***For both of us*** ANAD came back.
Jesus, he can read what I’m thinking, even if I don’t say anything.
The next few days were taken up with Johnny Winger and ANAD getting used to each other. Inside the Containment chamber, and later, outside in the parking lot at Galen Hall, Johnny practiced launching and recovering ANAD until the process was smooth and comfortable for both. With a little tweaking and some compromises, either operation could be accomplished in about half a minute.
Late that afternoon, Doc Frost could see the fatigue on Johnny’s face. They both needed some time off.
“That ground fog outside the window looks like the expression on your face. What say we head over to the Robbery, Johnny? Campus pub, in the basement of University Tower. They’ve got killer wings and beer, plus all kinds of vids and games.”
Winger yawned and stretched out on a bench beside the TinyTown pod. “I’m up for it. Lead the way.”
The Robbery was a small bar and grill, tucked away in the basement of the Tower building. All exposed beams and ducts, with brick walls and posters of famous criminals hanging from the rafters and between beams, the place was done up to resemble a 1930’s-era Chicago dive and gin joint, right down to the robotic piano player who bore more than a passing resemblance to Al Capone with its spats and pin-striped suit.
The two of them ordered something called The Slam…wings, nachos, Texas egg rolls, the works. Plus two full pitchers of beer.
Winger slurped and munched. “Doc, you’ve never really told me how ANAD came to be, I mean the real story. I knew molecular assemblers were a big Defense Department push in the early 40s.”
Frost licked beer suds off his mug. “It was a DARPA project. Everybody knew assemblers were coming. Other nations were working on them. Even some cartels, like Red Hammer. Nanoscale assemblers…the big question was how to design and program them to grab atoms and build—or ‘unbuild’…that was the term DARPA used then—fast enough to be tactically useful in combat. Northgate had a contract and we had a deadline. I was struggling with the programming—control and configuration programming—and we just weren’t making any progress. I had begun to think that this might not be doable the way we had designed it. Then the news from Engebbe broke…some ancient virus had been uncovered at an archeological dig in east Africa. The dig team published segments of the viral genome they had decoded…and it hit me. The virus was doing stuff that I wanted to do. I mean folding, cleaving, attaching, making and breaking bonds in an incredibly efficient way. It just slapped me right in the face. Nature and evolution had solved the very same problem billions of years ago and all we had to do was do the same thing.”
Winger nodded, picked at a spicy wing. “I saw in some of the vids that something activated the virus…it mutated. A lot of people were sick for awhile…pretty incredible that something buried for a billion years could ‘wake up’ and be so dangerous.”
Frost agreed. “The dig team didn’t follow common-sense protocols. There was one death, but it’s still not sure if the Engebbe virus played any role in that. What I did was take parts of that viral genome and marry it to the program we were writing for ANAD 1.0. The same procedures, the same sequences. It was a short cut we had to try because we were running out of time and we knew that Red Hammer and several nations were also close to achieving a workable molecular assembler. So that’s how ANAD 1.0 came to be.”
“Part organism, part mechanism,” Winger observed. “A man-made programmable virus.”
Frost shrugged. “Some have said that, yes. Perhaps some of the news vids are a little overblown. But we did solve our programming problems. And you’ve seen yourself what ANAD can do.”
Winger suddenly wasn’t thirsty anymore. “It’s like ANAD is the perfect warrior, Doc. Grown from a virus. Don’t get me wrong, I think you and Dr. Duncan are the smartest people on the planet. I just wonder how smart it was blending the Engebbe virus with ANAD. It’s like tampering with evolution, maybe tampering with the future. As a life form, viruses have lived on earth a hell of a lot longer than we have. They’ve adapted to everything Life has thrown at them. They’re relentless. And now what do we have? With ANAD, an intelligent, programmable virus. Add in a pinch of Engebbe and some sequences from HNRIV and what does that give you?”
“An even more intelligent, programmable virus.”
“Exactly…I mean…is this really a good thing to do? Doc, at times, when ANAD was inside me, talking to me on the acoustic circuit, I was certain he was alive, conscious, even mischievous, just like a little boy.”
“So you’re like a new dad now. And you’ll soon have a new son to raise and teach the facts of life to.”
