Little Deadly Things

by Harry Steinman

  Marta faced him, leaned forward slightly and enunciated each word as if delivering a verdict and pronouncing a sentence. “I do not trust her when it comes to you. But I trust you and that’s what’s important.” Marta paused for emphasis. “Listen carefully. The moment I think she might do something thoughtless with Dana, or if I think she’s going to compromise him in any way, that will be the end of Eva’s relationship with him.”

  She paused to let her husband absorb her ultimatum.

  “Look,” she continued, softening, “it’s delicate. Eva becomes a different person around Dana. She’s caring, gentle, and considerate. Those are three words that I would have never used to describe her. He brings out the best in her and he’s already very attached to her. But he’s not on this earth for her benefit. The entire earth exists solely for him. If she crosses a line that involves Dana, we will not have Eva in our lives. Is that unequivocally clear?”

  Jim swallowed. “Yes,” was all he said, all he needed to say.

  Marta concluded, “I am Mother and I have spoken.”

  After graduation, the three friends followed separate paths. Marta and Eva continued their education. Eva pursued twin doctorates in computer science and chemistry, completing both in three years. Marta went on to medical school and then focused on botanical research and the art of grant-writing to pay the bills. She travelled to the world’s rainforests, searching for remedies like those she found in El Yunque. Jim divided his time between childcare and his work at Haven Memorial. What started as part of his court-ordered community service had become a career. He was conscientious, effective in his job, arriving early and working late, caring for the shelter’s dogs. The work gave him a sense of purpose and helped him to manage his temper. While his work with dogs was fulfilling, he still mourned for Ringer.

  He would never have another dog in his household.

  Although Jim and Marta lived less than a mile from Eva, the two women did not communicate or visit. Jim maintained his friendship with Eva with Marta’s approval, although she was uneasy when Jim brought Dana to visit with Eva.

  Neither Jim nor Marta realized at the time that they would enable Eva to attain her dream of creating a scientific empire. The day that Eva would pay an unexpected visit to Jim at Haven Memorial was still in the future; a day when the three would be drawn back together as colleagues was still very much in the future.

  PART TWO

  CERBERUS

  “NANOTECHNOLOGY...IS DEFINED AS

  THE UNDERSTANDING AND CONTROL OF MATTER

  AT DIMENSIONS BETWEEN APPROXIMATELY

  I AND 100 NANOMETERS, WHERE UNQUIET

  PHENOMENA ENABLE NOVEL APPLICATIONS.”

  — U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

  542 F 009, October 2008

  PROLOGUE

  ___________________________________________

  RUDOLPH

  VENICE, CALIFORNIA

  NEW YEAR’S DAY, 2042

  Emery Miller’s sixth fatal overdose killed him, an untimely death, and quite surprising.

  He’d ordered SNAP, the most powerful—and expensive—of the recreational concoctions in the NMech pharmaceutical catalog. SNAP—Synaptic Neurotransmitting Acceleration Protocol—would amplify his mental pleasures. It would simulate the ecstasy of a Bach fugue, an algebraic proof, a perfect sonnet and extend the sensation into to a multi-hour reverie of almost unbearable bliss. So what if the drug was fatal? His NMech immunity subscription included an antidote to the concoction. When SNAP’s nanoagents detected death’s event horizon, it would pick apart the drug, reduce it to its organic constituents, simple wastes to be expelled. That is, as long as he paid his subscription fee. Without the pricey safeguard, Miller’s organs would be left with the vitality of pig iron.

  Fifty-nine minutes before blood poured from his eyes and his heart stopped, Miller walked into an NMech pharmacy and greeted the pharmacist with a silent nod. Miller seldom spoke, save perhaps to his cat. The pharmacist said, “Welcome back, Mr. Miller. It’s a pleasure to see you.” His voice carried neither welcome nor pleasure. But Miller was wealthy enough to be accorded at least token courtesy, and as a Rudolph, he warranted special attention.

