by Mike Kraus
“That’s another easy one to answer. The nanobots thrive on radiation. Their main power source is radiation, and I’m betting that after the bombs fell, they managed to scoop up every last drop of it.”
Leonard interrupted Rachel. “Wait, hold up. You’re saying that those things instantly cleaned up every speck of radiation in the entire world? What, with a giant vacuum? It’s not like they could just suck the radioactive particles out of the surface of the planet instantaneously.”
Rachel nodded as she replied grimly. “You’re underestimating these nanobots. They can self-replicate, there were plans to manufacturer millions of them and they love radiation. If you blanket the globe with pockets of extreme radiation where the bombs hit, these things could clean the world in, oh, I don’t know, forty-eight hours? That’s counting the fallout, too. Haven’t you noticed the skies getting clearer? They’re still sweeping the upper atmosphere clear of radiation, taking much of the dirt and cloud cover out as well.
“For as long as the nanobots could find large pockets of radiation, they could replicate incredibly fast since they wouldn’t have to generate their own power. Their replication would slow down significantly once they cleaned it up, but still, you’re talking about hundreds of trillions of these things by the time it’s all said and done.”
“Trillions?” Nancy was aghast at the high number, certain that Rachel must have misspoke.
“Yes. Trillions. Hundreds of trillions at least, and most certainly more. These things were created on the micrometer scale, and even if they’ve started replicating larger versions of themselves, I doubt they’ve gotten to be much more than two or four times their original size.”
Marcus replied breathlessly, overwhelmed by this. “Incredible. How can we even see them if they’re so small?”
“You can’t see them very well, even in large numbers, unless they’re moving. When they move, though, they generate noise and heat and they reflect light, and the combination of all of that makes them visible as those shimmering clouds you’re all so familiar with.”
“Two days… no wonder I didn’t get radiation burns when I came out in the middle of New York.” Leonard remembered back to the moment he stepped out into the destruction of the city as another thought crossed his mind. “Say, this is sort of morbid, but have any of you seen any bodies?” Nancy cringed as Leonard continued. “The only place I’ve seen actual remains of people was in New York, when I first got out of the sewers. Once I got out of there, though, I didn’t see any more…at all. None in the cars or neighborhoods or anywhere else.”
The others in the group shook their heads as they, too, recalled the frightening lack of corpses. “It’s probably the same thing,” Rachel said. “If the nanobots intentionally detonated nuclear weapons on our cities, they probably cleaned up the radiation first, then they swept back in and got rid of the bodies, too. I’m not sure why, though. That’s all part of the mystery of emergent behavior.”
Marcus wasn’t paying attention to the rest of them as they talked, remembering another bothersome detail from when he was at his campsite. “When the bombs went off, I remember blacking out just after I saw them. It was weird. I woke up, but it was a full two days later. Could that have something to do with the creatures?”
Rachel froze as she considered the new piece of information, remembering her own bout of unconsciousness. Nancy agreed with Marcus, remembering her blackout on the highway, but Leonard shook his head. “I didn’t get knocked out for two days, but I was pretty far underground. Maybe whatever knocked you two out didn’t reach me. What about you, Rachel?”
Rachel was mumbling under her breath, moving her hands and flicking her eyes back and forth as she thought. When she was engrossed in a task, she would talk to herself, arguing with her ideas and trying to extract the truth from the data in front of her. The influx of new information and the new perspectives on old information had set her mind ablaze, and she finally began to put all the pieces together.
Undisclosed Location
March 20, 2038
David arches his back and groans, feeling the familiar twinge between his shoulders that has been nagging him for days. He stands up and shuffles across the room, filling his coffee cup before returning to his desk. With a sigh he continues to scroll through thousands of pages of data dumps, searching through the results of the software upgrade analysis. Unlike his previous clandestine activities, this analysis is part of his normal duties, and he does it openly in his lab with technicians and assistants milling about. Struggling to focus, he skims through the lines of code and variables, barely able to keep his eyes open after spending the previous night modifying the latest upgrade patch before it was uploaded.
“Anything yet?” One of the lab technicians stops by, leaning his head over the partition. David turns to him, yawning as he speaks.
“Nah. Well, nothing unusual. Plenty of expected results, but nothing worth phoning home about.”
The technician nods sympathetically. “Sorry to hear that. I wish I could help you out.” Still new enough to the facility to not yet have a high level security clearance, the technician is unable to directly work on any materials in the lab. He and all the other new hires are stuck delivering paperwork and pushing the occasional button, though most of their time is spent reading a book at their desk. While many would consider this a dream job, every new recruit who has gone through the process inevitably describes it as mind-numbingly terrible, to the degree that more than one technician resigned before their waiting period was over.
