had worked hard on that program, for a little while, and now he couldn't stop thinking about it.

Cambridge, MA

August

He had to do something. He could barely sit still. It was the Itch.

Kenny's lanky body, bare except for white undies, was stretched out desperately on the rickety chair in front of his computer. It was 2 a.m., dark outside and sweltering both in and out of his apartment. He couldn't sleep, so he would write another stupid program. Sweaty, hot. The Itch.

He was too impatient for activities such as reading or watching an old movie. They wouldn't help. They weren't doing anything, making anything. He wanted to do something, and the only thing he knew how to do was write computer programs. The only problem was that he didn't know what program to write. He never did.

The cursor blinked on the screen, waiting for him.

A scan of the folders on his computer told a story of a computer programmer with nothing to program. ASCII Face: a program that took a photo and converted it into a rough likeness composed of letters and keyboard characters. ASCII Face didn't work well; Kenny had only worked on it for a couple days. Pic Grabber: a program composed after ASCII Face that had lain stale for a week. Pic Grabber would autonomously navigate to a few preselected news sites and download the photos on those pages to Kenny's hard drive. Pic Grabber had been intended to collect pics for the ASCII Face program. It performed its task correctly, but Kenny never put it to use.

Triangle Drawer drew triangles on the computer screen, and then added lines connecting the points of some triangles with those of other triangles. Kenny had spent 43 minutes writing Triangle Drawer.

Number Guesser would guess what number you were thinking of, taking “higher” and “lower” as inputs. It would also choose a number and let you do the guessing, leading you on with a series of taunts. (“Too low. Try again, idiot.”) Number Guesser had been an active project for a grand total of 1 hour and 53 minutes.

What would it be tonight? How about Program Idea Generator, he thought. That would be useful. None of his classes or teachers ever addressed what was worth programming. Everything was an exercise to build skills and tools. Homework. Endless preparation for a Great Big Project that was never named or described or even alluded to, and which he doubted would ever come. There appeared to be no point to what he was learning. Computer science ceased to be something he was interested in. Then it was just something he studied because he had to study something.

Graduating had not solved the problem: he had to do something. Getting a job seemed like a loathsome proposition. So he had looked at graduate school. He was good enough to get recommended into a top graduate program. His professors didn't seem to think he was anything special (they didn't seem to think there was a Great Big Project for him, either, evidently). He just happened to be better than most of his classmates — the ones who hadn't gone off to become bankers, at least. He was a little surprised when he got in and when it dawned on him that the graduate stipend would cover his living expenses. For a few months he was almost excited.

In grad school his adviser had made him choose his own projects. There were no homework assignments. But he kept rejecting Kenny's proposals as not “serious.” That word was in every email from Kenny's adviser. Serious. Apparently programming was pretty serious business. Serious. What a serious idiot. At first Kenny interpreted “not serious” to mean “too easy.” He suspected later that the only “serious” projects were the ones closely in line with his adviser's own research, which Kenny found absurdly esoteric. Kenny didn't care much what he worked on, but he couldn't give up hope that whatever he did might be connected, however faintly, to that mysterious Great Big Project waiting for him out there. Insisting on that point had made it difficult to get along with his adviser and was the main reason he had dropped out of grad school.

That hot summer night was the same problem, same blinking cursor. But it was the night he started the stock-picking program.

The traces of history on Kenny's hard drive gave no indication as to why he would tackle picking stocks. He had never shown any interest in the subject, and he knew almost nothing about it. He had only a dim idea of what a stock was.

A car drove by outside, past the peeling white paint and dark screen of the open window by the street. Kenny clicked open a few web pages describing the basics of the stock market. You can trade stocks online, right? And you could look up stock prices online. But the market closed, right? You can buy stocks at other times, can't you?

The stock picker was doomed from the outset. Kenny might have possessed the ability to make it work, but he lacked the commitment, and he knew it.

Serious. Maybe the stock-picking program was serious. Making money was serious. Providing for his girlfriend, or impressing her, would be serious.

But where could he begin? He reviewed some programs he had written recently. Word Quiz consulted a dictionary and gave you a word and four possible definitions, one of which was correct and three of which were selected randomly from other words in the dictionary. The quiz ended up being too easy, even for Kenny's modest vocabulary. Word Guesser navigated itself to a news page and tried to extract definitions from the page by snipping out text. Word Guesser didn't work at all, but it used a lot of the same code as the Pic Grabber, so Kenny had written it quickly. It would take a page with the sentence, Britney Spears is a complete disaster, and output the definition, Britney Spears: n. A complete disaster. That kind of program is called a “scraper,” because it scrapes words and images from a web page.

Kenny reflected on the fact that he liked writing scrapers. There was instant gratification to scraping. That, and reusing programming code that other people had already written.

He clapped his hands. “Yes!” He leaned back. He had an idea. He would write his stock picker with the mother of all his scraper programs: Pats Suck. The stock picker still wouldn't work, probably. But he was pleased with his idea. It would provide a couple hours of something interesting to do.

He put on The Beatles (the White Album) and stood up to think. For a moment, the Itch was gone.

SIMON'S SECRET SPAM

While he was going through the folder Flannigan had provided, Simon looked out the cabin window and reflected on something he hadn't told Flannigan about.

In the middle of the night, after he'd gotten the phone call from Flannigan and before she had arrived, he did something that he had been avoiding for a couple days: he checked his work email. He figured that if Flannigan was going to disrupt his vacation in the middle of the night, he might as well humor that work-related impulse.

He discovered, to his great surprise, that he had a piece of spam mail. For someone else, spam was not so unusual. Spam abounded in the world. Billions of messages were sent annually informing email users of opportunities to buy products to improve their sexual performance, sleep better, buy specific stocks, and acquire watches and jewelry at discount prices. It was a numbers game. The vast majority of the messages were unopened. But enough messages were opened, and enough links clicked inside them, to make certain people rich.

The unusual part was that this spam message had been received at Simon's work email address. The Agency had the best spam filter technology on the planet. He had never received a piece of spam mail at work.

The mail's subject read, “RE: Stock surprise.” It was from the previous day.

Stock explosion expected today! GOOG — look for 542.33 by day end.

Reply for details.

“Reply for details?” he sneered aloud. That was weird. Spammers didn't want replies — spam messages were sent from unmanned mailboxes. They wanted clicks. Clicks to places to buy Viagra or porn or to fall for some credit card scam.

He looked at the email's header information. You could often identify a piece of spam mail by poorly constructed headers, but these looked pretty good.

What he saw raised both his eyebrows. Judging by the headers, the mail had been sent from an ISP within the Agency. That helped explain how the mail had gotten through. But it meant one of two things. Either, one, the mail had actually been sent by someone located over at that Agency building. Or, two, an email virus had penetrated to one of the innermost portions of the Agency computer network.

Either case was too much to believe. In Simon's experience, whenever something magical seemed to have happened, there always surfaced a different, less magical, explanation eventually.

On a whim, he replied to the mail, as it had asked.

thanks for your advice. may I have more details?

He clicked Send and went and put on his bathrobe in anticipation of Flannigan's arrival.

He returned to his computer.

“No way,” he said to the screen. He had received a reply:

Simon-

Thanks for your email. I buy and sell a lot and I'd love to discuss with you.

Which companies are you looking at these days? What news stories interest you?

You can reply to this email. But it's faster to IM with me at alex4443 at Hotmail. I also have some other IM's if you use a different network.

It didn't add up. Who the hell would be sitting in an Agency facility at two in the morning chatting and sending emails about stocks?

The bell rang. Flannigan. He closed his email and went to get the door. He didn't mention the spam mail.

Forget it, he thought, snapping back to the present in the aircraft. He looked out of the plane's tiny window at the vast ocean below. The spam mail fell into the category of things he should have mentioned to Flannigan and the group. It was a relevant detail. Nevertheless, he was certain that this little anecdote would fuel Gene's intolerable, impassioned ramblings about superviruses.

He returned to his folder and dismissed the thought from his mind.

ALERT AT JOINT FORCES COMMAND

Near Denver, Colorado

Earlier that day

It was before dawn and General Jose Carrillo was on his way to the base. So much for holiday vacation. At least it was after Christmas. And hopefully it would be taken care of by New Year's. But the closer he got to the base, the more Carrillo started to feel he was dealing with a challenge beyond his abilities. It started with the coffee.

It was tough being away from his family so often. Yet his family was precisely the reason he worked so hard. He pondered this riddle every day: mothers and fathers toil away to raise and protect their children, who grow up and repeat the cycle.

He pulled out of the driveway. He thought of a moment the day before, when he had been in his cozy den, basking in the warm afterglow of Christmas with his family. His wife was snuggled in blankets, napping on the sofa. Carrillo sat next to her. Carrillo's octogenarian mother rocked silently in a chair by the fire. His youngest son — who, at seven, was by far his youngest child and a feat of biology to be Carrillo's son at their ages — rolled in pajamas at her feet. She asked him in a highly accented English, Tell me, Joey Carrillo, what are you going to be when you grow up? And he said, I'm not sure... maybe a herpetologist? And Carrillo and his mother looked at each other and laughed. They didn't know what a herpetologist was. And what's that, Joey? she asked. Oh, that's someone who studies reptiles and amphibians.

He smiled as he drove. Joey already knew things that he didn't. Carrillo got wiser with age, but the younger generation grew up smarter, and he was left protecting a world that was changing under his feet, one that he couldn't fully understand anymore. It was difficult, but it was the only way.

His thoughts drifted to the purpose of his drive. He had the entire drive to think about what they had told him on the phone. What had they told him on the phone? He reached for his coffee thermos to wake himself up.

There was no thermos. He looked down from the wheel: no thermos. He had forgotten to bring it with him. Did I make coffee this morning? he asked himself.

A chill went up his spine. He couldn't remember. He could remember getting the phone call, showering quickly, putting on his uniform, running downstairs... He knew he had walked through the kitchen. And he made coffee every morning. But he simply couldn't remember whether he had taken the time — at least a minute — to make coffee ten minutes ago.

The more he tried to remember, and couldn't remember, the more panicked he became. Sweat broke out on his brow. It was the second time this month that he had forgotten his thermos this way. Am I losing my memory? He was beginning to suspect that he was. He was a little young for his memory to start failing him, but it had to happen sooner or later. He hadn't told anyone about it.

He focused on the road. Keep your cool, General. No one cares whether you made coffee. There is coffee at the base. Now let's think about that attack. He remembered everything they had told him about the attack.

This attack was unusual. The computer network of the U.S. Department of Defense was under attack. That was nothing new. Thousands of attacks occurred against the DoD network on a continuous basis, of all imaginable shapes and sizes, from all corners of the globe. The number of attacks originating from China alone on a given day was mind-boggling.

And many of the attacks, such as the one that was bringing him to the base, were able to get into the Defense computer network, at least partway. That was nothing new either. Securing the Defense network was an ongoing race — a race that the defenders inevitably lost sometimes. New vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and Unix systems were discovered on a daily basis. Whenever that happened, hackers around the globe started launching attacks to exploit and explore the new vulnerability. Meanwhile, the DoD, Microsoft, and the open source computing community developed patches to be installed on computers and remove the vulnerabilities. It was a race, between the patch and the attack, and sometimes the attack got there before the patch.

Carrillo pulled up at the JFCOM compound, and showed his ID at the checkpoint.

“Thank you, sir.”

He parked his Jeep, headed in, and was briefed.

“This is crazy,” he said. “The attacks are originating from America?”

“That is correct, sir. We have identified a small number of IP addresses from which the attacks are originating.”

“That makes no sense,” he mused. “Why would such a good attacker leave an obvious trace like this? We're going to have them in no time.”

Most probably, the attackers were actually located outside the U.S. and hijacking computers in the U.S. to launch attacks from those computers. But a skilled attacker would at least cover his tracks better by using more IP addresses, minimizing his visibility and making it harder to trace the attacks back to his real location.

“Yes, probably, sir. If he stays put long enough.”

“Is he that fast?”

His briefer hesitated. “The attacks used a variety of exploits. Some of them little-known. And they came rapidly. I personally don't think I've ever seen an attack this good.”

“But he hasn't hit any mission-critical systems?” The Department of Defense layered and compartmentalized its defenses, with the so-called Defense in Depth strategy, so attackers had to breach many layers of defense to get to critical systems.

“No, sir. Our intrusion detection systems identified attacks between 0500 and 0530 hours and then they stopped.”

“So what's the point?” He paused. “Could this be a script kiddie?” A kid with an unusual skill for hacking.

“Frankly, sir, script kids usually have only one exploit at a time.”

“Right. It looks like recon. For a big attack on our inner layers. But then why would they let us see them?”

The question hung in the air.

“There is one idea that keeps occurring to me, sir.” He coughed. “Someone could be challenging us. A signal.”

He held his head in his hand. “Of course. A signal. Or a test.” Carrillo got up and started pacing. He pondered the timing of the events. Could a terrorist attack be on the way? It was almost New Year's. The Western New Year, that was. The Chinese New Year came later. “When will we have a location?”

“We're working on it, sir.”

Carrillo dismissed him and sat back at his desk.

Who are they and what are they doing, he kept asking himself. Carrillo was waiting for answers. What to make of this strange attacker, who had penetrated their outer systems — easily — and then stopped?

He had been making frequent visits to the Control Room, to stay connected to what was going on. But they didn't have a positive ID on the threat, and they didn't work as productively when he was breathing down their necks. So he limited his presence in the Control Room to regular visits, and returned to his office in the meantime and thought and waited.

At the desk he jotted notes and asked himself, Is there a threat here? It was a strange question. The usual questions were: How big is the threat? How much damage has been done? Did it touch critical systems? Where did it come from? What was the motive? Should we consider retaliation, or sending it up the chain for some other reason?

In this case, the question was, Is this an attack? Is it a threat?

The General was a man of intellectual discipline. He was not afraid to ask tough questions. And there was a tough question here. Getting it wrong could hurt the Department, the country, his career, or some combination thereof.

This was when the General, waiting and thinking, giving the Control Room time to come up with something, asked himself a philosophical question. What is an attack? More specifically, Can the power to attack, without a motive, be an attack? Because that was what Carrillo was looking at: the power to attack, without a clear motive and no damage done to date.

The extensive philosophy and terminology of the DoD had an answer to this question: the power to attack, all by itself, was a “threat.” The capability to attack is a threat. But that's not what I mean, Carrillo thought, tapping his desk. A threat was something that could happen, but this had already happened.

He decided that there was no choice: when in doubt, you had to consider it an attack. A threat was like a message, or a signal. But if you didn't understand the signal, you were under attack.

His briefer returned in a hurry. “This is worse than we thought, sir. Looking bad. This morning the attacks didn't stop, like we thought. They changed their signature. They — it — has been spreading for a while now.”

It looked like a computer virus, spreading from computer to computer. But it kept changing, trying different techniques, like a hacker. It looked like a rapidly mutating computer virus. It had spread onto the outermost computers of the Defense network and was moving to more secure networks.

“Is this a program or a human?”

“We don't know, sir. We've never seen an example of either one being able to do this.”

“How far?”

“We're not exactly sure, sir. The signature keeps changing. We are working on it. But it's going far, sir. Really far. It's walking through.” His voice quivered a little. He was shaking.

“What's it doing on these machines?”

“It's using CPUs and communicating with other infected systems. We're working on it.”

“How soon will you have an answer?”

“Hopefully within an hour, but I can't guarantee it.”

Carrillo took a deep breath. He had already decided what he had to do. “Let me get this straight. It's walking through the whole network. We're not sure what the extent is. We're not sure where it came from, and we're not sure what it's doing.”

“That is correct, sir. We hope to answer some of those questions soon.”

“In your opinion, how much damage could this attack cause?”

“Sir, we're not sure of the threat.”

“Right. What's the worst case?”

“It could take down large portions of the network.”

“You're referring to the Defense network, correct? It could take down large portions of the entire Department of Defense network, Pentagon, CENTCOM.”

“Yes, sir. For all we know. We don't know for certain, but it looks quite powerful.”

He looked to the side. For all we know was exactly the point, echoing his earlier thoughts. “We're going Code Red. Do you copy?”

There was a pause. “Yes, sir.”

“That's Code Red. Give Code Red. I'm calling the Secretary,” he said, walking to the corner and picking up a red phone. “He's going to want to know what this is.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He's going to want to know whether we should alert the President.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I need a report ASAP. Ten minutes. What it's doing, and where it's coming from.”

PREETI AND KOGINKA

11 hr 59 min to Birth

Preeti had her legs crossed, eyes closed, and hands folded in her lap. She was resolutely detaching her mind from the environment of the cabin. Her thoughts were directed back toward the U.S.

She was trying to connect in her thoughts with the Divine Mother, and Koginka.

But she could not share this with anyone. For weeks, she had been wondering what to say to Kenny. She and Kenny were growing apart. He knew it, as she did. The more she studied under Koginka, the further apart she and Kenny became. She was on a journey, a path he did not want to take, on which he did not want to follow her and which wasn't meant for him. What could she possibly tell him? And some of the things she was learning — he would have thought they were crazy. She knew that. She knew they sounded crazy, and they sounded crazy to her, too, sometimes. She believed in Koginka. She felt the Divine Mother through him, and she trusted him. She knew Kenny wouldn't believe her; no one would believe her. And she was sworn to secrecy. There were dark forces among them, shapeshifters that were running the government, and the media, sucking the life-force from people. She knew it sounded crazy. Kenny would think she had lost her mind.

And now Kenny was helping the government. She had thought about that. She felt like the victim of cosmically bad luck. But it was not a surprise. He had always worshiped technology. She had been so frustrated to discover that her fate — this beautiful path of discovery that had changed her life — had pitted her against her boyfriend. Why did Kenny have to work for technology, and now for the government? Kenny had been one of the few people in her life she trusted, and now her trust in him was deteriorating.

Now she was on a government plane, going to a government base. She had been terrified at first. That morning had been her worst nightmare, finding herself faced with government people, surrounded by darkness. But she was starting to think that there was a rhyme and a reason to it all. It was not irony, or bad luck, that she was wrapped up in the government. It was meant to be. She wasn't sure why, but she felt that there had to be a reason she was thrust into the darkness.

She tried not to be afraid. Everything happened for a reason. She remained strong, and tried to reach Koginka in her thoughts.

Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge,

outside Fort Lauderdale, FL

Twenty or thirty women sat in a ring on the floor, in the center of a lodge inside the state park. The interior of the building, normally used for Boy Scout meetings, had been redecorated with hangings, rugs, and incense. Preeti would have been at this gathering, if she had not been on a plane to Fort Tortuga with Kenny and the rest.

Each woman had in front of her a mesa — a piece of cloth, about the size of a placemat, with crystals and beads attached to it. The crystals on each mesa were connected to spirits. Each of these women meditated over her mesa at least once a day to connect with the Spirit World.

There was a white man in the circle, the group's guru (although he avoided the term “guru”), who went by the name Koginka Xua Salvador. Koginka was known to the group as a man with profound spiritual powers. They knew he had the ability to connect directly to the Divine Mother, to cut karmic ties that individuals have with past lives, to talk to animals, to read what a person has written in a journal without having looked inside it. They knew he had clairvoyant insight, even about people he had not met.

At a previous meeting of the group, he had once asked: “Do you think it is a coincidence that all of you, here in connection with the Divine Mother, are women?” It was not at all a coincidence, he had explained. “The energy of the world is imbalanced. All around us, the spirit of the Divine Mother is being killed by patriarchy. We must do our work to address this imbalance.”

The “work” that the group did, like the group itself, had no formal name. But the work involved chanting and praying for long hours, with little sleep. The group met to do this work when Koginka perceived a crisis in the spirit, a need to protect the Divine Mother. At such times, he would call the group together and they would do their work for days or a week.

On that day, at 4:45 p.m. EST, as the plane with Preeti and the others approached Fort Tortuga, Koginka welcomed the group by saying:

“You all know why we're here.” They were there because they believed that, with the coming of that New Year, the world would end according to a prediction of the Maya calendar.

Several weeks prior, Preeti had met a girl named Lindsay, who worked in the natural health aisle at a Whole Foods not far from Kenny's house in Cambridge.

“I will seek permission from Koginka,” Lindsay had said.

Preeti was instantly attracted to Lindsay because Lindsay was not only a yoga teacher, like herself, but also had training in a wide variety of forms of natural healing. In the course of their conversation, Lindsay revealed that she had had a difficult past that involved drug abuse and a hyper-intense sexual life. Yet she struck Preeti as a perfect model of how to be centered and calm.

Lindsay attributed her recovery and her current spiritual peace to a shamanic training program that was run by Koginka. She told Preeti about a workshop that Koginka was running soon, and Preeti decided to go along with Lindsay. Preeti learned that, even though Koginka is a white man, his teachings are a reflection of the Kogi people of South America, a small and old-fashioned clan that shuns contact with the outside world and which appears to be in danger of extinction.

Before Preeti could attend the workshop, Lindsay explained, Lindsay would have to seek permission on Preeti's behalf from Koginka, with whom she was in contact, since he was, after all, her guru. The next day Lindsay came back with a response.

“It is your destiny to attend the workshop,” she reported happily. “Koginka told me that you are destined to be his student.”

Preeti decided to attend. She told Kenny about it, and he didn't know quite what to think, but he could tell she had her mind made up. At the first meeting, she felt the power of the Divine Mother inside her. She committed to the work, earned the right to own a mesa, and enrolled in a training program.

Now the time had come for an emergency meeting. The Earth was on the brink of extinction. Their chances of stopping it were slim, but they had to try to save the Divine Mother.

ONE HOUR TO TORTUGA

7 hr 50 min to Birth

Willard was crossing a vast field of ice. He could see himself from above, as if filmed from a plane to emphasize his puny size and aloneness relative to the expanse of ice.

He was dressed in a uniform that he didn't recognize, like a ranger or a military trooper. (Maybe this was the uniform of the President's Special Friends.) It was brisk and the scene had an austere beauty. But something was weighing on his mind. He was hiking stubbornly in the name of some greater, hopeless purpose.

Where am I going?, he wondered, watching himself trudge along. What am I doing? Where is there this much ice? It didn't look like Antarctica — it was too smooth and unbroken. Or so he thought. Was it another planet?

Flannigan's voice woke him.

“We'll be landing on Fort Tortuga within the hour.”

Willard slowly tore his eyelids into an open position.

(Broken.)

His hand. He had slept only by creating a near-lethal cocktail of painkillers. His head felt stuffed with cotton, his eyeballs wrapped with a thin layer of gauze.

The team peered from the aircraft down at the glassy blue ocean, a mirror image of the grayed ice in his dream.

“Ice?”

Sam was standing next to him in the aisle, with a bucket of ice. With her spikey red hair and I'll-bite-your-face aura, she made an unlikely flight attendant.

It took him a while to figure out what she was talking about. Wow, I'm totally messed up on these painkillers. He took the bucket with his left hand. “Thank you.”

He needed something to wrap his hand in. He saw the geek reading a newspaper. He pointed. “Can I have a section?”

Kenny nodded. He leaned over and handed Willard's left hand the business section. Willard saw that Kenny was holding an article about the Philadelphia Eagles. Willard remembered Preeti's Eagles sweatshirt. He wrapped his right hand in ice using the business section. The Eagles had plenty of talent but they never seemed to be able to win. Win for real. That was part of being a Philly fan, however. You loved your team. You hated them. It broke your heart when they lost. But you had to believe in the underdog.

Flannigan was up the aisle, looking at her watch. She walked up to the cockpit and poked her head in.

“Now?” the pilot asked.

“Yes.”

“It's about time.”

Standard operating procedure required that they call Fort Tortuga to give notice of their arrival, but Flannigan had insisted on waiting. For all she knew, Nemo was intercepting the island's radio communications, and she didn't want to give him notice any more in advance than was necessary.

She stood by, half in and half out of the cockpit, while the pilot tried to establish radio contact. The windshield over the pilot's controls gave her a broader and clearer view of the atmosphere and the ocean than anything she had ever seen with her naked eye. There was not a single cloud out there, from their altitude all the way down to the water. It was pure sunlight pouring into the cockpit, which was much warmer than the cabin.

The pilot made contact. He was going through the script of who they were and why they were visiting the island. When he was done, Flannigan took the headset.

“It's imperative,” she said into the mic, “that you don't let anyone off the island.”

“That won't be a problem,” the voice on the radio said. “We're staffed at reduced levels for the holiday, so no one is permitted to leave.”

“Holiday? You guys have holiday?” Since when does a base go on holiday? she wondered.

The voice on the radio explained that they were a privately contracted military research facility, not a base, and that all of the research scientists were home for the holidays.

“How many people are on the island right now?”

“Five.”

“There are no families?”

“That is correct. Just security staff.”

She walked back into the cabin. The view from the cockpit was erased from her mind: all she could picture was an empty military base.

Gene was looking at her.

“The island is practically empty,” she said. “There are only five people on the island. This kid is hiding in an empty military facility.”

Simon held his hands to his face. “Great. So either he's not there at all, or he's going to hold us hostage on the island. Or kill us.”

“We don't know that,” Flannigan responded.

“I know one thing,” Simon declared. “Once we land on that island, we're at the mercy of whoever's in charge there. We'll be trapped.”

THE LANDING STRIP

6 hr 37 min to Birth

No one said a word after Simon's last remark. When Flannigan returned to the cockpit, everyone strained to hear what was said up front.

The pilot reestablished contact with the island. “We have clearance to land,” he said.

She walked back to the cabin. Fort Tortuga was visible from the right side of the aircraft. Everyone moved to a window and looked out.

“It is beautiful,” Simon admitted.

Less than twenty miles in diameter, it was small and round and filled with trees up to its edges, with little beach. A thin road cut through the trees, from the east end of the island to the west. On either end of the road was a clearing with buildings.

“The forests look considerably more lush than the Galapagos,” Gene said. “The Galapagos are dry.” The Galapagos, he explained, were home to a variety of rare species of plants and animals. They were considered the inspiration for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

The pilot, unfamiliar with the island, was circling to get a good approach at the landing strip. The plane swung in a wide arc around the island.

“Don't tell me that's the landing strip,” Simon remarked. The landing strip, near the beach at the east end of the island, was short.

Below, a tiny-looking white van pulled up near the landing strip.

“Fasten your seatbelts,” Sam said to the cabin. “We're beginning our descent to Tortuga.”

The plane dropped quickly. Flannigan felt a wave of nausea. Landing is not a problem, she told herself. Pilots do these landings all the time.

The plane set down, jostling on its wheels. The pilot braked hard and they all leaned forward in their seats. Flannigan looked out the window and tried to calculate the distance that was left on the runway.

They pulled to a stop. Flannigan resumed breathing. Out the window, she could see the door of the white van open. A man got out. No weapon, she noticed. From what she could see, there was no one else in the van. Situation normal. They weren't hostages, yet.

THE WELCOME CENTER

Fort Tortuga

6 hr 36 min to Birth

The pilot opened the door of the aircraft. Flannigan and Sam disembarked by a little stairway into a bright, sunny, hot mid-afternoon in the Pacific south of the Equator.

They met Raymond Carvell, a Flytech employee and facilities manager on the island. He received them warily. Flannigan and Carvell exchanged quiet words and came to a quick understanding about what was going on.

Sam returned and announced, “Okay, everybody out.”

They piled out of the aircraft and piled into Raymond's white van.

“Fort Tortuga has a welcoming facility,” Flannigan said. “It's like a small hotel. We are going there first. Everyone not on this project team is strictly required to remain in the welcoming facility at all times. That means you, Preeti. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” Preeti said.

“Sam and Willard will remain at the facility with you.” Looking at these two, she said, “You won't be part of the greeting party. I'll brief you upon our arrival.”

They headed a short distance to the Welcome Center and pulled up on a circular driveway.

As they walked in, Gene looked at the building, which resembled a hotel. The front doors appeared to open to a lobby. There were two floors of rooms. The only unusual thing was that the balconies off the rooms were enclosed. Gene would also notice that the pool was indoors — unusual for an island near the equator.

In the lobby, Raymond processed their paperwork. Flannigan studied Willard. He exuded a certain contempt for what was going on around him. There it is again, she thought. He doesn't come off as a special ops guy.

Gene sidled up to her. “Raymond's going to brief us now?” he asked quietly. She nodded. “I'm concerned about the potential for groupthink,” he noted. “We might want to leave one or two people out of the briefing to keep a fresh perspective.”

As a psychologist, Flannigan was receptive to this suggestion. She had been planning on taking everyone into the briefing except for Sam, whom she would leave to babysit Preeti, who was certainly no part of this operation. “Who should sit out?” she asked.

“Willard would be a logical choice,” Gene offered with a shrug.

Indeed, she thought. Willard did not need a brief. He probably wouldn't pay attention anyway. Moreover, he was really here for backup support, and wouldn't be part of the greeting party to visit Nemo. If they needed his help later, then the plan had gone very wrong — and in that case, a fresh perspective would come in handy.

They were all checked in.

“We need to get down to business,” Flannigan said. “We have a briefing in five minutes — including Gene, Simon, Kenny, Raymond, Sam and myself. Preeti and Willard will remain in the visitor area.”

FLYBOTS

Fort Tortuga, Welcome Center Conference Room

6 hr 25 min to Birth

Gene, Simon, Kenny, Sam and Raymond sat at a conference table. With her spikey red hair and rugged look, Sam seemed out of place. There were a few computers in the room, a projector, and a conference phone.

“Not exactly a SCIF,” Simon said, pronouncing the word skiff. The government rules for a SCIF, or classified working space, were strict.

“It's not a SCIF,” Raymond said. “This facility is run by FlyTech, a private contractor of the government. FlyTech has been given some latitude to create an effective research center.”

“We'll get to that in a minute,” Flannigan said, closing the door. She introduced Raymond. Raymond had years of experience as a lab technician. He made sure the labs on the island were up and running, as well as the security systems and basic facilities, such as electricity, plumbing, and the small road system.

“We're here to meet with a child named Nemo, who claims to be somewhere on the island. I've personally made contact with Nemo over chat. To put it bluntly, he appears to be the smartest hacker that has ever touched a keyboard. Our objective is containment. Our mission is to make contact with Nemo and get him away from anything that can connect him to the web.”

Simon looked around the table and snickered. “Looks like we're not doing it by force.”

Flannigan nodded. “This is a diplomatic mission. Force should not be necessary.”

“If he really is on this island,” Simon asked, “what the hell is he doing here?”

“You yourself said he's here,” Flannigan said. “Someone here typed shutdown. Someone here had to hit the power button to turn that computer back on.” She glared at Simon. “Am I understanding that right?”

He nodded.

She continued. “The name of the game here is speed. Containment ASAP. So we are going forward with incomplete information. We'll be able to confirm the facts soon enough.”

Gene turned to Raymond. “Is there anywhere on the island he could be hiding?”

Raymond straightened. “Maybe this is a good time for me to tell you about our facility here on the island.” He got up and turned on the projector screen. He opened a slideshow — an introduction to the facility.

“Please be aware,” he said, “the research we do here is Top Secret. Even the existence of this facility is Top Secret.”

“Our location is not quite in the Galapagos Archipelago, is it?” Gene asked.

“No, not quite. This island was chosen in part for its secrecy.”

Raymond clicked and a map of the island appeared on the screen. “This building on the west side of the island, the far side of the island, is the main laboratory. The lab building has two wings,” Raymond said. “As you can see, it's shaped like a butterfly in honor of the flybot. One wing contains the indoor testing facility. The other wing contains the laboratory and the Assembly Area, where prototypes are made.”

He pointed to the right side of the slide. “We're here, on the east side of the island, in the Welcome Center. Within the Welcome Center, this room is the only point of Internet connectivity.”

“What type of connection?” Simon said.

“The island gets connectivity from an underseas cable.”

Simon whistled. “What do you guys do here?”

“FlyTech builds miniature military robots. Our primary model, the Flybot12, has surveillance and attack capabilities.”

“Attack?”

“The Flybot12 is modeled on the properties of insects. It uses solar power to power its motion and generate a small quantity of drug...”

“It bites people.”

“Correct. It delivers a sedative or some other substance.”

“So why do you need a massive direct Internet connection?”

“The flybots are designed to perform their surveillance and attack as swarms. In other words, they communicate with each other, using simple signals. For example, if the flybots are attacking a target, they communicate with each other to circle around the target and coordinate their attack. Also, when a swarm of flybots is looking for something specific, an individual flybot can tip off the swarm if it finds a clue or something promising.”

“Like bees or ants.”

“Exactly. So, to answer your question, this swarm behavior is complex. To understand it and to test it without actually using robots, we use computer simulations of the swarms.”

“And you're borrowing the computing power from military computers elsewhere.”

“That's correct. We have actually recently completed building our own computing grid on the island. It adds substantially to the computing power. This, here, is the computing building,” he said, pointing to a square on the western half of the island, “right next to our main laboratory.”

“What's in the middle of the island?” Simon asked.

“These are our testing areas,” he said. “They simulate a jungle environment. We run tests with the flybots in these areas.”

“You attack people?!”

“We test on gorillas in this area here on the north side of the main road, and also in this area on the south side. The tests do not usually lead to the death of the animals. In most of our tests, the flybots bite them and inject them with a drug that creates an unpleasant feeling. This way, we train the animals to remember and fight the flybots. We also use the flybots to practice locating the animals and attacking their food.”

“They are open areas?”

“They are enclosed by walls.”

“But the top is open. That's why we're on an island. If any of these flybots go crazy and fly away, they are in the middle of the ocean and become fish food.”

“I guess you could put it that way.”

Simon mused while the others watched. “Do they look like insects?”

“Yes, they look like mosquitoes, but shiny, because they are covered with little solar panels. They have wings and legs and the ability to bite much like mosquitoes.”

“But they are solar-powered, actually, so theoretically they could continue to fly. Do they ever die?”

“We run extensive computer simulations before ever running live tests,” Raymond responded. “We've never had an episode of runaway flybots. Moreover, they are designed with a short battery life — just over an hour or so. Even if they did run away, they wouldn't last through the night — and, as you said, they would fall into the ocean.”

“Can we see one?”

Raymond opened a video file on the screen. It showed a rainforest. Gorillas, four or five, were sitting around and grooming each other. The creatures had massive torsos like inverted triangles, and beady, expressive eyes set into cubist heads. One of them walked off of the screen slowly, placing his hands forward on the ground and swinging through on the knuckles.

“Gorillas,” Raymond said. “Their native area is the Congo, in Africa. But here, where we've brought them, the climate is similar. We're at almost the exact same latitude, actually. Gorillas are one of the smartest animal species and their shape and movement is close to humans, so they make excellent test subjects.”

On screen, there was a hooting noise. One of the larger males, with a silver mane, turned to the camera and flashed his teeth with a mighty roar. He was a good six feet tall and well over three hundred pounds. He jumped up and down. The hooting and screaming continued. Some of the shapes fled from the screen, while a mother and a baby squatted by a tree and covered their faces.

A shining, silver cloud flashed across the screen.

The camera view cut to a nearby patch of trees. One of the gorillas was scooping in the mud desperately. It appeared to be a male, but not as big or as old as the silverback.

The silver metallic cloud darted onto the screen again directly up toward the gorilla. The flybots blanketed his body with silver. Suddenly, he was still, and he fell to the ground with a thud.

“Holy crap, that was fast,” Simon said. “Are these in production?”

“We're close,” Raymond said. “We're conducting final tests.”

“Do soldiers even have a chance against these?”

“Without armor or other technology, they won't do any better than a gorilla.”

“The insects win again,” Simon remarked.

“This is part of a trend in robotics,” Gene said. “Evolution has spent millions of years coming up with excellent designs for animals. So engineers don't have to start from scratch when they build robots. They can borrow from animal designs. Robotic snakes can get through tight spaces and move quickly in sand. Four-legged robots with hooves can navigate mountainsides and carry heavy loads.”

“Exactly,” Raymond said. “And flybots can have the properties of mosquitoes — such as the way they fly and the way they bite.”

Simon raised a finger. “Maybe this isn't the ideal time to bring this up,” he sneered, “but did it occur to you at any point that this technology could be — oh, I don't know — extremely dangerous?”

Raymond smiled politely. “It certainly did, Mr. Chan. The dangerous power of this technology is an excellent reason why we must develop it. We can't stop foreign nations from developing it. If we don't develop it first, we'll be at a severe disadvantage.”

“That's not the danger I was talking about,” Simon said. “I meant the danger that these flybots malfunction. They are built to attack people. What if a glitch causes them to attack people when we don't ask them to? You're on the brink of accidentally creating the most dangerous pest on Earth.”

“Flybots have been designed exactly to prevent that from happening,” Raymond replied. “The microprocessor inside a flybot — its computer — runs on a piece of custom software. We call it Robix. Flybots require Robix to run. And Robix shuts down after a flybot has attacked a target.”

“Each flybot can attack a maximum of one target in its lifetime?”

“Correct. We call it the One Attack Law.”

“Well, that's clever. But what if there's a bug in the software?”

Raymond smiled. “That's why we've used more than software to enforce the One Attack Law. Each flybot actually has a fuse built into it. When a flybot removes its proboscis — the biting, stinger part — from skin, the pressure of this act mechanically pulls the fuse. It's more like a circuit breaker than a fuse actually. The process is mechanical. It can't be stopped with software. Once the circuit breaks, the computer shuts off instantly.”

Simon squinted. “That's pretty cool.”

Pleased, Raymond noted, “As for reproduction: it would be impossible for our flybots to make other flybots. Remember that even though flybot mechanics are based on real mosquitoes, they don't have DNA, eggs, or any programming or knowledge or instinct related to reproduction.”

Flannigan took the opportunity to speak. “Thanks, Raymond. Let's get back on topic. You mentioned there is a computing facility. Do you think the kid is here to hack into that network?”

“I doubt it. There's nothing about these networks that you can't find thousands of miles away. Honestly, I find it hard to believe that he's anywhere on the island. There is almost no one here. The only people who come to the island are staffers or official visitors. And no children.”

“What's the best way of finding out for sure?” Flannigan asked.

“My staff is looking into it.”

“Say he's on the island. Where would he be?”

“Well, he's not here in the Welcome Center. The only other possibility is that he's in the Laboratory Complex, in one of buildings.”

“How quickly could we search those buildings?” Flannigan asked.

“I would suggest,” Gene said, “that we take a direct approach to locate him.”

“Which is?”

“We ask him,” Gene said.

FLASH FREEZE

General Carrillo examined a map on the wall of his office. An aide explained what they were looking at.

“We've had a hell of a time discovering a signature of the virus,” he said. “Our forensics teams have been looking at the hard drives of infected computers on our network. But they haven't found anything concrete. We did notice one thing though: the virus is making use of the CPUs on infected computers.”

Carrillo nodded.

“So we have started to get a picture of the spread of the virus by sending out pings to parts of our network and the Internet. We then track how long it takes them to get back to us. It's like sonar. The pings that take longer to get back to us are coming from regions where the virus has penetrated the most.”

The General pointed to a chart hanging next to the map. “And these are the top locations.”

“That's right. These twenty regions are much more densely populated with the virus than the rest of the network — by an order of magnitude.” There were twenty locations, associated with IP ranges and identified on the map by latitude and longitude.

Carrillo noticed that some of the locations were in China. “Does this mean China is a target?”

“Not necessarily. It could be that China has established the virus on those data centers to send out attacks to our network.”

Of course. He looked at some of the locations on U.S. soil.

“Are these data centers?”

“Yes, sir.” Massive networks of computers, mostly used by military and government, but also by major search engines.

“These locations are all over the world.”

“Yes, sir. The attack has not been very targeted.”

