by Sam Enthoven
The squirrel in the box didn’t appear to care: it was too busy nibbling at the nut it had grasped between its powerful front paws. It sat there, its tail arched up behind it, staring at the party behind the glass with something like suspicion in its beady black eyes. The prime minister, too, was less than impressed.
‘Professor, at the risk of repeating myself,’ he began, ‘we are all rather busy people. Do you think you could hurry this along, please?’
Professor Mallahide blinked but said, ‘With pleasure.’ He pressed the button on the intercom again. ‘All set, Belforth?’
The white-suited figure stood upright from behind the squirrel’s box and gave a clumsy thumbs-up.
‘Splendid.’ Professor Mallahide reached into one of the pockets of his lab coat and produced a small black disc of plastic with a red button mounted in its centre. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I must ask you to watch what happens now very carefully. Everybody ready? Then let’s go.’
He pressed the button.
‘There,’ he said. ‘I’ve just allowed some of my machines to be released. At this moment, a swarm of nanobots so small as to be almost invisible to the naked eye are making their way into our furry friend here’s container. Look carefully: there’s a couple of billion nanobots in the swarm; it’s possible you may just catch a glimpse of it.’
And it was true. The members of the assembled top brass who were prepared to strain their eyes hard enough found that they could indeed make out something that had appeared in the case besides the squirrel. Something wavered in the pitiless light from the fluorescent bulbs on the lab ceiling: a haze, shimmering in the air around the animal.
The squirrel suddenly stopped nibbling on its nut, and froze.
‘By now, my machines have penetrated the squirrel’s skin and are moving freely through the creature’s bloodstream,’ said Professor Mallahide. ‘Our friend here doesn’t know it yet, but something rather extraordinary is about to happen. Again, I must ask you to watch very carefully. Now.’
The squirrel in the box twitched its nose. Behind it, the great curve of its tail arched and thrashed the air in an expression of mounting nervousness. But it wasn’t panicking or in any obvious pain. And what was happening had already started to happen.
The dirty grey colour of its fur was starting to change. At the same time, imperceptibly at first – the squirrel was beginning to shrink, becoming physically smaller before the eyes of its audience as the strange haze around its body continued to do its work. Now the fur had taken on an unmistakable russet-brown hue: the colour was spreading all over the squirrel’s shrinking body.
‘And . . . there,’ said Professor Mallahide with satisfaction.
He pointed through the glass at the creature that now stood in the container.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my own little attempt to redress the balance in the squirrel population. Sciurus vulgaris, the Eurasian red squirrel. As a species, he’s a little smaller than his grey counterpart. But with the help of my machines, he’s now immune to the smallpox virus. I think he should get along just fine.’
There was a short silence in the room. The prime minister, the military chiefs of staff and the other bigwigs all exchanged another look. It was the prime minister who spoke first.
‘That’s it?’ he asked.
Mallahide raised his eyebrows. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘That’s what you wanted to show us?’
‘Well . . . yes,’ said Mallahide, his smile becoming uncertain. ‘That’s my demonstration.’
‘I’m sorry, Professor,’ said the prime minister, ‘perhaps I’m missing the significance of what I’ve seen here. But it seems to me that all you’ve managed to come up with for us is a way to . . . change a squirrel’s hair colour.’
He smirked. Some of the other bigwigs – anxious to show they appreciated the prime minister’s little joke – smirked too.
‘You mentioned military applications for your work,’ Mr Sinclair went on. ‘Those are what we’re here to see. Not . . . cosmetic care for rodents.’
Professor Mallahide gave him another smile, but it was thinner than before. ‘I assure you, Prime Minister,’ he said, ‘what I and my machines have achieved just now is rather more than cosmetic. Look at that animal out there,’ he added, gesturing again at the squirrel, which had gone back to eating its nut. ‘I appreciate you’ll have to take my word on this, but if you were to take a sample of his blood and perform tests on it, you would realize that in real terms, he bears no relation whatever to the creature that was standing on that spot a few moments ago. My machines have just rebuilt his whole body structure, changing it – cell by cell – into a different animal entirely. Imagine for a moment, if you can, what that change involved. Almost every single molecule in that creature’s body has been subtly altered. It happened very fast. It caused the creature no pain, as you saw – but that squirrel now belongs to a different species. I did that: I and my machines. Truly,’ he said, and paused, ‘the power that this technology offers is nothing less than God-like!’
The prime minister shook his head. ‘Professor, let me put this as simply as I can,’ he said. ‘We’re talking about war. You’re talking about squirrels. I’m sorry, but I’m not really seeing the connection. Show us something we can use, please,’ he said very slowly and deliberately. ‘I’m afraid that your funding depends on it.’
For a long moment Professor Mallahide and Mr Sinclair looked at each other.
‘Very well,’ said Mallahide. He turned and looked past the glass at the hapless creature that stood in the box in front of them, still obliviously working on its nut. All right, he thought. Time to show these people something they can understand.
