Yocto

by Timothy Jon Reynolds

  Their defector, Sokoloff, told them that once China became the economic giant they were today, smuggling things in under the guise of manufacturing became quite easy for the Russians. Walter hoped China really came to their senses quickly, as the alternative was global warfare.

  CIA Director Cummings broke the pensive moment Walter was allowing the room. One of Walter Kessel’s idiosyncrasies was he needed time to contemplate after a heavy input of information. He found that if he gave himself ten minutes after such events, then he was able to formulate action plans better. So everyone in the room was used to this pattern, and knew better than to interrupt, unless it was vital. “China is openly accusing India of the attack, they are blaming it all on the Akula-class sub.”

  Walter looked dismayed, “How can that be, Emil? The majority of their ships were sunk after the Akula was sunk.”

  “They are accusing India of having a second sub. Both countries are on their highest alert levels.”

  President Kessel addressed Director Cummings, “Wasn’t that one of the possible scenarios you had mapped?”

  Director Cummings answered, “It was indeed. If no satellites were tracking our sub, then it was going to be mighty hard to garner answers of responsibility from the bottom of the ocean.”

  Gary Salisbury added, “A crew member from a Greek container ship just posted a video of two missiles going up and doing a sling shot back to where they started, then lots of smoke on the horizon. Leaks are happening and people are starting to piece together that there was a military conflict out in the South China Sea.”

  Walter could feel it now, as this thing that had enveloped the world now had momentum. He felt like he was watching a boulder roll down a snow-covered peak. As the boulder headed down, it picked up snow and grew larger. He figuratively saw that the boulder was now a third of the way down, and it was getting bigger and it was getting faster. Walter Kessel, President of the United States of America, had a feeling inside that this was something the people who elected him would not like—and that something was fear . . .

  * * *

  Neither Christy nor Jack had reached for the remote. The day had been so perfect that neither of them wanted to ruin it with reality. Had they turned on the TV, neither of them would have slept at all that night. The news was filled with speculation that a war had already started in the South China Sea between India and China. But it was more than that, Pakistan also started protesting India’s refusal to return all of the Pakistani citizens, and India was claiming the same.

  The news Christy and Jack missed was that India was calling for immediate help from the United Nations. India was claiming that China and Pakistan had formed a Trans-Himalayan Pact to remove India from the equation and that China had most likely sunken their Akula-class submarine that was on patrol in the South China Sea. India was claiming that its nuclear-powered submarine was in international waters and was abiding by the maritime law. India was claiming that they had credible reports that this pact existed, and seeing that most of their nuclear arsenal was designed to defend against Pakistan, not China, they needed help, especially after the loss of communication with their only nuclear-powered submarine.

  Every country on Earth was on high alert, as Jack watched Christy snoring her soft snores, no doubt dreaming about their most amazing day. He knew there was no way he was sleeping tonight, not after his epiphany earlier. He had done this twice before, so it wouldn’t be any grand shock to her that he was taking off in the middle of the night—well, near midnight anyway. Christy knew her man, and once he got a bug up his ass, there was no stopping him; and Jack had a bug up his ass.

  As he was driving the Jeep to work, the fresh air felt great for the quick commute. The warm Central Valley air was just as pleasant as could be. Jack would surely be watching the news again tomorrow, as Nathan Pierce would certainly be mentioning his name associated with finding the Sierra ground-burrowing bees.

  Once he was at work, Jack got through security and went right to the lab. He decided to start all the processes over again, one at a time. The first thing he’d decided to do was to take a cross selection of the various muscle samples and run an isoelectric thin-layer test for species determination.

  But to do that, he would have to take the raw tissue samples, macerate them inside their own plastic bags and leave them overnight. Then in the morning he would be able to examine and compare the isoelectric focused protein patterns against the known samples they already had. Maybe there had been a change? Jack knew he was reaching, but reaching seemed to be all he had left nowadays.

  Later in his lab, tasks complete, Jack was getting ready to head home. He knew it would be days before he had any answers to the lab work they would do tomorrow, but he still wanted to get an early start, which is why he set everything up tonight. He also realized it had been a while since he had heard a peep from DARPA or his old buddy Curt Anderson, so he would fit that in. Jack was grabbing his wallet, phone, and keys when he had one final thought.

  * * *

  It had seemed like days since the call ended. The last forty minutes were formulating contingency plans, but really, the President had painted them into a corner that would force them to use their nuclear arsenal as more than a defensive weapon. None of the contingency plans had anything but aggression in them, as they all knew they had come too far. They were around the bend, and when that happened, one ran the endgame just like China tried.

  Then the phone of destiny rang.

  Walter and Sid both knew that it was the old wheel of fate, round and round she goes, and Russia had no doubt weighed all her options. Now it was time to find out what that fate was as Walter Kessel answered the Hotline, “This is Walter Kessel speaking.”

  The voice on the other end was now familiar, “Hello, Walter, we hope you are well. We also noticed you did not run out and correct the Chinese and their assumption that India was culpable for their losses.”