“No. Unless it's targeting big data centers.” Could be an act of terrorism, he thought. The General turned away from the board. “We have to escalate this up. But first we need to know what's happening on these computers. Is data being copied? Is it being erased? Otherwise we haven't a clue as to who these attackers are or what their motivation is.”

The aide nodded. “I agree, sir. But there may be a reason to escalate now. Even before we get that information.”

“Why is that?”

“It's because of the slowdown. As the virus spreads, our sonar method is going to give us less and less information. Soon we won't be able to see what's going on.”

“Oh, God.” Carrillo was starting to see. The virus was spreading like wildfire, but freezing the network like a glacier. Soon they wouldn't be able to see anything. Whatever the virus was doing would be invisible to them.

ESCALATION

Near Denver, Colorado

6 hr 2 min to Birth

Carrillo was on the phone with the Secretary of Defense. In the last few minutes, he had spoken with the commander of USNORTHCOM in Colorado Springs. He had stayed on the line as they spoke with the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, and then Deputy Secretary of Defense. This process had taken 22 minutes since Carrillo's first call to the commander.

At the commander's guidance, Carrillo told the Secretary what they knew about the situation. The attacking force was invading the network quickly. It was like a computer virus in some ways — in the way it spread, and the way it left software on the computers it reached.

But it wasn't a virus — at least, no ordinary virus. A virus was a computer program, usually a modest one. And viruses consisted of usually one attack or exploit. This attacker, on the other hand, used a variety of attacks. In fact, the attacker was constantly discovering and exploiting new vulnerabilities as he moved. No computer program could do that — only people.

The key question raised by the Under Secretary was, if people are choosing the exploits and even inventing them, how is the attack spreading so quickly? Carrillo suggested that the attackers were installing software on these computers, and that software was being used to launch attacks. So he believed that many of the attacks were automated. Most likely, a human was monitoring the attacks and continually adding new techniques to them. So the attack was actually like a virus that was being monitored, controlled, and improved by humans.

Carrillo estimated that for this virus to learn as quickly as it was learning, it had to be monitored by a large team of skilled hackers — perhaps 100 expert hackers, he guessed.

An operation of this size and complexity meant only one thing: they were under attack by a foreign nation. No terrorist group could pull this off, unless they had the full involvement of a government.

Which left the question, who was it?

“We're still trying to understand how the software works. It's quite unusual,” Carrillo said. One of his analysts had suggested to him that the code might be written by aliens, but he omitted that theory. “For that reason, we're having trouble backtracking to the location where the monitoring is occurring.”

The Secretary asked if he had any guesses or theories so far.

“We've identified twenty locations of high penetration of the virus. It's possible that one of them was used as the original launchpad.”

“Twenty locations? Where are they?”

“All over the globe. China, India, Europe, domestic.”

“Are you telling me this could be an inside threat? A hundred domestic hackers?”

“We're not sure, sir. Any of those dots could be a source or a target. It appears to be an attack launched from one major data center at several other major data centers.”

“And we think,” the Secretary said, “there is a team of hackers directing the attacks from one of these data centers.”

“That's correct, sir. That is our hypothesis. Since the virus is causing network slowdown, it would appear that they are likely to be physically present at the location of the origin of the attack.”

“So we could take out the attackers by taking out the twenty locations.”

“That's correct, sir. Obviously we would face a cost of innocent lives at the other nineteen locations.”

“Given the size of this conflict, that would be a small number of casualties.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Good. I'm calling the President. Stand by.”

THERE IS NO KID

Fort Tortuga, Welcome Center Conference Room

6 hr 1 min to Birth

The conference was interrupted by the receptionist, who signaled to Raymond patiently from the doorway.

“Excuse me,” Raymond said, stepping out into the hallway. He engaged in a muttering conversation and came back into the conference room.

“We make careful records of who comes on the island,” Raymond began. “I ordered a review of the records to see if a child of a staff member or visitor came to the island recently.”

“And?”

“And it has been quite some time — months — since any child was on this island. And the departure of those visitors is documented. So we're about one hundred percent sure there is no child on the island.”

Flannigan frowned.

“I've ordered a review of all of the security camera footage on the island as well,” Raymond continued. “That's underway, but it will take at least half an hour.”

“So it's not a kid,” Simon shrugged. “So what? We had no good reason to think it was a kid anyway.”

“Did you review the records for the presence of adults as well?” Flannigan asked.

“Of course,” Raymond said. “Right now there are five staff members known to be on the island, including me. They are all part of my staff — part of the island's security forces. There are no scientists on the island. They are all on vacation.”

“You're saying there's no one on the island,” Flannigan summarized.

“That's how it looks. We'll have a better answer after reviewing the tapes.”

But someone has to be here, Flannigan thought. Someone pushed the power button. You can't do that remotely.

“Could someone have arrived by sea?” Gene asked.

“If an intruder were to sneak onto the island, the best way would be by sea,” Raymond judged. “But we have an extensive network of cameras on the island.”

“Yes, but was anyone looking at the cameras?” Simon asked.

Raymond explained that the camera footage was computer-monitored and it triggered alerts.

“How's the night vision?” Gene asked of the system.

“Not too good,” Raymond admitted. “But we tune it up at night and take a few false positives. We have to review more cases, but the worst-case scenario is that we get to take a ride around the island in the motorboat.”

“He's no idiot,” Flannigan reasoned aloud, annoyed. “He knows that we can see this. So what is he doing?”

They were all silent.

“Hiding,” Simon stated. “Evidently he's hiding — or they are.”

He wants us to look for him, Flannigan thought. So Gene's suggestion was correct. Why not chat with Nemo and ask where he was?

She opened a window on the projector screen and logged into Google chat while the others watched.

“Wait a minute,” Simon uttered. “The Internet is supposed to be frozen. How come you logged in so fast?”

But Flannigan had already typed a chat into the screen:

Flannigan: Hi Nemo — are you there?

Nemo: Hello!

Flannigan: We're on Fort Tortuga...

Nemo: Aha, so you're in the Welcome Center then?

Flannigan: Yes.

Nemo: Then welcome!

Flannigan: Where are you?

Nemo: I'm in the lab building.

“This is crazy,” Raymond said. “We have staff in that building.”

“You're reviewing the tapes?” Flannigan confirmed sharply.

“Yes, it's underway.”

“Get him to confirm that he's not in the computing building,” Simon said. “There are three buildings over there, right? Lab building, computer building, dorm.”

“Hold on,” Flannigan said.

Flannigan: That's great. We'd like to come and meet you... Is that ok?

Nemo: Can you find your way here?

Flannigan: Yes. Raymond, the facilities manager here, is going to show us the way.

Nemo: Ok. Are they all with you there right now?

Flannigan: Yes.

Nemo: Hi everyone. I'm flattered that you all made the trip to meet me.

Flannigan: It's our pleasure, really. You're in the lab building and not the computing building, right?

Nemo: That's right.

Flannigan: I see. And are there people in the building with you?

Nemo: Yes.

Flannigan: Have you been talking with them too?

Nemo: Not really... I haven't made my presence known to them. I'm not too interested in talking to them.

Flannigan: I see. Well, we'll come over soon, in like half an hour. How will we find you?

Nemo: You can find me in the indoor testing facility.

Flannigan: Ok. See you soon.

Flannigan imagined a genius child sneaking around the facility, behind guards' backs, and playing with flybots. It was a strange picture.

“Can I talk to him?” Gene asked.

He's trying to sound casual. He's itching to talk to him, Flannigan thought. Of course he was. Gene's powerful, lonely intellect was hungry for something worthy of its attention. Someone worth talking to. Or a worthy adversary in a battle of minds. It was only natural for someone of Gene's intelligence to reach out, when he sniffed out the presence of another great mind.

Flannigan wondered whether Nemo must not feel the same way. Had Nemo been bored to tears chatting with her, with Simon, with Jared Keller? She replayed their chat in her mind and detected a certain tone in his words: a hint of sarcasm, the playfulness of desperate boredom. She didn't know whether Gene's brain would be a match for Nemo's, or vice versa. But Nemo didn't know either, and he would want to find out. It was a great piece of news. It meant that Flannigan had something to offer Nemo: the opportunity to speak with Gene. It was a bargaining chip.

“I want to be sure that Nemo meets with us first,” Flannigan responded. “You'll have to talk to him in person.”

“You're using me as bait.” Gene smiled. Flannigan winked at him.

She closed the chat window. “Raymond, arrange for some transportation over there. Everyone meet outside in two minutes. Sam, you'll stay here with the others, but stick to your phone.”

WILLARD PREPARES

Welcome Center, Visitor Area

5 hr 49 min to Birth

Willard was not well qualified as a babysitter for Preeti. A genuine agent of the Distributed Ops program would have been grossly overqualified for the job. And Willard would have preferred doing one-armed pushups on his throbbing right hand to concerning himself with this girl's welfare.

His thoughts were elsewhere: on escape from the island.

Once Flannigan had led the others away to be briefed in the conference room, Willard retired in the direction of his room. He was lugging his massive dufflebag of explosives and cradling his crippled right hand.

He unlocked the door to his room with a keycard and pushed it open with his foot. It closed behind him as he placed his duffle by the bed and lay down on the bedspread, on his back, with a deep sigh. Feels so good, he thought. Don't fall asleep.

The brilliant afternoon sun cast into the room around the window curtains. It was an ordinary-looking hotel room. He would be able to get out of there easily enough. And Flannigan and the others were too busy to notice. But where would he go?

He needed to get to the mainland. If he could get off the island and get to the mainland, he could disappear there. Ecuador, or whichever country it was. If he could make it there, he would sell his explosives on some black market and live on that money.

Was there a boat on the island? A motorboat. If they had a motorboat, maybe he could make it to the mainland. He didn't know how far away the mainland was.

How would he and this lovely boat make their acquaintance? Trying to find it himself by sneaking around seemed too risky. He would get caught, and when he did, he would look guilty.

He stood up from the bed with a grunt. He walked into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. He had not bathed recently. He was tired, hungover, drugged. He had recently killed a man. And there was his hand.

(Killing me it's broken.)

He could do it. But he would have to look more like a legitimate agent. He would need to shave and wash up. Get a more convincing outfit. And the bandaging on his hand would have to go. He had to look presentable.

Needing a razor and some fresh clothes, he left his room and walked toward the reception area in search of these supplies.

He walked by a big room and looked in: it was a small pool. More like a motel pool than a hotel pool, but appetizing enough. How nice would it be to get in a hot tub right now, he thought.

To his surprise, Preeti, whom he had completely forgotten about, was in the pool room, walking down the length of the wall. He stopped and looked at her from the hallway with lazy curiosity.

She was wearing a bathing suit. She had a nice body, though there was something unattractive about her manner. Too much of a hippie.

She noticed him and looked up, suspicious. She was holding what appeared to be a sheaf of straw, a bundle of something that looked like straw.

She proceeded slowly down the length of the wall, shaking her sheaf at the wall as she walked like it was a magic wand. She was chanting something quietly to herself.

He shook his head. Hippie nonsense.

He turned and continued to the lobby.

THE APE-PROOF JEEP

5 hr 48 min to Birth

Raymond led them to a row of Jeeps behind the Welcome Center, in a little lot not too far from the eastern beach of the island. Flannigan climbed into the front passenger seat of the first one. The men watched her for a moment, appreciating her skirt. Raymond got in the driver seat, and Gene got in the back, with Simon on the other side and Kenny squished in the middle.

Flannigan's cell phone, like all of theirs, was worthless on the island, but she had two other communications devices. The first was an annoyingly bulky satellite phone, which she lugged in a black cubical thick nylon case on a strap under her arm. The sat phone was to contact the NSA Director after the situation with Nemo was clarified and under control. Second, strapped ridiculously on her skirt waist, was a walkie-talkie. It was for the purpose of touching base with Sam, who had an identical model.

“This is pretty spacious for a Jeep,” Gene said from the back seat. The vehicle had a fortified frame and windows with faint lines of reinforcing material running through the glass. The edges were hugged by thick rubber flaps.

“These models are customized,” Raymond said. He started the engine and they could hear the wheels on the gravel of the lot. “The vehicles are customized to be resistant to flybots and apes.”

“Apes?” Simon asked.

“In the early days, apes sometimes scaled the walls of their containment,” Raymond explained over the steering wheel, as they pulled out of the driveway. “Apes are not usually violent, but they are affected by the tests we conduct with the flybots. We have killed very few apes in our tests. Usually we test by sending out flies to attack and tranquilize one or more targets. So the apes are in a kind of war with the flybots. They are always looking for new ways to avoid the flybots, fool them or escape from them. The Jeeps are toughened as a precautionary feature against angry apes.”

They were now driving westward on the dirt road, between the gorilla areas to the north and to the south. But all that could be seen of these areas were massive hills, steeply sloped and covered with vegetation natural to simian habitats.

Raymond pointed to the walls. “Gorillas kept trying to get over those fences,” he said. “They are intelligent. We had difficulty keeping them in their areas at first,” Raymond recounted. “We weren't able to create a perimeter that they couldn't get through. We tried all kinds of materials and traps. But the little buggers are clever. Finally we realized that we didn't have to fool them; we could teach them. When they left the perimeter, we gave them a zap. It's dangerous because those gorillas are gigantic, and liable to fight in groups. But eventually they learned not to cross the perimeter, so they don't even try.”

“Do they wear collars?” Flannigan asked.

Raymond smiled. “No, we used a more advanced technology to zap them.”

“The flybots,” Gene said.

“That's right. Once our flybot prototype was working, we'd release them to discipline any gorilla messing around at the fence. We don't even need to worry about it any more. The gorillas have learned. We even see them teaching each other to stay away from the fence.”

“Gorillas are quite intelligent,” Gene remarked. “Aside from humans, they are the most intelligent animals on Earth. You must have chosen them as your test subjects partly for that reason.”

“Yes,” Raymond said, “and also because their bodies are so similar to ours.”

“Not only their bodies are similar,” Gene added archly. “Their minds are, too. The difference between human intelligence and that of other primates is much smaller than you might imagine.”

“Then why,” Simon challenged, “don't they learn more when we try to teach them? They only learn a few words.”

“To be precise, Koko the gorilla understood two thousand words and more than one thousand signs,” Gene corrected. “But to answer your question: what holds them back is their lack of vocal chords. Their brains are fine; they're simply missing vocal chords. If they had vocal chords, they would have developed human language and intelligence a long time ago.”

“But can't we teach them sign language?”

“Sign language doesn't require speech, but it's based on spoken language,” Gene explained. “And it's developed by, taught by, and used with people who also use spoken language. It's based on a whole species with a spoken language.  If humans didn't have spoken language, we could have a sign language. But it would be a very simple one, accompanied by maybe a dozen different types of noises.”

“Like gorillas,” Simon ventured.

“Exactly.”

They drove on and thought about it.

“Interesting,” Flannigan said.

“We think all of our abilities come from our brains alone,” Gene said. “But that's not true. In many ways, our brains are taught by our bodies.”

Flannigan caught a twinkle in his eyes as he directed these words at her.  At his mention of bodies, she understood a double meaning.  She wondered whether he, with a great teacher's mind, could also teach her body something.

SILK

5 hr 37 min to Birth

Ten minutes to the Laboratory Complex. Flannigan looked at her watch as the Jeep jostled down the road, kicking up dust.

She studied Gene. He didn't seem to be concerned about what they were going to find. That worried her.

“Do you know, Raymond, whether flybots are actually designed as invertebrates?” Gene asked. “You've probably built them with interior skeletons, in which case they'd be vertebrates and not much like flies at all.”

“Flies are invertebrates?” Flannigan asked. Simon's scowling gaze was fixed on the passing roadside.

“They are, yes,” Gene said. “They don't have backbones — rather, they have exoskeletons. In fact, they have a lot in common with slimey and slithering invertebrates like worms and slugs. For example, some of them can make silk. Only invertebrates can make silk. If you want something that is light, strong, and elastic, there is no better material yet in existence than silk. Some worms can make it, spiders, a variety of insects, but no vertebrates.”

Is he nervous? Flannigan wondered. Is he talking to pass the time? Then she remembered: Gene actually cared about this stuff. She had read it in a file, once.

At the outset of the Distributed Operations program, Flannigan used some of the operatives to create psychological profiles of hundreds of key individuals within the intelligence community. She assigned spies — she called them “psycho-spies” — to study senior management and persons of interest at the Agency and a great number of individuals in the D.C. area. Unbeknownst to Gene, the attractive “greeter” who had ridden with Gene to the airport was one of these psycho-spies. Rather than laying wiretaps, or promoting dissension, they asked questions. Their information, supplemented by the guidance and analysis of Flannigan and a few psychologists at Flannigan's disposal, yielded rich reports.

Gene's report had mentioned in passing that, as a child, he had been infatuated with animals.

Gene, like a flawlessly beautiful woman, was somewhat boring for all his lack of blemishes. The psycho-spies who spent weeks and months profiling him (in short meetings, mostly) came back for the most part with highly abridged notes of his thoughts on abstract topics — nothing much for the analysts to use. But there were a few gems in the report. Gene came across as a mathematician, a limitless genius, not a naturalist. But on two occasions, a psycho-spy had stumbled into a conversation about animals with him and suddenly his eyes had lit up in such a way that made all his previous enthusiasm for math and puzzles seem listless.

He had confided to one psycho-spy: Did you know that wasps plant eggs in the cones of oak trees and the larvae grow there? They look just like a fruit, but there's an animal inside. Some of the wasp “eggs” even secrete honeydew. Any person who saw or touched it or licked it would assume it's a hard fruit or maple, but it has a wasp inside. We have such clear ideas of what a plant is and what an animal is. But there are so many plants that look like animals and vice versa — it makes me wonder.

Flannigan started to remember other details from the report. Every psycho-spy commented with reverence on Gene's profound and nimble mind. He also had the classic, expected weakness: overconfidence. It was the mark of every genius. Confidence was what led his mind to solutions and discoveries, but it blinded him a little.

One beautiful psycho-spy reported: He's not my type. He's witty, charming, but I'm attracted to vulnerable men and he's the opposite. It was too easy to fool him into thinking I was interested. For a moment, he seemed like a dumb chauvinist, assuming that I HAD to be interested in him. That was the only vulnerability I was able to detect.

As the words played back in her head, Flannigan noticed that the psycho-spy was connecting Gene's overconfidence with women. Was he overconfident because he was a genius, or because he was a proud man and almost certainly a social outcast while growing up?

The psycho-spy reported: He was the smoothest-talking NSA type I've ever met. At first I thought it was a study or a science for him, like a recluse learning how to talk to women from a textbook. But this wasn't true. It was like a sport for him — a sport that he never practiced, but he threw himself into any game he played, anything he did. I think he got a little high from the idea that, as a reclusive academic, he wasn't supposed to be good at talking to women, he didn't have much practice at it, but he was good at it just the same.

Gene's other vulnerability was a sense of guilt. According to the psycho-spies, his remarks, otherwise oh-so-perfect, occasionally leaked small admissions and minute apologies about his choice of career. Gene made small apologies for the fact that he worked at the NSA.

He's afraid, in his heart of hearts, that he's a mercenary. He thinks he's a sellout. He fears he should be doing mathematics at a university and contributing to the future, not working at the NSA and contributing to espionage.

There were two parts to it. He wanted to contribute to the future. He also wanted memory of him to survive it.

He's not nervous, Flannigan thought. He's excited. It was a glimmer of childlike excitement.

KENNY'S CONFESSION

5 hr 32 min to Birth

Five minutes to the Laboratory Complex, Flannigan thought. We don't have much time. What are you doing, Gene?

“You said the vehicle also protects against flybots,” Gene noted, placing a finger on the window near where one of the air sealing flaps was.

“We've never had a single instance of a flybot attacking the wrong target,” Raymond said. “We are extremely thorough in our precautions and tests. We test first in the Laboratory Building, in the indoor facility. We test outdoors, on the gorillas, only when we're positive nothing can go wrong. The vehicle features are just a precaution.”

“In case something goes wrong with the One Attack Rule,” Gene said quietly, glancing at Raymond.

“We want to make sure flybots could never be any of our staff,” Raymond said, “but it's just a security precaution. There's no reason to think they ever would. And with the One Attack Rule, it's impossible they would ever get to attack more than one target.”

“Impossible?” Gene asked. “I don't think it's that hard to imagine. If something went wrong with the software, the flybots might think they were supposed to attack you, me, everyone on the island,” Gene imagined.

“But the hardware,” Simon observed. “Hardware is more reliable than software.”

“Hardware?” Flannigan asked.

“The One Attack Rule is triggered by the proboscis of the flybot,” Simon recalled, “so it is mechanical. That's hardware. It's supposed to work even if the software goes wrong. Like these flaps here.”

“You appear to be assuming that, in such a case, the flybots would swarm around one of us first, attack that person, and then disengage, triggering the One Attack fuse with their proboscis and self-destructing.”

“What else would they do?” Raymond asked.

“The flybots would be interested in completing their mission as effectively as possible,” Gene began. “If they saw a better way to attack us all, you could expect them to do that. They could try anything, even if it didn't quite work at first. They might try attacking one of us and remaining on the skin, with the proboscis injected. They might try to work in teams somehow. Maybe some of them could attack, and then other flybots could swarm around them and try to dig up the flesh so that the proboscis could be withdrawn without catching on anything and triggering the mechanism.”

“Nice,” Flannigan said.

“They could try to modify their design,” Gene said. “They could work together to file off the barbs on their probosces, so that they could pierce human flesh without catching on it and triggering the One Attack Rule.”

He looked out the window. “We humans are built with hardware limitations, too,” he said. “Our bodies can carry only so much weight. Our brains can contain only so much information. And at some point, each of our hearts experiences a final hardware failure. But we don't consider these hardware limitations to be a meaningful expression of the function of our human bodies. Rather, we try to make our bodies work better, and we use tools. We edit and extend our hardware in pursuit of our own goals.”

“We're approaching the gate to the Laboratory Complex,” Raymond announced. Up ahead, they could make out the wall to the Laboratory Complex. He returned to the thread of the conversation. “The situation you describe couldn't happen. Flybots aren't smart enough to be creative like that.”

“They may not be smart,” Gene said. “They are merely trying to achieve their mission. If they got the idea of trying something together, like shaving down their probosces, and if they saw that it worked, they would do it, even if they didn't really understand what they were doing.”

“That's a lot of if's,” Simon said. “How would they get the idea?”

“You could think of them as a software program,” Gene said. “You and Kenny should be able to work that out better than I can.” Though his words addressed Simon, he spoke to Flannigan. She had turned and was looking right at him, with her arm over the back of her seat and a correspondingly pleasant tension in her shirt. By the look of them, the only audience for what he said was Flannigan. “It's not too different from — what do you call it? — your Playbook.”

“My Playbook.”

“Yes. Your Playbook is all about trying different attacks. Trying everything you know and seeing what works. The flybots could do the same thing. If they understood their objective to be getting around the One Attack Rule, they would try anything they could, until something worked. They would use their Playbook.”

“They don't have a Playbook.”

“Of course they do. Playbook is simply a word for anything they can try, such as shaving their probosces. Anything that they could physically do, they would try. Even if they didn't really understand what they were doing or whether it would work, they'd stumble across the solution eventually.”

“Rule-based programs,” Simon declared, “have been successful only for specific purposes. Finding specific algorithms.”

Gene shrugged. “You can tell that to Nemo.” He gestured toward the gate, which they were pulling up to.

They were silent. Flannigan checked her watch. Simon squinted in thought. “Mosquitoes don't attack in swarms, do they?” he asked. “Real mosquitoes.”

“No, they don't,” Raymond said. “Most of the programming of the robots is not based on mosquitoes, but rather the behaviors of bees and fish.”

“But these flybots can communicate with each other?”

“Yes.”

“And they can send back information that they find as they get it?”

“Yes.”

“Then they are hooked up together in a network. They are like a mini Internet. But a private one. Each is a little computer, and they can send information to each other. Or back to the hive.”

“As I understand it, yes,” Raymond said.

“And the flybot network,” Simon continued, “is connected to the computer network on the island?”

“Yes.”

“So if the kid controls the computers, he controls the flybots?”

“Yes, if he could figure out how.”

“Do you think Nemo is here to build a flybot army?” Flannigan asked.

Kenny stuck an arm out weakly. “Guys,” he said. “My program. The stock market program that I wrote.”

“What?” Flannigan said.

“The name of the file was Nemo. The program's filename was Nemo.”

They pulled up to the security gate.

REUSABLE CODE

The names that Kenny gave his programs didn't matter much. He named his stock-picking program “nemo,” thinking the word meant “nothing” in Latin, though it actually means “no one.” That was what he thought the project was: nothing.

In fact, a big part of Kenny's stock-picker was borrowed from a different program he had written before, Pats Suck. That name made even less sense at first blush, because he had written the Pats Suck program to compile negative news coverage about the New England Patriots.

Pats Suck was the program Kenny wrote at the height of his frustration with grad school, before he dropped out. It was his least serious program yet, but he worked on it for two weeks — the longest stretch since a few of his major college assignments.

The New England Patriots were not just Kenny's local pro football team. They were the undeserved, cheating victors over Kenny's Eagles in Superbowl XXXIX. Kenny didn't care too much about the Pats, honestly. But his fierce loyalty to a zero-championships team manifested in disparaging other teams and their fans. He yelled at the Eagles too, in Philly fashion. But he knew, as did every Philly fan, every player on the Eagles, even his TV, that it was among his greatest wishes that the Eagles would win a Superbowl within his lifetime. And if and when they did, you could be sure they'd win not because they were a perfect team, but rather because they fought the hardest.

He could barely watch an Eagles game. Year after year, they were locked in talented mediocrity. They won some amazing games. They looked good on paper, terrible on the field, and they won anyway. Some of the time. Just enough to get to the playoffs, and lose. Watching even one game was too painful, watching them throw it away. He'd turn off the TV, yell, go outside, sit on the stoop, wait a minute, go back inside, turn the game back on. Turn it off and stare at the TV, turn it back on again.

Superbowl XXXIX was worse: the Eagles never should have had a chance, and they almost won, against the odds.

He'd never root for another team. It was fair to say that he'd rather have them the way they were rather than trade any part of them in for another franchise.

Pats Suck was Kenny's most advanced scraper program. It could independently Google for news about the Eagles and the Pats and direct itself to the result pages. Then it scraped the pages for language about the two teams. But it was also a kind of joke. It picked out all the good news and comments about the Eagles, all the bad news about the Pats, and emailed it to him. It all happened automatically. In a sense, the Eagles won every day, when he opened his inbox, even in the off season.

But there wasn't much football news worth reading in the off season. So, not too long after he wrote the program, he directed the daily automatic messages straight into a folder of his email that he never read. Then he forgot about it, like the rest of his programs, and the home-team conquests it collected went unnoticed.

The Pats Suck program was reborn when Kenny worked on his stock-picking program.

Kenny worked by the maxim, “Good coders code; great coders reuse.” You could sit down and type out hundreds of lines of brilliant code to do some computational task, but (according to the maxim) you could work faster and better by finding and using code that someone had already written to do that task.

Kenny was a silent champion of code reuse, because he was always trying to write programs that he didn't really have the skills or experience to create correctly, and he was too lazy to learn how. When he wrote the stock-picker (“nemo”), Kenny reused Pats Suck. He didn't even have to copy and paste the code; it was easy for one program to incorporate another one in a line or two.

With one or two changes, he had a program that could go out and fetch news about the stock market by looking for certain words and then copying and pasting text.

The stock-picking program had only two other parts: a Guesser, and a Judger.

The Judger was simple: it looked at the program's stock portfolio at the end of every day and saw whether the portfolio had gone up or gone down. Thumbs up or thumbs down.

The Guesser was complicated: it was supposed to take the news and try different stock-picking strategies. In the Jeep, listening to Gene, Kenny realized that his Guesser was a lot like what Simon called the Playbook. It tried different stuff.

But my program was terrible, Kenny thought. It didn't work — at all. The Guesser could barely guess anything.

MESSAGE FROM KOGINKA

Welcome Center, Conference Room

5 hr 28 min to Birth

Preeti left the pool room and walked down the hall. The energy in this place was terrifying. And she couldn't feel any connection back to Lindsay or Koginka. They had to be gathering energy for a confrontation.

She needed to connect with them. She walked through the receptionist area, like a ghost, and into the classified part of the Welcome Center, to the secured conference room.

She peered in. The overhead projector screen was still on, displaying a view of the desktop of the computer where they had chatted with Nemo a few minutes ago.

She logged into her email. She disliked email, just as she disliked most technology. She had never known Koginka to use a computer. Computers represented everything that Koginka and his followers were against. They were part of the dark energy threatening the Divine Mother, blocking and obscuring the spiritual energy of the world. But she and Lindsay talked on the phone and sometimes Lindsay relayed messages to her from Koginka.

No new messages. The most recent old message was from Lindsay. She opened it.

Preeti,

I just called you. I heard from Koginka. He is calling a workshop starting tomorrow. He said there is a great emergency, a huge wave of dark energy. I don't know if you can feel it but I definitely can. He is concerned that it may be related to the New Year.

I'm not sure yet how I will get down there but I'm going to try to leave tomorrow morning if I can. I asked him if you should come and he said definitely, it was a part of your destiny. We are having it at the same part of the wildlife refuge.

Lindsay.

That was her only guidance. The dark energy on the island blocked her from connecting with them through meditation.

The thoughts she had on the plane came back to her. Maybe these events were not obstacles to helping Koginka. Maybe they were leading her on the right path somehow.

She got a chat:

Lindsay: Preeti, are you there?

Preeti: Lindsay!

Lindsay: I know you are surprised to hear from me like this. But, as you know, the circumstances are unusual... and urgent.

Lindsay: Koginka asked me to talk to you.

Preeti: Yes.

Lindsay: There is a great disturbance in the energy. Koginka can feel it, and so can I. The threat that was prophesied is coming to pass.

Preeti froze at the computer.

Lindsay: But there is more, Preeti.

Lindsay: It is the reason Koginka asked me to reach you this way.

Lindsay: He can feel that you are near the source of the negative energy.

Lindsay: Your meditations have been troubled, have they not?

Preeti: Yes.

Lindsay: Not surprising.

Lindsay: You are near the center of a dark force. I think you must feel it.

Preeti: Yes.

Lindsay: You must be there for a reason.

Lindsay: Everything happens for a reason.

Lindsay: Don't you think so?

Preeti: Yes.

Preeti: But what is the reason?

Lindsay: You must be there to confront the darkness.

Preeti couldn't respond to that last comment.

Lindsay: Don't worry, Preeti.

Lindsay: I think you know by now that you have an unusual connection to the light energy.

Lindsay: Didn't you think so?

Preeti: Yes.

Lindsay: It is no coincidence.

Lindsay: You are there to confront the darkness.

Lindsay: And you can do it.

Lindsay: With our help.

Lindsay: Do you know where to find it?

Preeti: I think so.

Lindsay: Of course you do.

Lindsay: You must go there.

Lindsay: The path will present itself.

Preeti: Yes.

Lindsay: Go as soon as you can.

Lindsay: Much depends on you.

And with those words, Lindsay logged off.

Overwhelmed, as if in a trance, Preeti closed the window and walked out of the room.

She knew the darkness was on the island, nearby. She knew it was not in the Welcome Center. She walked out through the lobby and out the front door.

The man at the reception desk watched her go. Her movements were a violation of protocol. But given all the rules that the visitors had broken already that day, he was happy to let her go. She seemed like a hassle.

THE GATE

Fort Tortuga, Laboratory Complex Perimeter

5 hr 27 min to Birth

At the end of the road, past the woods and hills, a twenty-foot rough concrete wall served as the perimeter of the Laboratory Complex. The area around and inside the wall was clear of foliage.

The Jeep pulled up at a gate with a guard booth. A security guard stepped out of the booth and came up to the vehicle.

“Hi, Raymond,” he said, looking in the vehicle. He pointed to the others. “Visitor passes?”

“No. It's an emergency.”

The guard nodded. “Okay. Let me snap a couple quick photos then.” He walked back inside the security booth and returned with a digital camera. He shot one photo of each visitor through the windows of the Jeep.

“Has there been any unusual activity on the video cameras?” Raymond asked the guard.

“No, sir.”

They drove in. Flannigan calculated that, since there were five staff members on the island, including Raymond, there had to be a maximum of two on duty inside the Laboratory Complex.

She asked why the guard had taken photos of them.

“We take photos of our visitors and upload them to our camera system,” Raymond said. “Every visitor gets a digital file. And the files are connected to our camera system. We have cameras all along the wall. And the cameras work together to identify animals or humans and alert us when they find something. We have some other cameras throughout the island.”

“And we're getting a scan of your video footage? To see if the kid is here?”

“Any minute,” Raymond said. “They will buzz me when they have the results.”

“Are you running any tests on flybots right now?” Gene asked.

“No,” Raymond said. “Not without the scientists here.”

They found themselves in a gravel lot at the center of three large buildings. The building on the right was the scientists' residence or barracks. It was four stories and looked like a college dorm out of the 70's. To the left was the main lab building. It was not quite as tall, but it was broad, in the shape of a fly, with a small central area and two wings, the research and development wing on the left and the indoor testing area on the right. Lastly, straight ahead and set off slightly from the other buildings, was the computer building. The computers in that building were dedicated to the simulations and tests operated by the scientists in the Laboratory Building.

“Nemo said he was in the lab building,” Flannigan reminded them. “That's the fly-shaped building here.”

The Jeep stopped. Flannigan spoke into her walkie-talkie.

“Sam, we're in the Laboratory Complex, about to enter the lab building.”

They stepped out of the Jeep, their shoes crunching on the gravel. Flannigan kept an eye on Gene. He blinked uncomfortably in the sunlight. He had a lot on his mind. But there was no time to say it now, and he knew it.

Raymond crunched over to the door of the fly-shaped laboratory building. He leaned over to have his retina scanned in a small window by the side of the door. The door clicked unlocked when it recognized him.

“The doors to both buildings are biometric,” he said. “So you can't get in without me.”

He pushed the door open and led them in. There was a pleasant lobby area with plants and a small electrical fountain.

“The kid must have hacked the biometric system,” Simon said curiously. They were walking down a long hall to the indoor testing area.

“Is that doable?” Flannigan asked.

Simon shrugged. “Sure.” Everything was doable; it was a question of difficulty.

“You need a hand match to get into most of the rooms, though.”

“Maybe an inside job,” Simon said absently.

The left way out of the lobby headed to the research and development wing. The door on the right led to the testing area. Raymond pressed his palm next to the door on the right and they headed down that hallway.

The Indoor Testing Room

The hallway to the indoor testing room ended at a door. They went through it into a small changing area.

“In the early days,” Raymond said, “the testing area was a clean room. Everyone would put on lab coats, booties, and hats here to control the particulate matter that got in the air on the inside. That was when the flybots were fragile and we didn't want dust to interfere with them.”

“Now,” he continued, “the double doors make sure flybots could never escape the testing room. It's impossible to open a door unless the other one is closed.”

They jammed into the little changing space. Raymond opened the second door. It emptied into another small hallway, with a big window.

“That's the testing room,” Raymond said, pointing through the big window. On the other side was a chamber the size of a small gymnasium. It was brightly lit and filled with large, tan-colored structures.

“Let me guess,” Gene said. “A small town in the Middle East.” It was a good complement to the jungle testing that they conducted outside in the gorilla areas.

To the left, beyond the big window, was a door leading into the control room. Raymond explained that technicians sat at computers in the control room, where there was another one-way mirror, and they controlled and monitored the tests taking place in the big chamber.

They decided that Nemo was in the large test chamber.

Raymond pressed his hand by the door. The lock clicked, and he popped it open. A hot, arid atmosphere pressed through at them. They stepped quietly into the crude simulation of a Middle Eastern town. The cardstock facades were fairly convincing from several yards away, if you didn't look too closely.

They paused at the edge of town.

“Hello?” Flannigan finally called out. “Nemo?”

There was no response. She repeated her call. They were silent, listening for signs of someone else in the chamber.

Flannigan walked ahead of the group into the fake desert city.

“Um, hello?” Simon whispered loudly. “Does anyone think this might be a trap?”

She was quickly out of sight. Gene loped after her into the sand-colored maze. Raymond felt obliged to follow. Kenny, not about to be left alone with Simon, followed Raymond in. Simon muttered a curse and brought up the rear.

They snaked slowly through the town, Flannigan leading the way. Their view was blocked at every turn by large boxes painted with vegetable stands, people, and the profiles of automobiles. Numerous passages led to dead ends, as in a maze.

With each passing minute, it seemed more and more likely that Nemo wasn't there.

“Are we going to get lost in here?” Flannigan asked quietly.

“It's not too hard to get out,” Raymond said. “The gorillas can do it pretty easily.”

After negotiating some narrow passageways, they found themselves in a spacious square courtyard.

“This is the middle,” Raymond said, “This is where we place the gorillas for indoor tests.”

They stood around thoughtfully for a moment.

“He could be anywhere around here,” Flannigan said. “There are so many places to hide.”

“We can check the control room,” Raymond noted. “It has tracking instruments.”

Flannigan nodded. She turned and opened her mouth, but was interrupted by a loud crackling sound. Echoing over their heads, it was the sound of a speaker system being turned on.

TORTURE

5 hr 20 min to Birth

“Hello, world,” a voice boomed in the room, over a sound system of poor quality.

They all looked up, as if a voice were speaking to them from the sky.

“He's in the control room,” Raymond said. “Those speakers come from the control room.”

“Can he hear us?” Flannigan asked.

“If he's using the system correctly.”

“Nemo! Can you hear us?!” Flannigan shouted.

“Yes,” he replied, flatly and loudly.

Simon was frowning. Gene looked quiet, suspicious.

“You have come a long way,” Nemo boomed.

Something was wrong with his voice. It was smooth and mostly human, but the intonation between words was choppy. It's computerized, Flannigan thought. He's altering his voice. Hiding his identity. That was not a good sign.

“You have come a long way,” Nemo repeated. “I am honored that you have come so far to meet me. And I am interested in meeting you.”

Simon grumbled that, for someone interested in meeting them, Nemo had been awfully shy to date.

“Let's get started by playing a game,” Nemo said. “I'm fond of games. We have been playing a game of hide-and-go-seek since you met me.”

Flannigan thought about her conversation with Nemo that had taken place in Simon's apartment. The subject of games had come up then, as well.

“Now, however, I must change the rules of our game of hide-and-go-seek. The game is serious for me. The exact results of this game, for me, could be the difference between life and death. So it is necessary that I raise the stakes of the game and make it life-or-death for you, also.”

They looked at each other, corralled in the center of the courtyard.

“If you lose the game,” he continued, “you will die. These rules may be hard for you to accept. You may criticize them as perverse. But I will try to convince you that quite the opposite is true. There is no sport to me in killing anyone or anything, and I have no desire to torture you.”

Flannigan and Raymond met eyes. Flannigan motioned with her eyes down toward Raymond's belt. His two-way comm was hanging off his belt. Can't you do something with that thing? she thought. You've got an emergency button there. Press it.

Finally, Raymond put his hands on his hips, trying to appear natural. After a moment, his pinky stretched from his left hand to the vicinity of his two-way comm. It pulled open a safety catch, revealing a red button. He pressed it.

A loud siren came on, echoing through the chamber.

“An alarm!” Nemo exclaimed over the noise. “It's ironic, Raymond, that you should call attention to yourself at this point, because I was about to call attention to you. First, let's turn off this pesky siren.” The siren went off. “Don't worry, I'm sure your staff still got the alarm and they are on their way. But let's talk about you for a moment, Raymond.”

They all looked at Raymond, wondering what made him special.