David and the technician smile, then David turns back to the data on the screen. The numbers begin to blur together with the lines of code, variables start to slip off the monitor and David feels himself slowly being overtaken by slumber.
“What’s that?” A new voice from behind David startles him awake, and he realizes that his finger has been stuck on the down arrow key, rapidly scrolling through the data without him even glancing at it. Susan stands behind him, having followed the technician over, and she smiles as he tries to cover up his momentary carelessness.
“Uh, huh? What do you mean?”
“There, that line.” Susan points to a line on the results that David had nearly scrolled past. He moves back up the page, reviewing the context for the line, then frowns. “That is unusual. That’s the first time I’ve seen that, actually.”
“You sure you weren’t sleeping through the rest?” Susan’s tone is humored and playful, but David takes her seriously, scrolling back up to see if he missed anything else.
“No, it was just a moment ago. That’s the first time anything like that’s come up.”
Glancing around, Susan’s voice lowers and becomes more serious. “Maybe for you, but I’ve got stuff like that all over my tables.”
“What?”
Susan sits down next to David, whispering as she passes him a handful of papers. “This is only half of what I saw.”
David’s exhaustion evaporates as he reads through the papers. His face pales and he gulps nervously. “There’s more than this?”
“Yes. And I bet this line here,” Susan points at David’s screen, “is just the start of yours.”
“We need to report this.”
Susan nods, then David picks up the phone, punching in the direct line for Mr. Doe’s office.
“Sir, it’s David. I need to report an anomaly in the software update dumps. Yes sir. Well, actually this might be something you want to see in person. Okay. Yes sir.”
David hangs up the phone. “He’ll be here in ten minutes.”
Nine and a half minutes later, Mr. Doe walks through the door to the lab. Technicians and assistants scatter like roaches under a light as he strides back toward David’s desk. Susan stands up from the spare seat and Mr. Doe sits down, looking back and forth between the two of them.
“Well?”
After a long, deep breath, David starts his explanation.
“Susan and I were going through the data du
mps from the software update, as ordered, when we came across some anomalies.” David passes Susan’s printouts to Mr. Doe, pointing at the lines in question. “I’ve already found one line similar to this in my reports, though I still have a lot to go through.”
Mr. Doe studies the papers, flipping through the pages. “Explain to me what I should be seeing here.”
Susan jumps in to answer. “As David was saying, these anomalies are all throughout the dumps. If you look here, you’ll see one example. That’s a power usage spike, a twelve hundred percent rise that lasts nearly half a second before dying off. Those are the primary anomalies, but we’ve also got processor spikes, memory increases and deletions and lots of other abnormal behavior. They just aren’t behaving like they’re supposed to, sir.”
“When did this start happening?”
David and Susan glance at each other. “This is the first time I’ve noticed it, sir.”
Susan nods in agreement with David. “Same for me, too. I’ve never seen this kind of behavior after an upgrade.”
Mr. Doe tosses the papers back on the desk and stands up. “No need to worry. Last night was also the night with the facility power issue. I’m sure this is related to that. Tonight’s update should solve the problem. If not, file a report and I’ll look into it.”
Without waiting for a response, Mr. Doe walks away, passing through a sea of whispers and half-glances as he exits the lab. Susan and David turn away from the rest of the room, sitting down behind the partition.
“What do you think?” David whispers to Susan.
“This isn’t just abnormal. This is dangerous. Any sane facility would shut down and restart from scratch with these kinds of readings. Why doesn’t he see how much of a problem this is?”
David shrugs. “Who knows. I know it wasn’t from my changes and the update itself wasn’t very big at all. It seems pretty weird that the facility would glitch out at the same time as these anomalies would start appearing, though.”
Leonard McComb | Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden | Nancy Sims
1:24 PM, April 5, 2038
“Everything okay, Rachel?” Leonard tapped her leg and she snapped her head up to look at him, her eyes wide. She began to speak at a rapid pace as the patterns started to fall into place in front of her.
“Yes, no I’m fine. It’s all fine. Better than fine. Well, as good as it can be, I guess. I think I know part of what’s going on.” She stood up as she talked, pacing back and forth in the small space. The other three shifted to watch her, craning their necks back and forth as she walked.
“Okay, this is a tenuous set of connections, but follow me here. The nanobots got out of control somehow, right? Some sort of glitch in their AI or something, it doesn’t matter. The point is, they developed some level of independent sentience and decided that they needed to do away with us, but not all of us. So, they somehow got every nuke on earth to detonate across the globe, scorching the cities and killing, oh let’s say ninety-nine point nine percent of us, something like that.
“Of course, they had to know that there would be survivors; any decent simulation of total thermonuclear war would account for that, so they did, too. So in addition to the nuclear weapons, they generated some kind of pulse that fried our central nervous systems and knocked out everyone who wasn’t hundreds of feet underground.” Rachel looked at Leonard as she spoke this last part.
