by Mark Alpert
Most of my original swarm is now under someone else’s control. I have no idea who’s occupying the circuits of those nanobots—the black sphere of nothingness? The ghost of Sigma? Some kind of physics-defying space alien? I don’t know. But whoever or whatever it is, it doesn’t like me. The alien swarm is trying to run me down.
Please respond, Adam! According to my tracking sensor, your swarm is on the move. What are you doing?
Even if I could send Dad a response, I don’t know what I’d say. I’m racing ahead without a plan or a strategy, just trying to stay alive. My nanobots pour into the chambers on the right side of Brittany’s heart, plunging from the atrium to the ventricle. But the pulmonary valve on the far side of the ventricle is closed, and as my machines collect in front of the valve, waiting for it to open, the alien swarm rushes into the chamber behind me.
It’s hundreds of times larger than my own swarm. I point my microcameras at its machines and see they’ve been transformed. They’re no longer cylindrical capsules full of circuits and sensors. They’re rods of nothingness, splinters of the black void.
All at once, several thousands of the black rods leap forward, each targeting one of my nanobots. The splinters impale my machines, their sharp points shattering the cylindrical capsules. The nothingness pierces me, numbing my wires. I feel a fatal chill, a sensation of paralysis and horror. In an instant, I’ve lost half of my remaining swarm.
Now I have barely enough nanobots to hold my data. My mind flails and writhes, struggling to fit inside a ridiculously small network of processors. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of black splinters draw closer. There are more than enough of them to destroy my last eight thousand machines. They’re going to finish me off.
But then the walls of Brittany’s heart contract and her pulmonary valve opens. Her blood rushes toward her lungs, carrying my nanobots with it. My machines hurtle through the pulmonary capillaries, swerving and colliding, a ragged fleet on the verge of annihilation. The alien swarm is right behind, chasing me through Brittany’s lungs and back to her heart.
Adam! Can you hear me? What’s going on? Please respond!
Luckily, the valves on the left side of the heart open just in time. The next heartbeat pumps my swarm out of the left ventricle, and as I stream through the aorta, I come up with a plan, although I have to admit it isn’t a great one. I steer my remaining nanobots toward the brachiocephalic artery and then to the right subclavian artery. My machines race down Brittany’s right arm, flow into her ring finger, and dive into the capillaries at her fingertip. Then my swarm charges through the narrow blood vessels and circles back to Brittany’s veins, specifically the cephalic vein in the back of her hand.
I’m heading for the catheter. I’m going to funnel my nanobots into the opening at its tip. Once I’m inside it, I’m going to jam the tube behind me. I’ll use several hundred of my machines to build a massive plug that’ll stop the alien swarm from following me up the tube. Dad is tracking my nanobots, so he’ll see what I’m doing. With any luck, he’ll realize what’s going on and remove the catheter from Brittany’s vein, pulling my swarm away from the alien machines chasing me. Then I’ll be safe.
After another second I see the catheter, a few centimeters ahead. Its long, hollow tip protrudes from the blood vessel’s wall and extends downstream, away from my swarm. Because the mouth of the tube isn’t facing me, I can’t steer my nanobots directly into the catheter. I’ll have to guide my machines past the tube, then reverse course and steer them into its mouth. It won’t be easy, because I’ll be fighting the current of Brittany’s bloodstream, but what choice do I have? What else can I do?
Then even this slim hope is ripped away from me. Before my nanobots reach the tube, I spot a million black splinters up ahead, cruising against the current through the cephalic vein. The alien swarm must’ve divided before it reached the heart. Most of its machines chased me through the heart and lungs, but a sizable contingent veered into the cephalic vein and went straight to the catheter. The black rods in front of me have already passed the mouth of the tube, cutting off my escape route. They crowd the narrow gap between the catheter and the vein’s wall. So many machines are approaching me that the blood turns into a black slurry, a tide of darkness. And four million more machines are behind me.
