by Brian Nelson
I know, the idea might sound audacious, but with the right operative, I’m confident that we can succeed. What’s more, using the “freelance” strategy that has been so successful in our past intelligence efforts also guarantees sufficient deniability to protect the Central Committee from any possible charges by the Americans. In fact, I have just the right freelancer in mind.
Looking forward to your insights.
Your servant and servant
of the people,
General Meng Longwei
Dear General Meng:
I read your briefing with great interest and have shared it with ** ****** ***. He has been following these developments with great interest and is very disappointed that our substantial lead was lost. He hopes that you will make every effort to redeem yourself in the crucial months ahead. He also reminded me that the People’s Republic does not engage in acts of ******, *******, or ************. Still, as a personal exercise, I encourage you to make the necessary preparations for the operation.
Do not contact me again in any official capacity on this matter.
Undersecretary Tan Wei
Office of the Chairman of the Central Military Commission
Chapter Nineteen
Ethel the Pig
February 14, 2026
Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC
After Christmas, things started to happen fast. With their self-replicating assembler, they could finally find out whether all the things that futurists had been foretelling were really feasible.
Naval strategists and engineers descended on the lab, salivating over the things they hoped to make: Could the navy scrap nuclear power and run ships off nanosites breaking down water into hydrogen and oxygen? Could bullets be guided around corners? Could a rifle be made to remember dozens of targets and then, in a burst of fire, hit them all? Would bullets even be necessary in the battlefields of the future? Indeed, compared to the relative speed of nanosites, the bullet was moving pathetically slowly.
The manufacturing possibilities were equally astounding. Once they figured out the programming, they could “grow” complex systems like a submarine or a cruise missile in hours or days. Something simple, like a rifle, could theoretically be grown in seconds. And not just the same old ships and weapons. The next generation of weaponry would look strange and alien when set alongside its antecedents. Lighter yet stronger. Tougher yet smarter: a rifle that would not work if picked up by an enemy, an attack drone that could not be shot down by conventional weapons.
And that was where Admiral Curtiss was going. He knew that America’s monopoly on self-replicating assemblers might be just as short as its monopoly on the atomic bomb, and he wasn’t going to waste a minute. He wanted the arsenal of the United States to take such a huge leap that no rival could ever hope to catch up.
To impose some order on this cacophony of what-ifs, Bill broke them into smaller teams. Jane was put on a team doing medical applications. She was infecting mice with a virus, then giving them a modified version of Minerva-C that was designed to encase the virus in gold, a nontoxic metal. Then the mice were bombarded with radio waves—harmless to tissue, but they would heat up gold and cook the virus inside the host. In this way, twenty-nine-year-old Jane Hunter from Mobile, Alabama, had a pretty good shot at curing the common cold.
Eric set out to make body armor by weaving fabricators, which were essentially weightless, into the fabric of a shirt. After six weeks, he was ready to show off his results. He invited Ryan and Jane to his final test.
By now, things between him and Jane were returning to normal, more or less. They were talking and hanging out, but Jane made sure that Ryan was always there. As a result, they had never spoken about what happened. There was a coolness to her, too. She would ask him how he was, and laugh and joke, but it felt like an act. As though her heart wasn’t in it.
* * *
“Are you sure Eric gave us the right directions?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah, don’t worry,” Jane replied. “I’ve been here before.”
They were deep in an old basement. At the end of a dim corridor was a huge metal door with a bright yellow sign: eye and ear protection required beyond this point. Jane pushed her shoulder into the door, and it swung open with a loud creak.
Ryan had never been to a shooting range before. At first glance, it reminded him of a bowling alley. He counted fifteen lanes, each with a cable like a clothesline, used for running targets out to a desired distance. At a table in the center lane was an impressive row of pistols and rifles, all of them with silencers.
Eric was there, tapping on his iSheet, but otherwise the place was deserted.
Well, almost deserted.
At the far end of the range, about fifty yards away, was a huge pig, snuffling happily in a trough of food. As if that weren’t strange enough, the pig was wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt.
“Oh, man, I do not like the looks of this,” Ryan said.
But Jane had a voracious look of excitement. “Wicked!” she said.
Eric recognized the old Jane at once and had to smile. He wasn’t sure why, but the coldness was gone.
“Jane and Ryan,” Eric said, “meet Ethel, our resident Duroc-Jersey pig. She doesn’t talk much, but she has a very healthy appetite.”
Just then a marine walked in. Brown service uniform. Spit and polish, hair high and tight. He had that rigid, almost cocky walk of the few, the proud. But this one looked too young and fresh faced.
“Corporal Davis!” Eric said. “I was worried you might not make it.”
“Oh, you know I wouldn’t miss this.” His accent said Kentucky or maybe Tennessee. “I was here at o-seven-hundred gettin’ everything set. The men are counting on me. They’ve already got the fire pit ready.”
Ryan raised his eyebrows at Eric—a look that invited an explanation.
“Corporal Davis is hoping for another pig roast. I’m sorry to say that Ethel is not our first test subject.”
The corporal whispered in Ryan’s ear, “Wilbur was delicious.”
“And you didn’t invite me?” Jane said.