  Behind the counter, sat a nanoassembler. This desk-sized factory built various compounds using prefabricated molecular pieces—carbon chains, neurotransmitters, ethanol, proteins, lipids, esters. Medicines, textiles, building materials, munitions, even food could be fabricated in an assembler. It had produced Miller’s SNAP in less than an hour and loaded the finished dose into an inhaler for the customer’s use.

  The pharmacist handed Miller his purchase. “Will there be anything else?”

  Miller ignored the man. He waved his datasleeve in payment, tucked the small package into a pocket, and walked out into the balmy Southern California sunset. Even in December, it was shirtsleeve weather.

  Despite the day’s warmth, he shivered in anticipation of his SNAP experience. His respiration and heartbeat would slow to a nearly undetectable level. Blood at the surface of his body would plunge deep into its core to protect the vital organs. He would hover at the balance point between nirvana and death. In return for near-surrender to Thanatos, his reward would be hyper-cognition, an hours-long thunderclap of understanding.

  Miller hurried eight blocks along Ocean Front Walk to his home, palmed the door open and ducked inside. An orange tabby cat curled around his legs mewling with impatient hunger. He hefted the cat and for a few seconds, the two nuzzled. Then the cat squirmed out of Miller’s arms and yowled. It was past dinnertime and appetite prevailed over affection. While the mouser ate, Miller took his own meal, if six ounces of amino acids, fatty acids, and glucose could be called a meal. It appealed to none of his senses save hunger.

  He walked through his modest bungalow to a plain bedroom, furnished only with a smartbed. He programmed it to maintain his skin temperature and ensure a comfortable recovery. He neglected this step once, and upon awakening, every centimeter of his skin burned with the devil’s own pins and needles as warm blood returned to cold flesh.

  Naked, trusting the smartbed to protect his skin, Miller lay down and activated the inhaler. He registered a brief tickle as billions of nanoparticles penetrated his nasal membranes. He could almost feel his brain flood with neurotransmitters. These chemical emissaries relayed messages to his body, barking orders to a fleet of corporeal agents. They slowed the nettlesome business of life support, system by biological system, putting vitality in nearly exclusive service to the mind. Miller was to be accorded a multi-hour experience of satori—Zen clarity without the fuss of zazen meditation.

  At first he experienced the normal effects of SNAP. Seven seconds after inhaling, he felt his sinuses erupt and knew there would be a brilliant crimson trail where bloody mucus blanketed his face. The red stain was the source of the pejorative nickname: Rudolph. Then SNAP stilled his warming responses and he shivered. Even the hair on his body lay flat as the drug destroyed every source of thermal insulation.

  But ah...the high! He was one with the cosmos—transcendent, omniscient. He danced among the stars, sang the music of the spheres and soared along simultaneous paths of quantum particles.

  The coppery taste was Miller’s first warning that something was wrong. While he lay paralyzed in ecstatic thrall, blood began to puddle in his mouth. It rushed away from his core towards the skin’s superficial capillaries, a torrent at escape velocity from the body’s gravity well. It seeped from sightless eyes and deafened ears. It suppurated at a rate that would make hemorrhagic fever look like a bridal blush. Every centimeter of his skin oozed. It would be a race to see if he bled out or suffocated first. Five times before, NMech nanobots kept him alive. Today, he was swept across a biological Rubicon towards death’s cold embrace.

  Still, the body is stubbornly attuned to one lodestone, the irresistible pull of survival. This most powerful of instincts punched its mighty way through the chemical interference, demanding life for an unresponsive body
.

  All for naught.

  Emery Miller often imagined that his final thoughts would be a flashing montage of his short life’s events or that he would behold a mystical White Light proclaiming the Oneness of All. But Emery Miller’s last thought before blood saturated his thousand-thread-count silk sheets and flooded his smartbed’s sensors, before his heart stilled into silence, was to wonder, Did I remember to feed the cat?