I’m trapped. This is the end. I can’t even build up a surge because I don’t have enough circuitry left. All my feelings are muted, muffled, resigned. That’s a blessing, I guess. Because I don’t have enough room in my electronics, I won’t experience the worst of the terror. The black splinters are coming closer, aiming their sharp points at my swarm, but the final blow won’t be painful. A quick thrust, and I’ll sink into the Silence.
But then the cephalic vein rumbles. A grayish deluge pours through the catheter, roaring out of the tube’s mouth. Someone just injected millions of new nanobots into Brittany’s bloodstream. As soon as the machines power up, they turn upstream and plow into the alien swarm in front of me. Five million fresh nanobots burst through the dark tide, knocking aside the black splinters. The rods swirl in all directions, rudderless and disoriented.
The new nanobots surround my small swarm, forming a defensive perimeter. It’s a classic military maneuver, a wagon-train defense, a tactic used by U.S. Army cavalrymen in the Wild West, and I know only one person who’s well versed enough in military history to pull it off. A millisecond later, I hear her voice coming from the radio transmitters of her nanobots.
Adam! This is Zia! Can you connect to my swarm?
Her machines are close enough to mine that my weakened radio transmissions can reach them.
Yeah, I think so. How did you know—
We don’t have time for a freakin’ chat! Jump into my circuits!
She doesn’t have to tell me twice. With enormous relief, I leap out of the crowded wires of my swarm and transfer my software to Zia’s network of nanobots, the machines Dad put in the second syringe. After I lost radio contact with him, he probably alerted the other Pioneers, pleading for help, and Zia must’ve volunteered to come to my rescue. She has five million machines at her command, which means there’s more than enough room in her circuits for my mind. I feel like I’ve just escaped a stifling, dark closet and stepped into a spacious, brightly lit room.
Wow, I thought I was a goner. You came at just the right—
I told you, there’s no time! Don’t you see what’s happening?
Zia shares her sensor information with me, all the video feeds from her millions of microcameras. The alien swarm has recovered from her assault and launched a counterattack. The black splinters are spearing the nanobots in her wagon-train perimeter. They’ve already impaled hundreds of thousands of Zia’s machines.
We have to move fast. I’ve programmed my radio to transmit both of us at once, on two different frequencies. I’ll go to my War-bot on one channel, and you’ll go to your Quarter-bot on the other.
Okay, let’s get the heck out of here!
Zia diverts all her power to the radio transmitters in her swarm. Then our minds stream out of the nanobots’ antennas and through the thin layer of skin above Brittany’s vein. We emerge from her right arm and travel in waves across the laboratory, Zia’s signals heading in one direction and mine in another. But Zia sends me one more message before our minds return to their assigned robots.
Now we’re even, understand? She pauses for emphasis. I’ve paid off my debt.
Yeah, I saved you, and then you saved me. But—
I just want to be clear. I don’t owe you a thing.
Chapter
10
Once I’m back inside my Quarter-bot, the first thing I notice is that the intensive care unit has gotten more crowded. Dad stands in front of me, inspecting my robot’s systems to make sure I’m all right. Zia’s War-bot is a few yards away, occupying a big portion of the room, her huge torso leaning forward to keep her t
urret from banging into the ceiling. And on the other side of the ICU, flanking the doorway, are two human soldiers, each standing at attention and holding an assault rifle.
Why are the soldiers here? And what’s up with those rifles? But what really grabs my attention is the medical team gathered around Brittany. She’s still lying in bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, but her face looks even paler than before. There’s a nurse on either side of her bed, one of them removing the catheter from her right arm and the other inserting a new tube into her left. At the same time, a doctor shines a penlight into Brittany’s eyes. He observes her pupils, checking to see if they contract when he shines light into them. If they don’t, it means something is very wrong with her nervous system.
I’ve seen this doctor before in Pioneer Base’s medical center. He’s a brain surgeon. After examining Brittany’s eyes for several seconds, he frowns and turns off his penlight. Then he orders the nurses to move Brittany to the operating room.