“I’m not sure who’s teaching who. With quantum computing, and now genetic programming from your Engebbe virus, we’ve given Nature’s most efficient killer the smarts to outsmart us all.” He decided to finish off his own drink. “I just wonder how much longer we can stay ahead of them. Do we teach ANAD? Or does ANAD teach us?”
Doc Frost shrugged. “Maybe a little of both.”
They talked a while longer. “It’s getting late, Johnny. Let’s head back to the Lab.”
They left the Robbery. The fog had grown denser, colder. The two of them followed a small gravel path between buildings, heading in the general direction of Galen Hall, somewhere in the distance…the Gothic building’s dim, blurry lights diffused by the mist.
Winger felt something sting him on the neck. “Ouch,” he muttered. Probably a fly. Or a mosquito. Then it came again and in seconds, his whole face was enveloped in a swarm of bees.
Only they weren’t bees. Winger could see Doc Frost swatting and flailing too, just before the engineer dropped to the ground.
“Arrggh…what the--?”
Then he knew what it was. They had run headlong into a swarm of nanobots, invisible in the dense fog. Some kind of loose formation of bots, coming at them. Had there been a containment breach?
“Come on, Doc…we’ve got to get the hell out of here--!” Winger knelt down next to Frost, helped him stumbling and flailing to his feet. Already a faint blue halo of bots had enveloped Frost’s balding head and he swung and slapped and pinched but it was no use.
The two of them stumbled and tripped several times on the wet grass, on icy patches on the walkway, then fell again heavily to the ground. The fog seemed to be alive. Now a flickering backlight surrounded them, like they were trapped in the middle of a light bulb, a silent, miniature thunderstorm, raining bots and swarms on top of them.
Winger fell on top of Frost and tried to cover the Doc as best he could. But he knew they couldn’t stay there. If these were rogue bots from Containment, who knew what they might do? Johnny Winger had no wish to be atom food for bad bots. They had to get up. They had to get going.
With every ounce of strength he had left, his head still buzzing from too many beers, he hauled Doc Frost to his feet, and draped the engineer over his shoulders. There was a fiery red-white glow at the base of Frost’s skull--the bots were already burrowing under the epidermis, and Frost screamed like a man possessed.
Winger dragged himself and Doc Frost, now almost fully limp in his arms, all the way back to Galen Hall. Within the hour, the Doc had been moved by ambulance to the campus infirmary.
“He’s got first-degree burns on his neck and shoulders,” said Dr. McLain, the staff physician on duty that night. “Multiple contusions and skin lacerations, some of them pretty deep. We’ve got him on antibiotics and fluids, and we’ll probably try a more serious regimen overnight…just to keep the onset of shock under control.”
Dr. Mary Duncan was there, along with Chief Joe Wise of the Northgate University campus police.
“Any evidence of nanobotic penetration?” Duncan asked, worry lining her face. “Johnny here said it was some kind of swarm assault.”
McLain shook his head, backed away from the gurney an
d pressed a button on a nearby panel. The bioweb blossomed immediately, surrounding the bed in a faint glimmering veil of nanobotic mesh. “None that we can detect, but then that’s more your area of expertise. I’m keeping the web up tonight, just in case.”
Wise scowled at the situation. “Mary, you told me there was no containment breach at Galen Hall.”
Duncan nodded. “None, Chief. Everything’s buttoned up tight as a drum. We have been running some tests with ANAD on Johnny here. But his embedded capsule is, or should be, empty right now. We extracted ANAD before he and Irwin went over to the Robbery.”
Wise said, “That was one of my theories, Mary…that somehow the bugs got out of your lab or some test ran amok.”
“I had no way to capture any of the bots,” Winger admitted. “It was foggy outside and we didn’t see anything until the swarm was right on top of us…it came out of nowhere.”
Duncan found that interesting. “No doubt using the fog as camouflage. As soon as I heard what happened, I sent Milan and Celia out to scan the area. They found nothing. Whatever it was, the swarm dispersed quickly. That’s why I made a call to Quantum Corps this morning, Johnny. Major Kraft was most interested in what happened…he’s sending a Major Lofton today, from your Q2 office.”
“Security,” Winger said. “Dr. Duncan, maybe we should go back over all the records of what we did yesterday with ANAD. Maybe something got out we aren’t aware of. I know there weren’t any alarms or obvious containment breaches. But people make mistakes. We shouldn’t discount anything.”
