Carbon Run

by J. G. Follansbee

  Mike poked his head into her tent. “Who has the first shift with the eggs tonight?” They had come up with a way to keep vigil on the magpie eggs for as many hours of the day as possible.

  “I can take it,” Anne said.

  “I figured you’d say that.” Mike grinned. “It’ll go fast.”

  Anne cocked her head, perplexed. “Why?”

  Mike beckoned. Anne followed him to the coop, and he opened the back door to the nesting box where the eggs waited, bathed in light the color of ripe crabapples. Anne peered in. One of the eggshells had a wide crack, and Anne heard a tiny peep.

  CHAPTER 21

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  COLONEL PENN DISLIKED THE FROWN on Dr. Pierson’s face. The screen she studied showed a video feed generated by the robot control interface, aka the controller, placed in the colonels’ right forearm. It resembled a smaller version of an arm guard for an archer, but placed closer to the elbow. A green lamp, no bigger than a pinhead, glowed near the corner of the controller nearest the colonel’s thumb. The controller communicated via an induction mechanism with the millions of nanobots that coursed through the colonel’s bloodstream.

  Pierson’s feminine scent contrasted with the lab’s whiff of solder and burnt flux. Days had passed since the colonel last spoke to the researcher, and Raleigh felt as if his life was as ephemeral as the doctor’s perfume. A large, blood-engorged blob filled the screen. “My tumor can’t have grown that much, doctor. That doesn’t look right.”

  Pierson breathed out—Disappointment?—as she manipulated the image of a disorganized jumble of tissue and blood vessels in the colonel’s brain. The colonel saw pulsing clumps of cells and, as the magnification and image contrast increased, individual neurons, some pale but alive, others on the verge of death, their dendrites and axons withered like the fingers of an arthritic hand. Other cells, as misshapen as goblins, were the mutated cancer cells. The colonel noticed dark dots, some tiny as pinheads, some splotchy and irregular. My saviors, Mother willing. Magnified further, the objects swam in the intercellular fluid like animal plankton. The pinheads were individual nanobots.

  “The clumps!” The colonel pointed at the hologram, excited as a child. “The robots are swarming on the cancer cells, working together, just like you programmed them.”

  Again, Pierson did not respond, instead focusing her intense concentration on one group of robots attacking a cancer cell. The monster squirmed in its death throes, then disintegrated, the mitochondria, ribosomes, and diseased nucleus spilling through a huge tear in the cell membrane. The nanobots, as if exulting in victory, scattered in search of another cell to attack and destroy. The colonel watched until his eyes hurt, and Pierson’s unexpected reticence alarmed him. The gloom intensified with the thickening rain and clouds as late morning turned to early afternoon.

  “I have some preliminary results.” Pierson was downcast. She folded her hands. “I’m sorry, Colonel, but the experiment is producing mixed results at best.”

  The colonel pursed his lips.

  “The glioblastoma is growing slower than before, but it has not stopped growing.”

  Relief filled the colonel’s mind, though his intellect reminded him that the reprieve was temporary. “That means we have gained some time.”

  “True, but how much is hard to say. It could be a day, a month, or a year.”

  “The robots are working. They are killing the cancer cells. I saw it happening.”

  “Yes, they are, but very inefficiently. The attack you saw was unusual. The logs we downloaded from your controller show fewer successful attacks than we anticipated, and there were far more unassigned robots than we hoped.” The colonel recalled the drifting robots, aimless with no instructions. “They might even behave in your body in ways we’re not sure about. The logs are unclear on that score.”

  “You mean they’re attacking healthy cells?”

  “There’s no direct evidence of that.” The doctor turned away.

  The colonel’s face grew flush. He had endured enough, but he stopped himself from lashing out at Pierson.

  “We haven’t solved a problem that has troubled us from the beginning,” the doctor said, frustration in her voice, as if she wanted to shake her fist at an uncooperative medical gremlin. “We know how to tell the robots to find and kill specific types of cancer cells. That’s what we’ve done with your glioblastoma.”

