Resistance (23 page)

“We were only following in your footsteps.”

“I was fighting a war. Your zoos are for profit.”

“What you call zoos, we call SuperCentres. Most of the revolutionary improvements in the world over the last decade have been thanks to supers trained and employed by Utopic. Look at what we’ve achieved in the last ten years alone, Jai. Global warming? Solved. Oil crisis? Food crisis? Water crisis? Energy crisis? Avoided. Recession overturned. New technology? Research? Progress? Terraforming? Exponentially accelerated.”

“So you claim.”

“It’s all true. Watch the news.”

“Which you own.”

“Utopic is going to turn our world into a good place to live for everyone alive on it. We run the world. But we are good people. We make things better.”

Jai crosses his arms. “You could put this all in a presentation,” he says. “Why have you come to me?”

Agent N licks his lips. “Do you know the world is supposed to end in three days?”

Jai gets up. “Enough,” he says.

“Sit down,” says N, his voice suddenly harsh. “This is important.”

A smile spreads slowly across Jai’s face. He returns to his seat.

“Let’s talk about nature,” says N.

“Let’s not,” says Jai.

“Indulge me. You, me, the Utopic board, and a few thousand others. We are the next stage. Post-human. In ancient times, we’d have been considered demi-gods. Maybe others like us were. Maybe millennia from now there will be no supers, and our exploits will be legend, and young humans will read about us and think we were works of fiction. Who knows how long this will last? Who knows when it will end? But while we have this chance, we must step forward. We must move the world into a new era.”

“Yes, yes. Why are you called Agent N?” asks Jai. “What does it stand for?”

“Nemo.”

“Seriously?”

“Nigel,” says N. “That’s my name. Nigel. Nothing major.”

“You’re not doing too well, minor Nigel,” says Jai. “You’re giving me generic publicist-speak for a company I have no interest in. You want to live in a perfect world. Good for you. You want me to set it up for you? Me? Do you even know who I am?”

“You’re the apex predator, Jai. You’re the last piece in our plan. But I have to explain what the plan is.”

“Today?”

“If all this – the super phenomenon – were just as simple as evolution, our goals would have been clearly defined. It would have been supers against humans. We’d have fought them. We’d have won. We’d have emptied the earth from end to end and taken it for ourselves.

“But it’s not so simple, because we are not really a new species. Supers don’t breed supers. We know. We’ve tried. Our science cannot tell supers apart from humans at a cellular level. We need humans to survive because, apart from our powers, we are still human. There’s no escaping that. Do you read comics?”

“I’ve read a few,” says Jai. “There used to be books lying around the Unit headquarters. I’d been turned into a superhero against my will. I thought I should find out how I was supposed to behave.”

“And most supers, at some point or other, have done exactly that. Modelled their behaviour on the spandex brigade. But that doesn’t work. Because comics were written for humans. So supers protected the innocent, helped preserve society. Human society. Heroes saved lives, held the earth together. For humans. Or they worked in the shadows, and feared humans. Feared being outcasts. And if they worked against humans, or killed people, they were villains. Megalomaniacs, tyrants, people to be super-punched. If this were one of those stories, Utopic would be an evil corporation.”

“Run by immortals. And represented by some smooth-talking, suit-wearing, speech-making idiot,” says Jai. “Yes, that would never happen in real life.”

“The point, Jai, is that humans and supers must coexist because new supers come from humans, not supers. But that doesn’t alter the fact that baseline humans are only relevant now as breeding stock. Raw material. In the new world, they will live lives better than ever before. Most of them will count themselves lucky to be able to experience this age of miracles. And if they are really lucky, they will never even know that mankind’s days are done. This end of man that the prophets have been going on about? That’s real. That’s us.”

“I’m confused,” says Jai. “You want to coexist with humans. You want to end humans. You want to make the world a better place for humans. Pick one.”

“What I’m trying to say is that the systems humans have set up don’t work any more. The world that the collective struggles of mankind have led us to has ripened, and has begun to rot. We have to build a new one. A better one. Where humans and supers can live together in peace, each strengthening the other.