Duncan was increasingly worried, about Irwin Frost, about the embed project with ANAD, about little slip-ups that always seemed to be happening. “Of course, you’re right, Johnny. I’ll get right on that, with Milan and Celia.”
Chief Wise decided more security was needed around Galen Hall. “I’m assigning two of my officers for 24-hour duty starting today. And I want to meet with this Major Lofton, as soon as he arrives. We may be dealing with something a lot bigger than a small containment breach here.”
Major James Lofton arrived late that same afternoon. Johnny Winger had met the Q2 officer during his Atomgrabber’s Qualifying Test, before he’d even been accepted into the Corps. Lofton had headed up investigations in the case of Nathan Caden.
Winger and Lofton walked across the campus from Chief Wise’s office to Galen Hall and went up the stairs to the fourth floor Autonomous Systems Lab, while Johnny explained the facts of the incident.
“Major, I’m fairly sure this was no normal containment breach. It was a full-on swarm. Any atomgrabber knows what that feels like. Things like that just don’t happen at ASL.”
Lofton didn’t bother to hide his skepticism. “Sure, nobody ever makes mistakes. What about the lab staff, Lieutenant? How well do you know them?”
They came into the lab. Winger pointed out the inhabitants. “Dr. Mary Duncan, I think you know. She and Doc Frost have been with the project from the beginning.”
“Hello, Major,” said Duncan. She was at a small window, peering into the containment tank, pecking out notes on a wristpad. “We’re just running a few tests here…trying to make sure ANAD’s whole and hearty.”
Duncan introduced Celia James and Milan Stovacs, the lab techs. They were both helping Duncan.
Lofton came over to watch. On the imager, a scaffolding occupied center screen. “What are those things that look like grapes, Dr. Duncan?”
“That’s ANAD, the master nano-robot and a few replicants we had him spawn, to check his replication program.”
Lofton was impressed. He’d seen ANAD systems before at Table Top. “Dr. Duncan, is it possible ANAD has capabilities, maybe even motivations, that no one is aware of? My four-year old son surprises Melissa and me with what he knows and can do. Maybe ANAD’s the same.”
Winger thought about the hours after the embed surgery, when the bot almost seemed to be reading his mind.
Duncan smiled patiently. “Of course, quantum systems like ANAD have all kinds of capabilities, Major. We think we have a pretty good handle on what ANAD can do.” Her smile said don’t ask stupid questions like that again.
Winger asked,”Any evidence of Red Hammer operating in the area? A few months ago, they had agents inside Table Top.”
Lofton shrugged. “We can’t discount anything.”
Nobody saw Milan Stovacs abruptly close a small window that had been open on his workstation screen.
Now Lofton was curious about the tests Duncan was running. “And how’s the little guy doing this morning?”
“Well,” Duncan sniffed, “we’re actually finding things a little out of whack…ANAD doesn’t want to replicate quite according to spec…he grabs molecules when he shouldn’t and doesn’t put them together quite the way he should. We’re trying to track down why right now.”
Winger scanned the console. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Still, after the surgery, there had been moments--
“Major, I think ANAD may have some corrupted files. Or possibly something latent in the viral genome is showing up…you’re aware that ANAD has processor algorithms taken from an ancient virus.”
“I did hear about that,” Lofton admitted. “Are you saying ANAD could actually do unexpected things?”
“It can’t be ruled out.”
“Would that mean getting out of containment on his own? Or pinching off a few ‘replicants’ and stashing them away outside of containment…something that could be used to attack you and Dr. Frost in a fog bank at night?”
Winger started to reply, but Mary Duncan intervened. “Oh, I hardly think so, Major. ANAD’s a highly capable nano-scale robotic system, a true autonomous assembler. But he’s not an independent entity the way you’re describing. He acts according to a program. Everything he does is programmed.”
“Then the question is the program, isn’t it, Dr. Duncan? And how well you understand that program. And who did the programming. Ultimately, it comes down to humans and how they interact with ANAD.”
Duncan didn’t like the way this conversation was proceeding. She went back to her tests, subtly moving Lofton away from the control console. The Major stepped back. “I think I can vouch for all the humans around here, everyone who’s had anything to do with ANAD.”
Lofton made no reply to that.
Later, the Major cornered Winger is a small vestibule one floor below the Lab. A light snow had started outside the beaded glass windows.
