Chapter 5
“The Eightfold Path”
Somewhere in Myanmar,
Along the Irrawaddy River
January 10, 2049
Early evening….
Mary Duncan pulled against the river undercurrent with all her strength and landed in river mud up to her knees, her head popping above the waves, where she heaved in a few great breaths. With all the strength she had left, she hauled a semi-conscious Doc Frost up behind her, dragging him onto the river banks.
The two of them lay panting for many minutes.
Doc seemed to have some head and face lacerations; there was a deep gash under his chin, leading down his neck. It was bleeding profusely and Mary Duncan knew she had to get that stopped right away. She tore off a patch of her trousers and knotted up a wad to try and stanch the flow. She didn’t have any ‘cytes to work on suturing the skin. But she found that if she applied enough pressure to his wound, the blood flow slacked off. Ultimately, she managed to fashion a bandage of sorts with the wad of cloth and some torn strips of her shirt sleeves.
The lifter was nowhere to be seen, presumably at the bottom of the river. Doc Frost sat up and looked around, wincing and holding the side of his face.
“Where are we?” Duncan asked.
Frost didn’t have a wristpad, palmpad or anything or the sort. Red Hammer had long ago confiscated things like that.
“Last fix I took showed us crossing the Irrawaddy River as we came down. Must be somewhere in Myanmar.”
“Uh oh—“ Duncan pointed to the center of the river. “Company—“
A trio of saltwater crocodiles, their black snouts forming v-shaped wakes in the murky water, were heading right for them.
Frost and Duncan both scooted up onto the bank and dove into a nearby forest, stumbling through heavy brush, until they came to a stand of screw pine. Both wheezed and coughed for a few moments. Duncan checked her makeshift bandage on Frost’s face.
“Looks like it’s holding.”
Frost looked around and they began picking their way through the forest, keeping a wary eye on the river for any more things that slithered. Howler monkeys screeched overhead. Freshwater crabs scuttled off into the dirt underfoot. In the distance, the forest thinned out a bit and they saw a field of statues, orderly ranks of golden stone stupas, each sitting serenely on a pedestal. A narrow pagoda in the distance seemed like a good destination; help might be found there.
They stopped at the edge of the forest, wary about crossing the field in the open. Flies and bats darkened the skies overhead.
“I’m not sure they’re all flies, Mary,” Frost muttered. “Stop here. I want to see if I can launch ANAD.”
“ANAD?” Mary sat down on the rotted-out carcass of a teak log. “I didn’t know you were carrying ANAD.”
“Neither did those thugs back at the monastery. It’s the latest version, all the upgrades I gave Johnny Winger.” Frost unscrewed a tooth cap in the back of his mouth and held it up. “My own containment capsule. I just don’t know what this blasted halo will do when I open it—“
He thumbed the cap until his fingers found a slight protuberance. “Here goes—‘ He pressed the protuberance, then set the cap down on the end of the log. Immediately, a faint fog began issuing from the thing.
At that very moment, Frost felt his skull squeeze as if it were in a vise. His whole head seemed on fire.
“Arrrgghhh!” He staggered back, fell heavily to the ground, then began rolling about in the soft mud. Mary Duncan went to him, trying to cradle his head and propping him up against a bank of limbs and leaves. “Ohhh…ahhhh…arrrggghhh…I can’t—“ The pain was blinding, excruciating and he finally passed out.
Ten minutes later, the ANAD master bot had formed a faint likeness of Frost himself and was leering down at both of them from a vine-covered backdrop. Frost regained consciousness, found his head pounding and his heart racing. Duncan tried to make him as comfortable as possible.
“I think the worst is over, Mary,” he forced out, gritting his teeth. “I can get up—“
“Be careful, Irwin. Take it easy.”
He saw the pagoda wasn’t more than a hundred meters across the field of statues. “Let’s try to make it to that little temple. Maybe someone there can help us. ANAD—“ he picked up the tooth cap and stuck it in his pocket. “—configure Transit One…follow us.”
They set out to reach the temple. The small swarm followed them like a ghostly pet.