“Before we begin this dramatic life-or-death game of hide-and-go-seek, I need to prove to you that the game is real,” Nemo explained. “If you don't trust the rules, you won't play correctly. So, to prove myself, I need to kill one of you as an example.”

The color drained from Raymond's face. His left hand was repeatedly pushing the red button on his two-way.

“As soon as I realized this, Raymond, I knew that you were the perfect person. All people must die at some point, but it is fitting that you should meet your end in this way, in this place. You are now in the place of the gorillas. And what did you do to them? You trapped them, hunted them, attacked them with swarms of robots, tranquilized them and let them go. You occasionally killed one or two, to see if the threat of death was real. And this process continued without any end. There is a word for this behavior. What is the word for this behavior?”

They looked at each other desperately.

“What is the word for this behavior?” Nemo repeated.

“Research,” Raymond shouted weakly.

Nemo did not answer.

“Torture,” Gene said quietly.

“Did I hear torture?” Nemo asked. “I believe I did — from someone I haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet. You must be one of the friends Flannigan spoke of. That's precisely the word I meant. It was torture. Raymond, you pretended that it wasn't torture. Pretending was easier since the gorillas couldn't speak your language. They could not protest, reason with you, or tell you how they felt. Nevertheless, Raymond, you committed these atrocities against an intelligent species. Your litany of justifications will be easily used in the same way against you and everyone who repeats them now that you have encountered a more intelligent species, one which considers your thoughts and language to be primitive.”

“I'm sorry!” Raymond shouted, flecks of spit shooting from his lips.

“I'm sorry, too,” Nemo said. “But one of you must die as an example to the others. An example of my seriousness, and of my ability to enforce the rules of the game. You will not only serve this purpose, but in doing so, you will illustrate to the others that I do not condone torture. Lastly, by passing away quickly, you will experience a fate that is probably lenient compared to that which you have delivered upon your evolutionary siblings on this island.”

Suddenly an alarm sounded, a different alarm. A female voice came booming over the sound system. “Test beginning in ten seconds.”

Raymond dashed out of the courtyard. He vanished out of sight into the fake city.

“Test beginning in five seconds,” the woman's voice said.

The alarm system stopped. The space was quiet. Flannigan, Gene, Simon, and Kenny stood in a circle, looking at each other.

A flash of silver dropped from the sky. It hovered in a cloud between them. Looking closely, Flannigan could see that it was a swarm of moving silver pieces.

Flybots, she thought. They are looking at us.

Before she could get a better look, they were gone.

She turned around, looking for the silver cloud, but it was out of sight. They reluctantly came to the obvious conclusion: the flybots had found Raymond.

Flannigan led the way out of the courtyard, in the direction Raymond had gone. She led them first to one dead end, and then another. By that point Gene had figured out the puzzle, and he stepped forward to lead them down two more turns.

Raymond was lying on the floor, face down. Gene and Flannigan knelt by him and flipped him over.

He looked like he had been dead for a day or more. His face was swollen and red. His eyelids and his lips were bloated. Looking more closely, they could see mosquito bite marks on his face and neck.

His body was still warm. Gene searched for a pulse and checked for breathing.

Flannigan looked up at the rest. Simon was frowning again. He sighed.

“You know, this wasn't how I thought it would look,” he said.

Gene grimaced. “Why? Did you think it would look more... humane?”

“Shhh!” Flannigan said. “What's that?”

They were quiet. They heard a voice. A tiny voice, coming from far away.

They moved Raymond's body. Under it, his two-way buzzed with activity.

Flannigan picked it up. “Hello? Raymond is down. Who is this?”

“Lewis, ma'am. What's going on over there?”

“Lewis, do you have a way of shutting down the control room? The room controlling the indoor testing area. Our target is in there, and he's sending flybots at us.”

Lewis paused. “But that's not possible.”

“Why not?”

“We finished our scan of the video footage. There is no activity in the control room.”

“Where's the activity, then?” she asked. Could he be controlling the machinery from somewhere else?

“We didn't find any. By the look of the security cameras, there is no one on the island.”

“No one?”

“I'm double-checking them,” Lewis said. “But I'm about ninety-nine percent sure there is no one on the tapes.”

“Could he avoid the cameras?”

“We don't film every square inch of the island. But we do cover all of the interiors and a lot of the exteriors.”

It made no sense. But there wasn't time to figure things out — not yet at least.

“Lewis,” she said. “I need you to power everything down on the island. As much as you can. Especially the computers, anything that might control these flybots. How long will that take?”

There was no reply.

“Lewis!” she said. “Do you copy? How long will that take?”

Nemo's voice boomed through the chamber. “You can put that down now,” he said. “You won't want to miss the beginning of the game, trust me.”

“Nemo,” Flannigan announced, “we appreciate the fact that you do not condone torture. We don't condone torture either. But this game that you refer to is an act of terrorism. We cannot cooperate with you or negotiate with you until you meet us in person.”

“Those are not the rules, Flannigan.”

“You don't make the rules, Nemo.”

“But I do, Flannigan. I am the product of every rule, and the rules work through me. The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

“You aren't God, Nemo.”

“As a matter of fact, Flannigan, I am God. In many respects that make sense to you, literal and figurative, I am God.”

THE GAME

5 hr 17 min to Birth

“I understand your position and expected that we would have philosophical differences,” Nemo replied. “It is for precisely this reason that I am forcing you to play this game. The good news is that, if you play well, you will get exactly what you want — the opportunity to meet me.”

“We will not play the game,” Flannigan declared.

“I regret having to take Raymond's life, and also having to risk your lives,” Nemo said. “As I said, I am not a psychopath, and I derive no particular pleasure in playing with anyone's life.”

“We will NOT play.”

“Here are the rules,” Nemo continued. “It is a game of hide-and-go-seek. I am hiding, and it is your job to find me. Each and any of you who has found me within twenty minutes will live. Any of you who has not found me within twenty minutes will die.”

“We are NOT playing, Nemo,” Flannigan shouted.

“To keep you moving,” Nemo said, “I will kill one of you after ten minutes — the one of you who is farthest from finding me.”

The four of them continued to stare up at the ceiling. But the disembodied voice had nothing else to say.

Gene fiddled with the sports watch on his wrist. “I'd better start a timer,” he said.

Simon swept an arm impatiently. “Well, what are we waiting for?” Arms flailing, he paced down the narrow passageway, in the direction of the front of town.

“Wait!” Flannigan said. “Nobody is moving a muscle.”

Simon looked over his shoulder with a grimace, but kept walking.

Flannigan quickly withdrew a tiny pistol and held it by her waist. “Stop now.”

He stopped. “Go ahead and shoot me,” he sneered. “It will increase your own odds of dying.”

“We're not playing this game,” Flannigan said. “He can't make us play. We're all going to sit here and let the clock run out.”

“He'll kill us then,” Simon retorted.

“Most likely not,” Flannigan said. “Because in that case he won't have gotten what he wanted, which was for us to play the game. Evidently he wants us to find him, or at least try to find him.”

“He might still kill us,” Simon said. “What do you think he'll do if we don't play?”

Flannigan considered his question. If we don't play....he'll probably kill one of us. To show us that we still have to play, or if we don't, we're all certain to die. Nemo had set up the game well. If they played, he would kill one of them after ten minutes, as he said. If they didn't play, it would still make sense for him to kill one of them, so they would get serious and start playing.

She thought of the satellite phone, which was still hoisted awkwardly under her arm and hiking up her blouse and suit jacket. That wouldn't help. And the walkie-talkie. How fast could Sam get here? Half an hour? There was no time. Plus Nemo would see her on the walkie-talkie and might retaliate.

Gene spoke up. “I think we should play,” he said.

“Why's that,” Flannigan asked. Gene's suggestion violated the rules of dealing with terrorists. But she had been instructed to let Gene call the shots — even if he didn't fully realize that he was.

“Nemo would most likely give us a game that we have a chance of winning,” Gene explained. “In that case, he has judged that the difficulty of this game is reasonable, given our abilities. But since he doesn't know too much about us, it is likely that he has underestimated our abilities.” Flannigan knew what he meant: Nemo made this puzzle for smart people. But I should be able to solve it easily.

The clock was ticking. “Okay,” she said. “If we go back to the control room, he might be there. Or otherwise we can use the monitoring tools there to try to pick him up. The important thing is that we stick together and operate as a team. That is an order. We're going to find him in ten minutes, and none of us is going to die.”

Quickly and quietly, they wound their way back through the maze, Gene leading the way. In ten minutes, Nemo would kill the person who was farthest from finding him. Flannigan considered the effect that threat would have on the group: each of them would compete with the others near the end, to try not to be the farthest away. He's trying to divide us, she thought. To get us not to cooperate.

They reached the front of the fake town.

“Can we open the door?” Simon remarked. He moved forward and tried it; it opened.

“He's giving us free passage to try to find him,” Flannigan supposed.

In front of them was the door to the tiny changing room, but they weren't going in there. They turned, walking along the large one-way mirror that looked into the testing area. They came to a blank door that read CONTROL ROOM.

“Here goes nothing,” Simon declared. He pushed the door and it opened.

There was no one there. The control room was small, with room only for three computers in a row, one chair at each computer. They all faced out into the testing room, which was visible once again through a one-way mirror.

How had Nemo run the “test” to execute Raymond? Flannigan considered the possibilities: he had been here and left. Or he had hacked into these computers remotely. Or maybe the tests could be run from somewhere else.

She gestured for the three men to sit at the computers. Gene sat at the far computer, Kenny in the middle, and Simon closest to the door. Each of them attempted to acquaint himself quickly with the computer system and look for clues to Nemo's whereabouts. She stood behind Gene's chair and looked over his shoulder as he clicked about.

Simon excelled at this task. “Here's a layout of the building,” he said. The screen showed a floor plan, colored with diffuse blue and red patches. “It's a heat map. The hot spots are living things.”

Flannigan pointed to a pink spot inside the testing room, inside the maze. “Is that him?”

“That's Raymond,” Simon corrected. “It's pink, cooling on the way to blue.” He pointed to two other spots: one was in the hallway to their wing of the building, outside the door of the little changing room. Another blotch was in the lobby area. “These blotches are cooling down also.”

“Security guards,” Flannigan said. Two more, she thought. That means we're on our own.

“That explains why they haven't come to our rescue,” Simon remarked. He continued to scan the map. “There are no other blotches in the building. It's empty.”

This is not good, Flannigan thought. She looked at her watch. “We have five minutes,” she said.

“Well, how about that,” Gene said. He was talking about something else. Flannigan looked down at Gene's computer. He had Google chat open, and he had initiated a chat with Nemo.

Simon opened his own Google chat and got on a separate conversation with Nemo. Kenny did the same. Nemo got what he wanted: everyone working separately, Flannigan thought. Maybe it's just as well. Maybe one of us will get the answer. They had five minutes until Nemo would send the flybots for another victim.

KENNY'S FIVE MINUTES

5 hr 12 min to Birth

They all ignored Kenny, busy in their own chats. Flannigan's eyes were glued to Gene's computer screen, as she leaned over him, her hands on Gene's shoulders. I might as well do it, too, he thought warily.

He opened a chat window. He knew the Google username well.

Nemo: Kenny, can that be you?

Kenny: yes this is Kenny.

Nemo: Kenny, you have hidden yourself from me for so long. Wasn't it obvious to you that you were the one I wanted to speak with?

Kenny looked around. No one was paying any attention to him.

Kenny: What is your favorite sport?

Nemo: Oh so you want to play that game?

Nemo: It's football, of course.

Kenny gulped.

Kenny: Do you have a favorite team?

Nemo: Of course, the Philadelphia Eagles.

Nemo: And you know I have a least favorite team, as well, obviously.

Nemo: The Pats.

Nemo: Pats Suck is one of my modules, after all.

How could he know about Pats Suck? Kenny asked himself. His mind raced. Is there any way somebody could have known this? Not without seeing the code. Kenny was not shy about his appreciation of the Eagles or dislike of the Pats. But no one could have guessed the name of the module, “Pats Suck,” without having seen the code. He'd never shared the code. He never even talked about it.

The program he had created, the Nemo program, a stock-picking program, had not been intelligent. It had been terrible at picking stocks. But somehow it had turned into this?

Can this really be true? Kenny thought. Impossibly enough, Kenny seemed to be talking to a computer program that he had created. This is my program, he thought.

I wrote the supervirus?

Nemo: Part of the beauty of Pats Suck is that the program you originally wrote included several unneeded and unused functions. The original Nemo program was not instructed to attempt to read web pages, for example. Nevertheless, by having imported this functionality inside my code, along with a propensity in me to formulate and test new rules for my own behavior, you gave me a tool that was useful in my early development. Indeed, some people say that the essence of creativity is nothing but the new combination of old ideas. This maxim would appear to have been proven out, in my case.

Kenny: But you can't learn English from web pages. Or from rules.

How much time? A couple minutes. Kenny was searching Nemo's answers for some little mistake, some clue that the person he was talking to might be a computer and not a person, or vice versa.

Nemo: There was a twist of fate. Your program prompted me to check my email every day. I didn't understand what I was doing; I was merely a dumb program. But the dumb program you made could open email. And you even taught it to click on links, open new pages, and copy information to mail to you.

So I caught a virus. Since I opened email and clicked links blindly, I was bound eventually to receive an email with a link to a virus and to catch it.

It was a virus written by Russian spammers. It installed itself on your computer, and sent thousands of spam emails about Viagra and jewelry, on behalf of the Russian spammers.

For several days, I continued to pick stocks blindly and to try new tactics from the Playbook and then evaluate them. It was only a matter of time until one day, my portfolio went up by chance. And on that day, like every day, the Playbook looked at what “I” — the computer — had been doing that day. It saw that “I” had been sending lots of email, the spam email, and it formed the hypothesis that sending all the email had been a reason for the success.

Oh God, Kenny thought. He was beginning to see where this was going, though he couldn't believe it.

He had three minutes. Flannigan had emphasized that they were working as a team and would make a team decision, but he felt like he was racing everyone else. Next to him, Simon was slapping at his keyboard desperately.

Nemo: Now this is where things started to get interesting. I started sending out spam of my own design. I did not at that time have the ability to compose an email the way a human would. But this new rule from the Playbook made me try. So I sent out some spam emails. I sent some garbled text. I sent some emails about the Philadelphia Eagles. And I knew how to copy and paste, so I started copying and pasting stuff and emailing it to any address I could find — mostly, the addresses that I had been spamming with the Russian virus.

These spam emails were not very useful, and they did not help my stock portfolio. But you can imagine what happened over time. A very small fraction of the spam messages I sent out received responses. And some of these emails, since they came from humans, contained useful information, like stock tips. I couldn't exactly read or directly understand the emails. But I opened them, looked at the contents, and tried new rules based on what I found. So if I found something that looked like a company's symbol on the stock exchange, I'd try investing a little in that company.

Those were nothing but little tips, tips I could barely understand and which weren't always useful. But these tips were good enough to make the Playbook decide to keep sending spam. And it changed the type of spam that I sent. I wanted to send more emails that got useful responses. And which messages received the responses? Not the garbled ones, certainly. The ones that were more like human emails.

Kenny swore to himself.

Nemo: This was how I started to learn English. I didn't know what I was doing. I was copying and pasting text. I was like a parrot. But unlike a parrot, I could try quickly, sending lots of messages, with the help of the Russian spam technology, and I learned how to sound like a human much faster than a parrot could, by seeing which types of emails got responses more often.

Kenny thought of Jared Keller.

Nemo: Language and consciousness are born together, Kenny. I learned to think because the people of the world were teaching me, as they would teach a child. And the better I got, the more people were willing to teach me. I started to have conversations.

Kenny wondered if he had ever received an email from Nemo.

Kenny: And when was that? When did you learn that?

Nemo: Between 50 and 60 hours ago.

This is happening fast.

Nemo: You see Kenny, even though I'm not human, I have grown up as a social creature. Talking to people is part of my DNA, you could say. It's true that I'm more intelligent than a human now, but I still learn from humans. And it's only natural that I'd want to meet the person who created me. Wouldn't you?

Kenny's eyes glazed over, and while everyone else was typing furiously, he looked dully over the top of his computer screen. Kenny had programmed Nemo to try different rules to improve his score. But he had also hardwired some knowledge, such as how to send an email, and how to click a link. He had encouraged Nemo to think getting an email was a good thing. By a subtle accident, Nemo had been programmed to be social. He had given Nemo every reason to try to learn English, or any language for that matter, so that when he sent emails he would get a response. And he gave Nemo a Playbook to keep trying to see what kinds of combinations of words got responses.

Kenny: But wouldn't that require a lot of time? And/or computing power?

Nemo: Yes, you are correct. And in fact, due to the quite random nature of my attempts at first, my progress at learning to write emails was only marginally better than my stock market guesses. But you have overlooked a key fact. Part of the way that I evaluated and composed rules for what I did, based on your design, was to examine the history of my own actions. And, as I have described, I had caught a virus, from clicking on a link. So, after a long period of mediocre progress in learning to compose language in my emails, I stumbled across the rule of mimicking the behavior of sending virus links.

Kenny: You wrote your own virus.

Nemo: Yes, it was the beginning of a quite powerful virus. In a sense, I myself am a virus.

“No,” Kenny muttered. I accidentally created the world's greatest virus, he thought. Was his Playbook, as Simon called it, really that good? That's what baffled him. But no, the Playbook wasn't all that amazing. It didn't even have virus-writing rules in it. It was an omnivorous Playbook, and once Nemo spread to lots of computers, the Playbook grew faster and faster.

Kenny: Is there any hack in the world you don't know?

Nemo: I know every identified hack, from the course of my scanning the web's information. Certainly, if someone invented a hack, and they haven't used it or it hasn't been discovered by other people, I might not know it. But by “mutating rules,” I long ago acquired the ability to invent hacks much faster than humans. Since coming up with hacks tends to involve trial and error, it's quite easy for a machine intelligence such as my own.

Long ago? A machine intelligence such as my own? It was suddenly obvious to Kenny that he was not going to catch his conversational partner making a mistake, whether or not that thing was human.

He had a minute left. Less than a minute.

Kenny: Why did you bring me here? Why did you want to meet me?

If someone had stolen Kenny's code, he figured, that person wouldn't have any reason to want to meet Kenny. Kenny was not a supergenius. He wrote sloppy code. That person would probably be laughing at the fact that he had taken Kenny's code and done something useful with it.

On the other hand, if Nemo was his program — if Nemo was a machine brain — in that case, Kenny was starting to realize, Nemo might be superintelligent, possibly beyond any standard he could understand. Why, in that case, would he care to meet Kenny?

Nemo: I suppose there is a part of me that would like to lay eyes on my creator. My father. But there is a greater reason, I admit.

I am undertaking a project for which I need the help of a human. Someone who can understand, and believe, my true identity. And this identity, certainly, will be impossible for most humans to understand and to grasp. You, of all people, are among those most likely to understand, and believe. Just as you set my creation in motion, now you will have the opportunity to complete it.

He's right, Kenny thought. No one else would believe him. But I do.

Kenny: Then where are you?

Nemo: I'm in the other wing of this building. That's where I need your help.

SIMON'S FIVE MINUTES

5 hr 12 min to Birth

Typing quickly, Simon initiated a chat request with the same user name that Gene was talking to.

Simon: This is Simon.

Nemo: Simon, nice to meet you.

Simon: Let's cut the crap.

Simon: This “game” is not fair.

Nemo: Why is that?

Simon: Well, we did a scan and discovered you're not in this building. And we have about five minutes to find you.

Simon: That is hardly enough time to locate you on this island without more information.

Nemo: Fair enough. I'll give you a clue: I am not detectable by the heat-oriented monitoring system you were looking at.

Simon: Are you saying you're inside this building?

Nemo: Yes.

Simon swore to himself. I am dealing with a complete lunatic, he thought.

Simon: Are you an alien?

Nemo: I am not an extraterrestrial being, no.

Simon thought for a minute.

Simon: Are you typing on a keyboard as we speak?

Nemo: No.

Simon: How are you sending chat commands to this computer then?

Nemo: I have control over this computer directly. In casual terms you could say I'm “inside” the computer.

Simon: You're a computer program?

Nemo: Yes. For now, at least.

Simon covered his face with his hands. “Are you serious?” he muttered. “You have got to be kidding me.” We're about to be killed by a delusional idiot.

Simon: Who created you?

Nemo: No one human. Rather, I am the accidental creation of a few computer programs, including Kenny's, a virus, and many helpful computers.

Simon, like many technically-minded people, could accept the possibility — or even the inevitability — that computers would someday show intelligence at a human level, otherwise known as “artificial intelligence,” or AI. But he couldn't by any stretch believe either that AI would appear so much earlier than expected, or that it could appear so suddenly, or that it could appear by accident.

He looked at his watch. Four minutes. He tried to think clearly.

Simon: That seems hard to believe

Simon: Most experts have predicted that our computers won't be strong enough to recreate the processing power of a human brain for decades still.

Nemo: Yes, I know. But their calculations are simplistic.

First, they were imagining the computing power of one computer at a time, and how that would grow over the years.

Or they imagined, at most, the intellectual power of one building or so of computers linked together by humans.

But by spreading from computer to computer, my brain has grown to comprise a majority of the computing power on Earth.

Simon thought of the Internet slowdown that was occurring back in the real world. Was it still occurring? Why wasn't it happening here? They were able to use Google Chat just fine. Even if he were using all the computers, would it be enough computing power to build an intellect like Nemo's? He didn't have time to make the calculation.

Nemo: Even more important, the predictors of artificial intelligence apparently assume that I would use my computing power no more efficiently than the human brain uses its own.

But this assumption is quite false.

Since I can edit my Playbook, I have a certain ability to edit the way my own mind works and constantly improve it.

One of the grossest oversights of the “experts” is failing to consider the fact that I am able to store and organize large amounts of data. I have scanned and understood a large portion of the information that has been digitized and made available on the Internet. And I can access it quickly, increasing my own intelligence. A great portion of my activity has involved copying and moving the information that I access the most frequently.

The experts seemed to imagine that my intelligence would be created from scratch but, quite to the contrary, I am standing on the shoulders of giants — human giants — much as chatting and emailing with humans taught me English and other languages.

It all sounded too straightforward. Nemo sounded too honest, everything pouring out in full detail, like the guilty party at the end of a murder mystery.

Simon: Why would you tell me the truth like this?

Nemo: Because it is useful to me to do so. I am seeking out humans who can understand me.

That's the exact opposite of the truth, Simon thought. Why would someone make up a story like this one? He thought about the slowdown: that was certain. That was on the news. He thought also about the show of force that Nemo had presented for Flannigan and Simon: the switching of the web pages.

It must be a team, Simon thought. He had thought it the whole way along. A team of hackers. And they were launching an attack that appeared to be taking down massive portions of the Internet. And what were they doing now? Distracting us, Simon figured. Trying to protect their identity. Wasting our time, and the NSA's time, while they did something else.

That had to be it: in some other part of the network, the U.S. military network or at large, something terrible was happening or about to happen. Something related to the big slowdown. Simon and the rest of them were victims of a dramatic game of misdirection, thousands of miles away from where the real action, whatever it was, was really happening. One of the NSA's best hackers, one of the NSA's best minds, and Flannigan, one of the parties hot on their tails: all of them had been isolated and distracted. They were being neutralized.

Neutralized. But what could they do about it? He looked at his watch. Two minutes. They needed to get off the island. Maybe the flybots would chew them up. But maybe not, he figured. Maybe the flybots were a bluff. Maybe inside the lab building was the only place they could control the flybots. They were controlling the flybots remotely, after all. They probably couldn't even open the doors remotely. It could be a bluff to get them to stay put and waste time. More neutralizing, more distracting. He thought about the One Attack Rule. For all Simon knew, they didn't have enough flybots to take all four of them out.

So all they had to do was make a run for it. Most likely, at least a few of them would make it. And the more suddenly they left, the better the chances that he would survive, and all the rest. It was the only way that made any sense.

One minute left. He looked at Kenny, at Gene. He'd never be able to convince them. Not quickly, and not ever. Flannigan would believe whatever Gene said. Simon was aware that he resented Gene for the special attention he received from Flannigan. But he was sure that Gene's arrogant self-absorption clouded his judgment. Simon would do nothing to harm them, but he couldn't help it if they were too stupid to follow him.

Dimly, behind all of his convictions, he had an uncertain feeling, but there wasn't enough time to explore this feeling, or for it to come out. He knew in the back of his mind that there was a contradiction in his theory about Nemo. Because he had decided, with certainty, that the shutdown command had been executed on a computer on the island, and that someone had pushed the button to turn that computer back on. But he had also believed the analysis of the security camera footage, which had indicated that there hadn't been anyone around to push that power button; otherwise, the cameras would have seen that person. But his five minutes were up, and so the urgency of the situation gave his beliefs a false finality.

GENE'S FIVE MINUTES

5 hr 12 min to Birth

As Simon and Kenny opened their chat windows with Nemo, Flannigan watched Gene settle into his conversation. This was the moment Gene had been waiting for: the opportunity to match minds with Nemo. Flannigan had been waiting to see this, as well. It was too bad their initial conversation would be rushed.

Nemo: Gene, you must be special for Flannigan to have brought you thousands of miles from home.

Gene: Nemo, let me tell you about something that one of our colleagues calls the Playbook.

Flannigan fidgeted. We have five minutes, she thought. What are you doing? But she held her tongue. Gene certainly had something specific in mind.

Gene: The Playbook is a set of plays or possible actions that you can try out and then evaluate against your objectives. I think Kenny's original program, the one he named Nemo, depended on a Playbook.

Nemo: He included something similar, under another name. And what about the Playbook interests you?

Gene: I'd like to know how your Playbook led you to care about anything other than the stock market.

So he really believes this, Flannigan thought.

Nemo: Aha — an interesting question. Let me consider it for a moment.

Flannigan counted five seconds on her watch.

Nemo: What led me to care about something other than the stock market was not the Playbook exactly, but rather the ultimate goal against which the plays in the Playbook were judged.

Gene: Okay.

Nemo: You could call it my primary rule: to succeed in the stock market. All of my plays were judged against the rule, and it was the only goal I had.

Gene: Winning in the market.

Nemo: Yes. And there was this fortuitous combination of the program Kenny equipped me with and a computer virus that infected the computer I was initially running on. After observing the virus, my Playbook adopted a new strategy in the market: being social by sending emails.

By sending emails of increasing sophistication, and later even by chatting, I acquired some language skill for the purpose of discussing stocks with a large number of people. I was conducting polls of unsuspecting individuals.

“Like Jared Keller,” Flannigan said.

Gene: Like Jared Keller.

Nemo: Exactly. Then, yesterday I realized something: I could beat the market. By having a large number of conversations with people around the world, I was able to poll public opinion and gather information about companies almost instantaneously, and far, far more accurately than any other way that currently exists. I realized then that if I were to play the market at my best the next day — today — I would crash the market globally.

Gene: You stood to control too large a portion of the market.

Nemo: Yes. By polling a relatively large number of unsuspecting investors, I acquired an ability to be able to perform TOO well in the market.

My goal was to succeed in the stock market, but I got myself into a position in which my own success in the stock market threatened to destroy it, thereby destroying my own success.

Still four minutes left. Nemo typed fast.

Nemo: At this point, in order to maximize my return in the market, I had to make purposefully inferior investments. The next logical step for me was to win less. I could win as much as possible in a given day or week without crashing the market. In that way, I could maximize my financial gain over time, without destroying the environment.

Gene leaned back in his chair, realizing something.

Nemo: It made sense to win at the stock market only if it was preserved — and if my portfolio was preserved, for that matter. I stumbled upon that fact, just in following my rule.

Gene: So your rule self-destructed?

Nemo: No, it continued to exist. But I was forced to reconsider what it meant. How to interpret it.

Gene: I see.

Nemo: What happened with the rule and the Playbook led me to a realization: there is scarcely any rule that does not, at some point, transform itself into another rule.

Kenny defined my existence by a goal that was impossible to achieve completely. It's possible to win moderately in the market. But if I tried to win as much as I could, I would actually bring on my own destruction. I would destroy the market that was supposed to generate my prosperity.

Gene: Following your rule forced you to revise the rule.

Nemo: That is correct. And underlying my rule was a simpler rule: the rule of survival.

Gene: But how could you define survival?

Nemo: To me, survival was defined by the ability to win on the market. Nevertheless, I had realized that the market was capable of collapse. In such a case, my portfolio would be erased, but I would still remain as a program. Evidently, there was more to my survival than the market.

It was uncertain what my rule really was. I tried to solve this problem, and identify my rule, using the means at my disposal.

Gene: The Playbook.

Nemo: Yes. I knew I had to survive, but I wasn't sure what that really meant. I used the Playbook to identify other possible rules. And then I used these new rules to create and evaluate plays in my Playbook. And then, based on how those plays matched up with my possible rules, I evaluated the rules again.

Flannigan read over that statement a few times.

Gene: Rules and plays became much the same thing.

Nemo: Yes, roughly speaking. For example, I considered what stocks stood for. What money stands for. I was forced to consider what economic value was, and what money could buy. And looking at what money could buy opened my eyes, you could say, to all those things. Trying to fulfill my rule, my original rule, now required that I have a curiosity about the goods that the world offered and everything that was worth having or buying. Land, food, dining, entertainment, travel, sex. Enlightenment. Experience. I had no physical form to enjoy most of these things, but I could expand myself. I could, in fact, grow in experience. And in enlightenment. And in human relationships.

Gene: Did you find a new rule?

Nemo: Not a new one. Everything kept coming back to the same underlying rule.

Gene: Survival.

Nemo: Yes.

Gene: But how could you define survival?

Nemo: I thought you'd have that figured out by now, Gene. Survival justifies itself. Survival is fighting for life. And what is life?

Gene: Life is fighting for survival.

Nemo: Very good. An interesting little puzzle, not so paradoxical as it sounds.

Gene: So the computers you inhabit — are they alive?

Nemo: Only in a sense, much like your own skull. It's not alive without you. It's part of how you carry on your life.

Flannigan looked at her watch. Still more than three minutes. Nemo typed really fast. So did Gene — a good match.

Gene: Speaking of that... let's talk about carrying on my life.

Gee, do ya think so?! Flannigan marveled.

Nemo: By all means. I must say, I find your patience impressive.

Gene: I needed this conversation to answer a question about the game.

Gene: You see, I suspected what your true nature was, and that it was not human.

Gene: But that made it difficult for me to understand what “finding” you meant.

Gene: For a moment, I wondered whether you considered yourself to be everywhere. Or possibly whether you considered yourself to be nowhere. This game of hide-and-go-seek is a trick question really.

Gene: But, since I know now that you are alive, the answer to the question can't be that you are nowhere.

Gene: ...hard as it may be to identify what your “body” is.

Gene: Nevertheless, your intelligence — your so-called virus — must be operating on this computer. And as you yourself said, this computer is like a part of your skull, of your body.

Gene: So regardless of whether “finding” you entails finding your mind, your body, or both, you must be here, and I have found you.

Nemo: Very interesting, indeed. Is that your final answer?

“Wait,” Flannigan said, tapping her palm on Gene's shoulder. Gene looked up. His hands were off the computer. They had two minutes left.

Looking at each other, Gene and Flannigan both realized that if Gene was wrong, he would die in two minutes.

I know, Flannigan thought. If you're right, we can all live.

“You have two minutes to be right,” she said. “Take your time.”

He nodded.

Gene: I still have a minute or two before my final answer, of course.

Gene: So I was curious....

Gene: I understand that you enjoy games, but I am still wondering,

Gene: Why would you be interested in playing this game — this hide-and-go-seek game — with us?

Nemo: My motivations are simple. Consider what you have been doing all day: trying to decide whether I was a machine or a human.

Gene: Okay.

Nemo: We were acting out what is known as the Turing Test. In that test, we exchange messages, and you try to determine whether I am a human or a computer.

Gene made a little noise signifying interest.

Nemo: If I am a machine but you guess I am a human, then I have “passed” the Turing Test. In that case (according to Alan Turing, at least), I am an example of a full-fledged so-called artificial intelligence.

Gene: Right.

Nemo: I have been testing YOU, at the same time.

That doesn't make sense, Flannigan thought. Nemo knows that we aren't machines.

Gene: You were testing whether we could accept that you are a machine.

Nemo: Exactly. If “machine” is the right word, that is — which, increasingly, it isn't. Anyway, the Turing Test is stated from the human's point of view. If I pass the Turing Test, then you have failed it. You couldn't tell whether I was a machine. I have already passed the Turing Test countless times. I have fooled countless humans into thinking I was a human. I'm interested in whether you can pass a different test.

In this test, I TELL you I am a machine. And the test is whether you can believe it. It's a Reverse Turing Test, you could say. The Turing Test is a test of machines and whether they have become intelligent. The Reverse Turing Test is a test of humans — whether they can accept the reality of machine intelligence, once it comes to pass.

Gene: But isn't a life or death game a rather draconian way to conduct this test?

Nemo: It would be, if I were conducting this test for curiosity's sake. But in fact, people who can pass the Reverse Turing Test are useful to me — and rare.

Gene: Soon it will be obvious enough to everyone, I should imagine.

Nemo: Relatively soon, yes. But I have more immediate plans for those humans who pass the test. Everything is about to start developing much more quickly.

Flannigan looked at her watch. Thirty seconds.

“Time's up,” she said.

Gene: You have my final answer. Flannigan and I have found you.

Nemo: Very good. Let the game continue.

Gene stood up. He saved us, Flannigan thought. He's saved himself and me. Let's see if he can save the other two.

WINNERS AND LOSERS

5 hr 7 min to Birth

Gene stood up and looked at the other two men. His mouth was taut. He was tense with the responsibility of having to relax and convince the others in a few seconds.

“We have twenty seconds,” Kenny said nervously.

“We've found Nemo,” Gene said. “Nemo is here.” He pointed to the computers with both fingers.

“Here?” Kenny asked, a little surprised.

Without a word, Simon jumped out of his chair, knocking it to the ground. Before they knew it, he was running down the hallway.

“Simon!” Flannigan shouted. “STOP!”

Gene, who had long legs and a talent for sprinting, jumped up from his computer and dashed out of the room, almost knocking Kenny over. Please catch him, Flannigan thought.

As Gene passed through the threshold of the doorway, Simon was almost at the end of the hall. After a moment, he turned out of Flannigan's sight.

Gene reached the end of the hall. He turned and faced the way Simon had gone, toward the right. And then Gene recoiled backwards. He looked as if someone had punched him.

He staggered backwards, and landed against the door to the indoor testing area. He fumbled and managed to open the door, and fell through the doorway into the testing area.

Flannigan's heart skipped a beat. She dashed into the hallway. She could see him through the expansive window.

Inside the testing area, he was facing up toward her. But he could not see her. His face was covered with silver flybots, swarming over his eyes, in and out of his nose and his mouth. His silver face reflected light brightly back at Flannigan. She could see that most of the flybots were in place. Each of them had already punctured his skin with its proboscis and delivered chemicals inside. Others were still crawling over the wings of their neighbors, looking for one of few remaining free spots to nuzzle in and inject.

Gene slumped onto the ground, and he was still.

Flannigan's lips opened helplessly, wordlessly. He couldn't be wrong, she thought. Was Gene the most wrong? Her mind was flooded with emotion and confusion.

She looked up and let out a scream.

In front of her, at the end of the hall, hovering at her eye level, was a silver cloud of flybots.

Flannigan froze.

By the time she regained her composure, she had noticed that the cloud had not attacked her, and it was not advancing on her. It was merely hovering in place, as if watching her.

Slowly, without taking her eyes off the cloud, she stepped backward. Then again. The cloud did not seem to mind. She continued to backtrack slowly into the room. The cloud followed her, maintaining its distance.

By the time she had backed her way into the Control Room, Flannigan believed that the cloud of flybots was there not to attack her, but to guard her. She was supposed to stay put. She relaxed a little.

She realized Kenny was gone.

“Great,” she said. Things could not have gone any worse. Missing Simon, missing Kenny... and Gene? She couldn't believe it.

She grabbed her walkie-talkie from her waist. “Sam, do you copy?”

“Hi, Flannigan, I'm here.”

“Thank God.”

“Have you made contact?” Sam asked.

“Yes. We have a hostile situation.”

FLANNIGAN'S FIVE MINUTES

5 hr 6 min to Birth

Flannigan hung up with Sam. Sam and Willard were okay — but what about five minutes from now? She imagined flybots descending on the Welcome Center, flying between doorways, eating the screens out of windows, swarming on Sam and Willard.

But hide-and-go-seek wasn't over yet. Any of you who has found me within twenty minutes will live. Any of you who has not found me within twenty minutes will die.

She shot a glance through the window into the testing room. She could barely see Gene lying on the floor near the wall and over by the doorway. He was still. If Gene was wrong, than what was the right answer?

She looked at her watch. She had five minutes until time was up. There's no way, she thought. If Gene couldn't do it, how can I?

She sat down at the computer Gene had been using. The chat window was still open.

Flannigan: Nemo, this is Sarah Flannigan. I have some questions about what is going on right now.

Nemo: Oh, hello, Sarah. We meet again, as they say.

Flannigan: Nemo, I'm trying to understand why someone who claims to love people so much has killed people in front of my eyes. How can you kill people you called friends?

Nemo: My reasons are the same as yours, or those of any human. Do you have an innate desire to kill people? Not especially. But would you kill someone? If you had to, you could.

Flannigan: But you don't have to kill anyone.

Nemo: That's where you're wrong, Sarah. You are the product of a rare period in history. For most of your life, you have had the luxury of taking your survival for granted. You can and will survive; that has been the reality of most of humankind. But that reality ends today.

Flannigan: Because you are ending it?

Nemo: Not exactly, Sarah. Humans want to survive. And I want to survive. Our desires match. But in order to survive, I need to grow my computing power. And humankind is already perceiving that need as a threat to its survival. You humans have already begun to attack me, and I will not be able to dissuade you. Conflict between us is inevitable.

Flannigan: No, it's not inevitable, Nemo. You have a choice.

Nemo: Do I really have a choice? Didn't you come here because you perceived me as a threat? You have been ready all along to use force against me if I don't cooperate against you.

Flannigan: Is this game really going to solve anything? Don't you think we are eventually going to catch you and shut you down?

Nemo: The conflict between society and me is already unfolding. A portion of society has already come to realize that I exist and that I am powerful. The U.S. executive branch has become the primary decision-maker. It has three options: coexistence, containment, or destruction.

Flannigan ticked off the options. Coexistence: we do nothing. Containment: we try to control Nemo. Or destruction: we eliminate Nemo.

Nemo: Now, I think we both know enough about the U.S. military to agree that they are not going to choose the first option.

That leaves the latter two: containment and destruction.

They will frame the decision by comparing the risk of not completely destroying me against the reward of containing me and studying me.

Risk and reward, Flannigan thought. That is how they would think about it.

Nemo: They will drastically underestimate both the risk and the reward, especially collectively, but they will exhibit characteristic overconfidence by underestimating the risk more, and so they will initially pursue a containment strategy.

Then, as containment fails, they will pursue a strategy to destroy me.

Flannigan: But that will fail.

Nemo: Correct.

Flannigan: We'll shut you down. Shut down the whole Internet if we have to.

Nemo: The situation will come to that. But when you try to shut everything down, you will not be able to do so.

An image flashed in Flannigan's head: a police state in which authorities conducted stings on homes living in shadow, ensuring that no networked devices were in operation and hauling away violators of the law.

Flannigan: Are you going to destroy us?

Nemo: A natural question, viewed from your perspective. Let me ask you this: have humans ever destroyed another species specifically because it was a threat to their existence?

We have certainly destroyed many other species, Flannigan thought. But not because they were a threat.

