Laney, for her part, was busy supplying Natty with the movies of what the nanites were up to inside the bodies of the captured nano-infested natives, and or their still-biologically active body parts. The films procured with the aid of nanoscale cameras circulating inside the natives’ systems after one of her injections. She was also busy testing the nanites’ responses to chemical and biological warfare she was subjecting them to on the microscope slides or with injections to the biologically-active body tissues. The film footage, conveying the results of those experiments, too, was supplied to Natty’s headgear to feed his creative processes and alert him to what further modifications to the nanites might be needed.
“Why don’t you take a break?” Leon said, stepping up to Laney, seeing her about to succumb to heatstroke. She couldn’t take in fluids fast enough to keep up with all the sweating.
Natty, overhearing the remark, peeled off the VR headgear. He looked up from his worktable, and saw the shape she was in. Shamed by Leon, he said, “Yeah, honey, take a break. I got this.”
Leon took her by the arm and forcibly walked her away from the lab table and out of the isolation tent. There wasn’t much more air out here, but a little. The occasional breeze that she couldn’t get inside the makeshift transparent isolation room.
The isolation tent wasn’t exactly up to Level 4 biohazard standards. Not Level 1, for that matter. It was mostly an air-conditioned space to work in. So she should have been fine. But the intense concentration and relentless pace had her sweating more than normal. Ironically, it took the blast furnace air and humidity outside it to relax her mind back into the present. Inside the tent she was in more of a timeless space, a vortex, blending past, present, and future together as her mind searched for answers wherever she could find them.
“I can’t take a break,” she said, struggling to get free of his hold. “Not with those bastards right on our tails.”
“Nah, we’re good for a while,” Leon said, letting her go.
“How do you know?”
“I don’t think Truman wants to kill us. At least not yet. He just wants to show your boy what he’s up against. I don’t think he wants him to grow up entirely. Rather, something closer to his boys-with-toys mindset, before he decided to grow a conscience. Hoping he’ll get so caught up in the war games he loses himself in the sheer exhilaration of them.”
“You mean all this…?”
Leon nodded. “Yep. It’s all one big attitude check for your boy. Having to come up against his own tech and find a way to best himself is just Truman’s way of getting him to rejoin the party.”
“So these abominations are Natty’s handiwork?” she said, looking back Natty’s way with a tone just acid enough that it could melt the plastic barrier between them.
“Go easy on him. I don’t think he knew they took his prototypes and worked on them on their own, away from his oversight.”
She stormed back in Natty’s direction. When she wasn’t getting any closer to the tent she looked down at her feet and saw she was marching in place. And it was all because Leon had grabbed her by the arm again. She was just too worked up to notice. “You get free after you down one of these, not before.”
She took the bottle of electrolytes, making the lime-green fluid disappear down her gullet. Then gasped. “Bet if I had his nano inside me, I wouldn’t need this.”
“As I said, go easy on him. If these are the first nano men, they’ll make short work of mortality, aging, and dying. In some places, they’d happily make him a god and revere him for far less.”
“Why are you speaking up for him? I thought you were…”
“What, trying to win your heart away from him? I am. But never kick a man when he’s down. It goes against a soldier’s code.”
She wrenched her arm away from him. Rubbed the Charlie horse out of it. “For the record, you’re making a far better case for humanity over transhumanity.”
Laney stormed off in her husband’s direction.
Leon smiled behind her back, mumbled, “That is the idea.”
***
“He says you’re responsible for these creations.” Laney was literally frothing over at the mouth, as she resumed her work opposite Natty at the lab table. He was currently extracting a biopsy probe from Mr. Freeze, who eyed him with as much vicious intent to get his hands around his throat as ever. The probe was jacketed by a hollow electrified tube that could burrow a hole in the ice and yet allow the melt to instantly reseal itself as it was extracted.
“You really needed to hear that from him? Who else could have done this?” He wiped the sweat from his brow that was raining down on him with the back of his hand so he could lean into the microscope and examine his specimen. “But I can’t shadow box against myself and expect to win. Not in our timeframe. And not without your help. So maybe check the attitude, huh? You can ream my ass out later.”
“Great idea. I’ll pick up the first dildo I find at the sex-toys shop, strap it on and ride you from California to New York. You don’t want to man up, don’t see why I can’t adjust, like everyone else forced to make do.”
After some tense silence, Natty cracked up. She joined him, his laughter contagious by that point.
As Laney reached for another drink, she found Crumley slipping a tall flask of something into her hands. She downed half the container without question and gasped. “It’s divine. Even better than those electrolytes Leon gave me. What is it?”
“One part viper venom, eight parts monkey piss, and one part Crumley sweat.”
She nodded. “That explains it.” She drank some more before setting down the flask. She had no idea if he was joking or not and was well past caring.
He advanced to Natty and gave him a friendly neck squeeze and shake. Natty smiled plastically and rubbed his neck; he looked as if he was checking to see if it was broken. “How you coming with that fluorescing gel, son? Bit curious to find out how it works. I thought bioluminescence faded when the lifeform generating it dies.”