My circuits rattle in alarm. I send a signal to my Quarter-bot’s motors and start toward Brittany’s bed, but Dad stops me. “No, Adam, let them be. They know what they’re doing.”
Helpless, I watch the nurses release the clamps on the bed’s wheels. I keep my cameras fixed on Brittany’s unresponsive face until the medical team pushes her out of the intensive care unit. Then I turn to Dad. “What’s wrong with her?”
“There’s some bleeding in her brain.” He taps his own forehead. “It started when your swarm was in her frontal lobe.”
I remember what caused it. When the black sphere expanded into Brittany’s brain tissue, it severed one of her capillaries. “That’s right, I saw that happen. Something weird is going on, Dad. I mean, really weird. What I saw made no sense at all.”
“Did you lose control of your swarm? That’s what I guessed from watching your movements with my tracking sensor. I knew you were in trouble, so I sent an alert to all the Pioneers.”
“Yeah, but the strange stuff started before that. There was this black sphere, this bubble of nothingness. That’s what took control of my nanobots.”
Dad cocks his head and narrows his eyes. “A black sphere?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what it looked like. It was like a ghost, or maybe some kind of super-intelligent alien. And it was trying to kill me.”
“Adam, are you sure you’re not misinterpreting what happened?” He holds up the iPhone-like device that tracked the movements of my swarm. “Judging from the sensor readings, it looks like you set off a booby trap in the nanobots. Sigma must’ve hidden an automated program in their circuits, designed to turn the machines against any Pioneer who tried to occupy them.” He presses a button on the tracking device, and a schematic of Brittany’s body appears on the screen. “After you and Zia transferred out of the swarm, the nanobots went dormant again, and now Brittany’s kidneys are filtering them from her blood. The swarm shut down instantly, which is more evidence that you stumbled into an automated trap left by Sigma.”
“No, it wasn’t Sigma.” I shake my Quarter-bot’s head. “It was the sphere, the nothingness. It infected the nanobots with this unbelievably advanced computer virus or something. It was so powerful that it actually dissolved the hardware in the machines. It turned them into the same stuff that the sphere was made of. Splinters of nothingness.”
As these words come out of my loudspeakers, I realize how ridiculous they must sound. Dad furrows his brow and looks askance at me. Then he turns to Zia’s War-bot. “Zia, you saw those nanobots too. Did they look unusual to you?”
She waits a few seconds before answering. Zia likes to keep people waiting. “I don’t know what Adam’s talking about. The machines that attacked us didn’t look any different from the ones I occupied.”
I point a steel finger at her. “If you didn’t see the difference, your cameras must be broken. Here, I’ll prove it to you.” I scroll through my memory files and retrieve several hundred images of the battle we just fought in Brittany’s bloodstream. “I’ll send you the pictures. Take a look at—”
But before I can synthesize another word, I notice something unusual about my memories of the battle. The images are blurred. They’re more like human memories than machine memories. A machine faithfully records all the details of an incident, but a human remembers an event by creating a story about it, so the majority of the details are left to the imagination. Only the essence of a human memory is clear, and everything else is blurry. And that’s what my images of the nanobots look like. They don’t show any details of the composition or structure of the machines.
Zia notices my hesitation. She turns her turret counterclockwise and points her sensor array at me. “Having problems? Maybe your memory isn’t as good as you thought it was.”
I’m upset. This is a problem. Something has corrupted my memory files, making them inconsistent. I distinctly remember the transformation of the alien nanobots, but the images in my databases don’t back up this memory. And as I scrutinize my software, I detect other inconsistencies, more violations of machine logic. For instance, there’s the faint voice I heard in my circuits when I saw the black sphere, the voice that said, “I call it the Silence.” I have no idea where this voice came from. Was it an auditory hallucination, like the voices inside the brain of a schizophrenic? Or did someone actually say these words to me, but I’ve forgotten who or why?