  Walter traded one barb for another, “And we noticed that you didn’t run out and notify your neighbors it was us who sank their vessels.”

  That ended the trading of barbs, as this was a mutual understanding and the Russian President solidified that with his next sentence, “We have discussed the matter at hand to a unanimous decision and we have agreed that we will use our assets. But, we will need three targets struck by your forces that we cannot reach and you can.”

  President Kessel did not need to ask how they knew that. “Very well, please communicate that information to us. Our technical people are going to send you a link to click and then we will be able to send each other data files.

  After a moment of IT people doing their thing, President Kessel was able to see the targets they were to hit: Kunming, Nanning, and the port city of Dongguan.

  Of course, after sinking most of the ships that could do harm to them, it was decided to send the USS Jimmy Carter back into action for one last encounter with the Chinese, but this time she would have some company.

  There were certain acts in the history of mankind that stood out as atrocities beyond all others, atrocities that could not be compared to any other act before or after them, and they were about to create the biggest one ever.

  The United States and Russia entered into such a pact, an accord that was going to erase half a billion people. Once the war plans were laid out, it was understood just how many targets they had to hit to ensure no retaliation. President Yeshevsky pointed out that two of China’s nuclear delivery vessels now lay at the bottom of the China Sea, thanks to America’s Seawolf. That helped Russia’s chances of not being retaliated against. It also helped that this was a sneak attack and China would strike at the foes that were aggressing it currently. As far as Grigory was concerned, India and Pakistan wanted to be nuclear powers, and now they could enjoy the fruits of that moniker.

  There were many reasons Russia chose this path, as there were many justifications Grigory had for executing the three generals who attempted their war room coup—shot dead by
firing squad. Times had changed, yet some things remained the same.

  An accord was struck between the two old foes, the ancient country of China was now targeted to be sent back to the stone ages, if the designs went as planned, of course, there is always that, thought Walter.

  Their military heads would plan the coordinated attack, but Walter wished before they did, he had a chance to coerce those Chinese bastards into telling them what it was they unleashed, and how it had mutated and jumped from species to species so seamlessly?

  * * *

  Jack took a cow’s heart out of cold storage. Not any cow, but one of the Harper Ranch cows that he’d watched die right in front of his own eyes. They still had a hundred hearts left, so he was making the call to sacrifice one in the name of science.

  He was present when David did the autopsies and he knew that David put tissues samples under the acoustical microscope, but he had not solved the problem with the electronic one to date. In fact, that was on the immediate to do list when he returned. Jack planned on eviscerating this heart and re-inspecting everything under both microscopes, regardless if they had already done it.

  Of the many tests they did, the only ones that led to an immediate result were microscopic in nature, and luckily David had acquired two new microscopes based on the obscure necessities they had, but needed nonetheless. Jack wasn’t the only person who hated waiting for results. When he was at Synanto, Nathan Pierce showed him how to look for tracheal mites in bees using a 50x microscope. This method was speedier than the other six methods known, including the sliced bee thoracic discs he was impatiently waiting to come out of the warmed potassium hydroxide in his lab.

  One of their new toys was a SAM (scanning acoustical microscope) and the other was an electron microscope that was able to view at two million times magnification. Unfortunately, the latter was useless for what he was doing as it had proven to not pick up on all biological material. It was something they were working on, and David had figured that a small coating of metal flecks could be the answer. Jack had just realized that subconsciously, part of his previous theory on what was killing the animals had come from David Ho. He sure missed his mentor.

  He cut a slice of the heart and placed it in the fluid filled tank directly over the tissue sample, then the ultrasound transducer did its job. After the machine was done analyzing the specimen, a composite would be provided so Jack could see the structure and physical properties of the heart tissue. While it was working on his sample, Jack got hungry, so he headed to the break room to grab some vending snacks. His office still had vending snacks, but vending machines were some of the first to disappear. Drink machines, food machines, it did not matter, they were all but gone except in institutions that could secure them.

  Jack had forgotten his rule about the break room, as all of the bad news he had received as of late seemed to always come from the news in there; but his head was in the clouds and he just forgot. So at 0212, Oct 2, 2015, Jack walked into the break room to find the TV on, as usual. This time it was not the typical story of some regional problem unfolding; this time the story was covering the Chinese/Indian/Pakistan nuclear showdown.

  All three countries had cut diplomatic ties, and all three countries seemed poised for war. Suddenly Jack was not hungry, but he bought a pack of peanuts for three dollars and a Coke and headed back to the lab. He didn’t want to hear anymore news, he was now going home.

  He knew that the experiments he was conducting currently were the equivalent of one trying to scramble up a steep embankment of sandstone. One might feel at some point that one was gaining traction, but inevitably, the ground below would crumble and one would slide to the bottom again. But if himself and others like him stopped trying, then who would be there to catch humankind when it fell?

  He entered the lab numb and almost blew off going over the analytical data he had just tabulated, but true to his nature, he took a look at the 3D composite and he was elated that he had. Scattered throughout the tissue of the cow’s heart were tiny specks, and seemingly there were thousands of them. What could they be?