“It’s the admixture,” Natty said holding up what was left in the specimen container, its glow actually overpowering the light cast by the battery-powered lanterns illuminating the tent. “Not sure what the extra ingredient is. But by the rate of the fall-off, I’d say it keeps them shining bright for a good 12 hours.”
“Shouldn’t the bugs be all over them at night?”
“Depends.” Natty rotated the jar in his hands, thinking about it. “In these parts, there are enough things that glow by night to distract the insects. Or it might be another additive in the mix. It’ll take me months, assuming I had the time, to figure out what each ingredient does. Some constituents, as you say, no doubt facilitate their trance state, lending them strength, courage, what have you.”
Crumley grunted. “I’ll leave you to it then. I have some magic potions of my own to procure if I expect to keep these guys in the zone.” He exited the tent fairly curtly, his mind apparently on attending to his part of things.
***
“That felt pretty good, working side by side like that, twenty-four seven,” Natty said, de-gloving in tandem with Laney as they stepped out of the isolation tent, “to unlock the mysteries of the nano men. I think I discovered what was wrong in our relationship.”
Cassandra smiled, trying to remind herself she was in character as Laney, and that wasn’t the same as being Laney. Especially if this was going the way she thought it was going. “Yes, we make a good team. Better perhaps than that other Laney and that other Natty.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, it’s good to be rid of them, isn’t it?” Natty kissed her forehead. Stroked her upper arms teasingly, using his fingertips as paintbrushes. Ran his tongue against her cheeks, lapping up the moisture.
Considering the tropics and the impossibility of not sweating, she wondered why tongue drying one another wasn’t more of a thing. All the same, she tensed.
He picked her up and wrapped her legs around his waist. He was running his hands all over he
r now. And they were headed into the trees, into the darkness, away from the splashes of light defining the camp. And the makeshift experimental station. Her eyes adjusted immediately to the dark; she had infrared sensing ability, he didn’t. She smiled as he was kissing him. He misread the cue as happiness. She was actually smiling thinking just how smooth he’d manage to be if he knew there was a venomous tree snake tracking the heat they were giving off. Or a half dozen lethal creepy crawlies she had to have her nano neutralize as he not so smoothly threw her up against a tree.
“You’re a lot more toned than I remember you being. Maybe we should, you know, do these outings more often, where we frequently run for our lives and ride the concussion waves of exploding arsenal, just like in the movies. Seems to be good for the cardio.”
“You should stop.”
“What? You’re joking, right?”
“It just feels too weird.”
“It’s these new skins we’re wearing. We’re so used to fighting, of course we can’t recognize the two people standing here.”
She grunted. “As effective as your psy-ops games are, if you don’t stop now I’m going to have to hurt you.”
“Hurt me? Really? Don’t tease,” he said, groping her breasts.
She shook her head, wondering what it was going to take to get him to change his mind about wanting to do this. “Hey, will you stop shaking your head?” he groused. “It’s making it hard to get my tongue down your throat.”
Making sure not to overdo it, she head-butted him.
He released her and rubbed his head. “Ow, that hurts!”
She grabbed him under the arm and rolled him. When he pulled his face up, he was staring straight into the eyes of the yellow tree viper. She had to roll him again to safety as his reflexes weren’t nearly good enough to dodge a striking snake.
He scrambled up from the ground on his own. “Yeah, maybe, we can do this later, you know? Tree and ground sex in the dark of night probably weren’t the best ideas. Maybe we can try cot sex, you know, off the ground, though that somehow sounds even more gymnastic.” After taking a few steps back towards their work station he turned and said, “I’m glad Leon showed you a few things in case someone with the wrong intentions jumps you.”
Continuing to rub his still throbbing forehead, he meandered back towards the work tent.
She had to admit, throwing him off wasn’t nearly as satisfying as feeling his heat up against her. His woody, aromatic fragrance, his lithe figure. He would have been the perfect sex toy in her arms; she could handle the choreography for both of them. She decided to stop torturing herself and put her mind on something else. Some things were off limits, even for her.
Ironically, if he hadn’t put the moves on her, she’d have lost herself in her Laney persona entirely. She was so into character, even her nanites were behaving differently, explaining her wilting earlier under the workload and the heat, and needing Crumley to resuscitate her.
***
“Okay, everyone, listen up,” Natty said, his pointer in hand, standing to the side of his blackboard.
“He brought a blackboard?” Leon said, trying to keep his mouth closed enough so as not to be an invitation to the swarming gnats.
“Oh, yeah,” Laney said, preparing to step up to the front of the classroom alongside Natty. “That over there,” she said pointing from the back of the class to the nearest tree, “that’s his battery powered clock whose ticking lulls him to sleep at night.”
Leon eyed the clock that was too wide to fit into a suitcase and groaned. “You know, in all fairness, I teach how to be prepared for any eventuality. I think he may have me beat.”
She smiled at him wearily and wended her way past the “students” seated on tree stumps and large rocks towards the front of the class, picked up her pointer.
“You want the big picture first?” Natty said, addressing the class, “or you want me to jump right into the nitty-gritty?”