  Three thousand miles away, in the sixth-floor management suite of a Boston office building, a chief executive sat at an ebony desk custom-scaled to fit her frame. A long bank of bare windows gave the space a clinical feel that matched the businesswoman’s demeanor. She’d scattered mementos on the opposite wall thinking this is what executives did, but the diplomas, photos, and a framed, jewel-studded gold pin were as out of place in the woman’s barren office as a litter of puppies in an operating room.

  A mat of dirty blond curls clung to her scalp like coiled worms. Her hands trembled, her legs kicked, and her eyelids fluttered uncontrollably. The 33-year-old face betrayed emotion for the first time in over a quarter-century. She’d pushed her body and mind beyond the limits that evolution had designed and her endocrine system rebelled.

  Confused steps replaced her once-certain movement. Only days ago, her muscles had obeyed with a speed and precision beyond normal human capabilities, but now, on the rebound, she was riddled with tics and twitches. As she lost control within, she sought greater control in the world outside her.

  Eva had a plan. The task was a difficult one, to create a master switch that would control every NMech product, every NMech customer. She was a scientist, so she would experiment. She would learn. She’d picked her test subjects carefully, as any good scientist would. Emery Miller was first on her list.

  Miller had no family, no friends, no one to miss or to mourn him, none to question his death—a perfect test case. She peered into a heads-up display and then grunted in approval at her short list. Like Miller, the other three on the list lacked family or close friends. The soldier’s entire world was his army. The scientist’s was her career, and the tea expert’s, his employer.

  An electronic back door gave her control—not to the actual medical, recreational, military, and environmental nanoagents; any tinkering there would immediately be flagged to the systems that monitor product safety. No, Eva would control the accounting for these applications. It was simple: a bookkeeping entry thwarted all of the safeguards built into the company’s products. It simply cancelled his life-support subscription for nonpayment. One stroke of a pseudo-accountant’s pen had transformed Emery Miller from preferred customer to deadbeat, and then from deadbeat to...dead.

  All NMech’s products were rigorously tested to ensure the safety and satisfaction of its subscribers. But bookkeeping entries? Insignificant. They were of no more interest to the ardent sentinels of product safety than an ant would be to Cerberus, the three-headed beast that guards the gates to the underworld.

  Eva Rozen’s face twitched again, this time into a smile. Control was in her grasp. Cerberus was her pet, and programmed to do her bidding.

  13

  ___________________________________________

  AN UNEASY ALLIANCE

  BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

  MAY 19, 2038, 7:00PM

  When Jim Ecco told Marta about Eva’s unexpected visit to the shelter earlier that day, he recounted her dramatic entrance, the receptionist’s flight, and Eva’s willingness to wait for Jim to finish his rounds with the dogs. Marta was skeptical, and at first refused even to listen to Eva’s proposal. When Jim outlined Eva’s plan to fund public health projects that Marta would administer, Marta immediately grasped the relationship between commercial nanomeds and paying for the costs of developing public health applications. But she was unmoved.

  “I don’t even want to hear the details,” she said. “I don’t trust her.”

  “Marta, if we can hold Eva to her word, you can save remedies that might be lost. You’ve said yourself that the cost to find the plants that have medicinal value, to isolate the active compounds, and then to synthesize the drugs means the pharmaceutical corporations are not interested in developing. Many of the remedies you’ve catalogued will be extinct before the drug companies think to fabricate them.”

  “I can’t argue with that. But I haven’t spoken with Eva in years. Why should I suddenly trust her now?”

  “This is not the same Eva Rozen. And if she and you can manufacture with nanoassembly, you’ll save some of the cures that will be lost if the rainforests die out. Maybe they’ll recover, maybe not. But we’ll have the medicines.”

  “And make Eva rich,” said Marta brusquely.

  “That’s the deal. She gets what she wants, and you get what you want.”

  “What I want is for her to stay away from me. From us.”

  “Marta—”

  Marta held up a hand to stop Jim. “Sorry. My answer is no.”

  “No? How can you say no?”

  “I’ve been collecting plants since my first summer in Puerto Rico. There are still millions of hectares of rainforest to explore. I want to find and catalog what I can before the forests are destroyed.”

