by Kurt Johnson
“Funny,” I muttered, “I mean, you know, do you see anything strange?”
It’s melted.
“Seriously!”
Chillax.
“No one says ‘chillax’,” I mumbled to myself. I brushed purple bangs from my face, never taking my eyes off the goo-puddle as we slowed to a stop.
Dad powered down the sled, walked to the storage compartment, and pulled out the repair kit. He glanced at me curiously as he paced to the rear. The storage area contained a control headband, a vat of replacement nano, and four head-sized cubes of blue feeder alloy. The idea was that the replacement nano would consume the corrupted nannites and then multiply thanks to the feeder cubes. We would be able to regrow the irrigation controller by guiding the replacement nano via the control headband.
I started down the ladder and jumped at the halfway point, tucking into a roll and coming to my feet a short distance from my dad.
Ray, something’s not right here. AI paused. I mean, beyond the melted controller. Which is freaky. AI was getting hot. He didn’t need to get hot; I’d heard him, after all.
”Something” isn’t enough to act on, I thought back. He muttered something about “teens” and “bossy” that I didn’t quite catch.
Dad had moved to the edge of the puddle, his boots only centimeters away from the liquid, and stared intently at its gooey, percolating surface. Usually, when people stared like that, they were in conversation with their attendant. Or, uh, thinking.
AI was right. Something was off. Dad didn’t think like that unless he really had to.
Carefully, so as not to touch the bubbling goo with his toes or gloved hands, Dad placed the alloy blocks in the center of the puddle. He tossed me the headband. I caught it and in a single motion placed the thin, silver strip on my head like a crown. Virtual screens flickered to life. Instructions, definitions, readouts were all superimposed on my vision, and control was a thought command away.
The interface also linked my mind to the replacement nano and its energy. Wait for it…ahh! My awareness expanded, and I was stronger, faster. Mom and Dad said the feeling of heightened awareness was common. The standard Galactic links only gave the user specific control over the nannites. They said the feeling of increased energy was just a kid’s imagination. I didn’t think so. I could imagine quite a bit, but nothing gave me a thrill like this. What was not up for debate was that my ability to control nanotech was simply beyond that of Galactics, including Mom, Dad, and Cri. If there’d been other Humans around, maybe we could have seen if this was a uniquely Human thing, or if I was just a unique Human.
But if I couldn’t fix this, no one else could. It was the reason I was up at this hour and Cri was still in bed. And if I couldn’t fix this, we’d have to report this to the government. The authorities took malfunctioning nano seriously. An invasion of technicians and their equipment would be here within an hour if it turned out we needed to report this.
Dad peered at me. “Are you well?”
“Good.” I shook out my arms like an athlete and glanced over my control displays. Are you kidding? I felt GREAT.
“OK. When you are ready, I shall proceed with the new nanoinfusion. Tell me when you have engaged the repair protocols.” Keeping one arm free, he picked up the vat of fresh nano with three arms and held it ready to pour above the alloy blocks.
I reached out with my mind, touching the nano and creating the control link. I could feel the tingling, surging little ’bots in the goo. They oriented on me, waiting for my thought commands. Which was strange.
There should be no “orienting.” They shouldn’t even be paying attention to me. There shouldn’t even be a “they.”
As a frown pinched my face, my sight revealed red fingers of color stretching into the pool of blue goo. The “infection.”
Stop! AI’s voice sounded in my head, for me only. I felt his temperature increasing in alarm. There’s unknown nano here.
“Dad!” I pulled my mind back and canceled the link’s protocol. And yet I still felt the nanos’ attention on me. I shook my head, trying to shake the feeling. You don’t mess around with this stuff. “AI guesses there’s some…” I started to say to Dad, worry cracking my voice.
I am not guessing.
“Eh?” I frowned more deeply.
There IS an unknown nano strain in this mix. I’m not guessing. HURRY. Dad set down the vat and stood, feet apart, with his lower arms on his thick belt and his upper arms folded across his chest. He regarded me curiously.
“Calm, Ray, you’re talking to me out loud again,” AI whispered.
Dad raised an eyebrow and rolled two hands in the universal motion that indicated, “continue….”