“Lieutenant, I wanted to let you know I came from Table Top with additional orders…from Major Kraft. Orders I couldn’t reveal upstairs, to Dr. Duncan and the techs.”
Winger was instantly alert. “Orders…for me, Major?”
“In a way. First, some background. In recent months, Q2’s been working on a little project ourselves, using some older versions of ANAD. We’ve developed a way to plant small formations of ANAD on the physical person of anyone we would like to observe. On the spot surveillance, if you like. A spybot.”
Winger had heard scuttlebutt about such things. “We’ve always tried to keep pretty tight control on how ANAD technology is applied.”
“I’m sure you have. This comes from on high…CINCQUANT himself authorized the work. Lieutenant, I’ll cut right to the point. I have authority and orders from Major Kraft directing you, with my help, to load some special configs I’ve brought into ANAD. These configs will allow your ANAD version here to function as a spybot. A surveillance mech to be planted on ‘persons of interest.’ Your orders are to assist me in any way possible. Here—“ Lofton pulled a small tab from his pocket. “Read and study.”
Winger took the tab and inserted it into a port on his wristpad. A small vid with Quantum Corps authentication started up. It was Kraft. Everything Lofton was saying was true. And it was clear that Ironpants meant business. Winger stopped the vid.
“Major, just who are these persons of interest?”
Lofton looked up at the ornate ceiling, studded with rococo molding and intricate tiles. “Everybody up there in the Lab, Lieutenant. Dr. Duncan, Stovacs, that girl James, everybody. They’re all ‘persons of interest.’ But I’ll need your help. Duncan said you now have some kind of capsule surgically implanted in your shoulder…you can carry a master ANAD bot.”
Winger explained the procedure and what they had learned so far. “ANAD and me…we’re like big brother, little brother, I guess. We’re getting to know each other, better and better every day.” He explained about the quantum coupler, not sure if Lofton was even cleared for the details. But there were orders from Major Kraft.
Lofton seemed energized by the idea. “This is great, Winger. When can we get started?”
Winger gave that some thought. “It’s a sure bet Doc Frost wouldn’t take kindly to me or anyone else tampering with the ANAD master bot. ANAD’s like a child to the Doc. We’ll have to do this after hours. Major, why don’t you meet me here tonight, say about midnight? I can use my own pass to get in.”
“Tonight, then,” Lofton agreed. “We’ll turn ANAD into the world’s smallest spy…and cop too.”
Dense fog blanketed the Northgate campus when Johnny Winger made his way across the grounds to Galen Hall later that night. Winger was leery of the fog after what had happened the day before; Doc Frost was still in the infirmary, recovering from his injuries. They had been lucky.
Winger hurried through the mist, absent-mindedly swatting at the tickle of the droplets on his neck. Only water, he kept telling himself. It’s only water.
He spied a car parked next to a utility loading dock. A form emerged, looking for all the world like a malevolent scarecrow. It was Major Lofton.
“Let’s get this done, Lieutenant. Lead the way.”
They went up to the fourth floor. Winger scanned himself and Lofton in, through all the biometrics, and they found themselves alone in a large room, partitioned off with ornate columns from the building’s previous life as a dormitory. In one corner, the containment tank with the ANAD master bot was wedged, draped with thick ganglia of cables and tubes. Consoles on wheels had been parked haphazardly around the tank. A metal frame enveloped the tank, mounting arrays of electron beam injectors, part of the containment system’s security screen, in case something went wrong.
“The way I see it, Major—“Winger started powering up the containment tank, system by system. A staticky image materialized on the imager screen, showing the interior scaffolding, hung with ‘grapes,’ the nanoscopic view of ANAD itself, beating to its own inner rhythm –“we have to go about this in a systematic way. You’ve got the config templates?”
Lofton pulled a small envelope out of his coat pocket. “Right here.”
Winger emptied the envelope and found a small memcube, a jelly bean-sized storage device. “First, I’ll load the configs and make sure everything works…nothing’s messed up. Then we’ll have to command ANAD to replicate some small swarms, formations, to implant on your subjects. Somehow, tomorrow I guess, we’ll have to do the implanting. You said you have some kind of interface control.”