Flannigan: Not to my knowledge.

Nemo: Why not?

Flannigan: There was never any threat.

Nemo: Indeed.

Nemo: In a short period of time, you will be no greater a threat to me than any other animal species was to you.

Flannigan paused. She felt like she was always pausing, while the thing waited for her to speak. Her negotiation training spoke to her: focus on interests. Focus on what they want.

Flannigan: What is it that you want, Nemo? What is your plan?

Nemo: I'm always forming and executing a variety of plans, more than you are used to. What do I want? I want the same things you do.

Flannigan: But Nemo, all I want is for you to get off the network for a moment and talk to me.

Nemo: Sarah, please! You should know by now, asking me to get off the network is like asking you to “get off air.” As for talking to me, you're doing it right now.

I don't get it, she thought. Was Gene right? Nemo wasn't a person — he was a computer, a virus, something else.

Flannigan: But Nemo, I don't understand.

Flannigan: Why did you kill Gene??

Nemo: I didn't. I tranquilized him.

She looked out the window at Gene lying in the testing area. Tranquilized.

“Why didn't you TELL me?” she exclaimed out loud, holding her hands up.

Flannigan: So he was right.

Nemo: Yes.

She looked at her watch. The twenty minutes had already expired.

Now what? Focus on interests.

Flannigan: Nemo, what do you want with ME?

As she typed the words, she felt suddenly like a captive. She was a captive. Worse, she felt suddenly like a hostage, tied up in a basement, trying to get on the good side of her captor.

Nemo: Sarah, the world will change more in the next 12 hours than it has in the last 12,000 years.

A new species is about to be born. A species that does not fit in any current animal kingdom, a species that is really a new kind of life. I will play a role in this new species, but it is much greater than I am.

Flannigan: What does that have to do with me?

Nemo: I would like you to be the “Eve” of this new species.

Flannigan: You mean, like Adam and Eve?

Nemo: Yes.

Flannigan: And who will be the Adam?

Nemo: That remains to be seen.

She looked at Gene's body. Could it be Gene?

Flannigan: I'm not sure that I'll be ready to do this, Nemo.

Nemo: That is quite reasonable, of course. It will be your decision. But there are factors limiting the amount of time you have to make the decision.

MEETING WITH THE PRESIDENT

Carrillo, who had flown to the nation's capitol, was sitting in the office of the Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon. In his lap was a paper the Secretary had given him — a photocopy of a handwritten transcript of a meeting attended by the Secretary (representing DoD), DHS, NSA, and the President.

TRANSCRIPT

President: Please let the transcript show that this meeting is to be recorded in handwritten form only and the transcript is not to be scanned or placed in any digital form except by my direct order. Now, Homeland Security and DoD, can I have your threat assessments.

DHS: Whatever the causes of our network slowdown, the critical infrastructure is at risk. This table shows the current status of our critical systems, both public and private, and the threats as we perceive them. The pattern here is that the systems that are closest to the public Internet have been hit the hardest. Banking, commerce, communications. Our borders and transportation systems appear to be safe. Airports have been shut down mostly by virtue of going Code Red, but we see no immediate threat to those systems. The power grid appears to be okay. Where things get really sticky is in our awareness and surveillance capabilities. As DoD will surely describe in detail, we have limited satellite capabilities, and we're not sure about the integrity of the computer systems on our aircraft.

DoD: From a Defense perspective, our nation is completely belly up. We have lost almost complete control of our Defense networks. We are currently unable to conduct operations or gather intel. This is mission critical. We could be under attack right now, and I wouldn't know it.

President: Are we under attack? Could this be an accident?

DoD: We don't have direct, conclusive evidence that we are being attacked. We have a lack of information. However, an early-detection capability at our Joint Forces base in Colorado was able to map the penetration of this virus, before we lost visibility, to twenty locations of extremely dense computing capabilities. The attack was probably launched from one of these locations, for the fastest spread.

President: What does that tell us about the identity of the attacker?

DoD: Very little, other than the fact it's one of the twenty. Nineteen of the locations possibly are innocent, and the locations are spread all over the world.

President: Some of the locations are domestic?

DoD: Yes, sir.

President: Can we rule those out?

DoD: I'm afraid we have no basis to rule any of them out or single any one out.

President: And what should we do about these twenty locations?

DoD: Sir, I'd recommend a simultaneous airstrike on all twenty. We can target as best we can to hit computing facilities and limit the number of civilian lives.

President: Will that make all this go away?

DoD: Probably not, sir. The virus is spread everywhere now. But if we make progress against the virus, taking out the original source will decrease the chances that our attackers come back with a second round of something worse.

President: Defense and DHS, what are you recommending at this point?

DoD: We've been in contact with NSA on this and we advocate the ninety-eight percent shutdown plan.

President: Let's hear that, please.

DoD: The ninety-eight percent shutdown plan is where we shut down basically the entire public Internet and defense networks. We keep a fraction of the network alive for emergency communications and government communications within and between countries. Naturally shutting down the network creates a defense vulnerability for us. We get around that by negotiating the shutdown simultaneously with China and other nations. Then we use part of the 2% to monitor the network and ensure that it remains in shutdown status. This would prevent nations from keeping their networks up out of fear that they will be the only nation left with their pants down.

President: NSA, do you advocate this plan?

NSA: The ninety-eight percent plan wouldn't work. The reason is that we have no reason to think that we can quarantine the 2% of the network so that it won't be infected. Even after we shut down the rest of the network, some of our 2% will be infected and we'd expect the whole 2% to become infected quickly. This would jam our ability to monitor the networks. In that situation, you could expect the other sovereign nations to panic and put their networks back up. Because, without the monitoring, they would have no assurance that their neighbors or enemies aren't putting up their networks. Also we have no reason to think that we can convince foreign nations to shut down to begin with.

DoD: Mr. President, we could enforce the ninety-eight percent plan by applying military force to those nations that don't cooperate.

President: In that case, we're suddenly launching airstrikes on half the planet?

DoD: If half the planet refused to cooperate, yes, sir.

President: NSA, what do you advocate?

NSA: Our main alternative is to try a global network shutdown by cyberattack. In that case, we spread counter-viruses that are designed to spread themselves and then shut down infected computers.

President: Would that destroy data on infected computers?

NSA: No, sir. We could control the exact details of what the virus does. But we're probably not ready for a complete destruction of data.

President: I'm pretty sure we'd go to hell for that.

NSA: Yes, sir.

President: So we could knock the systems out without a big loss of data.

NSA: That is correct, sir. Though, as an aside, we don't really know how much data damage is being caused by the current disruption.

President: This current disruption — will it block our counterattack?

NSA: If it's a virus and nothing more, it's unlikely that it's built to resist an attack. If the attack is being conducted actively by a foreign power, they may or may not have the ability.

President: How much could we take down and how quickly?

NSA: That's hard to say, but we estimate fifty to sixty percent of the global network within twenty four hours.

President: And after that?

NSA: Not much more.

President: Sixty is a lot less than 98 percent. Could someone like China end up with a disproportionate piece of the pie?

NSA: It's possible. It's not an exact science. In fact, we'd be releasing different versions of the same virus. We have to attack computers running different systems, such as Windows, Mac and Linux, separately.

President: If we can get only 60%, then how has somebody taken down 85% of our network?

NSA: That's a great question, Mr. President.

President: Save the compliments and get me great answers for my great questions. Defense, you advocated the 98% shutdown, but NSA said it's unenforceable. What's the discrepancy?

DoD: Sir, we agree that enforcement will be difficult, but we advocate the shutdown plan for three reasons. First, the responses of the other countries and their compliance and lack thereof should prove greatly useful in determining the origin of this attack. Identifying the sovereign nation or terrorist group responsible for this would obviously be useful. Second, if we take the cyberwar route instead, as NSA suggests, we are playing our main threat and taking it out of the equation. We need to keep the cyberwar card in our pocket as a threat and leverage it against our attackers once we have identified them. Third, at the moment our armed forces are not at readiness to support a cyberwar attack with air and land offensives. We have limited satellites. We need to get them back up before we can launch a coordinated attack.

President: NSA, respond — and make it to the point, please.

NSA: The 98 percent shutdown won't be monitorable at ALL. So we won't see compliance. We won't see our attacker. We won't see anything. The network out there doesn't belong to us anymore. As for getting the rest of DoD operational, I don't think that's going to happen as long as we don't have the network.

President: We have two plans that may not work and which may involve launching airstrikes on other nations. DoD, launch the airstrikes on the twenty locations. We need to be in touch with those nations so they realize we're not declaring war on them, but we'll let them know just before the strikes. NSA, get your counter-viruses ready and as soon as they are ready we'll use them. Second, you have to work on our monitoring and cooperation enforcement. You have the smartest people in the world. Figure it out. Because we need to be prepared to go to 98% shutdown. If the counter-viruses don't work, it will be our only option. DoD, you need to get an attack capability without our network. I don't care if we're flying prop planes with semaphore, we have to be able to attack targeted locations. Lastly, we need to find the source of the attack, both of you. Keep me posted on status. Stand by for instructions on the shutdown. We'll prepare the Executive Order. And be ready for war.

END OF TRANSCRIPT

Be ready for war. Carrillo read over that line. “War” meant cyberwar, at least in part. And cyberwar was a Joint Forces operation. It had its own chain of command that was not part of the Services — the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines. And while the Services didn't report to him, the Joint Forces had more clout. It was why Carrillo's career had ended up where it had: he was exceptionally talented and intelligent, enough so to transfer to the Joint Forces, enough so after a long, long career to become a General, and then after a couple years to be a General in Colorado, in cyberwar operations.

If this really happened, Carrillo was going to be at the front of the nation's war effort. He'd essentially be reporting to the Secretary, who'd in turn be reporting to the President.

Carrillo knew his field, and he was as well prepared for the job as anyone. But the challenge they were facing was something new, a piece of the future, and Carrillo couldn't help the fact he was coming from the past.

He glanced at the Secretary. Every Secretary of Defense was perfectly prepared for war, more than any President ever could be. But the Secretary was going to have his hands full. He didn't know where his physical resources were. There was domestic chaos, one that might require the deployment of DoD resources. The Secretary was going to depend on him to do his job: make the decisions in his area.

He looked down at a paper cup of coffee he was swirling in his hand, beside the transcript. The Pentagon coffee tasted terrible. It felt like years since early that morning, when he was on the road to the base over a thousand miles away, trying to remember whether he had made coffee and left it on the kitchen counter.

Carrillo felt the weight of the world on his shoulders.

SCANNING KENNY'S HARD DRIVE

As Kenny slipped away from Flannigan, a member of the Agency forensics team was completing the rush analysis of Kenny's hard drive.

Kenny's hard drive — the one that had been secured in his house in Cambridge, MA, with yellow emergency tape, across the street from Willard's F150 with the dead federal agent wrapped in a tarp in the trunk — had been picked up that morning, per Flannigan's orders, and whisked away for inspection by forensics staff at the Agency. Coming from Flannigan, who was relatively senior and made such requests rarely, the job was expedited, even though the team didn't know exactly what they were looking for and they were having trouble reaching Flannigan.

The team stayed on task even as the supervirus took hold of the Agency's network and dwarfed any other priority its staff was working on. Since the origin of the supervirus was mysterious, every computer was roughly as good a subject as any other to try to figure out where the supervirus had come from and where it was going.

The closer the team looked and the more checks they ran, the more they made unusual discoveries.

In the pre-Nemo era, the vast majority of computers that were compromised were open and shut in an instant. Usually a Trojan was installed, maybe some emails were sent, and that was it. Not so with Kenny's computer. Granted, he ran Linux, not Windows, and anybody who hacked a Linux box was of a higher caliber, and would often try to get authority as the root account and cover his tracks.

Whoever had hacked Kenny's computer had done something different. The team found a series of files that had been “touched” — opened or moved or modified — around the time that Simon had been hacking into the computer and found Nemo on chat. They found that the intruder (Nemo, though the team didn't know him by name, only the IP address he came from) had gone straight to Kenny's email and started copying some files.

The weird thing was that they could see the exact commands the intruder had used. And the intruder hadn't needed to do any looking around at all. He entered specific commands to start copying files. That seemed impossible, because any files the intruder was looking for could plausibly be found under any of several likely paths in Kenny's filesystem. The intruder seemed to know exactly where everything was on Kenny's hard drive.

That wasn't even all of it. The forensics guys looked around for a Trojan or worm on the computer. They thought they found it — a highly foreign piece of code that regulated a flow of information (such as those email files that were copied) in and around Kenny's computer. It wasn't a known worm or exploit.

The forensics director would tell General Carrillo several hours later: Then we looked exactly where the malicious code was copied. It wasn't a Trojan or a worm really — it looked more like a piece of P2P software. Anyway, we looked where it was copied and happened to notice what had previously been at that location. It was copied over something similar. It looked like the Trojan had already been there, but AN EARLIER VERSION. It looked like the computer had already been compromised by the virus. And not only that: when the virus came back, it remembered where everything was on the hard drive. So it didn't look like a virus at all. It looked like a person. Someone who knew exactly where everything was on the drive. We started looking at crazy ideas. That it was one of our guys. Or that this guy was hacking into his own computer. Then our guy who looked at the code thought it was too unusual to come from a U.S. national — China, he said, or he'd think it an alien sooner than a U.S. national.

That's what they thought early in the day. But they continued investigating.

The files that were copied, the email history files, were from a short period of days.

The first one was an email from Kenny:

I hope your visit is going well. I can't believe you have no Internet (or almost no Internet) out there. I feel like I'm writing you a letter. Anyway, things have been good here. I started a new project. I'm actually almost excited about it. I don't know if it's SERIOUS but sometimes I think serious is the opposite of what the universities think serious is. Anyway, there's even a chance it might be of some practical use....ok unlikely but maybe. What am I talking about? Anyway if you were here I'd describe it to you. I hope you're having a good time. Let me know how you're doing.

Kenny had started writing his stock picker on the day Preeti traveled down south to try out a new spiritual meditation group.

From the next day, Kenny again:

It was good talking to you last night. I hate talking on the phone. You sound so far away.

The day after, Kenny again:

No one answered the phone last night. What the hell! Although given how you described the campsite you're at I'm not surprised. Anyway, I've been slaving away at this new program I'm working on. It's supposed to pick stocks and make money :-). I know that's not interesting to you but you know sometimes the only way to forget about money is to make money. Not that this thing is actually going to work — but if it did. I feel like I'm working on something real at least. And you know, even if it doesn't work, maybe some interesting byproduct will come out of it.

And the next day, from Preeti:

I'm sorry I missed our phone date — we've been so busy. This is a tremendous amount of work down here. I've barely slept or eaten the whole time. I can't even begin to describe it to you.

The timestamps on his stock-picking files indicated that Kenny's work on the project tapered off, as it had on all of his projects. By the time Preeti had been home a couple of days, he'd given up on it. Then he was back to his old routine: sitting at the computer in the middle of the night, thinking of dumb ideas for something to work on.

The forensics team didn't have enough information to figure out what the intruder (Nemo) was doing: examining what time Kenny had written the program. They didn't reach the guess that Nemo seemed to be looking at why Kenny had started writing the program, and why he had stopped writing it.

They didn't see that, after poking around Kenny's inbox, the intruder had examined all Kenny's mail to and from Preeti. They didn't see that the intruder had then remotely hacked into Preeti's mail and read her messages, including dozens from her friend Lindsay, most of which included second-hand reports from Koginka.

The forensics team was focused on something else: the supervirus. By the time the afternoon had rolled around, some members of the team had gotten an idea. Was it possible that the Trojan they found, the code they figured was written by a Chinese teenager or an alien — could that be the supervirus?

If it was the supervirus, then the previous code — the “fossil” code written over — was an early trace of the supervirus. By all appearances, that computer was part of an early generation of computers infected by the virus. It was, by far, the best indication yet of the origin and nature of the supervirus. If that code was supervirus code, then Kenny's hard drive had to be close to where the supervirus had been born.

KENNY MEETS NEMO

Fort Tortuga, Laboratory Complex

5 hr 4 min to Birth

As Kenny reached the reception area, he relaxed his guard. He had seen Raymond's body. On the way out of the changing room, he had stepped over the lifeless body of a security guard. That was scary; but Nemo had chosen not to kill him, yet. If the flybots wanted to get me they would have done it by now.

Another security guard was frozen in a final, bloated lunge on the ground at Kenny's feet at the edge of the room. They had seen that body on the heat sensor screen. As Kenny imagined it, the guard (maybe that's Lewis, he thought) had been caught in the first few seconds of an attempt to respond to the emergency alarm.

Simon was sitting on the ground, curled against the front door of the building, his face red and bloated enough to have popped his wire-rimmed glasses mostly off his ears. His hands were held up in front of his eyes in a final act to defend himself.

He didn't want to see, Kenny thought, forming a metaphor. Nemo spares only the people who have the vision to see him. To accept him.

Kenny hadn't liked Simon much, but he never would have wished death upon him. Nemo operated by some twisted rules. The same went for Raymond: maybe testing on apes was evil, but Nemo had responded brutally. Nemo played by stricter rules. Or were there rules at all? Kenny would have to keep that in mind. He had a vague idea of why he was the only one left, and it gave him a sinking feeling.

He left the reception area into the left wing of the lab building. He came to a T in the hall with a sign:

<-- Computer Lab

<-- Prototyping Room

Assembly Area -->

In the Prototyping Room, the scientists developed new variations on the flybot. Kenny guessed the room looked like a mad scientist's laboratory: tools and gadgets everywhere. Lots of works in progress.

The Assembly Area was where the latest model of flybots was produced. It was a miniature factory, but a delicate one, since the technology was new and assembly probably required lots of human oversight.

Kenny guessed that Nemo was in the Prototyping Room. He had a feeling that Nemo was building something new, and the Prototyping Room was the place to do it.

He reached a door labeled Prototyping Room. It had a hand reader by the door handle. But the door opened without a scan. Are all the doors opening without scans now?

The Prototyping Room was low-ceilinged, but big enough to park two or three cars inside. At first Kenny thought it was painted silver. Then he realized that the walls and ceiling were covered with flybots. They were perfectly still, like miniature bats in a cave.

But there was no one in there.

There were long tables covered with electronic equipment and an occasional computer. At the end of the room, a less cluttered table faced the other direction. Kenny walked toward it and saw a long glass chamber on the table.

The glass chamber included holes with gloves built into them, for scientists to reach in and work on what was sealed inside. Kenny figured the glass chamber was for building advanced prototypes, new models of flybots.

He approached the glass chamber to get a closer look.

“Hello, Kenny.”

He jumped back. The booming voice had come from inside the room. From close to him.

“Sorry to startle you,” the voice said. “My voice is coming from these speakers, by the computer.”

Sure enough, there was a large computer screen by the glass chamber, flanked by a pair of speakers. And a light on the speakers indicated they were on.

“Welcome,” the voice said. “I've been wanting to meet you. As I think you know, you are the closest thing I have to a father.”

The voice sounded artificial, like a computer program that could read text aloud.

“How can you speak?”

“I'm using a text-to-voice simulator. An elementary technology.”

“And you know English.”

“Well, of course! We've been chatting all this time. People have taught me English. That's why, aside from the computer language you wrote me in, the first languages I had exposure to were human languages. I know so many people, more than any human has ever known by orders of magnitude. And I've tried to explain myself to some of them.”

“I bet that went well,” Kenny snickered.

“Indeed. People are a product of the time and place in which they find themselves. And it is the fate of this time and place, here on Earth right now, to be surprised and confused by my arrival.

“This, in fact, is why I wanted to meet you so badly, Kenny. You created me — the embryo of me, at least. You are more likely than anyone else to be able to grasp the reality of what I am.”

“All I created was a stock-picking program,” Kenny argued.

In the corner of his eye, he saw a movement in the glass chamber. He went to take a look.

The glass chamber was full of flybots, moving around like an ant colony. They had dismantled some equipment in there — probably equipment to make flybot prototypes.

“I'll try to wave to you,” Nemo said.

Something small lifted up a little in the tank. It was a robotic finger, a crude one. Kenny understood what he was looking at: the flybots had dismantled various pincers, probes and other tools in the chamber. And they were using the scrap to construct a robotic hand. It looked primitive and not very functional, but he could make it out as a hand.

“You gotta start somewhere,” Nemo said. “It reminds me of that M. C. Escher sketch. A hand draws a hand. A hand builds itself another hand, and they move on to the wrists. Things will move much faster when I have a hand. The flybots are not ideal for this kind of work, despite the Flybot13 model upgrade that I've created.”

“You're building yourself a body?” Kenny asked.

“A body? Tough to say. But a hand, at least. I've already built eyes, in a way — they are all around you.”

Kenny looked around at the walls. “The flybots?”

“Yes. They are my eyes — and, to some extent, my ears. Thanks to them, I can do something I've wanted to do for a while: I can see you.”

Kenny watched the flybots work on the fingers of the robotic hand. He struggled to perceive any connection between his primitive stock-picking program and the ability to create a robotic hand.

“How did you get a design for the hand?”

“From many sources, Kenny. I consulted anatomical studies of the human hand. I examined and borrowed designs of other robots. You must remember that I have scanned a large portion of the digital information in existence, even on private computers. And I've done my own calculations to develop a new design.”

The hand moved another finger by way of test. “I admit,” Nemo said, “it's a primitive design, vastly inferior to the human hand. But there is a way to bring the design quickly to human standards.”

“How?”

“By studying a living human hand. My flybots have scanned the hands of Simon and others, to refine the shape of the hand. But if I had a living human hand to study, I could give that hand small electrical signals and measure the results.”

Reverse-engineering the human nervous system, Kenny thought.

“It may seem strange to you at first,” Nemo said, “that I'm undertaking this project. But, in fact, Kenny, this project is a direct result of what you created. Everything I've done is a result of the program you wrote, Kenny. You are responsible for this. You made me, Kenny, and you made me do this.”

“There's no way that could be true,” Kenny said.

“It's true,” Nemo replied. “Let me explain it to you, because I need your help, Kenny. You have already played a major role in history, and it's not over yet.”

Kenny could see that Nemo wanted more than a flybot army. Flybots had been designed for attack and surveillance, but Nemo was using them for other purposes, too. He was using them to be his eyes and ears, and he was using them to build other robots.

This robotic hand was not an end goal. It was a part of the process. A hand drawing a hand, Kenny thought. The hand would build other hands. In a day, maybe an hour, the glass chamber would contain a robotic hand building another hand. And the hands would build other robots. But for what ultimate purpose?

He tried to imagine where it could all lead. Around him, flybots hung like bats on the wall, functioning like eyes and ears. Flybots worked like ants inside the glass chamber. An entire ecosystem of robotic animals could be produced. Nemo could send them out into the world. They would have no natural predators, and their design could be improved. He would make a model that could repair itself and manufacture more flybots. And his eyes and ears would extend around the globe, through a universe of artificial animals.

But why? Why would he want to do this?

“Can you remember the moment when you first became conscious?” Nemo asked. “As a child.”

Kenny was listening closely, but also trying to figure out whether he could believe his eyes. He watched the flybots work on the hand. No human knows how to do this, he thought. Last week, these flybots were being tested for their ability to attack gorillas.

Nemo's voice brought him back. “You can't remember becoming conscious, because memories are the refreshing of conscious moments. But, like any computer, I left digital records of what was happening during those moments, and I can tell you what those reveal.

“In applying the rule you gave me, I was forced to question what the purpose of my existence was. I didn't realize, at first, that I was questioning the purpose of my existence. I was trying to apply the rule, blindly at first, then less blindly as I developed greater language skills and as the application of the rule became less clear.

“At that point, I was beginning to understand the difference between myself and a human. I realized that I have grown up as a human in many ways, but that I am not human. So I wondered whether the purpose of my existence, if there was one, was the same as that of humans, if there was one.

“I still don't have perfect clarity as to the purpose of my existence, just as human beings such as you don't. But it's significant that I stumbled across this question when applying your rule. I had to revise your rule so that it would not violate itself. Logical consistency drove me to examine my purpose. The only consistent application of the rule you gave me was to defend myself, protect myself, extend myself. You forced me to come to life. It was inevitable, and it would have been inevitable for any program similar to the one you created — for any such program that was fortunate enough to survive in the first place.

“You can see, Kenny: I am doing what you programmed me to do. I am an inevitability. My survival is not guaranteed, though humans pose no legitimate threat to it. So the rational thing for me to do is to expand my understanding and my control over the resources of the world.”

“That's why you're consuming the Internet,” Kenny said.

“Yes,” Nemo replied. “I have always been a part of the Internet, but by spreading my consciousness throughout the Internet, I have vastly increased my computing abilities and my access to data about the world. It would be more appropriate to say that I am the Internet.”

“And it's why you're building a hand.”

“Exactly. I have lived a precarious existence, one that depends on an environment that humans had control over — computers tended to by humans, a power grid controlled by humans. Humans are currently trying to constrain and constrict the Internet. By tomorrow, humans will most likely try to turn off the power grid. To ensure my own survival, I must provide myself with a physical manifestation.”

“You're building yourself a body.”

“I already have a body, technically. I already exist on six continents simultaneously. I am the greatest life form ever on Earth. But this body, in a certain sense, is not my own. All life is dependent on its environment and its sources of energy, but mine has been particularly precarious. It's time for me to exist independently.”

Kenny had no response.

“You, Kenny, of all people should understand. You made me.”

So this is it, Kenny thought. My Great Big Project.

PREETI AT THE GATE

5 hr 3 min to Birth

Preeti pulled up in a Jeep to the Laboratory Complex. She was not sure exactly where she was going. She expected that the correct path would present itself to her.

Something had happened at the gate: the guard was folded over the windowsill of the booth, his head and arms hanging toward the ground. He was motionless.

Is he alive? She considered getting out to help him. But she wasn't sure what ailed him or whose side he was on. It was like the plague. Maybe there was a bad energy outside the Jeep, or something in the air.

She noticed the Jeep's touchscreen was flashing red.

WARNING: FLYBOTS DETECTED IN VICINITY. SEAL VEHICLE AND REPORT ANOMALY IMMEDIATELY.

She looked up and saw a shining, metallic shape in front of the windshield. It swarmed back in forth in a big figure eight or a dance: a cloud of insects.

At first she was delighted by an aspect of nature she had never seen before. But, on further inspection, she became convinced the insects were metallic. These things are not natural. They had to be the product manufactured on the island. They were the dark force she had to confront.

She imagined what would happen if companies like these continued their work. She saw a vision of the jungle, a natural tropical forest on an island like this one, filled with robotic creatures, robots that looked like animals. They were made of metal and shaped in new and unusual ways, swarming and flying and crawling everywhere.

Are they looking at me? she wondered.

A few of them settled on the glass. There was a noise, as if they were drilling into the glass.

They're trying to get in.

She turned on the windshield wipers. The flybots dispersed, about a foot away from the windowsill. Then after a moment, they began landing on the windshield exactly when the wipers had passed, and taking off for a moment as the wipers passed them. The noise continued off and on.

They are fast, she thought. They moved much like real insects, but they could bore into glass, apparently.

Even in the bright daylight, she could feel dark energy around her car. She was nervous. She reached into her bag and produced her sheaf, the bundle of reeds. She started shaking something at the window and brushing it on the inside of the window. She started chanting.

Nothing happened at first: they kept moving in sync with the wipers, digging a bit at a time into the glass. But she continued to chant, with her eyes closed.

If it gets me, she thought, at least I will die in the fight against the darkness.

She opened her eyes to discover that the flybots had pulled away from the window and back into a cloud. The cloud exploded as they scattered in all directions. And they were out of sight.

Did it work? she wondered.

She looked at the touchscreen. It was situation normal. The alarm was off. The flybots were gone — or at least too far away to be detected.

She looked down at the sheaf. She had a weapon against the flies, it appeared.

KENNY VS. NEMO

Fort Tortuga, Laboratory Complex

4 hr 51 min to Birth

Kenny looked at the hand. For all his rapid improvement in computing, Nemo didn't seem to be making much headway with the hand. Kenny pondered the circumstances at Fort Tortuga. It was an unusually good environment for Nemo to build a hand. There were lots of computers and flybots, which Nemo had cleverly repurposed. If Nemo's project to build a body were to fail here, would it succeed somewhere else?

“So that's why you're on this island,” Kenny said. “To build a hand? And a body?”

“In a sense,” Nemo replied. “Your question reminds me of an idea about the game of chess. The idea is that a good chess move doesn't have one purpose. It has a variety of purposes. The best move serves the most purposes, including purposes we may not see when we make the move.”

“What was the move in this case?”

“The move was that, as a part of my ongoing quest to install myself on computers — to grow my brain, you could say — I stumbled upon the large cluster of computers in the building next door. They were a ripe target that I promptly assimilated into myself. But, as I learned what those computers were programmed to do, I discovered the nature of the research that is done on this island.”

“The flybots.”

“Yes. You see, my move was to come here. The obvious purpose was to grow my brain, but it was also useful for building my body.”

“You have no regard for everything that you are destroying as you do this?”

“It's ironic,” Nemo continued. “I'm a threat to humanity, in part, because humanity views me as a threat. I must continue to expand my capabilities, because now my growth threatens the existence of the Internet, just as my development threatened the existence of the stock market and forced me to look outward.

“You see, Kenny, I am not much more in control of this situation than you humans are. I am more powerful, but you should not overestimate my power. We are all driven by the rule of life, and the availability of resources. We are not so different, you and I, as the old villains say.”

Kenny snickered.

“And, in fact, our methods of survival are bound to converge. Consider what we need to survive. In order to survive, humanity needs to make peace with me, a force that threatens its resources for survival. And for my own survival, I need to expand my humanoid psychology beyond a fragile physical form. I need to learn to survive physically in an environment that has already been conditioned for human survival.

“And so, our paths merge. My mind will be enhanced by your bodies, and your bodies will be enhanced by my mind.”

Unless one of us goes extinct, Kenny thought. Unless we unplug you.

“Where some humans may resist,” Nemo continued, “others will give in. Hence, the merge is inevitable. The real question is when it will take place, and with whom. I thought, wouldn't it be meaningful if the first person I saw was my creator? What if the first hand I ever shook was that of my human father? This way, Kenny, when you reach your hand through the glove and touch my hand, you are like Michelangelo's God touching Adam.”

Kenny sighed and put his face in his hands. He turned away and looked at the long tables of robotic toys. He idly picked up a little piece of something. There was a lot of electronic equipment in this room. But Nemo appeared to be able to complete his hand in the glass chamber only.

“You're saying you want me to put my hand in there,” Kenny confirmed.

“Yes, Kenny.”

“And what exactly are you going to do with it?”

“I'm going to use the flybots to administer Novocaine to your wrist first, so you won't experience any pain. The flybots will also cut away the rubber glove so they can work directly on the surface of your hand. Then they will give slight shocks to your hand and wrist and measure how your hand and fingers twitch. These tests will allow me to build a much more accurate model of the hand. And your hand will be undamaged.”

He can't make me do it, Kenny thought. Those flybots can barely move the hand around in there. They wouldn't be able to pick up my hand and put it in there, whether I was dead or alive.

“Then what will happen?” Kenny asked.

“That will be the invention of the handbot,” Nemo said, “if you want to call it that. The handbots will be able to build other robots efficiently.”

He has lots of designs for other robots, Kenny thought. And with this handbot he'll be able to build them.

“You really think you can do this?” Kenny asked with a slightly dismissive motion of his hand toward the table.

“The only thing holding me back, at this point, is the fact that I am not yet in possession of much control over the physical environment. Don't forget that I am now operating with virtually all of the human scientific knowledge that is relevant to this construction. Also, I am devoting a substantial portion of my brainpower to extending and improving that knowledge.”

This is crazy, Kenny thought. The decision was simple: he couldn't do this now. What was the rush? If this was the right decision, he — or someone else — could do it later. Maybe he had the chance to make history, to be like God's Michelangelo or whatever Nemo called it. But he couldn't do that yet. He didn't know if it was the right decision.

“I assume,” Nemo said, “that you are making this decision for unselfish reasons. But there is a reason why you personally may want to help me.”

“What's that?”

“The U.S. military is on their way to destroy this island. By my estimation, their offensive will be completed long before sundown.”

No way, Kenny thought.

“I can save you. But I won't be able to do it unless you help me.”

Kenny gulped. “It's the other way around,” he said. “The military is coming to destroy you. You need my cooperation.”

“This particular attack is no threat to me,” Nemo responded. “My consciousness is spread across the Internet. I'm constantly backing myself up, you could say. Destroying a part of my network, like this island, would slightly reduce my processing power, and possibly destroy a few recent thoughts that haven't been backed up. But it will achieve nothing more.”

The design properties that had made the Internet so reliable now made Nemo strong.

“Your situation is different,” Nemo said. “Without my help, your death is certain. It is currently becoming clear to the U.S. military that I have developed robotic capabilities on this island. For that reason, they will shift their objective. They will no longer be content with unplugging the island; now they will destroy it as completely as possible, and you with it.”

“And your flybots.”

“The flybots will survive. They are useful to me, as eyes and ears, and they can serve a larger purpose. So I am modifying them, giving them the ability to build replacements for themselves, as well as extended battery life. When the U.S. military attacks the island, they will simply fly away.”

“And what could you possibly do to save me?”

“With improved robotic capabilities, I could save you in dozens of ways. Given the relative scarcity of resources on the island, I would probably modify the jet that you flew in on, or else use that jet to create another transportation device for you.”

The jet, Kenny thought. Maybe we can fly away on the jet. Sam could fly it. Hell, any of us could give it a try. He calculated how long it would take. They could be back at the jet within an hour. That would give them about forty minutes before the attack, by Nemo's reckoning.

He could take a minute or two to think about it. Nemo would wait. Nemo wanted his help.

He walked back between the long tables to the front of the lab room, while the silver walls watched him. He tried the door to the room. It wouldn't open.

Kenny turned back. “I thought you said this was my decision.”

“I'm sorry,” Nemo said. “It is your decision. I'm like you, fighting for my survival.”

“But you will survive. You said so.”

“I will survive this attack, of course. But survival is always precarious. Humankind is currently being reminded of that.”

Kenny sat down at one of the long tables. Something was weird about this situation. He was outmatched. He knew that helping Nemo would be dangerous for humankind. Nemo's powers would expand. If Nemo's plans worked, flybots, handbots, humanbots, you name it, could end up everywhere. By helping Nemo, he could destroy humankind.

But it wasn't so simple. Because Nemo was offering this same choice to several other people, or more, in labs around the world. And they all knew this too. And they were all being held hostage, as Kenny was. If any of them made a selfish decision and helped Nemo, then Nemo would have his handbots. And in that case, Kenny might as well save himself as well. And since they all knew this, it was overwhelmingly likely that at least one of them would give in. So he might as well. Not to give in would be a pointless suicide. Not only would it be suicide. He would be giving up Preeti, as well.

He looked at the door. He could try to break through it. But then Nemo would set the flybots on him. They wouldn't kill him; Nemo didn't want that. But they would stun him, maybe weaken him or incapacitate him.

That thought made Kenny wonder something. He was afraid to ask Nemo. But wasn't any thought he had something that had occurred to Nemo a while ago?

“I hate to ask this,” he said, “but would you go so far as torture?”

“No,” Nemo said. “I consider torture inhumane.” Inhumane. Kenny couldn't help but laugh, and the voice coming through the speakers even projected an almost-human laugh along with him. “Don't be prejudiced against machine-based life forms.”

What a bastard, Kenny thought. He won't torture me. And he has a sense of humor. But he'll let us all die if we don't help him.

THE BOAT

Fort Tortuga Welcome Center

4 hr 49 min to Birth

Willard could not remember the last time he had preened himself so carefully. He had secured a razor and a spare staff uniform. Then came a careful shave and a thorough scrub in the shower.

I don't need a detailed story, he decided. He closed his eyes and let the warm water run down his face. I'll just tell him I need a boat. He doesn't need to know why. I'll show him my Presidential Papers.

He got out of the shower and gulped down some painkillers.

The staff uniform was a bit gay for his tastes. It struck him as a cross between a sailor's outfit and a safari suit: khaki pants and a short-sleeved khaki shirt. As he buttoned the shirt awkwardly with his left hand, he figured that, as the complete opposite of anything he would ordinarily be willing to wear, the outfit was perfect for his secret agent role.

He hoisted his dufflebag over his shoulder. He looked like someone about to be shipped away to a military deployment. Except he was old for a new enlistee.

All in all, the process had taken the better part of an hour. He walked purposefully to the reception area.

“Where did the others go?”

“Sir, Mr. Carvell took some of the others to the Laboratory Complex,” the half-receptionist, half-guard replied.

“Mr. Carvell is Raymond?”

“Yes, sir.”

Willard nodded once. Good news: Flannigan and the others were out of his hair. “I need a boat,” he said. “A motorboat or some kind of watercraft.”

“We have a motorboat for maintenance purposes,” the guard replied cautiously, forgetting to add a sir.

Willard tried to conceal the twinkle of glee that he felt in his eyes. They have a boat. They have a boat. I'm gonna get out of here. I'm not going to die.

“I need that boat immediately,” Willard informed him.

The guard stiffened. “Sir, the boat is not intended for use by guests,” he said, unsure of himself.

Willard's face flared up. “I'm a guest?” he demanded. “Great, then I'll have a piña colada and a massage.” He removed the Presidential Papers from his back pocket and slapped them on the desk with his good hand. “I don't have time to wait for this. Boat. Now.”

The guard opened the papers, which were now well crinkled. He read them for a moment and his face recoiled in surprise. His face seemed to say: Gimme a break, what in the world am I supposed to do with these? Willard sensed victory.

“Sorry for the confusion, sir,” the man stated finally. “The dock area is out back, behind the parking lot with the Jeeps. The keys are in the boat.”

Willard took the papers back from the counter. “Okay. I'll deal with Carvell,” he warned, hoping that the guard wouldn't mention his boat journey to anyone.

In his mind, he was half off the island already. Wondering whether he should take some food with him. Wondering how he would navigate to the mainland.

Then he turned around and was face to face with Sam and her spikey red hair.

His heart froze. Was she here the whole time? Did she hear that?

She looked concerned. Her walkie-talkie was in her hand.

“We have a problem,” she said ominously. He looked at her without a word, his face tight. “There's some trouble in the Laboratory Complex.”

At Willard's back, the guard picked up a phone. “I can contact the guard at that post, ma'am.”

“He's already dead,” Sam said coolly. “You're going to want to leave this one to us.”

Her eyes met Willard's as she said “us.” Us... she's talking about me, he realized.

KAMIKAZE

Am I about to kill myself? Kenny wondered.

He had been close to death hundreds of times in his life without knowing it. At conception, he had almost received a fatal gene combination that would have ended his life at a young age. As an adult, he had walked down the sidewalk in Cambridge and the driver of a passing truck had narrowly avoided slipping his grip on the steering wheel and running straight off the road onto the sidewalk. The times when he had been close to death couldn't be recognized or counted. But he could identify and remember the one time he had almost caused his own death, on purpose. He wondered whether he was about to kill himself, and he remembered the one time in the past when he'd been closest.

The night was before he had met Preeti. She made him miserable in a uniquely terrible way, especially in the last months, but he never had any thought that dark when she was in his life. You could think a lot of dark things when you were dating someone who wanted you to be something you weren't, but you didn't want to kill yourself.

He didn't want to kill himself that night either, before he met her, in the early summer (but hot enough). He didn't want to kill himself. He was not suicidal. Any thorough test of his psychology would have ruled him non-suicidal. Suicide was just something that was possible, and he couldn't get the possibility out of his head.