“Sorry, but Dr. Hill asked me to keep things quiet.”
Ryan took another look at Ethel, scarfing cafeteria leftovers and oblivious to the fact that these were likely her last moments on earth.
“Who in the hell gave you authorization to do experiments on live pigs?”
“No one,” Eric said matter-of-factly. “That’s one of the benefits of working on a military project that technically doesn’t exist. No IACUC paperwork.”
Ryan glowered. It was clear that he couldn’t save Ethel. “I hate tie-dyes,” he said.
“Not a problem.” Eric punched a few buttons on his iSheet, and the pattern on the pig’s shirt changed to a bull’s-eye target.
“My favorite!” Davis said.
“Whenever you’re ready, Corporal.”
Corporal Davis picked up the smallest pistol. “Firing Ruger Mark Two with echo suppressor. Ammo is .22 long. Targeting center mass.”
Ryan squeezed his eyes tight, anticipating the shot. But all he heard was the metallic tap of the firing pin and the movement of the slide. He thought the gun had misfired. Then he realized that this wasn’t a movie—there was no fsssst sound—the shot was completely silenced. Ryan opened his eyes. Ethel appeared unharmed, snout still in the trough.
Eric was recording everything with his iSheet. He zoomed in and inspected Ethel carefully.
“No impact,” he announced. “Proceed.”
Corporal Davis fired again.
Again Eric took a moment to examine Ethel’s magnified image on his iSheet. “No impact. Proceed.”
When Davis had emptied the clip, he picked up the next pistol—a .32—took aim, and began firing. Now Ryan could hear a muffled pop from the gun.
Eric examined Ethel after each
shot, every time repeating, “No impact.”
Next a 9mm pistol, then a .45.
No impacts.
“Totally awesome!” Jane said. “Where are the bullets going? They aren’t even reaching the shirt, are they?”
“No,” Eric said. “The cloud surrounds her at a radius of three feet. Here, take a look.”
He showed her what he had recorded on the iSheet. “With the help of slow motion and this filter, you can see how it works … There, see it?”
Ryan and Jane looked closely. A translucent yellow bubble surrounded Ethel; then a small dot appeared.
“There, that’s the impact.”
“I know I’m not supposed to ask questions,” Davis said, “but how is it possible?”
“It’s all about speed,” Eric said, “the muzzle velocity of a 5.56 round is about twenty-eight hundred feet per second, right?”
“That’s right,” Davis said.
“Well, the nanosites are moving over a billion times faster. So if you were the nanosite, it would be like having thirty-five years to break down each bullet. They’re that fast.”
“But how can anything be that fast?”
“It’s has to do with the size of things,” Eric said. “If you flap your arm as fast as you can, you’ll be lucky to do one flap in a second—up and down. But a mosquito can flap its wings a thousand times a second, because it is a ten-millionth of our size. It’s the same principle with the nanosites, but on a much smaller scale. Their arms are one fifty-millionth the size of a human arm, so they can perform up to fifty million operations in a second.”
“Awesome,” Davis said.
“Yeah,” Eric had to agree, “it’s pretty awesome. Let’s start with the rifles, shall we?”
Davis picked up an assault rifle. “Firing 5.56 from M4.”
This time Ethel gave a start. Even with the suppressor, the gun made a loud pop. Eric examined Ethel closely for damage, but it was just the noise.
Davis emptied the clip, then moved on to a bigger rifle.
“Firing FAL with 7.62 NATO.”
Still no hits.
“I’ve been waiting to say this all month,” Eric said. “Fire at will!”
Davis gave a sinister grin, thumbed the selector to full auto, and put the rifle to his shoulder. Ryan didn’t want to look. The rifle spit out fire and noise. BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
Ethel had by now gotten used to the blasts and merely stared at them, a large piece of cabbage hanging from her mouth.
“Hot damn, it really works!” Davis said.
“Beyond awesome!” Jane said, giving Eric a hug that went on long enough for Ryan to cough in annoyance.
“I knew you’d like it,” Eric said. He gave her a wink, and she smiled back. It was wonderful to see her like this again. But it also left him confused. Had something changed? Would they get together now? He suddenly wanted just to take her away from here, have her all to himself. But Ryan was talking, cutting off his thoughts.
“What about bullets going the other way?” Ryan asked. “I mean, if you’re wearing the shirt and you fire a gun, does it eat those bullets, too?”
“No,” Eric said. “The nanosites will let a bullet escape the bubble but not enter it.”
“All right, Hill,” Ryan said. “I’ll admit, I’m impressed. So what’s powering the nanosites?”
“Ah, that’s one of my better ideas: the wearer’s dead skin. A twelfth of an ounce a day is enough to keep them going indefinitely.”
“Very clever.”
Davis nodded appreciatively. “I’m real glad it finally worked,” he said, “but the boys’ll be disappointed.”
“Well, tell them there’s hope,” Eric said. “The next series of tests will be with land mines.”
Ryan groaned. “I believe it’s time to go.” He gestured toward the door. “Dr. Hunter?”
Jane gave Eric another quick hug and whispered in his ear, “I’m so proud of you.”