  Then he had an idea. David had a store of the metal-flecked paint he’d created. If Jack could shave off one of these microscopic dots, then maybe he could get it to light up and could see what this object looked like magnified a couple of million times.

  It took a few minutes, but Jack was able to shave off the slice he wanted and set it up on a slide. He decided to try it without the flecked paint first. He approached the console and turned the three-part monster of a machine on. First he ran the materials test and waited for pressure equalization. Once that was achieved, he was able to open the cover plate on the specimen chamber and place his slide on the specimen stage. The disc-shaped metal stand could rotate in any direction, and could be positioned left or right, up or down.

  Once placed into the specimen chamber, the process started. First the chamber was pressurized and then the thermionic cathode sent its concentrated negative beam of energy into the positive anode, finally sending the beam to the electromagnetic lens where it could be concentrated. From there the magic happened, and Jack turned on the monitor so he could see his specimen.

  On its first magnification view, Jack could see the dots were not dots at all, they were nearly starfish in shape. He clicked the magnification and was shocked to see that not only was he viewing these objects without adding any metal to their biology, but the one he was viewing was moving, which was a real feat seeing it had been frozen for the last four weeks. It also was not liking what was happening to it, as it was acting very erratically until it came outside of the flesh and stopped moving all together, as had all the others. Apparently this parasite could take being frozen, but not unfrozen. Jack hit the magnification again . . . and again . . . and again . . .

  He was looking at the result and he realized that the parasites did not perish from heat, he was quite sure they would have survived that; but electricity was another subject all together. Then Jack’s blood ran cold as he found himself looking at a picture of a tiny robot. Its two front legs were knifelike, but the rear legs were different. And he then realized what they were designed for: coupling, like a barrel of monkeys, only much more sophisticated than simple hooks.

  This impossibility was staring at him in the face, and then many things hit him at once. First, his country was at war, as this was an attack for sure. But then the big question hit him, with whom? The how had just put itself together quite perfectly with the revelation of the couplers. Somehow enough of these things couple themselves inside the heart until it stopped, but then the synchronicity of the whole thing hit Jack. That was one hell of a coordinating task, and it was mind boggling that anyone on Earth had the ability to pull it off.

  He had thought his blood ran cold earlier, but he didn’t know what that term really was until he’d realized who had the wherewithal to do this, and then Jack went white as a ghost and truly understood the term of “blood ran cold” now. Why hadn’t anyone thought of this before?

  Jack knew why. In every alien movie he’d ever seen, the aliens had come down in giant space ships and staunchly slapped mankind around until they rallied and thwarted the invasion. But what if the invasion was so small that no one could see it? Then one would start blaming neighbors, false realities would start to take hold, and then madness would take over. It was a brilliant plan—just make a few things happen and let man kill himself, then come down and take over a hapless planet.

  Jack was questioning his own sanity about this, but looking at the screen convinced him. Then he remembered it—something he should have never forgotten—and of all things, it was a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode that he’d recently watched that should have given him the clue. In that episode, the spawning aliens, “the Borg,” were advancing across the universe, absorbing all they came into contact with. The crew needed a solution, so Data, the android Lieutenant Commander on the ship, suggested they invade the Borg with nanotechnology.

 
Jack was the king of catching mistakes in sci-fi shows, yet somehow he missed this, and it was only weeks ago. If he’d had his head out of his ass that day, then he would have realized that Moore’s Law made Data’s statement impossible, as computers had doubled the amount of transistors per square inch every year since the integrated circuit was invented. Jack now saw the flaw in the writing of that show—as we have nanotechnology now.

  Jack looked up the terms for reduction on the molar scale. He had remembered these from of all things, his Greek studies, and sure enough there was the molar scale, and yocto (yoctomolar) was the smallest.

  The way Jack saw it, this was an invasion army, and so far, the only way to kill it was by a high amount of electricity. Then Jack realized that that wasn’t true either, maybe by encapsulating them in the microscope chamber he cut off their ability to pick up wavelengths from their base, thus they just went into pause mode.

  This meant they were now dormant and not killed by the electrical disturbance at all. This also probably meant they had a power source other than solar as well. It seemed so unfathomable that they were able to have a programmable chip inside, a chip that sent them to the right DNA host. Jack further pondered, so that was what some of the sub-species die-offs were about. “Jesus,” Jack exploded out loud, “We’re being invaded.”

  He burst out of his chair heading for the phone to sound the alarm. He had to stop a nuclear war from breaking out over something orchestrated by aliens—and then Jack realized that he’d better be very cautious how he presented his findings or no one would take him seriously and his career would be ruined.

  Jack had made it halfway across the room when his heart started to feel racy. He had been up a long time and was very stressed out. He tried to control his breathing as his heart rate was now really racing and he’d hyperventilated himself during his contemplation. He stopped short of the phone to catch his breath; he really could not breath properly.