The pagoda was open at the front and cool inside. Their steps echoed on stone and marble. A small shrine enveloped in incense occupied the center of the single room. A monk in saffron robes knelt at the shrine, mumbling and waving his hands. Suddenly aware of visitors, he abruptly turned and stood up.
He was thin and emaciated, with a wiry white goatee and deep set brown eyes. His face was a canvas of wrinkles, topped by wisps of thin white hair. He clasped his hands into a steeple.
Frost tried explaining their predicament. “Our plane crashed into the river. We want to contact our friends…United Nations Quantum Corps. You understand me…I don’t speak your language, I’m afraid.”
The monk smiled faintly and gave them some coarse bread and a small bowl of rice. Frost knew he could tap into the ANAD master bot for translation on the fly, but he was wary of the halo and decided not to try it. Instead, he and Duncan communicated with hand gestures and brief snatches of Tibetan they had picked up at Paryang. The monk seemed to understand that Frost was troubled by something in his head, in his mind. Frost could not make him understand the concept of a halo. Frustration set in and the monk seemed to sense this. He reached underneath the center shrine and produced a small parchment scroll. Unraveling it, Frost saw the parchment was written in living ink and watched as the words and letters arranged themselves into a passable explanation of something called The Eightfold Path.
The monk insisted that Frost take the scroll. “Better….” he mumbled out, his voice laden with a thick accent. “Follow this—“ he smiled with his broken English. “Make better….”
Then he left the pagoda and was gone.
Frost read the headings as they aligned themselves in English. The scroll had detected his own speech and already produced a rough translation. The words blinked and became bolder as he read out loud….
“Just this noble eightfold path: right view, right aspiration, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. That is the ancient path, the ancient road, traveled by the Rightly Self-awakened Ones of former times. Follow this path. Following it, you will come to direct knowledge of aging and death, direct knowledge of the origination of aging and death, direct knowledge of the cessation of aging and death, direct knowledge of the path leading to the cessation of aging and death. I followed that path. Following it, you come to direct knowledge of birth... becoming... clinging... craving... feeling... contact... the six sense media... name-and-form... consciousness, direct knowledge of the origination of consciousness, direct knowledge of the cessation of consciousness, direct knowledge of the path leading to the cessation of consciousness. Follow this path.”
It was Mary who snapped her fingers at a thought. “Irwin…the monk’s right. This is it. This can help.”
Frost carefully replaced the scroll on top of the shrine. “What are you talking about? I’m no Buddhist.”
“You don’t have to be. But the monk said this would make you better. Follow these and you may be able to get around that blasted halo in your head. These words will keep you calm. Focus on these things and maybe the halo won’t go off when you send commands to ANAD.”
Frost was dubious but it was worth a try. “Pretty farfetched, if you ask me. But what have we got to lose? Let’s go back to the river, see if we can get ANAD to help us make a canoe. Heading downriver is our best hope.”
They picked their way back to the river
banks. The ANAD swarm, resembling a horde of flies, followed behind, sparkling and fluorescing in the bright sunlight.
At the river’s edge, Frost spied a few loose teak logs, jammed together and tangled in ropy vines and brush.
“Mary, I don’t have a wristpad or anyway to control ANAD. This version’s a barebones assembler. And I don’t have a config for a canoe anyway.”
They scouted around the bush, found some vine they could use as lashing and began assembling strips of tree bark as well. Duncan noticed that Frost was wincing; she wondered if the face and neck wound was stinging, or bleeding again under her makeshift bandaging.
“No, it’s in my head…the damned halo. The bots are stoking dopamine again, it comes in waves. Makes you nauseated—“
Duncan said, “Remember that monk. Right view, right speech, right effort…concentrate on what he showed you…focus on that.”
Frost sniffed. “Right.” But it did seem to help.
Through some basic verbal commands, Frost was able to direct ANAD how to help them fashion a crude raft, using tree bark and vine lashings, and the teak logs. “At least, this ANAD should be able to do basic assembly and disassembly.”