Lofton nodded. “In my car. A little panel that fits in an attaché case. Pretty slick, if I do say so myself. Something Q2 rigged up last week. Once TinyEye’s implanted, we’ll be able to follow the subjects anywhere and everywhere they go. Even better, my configs give ANAD enhanced MOB capability. If we don’t like what a subject’s doing, we can command ANAD to replicate a Mobility Obstruction Barrier just like that—“ Lofton snapped his fingers. “Like dropping a net right on top of the suspect.”
“Swell,” Winger said sourly. “And probably beyond the law as well.”
Lofton sniffed. “We don’t need the law, Lieutenant. We’ve got orders. You do your job and let me do mine.”
So, shortly after midnight, in an otherwise unoccupied fourth floor lab atop Galen Hall, Winger and Lofton loaded and tested ANAD’s new surveillance configs.
Winger knew full well that Major Kraft didn't appreciate Security interfering with operational stuff but there wasn't much he could do about it. Lofton could go over his head to the Corps commander himself, if he wanted to. Kraft had little choice but to agree.
Winger could still see Ironpants’ pained face on the vid in his mind. "Do what he says," he told Winger. "And keep it quiet."
Winger listened carefully as Major Lofton had laid out the parameters of the TinyEye operation. Several nanomech surveillance swarms would be set up, able to unobtrusively observe a suspect at all wavelengths. Loaded into the ANAD master bot and replicated with the new configurations loaded, the TinyEye swarms could also fashion a virtual 'lens' and send photons back to be recorded. Whatever the subject did or said, would be well documented. For anything beyond surveillance, the Corps commander himself supposedly had to approve. Criminal or security investigations could not be allowed to compromise military operations.
Lofton was thoughtful, rubbing his trim black goatee. "If any of these jokers have a halo, TinyEye'll find it. Get started right away, Lieutenant, as soon as our ‘persons of interest’ come into the lab tomorrow morning…maybe I should say this morning. It’s already 0430 hours now…you’ve got probably about three hours. Notify me when all our little detectives are in place."
The config loading had gone on without incident. The ANAD master bot had responded to all checks and basic tests with flying colors. Winger had wanted to use his coupler link to have a ‘chat’ with the little bot, but Lofton’s presence made that inadvisable.
He went back to the campus residence hall he’d been assigned to, for several hours of shut-eye. But sleep wouldn’t come. He wasn’t sure just how he would swipe the TinyEye bots, now contained in several capsules in his coat pocket, against Dr. Duncan, Milan Stovacs and Celia James, the way he and Lofton had discussed for implanting the mechs.
But somehow it would have to be done and done in a way that seemed natural and wouldn’t arouse suspicions…or harassment charges.
It was times like these, he told himself, that he wondered if shoveling hay on the North Bar Pass ranch might have been a better choice.
Johnny Winger saw nothing of Major Lofton as he returned to Galen Hall the next morning. Dr. Duncan was in the lab, Celia was at the config console checking something with ANAD (this gave Winger a moment of concern…had he left a trail identifying what they had done the night before?) Stovacs was refitting some tubes on the outside of the containment tank.
Hi’s and good mornings were perfunctory and muted. Dr. Duncan always had a warm smile for Winger, along with a muffin and some tea. The two of them sat at a console where Duncan was reviewing a wish list of tests still to be run.
“I visited Irwin last night at the Infirmary. He thinks you and ANAD are ready for some more involved tests, now, Johnny. Replication, config change and approach and engagement tests, things with real tactical value.”
Winger sipped at his tea. It was hot and spicy, Burma Black, Duncan’s favorite. “Major Kraft will like that. He wants more operational results, as soon as we can get them.”
Duncan reached out and grasped Winger’s hand. “I know this upgrade has been hard on you, Johnny. On me and Irwin too, and that assault outside didn’t help. But the pace should be picking up soon…we just want to make sure you and ANAD are as close-coupled as possible, that the coupler works like it’s supposed to and ANAD does what it’s supposed to….”
Before Duncan had withdrawn her hand, Winger had surreptitiously brought his other hand, with one of the TinyEye capsules in his fist, against the sleeve of her lab coat. He quietly thumbed a button and the bots were quickly discharged. They took up residence among the fibers of her coat, looking for all the world like dust motes. Dust motes with eyes.
Mary Duncan seemed not to notice.
Ten minutes later, an awkward brush-by pass against Celia James, as she and Winger were jostling for positi
on around a coffeepot in the break room allowed capsule number 2 to emplace its contents on James’ lab coat. The pretty red-haired post-doc seemed unaware that anything other than an inadvertent collision by the sink had occurred.