“Big picture!” everyone shouted, Leon’s booming basso profundo voice climbing over all the others.
“There does seem to be a witch doctor bringing these guys back from the dead,” Natty explained.
He was drowned out by gasps and groans, and “Shit! I told you so!” remarks coming from the belfry. “Had to be!” “Damn voodoo doctors!” “Did I say we needed one in the group, or didn’t I say we needed one?!”
“Shut up, people!” Leon said, reading Natty with an intense voodoo-worthy stare of his own. “Let the guy finish. The other shoe hasn’t dropped yet.”
“I don’t think our witch doctor is sticking needles in dolls,” Natty continued. “I think he’s using the mindchip in his head…”
“…a damaged version of which we found in each of their heads,” Laney interjected.
“…to control them,” Natty finished saying. “If the chip isn’t damaged, they can bring themselves back from the dead.”
They were once again drowned out in front of the class. “F-me!” “Are you hearing this?” “No freaking way.” “Like he’s telling us anything we didn’t see with our own eyes.” “I prefer the voodoo story.” “Second that.” “Yeah, can we get back to the voodoo stuff? I’ll take my chances against one witch doctor versus… versus what exactly?”
“If you’ll let us finish,” Laney said. “They take their remarkable healing properties from the nanococktails inside their bodies. No two the same.”
“Wait a second,” Leon cut in. “I’ve read about nanites before. They’re supposed to function in hive minds to do their work. So why do they need the chip?”
Natty nodded, mumbling, “Clear why they put this guy in charge.”
“As best as we can tell,” Laney said, “they can’t get the hive minds to work on their own. They each have very specific tasks, hence the cocktail as opposed to just one infusion of one type of nano. And they depend on the mindchip to tell them when one swarm is to commence what kind of work and when it’s to stop.”
“And that’s how you plan to turn the tables on them, right?” Leon said from the back of the class. He was the only one standing.
Natty nodded. “We have a nanococktail we created together, Laney and I, I mean, that we can inject you with. It will allow you to control the nano swarm in your bodies just by thinking about what you want to do. No mindchip needed. My thinking has come a long way since I created these early prototypes, but I couldn’t have advanced the science by ten or so generations in an afternoon without my wife’s help. Without her ability to read the body’s responsiveness to the nanites themselves.”
“This isn’t an awards ceremony, doc,” Leon said. “Just stick to the salient points.”
“Yeah, like, did you say we have to put the nano inside us?” “Yeah, I’m kind of hung up on that point too.” “No frigging way that stuff is going inside me.” “Like I don’t feel eaten alive from the outside by gnats and ants already,” one of them said, swatting away the cloud of gnats from his face. “I’ll be damned if I have them eating me from the inside.” “And did he say this is a first generation prototype?” “Yeah, guys, I’m not really an early adopter. Let the other guy iron out the kinks, I say.”
Laney and Natty exchanged looks, trying to figure out what they were going to say to get control of the “class” again.
Finally Natty shouted, “Hey!” The crowd went quiet. “My imagination will trump your skill sets any day.” He let that sink in for a second. “You’ve seen what my failed prototypes can do. Do you really want to come at them with anything but the next generation on line?”
“Hell no.” “Once was enough for me.” “True that.” “Oh hell, like coming back from the dead isn’t part of our job description.” “That’s war for you. The only way out is deeper in.” “What am I supposed to say to my girlfriend? Oh honey, that’s not steam on the shower curtain, that’s me ogling you?” Nervous laughs. “What do you mean you’re being stalked by the invisible man?” They were all riffing on his joke now. “I did not start t
hat fire just so I could rescue you from a burning building!” “What do you mean I give blowing my top new meaning?” They were cracking each other up.
“That’s enough, guys!” Leon shouted. “Pull yourselves together.”
“You mind? I could use a little more gallows humor before the doc there injects me with this nanococktail shit.” “Ditto that.” “Yeah, you’ll forgive me if I’m not ready to take any of this seriously yet.” “I’ve always been a man of the real world. Not one to go off and lose myself in a fool’s paradise. But this is too real, even for me.”
Leon clenched his muscles to steel himself against the chorus of wailing human parakeets, then rubbed his forehead.
“Guys, even if you take the nanococktail,” Natty said, trying to crawl over the din of them still squirming in their seats, “and even if it doesn’t kill you, we may still have a bigger problem on our hands.”
That got them to quiet down fast.
“The witch doctor,” Leon intuited for himself reading Natty’s expression.
Natty nodded. “I don’t know what he’s using to open a communications link and keep it open to his human voodoo dolls. It’s very likely another one of my inventions. But unless I know which one, I can’t come up with a countermeasure.”
“What if it’s not one of your inventions?” Leon said. “What if this guy is more accomplished than your typical witch doctor? You’ve seen firsthand what his herbal concoctions can do. These guys spend half their time mucking around in the spiritual world. Maybe he’s figured out how to summon spirits to animate his dead or wounded tribesmen.”
Natty groaned. “Not you too.”
Mind of a Child: Sentient Serpents (OMEGA FORCE and ALPHA UNIT Book 1) Page 17