“So we’re all unconscious for 48 hours while the nanobots are circling the globe, exploding in population while they devour every last trace of radiation from the planet. Then they start to clean up our remains. Who knows, who cares. Not really important. What comes next, though, that’s important.
“After their population is in the trillions or more and they’ve cleaned up the planet, they have to deal with the survivors. So they decide to use us instead of just killing us outright. These things can do just about anything on their own, though. I saw swarms lifting and moving railroad tracks and ties, but still they decided to use us in the form of these creatures. I just don’t know why yet. ”
Rachel stopped her pacing and turned to the group, raising her voice and punctuating her remarks with her hands, thrusting her fingers and fists in the air as she spoke. “The point is, they planned all of this from the start, accounting for every contingency down to the smallest detail. They want creatures, so they get rid of the radiation. They need time to clean up the radiation, so they blanket the globe with a pulse or a chemical or some kind of agent that disables us long enough to keep us asleep while they clean. At the end of the day, when the inevitable survivors wake up, the nanobots have dominance over the planet and the means to stop any resistance to their plans.”
“Why would they knock us out, though? Why not just kill us all and not have to worry about us screwing with their plans ever again?”
Rachel looked at Marcus, not slowing down as she answered his question. “I don’t know, but right now that’s not the most important thing to think about. Don’t you see? For some reason, whether it’s intentional or because of a glitch in their AI, we’re still alive, and we still have a means to fight them! Maybe we’re alive because they need the creatures for a purpose other than hunting us; it’s hard to know for sure. As long as we’re still alive, though, that’s all that matters.”
Leonard McComb | Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden | Nancy Sims
1:39 PM, April 5, 2038
The room was quiet for several minutes as everyone digested the new information. They all took a short break from listening to Rachel by walking around and stretching their legs. Rachel took advantage of the silence to give Sam some much-needed attention, rubbing his stomach and feeding him bits of food.
It was still quiet outside the armory, from what everyone could tell, and though they were all captivated by Rachel’s explanations, she could tell that they were getting restless. We need to get out of here soon, she thought. But those creatures are probably still out there, just waiting for us. There was still a chance that the creatures had moved on to other locations, but she had no way to be sure.
Leonard was the first one to speak after the long silence. “So… back to the creatures for a minute.” Rachel looked at him as he sat down, while Marcus and Nancy quietly followed his lead. They all resumed their positions on the floor, continuing the discussion. “Marcus raised a good point. Why do the swarms turn some of the people into creatures, but kill others?”
Marcus spoke quietly before Rachel could respond. “And why are the creatures trying to kill us if they’ve got the nanobots inside of them? Why aren’t the DNA whitelists working for the creatures, too?”
Rachel was quiet, sorting through everything in her head. Bits and pieces of these same thoughts had come up in her mind over the last few days, but putting it all together was taking time.
“Okay, so… the nanobots haven’t rewritten the DNA inhibition routines yet. That’s why we’re not all dead or turned into one of those things. Based on my experience with the military soldiers and scientist, I’d say that the strategy of the nanobots is to change people into creatures when they don’t present any serious threat. If there’s any sort of direct or implied aggression during an encounter with someone who has the ability to follow-through on it, they just kill them. That would fit with the self-defense measures we instituted, although they’ve clearly been radically altered.
“As for the creatures, though, I’m not sure. It’s possible that the integration with a human body and brain neutralizes the inhibition programming somehow, or maybe they just can’t detect DNA patterns because they’re not able to scan for them when they’re inside a person.”
Silence settled over the group again, then Leonard continued his questioning. “So what went wrong? I’m guessing that even though these things were designed to be weapons, they weren’t meant to get out of control like this.”
“Yeah… see, that’s where it gets a little fuzzy.” Rachel had been dismissed on leave before the major software upgrades went in
to place that she suspected caused the situation to spiral out of control. She wasn’t certain about what had happened, but based on what Mr. Doe had spoken to her about, she had her suspicions.
“I wasn’t there when this all went down. They had sent me home for a while, to ‘recover.’ It was nonsense, though. They just wanted me out of the way temporarily so they could do their upgrades without having to listen to the one person who was strongly against them.”
“What kind of upgrades did they do?” Leonard continued to express the most interest in the revelations, and it showed in his expression and tone.
“Like I was saying, I’m not one hundred percent positive. The last I heard, though, they were pretty displeased with the original AI that was on the nanobots, so they decided to upgrade it to something a little more advanced. The details weren’t given to me, but I read the executive summary before they sent me away. It talked about military strategies, advanced compression techniques to store more data and experimental neural network simulations. There was even a section marked ‘Imprinting’ but it didn’t have any details.”