Carefully, mindful of the halo pounding inside his skull, Frost was able to direct ANAD to hollow out enough wood in the logs to give them some place to sit and steer. For good measure, the botswarm was able to fashion a set of crude oars as well. When it was all done, the sun had dropped behind the trees, and a wind had fetched up across the river, stirring the muddy brown waters slightly. The glowing bubble of the ANAD swarm began to disperse, collapsing in slow motion until only the bright marble-sized spot of the master glowed in the gathering twilight. Frost placed his tooth cap containment vessel on top of the raft and guided the master bot back into containment. “Can’t lose him, Mary. He could come in handy later on, since we don’t have any tools.”
They climbed awkwardly onto the raft. Mary Duncan looked about the makeshift boat and sniffed. “Irwin, do you know how to steer this thing?”
Frost shrugged. “I can figure it out. Have you a better idea?”
Duncan didn’t. Above them, hordes of flies and mosquitos buzzed and above that, bats and flocks of birds soared and swooped, seeming to follow them out into the main channel of the river. Frost used an oar to pole them into the current and then settled back, using another oar as a sort of rudder.
Duncan shuddered at their aerial visitors. “I don’t like the looks of those birds. Or the flies.”
Frost agreed, steering them through a choppy hydraulic that had erupted. “We’re under surveillance, I’m sure of that. Probably Red Hammer. As long as they stay up there. We’ve got to get downstream, find some village, somewhere we can contact Quantum Corps. Before those buzzards decide to make dinner of us…or worse.”
They cruised for an hour, alone on the river, with darkness settling over them. Sporadic lights and fires could be seen onshore. It was Duncan who spotted the pilings of a small village on stilts as the raft-canoe nosed around a headland thick with mangrove and wiry pandanus vine.
“Irwin, look…look up ahead. Some kind of village.”
Frost steered them in that direction cautiously. Soon, they were spotted and shouts erupted from the windows of several huts. Arms gestured. Lamps were assembled. The splash of boats putting out could be heard.
Frost let them drift right up to the nearest kelong huts, small round structures of wood and thatch, mounted on hardwood stilts sunk into the riverbed.
They were quickly intercepted by three dugout canoes, each bearing two stout fishermen with knives, machetes and spears.
Frost held up a hand, tried explaining in halting Tibetan, who they were and why they had come. The fishermen seemed to understand, somewhat startled at Frost’s command of the dialect. The boats turned about and expertly steered their raft to another house a few dozen meters away, where it was berthed below the main floor and tied to a post.
As Duncan and Frost were being helped out and guided to a rope ladder nearby, a shrill screeching came from above them. Duncan and one of the fishermen looked up. A small flock of birds hovered just above the pitched roof of the house, shrieking at them, flapping wings, cawing loudly.
“Naatsoemyarr!” the fisherman cried out. “Nghaatmyarr!”
A few birds swooped down and it was readily apparent that the attacking creatures weren’t birds at all, but rather automated drones of some type, with a single bright blue flashing light on top, slashing claw-like pincers for talons and a whooshing jetpipe out the rear. The drone-birds came at them with a ferocity unexpected and the fisherman was soon joined by his fellow villagers, swatting at the drones with everything they could find, slashing at them with poles, spears and machetes.
Duncan and Frost were quickly hustled into the house and made to lie down beneath rattan mats inside the main room. Frost found himself underneath the mat, face to face with a sniffling child, a girl, tears streaming down her face.
“Mary…” he mumbled, “I think we’ve brought the Devil himself to these poor folks.”
It didn’t take long for several drone-birds to swoop inside the house. The things hummed as they flitted back and forth, methodically sweeping their recon eyes around the room. A small boy peered out from behind a stool and was immediately flechetted by one bird, the boy’s neck spurting blood as the shards sliced right through the skin. He cried, fell back and went down in the corner in a bloody heap.
The mama went straight for her son, cradling his head even as blood geysered out of his wound, while an older male, perhaps the father, swung an impressive long-pole spear at the bird. He connected and sent the drone cartwheeling against the corner post. But other drone-birds had flown into the house in the meantime and now they were hunting and sniffing and expelling flechettes at anything that moved.