“No matter how hard Utopic tries to fix the world, it fails. Corrupt governments. Greedy rival corporations. Man and superman clinging on to the idea that they live in the old world. You know, before all this started, I went to your country once. I had no idea then that the cities I went to would be where the new world began. What impressed me most about your country was the ease with which people ignored the poverty that existed inches from their faces. How you could live your whole lives, every day, in denial, without wondering how long it would be before the poor stopped watching and worshipping you and rose up as one against you? Well, the whole world is doing that now. Supers and humans, pretending nothing has changed. If Utopic were just a company focused on gathering wealth, we’d have been fine with that. But we’re not.

“Democracy has failed. It’s too easily exploited. Again, India’s the best example of that. Even before the warlords took over the north, your country was doomed. Greedy local leaders robbing the illiterate masses while grabbing their votes. A complete breakdown of law and order. Incredibly rich businessmen getting richer, and the poor getting angry. Do you remember?”

“No,” says Jai. “But then, I was military. I saw things differently. I believed in India.”

“And what did that belief get you?”

“Nothing,” says Jai. “I was betrayed.”

“The US is even deeper in debt than it was before the First Wave. China works, but it breaks its people in the process. Utopic will not stand for that. The world we build will not have room for poverty, inequality, illiteracy and disease.”

“All right, then,” says Jai. “I’m sold. You have my vote.”

“Before Uzma Abidi enslaved you,” says N, “you had a plan. A few of your old followers work for us now. They weren’t very clear about what your plan was, exactly, but the essence of it, we understood, was that you would conquer the world. Old school. You would take it over, one country at a time.”

Jai grimaces. “It wasn’t very well thought out,” he says.

“But we liked it,” says N. “We think you should do it. We’d like to help.”

“This is how you want to make the world better?” asks Jai. “By having me break it apart? You know, before all this started, I spent some time hunting Pakistani terrorists. Young boys, trained to kill and die. To burn the world down so that a new one could be built in its place. They thought they were making the world better too.”

“That’s not us. We’re not anarchists,” says N. “We want order and progress above all things. Do you or do you not agree that military rule is the best form of government?”

“It definitely is for businessmen,” says Jai. “So that’s what all this is about. You want me to be your hired muscle. Don’t you have other strongmen?”

“Hundreds,” says N. “But that’s not what we want you for. We want you to conquer the world for yourself. We want to invest in you. Supply you with the teams you need. And the resources. It’s all ready.”

“And what do you want in return?”

“We want to heal the world when you’re done.”

“Own everything.”

“We want to build a world where there’s no need for money or property. Where everything, and everyone is free. A utopic world. Hence the name on the business cards.”

Jai sits back and stares at N in disbelief. N looks right back, his gaze frank and open. It’s a whole five minutes before Jai speaks again.

“I don’t understand,” he says. “Why me?”

“Let me be frank,” says N. “Your availability is a lucky coincidence. We didn’t know you’d free yourself from Uzma. We thought you’d be our biggest problem. Jai, we don’t believe in destiny, or divine providence. We’re not a religion. But if we were, finding you would be the best possible proof of the righteousness of our path.

“Why you? Because you’re the best man for the job. Because you’re stronger than any other leader we could find. The truth is we can do this without you. But we’d rather not. And we’ve studied you. We know you have no interest in running the world. We know you couldn’t care less about material wealth. We know that you once offered Aman Sen the job we’re going to do. The difference is that we can get it done. He would have failed.

“And let’s face facts. A military ruler isn’t going to be popular, no matter how wonderful the world he runs is. People need a leader they can fear and hate. Even in our utopia, there will be criminals. There will be rebellions. There will be many who want the old world back. We need a man strong enough to face them. Are you that man?”

“I could be,” says Jai.

“Excellent,” says N. “Then we have an agreement?”

“That depends,” says Jai. “Are you going to shake my hand?”

Jai holds his arm out. N does too, but Jai’s hand passes through his.

Jai keeps his hand out. “That didn’t work, did it? You’ll have to – how do you describe it? Turn solid again.”

“Come on, Jai,” says N. “You’re the most dangerous person in the world. I… wouldn’t feel safe.”