Now, for Stovacs.
The lab tech left his work bench and headed out of lab down a corridor to the men’s room. That gave Winger an idea. He followed and parked himself just outside the door, pretending to be flipping through a loose-leaf binder. A few minutes later, Stovacs emerged from the restroom. Winger started forward, brushing against the technician as he exited.
“I’m sorry…excuse me—“ Winger apologized. They sideswiped each other in the doorway and in that moment, Winger pressed capsule number 3 against Stovacs’ coat. The small swarm was instantly released and clung to the coat fibers as the two men passed. Winger went inside, the door swinging shut, and Stovacs headed back to his bench, none the wiser.
Winger waited a decent interval, left the restroom and told Mary Duncan he needed to obtain something from his residence room in Harper Hall, on the other side of the central quad.
“I forgot it this morning…be back in a few minutes.”
“Sure, Johnny,” she said back absent-mindedly. Duncan was engaged with the master ANAD bot, positioning a few molecules near its effectors for some tests. “Here…let’s get ANAD loaded. When you get back, I want to try a new launch sequence on your shoulder capsule…I’ve changed some of the sequencing and it should be much faster now.”
Duncan initialized ANAD inside the containment tank, cycled open the port and launched ANAD out into the air. A faint shimmering mist formed and drifted toward Winger’s shoulder capsule. Moments later, he felt the familiar sting of the drone-snap and ANAD was safely tucked away inside the capsule. Its exterior port clicked shut.
“Snug as a bug,” Mary Duncan smiled, patting his shoulder. “Off you go—“
Winger left Galen Hall and spotted Lofton’s van parked near the utility entrance on the side. The Major was inside, already taking a feed from each of the now-deployed TinyEyes.
Lofton showed him the TinyEye feed. A set of monitors flashed data from the devices’ sensors: EM, acoustic, video and audio, and a dozen other channels.
"If we get close enough, Lieutenant, we can even scan gross EEG output. Can't quite read their thoughts yet. But it may not be long."
Winger poured a cup of steaming coffee from a nearby thermos and situated himself in front of the video feed, streaming back from the virtual 'lens' that TinyEye had formed.
"So where are your targets at the moment?"
Lofton had spit the feed three ways. “Dr. Duncan is at the containment controls, doing something with ANAD. She hasn’t moved. Ms. James is in the break room, pouring her fourth cup of coffee and having way too many doughnuts…those things aren’t good for your cholesterol, dear, you know that…”
“What about Stovacs?”
Lofton frowned. The third feed was showing a grainy, indistinct image. “This has just started to happen…something wrong with TinyEye—“
“I placed him just like the others.”
“That’s not it…” Lofton fiddled with gain and other controls, tweaking the tiny bot’s position. “I’ll spin up the propulsors…move him to a new spot.”
“Won’t he notice that?”
“TinyEye’s like a dust mote. Do you notice dust motes coming and going on your clothes? No…it’s not the position, something else maybe—“
Just then, the image went blank altogether, replaced by staticky loops and swirls.
“What’s happening, Major?”
Lofton swore under his breath. “We saw this in testing at Table Top a few weeks ago…something’s jamming Eye, interfering with its operation. If I didn’t know better—“
Winger studied Lofton’s interface controls. It had displays for configuration, effector status, propulsor setting…in all ways, it was a masterpiece of miniaturization. Why the hell can’t we get something like this in 1st Nano? Stupid freakin’ compartmentalized information….
Lofton tried everything he could, then sat back, and snapped his fingers. He’d made a decision. “Stovacs must be our man. It’s a halo, Lieutenant. Stovacs has some kind of embedded swarm that’s detected Eye and is fighting it off. Red Hammer does that for all its agents.”
“You don’t know that, Major…you can’t—“
But Lofton was already on a comm loop through his wristpad to Chief Wise of Northgate campus police. He explained what they had found. Wise’s face appeared in a small window on the pad, asked a few questions, then promised to send officers to Galen Hall within the hour. The window closed.
“Major, just because TinyEye isn’t sending a feed back doesn’t mean Milan Stovacs is a suspect.”
