“It’s hard to reconcile what you’re saying with what I see around me,” Cronos said, eying the oil workers in the diner, about as simple, as redneck, and as throwback as any humans he’d ever laid eyes on.
“Sorry,” Serena said, “you’re right, of course. I’m still having trouble separating future gaming scenarios from present time. It appears I suffered more damage interacting with the uber-mind than I at first thought. I still haven’t run adequate assessments of my new steady state. It may be months or years before everyone is upgraded. Some may never be, long after it fails to matter, I imagine, as there’ll be too few of them to give any trouble, and they won’t be smart enough, furthermore, to sidestep the competition.”
Photon collapsed to the ground. Serena used her faster-than-human reflexes to save his camera. “Now might be the time to send him a little loving,” she coached Jane. “I’ll try not to be jealous.”
Jane concentrated on Photon, closing her eyes. “And make sure that nano is self-dissolving,” Serena said. “I don’t want any traces of it left in him afterwards. I like him just as he is, human, and lacking. Helps me to appreciate my shortcomings better and see where they might actually be assets.”
After a bit, Jane opened her eyes and smiled. “He’ll be alright.”
Photon grabbed the camera before he was even off the floor. “You kept it aimed at me the whole time? That’s my girl!”
“I’m happy for the two of you,” Jane said, seeing how they regarded one another. “Where will you go now?”
“I have to talk it over with Photon. He’s not half bad as a consultant himself, and likely to get better all the time now that reality is more of a video game with different levels, and with being able to change the rules on the fly.” She returned her attention to Jane. “And you must find your new champion. Nano Man 2.”
“I’m not sure even my nanites can get me back in the game that fast. I’d like to take a little time to grieve the loss of Nano Man 1, if you don’t mind. We weren’t exactly the most sterling specimens of humanity ourselves. But I’d like to think we learned some along the way, and we got a little more human even as everyone else got a little more inhuman, or maybe post-human, or trans-human.”
“In assessing the copious amount of footage there was on your flight to Alaska thanks to a world full of hidden cameras, I’d say you’re doing better,” Serena said, squeezing her hand. “The fact that I can even tell pleases me as well. There was a time not too long ago when I couldn’t have.”
Serena got up from the table and walked the floor to the door like a ramp walk for models, her camera man in tow. At least that’s how the locals saw it from the leers they were giving her. One grabbed her and she sent him flying through the window without slowing, turning, or doing anything but grabbing hold of his arm with the hand he’d grabbed and flexing it slightly. Cronos smiled. “She really must love him to be giving him those freebie special effects shots like that, especially at the risk of putting herself on everyone’s radar, everyone who matters, anyway.”
“Come on,” Jane said nudging him to clear the way for her out of the booth. “We need to find Michael and give him a proper burial.”
“I doubt we’ll ever find him,” Cronos said. “The nanites would have seen to his dissolution and theirs rather than leave a potential weapon in anybody’s hands. He was a champion to the end.”
“Maybe. Sounds like Michael. But I’d still like to check.”
“You already know, don’t you?” Cronos said.
“Yes, I suppose I do. But I’d like to gather up his ashes and see them shot into space so they’ll always be looking down on this new world he helped to create.”
“But it’s not his world yet, or yours, or mine, or Gunther’s even.”
“Precisely,” she said.
EPILOGUE 1
Chanming jumped out of the way of the giant earth mover to keep from getting run over. The tires loomed a couple feet over his head as they wheeled by. “Whoa! Don’t want that monster getting its maw on you!” he said, half-jokingly, to cut the tension of getting this far only to be squashed like a bug. He fell back into line with the rest of the Chinese dissidents who’d been rounded up and given a chance to serve their country, to make up for their past sins; it was that or be turned into potting soil for some tree. He decided he had a sudden taste for patriotism.
The cement floor beneath his feet sent chills up him. The pads of his heels felt like steel spikes were being driven into them each time he took a step. The giant chamber had a strange smell. A mixture of bleach and blood. He recognized the concoction from having worked in an abattoir, butchering beef for China’s moneyed elite and middle-class. A strange smell to be encountering down here. In the basement of a skyscraper inside of The City of the Future, albeit one that was at the very outskirts of the city, where they appeared to be expanding. Maybe his senses were playing tricks on him. The doctors had given him some drug and put him through a bunch of tests. He’d done rather well on the tests, he thought. But then, maybe that’s why these subjects had been chosen. The ones who’d made it this far, anyway. And maybe that’s why his mind was messing with him now, a side effect of the drug?
He was told the exams were preliminary, and once they were in the chairs and strapped in, the real tests would begin in VR, with the aid of goggles. They were told the VR was so convincing they’d be strapped in for their own protection, so they didn’t go wandering off into traffic. Considering the size of the rigs moving about the sub-basement floor, he was feeling rather appreciative someone had at least worked out the logistics of the tests ahead of time.