“Uh…I. Yeah. AI has detected an unknown nanostrain. And then gave me major attitude. And then….”
“Raystar,” he said, pointing at the goo with his two closest hands and with a third at Banefire—which was nearly directly overhead. “Would it be nice to get home early?” he asked.
I looked at the controller, then back at him, with wide eyes.
He smiled and sighed, crossing the distance between us. Bending to one knee, he gave me a hug, simultaneously ruffling my hair with his other two hands. “My twig, invest your energy in the battles that mean something. Synthetics do what synthetics do. We can investigate yours when we return home. It is older than most, and perhaps it has been corrupted.” He frowned disapproval at my pendant and then turned his gaze to me. His features were like an ancient Human statue, perfect in their symmetry, except with large, golden eyes.
Corrupted, my virtual butt! Ain’t nobody investigating me when we get back home, or anywhere! AI hissed in my brain.
I winced at how hot he’d become, and then turned to Dad. “AI found a separate strain of nano in the mix and advised we not proceed with the rebuilding.”
Thanks for the credit, AI muttered.
Dad thought about my comment a moment, then nodded. Why bother with words when you can nod? No matter that AD9 wasn’t here—with a massive arm, Dad hoisted the hundred-kilo vat of replacement nano to his shoulder, turned, and thumped back to the sled. A moment later, he returned with a containment unit and three shovel-like scoops, each held lightly in a separate hand. The containment unit was built of nanoresistant alloy and featured a multifrequency energy shield as an extra measure to keep the little ’bots in. The scoops were both to shovel and to prevent leakage from the ground to the containment unit. Two scoops for him, one for me. We looked at the puddle. And froze.
The four alloy feeder cubes were gone. They had been eaten. That wasn’t normal at all.
I met my dad’s gaze. My eyes must have been huge. Feeder-cube safety protocols should have been active, and no nano should have been able to consume material until I granted permission via the control band. Dad frowned, lifted his hands toward my pendant, and dipped his head toward me in question.
Are we safe to remove the nano? I thought to AI.
Yes. Hurry-the-great-gravity-well up! I’m not screaming “hurry” for you and your dad to make googly-eyes at each other. THIS NEEDS TO BE CONTAINED!
“Yes. And he says we should hurry,” I said, wincing as AI shouted directly into my brain. Dad paused and eyed me, suspicious about my internal conversation. Then he started shoveling, two hands on each of his scoops.
AI, why should we hurry? I thought silently, pushing my tool into the dirt.
Ray. Stop with the questions! Just do!
“Just do?” I huffed. Dad looked at me from his shoveling. I shook my head. The day could only get unweirder from here. AI wasn’t joking, though. He was molten red.
5
“URRGGNNN!” Dad’s four arms surged with a million veins and a stampede of muscles. With two of his arms, he steadied the top of the me-sized container, and with the other two, he grabbed it from below. In a move like he was pulling a tree from the ground, he pivoted and lifted the container above his head. Filled with dirt, it was heavy. Dad staggered to the sled
-wall. There, he hung the containment unit in its cradle with great care, like it was an egg.
“One thing more remains,” he panted, stomping around to the front of the sled.
We’d filled the container with the unusual nanogoo and a good deal of the surrounding dirt. A great, filthy hole in the ground remained. The moist, black soil was greying in Banefire’s late-morning heat. I was sweaty, covered in soil, and ever so grateful for the rising wind sprinting over our expanse of ’natch. With our irrigation controller gone, Banefire’s intensity was drying out this section of field.
I smelled dirt, the ’natch, and something vaguely metallic. With my last bit of strength, I climbed up and over into the carrying bed and collapsed. My legs flopped in different directions. The leaves were cool against my neck and exposed skin. Stems pressed against me through my clothes, and my arms ached with exertion.
The thought of our other hundred or so irrigation controllers being infected by the mysterious goo was nova bad. The thought of what it would do to my weekends was terrifying. If only one more thing remained, then I was all about taking care of it. Besides, clouds were massing in the late-morning sky, and I could feel the storm’s energy coiling like a spring. And something else. My insides were flopping; anxiety was making me hot. Maybe I was just tired from digging. Sure, that was it. More like, everything was feeling off and stranger with each passing second.