‘Compared to changing a creature’s species,’ he said, ‘applications of a more . . . aggressive nature for this technology are absolute child’s play. If instructed, my machines can act in exactly the same way as diseases such as botulism, Ebola, anthrax, or AIDS. They can take on the properties of cancer cells, generating random and debilitating mutations in the body that can progress towards their fatal results at any speed I see fit. And those are just conditions that already exist today: if I choose, my machines can even invent new ones. New diseases, specially designed. Ones for which the treatments don’t exist.’
He sighed. I’m sorry, he mouthed at the squirrel – then he gave the order. He didn’t bother to use the button this time: he just signalled the swarm wirelessly through the tiny chip he’d installed in his own brain. He could have done this at any point, of course, but it didn’t do to let on too early to these people just how far he had already progressed with his own side of the project.
Invisibly, his billions of tiny machines began to do his bidding . . .
‘The simplest course of action, however,’ Mallahide went on, ‘is to allow the nanobots to do what they do most naturally: make use of whatever raw material is to hand to reproduce and make more of themselves.’
He turned his back to the window. He knew what was about to happen, but he had no wish to see it for himself.
‘Imagine it,’ he said. ‘With only a relatively small initial quantity of nanobots, no army on Earth would be safe. Effectively invulnerable to conventional attack, the nanobots’ numbers would multiply at an exponential rate. Even a small swarm would become an unstoppable tide of machines, consuming everything in its path. Buildings. Armour.’
He paused significantly.
‘. . . And flesh.’
The assembled bigwigs weren’t looking at him any more. They were staring past him, expressions of horror already taking over their faces. Behind him, out in the glass case beyond the window, the process was now well under way.
The squirrel’s fur was the first thing to go: the soft russet-brown hairs on the creature’s tail and body were vanishing as quickly as they’d come. In moments, the squirrel was completely bald, the delicate grey-blue of its veins showing clearly in patches through the suddenly denuded skin. All this whil
e, Mallahide’s millions of machines danced around the animal in a strange and shimmering haze.
Abruptly the squirrel’s skin vanished too. The whole process was happening so quickly that it was only at this point that the animal seemed to wake up to the danger it was in. Its small dark eyes suddenly widening in panic, the squirrel finally dropped the nut and began scratching and clawing at itself all over. By this point, of course, it was already too late: all it was doing was hurting itself, its sharp claws digging great bleeding furrows in its own lacerated and diminishing flesh. Yellow-pink layers of glistening subcutaneous fat seemed to evaporate as Mallahide’s machines went about their work. The squirrel fell on its back, convulsing, exposing the small pale-grey knot of its intestines – then it froze, helpless, as its bones appeared, open to the air for all to see. For another half-second its bare skeleton lay in a rictus of death on the floor of its glass cage. Then the bones vanished too.
The squirrel was gone. Nothing remained in the box to give any indication of what had occupied it. For all intents and purposes, the squirrel had ceased to exist. All that was left was the same strange glittering haze – fractionally darker, fractionally thicker than before, but still so close to invisible as to appear to be nothing more than a trick of the eye.
The entire process had taken just over six seconds. Professor Mallahide was not a cruel man: six seconds was longer than he would have liked, but it was the compromise he had settled on between sparing the squirrel as much pain as he could and giving his audience something to satisfy their bloodlust.
He, in turn, watched them, gauging their reactions.
Ms Flitwick had her hand to her mouth. Field Marshal Thompson was biting his lip. The rest of the party all also looked more than a little sick. The prime minister’s mouth was open. Mallahide just watched them and waited.
‘That . . .’ said Sinclair finally. ‘That’s . . .’
Field Marshal Thompson cleared his throat. ‘The – the swarm,’ he said: ‘would it be vulnerable to things like wind or rain?’
‘Not especially,’ said Mallahide. ‘The nanobots are self-propelling: they move by themselves, and they’re capable of overcoming most practical obstacles. You might lose some of them, but sheer weight of numbers will more than make up for any casualties.’
‘What about delivery?’ Thompson asked.
Mallahide shrugged. ‘Whatever you like. Once released, they’ll go wherever I tell them.’
‘And how do you “tell them”?’ asked Ms Flitwick. ‘How do you control them, exactly?’
Mallahide smiled. ‘I’m afraid that’s going to have to remain my little secret for the time being. As I’m sure you’ll understand, an invention like this carries with it certain . . . responsibilities. I won’t allow my work to be used without my permission or involvement. But you may rest assured that the swarm is entirely and completely at my own exclusive command.’
At this, the prime minister seemed to snap out of his trance. He exchanged another look with the rest of the top brass: this last bit of news was, Mallahide knew, something they hadn’t wanted to hear. Mallahide didn’t care. He had them now.
‘Well, Prime Minister?’ he asked. ‘What do you think?’
‘Impressive, Professor,’ the prime minister admitted. ‘Very impressive. You have this government’s full permission to carry on with your research. Thank you for your time.’
‘Thank you, Prime Minister,’ said Mallahide. ‘Would you mind terribly if I didn’t see you out?’
‘Not at all. Good day to you.’
‘Goodbye, everyone. Thank you for coming.’
Mallahide watched them all filing out of the room. The door closed. Then he waited. When he was absolutely sure they’d all gone, he turned back towards the window.
‘Morons,’ he said. Then he signalled his machines again.