  “It’s not working.” The colonel sighed.

  “Coordinating millions of robots is far more complex than we thought at first. Managing their self-replication and disposing of expired robots adds to the trouble. We’ve written software—“ she glanced at the colonel’s implant—“ that can anticipate and act on all the variables, including ones we can’t even imagine. We’re convinced our theory and design is sound, but there’s something wrong with the programming, something we can’t find.”

  “You mean there’s a bug?”

  “You could call it that. It’s a problem with one of the AI algorithms. I’ve sat up for days with the programmers in the lab looking for it, testing patches and rewrites, but as soon as we think it’s fixed, the problem pops up again.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “Keep trying to find the problem.” Pierson looked as if she had been beaten at a game of cards. “Once we find it, we can update the software in your controller, and give the robots new instructions.”

  “Maybe you need to call in some other expert, someone who can look at the problem with fresh eyes.” Someone who knows what they’re doing.

  Pierson blinked behind her glasses. “No one is doing this kind of work. We’re on the bleeding edge, as someone once said.”

  The colonel pressed Pierson. “Even if you find this bug and fix it, there’s no guarantee it will even get the results we want, correct?” The colonel wondered if Pierson thought of his case as a chance to cure a terminal disease, or just an experiment that may or may not succeed. The colonel was too exhausted to raise the question, but he did not believe Pierson had all the answers. “I know someone who could fix your bug in the blink of an eye, if I could find her.”

  “Who could that be? There’s no one else with our expertise.”

  “Her name is Molly Bain.”

  Pierson grew indignant. “Colonel, her reputation... We’re all working as hard as we can. We’re perfectly capable—“

  The colonel brushed off Pierson’s objections. “I don’t even know if she’s alive or dead. If I find out, I’ll let you know.”

  As he donned his raincoat and departed the Maynard Center, the colonel gambled more chips on Martin Scribb. Protecting him from interference was proving to cost more than he expected, though the lives of the couple that kidnapped Scribb in British Columbia were a trivial price to pay. If I’m not willing to make such decisions, I’m a dead man, in the old sense of the phrase.

  CHAPTER 22

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  MARTIN SCRIBB AWOKE TO A low thrumming that wiggled the drops of condensation collecting on the steel slats above his head. The drops’ rhythm meant Extinction was still prowling the depths of the Arctic Ocean. He closed his eyes in anticipation of the next sound—CLANG CLANG CLANG. He imagined blood leaking from his injured eardrums as Reason pounded the metal in a deafening reveille.

  “Get up, you ass-fucking dogs. Get up now, or I’ll stuff you into a torpedo tube along with all the other human waste.”

  His tormentor dished out threats as if they were the greasy slops fed to Extinction’s damned, but Martin was slow out of his bunk.

  “Move, asswipe. You’re the goddamned slowest of the whole stinking lot.” Reason poked Martin hard with a steel pipe, raising a welt. The monk yelped in pain. “Shut up!” Reason barked, “or you’ll be the first in the tube.” He exhaled in Martin’s face. His breath stank of stale beer and spent mist. “Do you know what happens to a human body at this depth?”

  “You’ve told me a dozen times.” Despite the daily humiliation, Martin fear
ed Reason and the other bosses less and less as the days passed. Extinction needed Martin and the other cursed men and women who lived above the bilge.

  “You’re crushed like a bug until there’s nothing left but a grease slick, spreading out until you disappear into nothingness.” Reason snarled. “Would you like that?”

  Martin understood nothingness. Out in the normal world, he lived in a kind of social hell, a paradox of existence without substance. At least the tortured souls in the popular conception of hell had demons to keep them company. Each poke and prod with a firebrand was an acknowledgment that the soul existed and deserved attention, however unwelcome. The disidentified’s hell consisted of unending indifference by others, except when they felt threatened. Extinction was closer to a purgatory than a hell. People, even if they were psychotic like Reason, spoke to Martin as if he were human.