Through the loose weave of the rattan mat, Frost could barely make out something in the corner, next to an oil-fired camp stove. He inched along the bamboo slats of the floor, a moving hump below the mat, until he came to the device. It was a nanobotic containment vessel, an older model matter compiler, shaped like a gourd, but Frost was sure he was seeing right. The vessel probably hosted an angel of some kind. Maybe the family had scraped their savings together and sprung for a way to fab a long-lost uncle, or a beloved grandmother, a botswarm that could be configged to resemble a loved one.
It gave Frost an idea.
From underneath the mat, Frost unscrewed his tooth cap again and launched the embedded ANAD. The flickering mist hovered around his face until he managed to make voice contact with the master bot.
“ANAD, steer right…exit this space. Disassemble that gourd on the stand over there.”
The mist began dispersing, as the bot commanded its replicants on propulsor to maneuver where Frost had directed. If his plan worked, if ANAD could break the gourd’s containment and release the angel inside, it might just be enough to create a nano signature that BioShield could detect. If that didn’t work, there was always ANAD itself.
Mary Duncan herself had hunkered down in a corner of the room, while the fishermen and his wife flailed and swung anything they could find at the drone-birds swooping and darting through the house.
“Nghaatmyarr!” the fisherman cried out, swinging an ax against an oncoming flock. The axe sliced through the formation and scattered wings and heads and props everywhere. And still the birds came.
Now, however, the fisherman’s wife noticed the ANAD swarm hovering around the gourd, thickening, descending on the final resting place of an uncle. She dove at the swarm, flailing and sweeping her hands back and forth, trying to shoo the bots away. But when the first of the swarm stung her face, she stopped and backed off, shrieking at the top of her lungs.
The gourd was engulfed in a pulsating ball of white light as ANAD slammed the atoms with bond disrupters and everything it had. For a moment, the gourd was lost to view. Then the
light ball flared into blinding brilliance as the contained angel erupted, slaved to its own config, now engaging ANAD directly.
For a few minutes, the drone-bird attack slackened as the gourd supernova’ed into incandescence and the swarms collided. Even from beneath the mat, Frost could feel the heat and light of the assault.
Go, ANAD. Do your thing…make a big pulse...so BioShield can see it…
If his plan worked, the nano signature of illegal fabs and swarms going off would trigger BioShield alerts from Mandalay to Singapore.
And, Frost fervently hoped, that might just bring the cavalry to the rescue.
The drones came back as the swarm engagement flickered away into a faint shadow of its former brilliance. Now, Frost decided he and Duncan had to get out. He crawled on hands and knees out from under the mat, spied Mary in the corner, half-hidden behind some furniture and grabbed her outstretched arms.
“Come on! We’ve got to get out of here!”
The two of them slipped down the rope ladder and landed with a thump in a longboat canoe. There were no oars but Frost was able to get a small outboard motor going. He pulled and pulled on the cord and the engine sputtered to life. Using the tiller, he unmoored the banca and they headed out into the river.
The flock of drones dove at them immediately and Frost found the only way they could survive was to play hide and seek among the stilts of the village huts, darting from one to another, and swatting at the drones as they dove and careened among the village. This went on for half an hour.
Frost steered madly for a larger house further downriver, at the end of the village. He rammed the banca into a stilt pole and grabbed Mary Duncan. Together, kicking at the drones as the things nipped their heels, the two of them scrambled up a rope ladder, running right into a furious fisherman armed with spears.
But before he could clamber into the house, Frost’s halo went off again. Inside his brain, inside his ventral tegmentum, a fire had been lit and the halo bots stoked dopamine flow so high Frost felt his head was going to take off.
He fell heavily to the bamboo slats of the floor, Mary Duncan right on top of him, convulsing and screaming at the top of his lungs. Alarmed, the fisherman and his family backed off, spears and poles waving at the ready. Already, another attack of the drone-birds was forming up below the floor slats, ready to leap into the house from below.