“That’s a problem, isn’t it? No one would feel safe. Let’s say I agree. Let’s say you give me a super army. How do you know I won’t turn on you?”

“It’s our army.”

“How do you know I’ll give you the world once I’ve won it?”

“What would you do with it?”

“Whatever I want. You’d never trust me. You have no reason to.”

Jai draws his arm back. “No, Agent, N,” he says. “My answer is no. As your friend in the other room found out, I am no one’s puppet.”

“That’s unfortunate,” says N. “But you should know this is happening with or without you.”

“And what if I decide to stop it?” asks Jai.

“Then our considerable investment in finding out how to kill you would be money and time well spent,” says N.

Jai stands up. “Good luck,” he says. “I like you, Nigel. One day I’m going to kill you.”

N sighs. “I see I’m going to have to tell you why we’re doing this,” he says.

“That would be a start, yes.”

“Sit?”

Jai rolls his eyes and slumps back into his chair.

“We cannot be stopped,” says N. “That isn’t big talk. It’s just impossible to destroy Utopic now. We’re everywhere. There’s no one person you can kill. No secret board meeting you can invade. No single apocalypse that one brave band of heroes can team up to stop while people eat popcorn and watch them. We’re like a hydra. Like a wiki. This is happening because it needs to.

“Much of our efforts, as a species, have gone into extending our lives. It’s a basic human desire. People want to live longer. To live forever if they can. All six of our directors – and these are people who are more intelligent and ambitious than you or I can ever dream of being – became immortals when they became supers. But this is not about them.

“Most of economics is based around an essential problem – limited resources, unlimited wants. The earth can support only so many people before we ruin it. But over the centuries, we’ve become adept at making people live longer. We fight diseases. We invent prosthetics. We replace organs. And this is before the age of supers even arrived.

“Now with the combined power of human science and super abilities, we’re making it possible for people to have longer and richer lives than anyone dreamed possible. Not just by making humans healthier and stronger, or by fixing their problems. We’re overcoming everything that killed them. We’re making super-nutrients and clean energy. We’re taming tsunamis, softening earthquakes, preventing epidemics. We’re cleaning water, cutting pollution, controlling the weather. We’re using Uzma Abidi and her blundering hippy diplomacy to stop wars before they start. We’re living, we’re growing older, we’re breeding, and we’re overrunning our planet.

“Our current population is above eight billion people. Without supers, the world would have been able to sustain two billion. With us, and the improvements we bring, three billion people can live stable, healthy, sustainable, long lives in a clean, happy world. Utopic has been exploring the possibilities of colonising other planets, even building new worlds or opening new dimensions for humans to live in. So far, it hasn’t worked. In fact, most of the magicians who could make it work refuse to work for us. They reject our help, our facilities. They run and hide, and live in communities in remote parts of the world. We watch them. We help them secretly. They haven’t succeeded yet, and we don’t know if they ever will. But let’s say we keep an extra billion people on the world in case we need colonists. That’s four billion people. That’s the population of the world in the 1970s. There is more than double that number in the world right now. This cannot work.

“Over the years, Utopic has secretly sponsored millions of deaths. We’ve allowed natural disasters to take place. We’ve started controlled epidemics. We’ve unleashed monsters. We’ve allowed super-combat tournaments to take place in populated areas. Sponsored wars. We’ve done this quietly, off the books, away from the news. But though this was all necessary, we couldn’t convince ourselves it was the right thing to do.”

Despite himself, Jai gulps. “And why is that?” he asks.

“Because it’s not fair. We’re not Nazis. We’re not religious fundamentalists, or bigots of any kind. We believe all people are born equal, and some are made superior by sheer luck. Every population control exercise we’ve run has led to serious differences among board members.”

“That’s horrifying,” says Jai. “The Utopic bosses… argue?”

“I can see how it might be amusing from the outside,” says N. “But yes. We can meet our population targets in a few years with our current programmes, but none of them are fair. We don’t want to run our population control measures in any specific part of the world, against any race or religion. We don’t think the prosperous deserve life more than the poor, the clever more than the stupid. We believe in diversity. In freedom. We’re not killers.”