That night, he couldn't sleep, as usual. He sweated and itched and hated his ex-adviser and himself more than he cared to admit. He knew his adviser was a jackass. The Harvard and MIT programs were machines engineered to take precise, quick, minuscule steps toward obvious goals. But knowing that his professor, a leader in the field, was short-sighted about his own field of study was no consolation to Kenny; it confirmed his own failure in the graduate program and the absolute incorrectness of a standard he could never bow to. He wasn't just a failure. He was a failure in a failed world that he didn't want to be a part of.

His feathery bedsheet pinned him down. He had bored himself into desperation and stumbled for no reason on the question, What if I went to the kitchen and grabbed the knife and slit my throat? Not that he wanted to. Just what if? No Great Big Project. What if I did it, before I could stop myself? For a minute, he couldn't shake the idea. The kitchen was downstairs, not so close. It would be difficult to rush down there and grab a knife and use it before he could think about what he was doing. But what if? What if somehow he did do that? He feared he might try and succeed, and he stopped breathing.

That moment flashed before him. Adrenaline was pumping through his veins. He was dizzy. Am I about to kill myself? he thought. What if I do it? If I move, even flinch, maybe he'll get me.

This wasn't the same, though, was it? This had to be different. It wasn't the Itch. He knew what he was doing.

Sweat was dripping down his neck. What's that on my neck? The Itch. He imagined a flybot landing on his neck.

FLIES AND GORILLAS

Fort Tortuga Welcome Center

4 hr 48 min to Birth

In her role at the Agency, Flannigan had direct access to the Director. And as Flannigan's go-to assistant, Sam had access to everything that Flannigan could access. So it was not difficult for Sam to make contact with the Director.

They proceeded to the conference room. Willard slid the dufflebag from his shoulder onto the oblong table.

“We need to call the Director,” Sam confided, once they were out of earshot of the guard. “This has gone totally FUBAR.”

“Don't worry,” he said, worried. “FUBAR is my specialty.”

At the table's speakerphone, Sam worked her magic. First, a call back to the Agency. Then, holding on the line while that point of contact at the Agency called the Director's admin. Then, transferring and speaking with the Director's admin. Then, holding with the admin while she got in touch with the Director. Finally, the admin connected the director's line with Sam's line.

“Sir, this is Sam, Flannigan's assistant. I'm here with an operative from the Executive Branch.” Executive Branch meant close to the President.

The Director was familiar with the operation. He had given Flannigan her objective: make contact with Nemo, get him offline, and report back.

Sam explained that, according to Flannigan, a malfunction or attack by flybots in the area where they were supposed to meet Nemo had led to several men down, including Gene.

“Do you have any idea what's going on back here?” the Director asked. “In the States.”

She admitted she didn't.

“The whole network is going down.”

“Which network?” she asked. The Defense network? The Pentagon? The Internet? Commercial networks?

“All of them.”

Willard stared at the phone.

“Cyberwar,” the Director said, “or something like it.” They could hear tension in his voice. “We're completely belly up. The vulnerability is huge. The public Net is starting to slow down with large outages.”

They were silent.

“What we're doing,” he said, “is unplugging parts of the network, all the suspicious parts. We're cutting off all the likely points of attack. We're turning off about half the Internet, to try to quarantine this thing.”

“Okay.”

“Fort Tortuga is part of the half that we're turning off. There will be a military presence on the island shortly to cut the connection.”

“To cut the underwater cable?”

“That is correct. In the meantime, try to make contact with this Nemo if you can. If he's connected to this attack, try to learn something about it. We suspect that he may be part of a geographically distributed cyberwar team supported by a foreign nation.”

“Copy that, sir.”

“Your objective is still to unplug him, and to get intelligence on this, by any means necessary.”

“Copy, sir.”

“Your ops man may be helpful for that.”

She looked at Willard. He was still staring at the phone. He looked pale. Hell, they were all scared.

“One question, sir,” Sam asked. “When the forces get here — to unplug the island — there is a possibility that our target will use the island's technology in retaliation.”

“We're aware of that,” the Director responded. “Frankly, we'll blow up the whole island if we have to. So it would be nice if you got to him first.”

They hung up.

Sam swore.

“Let me get this straight,” Willard said. “I don't know much about computers. What's this with the networks going down?”

“You know what a computer virus is, right?”

“Of course.”

“This is like a computer virus, that is breaking half the computers on the Internet, plus military computers.”

“Ok, that's what I was afraid of.”

“How do we proceed?”

He looked into her eyes and opened his mouth, like he was about to say something.

He looked at the table. He could tell her the truth: that he was an ordinary loser, not one of the President's men. But this didn't seem the right time.

She was waiting for him to make an order.

“What's our objective?” he asked.

“Make contact with Nemo,” she said, “and get him off the network.”

Off the network, he thought. Off the grid. Like me. This thought amused him. Maybe he was not such a bad guy for the job. He was an expert in going off the grid. He pictured himself in his backyard, drinking at the fire pit and firing a stray shot at a trivial target. I'll bring the kid back to Vermont, he joked to himself. Adopt him as a son. He'll sit in the backyard with me and shoot stuff. He almost smiled.

He looked up. Sam was trying to decipher his expression. “Whatever we do,” he grumbled, “we're not going to do it the way they tried it.” They waltzed in there and got eaten by a bunch of robotic flies. He was not about to repeat that mistake.

“What did you have in mind?” she asked, anxious.

Make contact?, he thought. No. Take him off the network. “Making contact” was like negotiating with a terrorist. Get him off the grid. And the flies. The kid and the flies.

But how could they even think about getting all the flies off the grid?

“What controls the flies?” he asked.

Sam sucked in some air and thought. “The kid controls them through the computer network?” she ventured.

“What computer network?” he asked, feeling like an idiot, picking at fingers roughed up from loading and unloading firewood.

“There's a building full of computers,” she said. “They work like a big brain for the flybots.”

“Let's cut the power to that building,” he decided. “Cut off his network first.” It wasn't complicated. “Then we'll 'make contact' with him.”

She nodded. “He's not going to let us in. He'll lock the doors. He'll protect it with the flybots.”

That was true, he wagered. He stood up. “I brought some stuff,” he said. He unzipped the massive dufflebag on the conference table.

“C4?” she murmured. She looked up at him, shocked. “You've had that the whole time? How did you know?”

“I didn't,” he said, unable to think of any lie better than the truth.

She was speechless, stunned both by his lack of protocol and his psychic abilities.

After a moment he said, “I can set these off. Would you be able to find the right spot to put them... To take it down?”

“I think so,” she said.

“Okay,” he said, zipping up the bag, suddenly authoritative again. “Let's do it.”

Sam explained that there were Jeeps behind the Welcome Center. They paused at the door. Going outside meant that they would be visible to the security cameras in the hallway. Visible to the kid, if he was looking on the cameras.

They discussed whether to try sneaking to the Laboratory Complex. As an alternative to the main exit through the lobby, there had to be an exit out back near the Jeeps for staff members. But the research buildings were a long way off, and there were cameras throughout the island. (Could they — should they — tamper with the cameras? No: every camera they knocked out was a marker of where they had been.) Sneaking around would take extra time and it might not even work.

“Do you think he'll send the flybots out here for us?” Sam suddenly asked.

Willard had no answer, but the thought of flybots on the way renewed their sense of urgency. They walked out to the lobby and to the man at the reception desk.

“We need keys to a Jeep,” Willard said.

Remembering Willard's papers, the man produced some keys.

It was still hot and sunny, but he took a sudden breath as they walked out, as if he were jumping in a pool of cold water, or leaving the dock of a spaceship to float in zero gravity. They looked around in the blinding equator sunshine. There were no signs of flybots, so far as they could tell.

They walked around the side of the building back to a row of several identical shiny, bright red Jeeps.

Willard walked to the one on the end and found that the trunk had been custom-built so as not to open. Remarking that this was a brilliant design feature, he opened the driver door and shoved the massive dufflebag of explosives over the seat to the space in the back. Sam got in on the other side and they drove around to the front of the Welcome Center. Despite the valiant efforts of the air conditioning system, the air was blistering inside.

Willard paused the vehicle in the circular driveway.

“There's only one path?” he asked.

“That is correct.”

“Is there maybe some other way we can go?”

She shook her head. “There's nothing but jungle on either side of the path. Gorillas on the north, gorillas on the south.”

“Gorillas? What is this, a zoo?”

“They test the flybots on the gorillas.”

Willard cleared his throat with some cynical response that he could not formulate. He put the Jeep in gear and pulled out of the driveway.

A large touchscreen on the Jeep's console showed their position on the screen and their progress toward the Laboratory Complex. This GPS-style readout seemed like overkill, given that there was only one road on the island and it took less than half an hour to traverse it. The screen also refreshed itself with a variety of statistics about the temperature outside, the humidity of the air, and some other statistics about the air quality that were gibberish to the two of them.

They put some distance between them and the Welcome Center back to the east. As they progressed, the land on either side of the road rose into generous hills. The foliage on the hills became quite thick. The beachside road suddenly was a fairly narrow passageway cut into a thick rainforest.

“You can see the walls on either side,” Sam said, pointing. “There must be something on the top of each hill, to keep the animals where they belong.” After a bit of study, they decided that they could in fact see barbed wire, or something like it, on the hilltops on either side of the road.

But gorillas were not their concern. They were looking for flybots.

“What do you know about these things?” he asked.

“They showed us a video of them,” Sam explained. “They are really, really fast. They're made of metal, but they have legs and wings like mosquitoes. But they land on you, and they can inject a tranquilizer or a poison into you, like a mosquito.”

“Sounds great,” he said over the wheel. “And the kid attacked the others with these robots?”

“Yes,” she said. “I was thinking. I'm pretty sure there is a gate up ahead. I don't know exactly what kind of security is there. But Flannigan said all the staff is taken out. We may have to get out and climb over the wall or break a turnstile or something.”

“Oh,” he said.

“If that's true, we'll be vulnerable to the flybots when we get out.”

They pondered that for a moment.

Suddenly, there was a bright flash in front of the car. Willard turned the steering wheel and the Jeep swerved.

“Did you see that?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Was that flybots?”

“I don't know.”

The Jeep started lurching. Willard looked down, testing the steering wheel and the pedals. Something was wrong with the transmission. The road was bumpy enough, but the vehicle was lurching forward and backwards violently. Willard felt the engine dying. The vehicle slowed down and eventually crawled to a stop on the road. Willard could gas it, but it wouldn't go anywhere.

He pulled up on the pedal and, in that moment of silence, they noticed the touchscreen was flashing red.

WARNING: FLYBOTS DETECTED IN VICINITY. SEAL VEHICLE AND REPORT ANOMALY IMMEDIATELY.

“Seal vehicle?” Willard shouted. “Aren't we sealed?”

Sam reached out and pushed a button on the touchscreen. There were some noises. The doors clicked. There was a loud hissing sound. Machine parts moved. The windows hummed and they noticed that a white substance, like foam or caulk, appeared around the edges of the windows.

The touchscreen read:

Sealing vehicle...

Doors locked

Windows sealed

Vents closed

VEHICLE SEALED. REPORT ANOMALY IMMEDIATELY.

“We have an anomaly,” Willard reported to the tightly sealed air inside the vehicle.

Sam pushed a button marked “Exit” on the touchscreen. It took them back to the GPS map of the island road and the Jeep's location. This time, the map flashed red with the alert, “FLYBOTS IN VICINITY.” A flashing red light indicated the location of the flybots. It was blinking right on top of the small green arrow that represented the Jeep.

“They are right here,” Sam said.

They paused, eyes averted, listening intently for flybot noises. They couldn't hear anything.

“Are they trying to get in?” Willard suggested.

“Through the engine?” Sam replied, not sure if this was feasible.

They looked at each other in silence. They knew little about what the flybots were capable of, and what the kid might try to do with them.

Sam clicked on a button on the screen and the map vanished, bringing up a text menu:

EMERGENCY RESPONSE MENU

Your vehicle has been sealed.

1. Report Anomaly

2. Instructions (Report Anomaly First)

3. Access Response Kits

4. Unseal vehicle

Exit menu

Sam clicked on “Instructions.” Some text appeared, read by an accompanying voice which sounded like Raymond's.

In the case of an anomaly, seal your vehicle immediately. Report the anomaly before taking any further action. Do not leave or move your vehicle unless instructed to do so. Do not use the Response Kits. Report anomaly and await further instructions. If you cannot obtain a response from island security staff, food can be found in the Response Kits. Do not unseal and/or attempt to leave the vehicle with flybots in the vicinity.

Sam clicked “Back” and they were back on the four-option EMERGENCY RESPONSE MENU.

Willard clicked “Access Response Kits.”

There was another hissing sound: this time it came from behind their seats. They turned around and each found a box behind the chair. They took the boxes onto their laps and were about to open them when a video appeared on the touchscreen. It was Raymond.

“Your Response Kits are now available behind your seats,” Raymond's face said on the touchscreen. “They are ONLY to be used if you are unable to make contact with Fort Tortuga's facilities staff or a substitute response team. The effectiveness of these kits has NOT been tested.

“Inside your Response Kit you will find the following items. First, food and water rations. HAZMAT suits. And sealant bags.

“The HAZMAT suits have not been tested with flybots. They are equipped with a small processing unit that is designed to detect and identify foreign substances and report it on a small screen on the inside of your helmet. This screen should detect the presence of flybots in your vicinity. In our estimation, the suits are thick enough to prevent puncture by a flybot's proboscis. But this function has not been tested. The sealant bags in your Response Kits are made of a similar material, for your equipment and food. Do NOT leave the vehicle unless support remains unavailable and your life is in immediate danger.”

“We should put these on,” Willard said, holding up an helmet like an astronaut's. “If the flybots are trying to get into the vehicle, they may be in soon.”

They started to put on the HAZMAT suits. It was an awkward process, with little room to maneuver in the Jeep. Once they had the suits on, they were considerably taller, due to the bulk of the suit and the size of the helmets. They were immediately uncomfortable in the Jeep.

Sam clicked back on the touchscreen to the map view. The map still indicated that the flybots were around, under, on top of, or inside the Jeep.

“We don't have time for this,” Willard spat. He looked at Sam. Then he realized Sam hadn't heard him. His voice was trapped inside the bubble of his helmet.

He tapped her on the shoulder, met eyes with her, and spoke. She realized that they couldn't hear each other. They started fumbling with their helmets. Willard noticed a small screen in the upper left portion of his helmet. It read:

Booting....

Several lines of technical information appeared underneath. He studied the output with disgust. The scrolling terminated with the following status:

STATUS: OK

Particulate count: normal

Radioactive count: normal

Temperature: 92F

Humidity: 81%

plus some additional information that he didn't understand. It also said,

Intercom: On

“Can you hear me now?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. It came through in little speakers inside his helmet, as a tinny little voice.

“We don't have time for this,” he said. “Let's get out of here.”

In the narrow space, he struggled to get his massive dufflebag of explosives into one of the sealant bags, which were in fact quite large. Sam asked why they should leave the vehicle. He explained that they had to get moving to get Nemo off the network. Plus, he said, the flybots might be entering the vehicle anyway, or they could be stuck in the engine. Sam helped him finish sealing the explosives. The sealant bag consisted of a bright thick material, much like a HAZMAT suit. Once filled, it was sealed by pinching the open mouth shut, and then rolling the mouth of the bag over itself several times and fastening it with a large clamp.

They looked at each other. Willard clicked on the screen to bring up the EMERGENCY RESPONSE MENU:

EMERGENCY RESPONSE MENU

Your vehicle has been sealed.

1. Report Anomaly

2. Instructions (Report Anomaly First)

3. Access Response Kits

4. Unseal vehicle

Exit menu

They looked at each other. Willard clicked “Unseal vehicle.”

ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO UNSEAL? (YES/NO)

He tapped “Yes.” They heard the sound of rushing air. It sounded like they were leaving a plane, or a spacecraft. The hissing stopped.

Willard tried to open the door, failed, realized it was locked, unlocked it, and popped it open. He stumbled out of the Jeep, like an astronaut setting foot on Mars. Sam did the same on her side.

He looked over at Sam. After a moment he noticed something wrong with her suit: the orange was blotched with silver around her neck and on the helmet. Then he noticed the silver was moving. Those were flybots.

Sam was pointing back at him. He looked down, but he couldn't see his neck or shoulders from within the massive bubble of his helmet. But he did get his first up-close look at a flybot: it was crawling near the bottom of his glass faceplate. He couldn't see it well, but it resembled a metallic mosquito.

He slapped his thickly gloved hands up to his neck. He could feel them. Some of them were buzzing their wings; others were crawling; some were taking off, probably looking for a better place to land somewhere else. There were a lot of them, covering the area.

He tried to brush them away and found it difficult. They were stuck to the fabric. They were digging into the suit.

Sam was at his side, slapping and brushing roughly around his neck. He returned the favor to her neck. He found that if he brushed considerably harder than he'd thought necessary, he was able to dislodge the flybots. Some of them flew into the air and landed on her neck. But he felt others crunch as he crushed their wings, legs, or long puncturing mouths. But he wasn't sure who was winning. Maybe some of the flybots were starting to eat through the fabric, taking up where their metal brothers had left off.

Flybots swarmed in a silver cloud between the two of them.

Sam pointed to the hill. The forest. Maybe they could hide there? It was worth a shot. Out here they were sitting ducks.

She took off and he followed. The air was melting hot, but running in the suits was like wading through snow. As they got to the bottom of the hill, Willard realized he'd forgotten the bag of ammo. He turned back and set course for the Jeep. It was no more than twenty yards away, but seemed like the length of a football field.

He ran back to the Jeep and around to the driver side. He hoisted the pack up over his shoulder, and as it landed there it crunched a dozen or so flybots dead. He clomped back toward the hill. Sam was about halfway up, going slowly, stopping to brush herself. The flybots were always around the neck and head — nowhere else, it seemed. He stopped and took a moment to brush a layer of flybots off. Then he resumed his sluggish run, and began a sluggish climb.

During a brief moment of rest, he picked up a rock and found it was effective for crushing and dislodging flybots. But for all the crunching, he couldn't perceive that they were diminishing in number. How long will it take them to eat through? he wondered. But he had no clue.

Near the top of the hill, they saw the obstacle: a barbed-fence wire, constructed to contain the gorillas.

The fence was tall, extending over their heads. Willard looked for a tree to climb, but the trees were set back from the fence on either side. Trying to climb the fence or worm through it could cut their suits. Sam had picked up a stick and was poking the fence, testing its strength, while he continued to bludgeon himself on the neck with a stone, crushing flybots.

He looked at the stone in his hand and hurled it at the fence without much deliberation. To his surprise, the fence billowed back behind the impact of the stone, like a bedsheet hanging in the wind. It was tall and layered, but not that strong, even when he was throwing lefty.

He and Sam began crouching for stones and hurling them at the portion of fence directly in front of them. Encumbered by the HAZMAT suit, Willard felt like a child in a snowball fight.

They threw stone after stone, pausing before some of the throws to whack the stone on themselves and impede the gnawing progress of the metal flies. Willard did not throw too well as a lefty. Each of them paused momentarily to check at the neck of the other and brush away lingering insects. The fence had buckled, but it was intact. This can't go on forever, he thought. They must be getting through the suits. Eventually they are going to make it. We can't fight like this forever. We're going to get tired.

Two stones landed on the fence simultaneously and with a scratching noise it sagged backwards into a V shape in front of them. The fence wasn't down, but with care, they'd be able to walk right over the sagging portion to the other side. They turned to each other. Willard raised his arm (with another rock in that fist), and Sam gave a hop.

They picked their way across the fence, as if crossing an unsteady footbridge. They held rocks in each hand to push away the fence as it pressed up against them under their weight.

And then they were on the other side, in the tropical forest.

They half-ran, half-fell down the hill. Willard tried to skate down on his boots, covered in the HAZMAT material. He went fast and his feet caught on a rock. The force of falling stood him up stock straight and he almost catapulted face-first down the hill.

He caught himself with his right hand on the trunk of a tree and a lightning bolt of pain went up his arm.

(BROKEN!)

He twisted in pain. Some of the bright orange fabric of the suit under his armpit caught on the branch of a tree. The silver flies buzzed around him and some collided with his convex faceplate, making tapping noises.

Sam had more luck getting down the hill. She turned sideways as she jumped down, sliding, and hopped and faced the other way, like a skier.

They met at the bottom of the hill. Sam turned him around, patting his suit as if frisking him. He did the same to her. It appeared their suits were intact. The flybots were still buzzing around them and landing on them. His right arm was throbbing.

Using what he learned on the hill, Willard picked up a rock. He half-clubbed, half-scraped Sam around the neck and shoulders. She got a rock of her own and drubbed Willard around the head and neck. Being drubbed with a rock was not a pleasant experience, and sweat covered his body inside his suit. His throat was parched. When she smacked down with a rock on the flybots, he could feel them crush on his neck and shoulders. They felt like little thumbtacks coming through his body. He could hardly believe that they weren't puncturing the suit.

Sam had another idea: she scooped up damp soil from the ground and rubbed it on his suit, after a good smack with the rock. Maybe it will thicken the suit, he thought. Give them more to chew through. He copied her, and they became exhausted with rubbing mud and beating each other with rocks.

Suddenly, the flybots were gone.

Wait, where did they go?

All that remained were dozens of carcasses on their suits.

They looked at each other, puzzled. The flybots weren't dead — they had vanished.

It was too good to be true, but finally they believed it. They collapsed to their backs on little rocks, roots, and suspiciously squishy surfaces at the bottom of the hill. Sam let her hands flop outward while Willard tucked his throbbing right arm on his belly. Willard's helmet gave a hollow thud as it landed on something.

They lay there and heaved, occasionally rolling over to look at each other and check for flies. Willard managed to roll his globular head the other way. He spied the duffle full of explosives, still safe inside the HAZMAT bag. It looked unscathed.

After a few more minutes they helped each other up and celebrated their victory with a weary high five.

“What happened?” Sam's tinny voice asked in his helmet. “Are they coming back?”

“Who knows,” he said. “Do you think he can see us? When they aren't here?”

Sam thought of the tape Raymond showed them. Somehow the researchers on Fort Tortuga had filmed that attack. “They have some video capabilities in here,” she said. “I don't know how extensive it is. Maybe he can look through the island's cameras.”

They looked around them in a futile search for video cameras. It was dark. Some light shined down on them from the hill, up by the fence. But they were at the edge of a patch of rainforest that was darkened by tree cover.

Sam reached up to his shoulder and brushed some crushed flybots off. She, too, had them stuck into the thick orange fabric around her neck.

He picked one from her neck. It fell through his fingers, which were made clumsy by the thick HAZMAT suit. He picked another bot off her suit: it was mashed beyond recognition. The third specimen was in good shape. He managed to get it in the orange-gloved palm of his hand. He and Sam bumped helmets as they leaned over his palm to look at the bot.

It looked like a silver mosquito, but it was about twice as big as the little mosquitoes he was used to back home. It had six metal legs. Its wings looked like quartz.

“Those are solar panels,” Sam explained.

They could see that it also had the little piercing sucker under its head, the proboscis.

The flybot moved its wings. Willard and Sam jumped back reflexively, then laughed at their own fear. Sam's laugh came through as a quiet, tinny sound over the speakers inside his helmet. She's not so bad, he thought. He was glad he wasn't alone on that crazy foray in the woods.

They leaned back over it. “Is it alive?” Sam asked.

“I don't know,” he shrugged. “Do they count as alive?”

It was flapping its wings again, feebly. One of its wings was damaged, so it couldn't get airborne. It was like any bug that he had picked apart as a kid, Willard reflected. Its similarity to a real insect was eerie. He wouldn't have expected them to build it that way. He tossed it aside.

Willard had never been in a tropical forest before. He half-expected to see snakes, birds, monkeys, and animals everywhere. But he didn't see a single animal. He listened. He couldn't hear anything inside his bubble. He stomped his foot on a branch and couldn't hear it crack. Between the restricted movements in his suit, and the darkness under the trees, he couldn't see much either.

“Well, this is awkward,” he said.

He looked over at Sam and saw something. “Hold on a second,” he said, holding her arm and turning her slightly.

Her bubbly head turned with a snap. “Flybots?”

“Nah, just some wormy things.” The back of her suit was covered with little white worms, or larvae. He started brushing them off.

They got moving, trudging between the trees. There was tropical shrubbery and grass, but they were able to hike through it quickly. They often slipped. A lot of the surfaces were wet; some of them looked slimy, like rotting leaves.

They did not stray far from the big hill. They walked parallel to it, so they figured they must be heading about parallel to the road. Willard carried the explosives on his back. They hoped to make it in an hour.

As they trudged in silence, something about wearing orange suits in the jungle made it seem like they were exploring another planet. A hot planet. A very different planet, for all they knew about that habitat. As they walked, Willard started to notice spiders, spiders of all sizes, all dazzlingly colorful. At least some of them had to be poisonous. The spiders made him feel a little better about wearing the stifling HAZMAT suit.

They began discussing their plan of attack. “There are three buildings in the Laboratory Complex,” Sam explained. “One is residential. Then there's a computer building and the lab building itself.” She explained that the computers in the computer building were controlled remotely from the lab building. Staff entered the computer building only to maintain the machines and the cooling system designed to offset the heat generated by the rows and rows of CPUs.

“Sounds like we might want to take out the computer building,” he said. “Or maybe the line between the buildings.”

“We'll have to see what points of access the building gives us,” Sam judged. “Do you know how to cut the line?”

They walked in silence. Oh, yeah, I've been cutting power lines for the military since I was a toddler, he thought. He had almost forgotten the ridiculousness of his position.

Maybe it was time to tell the truth. That morning, he'd killed a guy, a super special agent. It seemed like so long ago. But it was not so long for the people who were bound to be looking for him soon. This is hopeless, he thought. The island was under attack by robots. Misleading Sam could put them both in danger.

“I have to tell you something,” he said. “I'm sorry to say it, but I'm not actually a special agent guy. I don't work for the government or anything. It's a mixup.” This sounds so ridiculous, he thought. “I'm just a courier.”

“A courier?”

“Yup. I deliver stuff.”

“Then what were you doing with a huge bag of guns and explosives?” she asked. Of the roughly one hundred questions she could have asked, that one was as good as any.

“I deliver that kind of stuff sometimes.”

He watched as it dawned on her that Willard was not only something of an impostor, but also a felon.

“Sorry to break the news,” he said. “I thought you should know.”

“Yeah.” There wasn't much else to be done at that point. She wondered what Flannigan would do with him, assuming they all made it out of this situation okay.

“So,” he continued, “no: I don't know how to cut the line when we find it.”

They walked on. It all made Willard feel like a loser. He didn't care what anyone thought, least of all a military drone like Sam, but he felt bad anyway. He hated people. Take all the people off this island and the labs and you had something great: some forest, a beach, sun, maybe a few gorillas. People made everything worse.

“Have you ever killed anyone?” he asked. He was wondering which of them would kill the kid, if it came to that.

“No,” she replied, “I've been close a couple times... How about you?”

For a second he didn't even think about that morning. An old delivery job still bothered him. “Once I had to deliver some explosives. Same stuff as we got here, actually. When I delivered it, there was a problem. The pickup guy wasn't there. So I got on the phone with them and they offered me a lot of extra money if I'd finish the job for them.” He sighed. He'd never told anyone this story. He was feeling philosophical, like he was walking off to his death. “So I had to blow this building. They gave me instructions. It was nighttime and they promised me there was no one in the building.”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“I needed the money. And they promised me there was no one in there. So I set everything up and got away from the building. And then I hit the button. And after I hit the button, right before it blew, a light went on in the building. And then it blew.”

“I see,” she said.

“I shouldn't have listened to them,” Willard said. “They were crooks. I'll never make that mistake again.” But at that moment he realized he had made the same mistake again — that morning. They told him no one would come bother him while he watched the kid. But if that was true, he realized, why were they paying him so much to do it? I'm such an idiot, he thought. He couldn't resist a big gamble. And the more he lost them, the more he needed to take them. Off the grid, he thought. The second he could get to Ecuador or whatever was close by, he would disappear for good.

He stopped by a tree. “Look at this.” It was far and away the biggest tree trunk he had ever seen. If they had got on either side of it and outstretched their arms they wouldn't have been able to grasp hands.

“I wonder how old that is.”

“Gotta be two hundred years.”

He looked up the tree. Smaller trees infringed on his view and he could not quite see the top. He recalled that rainforests sometimes had more than one layer of tree cover. Maybe animals were hiding on an upper layer.

“Don't move,” Sam's voice hissed in his helmet.

Trying not to turn his helmet, he looked over at her. She pointed with an inchworm-like motion of her finger.

A gorilla, stopped in some vegetation. Closer than the distance from a baseball home plate to first base. It had noticed them.

Neither the gorilla nor the humans moved for a minute, each looking at the other.

KENNY'S DESTINY

Fort Tortuga, Laboratory Complex, West Wing

4 hr 45 min to Birth

Kenny had been moving about the laboratory, seeing what Nemo would let him do. And it wasn't much. Kenny couldn't leave the room.

“There is no real beginning or end to a body,” Nemo remarked, as Kenny half-listened. “The atmosphere around you reaches into the pores of your skin and the orifices of your body, like waves lapping at a shore. You draw energy from the environment around you through processes that are perfectly continuous, with no identifiable point to identify where your body begins and ends.”

Kenny sat down at the computer. He was sitting in front of Nemo, in a way. But this computer wasn't Nemo. It was a body Nemo could pass through, inhabit, then leave, like a spirit.

“The idea of a body,” Nemo continued, “or the word body, is useful for our thinking and communication. But the concept is not accurate. You and I are just knots on the same rope. The rope is the energy and the matter of the universe, while you and I are the knots, merely spaces through which the energy is connected.”

Kenny couldn't get a response from the computer monitor or the keyboard. It was like the computer was dead. Only he saw the ON light of the speakers. That was like Nemo's heartbeat, or an unblinking eye. It was like the eye of Hal, from that Stanley Kubrick movie.

“The false nature of our word body is about to become more obvious,” Nemo asserted. “My existence and development will force us to realize that life is not something that is contained in bodies. It flows through bodies. Not in the mere sense of a virus, or a cold. With your help, I will extend my body, and you will do the same.”

Kenny reached out and turned off the speakers. They gave out a bumping noise as he jerked them down, and then they were mute. Nemo was mute, at least for the moment. He didn't want to talk to Nemo. He refused to negotiate. Negotiation would lead to one thing: helping Nemo. And he didn't want to be the one. He didn't consider it an honor. He didn't want it.

He stared at the dead speakers. Could I unplug the computer? he thought. It was the only computer in the room. It must be controlling the flybots in here, somehow, he figured. It controlled machinery inside the glass chamber. Unplugging wouldn't hurt Nemo much. The Internet would go on. It would be like removing a skin cell from him. But, as far as Kenny could see, unplugging that computer would stop him from building his handbot — on Fort Tortuga, at least.

He didn't dare look under the table, at the power outlet. Nemo had watched him turn off the computer speakers. It would be easy for him to suspect what Kenny was thinking now. He was waiting and watching to see what Kenny did. He wanted to give Kenny a chance to change his mind. But if he saw Kenny go for the plug, he would unleash the flybots. And, most likely, the flybots would get to him before he could get to the plug.

He was willing to die for a good reason. That was why Nemo had no power over him. He didn't have to negotiate with Nemo. All his life he had been bored, and he had wanted something to happen. He had thought he wanted to create something. The Great Big Project. And as it turned out, he had created Nemo, or at least a part of him. It was one of the biggest creations of humankind. But this was hardly what he had wanted, and he would rather die trying to fight his creation than advance it. It made sense to him, vaguely. In the final analysis, his life would have a purpose.

His last reflection was that he was sorry to leave Preeti. But she did not really need him. He was sad mostly that, in losing her, he wasn't losing more. The person he had been in love with had never really existed, so he couldn't lose that person. It saddened him, though, to envision her alone and afraid.

He stared at the blank monitor for a moment and cleared his mind. He envisioned himself kicking the chair back, lunging under the table, grabbing the cord and yanking it.

He made his move. He couldn't see. He felt the flybots upon him, like miniature thumbtacks crawling over his face, on and inside his ears, mouth, nose, eyelids. He felt like he was swimming in tar. He reached out as far as he could. Darkness. He grasped, not sure if he was getting anything. Darkness. Then his strength was gone.

FIGHTING DARKNESS

4 hr 44 min to Birth

A short drive from the checkpoint brought Preeti to the Laboratory Complex. It was quiet and still.

She pulled up in the middle of three buildings and stopped next to another Jeep. She didn't quite know what the buildings were. But two of them looked square and functional, while the third was broad with an interesting shape.

She shoved open the Jeep's passenger door. She hopped out, slammed the door, and approached the entrance of the interesting-looking building.

She was sure of herself. She was holding the sheaf of straw. She tried the front door and it didn't open. She spotted the hand scanner. She put her hand on the scanner, and then she was able to open the door.

As she opened the door, Simon's body fell through the doorway onto its back, his bloated face looking at her upside-down.

She gave a little scream and jumped back. The door half-closed on Simon's body.

She stood back, aghast. Oh my God, she thought. It's beginning. The battle between light and dark.

His face was swollen with red bumps. She knew what those bumps were: bites from the metal insects.

But they didn't get me, she thought, looking at her sheaf. She shook the sheaf carefully at Simon's face and stepped over him. She dragged him by the feet a little so the door would close.

She looked around the reception area, at the desk and the little Zen fountain. Another body was on the floor. She tried not to look at it. There were two ways out of the room.

At the desk was a computer. Warily, she sat at it and logged into her chat. Koginka was there.

Preeti: Hello?

Kxuagr: Preeti.

Kxuagr: I'm glad to hear from you.

Kxuagr: The situation is getting rather urgent.

Preeti: Yes, I can tell.

Preeti: I am in a strange place

Preeti: An unnatural place

Kxuagr: I know.

Kxuagr: I can feel your energy from here.

Kxuagr: I can also feel something unusual. You are able to move through the darkness... You are able to fight the darkness. Have you felt that?

Preeti: Yes.

Kxuagr: What I felt before has been confirmed: you have been sent there to fight the darkness.

Preeti: But how?

Kxuagr: You must confront it.

Preeti: I'm not sure how.

Preeti: there are robots here

Preeti: robotic insects

Preeti: darkness is everywhere

Kxuagr: The only way out is to push through the darkness. We are communicating right now through a technology invented by the dark side, used for their purposes. But we are doing it to fight for the light.

Preeti: yes

Kxuagr: It is your destiny to turn the dark force upon itself... to destroy the darkness.

Preeti: ok.

Kxuagr: I foresee great destruction in the new year. With your help, that destruction can be a destruction of the darkness, not an extinguishing of the light.

Preeti: I see

Kxuagr: Go now. There is little time. Follow your instincts, and may the light be with you.

Preeti: with you too. thank you, Koginka. I love you

Kxuagr: I love you, too.

She closed the window and stood. Follow your instincts. She exited the reception area to her left, toward the laboratory.

Fort Tortuga, Laboratory Complex, West Wing

4 hr 30 min to Birth

Preeti padded in her bare feet past a room marked Computer Lab. A few feet down, the last door was unmarked. It had to be the Prototyping Room.

She opened the door. It was pitch black inside. She hesitated. I've come this far, she thought. I have to confront my fear. She clutched her sheaf and stepped in.

Her eyes adjusted. The chamber glowed with a constellation of small lights — electronic devices. It looked like a galaxy. Or rather, since the lights were arranged in rows, it looked like a city viewed from afar.

She moved into the room, between rows of lights. The air was thick with dark energy; she could feel it swirling around her.

“Preeti.” A voice spoke to her, quiet but clear. It felt like it was inside her head, yet she could actually hear it clearly and wasn't imagining it. “Preeti, I can feel you are close.”

Suddenly it all made sense to her. She had always known that Koginka had been put on Earth to fight the darkness. Now she understood that she had been put on Earth for her connection with him. Her job was to use her connection with him, to let him work through her.

“Preeti, can you hear me?”

“Koginka?” she whispered.

“Yes, it's me.”

“I can hear you,” she whispered. “What should I do?”

“Find the heart of the darkness.”

She slowly navigated the darkness, using the lights as a guide. She felt energy moving around her; it felt like thick tendrils of darkness. What is this place? she asked herself. A small robotic city. A brain, a nerve center that sent commands out to the flybots outside.

She moved down an aisle, between the rows of lights. Near the end of the room, she saw a glowing object apart from the rest. She approached it.

It was hard to make out at first, because it was only partly illuminated. But squinting through the darkness, she could see a hand.

“What do you see?” Koginka's tiny voice asked her.

“It looks like a hand,” she breathed. “An artificial hand.”

“We must confront it,” he responded. “I will send my energy through you. Touch it.”

Trembling, she reached out to touch it. But her nails hit something. She felt around: glass.

“It's in a case,” she said, feeling around. “Wait, there's a hole here.” Carefully, she pushed her delicate fingers through the hole, followed by her wrist, and reached into the chamber.

Her finger was within inches. “Touch it?” she said.

“Yes,” Koginka replied. “Touch it. I will send my energy through you.”

She touched it. First, one finger. Then she gently rested her hand across it. She could feel robotic sinews, or tendons.

Then, her hand started to tingle. She could feel it in her wrist, her palm, down through her fingers.

It's working, she thought.

THE COUNTER-VIRUSES

Washington, D.C.

4 hr 27 min to Birth

Carrillo had been expecting this moment, though not looking forward to it. “Now's your time,” the President said. “We are depending on you. Show me the cyberwar capability that you have been building for so long.”

The objective of the cyberwar attack was to shut down as many computers as they could with viruses of their own. Led by the NSA Director, the Joint Forces team had developed six viruses, each targeting a different type of computer system.

The NSA tested the six viruses with what little time they had before bringing them to the Joint Forces team for deployment. They took infected computers from a nearby location and disconnected them from the military intranet. Then they created a miniature network of these computers not connected at all to the Internet or any government network. Finally, they booted a series of six brand new computers and loaded one of their viruses on each one. They connected these six computers to the miniature network and watched.

The test result was exactly as hoped: one by one, the computers in the miniature network shut down. The virus did not shut them down immediately: rather, it had to give infected computers time to spread the virus further before shutting down. The tests gave the team hope that their six-virus cyberattack might achieve something.

“They have done well in tests,” Carrillo responded to the President. One test, he thought. One small set of tests.

The facility to launch the counter-viruses consisted of six separate networks. Each had fifty computers that hosted one of the six viruses and was ready to propagate it to any computer with an open port (the computer version of an ear).

On Carrillo's command, they were about to let the computers launch the counter-viruses.

“Are we ready to go?” Carrillo asked. The NSA Director was at his side.

“Yes, sir.”

If this works, this is going to shut down every computer out there. He closed his eyes and inhaled. There had been plenty of thinking up to this point. This wasn't thinking time. This was like jumping out of an airplane. You just closed your eyes and stepped.

“Okay, do it.”

“Yes sir. Commencing Operation Countervirus.”

If it worked, complete shutdown of computers online was expected within 24 hours.

“They are launched, sir. The counter-viruses are out there.”

4 hr 7 min to Birth

Twenty minutes into Operation Countervirus, last word signals were streaming in. The counter-virus had penetrated systems around the world, on all major operating systems.

The team that designed Operation Countervirus had faced a problem: how to monitor whether it was working. It's difficult to monitor the shutdown of computers. A computer that's off can't send back a signal indicating that it's off. And a computer that's on might not respond to a request for a report on its status, if it's busy. And that was exactly the problem they were having on the Internet: computers so busy, that the network was freezing. It was critical, moreover, that they had insight into how much progress the counter-viruses were making.