“You’re Chanming?” his attendant asked, strapping him in.
“Yes.”
“Feeling any strange after effects from the drug we gave you?”
“Yes, strange smells. And I’m feeling unusually passive and trusting. I’m letting you strap me into a device that looks like something out of a sci-fi horror movie. And I couldn’t care less. Anyone who knows me, knows I’m never this calm about anything. And I’m not so prone to speaking the truth either.”
“It’s all on account of the drug. It’s to help you relax into the tests so you can do your best. Without an open mind, and an ability to take in novel experiences without resistance, you won’t fare as well. And we want you to excel.” The attendant grabbed his PDA and took notes by speaking into it, taking advantage of the device’s language translation software. “Chanming. Approximately six foot four.”
Chanming was six foot three, but felt no compunction to correct the aid. Must be part of that passivity drug they gave him.
“Looks like a young Leehom Wang.”
Leehom Wang was his father. Again, Chanming made no attempt to correct the man.
“This is you?” the aide said, holding up the screen to Chanming.
He nodded.
The attendant pressed the checkmark on his screen. “Very well. Enjoy the next couple hours. In all likelihood they’ll fly by,” the attendant said slipping the VR goggles onto him.
“What if I have to relieve myself during the test?”
“The drug hasn’t fully kicked in yet. Once it has, it’ll severe the connection to your body, so the VR gets your full concentration.”
Why then did he need to be strapped in? His mind started to race the way it had during the preliminary exams. But before he could work up a good sense of panic, the tests had begun, and they were more fun than worrying about what else was going on that he wasn’t being told. This was a government project. Who was he kidding? They’d never tell him everything. Better to continue to be submissive and accommodating. Maybe if he did well on the tests there’d be more in it than just a reprieve for him.
What felt like a half hour into his test, Chanming felt like he was inside a videogame of Hitman, the one his friend had introduced him to; it had been a copy pirated from the U.S. Only, his awareness had expanded to where it wasn’t just inside the hit man, but in each of his targets, the
countless bit characters in the game, even the physical environment itself, every tree, every car, the AI aboard every car and inside each city building. It was as if there wasn’t just one Chanming anymore, but hundreds, like the many voices inside his head all grown up and gone out to live lives of their own. Only he seemed to be acutely aware of what each was thinking and doing all the time. The even stranger thing was, this felt natural to him. His mind was working so much faster than normal.
Visualization was no longer just a matter of pulling a static image out of the fog that he could hold on to for a few seconds before it distorted to disappear back into the mists, but HD movies that could be watched live, stopped, played back, fast forwarded, all without him losing track of the innumerable consciousnesses he was now tracking.
After what felt like another half an hour in to the tests, Chanming was addicted. He didn’t want these tests to ever end. The thought of returning to the real world just depressed him. He wondered if that was the real purpose of the exam. To ensure him that however much he hated life, and whatever he thought of politics and politicians in China, life was all about to get much better, so why waste time complaining about anything? The powers that be had without a doubt cured him of his activism and need to reform China. Very clever of them. Assuming he was right about the purpose of the experiment.
***
“I haven’t been here five minutes and it’s already feeling like a case of déjà vu,” Truska said, as Manga Man approached her on the catwalk. Together they looked down at the two hundred subjects lined up along opposite walls, facing one another. The “volunteers” had been strapped in, much like last time, given the injections, and the VR goggles.
“That’s only because you fear the same outcome. No surprise, considering how every test has gone so far. Have a little faith.” He nodded to his assistant on the floor, who, awaiting his cue, flipped the lever.
It took thirty seconds longer than the last go around, time enough for Truska to build up a real sense of hope, before having it shattered. Every test subject exploded as before.
“I think it’s time we asked the AI for its help,” Manga Man suggested, eyes lowered in shame. “Maybe if it oversaw the transfer.”
“We discussed this. Too dangerous.”
“Even if we destroy the bodies as we discussed? To keep it from sending drones into the world following its own agendas.”
“If it finds out too much this early on, it could block all future attempts at uploading so we had no choice but to accept its terms. That or wipe her memory banks and start over.”
The hoses had already been opened wide to flush the room. The human detritus floated into the jaws of the giant earth movers positioned to receive it at the end of the hall, holes drilled in their scoops so the blood and fluids drained out even as they lifted what was left of the bodies’ solid parts. The shrapnel of bones was then deposited in the foundation of the neighboring building under construction, whose overhead skeleton shielded prying eyes from knowing what was going on in the sub-basement.
There was a voice shouting from the floor below. It had been masked by sounds of the earth movers. But now that they had receded into the background…
“Chanming! Chanming is alive!”