For a few moments, Frost wailed. “Arrrrggghhh…Maareeeee….I can’t….”
Then a loud whine was heard above them, a shrill pulsing whine that was audible even over the flap and slap of the drones. The fisherman and his family looked up in fear, while Duncan tried to cradle Frost’s head, to keep him from banging himself to unconsciousness. Even her own head was starting to pound…her own halo was awakening…the bots stirring—
Overhead, a Quantum Corps lifter looked to the villagers of Suyang like a great angry bird about to descend on top of them. The black hull, with its articulating jet rotors, beat down on the river and radiated out concentric waves that lapped against the stilt houses. The houses shook and swayed with the waves and the downwash.
The lifter launched its own swarm of ANAD bots, beating back the drones, tearing many to pieces as their bond disrupters discharged, severing atomic bonds. Drones and pieces of drones fell clattering out of the sky, raining parts all over the stilt village. A small bubble of ANAD bots formed up, making a translucent shimmering veil, that draped itself over the village and fended off the Red Hammer birds to clear a space for the rescue that was now unfolding.
Out of the rear of the great metal bird, a squad of nanotroopers boosted down to the hut, crashing right through the thatch roof. Three of them landed with hard thumps on the bamboo slats, knocking furniture in every direction.
One trooper pulled back the visor of his hypersuit helmet.
It was Johnny Winger.
“Come on, Doc…get him out of there…put the rope on him…Dr. Duncan too!”
With practiced hands and the smooth choreography of a ballet troupe, the nanotroopers wrestled the writhing Doc Frost into an exfiltration sling and cinched it up. At a comm signal, the lifter hauled the thrashing body of the professor skyward, right through the hole in the thatch roof. Duncan went next.
Then, one after another, Winger and his rescue squad boosted back to the lifter and slammed the hatch shut behind them.
Frost was still caught in the vise of the halo attack. Two troopers pinned him to the floor to keep him from hurting himself.
Winger yelled up to the cockpit. “Corporal…get this buggy going! We’re collapsing the bubble!” Then he turned back to Frost. “I may have to do an insert right here…if this friggin’ halo doesn’t shutdown.”
Sheila Reaves was stripping off her own hypersuit helmet. “Skipper, it’d be better to wait until we get back to Singapore…this all pretty crude around here…you could do more harm than good.”
The lifter wheeled about and began accelerating away from Suyang village as the pilot lit off the afterburners. They climbed at a steep angle, punching through a cloud deck and burned a hole in the sky, making best time back to the Quantum Corps East base. The trip would take a good hour.
Winger bent down to Frost, now cringing, whimpering, curled up like a bawling baby, still twitching on the lifter cabin deck. They covered him with blankets as best they could, forced him to drink water from a canteen, which dribbled out both sides of his mouth.
Jeez,” muttered An Nguyen, as he watched Frost’s convulsions. “It’s like a big bang inside the man’s head.”
The nanotroopers didn’t know it, but they would soon be facing a real Big Bang in the coming days, as Red Hammer engaged Quantum Corps in a last-ditch effort to destroy 1st Nano and ANAD.
Finally, Johnny Winger couldn’t stand to see Frost suffer any longer. “Okay, I’m going in. ANAD and I are doing an insert. Let’s get the Doc prepped and ready as we can.”
Reaves and Nguyen looked at each other for a long moment.
No one had ever done an ANAD insert on a living human, while flying in a lifter across the ocean. Not even Johnny Winger himself.
Doc Frost moaned and cringed once again. The troopers of 1st Nano grimly set to work.
END
About the Author
Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He works for a large company that makes products everyone uses…just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He’s been happily married for 25 years. He’s also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3-4 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children. They do, however, have one terribly spoiled Keeshond dog named Kelsey.
To get a peek at Philip Bosshardt’s upcoming work, recent reviews, excerpts and general updates on the writing life, visit his blog The Word Shed at: https://thewdshed.blogspot.com.
Nanotroopers Episode 9: Demonios of Via Verde Page 17