“You have a better explanation? We’ve seen halo signatures before…Nathan Caden had one. This matches the indications. And the other two Eyes are sending feeds back perfectly normally. No, Stovacs is hiding something, I’m sure of it.”
“Don’t you need some kind of warrant? Is the Chief making an arrest here?”
Lofton seemed disappointed at Winger. “I’m surprised at you, Lieutenant. You of all people should know what we’re dealing with here. If it’s an issue of security, like operating unidentified swarms without a permit, I’ve got all the authority I need to being Stovacs in.”
“The man does have rights, you know.”
Lofton sniffed. “He’ll get an attorney. Nobody’s stepping on anybody’s rights. But in the meantime, we’ll be asking a lot of questions.”
Winger felt his neck hairs stand up. “Memory tracing?”
Lofton nodded. “At the very least.”
Johnny Winger wasn’t in the least surprised that Lofton had already brought several Q2 techs and all the requisite gear to do the memory tracing. Stovacs had been taken into custody by Chief Wise and thrown into a small cell in the basement of the Admin Building, a holding area usually reserved for drunk student drivers, the occasional over-zealous protester and disorderly grad student conduct cases. He glared out at them through the bars.
“I demand to see a lawyer. You can’t hold me like this.”
Major Lofton was on hand, with Chief Wise, Johnny Winger and two techs from Table Top that Winger had never met: Corporal Sheena Neves and Sergeant Rudy Jung. Both were recent atomgrabber cadets, as was Winger, though not of the same class. Instead of Ops however, they’d chosen the Security track and wound up working for Lofton.
“Oh, don’t worry, Mr. Stovacs, we won’t hold you any longer than necessary. In fact, a lawyer from the Corps Judge Advocate’s office is already on the way. I just want to ask a few questions.”
Stovacs was a swarthy, dark-haired man with an aquiline nose. “I have nothing to say. I’m a grad student, an intern at the Lab and Dr. Frost and Duncan will vouch for me completely.”
“Oh…you don’t have to say anything, Mr. Stovacs. I can ask questions and find out what I want, even if you say nothing.”
Corporal Neves had administered a sedative into Stovacs’ arm before he realized it. The Carpathian just shook his head in disgust and lay down on his side on the bunk. A minute later, he was completely out.
The memory tracing took less than two hours, all of it conducted right in Stovacs’ holding cell. A cart was produced and Lofton’s mobile interface control unit in its attaché case was secured to the cart top. The whole thing was wheeled into the cell, where the sedated intern was fastened to his bunk and quickly prepped for ANAD insert.
Winger knew that this particular version of ANAD was optimized for just such functions as memory tracing.
Lofton looked up at Winger, while Neves and Jung made the unwilling subject ready.
“Lieutenant, I know you have some experience with this technique. I’ll be asking your help at times during the session…Neves and Jung are newbies at this.”
Winger tried to conceal a sour look, n
ot very successfully. He’d never found invading someone’s skull and reading memory traces particularly palatable. “Sure thing, Major. What- ever you need.” He knew perfectly well that any resistance on his part would find its way back to Major Kraft and he’d be ordered to assist anyway.
Sergeant Jung tapped a short sequence of instructions on the keyboard. Inside the containment cylinder attached to the briefcase, ANAD responded to the command, readying itself for launch.
"ANAD reports ready in all respects," came the high-pitched voice.
Lofton suppressed a slight smile. "The little guy sounds like a teenager on his first date."
Chief Wise was on hand, nervously chewing on a fingernail. “We should wait for the attorneys, Major. This really isn’t kosher, conducting a session like this without the subject having legal representation.”
But Lofton wasn’t stopping for anything now. “It’s a national security matter, Chief. The laws are quite clear on what is and isn’t kosher under these conditions.”
"Gives me the creeps, I don't mind telling you," Chief Wise admitted. "Invading someone's mind like this--"
"It's just a high-powered lie detector," said Sergeant Jung.
"Let's get going," Lofton growled. "If Stovacs knows anything about bot swarms or Red Hammer, I want to know it. It's too late for legal niceties now. Permission to launch."
Strapped to a gurney next to the containment cylinder, Milan Stovacs had been fully prepped for ANAD insertion. His body was surrounded by a fine mesh of sensors--the vascular grid--that would precisely locate ANAD inside his body, once the mech was inserted.
Corporal Neves patted down the incision that had been made in Stovacs’ neck. "Okay, Sergeant, subject's prepped and ready."