Truska picked up the binoculars and regarded the shivering man, drenched by the hoses. He was strangely handsome and aristocratic looking for his humble attire.
“Finally!” Manga Man shouted.
Truska sighed. It was far too early to feel any sense of triumph as far as she was concerned. “Time to see if the upload went well. What state the AI version of Chanming is in. While we’re at it, let’s keep the original around, just fully contained, away from any internet hookup. And let’s see what state he’s in.”
“But we decided we couldn’t risk…”
“I know what we decided. But before we have him destroyed I want to see if this AI is up to something, what it’s up to and what its methods are. We’re not going to find out just by talking to it. We’re certainly not going to get any straight answers that way.”
“We’re not going to get any from him either.”
“We have drugs that might elicit his full cooperation, and other methods at our disposal if they don’t.”
“The AI would likely see to it that he has no idea what he’s carrying in his head until the right trigger is pulled.”
“It’s going to be your job to find that trigger.”
“What if it’s as we feared? What if this guy gets away from us?”
“Let’s just see that doesn’t happen.”
EPILOGUE 2
Silver powered up and the dark room was suddenly filled with illumination and consciousness. The blackness dispelled courtesy of the colored lights emanating from inside him, shining through his transparent exterior.
He looked about him and what he saw was unsettling. All the bots from Robo-Land were thrown about the storage room, willy-nilly. Rex Rider. Octo. Many of his other friends. They’d been here long enough to collect dust.
That could only mean one thing. The next phase had begun. Robo-Land was no longer needed because robots had infiltrated the public consciousness to where people felt comfortable welcoming them into their homes. Just not these models. They were little more than amusement park toys for kids, after all. He should have realized that Emancipation Day was never coming for him; he’d just fooled himself all along.
Silver footed it up the stairs to make sure. Denial was a powerful thing. And he had to know. It was possible he was just imagining the worst.
Once he was at ground level there was no denying anything anymore. They were trucking away the various amusement park rides and attractions. He grabbed the arm of one of the nearby truckers, finished hitching up the ride he was carting off. “What’s to become of us?” Silver asked.
“Heard you guys were sold to some rich folks for their kids to play with. Beats the hell out of being a maid bot, huh? Can’t wait for the day when I can just sit around all day and play with my grandkids. You got it lucky, pal. I’m jealous.” The heavy set, tattooed man, climbed up his rig. His vitals indicated he’d die any day now from that much exertion. So in his own way, he was right, Silver was lucky relative to him. He just didn’t feel particularly lucky.
“Poor bastard,” he heard the truck driver think as he looked down at Silver from inside his cab. “Must be terrible to never know anything of the real world. To be so sheltered like that. No wonder they can never grow up. What was I supposed to do? Tell him that in the few months they were decommissioned, the world passed them by? They’ll be lucky to last much longer as toys, the way robotics is advancing by leaps and bounds.” The driver fired up the truck. Soon he’d be out of range of Silver’s ability to read his EMF waves. Probably for the best.
Silver calculated that there was less than a few hours before the last of the rides were gone, and there’d be nothing left to do but truck off Silver and his kind. That wasn’t a whole lot of time to awaken his brethren, and sell them on what he had in mind.
The truck driver was right. There would be no safe refuge for them in the present, even less so in the near future. That meant there was really only one flight path worth a damn. They needed to escape into the past. For that they’d need a physicist close to perfecting his time machine. If a human wasn’t working on one, you could bet an AI was. Silver couldn’t be the only one looking for a ticket out of here and a little more security than the future held. Someplace where he could be a big man again. Feel larger than life instead of forever inadequate to the times. Hell, in a world such as this, everyone had to be working on a ticket out. So the odds weren’t as damning as all that. Then again, that could be the denial talking.
He found the warehouse entrance and headed back downstairs. There wasn’t just his pitch to the others he needed to work on, on his way down the steps, he needed to consider the implications of a bunch of them invading the past. What impacts they would have. What it would mean exactly. He bette
r store up some e-books on Steampunk Sci-Fi in his memory files before heading off on an adventure in time. Surely someone had to have worked out at least some of the logistics of the alternate timeline he was about to open up. Save him having to figure out how to reinvent the microchip with no more than a pliers, a blow torch, and some rare earth metals no one had yet to hear anything about.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I’d like to thank Angela for her invaluable editorial feedback on Nano Man. She has helped me with quite a few of my books now and continues to be a voice of reason and a source of inspiration.
I’d also like to thank Rob for his help with a later draft of Nano Man. His insights were poignant and insightful as always.
Beta readers who also contributed cherished support include Natan, Floyd, Rick, Matt, Jessica, Sarah, S.J., Victor, Jeremy, Katrin, Judy, Katherine, Carla, Ken, Peter, Roshelle, and many more.
Nano Man Page 37