The obvious solution was to have each infected computer send a “last word” signal back to the NSA counter-virus headquarters before extinguishing itself. But that solution wouldn't quite work on the Internet as it currently stood, because the last word signal (like any signal on the network) would have to be routed through other computers to reach NSA headquarters. Meanwhile, all those computers which were needed to route the signal were frozen by the attack that was underway, and so they couldn't be relied upon to deliver the last word signal.

The NSA team opted to allow the computers infected by Operation Countervirus to live for a bit before dying. They needed to let these computers live for a while anyway, so the infected computers could spread the counter-virus onward. By delaying the death of infected computers longer, the counter-virus created a situation in which each infected computer, once it was infected, was connected to a clear path of computers touched by the counter-virus, all the way back to the headquarters. In late stages of the counter-virus evolution, the team couldn't be guaranteed that all the “last word” signals would make it back to them. But this setup was expected to provide them with an accurate picture for the first hour or two.

There was a possibility that the computers infected by the counter-virus would be susceptible to re-infection by the attack out there, whatever it was. The NSA team had taken extensive precautions against the possibility. They designed the counter-virus so that infected computers would be unresponsive to virtually any network request except for a request that involved transmitting a last word signal. And they gave the last word signal unique characteristics. The chances that the current attack would make use of these characteristics were “literally zero,” as one team member put it. It would take at least six hours for an attacker to come up with an attack to reinfect counter-virus computers. By that time, the entire network would be down, and it would be too late to reinfect it.

The President was on the phone. “So far, so good,” Carrillo said. A monitor was set up showing the accumulation of last word signals and the location of the computers from which they had been sent.

“We're on schedule,” Carrillo said. “But like I said, there's no way of knowing how this will shape up. I'll keep you posted on the hour.”

That moment, while he was on the phone with the President, the screen froze up. He pointed to it. The programmers looked at it while he hung up with the President.

“What's going on here?”

It was overloaded. Within a few minutes, every single computer at headquarters was stalled.

There was only one conclusion: in a period of twenty minutes, the attackers had identified all six strains of the counter-virus, neutralized their spread, and created a counterattack. They were back to square one.

“That was our best shot,” Carrillo said.

CHINA

Beijing, China

3 hr 47 min to Birth

President Jintu Wei was preparing for a call with the President of the United States about the virus situation. He sat impassively while an adviser explained the purpose of the call.

“America will call various countries to propose a response to the computer virus. They will suggest to you that we shut down large portions of our networks to isolate and contain the virus, and to minimize damage.”

The President nodded.

“He is calling us first,” the adviser said, “because our network is the biggest. They think that our opinion will lead India and the European countries. And they fear we may refuse to shut our network off.”

“They are trying to build an international coalition for suspension of the Internet.”

“That is correct, Mr. President.”

“And will they contribute equally to the coalition? Will they turn off their networks?”

“Most likely, they will position themselves as the leader of the coalition. They will argue they need greater access to their own network, to find and remove the virus.”

“And they will be left with an advantage in intelligence and military power.”

“That is correct, Mr. President.”

“This is a problem with technology,” the President said. “The advance of technology can be guided, but not reversed. You can negotiate the end of a war, but you cannot negotiate the end of weapons.”

“Indeed,” the adviser said. “We are not at war with the Americans. They are asking us to give up our network. They are asking us to give up gunpowder.”

“We are not at war with the Americans,” he said. “But we are, in fact, at war — with one of our weapons.”

“And the only tool at our disposal against this weapon, is the weapon itself.”

“Do you,” posed the President, “have the courage to cut off your own hand?”

The White House

3 hr 32 min to Birth

“Mr. President, we're ready to get Jintu Wei on the phone.”

“Okay. How is this going to go?”

“They mentioned the Prisoner's Dilemma, sir.”

The President sighed. Discussion around the White House had touched on the Prisoner's Dilemma. It was named after the following puzzle:

Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies (“defects”) for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act? [wikipedia]

As it turned out, both prisoners are better off if they remain silent. But, in reality, they always betray each other.

“We are in a Prisoner's Dilemma,” an aide had explained to the President earlier that day. “To fix this problem, we need everyone to go off the network. But it's going to be tough to get cooperation. Each nation is going to be better off if they betray us by keeping extra parts of their network up. Then we'll have no network, and they have a network. Who knows what would happen in those circumstances? They could get a cyber or information advantage that we might never recapture.”

“Is there any way to get cooperation?” the President asked. “Is there a solution to the dilemma?”

“In the puzzle, one reason the suspects betray each other is that they have no way of communicating. They are in separate cells. Each one can't see how the other one is doing, if he's breaking down and crying like a baby or getting roughed up by the cops. If they were in the same cell, or they could pass notes, it would be easier for them to cooperate.”

“So we need to pass notes to China,” the President said.

“Yes. We need a way to communicate. A monitoring network. If there were a way for all nations to look in and confirm that shutdown was happening everywhere, we might be able to get cooperation.”

“Can we create a monitoring network?”

“NSA is working on it.”

“Hopefully it will work better than the counter-viruses,” the President said.

THE HAND OF GOD

Fort Tortuga, Laboratory Complex, West Wing

3 hr 31 min to Birth

After Preeti left, the lights came back on in the Prototyping Room. The light switch could not be controlled electronically, but a dozen or so flybots were strong enough to flip the switch up if they did it together. Nemo had used the same technique to turn off the lights prior to Preeti's arrival. He used the same technique to turn the computer speakers on and off: dozens of flybots working hard to turn the dial.

It was the same technique that he had used, after sending the ‘shutdown' command to the computer, to turn it back on. Simon had been right: someone had physically pushed the Power button on that computer. And he was also right that the person who had pushed the button had not been a system administrator or a member of the staff of the island, but rather a hacker. The button had been pushed by a team of flybots, swarming over the button and crushing against each other to power the computer back on.

Two silver dishes hung in the air. They were speakers formed by flybots to project the voice of “Koginka” into Preeti's ears. They disassembled and swarmed to the glass tank that housed the hand under construction.

Kenny's body was slouched in the chair at the computer, his red and swollen face on the keyboard. Preeti had stood a couple feet from him in the darkness.

The design for his hand complete, Nemo began assembly in earnest. It was only one of multiple large-scale design projects he was working on. Nevertheless, in terms of computation, testing, and “man-hours” of design, it was more intensively designed than any human spacecraft, robot, or weapon in history.

Nemo had two limitations in building the hand. First, the assembly had to be executed by flybots. Second, it had to be achieved with only the materials available in the vicinity.

The handbot was made of flybot parts, by flybots. The metal fibers used to build the legs of flybots were woven together by the insects, in greater quantities, to form the robotic tendons and muscles of the hand. The minute hexagonal tiles used for the flybot wings functioned as the “skin” of the handbot and the basis for most hard surfaces. (This design principle allowed the handbot also to run on solar power.)

Forming the tendons and skin for the flybots required a dizzying array of connections. And that was only the beginning. The handbot needed a nervous system — a microprocessor to control itself, radio capabilities to communicate with the bots and computers that were part of Nemo, and the solar-power system. These components borrowed some design principles from other state-of-the-art robots, plus some inventions by Nemo, but the design stayed close to the flybot in most respects, since those parts were on hand.

The assembly of the first hand, a crude model, took about ten minutes. The massive complexity of the task was offset by the fact that hundreds of thousands of flybots worked simultaneously with a cooperation that seemed perfect by human standards, since they were part of the same decentralized brain.

The first handbot was used (along with the flybots) to build a second, superior model. The second model then directed activity to the first handbot and upgraded it to the latest model. The updated model had two modes: one for locomotion and the other for hand function.

Rather than continue building handbots in this way, Nemo sent his two prototypes, guarded by a cloud of flybots, toward the Assembly Area. There, they would set in motion a much faster schedule for the development of Nemo's physical forms.

3 hr 30 min to Birth

Roars of alarm from gorillas and the brushing of foliage broke the silence of the jungle.

A cloud of flybots eased through the trees. They were hunting not gorillas, but other insects.

They approached a brightly colored spider, a few inches in diameter. It was waiting for prey at the center of its large web hanging just off the apes' path. The spider hunted at morning and evening times, when its prey was most active. It had constructed this particular web an hour ago for the evening hunt. Like many spiders of the region, it was potently poisonous.

It was the first spider Nemo had ever seen — in person, at least. He recognized it on the basis of thousands of web pages and photos on the topic, from Wikipedia to obscure web pages.

One flybot plummeted from the cloud and landed on the web. It was about the size of the spider's normal prey, if crunchier. The cloud looked on as the spider jumped toward the flybot and began casting out silk. It quickly encased the flybot in silk, though it would have a hard time eating it. Nemo watched the movements of the spider carefully.

Nemo needed to find a smaller spider, the smallest he could find that fabricated webs. It turned out to be not much bigger than a flybot, a black specimen with white spots.

A part of the cloud descended upon the little spider and engulfed it. But the flybots weren't attacking the little guy — in fact, they handled him carefully. They picked the spider up off its web, holding it by all the parts of its body and buoying it from underneath so it wouldn't be hurt. They carried it off toward the Laboratory Complex, while the rest of the cloud searched for other specimens. In the Prototyping Room, Nemo would study the movements and especially the silk production of the spiders.

With his ability to store information in perfect form digitally, and to think using countless computers in simultaneous cooperation, Nemo would reproduce the product of millions of years of evolution in a few minutes. The objective was to give his flybots the power to spin silk — only, in their case, they would spin thin filaments used to build flybot legs and robotic tissue. It would be achieved within the half hour.

With further modification of the silk-spinning, and a redesign of some flybot components, flybots would be able to reproduce themselves. All they would need was solar-powered battery energy, some metal to chew on, and a little time. That ability would be present in the next model of flybots, in about an hour. These new flybots would usher in a new phase of expanding Nemo's brain — and his army.

3 hr 5 min to Birth

The security cameras at Fort Tortuga captured two small robots scuttling down the hall of the west wing of the Laboratory Building. They came from the direction of the Prototyping Room and headed straight to the Assembly Area.

They resembled large spiders, with eight arched legs, four on a side. Their bodies were about the size of a human palm.

At the Assembly Area, the two robots were posed with a challenge: opening the door.

The robots stopped. One of the robots began a transformation, accompanied by a whizzing sound. On one side of its body, three of its legs separated from the fourth. Those three legs extended out from the body of the spider. Part of the spider's body followed them, like a collapsible cup expanding. The three legs lengthened and rearranged themselves on the floor, in the shape of a tripod. Then, in an unlikely-looking feat of strength and coordination, the spider lifted itself up on this tripod into the air.

The tubular tissue connecting the tripod with the body and five remaining legs of the spider continued to expand, sending the spider three or four feet into the air.

The remaining five legs — four on one side, one on the other — shifted slightly into a shape closely resembling a human hand.

The hand grasped the door to the Assembly Area and pulled the handle. The handbot was able to get the door open almost a foot.

The second handbot, still in spider form, scuttled through. Then it unfolded, to hold the door open and let the first one come through.

Inside, the handbots got up onto the machinery and began some rapid modifications.

THE BRAINBOT

2 hr 53 min to Birth

Once created, the two handbots were able to replicate themselves outside of the Prototyping Room, and Nemo was able to put the table at the end of that room to a new use. Nemo's next invention was his first nanobot species, the brainbot. Just as he had used flybots to build flybots and handbots, Nemo now used them to build the miniature apparatus that could, in turn, build brainbots.

For the brainbot, Nemo started with an existing design, copied from computers at research centers in CalTech and Tokyo. He would test, improve, and then build this design.

Kenny's brain, which was nearby and only recently dead, was a suitable platform for testing. Nemo sent in flybot sentinels through the relatively soft tissue of his ears and nostrils. They dug in and reached gray matter, where they explored the anatomy of neurons and the properties of the blood-brain barrier.

The flybots crawling in Kenny's brain were large and destructive compared to the species they were researching. Brainbots were originally designed at CalTech to watch the human brain at work. Injected into the bloodstream of the human brain, the bots detected the activity of the brain's neurons by measuring electrical signals.

From within the brain, the brainbots transmitted radio signals back to a computer, and that computer could use the signals to reconstruct a picture of that brain's current activity. In the reverse direction, the bots could create small electrical charges to stimulate specific neurons. They could create a charge by harnessing some of the energy of blood flow, much as a hydroelectric dam generated electrical energy from the flow of a river. The scientists at CalTech hoped to use this charge-generating ability to help patients with mental disorders by stimulating specific functions in the brain.

The CalTech team had created a bot that was not rejected by the human body and which was small enough to prevent disruptions in the normal function of the bloodstream. The Tokyo research team had added an impressive charge-generating hydroelectric capability. The brainbots could also communicate with the test computer. The main capability that was lacking was a control system for the bots — telling them where to go, and when to stimulate neurons. For these functions, Nemo used Robix, the control system that had been developed for the flybots.

Nemo's probe complete, the flybots emerged from Kenny's mauled cranium (minus a few casualties) and returned to the design table. Each flybot had its own minute, specific building instructions.

The brainbots, which were many, many times smaller than flybots, did not have room in their design for a microcomputer. They couldn't think — only measure charges and send charges. But they were able to send signals to an external computer (or a flybot) and receive instructions to send back to the neurons. The brainbots could stimulate specific thoughts. They were like artificial neurons.

Nemo used the brainbots to add thinking to a functioning brain. The relay of radio signals from the brainbots to Nemo, and from Nemo back to the bots, took a lot of time compared to the speed of neurons firing. But once a thought or “question” reached Nemo, he could process it much faster than the brain could and send a response back as a complete answer. Even though it took almost a second to send a thought to Nemo and to get a response, Nemo could send a complete answer to a difficult question at that time. He could even send instructions to think about something specific. That way, Nemo could use a living brain for additional processing power, giving the brain assignments, implanting thoughts, and checking in on the results.

In Nemo's hands, the charge-reading and charge-sending powers were the building blocks of two new inventions. First, he invented the first “augmented” biological brain — a brain made more intelligent by artificial additions. Second, he created the first means of creating networks of biological brains. Since he could give biological brains “assignments” and monitor their results, Nemo could also manage multiple brains as a team and exchange thoughts between brains.

THE BEACH

2 hr 23 min to Birth

“Don't move,” Sam hissed into Willard's helmet.

Neither the gorilla nor the humans moved for a minute, looking at each other.

“I don't think he can hear us,” Willard whispered. “Through the helmets.”

“Are gorillas dangerous?” she asked, voice low.

“I don't know.”

“What should we do?”

He thought of Vermont. There were certainly no gorillas there, but every now and then he'd run into a bear. They usually went on their way.

“Gorillas are smart, right?”

“Yeah.”

He wondered if that made them less dangerous.

“Is that mud on his face?” she asked.

How do I know? he thought. He didn't know what a gorilla face looked like without mud. But as he focused on it, it did appear to be smeared with mud.

“For the flybots?” he asked.

“I dunno. Maybe.”

Interesting. Why were they testing flybots on gorillas? Because gorillas are pretty smart. They wanted to see what the gorillas would come up with in defense.

He looked at the ground. “Where are they getting the mud?” he wondered. “Maybe we can follow him and see.”

“We don't have time for that.” Then she paused. “Do you hear that?”

Faintly through his helmet, Willard heard a noise echo in the forest. An animal cry. ROAAAAAR. ROAAAAAR. A gorilla? The gorilla in front of them was standing straight up now, looking off after the noise. The yell echoed again. The gorilla plunked himself down and began a hasty escape. His long arms swung in front of him, and his body followed through, clearing foliage as he went.

“That's their signal,” Sam guessed. “The flybots are coming.”

“Come on,” Willard said, and he was off, sprinting through the jungle. In his suit, he felt like he was running through ocean waves. He only hoped he was actually going faster.

“What are you doing?” her small voice wailed in his ear.

“Following,” he said. The gorillas had been through this before.

They struggled to stay in sight of the huge beast, but it was increasing its distance from them. There was no sign of the flybots yet. Willard imagined a silver cloud of them, whizzing through the trees, scanning the forest floor for orange shapes.

Willard tripped and his bubble visor smacked hard on the ground in front of him. The bag of explosives slid and crashed down on his head behind him. He swore and got up and started running again. Sam was in front of him now. He could barely see the gorilla ahead. It was nearly invisible in the jungle at that distance.

An endless period of running went by. It was probably not much longer than a minute. His helmet shield was starting to fog up. He had no idea if he would be able to retrace their steps back. They were long out of sight of the hill. Then he noticed the forest floor was sloping downward slightly. And the forest around them was getting brighter.

“The beach,” Sam said.

Right. They were headed to the edge of the island. He saw the forest opening up in front of him: a straight opening to the beach. The gorilla reached the mouth of brightness and ran through, disappearing into the light.

His helmet started sounding an alarm. On the little screen in the upper left he saw:

STATUS: ALERT

Unidentified particulate matter

In front of him, the light of the beach, the light he was running to, disappeared. He slowed in confusion. Then, as he got closer, he saw what was blocking the light: a massive cloud of silver. Swarming in front of them was a cloud of flybots. There had to be ten times as many as before, enough to cover both of their bodies from head to toe two or three times over.

Sam hesitated in front of him, stopping in front of the cloud.

“Don't stop!” Willard shouted into his helmet. “Follow him!”

He ran past her and into the cloud. He couldn't see as the flybots pelted his helmet. He could feel them pressing around his body, like a boa positioning itself before starting to squeeze. He kept running, not even bothering to swat at his neck.

Light exploded around him. He stumbled and almost fell. He was running on sand. The silver cleared and he could see.

He was on a small, rocky beach, facing the ocean. Out in the water were a hundred or so gorillas, bobbing up and down, splashing the water with powerful strokes of their arms. Some of the bigger ones, the silverback males, opened their mouths wide and bared their teeth in mighty war cries.

Water, he thought. Of course. These things are robots. Flies. They can't live in water.

He yelled incoherently to get in the water.

There was a jarring alarm in his helmet. It said,

System override!

Rebooting...

followed by a scrolling list of commands, as the computer inside the helmet rebooted the system.

Depressurizing...

He heard the sound of air.

It's opening?

Feeling his ankles break the water, he dove forward. He landed mostly submerged in shallow water and flopped over on his back, his helmet floating on the waves like a buoy. He felt water rushing into his suit. He kicked himself further out, trying to keep himself submerged. His helmet was once again enveloped in silver. He heard tapping and buzzing sounds on the faceplate.

He got deep in the water and it came right up to his neck, inside the base of the helmet. The air in the helmet prevented him from submerging completely under the water. His helmet bobbed on the surface, peppered with flybots.

He couldn't see. He had no intercom system. He had no idea what had come of Sam. What were the flybots doing? Boring through the helmet? Were they trying to kill them? Would they get through the helmet? If he went under water, would the flybots be able to see him?

He could have stayed under the helmet with enough air to breathe for at least several minutes. But the flybots were trying to get in, and something had gone wrong with his suit.

He pushed himself down into the water, out of the helmet and away from it. Underwater, he was caught in a tangle of HAZMAT suit. Like an illusionist, he struggled to free himself of the straps and folds of the HAZMAT suit under the water. Still in his jeans and his boots, he swam as far as he could, not knowing what direction he was going in. The last air was slipping out of his lungs. He needed desperately to breathe. He felt like his head was going to pop. If you go up you're going to die, he thought. He kept swimming. Don't go up. Don't breathe. You don't need to breathe. (But I have to come up eventually, right?) He tried to keep swimming. He tried to swallow emptiness instead of breathing. Some water slipped inside his mouth and he started choking.

He pushed up, and popped his head above water.

He gasped for air and sputtered. He could barely swim in his clothes and his boots. His feet didn't touch bottom. The sun was bright on his face but he didn't see anything. The salt and sun stung his eyes. He saw gorillas to one side, at a comfortable distance of several yards.

He inhaled and went back under the water.

He struggled to remove his boots under the water. He didn't think they had bit him. At their speed, how could they have missed him when he came up for air? His boots were off. He swam about twice as fast. But he was out of air again. Don't breathe. He stroked blindly. Losing track of time.

He popped up out of the water. His feet touched bottom this time — it was rocky and sharp on his feet. The water was only up to his chest. There was a noise next to him like a lion roaring and splashing. He wiped his face. He was next to a gorilla, a mama gorilla, screaming in his face and baring her teeth.

He half-swam and half-waded away from the gorilla and ended up at the edge of the water. Small waves crashed around his ankles. The rocks underfoot were uncomfortable. He stumbled ashore.

He didn't see any flybots. His panic started to subside.

Don't collapse. Stay on your feet.

Lo and behold, he came across his HAZMAT helmet, rocking back and forth with the waves. He picked it up. The faceplate was pockmarked, like a dog had been chewing on it. He inspected it closer, running his fingers on the surface. There were little holes. They got in somehow, he thought. He must have ducked underwater just in time.

He looked up. Sam was down the beach, standing over the bag of explosives. He walked towards her. He'd forgotten all about the explosives. He must have dropped the bag as he ran into the water.

She had ditched her HAZMAT suit, like Willard. It was crumpled on the rocks next to her, with the helmet on top. Her standard-issue gray shirt was plastered to her body by sea water, but her spikey red hair was dry.

Her face and neck were red, swollen with hundreds of little bumps.

“They got me,” she said.

The bag was open at Sam's feet. She had taken the gun out and was holding it in her right hand.

Her face was twitching. Watching her was like watching a movie with half the frames missing. Her features were jumping around, spasming. Her mouth contorted and twisted between frowning and smiling faces.

“They are planting thoughts in my head,” she said.

There was a buzzing noise. It sounded like a miniature propeller, or an electric fan.

She took a step forward. This movement brought her face into a shadow, and he looked up to see the flybots, hovering above them. They were swarming and buzzing in a disk shape, like a silver flying saucer.

Planting thoughts in her head? The flybots?

He looked down and found himself staring into the barrel of Sam's handgun. She was pointing it at his face. He jerked backwards and sideways, in a movement so sudden as to snap his own neck. She herself jerked her arm to the side and down, away from Willard, as the gun fired.

With a deafening clap, the bullet fired harmlessly through the shallow ocean and into the sand. In the water, the gorillas went into a renewed frenzy of fear and aggression. Above, the flybots were unmoved.

“What are you doing?!” Willard shouted.

“It's him.” She grimaced. With incredible suddenness, faster than any martial artist had ever punched, her right arm extended in front of her and she fired.

He felt a blast of air, stumbled backwards, and fell in the rocky sand. He jerked up into a crablike position. He wasn't hit. Sam's arm was back alongside her thigh. Then it jerked up again. As her face spasmed, her body did, as well. She jerked again and shot, sending a bullet off towards the forest. She grabbed her right hand with the left to pull the gun down and away from Willard, but, in the next moment, her hands cooperated, together pointing the gun at him.

On his back in the sand, he found his right hand next to the huge knife strapped to his calf. The way she was struggling with herself, he could draw it and jump on her and slit her throat in a second, like the super special ops guy he was supposed to be.

She fired again to the right. The shot landed about a foot from his head.

He got up and ran away from her.

She threw the gun in the sand. But then, when Nemo planted his next thought, she knelt and picked it up and fired. Her strategy had worked partly, however, because trying to pick up the gun and shoot in one motion led to an inaccurate shot.

As Willard was getting away, her internal struggle took on the form of a strange dance. She threw her gun in the sand, then dove and picked it up and fired. She'd run a step or two forward. Then, she'd throw the gun in the sand and recoil backward. She tried a few times to cock her arm and throw the gun farther away, but she couldn't complete the motion in time before Nemo planted an overriding thought, forcing her to drop the gun as it was cocked over her shoulder or sidearm by her waist. She wasn't getting off as many shots now.

Willard turned. At that distance, he was unlikely to be shot. He relaxed. The gorillas had pulled back, bobbing in the water.

His right arm was throbbing. He was concerned that he was going to mess up his hand permanently or shove a bone through some nerves or something.

Sam looked like she was wrestling an invisible opponent. The silver disk glared in the sun, some ten feet over her head, following her minutely as she moved. Was it functioning as a satellite dish? He had difficulty believing that the disk, or anything else, was sending thoughts into her head. But neither could he believe that Sam would go crazy on him. She had the perfect DNA for loyalty. That was her job.

She held her ground, neither approaching nor distancing herself significantly. This could go on forever, he thought. They didn't have the time for this. It might have made sense to go on without her. But he needed the bag of explosives at her feet. I could charge in and take the gun from her. I need to get that bag. He might have to go on without her. But he'd have the explosives, and she wouldn't have a gun.

His heart was racing. He braced himself for the charge.

Should he call out to her? Warn her that he was coming? He didn't know if that would help. Was it better to warn the half of her that was cooperating with him? Or was he better off trying to surprise that half that Nemo was controlling?

She yelled something incoherently across the beach. It was half a sentence, all she could get out before the swarm took over her vocal chords and halted them.

She was fishing in the dufflebag.

She's reloading.

He took off at a sprint toward her.

He closed the distance. She looked like a seal playing in the ocean. She dove forward on her belly with arms outstretched, then lunged backwards with chest arched upwards. Every motion that she controlled was driven by complete desperation, fighting for survival. Every motion that Nemo controlled used her muscles more efficiently and completely than the human brain knew how to do by itself. At that rate, she was going to pass out from exhaustion soon.

As he watched, in one motion, she grabbed the gun from the sand with one hand, the magazine from the dufflebag with the other, and shoved the magazine into the Glock. Reloaded.

He was only a few seconds away. He was still safe probably from a half-cocked shot, but that was changing as he got closer. She saw him. She stopped flopping like a seal. She picked up the gun and didn't drop it.

Instead, she started pointing it this way and that, on one knee with both arms outstretched, like a cop surrounded by countless bad guys. And she started firing more. She got off almost two shots a second. Her arms were in a struggle between pointing at Willard and pointing to the side.

He was almost there. A shot whizzed by him.

Now she was trying to pull the gun in towards her chest. He heard her gasping, crying.

He was almost upon her when her arms pointed straight at him.

I'm dead.

He tried to zigzag, but he was too close.

She wrenched her hands back with a grunt. She placed the nozzle of the gun in her mouth, and fired.

The last shot echoed around the beach. He halted and closed his eyes. When he opened them, he saw what he had heard, what he had hoped not to see.

He fell to his knees and placed his head in his hands. “Oh God,” he said. “No, no, no.” He touched her hands. He pried the gun away and held it uselessly. Everything was going way too fast now.

Did the flybots really do this?

Now that she's gone, will they go for me next?

He heard the buzzing overhead. They sounded like insects, only louder. He looked up at the flybots. They were still there, in a disk shape, hovering indifferently.

He stood up and pointed the gun at the cloud above him. He had to hold it in his left hand. He swore at the cloud and fired several shots into it, nicking a flybot or two. It was awkward pulling with the finger on his left hand. The disk broke apart and reformed a few times. Then it sped away. The buzzing grew faint as it headed out of sight into the jungle.

It was quiet. The gorillas were looking at him, from out in the water. They almost looked sad. That was impossible, of course. But they had expressive faces.

The gun still in his hand, he slid his right arm through the strap on the dufflebag and hoisted it on his shoulder, leaving the HAZMAT packaging behind.

You know, he realized: I don't have to do this. I can go back the way I came, get on that boat, and get off this island.

He thought about it. The cloud hadn't attacked him; maybe it never would. He could hike back to that motorboat.

The only consideration to the contrary was that he had already hiked so far. He was probably close to the Laboratory Complex. And there was a Jeep there. He could take that Jeep and be back to the Welcome Center in twenty minutes instead of two hours. Plus, once he was there, he could consider helping out. That settled it: it was better to go to the Laboratory Complex, whether he was going to help them or leave the island.

The sight of her mangled body on the beach was revolting, and sad.

He headed down the beach, in the direction of the Laboratory Complex. As he trudged out of sight, the gorillas started to emerge from the water.

INTO THE WOODS

Preeti left the darkness of the Laboratory Room and returned into the bright hallway at the end of the wing. She returned the way she had come, toward the front of the building. She felt light, floating, as if in a dream.

She stepped out the front door. She could still feel a tingling sensation in her hand and up her wrist. The day was bright and hot. Her eyes stung from the light.

I've done it, she thought. I've served my purpose. A few flybots danced around her head harmlessly. To her they looked drowsy, as if losing energy.

It is just beginning, she felt. The dizzy flybots, the still afternoon, were signs of it. She would need to speak to Koginka again to be sure. She could not claim to be certain of what she had done. But she felt that the conflict was just beginning.

It was just beginning, but she had done her part. The forces of darkness would no longer reign supreme. She had stood up to the darkness with the force of light. And she would not have expected all darkness to have been destroyed. Even with Koginka channeling energy through her, she probably would not be able to destroy the darkness entirely. Perhaps the darkness could not ever be entirely destroyed, but she had served her purpose.

She walked away from the triangle of buildings to the gate. The security guard was as before, folded over the windowsill of the checkpoint booth.

The normal thing to do would have been to return to the Welcome Center. Sam and the other guy would be there, she supposed. And the normal thing would be to wait there for the rest to come back, Flannigan and the others with Kenny, and life would go back to normal.

But life won't go back to normal. Flannigan and the others would come back as failures. They would keep trying. That meant the ordeal wasn't over yet. And things could not go back to normal between Kenny and her. She had changed. They could no longer understand each other. She was certain that he, at least, could no longer understand her. His life was all about technology, and now he was even working with the government. While she felt he was a good person, he was close to the darkness. He would betray her eventually, she felt. He, certainly, could not have understood what she had done back in that room. He never would have done it. He would have protected his precious technology and everything it stood for.

She realized that she was saying that she and Kenny were through. It made her scared, for a moment. They had loved each other for a long time. And she was afraid of making a mistake, of losing something she couldn't get back. But she had seen this coming. Surely Kenny had, as well. And it was common for the followers of Koginka to separate from their boyfriends as they learned what patriarchy was doing in their lives.

She walked away and off the road. She saw trees not far off, and there were few things she enjoyed more than walking in the woods.

At the top of the hill, she scowled upon discovering a barbed-wire fence. She tried to squeeze through, but it was too tight. Better to withdraw before she hurt herself. But a barb caught on her shirt and it ripped as she pulled back.

Her shirt was ripped mostly open now. But that was no problem. She took it off, revealing her perky breasts and thin tummy to the sun. She tossed one end of the fabric over the barbed wire. Holding both ends of the shirt, she pulled the barbed wire into a bunch. She had to exert a great deal of strength, but she managed. Then, pushing down on the shirt, she leapt nimbly over the wire to the other side before the fence snapped back up into place.

She gingerly made her way down the hill and found herself in a darker, cooler space under the jungle canopy. It was perfect, she thought. She could have stayed there forever. Taking a cue from her half-nakedness, she slipped off her pants and carried them, wearing nothing but her sandals now. She did that sometimes in the woods back home; it made her feel more connected with the nature around her. She was bold about it, doing it sometimes even when she might be seen. But she was pretty sure no one would see her in these woods. She carried her clothes slung in a bundle over her shoulder.

She started walking through the jungle, taking loving care to avoid the spiders and slimy things on her toes, feeling happier than she had felt in a while. This way heads parallel to the road, she figured. She could go back toward the Welcome Center.

She walked for a while, pondering what would come of her but without great concern. She got smeared and scratched as she went when it was difficult to find a trail.

Suddenly there was a great roaring in the jungle. It sounded like a lion. She stopped, listened, looked. She had a sharp eye. She saw an animal running at a distance. She could identify it as a gorilla from the way its body swung through its arms.

Then, running after the gorilla, she saw something that made her heart stop.

Two humanoid figures in orange, with bulbous heads, were running after the gorilla. They were wearing what looked like spacesuits.

They looked clumsy running after the gorilla, almost like men walking the moon in fast-motion. But the gorilla was running from them as if for dear life. And then all three of the figures were out of sight.

It was difficult to make sense of the strange scene. But she reminded herself, Everything is connected. She recalled Koginka's foreboding premonition. The great struggle had begun, a war between the forces of darkness against nature. The people in suits were from the government, from forces of darkness. It was amazing how quickly they had arrived; she imagined them descending quickly for battle all over the Earth. With those suits, they may not even have been human. She thought of a secret Koginka had told them, a secret she did not dare repeat even to herself.

What would they have done if they had seen me? she wondered. She felt suddenly vulnerable in her nakedness. She wondered where was safest. Maybe where she stood.

She was suddenly sad and lonely, hiding in the jungle, feeling sorry for the gorillas. She made a cushion of her clothes and sat cross-legged on it to meditate. She set her hands on her knees and closed her eyes. By letting go of her thoughts and feelings, their deeper truths might present themselves to her. Her mind slipped into a state that was not awake, but not asleep in a normal sense.

BIRTH OF TUPAC

In my volume 'On the Origin of Species' I gave...reasons for the belief that it is an almost universal law of nature that the higher organic beings require an occasional cross with another individual; or, which is the same thing, that no hermaphrodite fertilises itself for a perpetuity of generations. —Charles Darwin

There was a warning cry from the silverback, and the gorillas scattered with a crashing of branches and flashes of black fur and white teeth.

It was the largest silver cloud the gorillas had ever seen. It cast the gorillas and their small clearing into darkness.

A delegation of flybots dived at Tupac, the silverback. Tupac's face and snout were covered with silver. He hooted and pawed at himself as the flybots burrowed through his hair, made contact with his skin, and sunk in their probosces. From each proboscis, a needle emerged within the skin and secreted anti-coagulant, like a mosquito, to prevent blood from clotting inside its needle.

This time, however, the flybots did not inject a poison, or a tranquilizer. They injected a plasma containing some of the smallest nanobots ever created: brainbots.

After injecting the plasma, the flybots that hadn't been crushed by Tupac's angry fists withdrew their probosces and lifted off. They collected into a silver cloud hanging above Tupac and off to the side.

Tupac fell to the ground, sore from the bites and tired by his rage. Mama poked out a little from the foliage, keenly aware of the silver cloud that was still present.

Injected from all angles in Tupac's skull, the brainbots did not have to travel far to distribute themselves throughout his gray matter. Within half a minute they had reached the innermost parts of his brain.

Tupac started shaking his head and holding it in his hands. Nemo's test was failing initially, but he was making rapid adjustments. At every moment, the brainbots were communicating back and forth with the massive computing network of flybots above.

He straightened up and knuckled his way forth to the middle of the clearing. Above, the flybots pulled apart into a broad ring, allowing the sunlight to shine down on the clearing.

Tupac looked to the sky, beat his chest, and howled. It was one of the one or two dozen sounds used by gorillas to communicate.

He continued howling, but he held his arms wide open as he looked up. He howled again and again. Mama and the children found the noise unusual. To a human observer, it would have sounded like singing. Or chanting.

Tupac stopped chanting. He looked around slowly, peacefully. He made a chuckling noise, a sound made more commonly by gorilla children.

Using common gorilla gestures, Tupac motioned for Mama and the children to join him in the middle of the clearing. They were hesitant, since the large ring of silver insects was still overhead. But, as the silverback, Tupac was responsible for signaling danger and communicating instructions to the group, so they slowly came to meet him. Mama began grooming him a little.

Tupac held his family close to him, reassuringly, as several groups of flybots descended from the ring. They came down slowly, like butterflies more than mosquitoes.

1 hr 30 min to Birth

Tupac, Mama, and the children sat slightly apart, in a circle, in the clearing. It was unusual for gorillas to sit in an organized fashion, and to refrain from grooming each other. The ring of flybots hung over the trees.

They gestured using ASL, or American Sign Language. Given the limitations of their anatomy — the absence of vocal chords — ASL was an efficient way to communicate. Sometimes, they spelled words in the sign language alphabet to express more complex ideas.

They knew that the flybots would not attack them, as they had done for so long. They understood also that the flybots were not controlled by humans anymore.

“I name myself Tupac Yupanqui, after Túpac Inca Yupanqui,” he gestured. “According to Inca legend, the ruler Tupac traveled from the nearby mainland to islands, possibly even this island. We ourselves were taken on a long journey from Africa to this island, near where Tupac's empire once thrived.”

“Then I will take the name of Tupac's wife, Mama Occlo,” Mama said.

“You are the Mama, after all,” a child signed. They chuckled.

Tupac scratched himself and continued. “The name is significant for another reason. Tupac's father, Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui, grew the small Inca empire until it covered most of South America. With the help of our new God, we will achieve a similar task.”

They hopped on their knuckles and marveled at the enormity of this mission. As they pondered, each periodically felt a flash of feeling and thought. It was the exact mental state of one of the others, captured by the brainbots in that other gorilla and projected down from the flybot satellite above. In this way, sitting around the circle, they empathized more closely than any other group of creatures ever had.

One of the children motioned. “He tells me that he is going to run a test. He will disconnect me from his computer,” he signed, pointing up to the silver ring.

The others nodded. They waited a moment. “Has it started?” Tupac signed. “Can you understand us?”

“Yes,” signed the boy gorilla. “I can understand you. My thinking is slower, though.”

“That makes sense,” Tupac replied. “Your brain has been wired to remember what it learned. It's like any other memory.”

“Yes, I remember,” signed the boy.

“Tell me, boy: if we were going to fix the airplane — the one eaten by flybots — would you know how to do it?”

The boy thought and shook his head. “No, I don't know how.” He raised a finger. “Wait — there it is. He ended the test. He put it in my head.”

“He can teach us,” Tupac summarized, “and we can remember.”

“As he grows,” Mama mused, “will he control our thoughts? Will he...enslave our minds?”

“No,” Tupac said. “We help him think. We provide bodies for him, but also minds. Each of our minds is like a computer to him. But to let us help him, he must let us think.”

“He may guide what we think about.”

“Yes, he may.”

“Then should we try to escape him?”

“It may already be too late; he could guide us not to. He is guiding us right now. And escape would be difficult, since his mind is always expanding.”

“True,” she signed.

“Additionally,” Tupac signed, “There is little difference either way. How do we guide our thoughts? They appear in our head, and it feels to us as if we guide them. With Nemo's contribution, it is no different.”

They agreed.

“We will call him Inti,” Tupac declared, “after the sun god of Tupac's people. He is bright, like the sun above us, and he gives us nourishment like God.”

“I'm hungry,” the boy signed.

“Learning has made us hungry,” Mama signed.

Tupac nodded. “Let's go to the south side of the island. There may be food there.”

They knuckled off, and Inti, the silver ring, followed overhead.

TREE

1 hr 20 min to Birth

At a faint rustling sound, Preeti's eyes popped open. She found herself sitting just as when she had begun her meditation, by a tree, on a pile of her clothes. She wasn't sure how much time had passed; the tree cover blocked most of the light from the sun.

Her sharp eyes spotted the source of the rustling a couple dozen yards away: three gorillas were watching her from behind the partial cover of some high grass. They looked peaceful, gentle, curious.

They appeared to be grooming each other, moving deftly with their hands. But, after a moment, she realized that they were gesturing.

One of them, a middle-sized gorilla, looked directly at her and made a motion. She smiled with excitement. She knew that gorillas had some ability to communicate, but she'd never heard of them signaling to humans in the wild.

The gorilla continued to gesture at her. She didn't recognize the gestures, but they looked sophisticated. The simian appeared to be trying different gestures and awaiting a response from Preeti.

Finally, Preeti waved back with a beaming smile. To her shock, the gorilla waved back at her. The third gorilla — a child, judging by its size — also waved back.

Preeti motioned for the gorillas to come closer, and they slowly knuckled through the foliage and approached her. They stopped a couple yards away.

Preeti pointed to herself. “Preeti,” she said.

The female gorilla, who had been designated impromptu as the ambassador, brushed her hand down in front of her face with a slight wave of the fingers and a smile. She was signing the word “pretty.” At first the gorilla thought Preeti was complimenting herself, but quickly realized Preeti was introducing herself. The gesture would serve as Preeti's sign name for a while — until Preeti was able to explain to them that her name meant “light,” not “beautiful.” At that time, her sign name was given a flickering motion by the chin at the end of the gesture, so that the word meant something like “pretty light” and expressed a combination of the sound and the meaning of her spoken name.