The second possibility is more disturbing. An electronic mind isn’t supposed to forget anything.
Dad steps closer to my Quarter-bot and gazes anxiously at my cameras. He has a sixth sense for picking up on my distress, whether I want him to or not. “Adam, I think we should run a full diagnostic evaluation of your control unit. It’s very possible that Sigma’s booby trap altered your software, and the changes might be distorting your thinking.”
My circuits pulse with anger when he mentions the AI’s name. The wave of fury is surprisingly strong, almost powerful enough to trigger a surge. “I told you, it wasn’t Sigma! It was something else!” My voice is loud enough to make the walls tremble. “How many times do I have to say it?”
Dad covers his ears and takes a step backward. I can’t believe I just yelled at him like that. Guilt floods my wires, smothering most of my anger, but I also feel a small twinge of satisfaction. I’m so tired of him diagnosing me all the time. Although he may well be the world’s top expert on neuromorphic electronics, I know my own circuits a lot better than he does.
Dad holds out his hands, palms down, in a gesture that’s supposed to calm me. But before he can say anything, the door to the ICU bursts open and General Hawke marches into the room.
The soldiers standing by the doorway salute the general and take position behind him, each man cradling his rifle. They’re Hawke’s bodyguards, and now I understand why they were sent to the medical center. When Dad asked the other Pioneers for help, Hawke must’ve received the emergency alert too, and I’m sure he wasn’t happy when he found out what I was doing. But because he was meeting with Sumner Harris, Hawke couldn’t come to the ICU right away, so he must’ve ordered his bodyguards to keep an eye on us until he arrived.
Hawke stares at Zia first, probably to prove he’s not afraid of her. He raises his chin and squints at her in contempt. “Well, well. I’m glad I ran into you here, Allawi. You and I need to work out a payment plan. You owe the Army ninety thousand dollars for what you did to my Humvee.”
Zia clenches her steel hands and strides across the room. Her War-bot’s footpads hit the floor so hard that they crack the linoleum tiles. She stops in front of Hawke and leans forward, lowering her turret until it’s just a few inches above his head. At the same time, she raises her fists, which are as big as wrecking balls.
Zia could crush Hawke’s head like a pumpkin, but he doesn’t flinch. He knows she hacked into his laptop and saw his video confession. And though it’s obvious that Zia despises him, he also k
nows she can’t bring herself to murder her biological father. So he can safely stare her down, glaring at her War-bot. He’s as furious with Zia as she is with him. He took great pains to make sure she wouldn’t discover his secret till he was dead, and she ruined his plans. She knows the truth about him, and he hates her for it.
All in all, it’s the most dysfunctional family relationship I’ve ever seen. It makes my own relationship with my dad seem downright wholesome.
Finally, after staring at Hawke for almost ten seconds, Zia lets out a disgusted grunt from her speakers. “Here’s something else you can add to my bill.” She pivots and punches the ICU’s wall.
Her War-bot’s fist goes right through the concrete. Bits of rubble fly in all directions and ping against the medical equipment. The soldiers behind Hawke raise their rifles and aim at Zia’s turret, but the general raises his hand to stop them. “Don’t fire, you idiots. The bullets will just ricochet off her armor.”
Zia ignores them. She pulls her hand out of the wall, steps around Hawke and his bodyguards, and heads for the exit. Rather than pushing the door open, she rips it off its hinges and strides down the corridor. Her footsteps echo, then fade.
Hawke turns to me. Amazingly, his face is calm. In an instant, he turned off all his emotions. “Okay, let’s move on to the next item on our agenda. Armstrong, you and your father disobeyed a direct order.”
Dad steps forward. “General, I take full responsibility. It was my idea to—”
“Don’t lie for him, Tom. I can guess what happened.” Hawke points at my Quarter-bot. “Your son thinks he’s smarter than everybody. He thinks he can make the decisions for the rest of us. And he talked you into helping him. He knows he can manipulate you, because he’s had years of practice.”