  Martin swung his legs to the deck and slipped on his flops. He occupied the lowest bunk in a tier of five. The other three dozen or so anathematized in the compartment climbed out of their bunks, as the bosses continued poking and prodding everyone. Reason and his colleagues drew blood most days with their clubs, but beatings were rare, and serious injuries few. One of the damned had died since Martin had been shanghaied, but the poor devil was sick to begin with. The bosses preferred not to kill, because the dissed and other unfortunates were difficult to replace. Still, fear was as rampant among the crew as the lice that infested their bodies and the open sores that dotted their exposed skin.

  The damned—the word they used to describe themselves—filed through a hatchway past another compartment where each bunk was filled by a snoring wretch, exhausted by eighteen hours at his or her station. Martin’s group lived in the lowest tier of the crew quarters, which was also home to most of Extinction’s population of non-human vermin. Colonies of rats scurried on the deck, disappearing when the bosses showed up for a security check, or to drive the crew to their stations.

  Underlying every human or vermin-caused smell was the stink of petroleum. A microscopic film of crude oil covered everything, and a rainbow of micro-slicks floated on the puddles of condensation that collected on the deck plates. Martin conjured in his mind the droplets of oil that made the air thick and heavy, and he imagined it coating the alveoli of his lungs. It’s a matter of time before my lungs become reservoirs for the molecules that were once dinosaur bones.

  Reason herded Martin’s group into the crew mess. Benches lined each side of an aluminum table covered with stains of all colors and crawling with cockroaches. The shit-colored insects ran up to each bowl of cornmeal mush like puppies eager for scraps. New crew refused to eat the gruel. Hunger forced them to dip their unwashed spoons into their food, which varied in consistency from watery chunks covered with an oily sheen to thin papier-mâché. Experienced crew valued the submariner insects as protein, and they swallowed the unlucky bugs who slipped into the gruel and drowned. Some were eaten before their legs stopped wriggling.

  Martin savored his meals, remembering the days in the hot sun of the eastern reaches of Pacific West when a drink of water was all he expected for days on end. He relished chewing on a piece of gristle or a sliver of carrot. Moldy crusts of bread were thrown on the table. The damned devoured them in seconds. The scraps came from the bosses’ mess, or the captain’s cabin. As Martin sized up his shipmates, he noted that none were starving, though none were thriving. The cook—an unseen psychopath—was adding nutritional supplements to the gruel, maybe antibiotics as well. Ranchers once did such things to cattle and sheep. Why not do the same thing to the damned?

  Martin had made the acquaintance of a bunkmate who went by the name “Osco.” He also had a brand on his forehead. They whispered to each other at meals to avoid the bosses’ wrath. Martin always started the conversations.

  “How long?”

  “How long for what?” Osco picked at a roach carapace between his teeth.

  “That.” Martin pointed at the brand.

  “Seven years.” Osco slurped at his spoon, a drip of sweat falling into the bowl.

  “For what?”

  Osco scratched the gray stubble on his head. Enough dirt was packed under his fingernails to grow a small vegetable garden. “Does it matter?”

  “Just making conversation.”

  “You’re a strange one, Scribb.” Osco stared at Martin with black eyes. “You’re talkative for a dissed man. You could lose your tongue for talking too much.”

  Martin swallowed a bite of gruel.

  “I killed thirty-eight people,” Osco said. “One by one, with a knife. A serrated knife.”

  Martin and three or four others paused their eating. “Impressive,” said a young man with a missing ear.

  “I ate them,” Osco added.

  “A gourmand, eh?” The man with the missing ear wiped his bowl with a finger to capture the last lumps.

  Martin forced back a gag. Others chuckled, careful not to draw attention.

  Osco pointed his spoon at Martin. “What about you?” He already knew the answer; Martin had told him.

  “I killed millions.”

  “What’s that you say?” Osco enjoyed teasing Martin.

  Martin cleared his throat. “I killed millions upon millions.” That’s what the tribunal said, though it’s not true. It was Molly that killed them. I found the emails and the minds-eye logs, but she struck a deal with Raleigh Penn. Me for prison. For once the powerful leader, the money man, instead of the cubicle drone, would go down. It was a lie. Blood, even the blood of in-laws, is always thicker than water.