  “You sound more like a librarian than a scientist. At least people use the information that a librarian files away so neatly.”

  “That’s not fair,” Marta protested, but she knew that it was beyond fair: it was accurate. Worse, it was not what she wanted. She remembered Abuela’s words, “What becomes of adults? Do they follow their hearts or are they filled with discontent? Why not do what’s in your heart?”

  Marta paced, considering the opportunity. Then she spoke. “Eva always says, ‘I have a plan.’ I can’t see doing this unless we have a plan to make sure that Eva keeps her word.”

  Jim said, “You could insist on being equal partners.”

  “That’s an idea,” Marta allowed, “but I don’t know if I can do it myself. I do like her idea of using commercial applications to fund public health, but I don’t think I can do this unless you have a role at NMech, too. And not just some sinecure. I want all three of us to be involved. I can’t square off with her by myself when we disagree. I don’t do well with confrontation.”

  “But what about my work at Haven Memorial?” Jim protested.

  “Querido, I know it’s important to you, more than important. And so is my research into rainforest-based medicines. But you’re right. This is a chance to do something that could change the world.”

  “I don’t want to leave my training work behind. Leave me out of this,” said Jim.

  “And I don’t want to abandon my exploration.” Suddenly, both were breathing hard. Marta pressed on. “You’ve built a terrific staff. That’s the mark of a good leader—your team could carry on without you. But I can’t face Eva alone. If you become part of NMech, then we’re two to one. Or she can have forty-nine percent of the stock and you and I split fifty-one percent so we have a voting majority.”

  “Why would she give me that kind of a role at her company?” he asked.

  “Jim, think about it. You’re great at organizing and leading people. I don’t have much in the way of people skills—”

  “Yes, you do,” Jim interrupted.

  “That’s sweet of you to say. But I’m not a leader. I like to be gracious, but you have a knack for getting people to want to do the hard tasks. I’ll consider working with Eva but I won’t do it without you.”

  Jim sat and subvocalized and invoked a heads-up display. He saw his son tinker with an old dataslate. Dragonfly monitors—insect-sized sensors that combined specks of processing power—produced visual images and sound readings in Dana’s room. “What about Dana? Look at him. Eight years old and he’s taking apart and reassembling his slate like it was a construction toy. Haven Memorial lets me set my hours so I can be with Dana. I want to stay connected with him. He’s special, and I’m not just being a proud papa. He has a gift. What about that?”

  Now Marta
was silent. She paced their small apartment. The walls were drab, without the benefit of brightwalls—paint embedded with light emitting nanoparticles that allowed the walls, ceiling, and floors to provide variable lighting and heat at a command from a datapillar. There was no pillar, for that matter. Even something inefficient and underpowered was beyond the means of a family whose income was based on two soul-satisfying but low-paying jobs that kept a roof over their heads but little more.

  She paused at a window. At least it had nanoglass, thanks to building codes rather than to any generosity on the part of their landlord. She touched the pane and it darkened. Looking out at an alley and a convenience store was dispiriting.

  “There are afterschool programs at NMech,” Marta said.

  “How do you know that?” asked Jim.

  “I follow things,” she allowed.

  Jim took a moment to digest that information. “So, let me get this straight. Eva knows about your exploration of rainforests in places like Brazil and Borneo. You know about kids’ programs at NMech. You two haven’t spoken in years, and yet you each know all about each other’s careers?” Marta nodded and Jim shook his head. “You’re like the boy and the girl in an old movie—fighting like cats and dogs throughout the film and lovey-dovey at the end.”

  “Don’t count on lovey-dovey. I know about her because it’s hard not to notice what she’s doing. It seems like every scientific journal has a paper she wrote. Then there’s the financial press. She spent four years at Harvard telling me that she was going to be the richest woman in the world and she appears to be well on the way. As far as her knowing about me, well, she spies on people.”

  “Is it any good?” asked Jim.

  “Is what any good?”