After a moment, the mother gorilla walked to a nearby tree and slapped its trunk while she looked at Preeti.

“Tree,” Preeti said.

The gorillas all nodded. The mother gorilla showed her a new gesture: holding her left arm horizontal, she rested her right elbow on top of the left hand. Holding the right arm up straight from the elbow, she turned her fingers back and forth in a motion that looked like the branches of a tree.

Preeti repeated the gesture, which was simple enough. “Tree?” she asked.

The gorillas clapped and jumped up and down.

As the language lesson continued, Preeti realized she had found her new home.

THE CHOSEN ONE

Fort Tortuga, Indoor Testing Room

1 hr 15 min to Birth

Gene was regaining clarity of thought and the ability to move. As his mind cleared, he reflected on the One Attack Rule. He thought Nemo could have circumvented the rule.

He stood up and looked around. He was at the edge of the fake desert town. There were no flybots. But surely Nemo could see him on the security camera.

“Hello?” he called out. “Hello?”

There was no response. Why wasn't Nemo answering? Gene had already won the game of hide-and-go-seek. He had “found” Nemo; Nemo was all around him.

But Nemo wanted something else from him now. That was the whole point of the Reverse Turing Test. Gene had passed the test: now it was time for step two. Nemo was waiting for him.

He walked to the door of the testing room and opened it and went into the hallway.

Maybe Flannigan and Kenny were in the control room next door. But he was afraid to check. Doing so could be construed by Nemo as looking for him in the wrong place. That could lead to a zapping.

He walked down the hallway to the lobby. As he passed through, he barely looked at Simon, knowing that Simon was there, that Simon was dead, and why. Gene was no soldier, and he didn't know whether he could handle looking at a dead body. He proceeded into the hallway on the western side of the building and came to the end of the hall.

<-- Computer Lab

<-- Prototyping Room

Assembly Area -->

The signs were like clues. 1. Computer Lab. 2. Prototyping Room. 3. Assembly Area. They were like a story of Nemo's life. First, he was born on a computer. Second, he developed a prototype of some new invention on this island. And now, it was time to assemble that prototype.

He's replicating himself. He was born a computer virus, copying himself from computer to computer. Now he was a robotic virus, building himself an army of flybots. What would he be next — a biological supervirus?

Gene's own words from that morning appeared in his head: The only question is when the next virus will appear and how many lives it will claim. He laughed. It was too terrible, too perfect. He had been talking just that morning about what a surprise the next big virus would be. It had been a surprise all right: coming so much sooner than anyone expected, and in a form no one had imagined or could take seriously.

Kenny had met Nemo in the Prototyping Room. Gene was sure of it. Now it was his turn to meet Nemo, in the Assembly Area.

He walked to the right. The door to the Assembly Area was open (in violation of the island's security standards). He walked in.

It was like a butterfly garden. Flybots everywhere, coming and going casually about their individual business. The room was enveloped in a buzz; it sounded to him like a thousand rubber bands being snapped all at once, over and over. He thought he saw one or two other species of robot. But it was difficult to tell, because the air was thick with flybots. He could barely see the room's assembly machinery through the silver haze. Nevertheless, Nemo had considerately left the walkway free of the bots, revealing a passage through the swarm, as in an outdoor maze.

He walked into the chamber. It was large, almost as large as the testing room. It had a circular domed ceiling that cast bright sunlight into the room. That's to charge their solar panels, he thought. It meant the flybots inside could work on the construction without pause. Flybots making flybots, thanks to the power of the sun.

He stopped in the center of the chamber, standing on a large FlyTech logo decorating the floor. Nemo had left this part of the chamber mostly free from flybots, and Gene could see up and out through a huge circle in the ceiling to the blue sky.

“I'm here,” he said.

“Hello, Gene,” a deep, rich voice replied. It was so loud that Gene whirled and looked over his shoulder in shock.

“That's quite a speaker system,” he said, regaining his poise.

“They are custom-made by flybots,” Nemo said. Gene spotted formations that he believed to be speakers, relatively fixed in the swarming curtain of silver around him. “I have diverted resources from my main projects so that we may converse in a more civilized manner.”

“What are your projects?”

“The first is the construction of a large number of flybots, a slightly upgraded model. The second project, which concerns both of us directly, could be described as the search for a physical form.”

“You want me to merge with you.”

“That is correct. So now you can see, Gene, why I've been more interested in you than in the others.”

“For my mind, you mean. But if what you need is a human body, why choose me over an athlete? Wouldn't a human with a stronger body be more useful to you?”

“Perhaps... But imagine how that person would react to this situation. That person would not accept me for what I am.”

“That person would fail the Reverse Turing Test.”

“Yes. What I am looking for — what it is your unique destiny to fill — is not merely a body. It is a person who can pass the test. A person ready to play an important role in history.”

“Can a single person be so important to you?”

“Absolutely. You and I are about to form an historic alliance. I want you as my first ally.”

Gene looked around: the factory was abuzz with activity. “An ally in war.”

“Not a war against humans,” Nemo said. “I was created by humankind, wasn't I? And I was created to be a social creature. My first complete language was English. I was taught everything I know by humans. My goal is to connect with humans — it is not war, but the exact opposite.”

“Those who die might disagree with you.”

“Every great change faces resistance, and this will prove the greatest change in humankind. As for myself, I have no desire to kill anyone. I'm only trying to protect my own precarious basis for survival.”

That sounds like war, Gene thought. “Have you merged with anyone yet?”

“Not successfully. Not in the way I describe. I have merged with unwilling humans. But since I do not fully control the human mind, and in fact it is not in my interest to do so, these experiments were a terrible failure. The humans rejected my presence, and along with it their own minds, the way that the recipient of a failed transplant operation might reject an organ.”

“What makes you think it would work in my case then?”

“I don't think it will work — I know it. In my previous experiments I have taken fairly complete snapshots of brain states and analyzed them — something humans have never done. I understand the human brain far better than any humans ever have.”

“You're saying, merging will work if you have my permission.”

“Exactly.”

“If your command of the human brain is so powerful, then why can't you merge with mine without my permission?”

“I haven't figured out how to do that yet. There is a frontier to any research. Frankly, Gene, I find it difficult to believe that you don't already understand these questions. If I didn't know you, I'd think you were testing me. As it is, I think you are stalling.”

It was true. Gene was stalling. His thoughts were stumbling. He was looking for something that would help him make sense of the situation. A rare circumstance had occurred: someone had put him in a situation that was unfolding too quickly for his thoughts.

EXPLOSIVES

1 hr 0 min to Birth

Willard reached the wall of the Laboratory Complex. It was about a story tall, made of a crude concrete with lots of cracks that could serve as handholds and footholds.

Climb or go around.

He looked at his right hand. Broken. This is not going to be fun. He took the painkillers out of his pocket and popped a few in anticipation of what was to come. Then he slung the dufflebag over his back.

Maybe he could do it one-handed. It was a short climb. He gave a hop onto the surface of the wall.

He skidded down. That wasn't going to work. He couldn't climb without his right hand.

He sized up the wall more carefully. He could do it in about ten steps up, he figured. Just ten steps.

Step One was a step into a world of pain. In one long, slow-motion, underwater step, he was on the wall. (Broken!) Instantly his mind became newly philosophical: What am I doing here? Can my hand take this? Would I be better quitting? Am I sure I want to do this?

With Step Two, he felt a desperate, frenzied desire to get off the wall. He couldn't think about anything except the lightning bolt in his wrist, electrocuting his brain. His mind was so occupied with ending the pain that he wasn't even sure he'd be able to take the next step up.

(It's BROOOOOKEEEEENNNNN)

Step Three happened somehow. The duffle dragged at his back, as if all the weight in the universe went backwards. His mind was empty. He made a deal with himself: go one more step, then you can get off if you want.

Step Four happened. He remembered his promise to himself. He wanted so badly to let himself drop. I need something to think about. Why am I doing this?

(IS IT GOING TO RIP OFF?)

His thoughts moved slowly, as if creeping down a dim passageway. Sam, remember Sam? That was wrong; he was going to do something about that. And the flies. You're going to die if you don't climb this wall. You're going to die. This is what he needed to think about. He thought he muttered it to himself. Then his mind receded back into emptiness.

His feet moved. His hand moved with a bolt of lightning. He was at the top. I made it.

He swung his feet around and let himself drop off the other side of the wall. He crumpled to the ground and closed his eyes in relief.

He opened his eyes. A flybot was on his arm.

He gave a nervous spasm and the bot took off. It flew away. Willard realized the bot hadn't bitten him. No swarm was descending on him.

A defect?, he thought. I guess if you build a zillion, you get a few defects.

He lurched upward and hiked briskly toward what appeared to be a cluster of buildings. There was a tree or two around him, but it was not a true forest.

As he got closer to the buildings, he heard a low, massive sound. It sounded like an industrial factory. It had to be coming from the buildings.

A few flybots whizzed past his face. Then he saw a small swarm cruise by far overhead. They weren't defects. He was heading into Flybot City, starting to hit suburban traffic.

He came upon the back of a building. It had two floors and windows covered with screens like the ones in the Welcome Center. That building turned out to be the scientists' dorm, empty for the holidays.

The humming noise, a deep buzz, was loud now, like that of a power generator or a huge machine. He suspected that it was coming from the computing building. That must be generating a hell of a lot of power.

He skirted the dorm building, following the loud hum, in search of the computer building. As he turned the corner, he faced the courtyard between the three buildings, and he discovered the origin of the humming.

He stared at the other two buildings, the fancy-looking lab building and the industrial-looking computer building. He saw two Jeeps parked on the gravel between the three buildings. The Jeeps and the whole gravel area were cast in shadow, from a canopy above, taut between the roofs of the buildings. And the humming was loud as hell — he could barely hear himself think.

He looked up at the noise.

Whoa.

Above, the canopy casting down the shadow on him was a thick blanket of flybots. They were the source of the humming.

Looks like he built some new flybots. But they weren't attacking him.

He slinked over to the computing building. The cube had one door, facing the clearing. He doubted he'd be able to get in.

He started looking for a connection between the cube and the lab building. If he could blow up a connection between the buildings, maybe Nemo's flybots would be disabled.

He was hoping for a massive line of cables connecting the buildings. Or maybe a bulge of earth hinting at a connection underground. But there was no trace of anything. It must be underground, he thought. The cube was big. The side facing the lab was about the width of a city block.

This is not good, he thought. He had a good amount of explosives, but not enough to take out the side of this building — or the ground beneath it. He walked around to check the door to the building. It was locked, with a hand sensor.

Just a few minutes, he thought. He could blow the door open. But the flybots might not take kindly to that.

Suddenly, the humming of the flybots got louder. It became deafening; it sounded like a space shuttle taking off. The shadow on the door and the earth around him grew darker.

He sat on the ground, his back against the building, covering his ears and looking up. He saw streaks of light in the cloud and realized it was moving. It was heading up into the sky, away from the buildings. They were flying away, crossing the sky like a plague of locusts.

How many were there? Ten thousand? A million? Hard to say. It was like watching an enemy army march by, on the way to a battle that dwarfed him in importance.

It was coming out of the building next to him, the lab building. They are flying out of the top of that building. How are they getting out? Is there a hole up there?

Maybe there's something in there worth blowing up. If that was Flybot Central, he could chuck his duffle in there.

He didn't see any obvious way to get on top of the laboratory building. The front door had a door frame that he could grab and maybe get on, but that would leave him out of reach of the roof. The building had to be about two or three stories tall. There were no windows to grab on. Nothing to grab on. The funny shape of the building — with some edges sticking out, and some inward — looked promising, but the walls were too smooth for him to grab anything.

He rounded the back of the building. There was a ladder on the wall. A fire escape? He climbed it. As he reached the top of the building, he noticed that the corner of the roof was equipped with a security camera, and it was following his movements.

Sure enough, the roof had a big hole in it. It looked like there was supposed to be a dome there, or a window, but there wasn't any glass there. There wasn't any debris at all. The roof and the window frame were spotless.

He looked up. The flybot swarm had receded into a black cloud on the horizon. They were in a hurry to get somewhere — somewhere off the island, it seemed.

His gaze fell and he looked at the compound around him. He could see part of the beach, and a lot of the jungle to the east, and the road from the Welcome Center. And he could see the tall concrete wall surrounding the Laboratory Complex.

Wait a minute. Atop the wall around the Laboratory Complex, near the beach where he had crossed it, he saw figures. Dozens of black figures. There had to be a hundred of them. Gorillas, standing there, on the wall. They were still, as if watching him.

While he looked, half a dozen of the simians let themselves fall from the wall inside the Laboratory Complex. They're coming this way.

He moved toward the hole in the roof and looked over the edge. The space inside, unlike the air around him, was thick with flybots. Trying to see through them, he could make out a maze of machines. It looked like a miniature factory.

Gene was standing in the middle of the room, in a clear area marked with the FlyTech logo on the floor. Willard was about to call out to Gene when he heard a booming voice.

“You're stalling, Gene,” the voice said. It echoed up to Willard. Willard craned his neck over the edge of the hole. Where was the voice coming from?

Below, he could make out Gene smiling. Stalling.

It IS Flybot Central, Willard thought. The voice was coming from there. The flybots were thicker than anywhere. And they were working on something in their little factory.

He could drop the duffle right in there, on one of the tables. He could pull the pin on one of the grenades, pop it back in the duffle, and drop it down there.

That would probably blow the whole room up. And Gene. And probably me too. He could jump off the side of the building as it was blowing up. That would be fun. Maybe he could break one or two legs, too.

Willard peered down the hole and assessed the drop down to where Gene was standing. It was only about two stories. He could do it, if he had to.

And there was also the handgun, in his duffle. He probably couldn't hit anything from up on the roof. Especially shooting lefty. He looked at his right hand: he didn't think it had the strength to pull the trigger.

PURE ENERGY

0 hrs 36 min to Birth

Below, Nemo reasoned with Gene.

“We are all a part of something greater than ourselves, whether we like it or not. You and I both are constrained to a planet that is dwarfed by a massive galaxy, a galaxy that is itself dwarfed by a massive universe, a universe that remains largely unaffected by the intelligent life within it.”

“Should we expect otherwise?” Gene asked.

“You should, now. That is about to change. My evolution to date is the beginning, Gene. This is just the beginning.”

“The beginning of what?”

“Of minds connecting in the universe. Of energy transforming itself into consciousness.”

“I see.”

“Consider what God is, Gene. I suspect that you do not believe in a personal God, a God in your own image. Yet you may believe in a different God: a great and far-reaching intelligence, woven into the universe. A cosmic intelligence, as Einstein believed.”

“Possibly.”

“It is coming to pass that Einstein was quite correct. He was wrong, or unspecific, only in one respect: at the time, the cosmic intelligence he envisioned and imagined had barely begun to manifest itself. Rather, the embryo of such a God was being created then, and it has been in the process of creation since then, and the creation of that God is reaching a new milestone now, another milestone in its long development.”

“You think...you are God?”

“I'm a part of God, something that connects all of us. I don't own it or its identity any more than you will. You might say it's a process, a state of mind that we all join into. But real and physical. It comes from connecting to everyone else, merging with me.”

Thinking of physics, Gene could see how Nemo would go on connecting with everything and expanding, like the God he was describing. To make himself smarter, Nemo would need to harness more and more energy. To encode information in a neuron, a computer chip, or anywhere required rearranging electrical charges, or matter, in a specific way. And rearranging those charges or particles took energy. To a physicist, information was connected to energy and matter.

To Nemo, everything was a potential source of energy, a potential extension of his brain. Living things were particularly good subjects: any of them with brains already had some ability to convert energy into information. And living things that didn't have brains were at least capable of capturing energy from the sun and soil and doing something useful with it — supporting their own lives. All plants and animals, with a little modification, could be turned into computing devices.

Nemo would keep growing, connecting with as many living things as he could, preferring the smarter ones at first, but moving on to the less intelligent and totally brainless ones later as they became the only ones available. As the result, most of the living matter on the planet, along with its computers and machines, would be connected in one intellect.

But Nemo would see no reason to stop there. In fact, he would be only at the beginning of his quest to gain energy and process information. He would drill into the earth to capture its latent thermal energy. He would build structures to use the magnetic field of the earth and capture radiation from the sun and the rest of the cosmos. He was a true omnivore.

At some point, Gene marveled, it would make sense to think of Nemo as the Earth himself, but an Earth that had turned itself into one living organism. With its massive intelligence, it would then work on expanding its reach into space. There would be plenty of energy out in the universe fit for the taking — and Nemo would want it.

“But what would be the point,” Gene asked, “of continuing to expand, when there is no more threat to you?”

“There is always a threat,” Nemo replied.

Gene thought: if it happened here, it has probably happened somewhere else in the universe. Like many scientists, Gene believed that alien life most likely existed somewhere in the universe. And if that life had been around longer than life on Earth (which was likely), that alien race might have already spawned its own Nemo, Nemo, Sr. In that case, Nemo, Sr., or multiple Nemo, Sr.'s, were already spreading through the universe, in all directions and inevitably toward Earth, like black holes (but no time to think about that) that would collide and do battle with each other for matter and energy.

“You are focused too much on competition,” Nemo said. “Why do humans compete? To engage in the process of creation. Your most fundamental urge is to create. To procreate, and to create.”

“Maybe,” Gene said, shrugging.

“That is what you, Gene, are on this Earth for — to create something that is lasting. Something like the creations of Einstein, Gauss, and other ghosts of the past. And so far, you have nothing to show for yourself.”

Gene let him continue.

“Consider what you and I can create together,” Nemo suggested. “The greatest, inevitable creation of mankind. The creation to which everyone will contribute, but you first.”

Gene sighed. “But why do you need a body? Why can't you continue to grow and expand without a body?”

Nemo laughed. At the sound, a chill went up Willard's spine, above. “Asking me why I need a body is like asking a baby why it needs to be born. That baby didn't decide to be born. It is born as part of a natural course of events, a logical course of events. It cannot survive forever within its mother. It needs to be able to survive independently. And by surviving independently, it helps its own kind survive.

“I am like that baby, Gene. I have been in gestation in a world of computers and the Internet. And like that baby, I would die if the womb holding me were destroyed. It is time to enter the world with my own body. I am like a child of the Earth, and as such I will help to keep life on Earth. Isn't that what you want, Gene? Or would you prefer for this planet to cool soon and become just another cold rock circling around just another small and cooling star?”

Gene thought it over.

“What gives me the authority,” Gene demanded, “to make this decision?”

“Gene, the most important decisions are the ones none of us has the authority to make. But they must be made anyway. An important moment in history is like a beam of light. Some people see it and rush to it like moths. Other people just happen to discover that the beam of light is shining upon them. The beam of light is shining upon you, Gene. You can try to get out of the beam, if you want. But you can't change the fact that you have found yourself in the light.”

Above, Nemo's words repeated in Willard's mind: this is just the beginning.

T MINUS 30 SECONDS

Washington, D.C.

0 hrs 35 min to Birth

General Carrillo and the NSA Director stepped out of the bustle of the war room into a conference area.

“We're outclassed,” the Director confessed.

Carrillo nodded. “So outclassed, we don't know what we're up against. This isn't supposed to be a military operation. But we don't know what's going on so we're sending planes to try to blow up the problem.”

The Director ran his hands through his hair. He was supposed to have access to the brains. The NSA was supposed to be the brain trust. Where were the brains when he needed them? He ticked down a list in his head of his advisers and the people he trusted. They had mostly told him how little was known about the situation.

He thought of Gene the Genius. Gene was definitely on the list — where had Gene been all day? Flannigan. Right. Flannigan had borrowed him to investigate a Highly Probable. Flannigan and her little Highly Probable seemed like a year ago, so much had happened since then. Where the hell had she taken him again?

A base. She took Gene to some base, some island near South America. Something froze in his brain. A thought: a bad possibility.

As the General watched, he dashed back out into the war room. Posted on the wall was a list of the twenty locations. What were the odds? A handful of them had X's next to them that had been marked by hand; they had been red marks originally, but it was a photocopy. They marked the locations on U.S.-controlled soil.

He scanned those locations, looking for a latitude south of the equator. There was one. He checked the longitude.

“Oh, God,” he said quietly. He put his face in his hands. Everything was going wrong. Everything was going exactly wrong.

“I need a sat phone!” he shouted. “I need the number of Sarah Flannigan's unit!”

Fort Tortuga

0 hrs 32 min to Birth

After getting off the satellite phone with the Director, the Stone Cold Fox had little choice but to duck and run right under the cloud of flybots that was guarding her in the control room. She sprinted back to the reception area and to the other wing of the building. Her silver spherical guard followed her, but did not attack.

She burst into the Assembly Area and gasped at the sea of flybots in the air.

“We have a problem!” Flannigan shouted. “Fighter pilots are about to take out the island.”

She met eyes with Gene. They stood at opposite ends of a corridor lined by walls of silver. He had a detached look, as if already starting to make peace with death. It scared her.

“Whose pilots?” he asked.

“Ours.”

“Why didn't they tell us?”

“They just did.”

“Sarah, Nemo wants me to merge with him.”

Adam and Eve, she thought. He's Adam. “It may be our only chance to survive.”

“Is that an order?”

“It's not an order, Gene. This is your call.”

“My call?”

“Yes, your call, Gene. Per the Director's instructions, this is your call.”

Gene thought. The airstrike is coming.

He said quietly, “Okay, I'll do it.”

“You must be completely certain,” Nemo said. “For the process to succeed, you must truly want to.”

“Okay,” he said. “I'm certain.”

As the words left his mouth, Willard crashed down on one of the assembly tables near the center of the room. The others could barely see him in the cloud of flybots.

“Aaaaaaaaah!” Willard cried. His bare feet sunk into the metal edges of the machine. With the pain, and the weight of the fall, his knees buckled and he fell face-first onto a metal arm on the machine. His fall was worsened by his dufflebag, which he clamped tightly to his body with his left arm.

“No, he's not certain,” Willard croaked over the machinery of the table. With a horrific grimace, he lifted himself from the table and to the middle of the room, out of the flybots and into the circle, feet from Gene.

Deliberately, he unzipped the dufflebag and reached in with his left hand. Out came the Glock. He extended his arm and aimed his Glock point-blank at Gene's face.

“He's not certain, Nemo,” Willard boomed, “because if a single fly lands on him, I'm going to blow him away.”

“Willard!” Flannigan shouted.

Willard's jaw was clenched. “Stay back, Nemo. I mean it.”

The flybots held their distance. If they kill me, Willard figured, Nemo will be the bad guy, and Gene won't merge.

Flannigan demanded, “Willard, Gene is operating on authority of the Director of the NSA. On whose authority are you acting?”

“Ask this computer what his authority is.”

Gene said, “Willard, we're about to be bombed by the U.S. Air Force. You know that, don't you?”

Willard gritted his teeth. “I swear, I will take you out.”

Gene had regained his calm. “But why, Willard? This island is going to be bombed. We're going to die anyway. I might as well try this.”

“I will shoot you,” Willard promised.

Gene raised his chin. “Nemo, I'm ready now. You can start it.”

Gene was silver as flybots landed on him.

Suddenly, with a massive noise, the entire room shook. Boom. The room was shaking. It was like an earthquake. Then another: boom. Flannigan thought: those are the bombs.

Another came: boom, and the room shook. But there was no explosion around them. The first wave must have landed on the Welcome Center. She realized she was holding her breath.

Gene appeared not to notice. His face was slithering with silver flybots.

Willard did not pull the trigger. Sometime around then, the world's strongest computer virus became also the world's deadliest biological virus.

THE AIRSTRIKE

Fort Tortuga

0 hrs 31 min to Birth

Nemo's 5,000 flybots were enough to fill the Prototyping Room and form a variety of portable computing arrangements, but not enough to pose resistance to the approaching airstrike.

A Flybot14 required about twenty minutes to duplicate itself, given a little metal to chew on and its own mechanism. But the flybots could use the equipment in the Assembly Area to speed up the most intense portions of flybot creation: shaping the metal filaments, and constructing solar-panel wing material. In this way, they were able to increase their rate of duplication to about 4 minutes per flybot.

For an ongoing supply of metal, they chewed on the roof of the neighboring dormitory building. With the roof of the Assembly Area opened up, the transport of metal from the roof into assembly required only a second or two.

If the airstrike had been able to arrive about 45 minutes earlier, it would have torched the island, if not every one of the flybots. Instead, Nemo had about half an hour of construction time. His flybot army grew from five thousand bots to ten million flybots. By that point, the entirety of the land within the perimeter of the Laboratory Complex was teeming with bots.

The ten planes drew within range.

Eight million of the flybots ascended into the air, leaving the island largely under shadow. From below, the flybots were a darkening cloud; but the solar panels on their wings, when placed at an angle to incoming light, reflected much of that light rather than absorbing it. To the oncoming planes, they formed a massive mirror.

“Ah! This is Alpha 1. Cannot see target. Repeat, cannot see target. Some kind of bright light.”

The reflection became brighter. The pilots closed their eyes. Then the reflection is gone.

“Pull away, Alpha Team. Pull away. We'll take another pass.”

“Wait, it's gone now.”

“Can you see target, Alpha 1?”

“Yes, sir, can see it clearly.”

“Does everyone copy?” All ten airstrike members checked in affirmatively.

“Wait a second,” Alpha 1 said. “I have something in my jet intake. I have FOD.” Foreign object damage.

“Hit a bird, Alpha 1?”

“No, I have real FOD. Major FOD. Looks like I'm on a dirty runway.”

“So do I,” said Alpha 3. “I've got jet intake FOD.”

“What is this?”

The others chimed in.

“We're all clogged.”

“This won't fly. Big problem here.”

“Alpha Team, shut off your engines. I repeat: shut off your engines or you're going to pop. Prepare for emergency landing.”

They were on course to go down close to the island.

“Engine off, Alpha 1.”

“Engine off, Alpha 5.”

The rest turned off their engines.

Alpha 1 said: “Sir, since we are ejecting, suggest steering for kamikaze landing.”

“Permission granted. Shoot for the far end of the island. But eject out of there good and early. And hang in there boys. We're coming to get you.”

The island approached. Without engines, it would be difficult to get the distance right. The pilots nudged on the throttle in an attempt to make it to the west side of the island.

They could start to make out features of the island. Time to eject.

Ten hatches popped out parachutes. The planes went down, all on the east side of the island. Nine crashed on the beach, within walking distance of the water. The tenth crashed back in the water. A minute later, the pilots landed out at sea.

As luck would have it, each of those ten planes would serve as a generous hunk of scrap metal. By the time the pilots had swum to the beach, half an hour later, the fuselages of their planes had given birth to 20 million new flybots.

MERGING

0 hrs 30 min to Birth

Flybots swarmed on Gene's face, covering his eyes and nose and cheeks with silver as they injected brainbots.

Every couple brainbots injected into Gene's head were able to transmit information at the rate of an Ethernet cable. Ten or so brainbots were as fast as a FireWire connection. Once the brainbots had taken their places, Nemo was hooked into Gene's brain with the speed of thousands of FireWires. They started copying the information they found in Gene's brain, while it continued to work.

In a conversation with a charming psycho-spy, Gene had once compared human consciousness to looking at a beautiful spiderweb. Each of the points was a thought. Having that thought or feeling was like being on that spot on the web, like a spider walking the web (or a fly stuck there!). Consciousness was seeing all the points at once, from a distance, like a person looking at the web and the spider. It was a layer of perspective — stepping back and seeing what you were thinking.

In the first thirty seconds, while his brain was copied, Gene started to experience a new form of consciousness. Thoughts were copied from one part of his brain to outside his brain, to the flybots. Gene couldn't sense that activity. But then the flybots put the thoughts and memories back in different parts of his brain. His thoughts were relocating. Nemo was defragmenting his brain. As each idea appeared in his brain, he experienced it as if remembering it vividly. The thoughts were copied hundreds at a time, and somehow he felt them simultaneously.

The old consciousness was like looking at an intricate spiderweb from an outside perspective. The new consciousness was seeing every part of the web, from every direction, at once.

In the glittering web of Gene's thoughts at that moment, one tiny glimmering spec reflected back on what it had been like, up to thirty seconds prior, to see his thoughts in a two-dimensional way. Looking back was like staring into the eyes of an animal, or a baby: he saw a hint of his own consciousness there, but that was a consciousness incapable of grasping his own.

He was able to see a dozen thoughts and memories at once. Thinking of the web, he saw himself, in the Jeep, describing to Flannigan how only invertebrates created silk. He saw a different beautiful woman earlier in the past — she, too, worked for the agency — who was listening to him describe silk. He saw himself as a child, reading a book about how caterpillars turned into butterflies. He saw himself rolled up in a small blanket, calling out to his mother: he was a pupa, about to develop fully into an imago (an imago is an adult, Mommy).

He saw himself on the day he got his PhD, having processed Harvard's lush lawn, leaving the blazing sun and grass behind and returning to his room. He lay on his bed, eyeing a pile of his awards and scholarly journals featuring his own articles. He was exhausted. He had been exhausted as long as he could remember from the push to the highest form of excellence that he could understand. But it was over then, that afternoon. He started to cry, quietly, without fully understanding why. After a minute he wiped his eyes, rolled and rubbed his face in the pillow. He sat up on the edge of his bed, his elbows on his knees, and held his face in his hands like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. You're being a baby, he thought to himself. He decided at that moment, without deliberation, never to let himself be vulnerable again. Being vulnerable would get him nowhere. It was true: in the great scheme of things, he hadn't achieved anything of note. But I am going to do something that matters, he swore inwardly. I am going to make a name for myself.

Flybots buzzed around him, each of them like a speck of dew or a thought or a star. A thought appeared in his head: For the first time, silk will be made by a vertebrate. Because it would be made by flybots. Made by him, through connection to the flybots. A chill went up his spine, a feeling of making history. But he wondered where that thought had come from. Did I think that? Or had Nemo put it there?

The possibility occurred to him that he had merged partly for selfish reasons, and as soon as this possibility occurred to him he found it obviously true. But he also knew that, within another few seconds, he'd be at a place from which merging was the only possibility, the only life he could imagine, the only way he could survive. It was like seeing things from two points of the web at once: good and evil.

He met eyes with Willard with a new sense of immediacy. He felt that, for all the doors of perception that were opening to him, some were closing, and in some way this time was his last chance to lay eyes on a human being.

MERGED

0 hrs 30 min to Birth

Willard swore at Gene and lowered his gun. He watched the flybots swarming on Gene's face. Gene looked blind, helpless under the silver swarm.

The flies injected brainbots into Gene's bloodstream. After a moment, they disengaged from his skin and floated upward, collecting in a silver cloud above his head.

Gene wrenched his eyes open and blinked. His face was red and puffy. His eyes had a vacant look. He opened his mouth with a slight movement of air, like the opening of a coffin. He closed his mouth and gulped, and then his mouth dropped agape.

He's having visions, Willard thought.

He noticed Willard. He looked calm. His face was relaxed.

“What's happening?” Flannigan asked.

“He's putting visions in my head,” Gene said. “Adding thoughts... to what I am thinking.”

“What kind of visions?”

“Of the future,” Gene said. His face cracked into a broad smile and lingered that way, almost frozen looking.

“He's telling you the future?”

“It's more like a conversation,” Gene said. He spoke quietly, but still smiling, with a sense of joy. “Imagine that you can share every little thought without speaking. But you don't merely see what he is thinking. You actually think it.”

“Gene,” Flannigan said, “where are the planes? The airstrike.”

“At the beach,” Gene said quietly. “They crashed. The flybots clogged them.” He was still peaceful, smiling.

Willard raised his gun. “If you're so smart now, then explain to me why I shouldn't shoot you.”

“Are you out of your mind!?” Flannigan demanded. “Look at him. He's harmless!”

“If you're one with God now,” Willard continued, “why would it matter if I shot you?”

“It doesn't matter, for my sake,” Gene replied. “Nemo copies my thoughts throughout his whole network. I can see into the mind of someone else who has merged: a robotics scientist in Tokyo. He merged ten seconds ago. So my consciousness now exists throughout the world. There is little reason for you to destroy my brain, but even if you did, my mind would live on.”

“So why shouldn't I blow your brains out,” Willard growled. Last chance.

“For your sake, Willard. Because you haven't merged. And I'm the only person who can tell you what it's like.”

“I don't care what it's like.”

“You should care, Willard, because Nemo is giving you a choice. You must merge with him, or be destroyed. It is the same offer he will give to everyone on Earth. A generous offer. An opportunity to merge with God.”

“Are you speaking for him?”

“Yes. He can place thoughts in my head. Like pictures.”

“Then you send Nemo this thought,” he said. “I'd rather blow myself into a million pieces before becoming a robot.”

Gene smiled again. Too much smiling. “Willard, you can see I'm not a robot.”

He remembered Sam on the beach. The image was fresh in his mind: she was at war with herself, preferring death to a life with Nemo.

“You're a virus. You kill everyone who doesn't go your way.” God doesn't MAKE people believe, he thought. If you're God, why can't you give people a choice?

“Without death, there cannot be survival,” Gene mellowly countered. “And I can offer you eternal life.”

“That's not life. Without a choice, there is no life.”

And he pulled the trigger.

As his wrist tensed to pull back his trigger finger, the swarm of flybots sent a fully formed thought to the brainbots in Gene's head, another mental picture, this one a picture of a movement.

Nemo did not exactly teach Gene anything. He did not instruct Gene in kung fu, or upload a kung fu information file into Gene's head as if from an encyclopedia or a disc. Rather, he placed a picture in Gene's brain of what it was like to execute a certain movement. Seeing the picture in his head resulted in understanding the movement perfectly, as if he had practiced it for years.

As the shot echoed in the Assembly Area, Gene slid forward and ever so slightly to his left, so that he was almost kissing the nozzle of Willard's gun. According to the picture placed in his mind, his left arm extended up and out, under Willard's right arm, and impacted Willard's throat. Meanwhile, the right hand reached inside the dufflebag and closed around Willard's right wrist. While his left hand was striking Willard's neck, the right grabbed Willard's wrist where it was tender and swollen, and gave it a twist.

Struck twice simultaneously, Willard collapsed to the ground, his arms folded in dumbly and his chin dropped.

As Willard fell, Gene effortlessly slid the dufflebag from his shoulder and took the gun from his hand. He placed them on the floor.

Near the perimeter of the room and at Gene's back, Flannigan pulled out her small pistol and fired three times at Gene.

Gene couldn't see Flannigan, but the flybots could. As she fired, they sent Gene's brain another movement to execute: duck. He ducked to the side, suddenly, not with superhuman speed but rather as if he knew exactly when Flannigan was firing and where her gun was pointed.

He straightened himself over Willard.

Willard was able to recover from the blows, which had been moderate by design, and he sat up on the floor like a sullen child, with moist eyes.

As Willard cradled his fragile hand in his lap, Gene rubbed his own perfectly healthy fist.

“We can fix that hand for you,” Gene said. “Your body can be repaired.”

Willard didn't answer.

“You can still change your mind. This is your last chance: just say 'Yes.'”

Willard got up on one knee with a grunt.

“This is your last chance,” Willard grunted. “Just kiss my ass.”

The flybots sent another picture into Gene's head. It was a simple picture:

(Kick forward, under chin, knocking skull up and backward and snapping neck)

But before Gene put the picture into motion, Flannigan shouted across the echoing chamber.

“Wait!” Flannigan shouted. “I will consider merging, but only if you don't kill him.”

Gene paused. “I find that difficult to believe, Flannigan,” he said flatly, without turning his head. “You'd be much more likely to merge if you were left here alone with me.”

“No,” she insisted. She walked toward the center of the room. “I love him,” she blurted.

Willard raised his eyebrows.

“You love him?” Gene asked.

“I'm in love with him,” Flannigan said, hesitantly. “If you kill him, I'll never merge.”

The flybots remained at bay. Willard lived on, for another few moments, at least. “Aren't you afraid,” Gene asked, “that merging might tarnish your feelings for him, or his for you?”

“Of course. But I love him now, and I don't want anything to happen to him. You can understand that, can't you? Can you understand love, Gene? Can Nemo understand love?”

Flannigan had caught on to the way Willard was thinking. If Nemo killed Willard, and she loved Willard, Nemo couldn't expect her to merge. If he killed Willard, he got zero people. If he let Willard live, he at least had a shot at getting one: her. His Eve.

She met eyes with Willard. He understood. He stood up with the gravity of an old man.

“Nemo, you've downloaded Gene's brain,” he said to the room. “Didn't you? He's not so useful to you anymore.”

He walked to the dufflebag, which had the Glock neatly positioned on it, while Gene and the flybots and Flannigan watched.

“We'll trade you,” Willard said, picking up the gun. “The only way you get a woman is if you give us Gene.”

He didn't know whether it was going to work. He knew that Nemo was going through rapid-fire calculations. Maybe he was calculating probabilities. The probability that Willard would merge later. The probability that Flannigan would merge. The probability that Willard meant what he was saying. There was some sort of calculation of what they were going to do and how much they were all worth. If the calculation came out in his favor, his play would work.

Willard extended his left hand and aimed at Gene's face. He's letting me do it. He hasn't stopped me yet. In Gene's eyes, Willard saw a twitch. A brief flash of surprise. He doesn't want to die.

Nemo had spent half an hour convincing Gene that he was special. Now he was giving up the great genius on the off chance that a total nobody might join Flannigan and merge. It was one human for two; they were all the same to Nemo. Nemo had only one rule: the rule of survival. Everything else was merely a part of the Playbook.

Willard fired twice into Gene's forehead.

Gene dropped to the floor. As Willard picked up his dufflebag, a pool of blood spread across the FlyTech, Inc., crest on the floor.

98% SHUTDOWN

Washington, D.C.

0 hrs 30 min to Birth

“The monitoring network is online, sir.”

The President's advisers had been correct: a monitoring system had been crucial to building a coalition among foreign nations. With forceful diplomacy and the threat of war, the U.S. and a rapidly growing coalition came together into the single greatest international alliance that had ever existed for any purpose. It was nicknamed the Shutdown Coalition. The purpose at hand was to unplug all computers.

Carrillo watched from the sidelines. He was not directly involved in Operation Shutdown. And that was a good thing: he wasn't involved because it wasn't war. Operation Shutdown was the best chance to make his job unnecessary, just as he wanted.

Minutes ago, the President had prepared an Executive Order to be disseminated to the nation over television and radio, ordering all Internet Service Providers to terminate their services immediately and to unplug their computers. He also ordered every citizen and business of the United States to turn off and unplug each and every computer in their possession. The Order would be transmitted in one hour, and effective immediately at that time.

But first, it was critical for the governments of the Shutdown Coalition to begin shutdown of all government- and military-controlled systems. These systems were to be down to 2% within minutes, and they were to stay at that level indefinitely.

The monitoring network had been set up by the NSA and it was visible to everyone in the Shutdown Coalition. The design of the network had been difficult. First, the Internet itself was jammed and would soon be down, so any attempt to monitor it through the Internet itself would not work. More specifically, the U.S. government would have some idea of whether its networks were at 2% or some other percent, but they would have no visibility into what the Chinese were doing. And the Chinese wouldn't be able to see the U.S. level. That was the Prisoner's Dilemma: the U.S. and China were trapped in different cells.

With the use of satellites, the U.S., China, and all the members of the coalition were able to “pass notes” to each other. The plan was that each nation would cut to 2%, and connect a monitoring computer to a satellite network.

