Chapter 24


China wanted to control history instead of influencing it, but the central government was increasingly out of touch. When citizens became better educated, they had less in common. Sometimes, less conflict could be a bad sign. And now groups were becoming self-aware, a strange response to the population pressure. They acted against the best interests of their members, who seemed to enjoy the conflict. Before humanity could evolve to the next level, it would have to make roughly a million changes, or one every fifteen minutes. Everyone would have to become a better listener, and a faster talker.
  The Security Minister in Beijing tried to take control of Qiyuan's police department under the Constitution's panic clause. The mayor had been liberated from his office, and took the call after taking a deep breath.
  "How dare you impugn my integrity." He hissed. "We don't need your 'help'."
  "You're a menace to society," the minister shouted.
  The mayor had already hung up. He glanced around his office, almost restored to its former condition. Even if Qiyuan was someone else's dream, he would protect the legacy of the Compromise Party.
  Troop landers descended from the clouds like gray elevators, disgorging their soldiers and equipment. More units arrived overland, joined by federal police, activated reservists, and civilian contractors. After five decades of peacekeeping experience in the world's horror countries, it took barely longer than five minutes to capture the town. There seemed to be too many neighborhoods, and not enough sightlines. The troops hid behind corners, strung up camouflage sheets, and seized convenient buildings, waiting for the battle to begin. A few residents tried to reason with them, but the streets soon emptied. Around 3 PM, the full story broke on the Net.

  Rick was half an hour out when he finally reached a human operator at the Police Ministry.
  "Qiyuan Municipality is closed to visitors," the operator said distantly.
  "I will explain. . ." The line went dead. "My condolences, you're all going to die," he said.
  Too many people were trying to help. Rick had thought he could influence the capture. He imagined howls of laughter at his naïveté. At least the recording proved the operator had cut him off. He had an excellent reason to go there, and would think of it soon. Reality seemed to be fragmenting, and the answer might be in Qiyuan.
  An agglomeration of villages, hubs, and old trade routes, the town had two connecting highways and a high-speed rail link. Roads had become unfashionable as a waste of space. The "urban island" evacuation routes, including farmland and sports fields, were blocked by soldiers. They had secured well over a hundred square kilometers, which in this part of China meant two hundred thousand suspects. In his rental car, Rick would have already been stopped.

  Train service through town had been suspended two hours ago. He got off at a commuter station five kilometers to the east. The air felt cooler than in Russia, with low-moving clouds. The sky had a sinister gradient, almost green at the bottom, and he felt the first stirrings of real excitement. A beam of sunshine narrowed to a sword of light.
  A group of cops down the pier radioed his Box. Without his UN codes, he would have been arrested remotely. Rick waved enthusiastically. Most jurisdictions (except the dullest ones) hated intruders.
  The cops stood in various poses while a civilian demonstrated a gas mask. Most had changed from their neo-futuristic orange and white uniforms into still spotless army fatigues. They would proceed westward over the tracks, detain any escapees they met, and provide crowd control as needed. The chief ignored Rick, who stood right next to him, as if he had already been integrated.
  When the chief looked up, Rick showed his ID. "I'm the person who found Anonymous. You need my help."
  "Wait over there," the chief pointed at a marble bench.
  Rick didn't move. A silver bullet train seemed to hover over the tracks. They heard a distant explosion.
  "The man who attacked me is killing your colleagues," he said. "If I join you, he has one more target."
  The chief calculated the likely blame, and saw a net benefit. "Can you follow orders?"
  "Extremely well." Another cop told Rick to empty his pockets, and he complied at once, littering the platform with pieces of equipment.

  Five minutes later he sat in an all-terrain vehicle, trying to close the straps on an oversized helmet and light armor vest. The convoy drove over the embankment, smoother than expected on the plasti-ceramic rails and diagonal ties. They passed a series of factory farms along a constant-width stream. A stork guarded a square island. Every meter of track was scanned. The chief lifted his binoculars. A truck with soldiers stopped in the distance.
  Tall trees marked the town's outskirts, and the pylons started to turn to the left. The ATV's drove off the berm, entering Qiyuan on a winding, tree-shrouded lane. Rick saw large houses, statues between trees, a mystic dome at the end of a street. He hunkered down.

  Xiao's transmitted records were analyzed at light speed. Qiyuan's strong privacy laws had allowed it to collect more data than almost anywhere else. The town even licensed antisocial behavior, which would happen anyway. Finding the small gap Anonymous had made required most of the world's computing power, including the 7.5 zettaflop cruncher "Fat Moth". By the time the first vertol had landed with a loud blowing roar, federal investigators had narrowed the target zone to four square kilometers.
  Only three blocks from Main Street, the mansion was oddly disconnected from the surrounding town: a terminus on the social map, where every network dead-ended. Most locals didn't know it existed. Built in 2030, it was listed as an Interface, with the legal status of a temple.
  Troops surrounded the coordinates at two hundred meters. Forward-deployed units saw different parts of the building. The garden was motionless in the afternoon shade. Wasps buzzed the air.
  Airborne and regular soldiers, and federal and provincial police spread out across nine blocks of gardens and alleys. Each had a robot partner weighing a third as much, doubling their effectiveness.
  Their first error was to miss the hidden path several residents used to escape. The remaining civilians were ordered to come out of their houses. A few individuals responded to the loudspeakers and priority messages, and were promptly detained in a nearby hotel.
  The counterattack began with a tone generated everywhere at once, hiding a deeper rumble. An avalanche of white smoke rolled down the streets like a moving wall. Visibility blinked to zero. It was considered a chemical weapon. The troops in their airtight suits were blinded by their own lights.
  "Not our show," a reporter commented.
  A multitude of hidden antennas came on. Untraceable pseudo-signals reduced radio range to a few meters. Small grenades detonated in an endless fusillade that could be heard twenty kilometers away. They had resembled spotlights and clumps of dirt from the air. Fires started in the weed mountains forming the native landscaping. Long wires draped through the air like seed crystals, as sparks chased each other through the trees. Wads of sticky foam hardened into steel cobwebs. A police sniper came crashing down, the first injury.
  Soldiers looked for targets behind their shields and light armored carts, ready to sacrifice themselves. Their scanners saw through walls, and their facial recognition software had stealth tolerances, but their guns wouldn't fire without permission.