  “Did you eat all them millions?” Missing Ear grinned. His skin boiled with oil folliculitis. Pus dripped from one of the pimples.

  Osco smirked. “No, but they cooked. Every one. In the Spike. Right, Martin Scribb?”

  A boss ordered silence. Each crewman and woman at the table scrutinized Martin with equal measures of hate, disgust, and indifference. He was a celebrity, of a kind, on the boat. Martin did not feel threatened by his fame. That was the paradox of Extinction. They were already dead; no one wasted the energy to kill for revenge.

  Martin had another motive behind his garrulousness. He still hoped to find Molly Bain in Bežat, though he had no idea where it was, or even if it existed, despite the colonel’s assurances. Bežat was in or near the Arctic Free Economic Zone, and Kapitan Gore’s order to set course for the Arctic Ocean was evidence that Bežat was at least nearby. Ever since the incident with the couple in Alberta, Martin believed the colonel was watching over him, perhaps even getting him the berth on Extinction. Martin was confident that he was heading in the right direction, though he never expected to conduct a search from the lower deck of a corsair submarine. He decided the risk of revealing something more than his background as a mass murderer would help his cause. “I’m looking for someone. Her name is Molly Bain.”

  Osco and the others ignored Martin.

  “There might be a reward if I can find her.” Martin had no idea if the colonel would honor a promise to pay a reward.

  “Never heard of her,” Osco said. “Who is she?”

  Who is she? The most beautiful, most intelligent, sexiest woman I’ve ever known. She was my Athena, and it’s because of her that I’m here. Martin shrugged. “A friend of a friend. I promised I’d find her if I could.”

  “If you need a girlfriend, I’m available.” A young woman with matted hair gazed at him with mocking eyes.

  Martin was repulsed. “No, I’m not looking for Molly Bain in that way.”

  “Smart.” Osco winked at Martin. “That’s Lizzie Castrata. She’s trouble.”

  “ Castrata?”

  “Her real name. Killed ten married men. She cut off their dicks and sent them to their wives in a box marked ‘special delivery.’”

  “They weren’t very nice to me, so I had to punish them.” Lizzie Castrata laughed. So did Osco, who choked when Reason shoved a club into his ribs.

  “Enough. Meal’s over. Get to work.”

>   One at a time, the damned filed out of the mess into the engine room. The thrumming that welcomed Martin on his waking came from the steam turbines driving shafts that spun twin propellers at the stern of Extinction. A nuclear power plant, ancient but serviceable, generated the steam that drove the turbines. Martin was happy when he heard the bosun assign him to the engine room; he had studied nuclear power engineering in college, and he had visited a plant before the post-Spike environmental protection frenzy restricted nuclear energy to the military. The loss of year-round ice in the Arctic brought a hundred years of tension to a head, resulting in the Three Degrees North War, a brief but violent naval conflict which ended in a stalemate and the creation of the Arctic Free Economic Zone. Submarines and submersibles fought much of the war, and a number of subs were never accounted for and presumed lost with all their crews in the Arctic Ocean’s depths.

  Martin discovered on his first day aboard, however, that one of the boats had reappeared. All the markings, from numbers on the bunks to labels on the miles of pipes, were in Cyrillic script, though the crew supplanted some of the labels with English. In the engine room he found a faded but readable plaque on a generator. He knew enough Russian to make out the boat’s name: Yuri Dolgorukiy.

  “You keep an eye on these pressure gauges. If they get to this mark,” an engineer in clean overalls pointed to a daub of paint on the gauge, “let me know.”

  “What happens if I don’t notice?”

  “You’re scalded to death when the steam pressure breaks the seal.” The engineer stuck his stylus in the air, indicating a joint in the overhead pipe. “And this old Russian self-propelled coffin takes us and her ghosts to the bottom.”

  “Ghosts?”

  The engineer scratched on his tablet. “Five hundred of them. All Russian sailors. All suffocated to death. All except her captain.”