We had been shoveling longer than expected. I was betting Dad didn’t want to face Mom any more than I did, especially since we’d forgotten sunscreen. I was pretty much enthusiastically for finishing quickly and getting home.
The sled flowed into motion as Dad brought it around and then stopped so it was perpendicular to the hole we’d dug. Smoldering autocannons whirred, and heat trails followed their glowing barrels in an arc as the four on that side of the sled spun precisely toward their target. WHAT THE NOVA!? I buried myself in the ’natch, but not before a pulse of light streamed from the front and rear sled-cannons to our just-dug pit. A series of drum rolls and whumps followed, succeeded by waves of heat.
When the sounds of the barrage were replaced by the rising breeze, I peeked over the container wall. This was the “one thing?”
The hole was shiny, and the molten dirt was cooling into glass. Ozone, burnt ’natch, and something else chemical infused each breath. Dad stood on one side, upper arms crossed, his lower two hands on his hips. His black hair streamed in the wind, and his eyes glowed as he hunted the newly formed hole’s perimeter for, apparently, any other dirt that needed ANNIHILATION.
“Sathra, it is as we thought,” he said, monotone, into his link. “The controller was infected with an unknown strain. I have sterilized the area….”
Mom said something.
“Of course we did not go near the Ruins,” he said, not raising his voice, but his annoyance unmistakable. “Her synth identified the infection,” he continued before nodding at Mom’s reply. Severing the link, he stomped one more lap around the glassed pit, taking his frustration out on the dirt under each boot-fall.
I frowned, turning my gaze to the Ruins in contemplation. What was as they had thought?
We were going to have an in-depth, kid-to-parents conversation.
“Raystar,” AI chimed, pulsing alternating yellow-orange warnings.
The view beyond my dad, over the fields, assembling above the Mesas, was captivating. A black-grey thunderhead mushroomed and billowed above them in slow-motion. The meteor-crater smoke was no longer visible. Instead, lightning crackled in between the ancient Human structures. I blinked up at the clouds’ rising blackness.
“Raystar. You’re bleeding,” AI said, louder.
Lightning played along the Ruins; it was mesmerizing. You’re bleeding? His words crept into my awareness and I rubbed a tickle of sweat from my chin. My hand came away grimy and red. My nose was runny, like I had a cold. I sniffed the runniness back in, and when I wiped my nose with my sleeve, the fabric came away streaked with crimson. Blood, in fact, was everywhere; my hands and arms were slick with it, and my shirt was soaked.
In a rush of patting, I felt my body for wounds.
And then the blood turned into mist, shrouding my body in red haze. Within the mist, darker tendrils of…my blood…snaked around me lazily, as if caught in some unseen air current. My nose filled with the smell of ozone and burnt metal. Sound faded, so only my heartbeat thundered in my ears. Ripples of energy pulsed from my navel to my fingers, down to my toes, and tingled up my spine. I shivered. Fingers of brown radiated outward from me and the surrounding ’natch—in fact, the entire load of ’natch I was standing on flashed and turned to ash. The ’natch-turned-soot, no longer able to support my weight, dumped me to the bed of our carrier. I managed the five-meter drop unhurt, landing on my feet and hands. I winced as sounds came back in a roar.
My feelings were a storm of confusion. Bewilderment and panic threatened to take over my mind. If I’d learned anything during my parents’ training, it was that you can always be afraid, BUT you can’t let fear stop you from taking action. I had to move. The walls of the container were five meters up. If I could get my fingers on the rim, I was confident I could pull myself over. Incredibly, I knew I could jump, at least to the edge.
Dad’s gaze snapped on me as my jump launched me out of the sled. I landed in a stumble on the top of the cockpit. My blood-mist stayed centered around me despite my jump.
What happened next was in disorienting, high-definition clarity. The millions of pinhead-sized droplets buzzed and quivered. Then, like fireworks, they blossomed into an undulating screen of sparkles. I was surrounded by billions of sparkles.