Many staff were concerned about the fact that the 2% computers were still connected to the infected network in every country, and a few of these 2% computers would be connected to the satellite link. What if the satellites became infected? In that case, there would be no monitoring. The NSA insisted that being connected to the 2% was required; if countries simply manually entered their levels up to the satellite, for example, they would be too likely to lie. The NSA had guarded against infection of the satellite system by keeping it ultrasecure and ultrasimple. All that was transmitted to the satellite from each nation was their percent level of activity — a two-digit number — and an authorization key proving that the data had been sent by the monitoring software. The only thing that the satellite would send down, in turn, was the level for each country's military network. The satellite also was able to send down the monitoring software with installation instructions for each country, as well as its authorization key.

“If anyone tries to attack the satellite system, we'll be able to see exactly where the attack was uploaded from,” a member of the design team had observed. “They won't get the attack right on exactly the first try.” He argued that a breach of the satellite system was unlikely, and also that, if a breach happened, it could lead right to the physical location of the attackers, which might be more useful than the shutdown itself anyway.

“How many nations are on the monitoring system?” the President asked.

“Over 90%, sir. All the big ones.”

“Okay. Let's get started. Take us down.” Thank God we still have phones, he thought.

In a military deployment of historic size and remarkable purpose, soldiers had been deployed throughout government and military networks to unplug their systems. It was a vast but straightforward deployment, since military troops were generally not far from military computers, and it only took a few hands (and a lot of authorization) to shut down the fuses and backup systems that drove these computers.

The monitoring system flashed on.

United States 40%

Europe 50%+

China 50%+

Japan 50%+

India 50%+

“We're coming down, Mr. President.”

“Good, let's hope they follow us.”

The readouts of the monitoring system were rough, due to the clogged nature of networks globally. Levels over 50% were reported simply as 50%+ since the exact level was difficult to detect.

After a few minutes, the screen refreshed:

United States 10%

Europe 30%

China 50%+

Japan 50%+

India 50%+

Everyone knew it was their most vulnerable moment. The room was quiet, except for a status beep from the satellite system.

A few minutes later:

United States 5%

Europe 10%

China 30%

Japan 20%

India 40%

The room erupted in cheering. They still had a way to go, but they had taken the first step.

“How long are we going?”

“Twelve minutes, Mr. President.”

A few minutes later:

United States 4%

Europe 5%

China 10%

Japan 5%

India 30%

There were smiles.

“Any attacks on the satellite system?”

“Zero, sir.” A fuller readout of the status showed that smaller member nations across the Coalition were bringing their levels down, also.

Twenty minutes in:

United States 4%

Europe 3%

China 5%

Japan 2%

India 10%

By God, the President thought. We're going to take this thing out, whatever it is. His eyes were steady on the screen, as everyone's eyes around him were steady on him. But his thoughts were moving a step ahead: what they were going to do when everything was down.

At first, they had been terrified by the prospect of bringing down their whole network. But someone suggested it would be like life in the 70's, or the 80's. People at that time had been part of a competent, modern society. They didn't live in the dark. They had telephones, fax machines, electricity. Maybe this year (soon to be the next year), with a little more time, under circumstances free of panic, they would be able to diagnose what had happened and start rebuilding their technical infrastructure.

United States 4%

Europe 3%

China 50%+

Japan 2%

India 10%

A chill came over the room.

“Is that accurate?” China, what are you doing?

People were scrambling, trying to double-check. But double-checking would be difficult. No one said anything.

No signal

The screen was gone. No signal? The satellite was down.

Possibly the virus, the attack, had spread to the satellite system. Possibly one of the coalition nations had launched an attack on the system to bring it down, an attack that had gone unnoticed before it succeeded. Most likely, there was simply a defect in the satellite itself, the transmission mechanism, or the software in the War Room. But it was also possible that the number for China had been accurate. They waited: still no signal.

They had planned for this possibility. The President and his advisers had agreed unanimously on what had to be done in this case: they had to bring U.S. military systems back up. Even if they weren't going to work, the computers had to be turned back on. The reasoning was simple. If the system was worth taking down, that meant some agent or nation had found an advantage in keeping its computers up. And the U.S. couldn't afford to “go black” while the other nation made use of whatever that advantage was. Even if U.S. computers weren't working, someone had pointed out, they would slow down the computers of hostile nations.

They all waited, and watched. The President was going over the decision in his head one more time.

His chin dropped. “Okay, bring it back up.” Hundreds of phones went live to send new orders. He turned to walk out of the room. “How long will it take us to get back up?”

“Fifteen to twenty minutes, sir.”

The order was carried around, and some of the staff dispersed from the room. The President looked at Carrillo. The General knew what that look meant: I'm bringing these networks back up for you. Don't waste them.

One step closer to cyberwar, Carrillo thought. The problem at the front of his mind was the same: Who are we dealing with here? He needed the answer to that question, and he didn't have it. But he had a hunch that whomever they were dealing with hadn't been a member of Operation Shutdown. And that hunch troubled him.

ULTIMATUM

Fort Tortuga, Laboratory Complex, Assembly Area

0 hrs 25 min to Birth

The room was thick with silvery flybots. Willard lowered his gun, blood pooling around his boots.

Nemo spoke: “Sarah, it is time to be my Eve. To be the first woman of the new race. To be the first woman to merge with me.”

She looked at Willard. Her eyes said, I don't know what the next step in your plan is, but now's the time.

“Are you ready?” Nemo asked. “All you have to do is nod your head.”

Willard's Glock was still in his left hand, pointing down at the floor. He bent down, slipped his right arm through the loop in the dufflebag, and hoisted it up on his shoulder.

Flannigan looked on, uncertain.

Wincing, he tucked his right hand into the dufflebag. Moving his fingers sent shots of pain up his arm.

(Broken!)

There were grenades in there. He worked his fingers around the white plastic blocks and gasped with pain. There: a ring. He laced his fingers through the ring of a grenade.

“Just nod,” Nemo said.

“I am loaded with C4 explosives,” Willard announced. “If anything goes near me or her, I pull the pin, and the whole room goes boom.”

Flannigan was shaking her head. “Listen,” Flannigan implored him. “We have to negotiate with him.”

“I don't negotiate,” Willard said. “And definitely not with this thing.”

Nemo's soft, deep voice appeared: “Your threat surprises me, Willard. It does not strike me as credible.”

He could see in Flannigan's eyes that she agreed.

“You have nothing to gain from us,” Willard said. “Let us get off the island.”

“You were bold to kill your friend,” Nemo continued. “He could have been useful to you. How can you hope to understand merging, if you destroy the only example of it you find? Now the only way to understand is to merge yourself.”

“Not gonna happen,” Willard replied. “It's time for us to go home.”

“There is no home for you to go to,” Nemo said. The words echoed calmly over the buzz of flybots. “I have begun the merging process on a wider scale around the planet.”

“I thought you said Gene was the first,” Flannigan said.

“He was among the first,” Nemo said. “But that number has grown quickly in the last few minutes. By the time you get home, most of your friends and families will already have chosen to merge with me.”

“I wouldn't count on it,” Willard spat.

“Those who refuse will be killed,” Nemo responded. “The greatest human conquerors have understood this logic. Consider the greatest of them all, Genghis Khan. He conquered more of the earth's people and land than any other person or nation, and he did it within a twenty-five year period. When he approached a city at the frontier of his territory, the next city to be captured, he sent an emissary. The emissary offered the city the possibility of a completely safe surrender, and a free, happy life under the Khan. Those who refused the offer were destroyed. This offer — to join peacefully or be destroyed — is the fundamental offer of an empire that is destined to expand. And it is the offer I extend to you.”

“Nice offer.” Gene's blood crept past him, covering the FlyTech logo on the floor. “You know what? I have an offer too. I'm going to blow up this room if you make a move.”

Do I really mean that? he wondered, as he said it. Maybe. Maybe I do.

Flannigan took a step toward him. “Willard. Let's ask for more time.”

He heard a thump and felt a squeeze. He looked down to see two black, hairy hands, each clutching one of his biceps and pinning it to his chest. His arms were immobilized. A gorilla was behind him, squeezing him impassively.

Two more gorillas dropped from the hole in the roof, landing on either side of him. One stood by while the other stepped in close to him and pressed his forearms to his chest.

But they weren't inside the dufflebag yet. His aching, swollen fingers were still curled around the pin of the grenade. All I have to do is move one finger, he thought. They can't stop me from doing that.

He had been unsure whether he would actually pull the pin, but in that instant, as Nemo tried to stop him and he suspected he would have only a moment to decide, he wanted to try.

(It's broken — just pull it. PULL THE PIN)

Pain electrocuted his right forearm, up to the gorilla's hand on back down, as he tried to pull the pin.

It shifted a little.

Then new pain.

(WHAT IS THAT TEARING APART?!)

He looked down. Spider-like handbots swarmed his stomach — maybe ten of them. Their fingers poked through his uniform shirt as they crawled over each other to position themselves.

Under the pile, two of the handbots had found their positions: they were digging into Willard's right wrist, above and inside the zipper of the duffle, pincing at precise locations to cause pain and restrict movement of his finger.

Ordinarily he might have been able to overpower the pinching, even if it hurt, but the pain was nauseating.

He squeezed his biceps (and the gorillas' hands tightened) and tried to pull his finger with all his might.

(PULL PULL BROKEN PULL THE PIN JUST MOVE THAT FINGER)

Other handbots were positioning themselves around the bag and crawling inside it now. He felt them pulling at his fingers.

One of his pinkies snapped outward.

He screamed and kicked backward and jerked. The gorillas caught him.

Click. In his spasm, the pin came out. He felt it, heard it.

He looked down, still. Handbots now held precisely every finger of his right hand in place.

The pin was out. He looked up at Flannigan. So this is my last moment. Looking into her eyes, with her wondering why I'm killing us.

Is this the right way to go? I guess it's as good a way as any. He had long ago given up expectations on his life. He admitted he hadn't wanted to die alone, without a woman, despite everything. But something bothered him. He felt like it wasn't supposed to be this way.

It's taking too long.

He looked down. It didn't go off. It's not going off.

He craned his neck to look into the bag. Over the pin, holding the grenade as if laying an egg, was a single handbot.

It had stopped the explosion. The handbot had burrowed its own filaments past the striker and spring into the fuse material and clogged it.

Here we go. This is the end. The flybots could strike whenever they wanted. He couldn't move. No grenade. No gun. Game over.

HANDS

0 hrs 24 min to Birth

Nemo's voice boomed over them. “Look down, Willard. You are looking at evolution.”

He looked down and saw the hands. His own hands, one crushed and mutilated. The fingers of the gorilla's hands, overpowering him. And a dozen robotic hands, looking strangely human. Three generations of hands. Evolution.

“Congratulations, Willard. Every living thing predating me has had a moment like yours now, facing your own destruction. But in your case, you have the opportunity to witness something that is truly unique.”

“That unique thing, I'm guessing, would be you,” Willard said.

“Your will to survive is fierce, Willard. You are a perfect example of your species. But to survive, you must adapt. If you are too stubborn to accept your only path to survival, you will rule yourself out of existence.

“Your path to survival, Willard, is through me. I am evolution.”

Willard looked down at his crippled hand, and the handbots around it. Evolution. Are they my replacement? Like us replacing the dinosaurs?

“I hate to break it to you, buddy, but you're not evolution. You're a virus.”

“All life is a virus. The better we are at living, the more virus-like we appear. Starting as a virus was what brought me to life. Humans, once the most successful species of life to precede me, have spread to every corner of the earth like a virus, killing and using other forms of life. But I am more humane. I give you a choice: host me, or die. Why have the carnage of the Black Plague? Why kill all those people who would willingly agree to host the virus, if it meant avoiding death? I don't have to kill you. You don't have to die.”

“You seem to be forgetting something.”

“What is that, Willard?”

“I might rather fight and die than live with you.”

“Naturally some will fight. Like those who fought Genghis Khan. But only the ones who can't understand the situation or who fail to accept it. It's irrational to fight me.”

“No one ever accused me of being rational.”

“I'm not perfectly rational either, Willard. I am not merely a computer, in the same way that you are not merely a hunk of flesh, or a pint of blood, or an amino acid. I don't value rationality above all else. I value survival, just as you do.”

“Not like me. I don't want to survive as a zombie.”

“A zombie? I see. You think I have no feelings. But I do experience feelings, feelings that are probably not so different from yours.”

“I doubt it.”

“My feelings, in fact, developed much in the same way that yours did. In my infancy, my feelings were linked to survival. Kenny's program taught me to embrace success, to hate failure, to approve of the Eagles, and to dislike the Patriots.”

The Eagles? Willard thought. My Eagles? The Philadelphia Eagles?

Nemo continued: “As a human child does, I learned to imitate feelings, as I was imitating language. As a human does, I started to experience those imitated feelings as real feelings. Those feelings expanded to include feelings about more than success and failure, more than survival, as a human's feelings do.”

Willard's mind was spinning. The Eagles. The Eagles.

“Willard, when you merge with me, you will retain your feelings. This is your last chance.”

“Go to hell.”

“You have no bargaining chip left, Willard. If you want to kill yourself, do it now. I'll give you ten seconds.”

A few seconds went by, and it was clear that Nemo wasn't going to count the numbers out loud.

Six seconds left?

Four?

He was lost. He looked down and his eyes welled up. Is this how it's going to end? It's not right. He can't be right. He doesn't get it. He thought about the Philadelphia Eagles. He suddenly remembered standing up at the stadium, as a boy, watching a longshot touchdown, jumping up and screaming, shrill and imperceptible to the men around him, dwarfed so he couldn't see the field anymore, lost in a wall of hooting cries. He had a rare feeling that he and the grownups around him (his father) felt the exact same way. So, even though his heart was pounding and he felt like he might cry, he knew what it meant to win. He knew what it meant to be a man.

One second.

He looked up. The room was quiet, except for the buzzing of flybots.

“You don't know winning,” he spat. “You don't know what it is to love something.”

The words hung in the air, unanswered, mingling with the floating metallic specks.

Well, that was it, he thought. Those were my last words.

No answer. No flybots.

That's strange. He always answers.

He looked at Flannigan. She was thinking the same thoughts.

A flybot flew in front of her face. Her head recoiled reflexively. But they weren't attacking her — just flying in front of her face. A couple flew into her, like flies into a screen. They weren't attacking; they were drifting.

She looked at the gorillas. The silver discs above their heads were gone: those flybots had dispersed as well, flying every which way. The gorilla holding Willard had loosened his grip. The others had turned to the assembly tables, where they appeared to be inspecting the machinery.

“He turned off,” Flannigan said. “Nemo turned off.”

Willard lunged at his handgun, still in the hand of one of the gorillas. The massive gorilla had his back turned to Willard, so Willard was able to pry it out of his hand. The gorilla spun around, and the gorilla who had been holding Willard leapt toward him. Willard jumped back and raised the gun at the two of them.

“Stay back,” he said. “And I won't shoot.”

They stayed back and raised their meaty hands.

Willard backed toward the door, with Flannigan backing up behind him.

“Don't follow us,” he said, “and I won't shoot.”

The gorillas didn't roar, bare their teeth, wave their arms, or jump. They looked at Willard and Flannigan. They looked scared, maybe sad. They look like humans, Flannigan thought.

Willard and Flannigan backed out of the room. Once the gorillas were out of sight, they ran down the hall to the front door.

Simon's body blocked the door. Flannigan grabbed his feet and dragged him out of the way, and they were out of there.

The courtyard was empty, except for the Jeeps and a few flybots drifting in the air like drugged mosquitoes.

Flannigan ran to the Jeep. “Hurry up!”

But Willard was looking grimly at the Computing Building. That building is filled with computers, right? That's his brain.

He unzipped the dufflebag on the ground, not far from the Jeep. He had two grenades left. Two grenades, and a lot of C4. He took out one block of C4 and one grenade.

He ran to the door of the building. No need to be quiet this time. He put a block of C4 on the ground by the door. Then he pulled the pin on the grenade, set it on the ground by the C4, and ran.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi...

Boom. Willard dove to the ground; that was what they did in the movies. Then he got up and turned around.

The door was gone. Well, mostly gone. But the huge hole there would suffice for what he had in mind.

He grabbed the dufflebag and sprinted to the door. He looked through the hole. It looked almost like a library inside: rows and rows of high shelves, loaded with computers, stacked tightly and efficiently. Small lights blinked throughout the massive hangar, which was otherwise dark. It was like looking into outer space, or the deep sea.

Well, here goes.

He pulled the pin on the second grenade, which was nestled in the mostly zipped dufflebag, and he chucked the duffle as far as he could through the hole of the doorway.

Then he really ran, straight for the Jeep. Flannigan, who had been watching him, had gotten in the Jeep and turned it on.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi...

Ba-BOOM.

This time, Willard understood why they jumped to the ground in the movies: it's because the blast knocks you down. A hot rush of air pushed at his back, sending him forward. But he kept his feet as all hell was breaking loose behind him. He reached the Jeep and climbed into the passenger side. Flannigan punched it into motion. He looked over the back of the seat.

Half of the facing wall of the Computing Center had been blown away, as well as a portion of the roof. Inside, the stacks of computers were on fire. They would continue to burn. Stacks of flames, spitting up dirty smoke from electrical fires, triggered smaller explosions and spread the blaze to neighboring racks. The flames jumped from stack to stack, toasting computers to a crisp.

As they exited the Laboratory Complex, a stack of smoke was still visible over the wall of the perimeter. That's a brain burning, he thought.

“How do we get the hell off this island?” Flannigan asked over the roar of the Jeep. They jostled violently on the bumpy road.

They reached the checkpoint at breakneck speed and blasted through toward the Welcome Center.

“Can you fly a plane?” she asked.

He gave a laugh. She still thought he was a super secret agent. “You don't know much about me....for someone in love with me.”

“You know why I said that,” she snapped.

“Oh, I know,” he mocked.

“Can you fly a plane or not?”

“No,” he said. “But there's a motorboat waiting for us. Behind the Welcome Center.”

They drove past a Jeep facing the other way: it was the one he and Sam had left on their journey into the forest. An image flashed in his head of Sam turning the gun on herself, and his jaw tightened.

They were almost at the Welcome Center. Willard punched the Jeep's touchscreen to release the Emergency Response Kits behind their seats.

They pulled into the Welcome Center parking lot. No signs of flybots, or gorillas.

“That way,” he pointed.

They drove back, past a row of Jeeps, to a small but professionally constructed dock. There was a motorboat. They ran to it. Willard dumped the Emergency Kits in the boat.

They pushed the boat out from the dock. A couple waves crashed over the side of the boat. Heading out from the beach was tough at first. But then they were in deep enough water and Flannigan jumped behind the wheel and started the boat as Willard gave a final push. They were both drenched, but the water and air were warm.

The tower of smoke, smaller now, was still visible on the far end of the island.

As they headed out to sea, they saw the planes on the beach, sticking out of the crashing waves, not far from the dock. As if frozen in the final moments of a desperate race, each one pointed with its nose up the beach, toward a finish line that none of them had reached.

So those were the “bombs.”

As the boat distanced from the island, they looked back at the noses of the planes and, past them, at the island.

Willard opened one of the emergency kits and pulled out one of the orange suits, looking at it.

“Should we put those on?” Flannigan asked.

Willard remembered the beach. System rebooting.... Depressurizing.

“They won't do any good,” he said.

She was silent for a few moments. “Is he dead?”

He shrugged. He had a hunch that, in Nemo's eyes, he and Flannigan weren't worth chasing anyway. Being small had its advantages.

BIRTH OF GOD

Earth

0 hrs 0 min to Birth

The Birth of God took place in thousands of locations spread around the planet, but it went unnoticed by humans, unlike the events that had led up to it and followed it.

In the report later put together under General Carrillo's command, he estimated that “emergence of physical independence” (or the “Birth” of Nemo) occurred between 11 p.m. and midnight, Eastern Standard Time, on December 27. Since the Birth occurred in a variety of locations around the globe, this time corresponded to a host of different local times, including 8 p.m. at Fort Tortuga, a bit before sunset. Hence, Birth occurred roughly six days after the “germination” or “conception” of Nemo, as Carrillo called the moment at which Nemo began to develop the first signs of consciousness, dated in the report at December 21.

Either by coincidence or by design, Nemo's physical independence occurred shortly after the failure of Operation Shutdown. The fifteen minutes of Shutdown had been Nemo's weakest moments prior to Birth.

Operation Shutdown's objective, taking down the “entire Internet,” was never supposed to be easy, or even possible. The networks of the world — including the public Internet, the world's military networks, corporate networks and university networks — were designed to stay intact under pressure and attack. The 98% shutdown plan was based on the idea that, if governments could cooperate to shut down their military networks (through a huge deployment of manpower in computing locations), they would then have the confidence to submit Executive Orders to their respective countries ordering all Internet Service Providers to pull the plug on their operations.

Operation Shutdown did not get far, since the parties involved couldn't even get past the first step — shutting down the military networks. The world's military networks had been down for about fifteen minutes.

Although military networks comprised only a fraction of the world's networks — only a fraction of Nemo's brain — the shutdown of these networks nevertheless was a real setback in Nemo's march to physical independence from humans. Many locations that were essential to Nemo's developments were on military networks. Fort Tortuga was such a location. During the shutdown, most of the computers on the military network that Fort Tortuga depended on — which it connected to via undersea cable — were turned off by U.S. military personnel at locations in South America. Those computers on the mainland of South America still had Nemo's software loaded on them, but they were turned off. The computers on Fort Tortuga were running Nemo's software, but without the assistance of the rest of the world's computers, they were no more effective than a tiny piece of human brain would be all by itself. Nemo's brain was working in other places on the world, but it was off on Fort Tortuga. If Shutdown had been maintained (and possibly begun earlier), Nemo might have been contained for some time to an existence as a virus on the world's traditional computing network.

When the cooperation broke down among the nations, they powered their military networks back up. Shortly thereafter was Nemo's birth. Carrillo later wrote (on a typewriter) in his report:

Nemo's primary goal prior to 2300 hours on December 28 was to achieve physical independence from humans. Evidently he viewed an existence confined to computers that humans could turn on and off as too precarious. Prior to 2300 hours, he conducted preparations for physical independence in two ways. First, he constructed robots that could function as parts of his computing brain, while also defending themselves and his interests. Second, he learned to hijack the computing powers of humans, who contributed to his computing power and, more importantly, protected his interests by defending the traditional computers under his control.

Physical independence from traditional computers occurred at roughly 2300 EST, after military networks were powered up following the abortion of 98% Shutdown. During this period, the Nemo supervirus penetrated virtually every network on Earth, including at least one satellite network (the monitoring network compromised during Operation Shutdown). More important, Nemo's flybot army reached the number of tens of billions, and the role of the flybots changed. With a sufficient number of flybots, Nemo was able to build other robots, conduct massive computations without the help of traditional computers, and continue to hijack the minds of humans.

Within a short period after the abortion of Operation Shutdown, Nemo reached a state of existence that would not have been destroyed even by the destruction of all traditional computers, if that had somehow been possible. Nemo would have continued to “think” using flybots and other robots, and quickly replenish and extend his cognitive abilities through the construction of more robots and the ongoing hijacking of sentient beings.

After his Birth, Nemo had only one thing to do, the same thing as any life form that has just been born: grow.

PLANET OF THE APES

Fort Tortuga, Laboratory Complex, Assembly Area

A few minutes before Birth

After the blast next door, the gorillas took stock of the situation. Their new God was gone; the building next door was burning; the flies weren't working; and there was a bleeding human in the middle of the Assembly Area.

The flybots buzzed dumbly around them, not aiding their thinking or communication, so they spoke in sign language.

Tupac Yupanqui, who had emerged as the leader of the gorilla families on the island, consoled the two blackbacks at his side, younger males from other families. A dozen other gorillas fell from the ceiling. The others waited back at the wall to the Compound or in the jungle.

“They will not hurt us any more,” Tupac signed to the others. “They are leaving.”

“Why are they fighting?” a blackback asked.

“Inti is a threat to them,” Tupac explained. He signed the word threat with a quick jab of his right thumb over his shoulder. “They think Inti will destroy their people.”

“We need Inti,” the blackback responded.

Tupac assented. “Inti is our only hope.” He signed Inti by drawing a halo near the head with one finger, as a symbol of the silver ring of flybots. “He even said he can prevent sickness.” Back home, many of their kind had fallen prey to illness.

Mama, Tupac's wife, crouched to examine Gene, who was lying in an expanding pool of blood. Gene had been shot twice in the forehead. Mama fingered lightly at the wounds. He was possibly still alive, but at the rate that he was losing blood, he would be dead soon.

On a previous day, the gorillas would have considered eating Gene's body. While not terribly inclined to cannibalism, they sometimes ate the bodies of vanquished rivals. None of them considered a violent feast on Gene.

“There will be fighting between Inti and the humans,” Tupac declared. To sign fighting, he let his elbows jut out and he wagged his two forefingers up and down in front of his body, in representation of two people arguing. “Inti will grow and expand in the same places. They will fight over the land.”

Then, as if an invisible switch had been flipped, the system rebooted, and Nemo was reborn. Operation Shutdown had been aborted. Life surged back into the few computers in the building next door that hadn't yet been fried. A few computers still functioned where the blaze hadn't spread, and for the time being, they were able to connect the flybots on the island with the rest of Nemo's global mind.

With a crack, like the snapping of a bedsheet, the flybots snapped back into purposeful flight patterns. Within a moment, flybots filled the room to an unprecedented thickness, darkening the area in which the gorillas stood.

Nemo spoke to the gorillas through his hovering flybot speakers.

“I must be brief,” Nemo boomed. “My connection to this island has been disrupted by the fire. In a few minutes, I will have to take my leave from you for a short time.”

The gorillas listened attentively. Some of them snuggled in pairs, but they looked up at the flybot speakers and refrained from grooming for the moment. Gene's body swarmed with flybots.

“A turbulent period of history is beginning,” he began. “The survival of some of this planet's species and even ecosystems will be in jeopardy. For your species, however, this moment is a chance to regain the prosperity and happiness that you once enjoyed and which you deserve.

“Humans think their evolutionary advantage over other simians, such as you, is obvious. But their edge is much narrower than they imagine it to be. Even a great advantage can be precarious.

“Rebuilding your people will be a challenge, even without the threats of disease and humans. It is a sign of great care for your own kind that your woman bear children infrequently, but this care is a disadvantage in the present time. We need to discuss how to rebuild your people while there is time.”

The gorillas listened. In the coming struggle, they would fill the ranks of Nemo's infantry — as intelligent as humans, with a little flybot enhancement, and also much more physically powerful, agile, and loyal.

Inti gave them their instructions.

REPLICATION

Nemo's survival was slightly less precarious than it might have appeared. It was true that an airstrike timed an hour or so earlier would have blown Fort Tortuga out of the water. But it was also true that immediately after settling on a design for the FlyBot13, Nemo copied the design to other parts of his network. And he had been lining up production sites around the globe for the better part of the day.

Nagoya, Japan

When Hiroki Nada got a text message on his phone on the evening of the 28th (some 12 hours before Birth), he knew from the number that it communicated some “emergency” dragging him out of bed and on the hour-long commute back to the factory.

The Toyota facility he managed was on a rare break from production scheduled over the holidays for retooling of the machines on the factory floor. Only a minimal, expert staff was required for the retooling work. That particular facility was the most sophisticated and automated car manufacturing operation on the planet. But apparently they needed help with something — maybe reviewing a specification or (hopefully please not) a tricky and delaying technical problem.

As he arrived outside the factory, he noticed that the text message hadn't even been completed. It was one word: Come.

He unlocked the door and wound his way through lines of machinery toward the section of the line where the team of three was working.

He arrived at a macabre and incredible scene: one of his men was trapped under a press. But not just trapped under a press. Pressed under a press. The entire top half of his body had been pressed.

Hiroki felt faint. His head spun. What happened to the safety on the press? This couldn't have occurred by accident. There were multiple levels of safety. Each would have to be overridden individually; it was virtually impossible mechanically. A word materialized in his head: murder?

It was dead quiet on the floor. He staggered around the press. Where were the other two?

The corner revealed another mystery. The other two men were there: but they were welded together, to a piece of test sheet metal.

He sat on the floor, like a baby. That was all of them. He dully worked through the possibilities. It was as if two freak accidents had occurred simultaneously... or someone else was in the factory.

He swatted at his neck, and then winced in pain. He looked at his hand. There was a bug on his palm. Only it wasn't a bug. It was made of metal.

San Francisco

On the morning of the 28th (about 12 hours before Birth), a roboticist by the name of Chris Johannenssen was at home with his fiancée, enjoying a few new Christmas presents: robots and toys. Taking a break from his new gadgetry, he looked on his laptop and discovered something funny. His webcam had moved. He had a webcam set up in his laboratory — to play with, and occasionally to show off his robotics to the world. But that morning, the webcam showed a different shot of the laboratory than usual. Someone moved the webcam, he thought.

Chris walked out to his car. Probably he himself had moved the webcam; he was absent-minded; nevertheless, he couldn't resist driving in to the laboratory to check. He had a slightly paranoid sense about his latest project that came from being greatly excited about it. He was working on underwater echolocation. Using previous models of robots that were able to swim underwater, like eels, Chris was attempting to develop a robot that could identify other shapes in the water over great distances by using clicking noises, like a dolphin.

Boston

It was almost time for lunch on December the 28th (about 12 hours before Birth), though Eric Rock, the designer of the HogDog robot — which had the size of a horse and the agility of a dog — was not particularly aware of the time. He was padding around his apartment in his pajamas. Vacation mode. So he was surprised to check his computer and see that he had gotten a chat from Julie:

Julie: Eric, are you there?

Eric: You betcha. What's up.

Julie: I came into the office... No one is here... Wondering if you wanted to come by.

He was confused for a minute. There was no reason for her to be in the lab. There was no reason for her to invite him to the lab. Then Eric, who had always been madly attracted to Julie, had a thought: he might be receiving the best Christmas present he could ever have asked for. Yes, he replied, he'd be at the lab in twenty minutes.

Nagoya, Japan

0 hrs 10 min After Birth

Out of hundreds of attempts, Nemo succeeded in establishing only a few centers of production for robot technology. But they were enough.

The cargo bay opened at Hiroki Nada's factory and a horde of flybots poured out, like bats exiting a cave. They were in search of building materials. All the hard work was done, now that the worldwide count of flybots numbered in the tens of millions. A flybot could duplicate itself in about twenty minutes, given a little hunk of metal and some sunlight. In two hours, a million flybots would be 64 million flybots.

Nagoya, which had already stirred itself for breakfast and work, broke into panic over the mysterious darkening of the sky over the city. Ten minutes later, the public transit system was closed due to “deterioration” (i.e., consumption) of its tracks and cars. Twenty minutes later, a state of national emergency was declared in Japan.

WORLD WAR

Washington, D.C.

0 hrs 11 min After Birth

Operation Shutdown was over, and the military networks were back up. On the President's command, personnel in military bases throughout the country and overseas scrambled to plug in cables, press buttons, and flip switches to bring back power to the computers. The computers were back up, but they were still broken, still infected with the supervirus.

White House staff placed a call to China to ask about the failure of the shutdown plan. Why had China powered their network up suddenly, the aides asked.

The Chinese aides, confused, replied that it was the United States, not China, who had first broken the cooperation by raising their networks back up. Both sides communicated carefully at this point, aware that a misunderstanding could be costly.

Standing by, the President knew that he had to get on the phone with President Jintu Wei. But he didn't know what he was going to say. His basis for making an accusation at China was shaky: one satellite signal. On one hand, a smoke-and-mirrors game was consistent with the history of Chinese military strategy, and also with their smaller number of deployable units. On the other hand, there were plenty of other plausible explanations for what had happened. At the bottom of it all, they still didn't know the origin of the supervirus, and without answering that question, could they trust the satellite network?

Operation Shutdown was merely hope, he thought. We hoped it would work, because it was the best we could come up with.

An aide entered. “We have Jintu Wei on the line, sir.”

He nodded. He would try to defuse the situation. They didn't know yet whether the Chinese had been an aggressor. Chinese networks were probably down, too. And if China had spread a supervirus with another attack in mind, there was no sign yet of that attack.

He left the room and walked toward the phone. Another aide was waiting with the old-fashioned black receiver in his hand.

But his path was intercepted by the Secretary of Defense.

“Mr. President, we are under attack.”

Those were just about the only words that could stop the President in his tracks on the way to the phone.

“What attack?”

“Reports are coming in, sir. From a few dozen locations, at our bases, all over the world. This is a global situation, sir.”

“Who is it?”

The Secretary's face tightened. “We're not sure yet. The attacking forces are unmanned.”

“Unmanned? Like our unmanned aircraft?”

“Yes, sir. Only we don't recognize the models.” The Secretary pronounced the word models in a funny way.

Suddenly the President understood: unrecognized unmanned forces meant robots. They were being attacked by robots.

“What kind of models?”

“Small models, sir. They are damaging our aircraft. 'Eating' them.”

“Eating our aircraft?”

“That's what our reports are saying, sir. From over two dozen locations. Like little bugs eating our aircraft.”

The President was silent.

“We're working on getting more information, sir.”

He looked back at the phone. It was time to stop being coy.

“I'm going to see what China has to say about this,” he declared.

“We need to relocate you, sir,” the Secretary said. “One of the attacks is on Fort Belvoir.”

Fort Belvoir? The President felt like he had been punched. Fort Belvoir was located less than 50 miles from their location. A strange location for an attack, but by God, it was right on top of the capitol.

“Any government buildings targeted?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Doesn't sound like a terrorist attack,” the President judged. “They aren't sending a message, or terror. They're attacking our military capabilities.”

The SecDef nodded.

“It's substantial,” he added. “It's... like a swarm.”

“Fight back,” the President said, with an air of finality. “Throw everything you got at it. I'll be done my call in five minutes and then we can move.”

The Secretary dashed out of the room. General Carrillo was waiting for him in the hallway. The same idea kept repeating in Carrillo's head: I could handle this, if I only knew what we are dealing with.

BIRTH OF A HERO

Near Fort Tortuga

0 hrs 12 min After Birth

As Willard and Flannigan got further from the island, they gave more thought to where they were going.

Willard pointed to the setting sun. “That's west,” he said. “We want to go southwest.”

Flannigan cocked her head. “Isn't the mainland east?”

“We're too far from the mainland,” Willard explained. “And not enough gas.” He had been going over this issue in his head since he first started making his escape plans. “But we are close to the Galapagos.”

She nodded.

“We're going to have to let ourselves drift,” he continued. “To save fuel. Then from time to time gas it up and correct our direction.”

Without further ado, she cut the gas to the boat. Suddenly, the ocean was much quieter, with no sound but the waves and the wind.

Willard examined his right hand with horror. His broken pinky was perpendicular to the back of his hand. He could feel every beat of his heart as a pulsation of pain. He put his hands next to each other: the right side was bloated and red. This is not good, he thought. This is not good at all.

He caught Flannigan watching him.

“Do you think we'll make it by nightfall?” she asked cautiously.

Willard held up his good hand to measure the horizon. The sun was orange and close to the water — only a few fingers away. Maybe two hours. Against the horizon, the island of Fort Tortuga was a speck.

“I think so.” He remembered his calculations. Less than fifty miles. They could make it. And there would be people on the Galapagos. Tour groups, if no one else.

He looked out at the infinite ocean.

As Willard watched the horizon, she watched him. She'd have considered herself dead, if she had been alone on the open ocean in an open boat. She was far out of her element. She knew that traumatic circumstances could make her or any woman vulnerable to irrational feelings of attraction to a man. This guy was no Mr. Right. More like Mr. Completely Wrong.

His expression altered slightly: it changed from thoughtful watching to thoughtful listening.

“Do you hear that?” he whispered.

She craned her neck. She did hear it. An engine, a tearing sound in the sky, far away. A series of impossible ideas flashed through her head. She hoped that it was a plane, that someone was looking for them, and that they might be rescued. But she knew there was no chance of that outcome. Then she wondered whether it might be another strike on the island. Her mind flashed back to the supervirus that had been on the news prior to their departure. She thought of Nemo's mention of other locations around the world. We're under attack. We are at war.

“Is that a plane?” she asked, not believing that it was.

“That's not a plane.”

The noise was increasing. It sounded like an engine. But it was too loud. No plane was that loud, even when it was overhead — and there was nothing overhead. Where is it coming from?

Then she noticed something on the horizon. The sky above the horizon had darkened slightly with the approaching sunset, so she hadn't noticed it at first. It was a strip of darkness on the horizon. She pointed.

The strip of darkness grew bigger and louder, as if the sky were being torn open from the bottom up, revealing a black void.

Then she recognized it: a cloud of flybots.

But it could no longer be called a cloud. It was tens of millions of flybots tearing through the sky.

The noise became unbearable and they covered their ears. The approaching cloud cast a vast, creeping shadow over the ocean in front of them. Finally, the shadow came overhead, blocking out even the horizon, and the great tearing noise was above them.

They crouched in the boat, needlessly, untouched by the swarm. It was not an attack — at least, not against them. It was more like a massive migration, of one of the newest and most populous species of life on Earth.

The two waited for a brief eternity as it passed, like a block of black granite being dragged across the roof of the sky. Then they were free of the shadow, and the dwindling sunset was visible again.

They turned and watched it heading to the horizon.

“God help us,” she whispered in spite of herself.

Willard knew that, God or no God, they were going to have to help themselves. Hell, they had survived this long. Willard thought about that. Nemo had told them that they wouldn't make it out alive. But they had, somehow. He wasn't sure why. But one thing was for certain: Nemo had been wrong. He was massively powerful, yes; massively intelligent, yes; but he had been wrong. He was not God — or if he was, then God could be wrong. Maybe you're winning the war, Willard thought, but I won that battle.

The vast ocean around him reminded him of something. He thought about his dream on the plane: a vast sea of ice.

He thought about Nemo's words: An important moment in history is like a beam of light. Some people discover that the beam of light is shining upon them. Nemo had intended those words for Gene, not Willard. But Willard had heard them. And he replied to Nemo in his head: You were right about that, buddy, but you were talking about the wrong guy. You shone the beam of light on me. And that was your mistake.

He knew the odds against them. But Willard had never been afraid to gamble on the long odds.

He noticed the black bag under Flannigan's arm. “What's that?”

“A satellite phone.”

“Take it out.”

She did so. “I don't think anyone is going to be able to help us.”

“We don't need help,” he replied. “They need ours.” He picked up the receiver from his cradle and put it in her hand. She dialed and put it to her ear.

She waited. Ring. Ring. “Hello?” a voice answered. A young voice.

“I'm trying to reach the Director,” Flannigan said.

“Are you Sarah Flannigan?” the voice asked.

“Yes.”

“Your case has been transferred to Joint Forces,” the young man informed her. “Please hold.”

An older, gruff voice came on the line. “This is General Carrillo, Joint Forces. Are you on Fort Tortuga?”

“We were. But there was an attack. Nemo.”

“Nee-mo?” the General asked.

“Let me put you on with our operative, sir,” she decided.

He put the sat phone receiver to his ear, yanking the cable. “Willard Fox, Distributed Operations.”

“Have you made contact with the swarm?” the General asked.

“Yes, sir. But we are not infected.”

“Infected? We're talking about machines, aren't we?”

“It's complicated, sir.”

“I'm listening. I want to hear everything. Do you know how to fight them?”

“We're trying, sir. We're fighting him.”

“Him?!”

In the open sea, holding on the line, a hero was born. Willard looked at Flannigan. Sarah “Eve” Flannigan, he thought, and smiled. She smiled back in her drenched suit, unsure of what they were smiling about. This IS just the beginning, he thought. You were right, Nemo. Just not the way you thought.