Instantly the swarm reacted, the shimmering haze condensing momentarily into a ball of darkness as it rushed to do his bidding. Newly created nanobots sacrificed themselves willingly, allowing themselves to be broken back down again into their source material. Each molecule, teased into being with unimaginable delicacy, was reconstructed exactly according to the information that the swarm had stored. The bones came first, knitted into shape and extended: blood, flesh, muscles, skin and then fur all followed – grey again this time. Then the squirrel was standing there in its glass box once more.
It blinked. It shook its tail. Then it picked up the nut it had dropped.
‘Good as new,’ said Professor Mallahide.
Morons, he said again, without speaking this time. No doubt about it: he was working for morons.
But not for much longer.
BIGGER FISH
TIM LIKED THE water. He liked the feel of it all over his scaly skin and the effortless way that it supported his weight. In fact, his long body and powerful tail seemed ideally suited to this new environment. Undulating easily onward, paddling with his limbs, Tim found that he didn’t even need to breathe.
How long had he been swimming? Tim didn’t know. Where was he going? He didn’t know. All he knew as he sank into the welcoming deep, lashing the dark with his tail and feeling the water surging around him, was that for the first time since leaving his old enclosure, he was something close to being happy.
Then suddenly a voice said, ‘At last. Took your time, didn’t you?’
Tim stopped swimming. He was so surprised, he didn’t know what to do. Nobody had ever spoken to him like this before, and the way the words had arrived in his head meant he had no way of knowing where they’d come from. For a long second he just hung there, suspended in the watery dark. Then the thing that had spoken to him showed itself.
All around him, the sea began to take on a strange kind of glimmer. What Tim had thought of as empty water suddenly erupted into an incredible tracery of neon-bright patterned multi-colours, shimmering and fizzing. And while Tim kept staring, dazzled and fascinated—
Abruptly he was seized about the waist by a thing like an electric-pink snake covered in rubbery suckers: it wrapped around him no less than three times and effortlessly yanked him deeper into the water.
At the same time, the pulsating colours around him resolved themselves into a sizable acreage of body: the patterns, Tim realized, weren’t actually appearing by themselves but were instead just displaying on something’s skin. Something big: many times bigger than Tim. Something strong: immeasurably, impossibly strong. Something – Tim realized as the tentacle held him before a vast eye for further examination – that was looking at him.
‘No!’ said the voice in his head. ‘You’re the one who’s going to replace me? HEE HEE HEE HEE!’
The water around Tim eddied and boiled with glee: the whole ocean seemed to shake with the monster’s laughter, and the tentacle that held him quivered.
‘Come on,’ said the voice, getting itself back under control. ‘You’ve got to be kidding! You’re . . . tiny!’
Tim looked back at the eye. Big as he was, he was barely the size of the eye’s pupil. Still not really knowing what to do, he just froze and stared back at it.
‘You can speak to me, you know,’ said the voice. ‘I can understand you; in fact, I’m the only one who can. You know why that is? Because you’re the only thing in the world that can understand me!’
Tim said nothing.
‘Hmm,’ said the voice. ‘Or maybe not.’ Its owner sighed. ‘Just because it’s all I’ve done for the last million years or so doesn’t mean I actually like talking to myself. All right, little one: time to give me a sign here.’
Tim blinked. Then he opened his mouth. A lot of water came in.
‘Not like that,’ said the voice quickly. ‘With your mind.’
‘Oh,’ said Tim, surprised at himself. ‘Like this?’
‘That’s it. Like that.’
‘Um . . . hello.’
‘Hi,’ the voice replied.
There was a pause.
‘I am the Kraken,’ said
the voice. ‘And you are . . .?’
There was a word his tiny keepers had used the most whenever they’d tried to speak to him in their language: ‘They call me . . . Tim,’ said Tim.
‘Well, it’s a name, I suppose,’ said the Kraken. ‘I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you . . . Tim. It’s a pleasure.’
Tim didn’t really know what to say to this, so he didn’t reply.
‘I guess you’re wondering why I brought you here.’
‘Brought me?’
‘That’s right,’ said the Kraken. ‘You remember: anytime you got curious about what the world was like outside that little egg they kept you in . . . anytime you felt like breaking out of it, right up until now when you came out here to meet me? Well, that was me, giving you a little nudge.’ The Kraken paused. ‘You’re a little lazy, if you don’t mind me saying so. I don’t think you’d ever have done it otherwise.’
‘But . . . how? How did you do that? How did you get in my head? Who are you? How are we talking now? What’s going on?’
‘Easy there!’ said the voice. ‘No need to panic: the answers are coming in good time.’
‘But—!’
‘You’re here with me now. I’ll protect you for the time being and prepare you for what’s coming as best I can. You see . . . that’s my job. My last job.’ The voice fell silent.
In the long moment that followed, Tim felt very strange. He was realizing something: he wasn’t as scared as he’d thought he was. A part of him was still frightened by this enormous creature that held him in its tentacle as if he was a toy; a big part of him was still tremendously confused by what was happening and, indeed, by pretty much everything that had happened to him ever since he’d left his home behind. But another part of him felt . . . calm.