BZRK

head? Can he read my memories?”
    “No,” Ophelia said, still in her calm, calm, calm voice. “We can’t really read memories. But we can locate them. It’s like . . . Well, think of it like this: we can find it the way you can search a book for a particular word. But we can’t then read the whole book. We can find the location of an idea. Then, we can spin a wire and just lay it on the surface, or we can belay off a pin that’s jabbed into the brain, or we can plant a transponder.”
    “And what does that do?” Sadie demanded, glaring at Renfield.
    “Wire or transponder, it connects two different memories or thoughts. It connects them in ways that the mind had not previously done. For example, we could locate your memories of a favorite pet. A cat, maybe. And we could link that memory to something you feared or hated.”
    Renfield smoothed his hair back with his hand. “And every time you think,
kitty, kitty
, you also think,
fear, fear
.”
    “Enough of those connections and you can alter the way a person thinks. You can create false fears. You can rewrite memories. You can create love or hate.”
    Sadie, still refusing to sit down, said, “My father never would have done any of that. That’s obscene.”
    “This isn’t McLure Inc.,” Renfield said. “Your father gave us the tech. He didn’t run the show.”
    “Who does?”
    “Lear.”
    “Who the hell is Lear?”
    This now was the most subtle of Ophelia’s many smiles. This one was made of respect and fear and submission. “Lear is Lear. And that’s all any of us will ever know.”

ARTIFACT
    Statement of Charles and Benjamin Armstrong.
    We are not evil men.
    We do not desire power. We do not desire the subjugation of others. Our goal is freedom for the human race.
    How many starve as we turn away? How many die from preventable diseases as we ignore them? How many of our fellow human beings languish in political prisons, or the prison of their own addictions? How many are without hope, when we might give them hope?
    We are a freak of nature: two men joined together by an accident of nature in our mother’s womb. Our brains are individual but interconnected. We cannot be separated without one of us dying.
    And isn’t that how all mankind should be? Shouldn’t we all survive only so long as others do? Shouldn’t we all be part of one great human race without hatreds, without wars, without cruelty?
    We are never lonely because we are we, and not just I. Many look at us with pity or with horror. Believe us when we say that we feel the same for all of you, trapped in your eternal loneliness.
    For all of human history humans have been given the opportunity to love one another. And for the most part we have failed. But this need no longer be the case. Technology offers us a way out of harsh, cold, hostile separation.
    I hear you thinking, “But that is the human condition.”
    But why should we not seek to better the human condition? Have we not from time immemorial turned to technology to give ourselves powers that we did not naturally possess? Did we not use fire to stay warm and cook our food? Did we not use the electric light to banish the night? Did we not take to the air in balloons and airplanes and jets and thence to space itself in rockets?
    Now we have the technology to banish not only the literal night, but the long, dark night of the human soul. With nanobots we can connect all people, everywhere, into one great race: the human race. No longer will some go hungry while others get fat. No longer will we turn a blind eye to cruelty, because we will feel all cruelties as our own.
    Only ignorance stands between us and our goal of uniting the human race into something so much more profound than a mere social network. We can create a nexus of the entire human race.
    We have in our hands the beginnings of true utopia.
    Some will choose the path of evil and resist this glorious future.
    We will mourn them.
    Charles and Benjamin Armstrong

ARTIFACT
    KING LEAR
    Dost thou know me, fellow?
    KENT
    No, sir; but you have that in your countenance
    Which I would fain call master.
    KING LEAR
    What’s that?
    KENT
    Authority.
    King Lear
, William Shakespeare

TEN
    Vincent contemplated the China Bone and watched—from the Asian grocery across the street—as Karl Burnofsky shuffled inside.
    Burnofsky was flanked, at a discreet distance, by two TFDs—Tourists from Denver. Two of the usual AmericaStrong security men from Armstrong Fancy Gifts. One