Eric beamed, oddly speechless. “Thanks,” he finally sputtered. He watched them go, his eyes tracking Jane.
* * *
That afternoon, Bill Eastman called Eric into his office. “I heard about your tests of the body armor. Congratulations!”
“There are still a few bugs to work out, but I think I’ll be able to demo it for the admiral by the end of the month.”
“I just spoke to him and he’s very excited. He says you are going to save a lot of lives.”
Eric hadn’t fully appreciated his own invention until that moment. It was a wild concept, that soldiers need no longer die in combat.
“Eric, I’ve got a little side project for you. It’s a favor for the admiral. Jack and Jessica were working on it, but they hit a dead end. I need a new approach. Take a look at their notes; then get to work on it. I know it’s mostly theory, but the admiral wants to know if it’s feasible, just in theory.”
After a quick lunch, Eric went to work on the problem. The question was, if you had a virus programmed to do X, how could you fool it into doing Y? He racked his brain all afternoon but got nowhere. Frustrated, he went to talk to Jack.
“I couldn’t figure it out, either,” the big man said.
“I saw that you wrote ‘Trojan horse’ in your notes,” Eric said. “But you abandoned the idea?”
“Right. At first I thought, hey, all we have to do is get our code inside the virus. Then we could open it up—surprise—and take over.”
“But it wouldn’t work?”
“No, because a virus is just too small, too basic. After all, a virus is just a piece of RNA or DNA swimming around in a little protein sock.”
“You make it sound like they’d make good pets.”
Jack laughed. “Of course, viruses are Trojan horses themselves, plugging into cells and co-opting them to make copies of the virus instead of doing whatever the cell was designed to do.”
“So you’re saying, if you try to inject too much code into the virus, it’ll burst at the seams?”
“Exactly.” Jack gave a sigh. “If there’s a way to do it, it’s beyond me.”
Eric thanked him.
“Sorry I couldn’t be more help,” Jack said, and Eric headed back to his office.
Eric decided to do some research on viruses. But since Bill had said he just wanted to know whether the idea would work in theory, he decided to look not at biological viruses, but at computer viruses. He’d been a decent hacker once, and he knew the mentality. Computer geeks were the guerrilla fighters of cyberwarfare, locked in a constant arms race with the people who protected the computers—which meant they often came up with the most ingenious ideas. He searched all day for a good idea and found nothing. But on the second day of his hunt, he found someone, probably a pimple-faced teenager in Russia, who had written a piece of code called Lamprey, named after the eellike parasites that attach themselves to fish and eat them alive. The kid, or whoever it was, had gotten the name right: Lamprey was 100 percent pure parasite. The virus sat outside the program it was corrupting, so that it remained undetected, and every now and then it would suck out a piece of code and change it, making sure the amount of code taken out exactly equaled the amount put back in. (Security programs used “checksum functions” to search for changes in file sizes.) In the end, the host did Lamprey’s bidding, with no one the wiser.
That was it! He didn’t need to get all his code into the virus, just do a bypass. He spent the next two days fitting the idea to the virus problem. In theory, it would work. And that was all Bill wanted to know.
The next day, he showed it to Bill. His reaction was strange. “Clever,” he said. And then, as if he was thinking the idea through to its logical end, he gave a sad frown. “Thanks,” he said. “The admiral will be pleased.” That was Eric’s cue that he was excused. He had done some good, hadn’t he? Suddenly, he wasn’t so su
re.
Chapter Twenty
The Robbery
February 20, 2026
Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC
Eric’s office phone rang. It was Olex. “This woman keeps calling,” he said. “She’s asking for Bill. I don’t understand what she wants, and I don’t have time for it.”
Eric sighed. Since Bill was in California, that left Olex in charge. God help us.
“Okay, put her through.”
“This is Special Agent Brightwell of the FBI.”
Eric felt his eyebrows go up. There had been a robbery involving certain chemicals, and she wanted to know what they might be used for. But their conversation quickly stalled. Lab security. He could not discuss the nanotech applications of the chemicals without verifying that she was really FBI. In turn, she could not elaborate on the crime without confirming that Eric had a high enough security clearance. Eric glanced up at the security poster above his computer: security is common sense. don’t take chances.
But he was interested. Two of the chemicals she mentioned were used in nanotech. Was someone or some group doing underground nanotech research?
“Can you come to my office?” she asked.
He agreed to meet her after work.
It was a bitterly cold February day, the temperature right around zero. As he prepared to leave, he remembered that he had stupidly left his heavy jacket in his room. He had thought that a thick sweater would be enough for him—tough guy—but he quickly found that the wind cut right through it, stabbing him like icy needles. To get to his car, he would have to hike all the way to the overflow parking lot. He looked around the lab for anything he might wear, but there was nothing. Then his eyes fell on the prototype shirt, laid out under glass.
He had discovered that one of the byproducts of having dozens of microfabricators woven into the shirt was heat. Not a lot, but the one time he had put it on, it produced a cozy drowsiness, like an electric blanket. It would be perfect. He went to lift the glass, then stopped. It was completely illegal, of course, taking the world’s most advanced body armor out for a spin. He would be breaking several dozen laws and would face a military court if caught.