In the distance, lightning ripped from the Mesa Ruins toward the darkening sky. Thunder pounded the air after each bolt connected with the growing black clouds. My vision turned silvery. It always did this before the headaches. I stared at my glowing hands, dimly recalling AI’s warning from this morning.
But instead of a crippling headache, I felt AMAZING! The silvery view that normally heralded a headache’s arrival formed controls and symbols overlaying my vision. I didn’t understand the language, but it reminded me of an incredibly complicated control headband. Did I mention I felt amazing?
Dad’s eyes grew wide and blazed gold light as he took me in. A seven-meter jump launched him from the smoldering pit to the sled. He spread his arms into a wide “X.” His jacket flapped and his black hair swirled around his head, revealing only his glowing eyes. Three hundred kilograms THUNKED to my right.
“Rayst…” he reached out tentatively. My sparks greeted his outstretched hand and swirled up his arm. Our eyes met in panic, and as one, we watched as bits of his jacket eroded like dry sand in the wind.
Metal squealed and the containment unit’s klaxon blared, signaling a breach. Dad and I jerked toward the alarm’s scream. Impossible. Something had escaped the container from the inside out. Those containers were tough—shielded, reinforced Galactic-alloy tombs for whatever was placed inside. Apparently not.
A silver claw, complete with talons the size of Dad’s hands, curled over the edge of the container wall. Metal nails scraped against the galactic alloy. A blink later, a second claw slammed down on the wall’s rim, gonging and vibrating the entire sled.
What heaved itself up and onto the lev-sled’s container wall was…ME.
“F…” Whatever AI was going to say was drowned by the scream of twisting metal as the THING bent the sled’s walls as it ascended.
IT-ME (as I named IT) was the color of the blue nano feeder cubes. It balanced impossibly on the edge of the container’s wall, like it was glued there. Spiky hair crowned a duplicate of my face. Silver eyes, with pupils too bright to look at directly, shifted to take in my dad and then flicked to me. Oversized, talon-tipped hands spread on either side of it as it crouched and fixed me with a stare.
I had seen those eyes before. Last night.
“RRRRRaaaaaaaayyyyyssttrrrrrrr,” IT-ME croaked. My shimmering halo coalesced
in front of me, rippling as an unseen force crashed into it. Dad staggered back a step. This morning had edged beyond extreme.
IT-ME raised and swung its clawed arms toward me. Sputtering lightning formed between its outstretched talons.
The lightning coalesced into a crackling ball and streaked toward my face, leaving a comet’s trail of sparks in the air.
“We’re going to dieeeeee!” AI screamed, flaring into a yellow, fist-sized, cowardly star.
Power coursed through me, and my corona intercepted the streaming lightning. Sound and color flower-petaled the walls of the lev-sled outward, scattering the surrounding ’natch to the sky like a green, nutritious tornado. Dad was thrown airborne and thumped on his back some ten meters away. Barely an instant later, two hundred kilograms of giant, angry Glean flipped to its feet. From the folds of his farmer’s jacket, Dad produced FOUR enormous plasma pistols. He crouched low and spread his arms in an X.
Orange bolts thundered from each pistol’s cavernous maw, impacting IT-ME dead-center. Instead of a gratifying explosion or much-wished-for obliteration, the creature simply froze, paralyzed, and fell like a tree into the container bed. The bed gonged with IT-ME’s impact. My nose filled with ozone, incinerated ’natch, and slagged lev-sled.
Even though IT-ME was on the other side of the sled, I was close enough to the plasma wash that I should have been singed. But my corona had simply grown brighter and energy surged through me, pinpricks against my skin. I felt no heat. I felt….
HUNGER.
The thing staggered to its feet and turned its head to me. The swirling sparks around me intensified, concentrating into balls of light around my fists. Unbidden, my hands unclenched and raised in the direction of the creature. IT-ME’s silvery eyes grew wide as it took in the glowing orbs of lightning centered in each of my palms. Spiderwebs of light flashed from my hands toward it, becoming brighter and thicker as the net of silken light made contact and stuck. My control overlay revealed that IT-ME’s body was a lattice of red criss-crossed lines. I didn’t understand the symbols, but I knew. I knew that if I pushed my energy toward those lines, I would destroy its shield. I was hungry, eager, greedy.