Jung handed her the injector tube, attached by hose to the containment cylinder. Inside, the modified ANAD ticked over, ready to be launched.
"Steady even suction, Corporal," Jung reminded her. "ANAD, report status--"
The teenager's voice crackled over the circuit. "ANAD effectors safed for launch. All parameters normal. Internal bonds and states are stable. Sensors primed and registered. Core functions initialized…I'm ready to fly, fellows--"
Jung glanced up at Major Lofton, an embarrassed smile on his lips. "The assembler uses a small percentage of his computational ability to simulate emotional states…sometimes, it correlates, er, inappropriately."
"Get on with it," Lofton ordered.
"Vascular grid?" Jung asked.
"Tracking," said Neves. She tuned the grid to pick up the mech as soon as it was inserted.
"Let's go, then."
The insert went smoothly enough. A slug of plasma forced the master replicant into Stovacs’ capillary network at high pressure. Johnny Winger watched the board carefully and quickly saw a good acoustic pulse seconds later. Good so far, he told himself. He knew TinyEye had encountered what was probably a Red Hammer halo when he had first emplaced the spybot on the intern. Now, Neves selected Fly-by-Stick to test out the controls. A few minutes' run on propulsors brought ANAD to a dense mat of capillary tissue.
Lofton studied the sounder image. "Looks like you're ready for transit, Corporal. You can force those cell membranes any time. Lieutenant Winger, do you see anything we should be aware of?”
Winger didn’t. “Negative, Major. If Stovacs has an inserted halo, it’s inactive so far. I don’t see any conflicts. No alarms popping up.”
Neves told ANAD to probe for weak spots in a clump of lipids, clinging like a bunch of grapes in the middle of the wall. "I'll try there first--"
She steered ANAD toward a cleft in the membrane lipids, pulsing one of the carbene grabbers to twist a nearby molecule just so, then released the lipid and slingshot herself forward through the gap. Seconds later, ANAD was floating in a plasma bath, dark, viny shapes visible off in the distance. She tweaked the picowatt propulsor to a higher power setting and took a navigation hack off the grid.
"Aortic cavity, Major. Just past the Islet of Duchin, I'd say. Looks like we're in, sir. Where are we going now?"
Start Trace Matching….
Stovacs shuts down a window on his workstation monitor and finishes fitting a nutrient supply tube to the end of the containment tank. Dr. Duncan is at the other end of the tank, fiddling with some instrument. Celia is at the config console, loading something into ANAD’s processor.
Stovacs gets up and tells them both he’s headed to the men’s room.
Duncan and Celia wave back. Stovacs pushes through a heavy hatch door and the security system beeps as it records his departure.
He walks down the corridor to the men’s room, pushes at the door and almost collides with Johnny Winger.
“Excuse me,” Winger says, as he shuffles to the side. Stovacs puts on a fake smile.
The two men brush against each other as Winger leaves and Stovacs enters.
He looks down just in time to see Winger’s hand, a small capsule just protruding from his fist, pull back from contact….
(The imager blurs, shot through with streaks of light, peculiar starbursts and fragments of hazy, out of focus visuals, all jumbled up. The speaker crackles with static--)
Sheena Neves fiddled with her joystick, tried tweaking the gain on the signal. "Looks like we lost that trace, Major. Just fizzled out."
Major Lofton glared in disgust at the IC panel. "Can you get it back?"
Johnny Winger shook his head. He had seen what had happened. "Faded out, Major…she didn't have a good gradient to follow. Maybe a backtrack--"
Lofton was standing beside Chief Wise, who rubbed stubble on his chin uneasily. "Eerie, isn't it? Seeing things through another man's eyes."
"Gives me the creeps," the Chief admitted.
"It seems to work well enough," Lofton said. "Couldn't tell you the theory behind it."
"Looks like a damn circus trick," Wise growled. "Makes me nervous. We can really play back someone's memories like a recording?"
"Not exactly, sir," said Winger. He was helping Neves and Jung sniff out new traces for ANAD to follow. "We just put ANAD inside the suspect and replicate a few trillion times. Then we put the whole herd in 'bloodhound' mode and go hunting."
"What exactly are you hunting for?"
"Everybody makes memories the same way. It's called Long-term Potentiation. One of the chemical signatures of LTP is a molecule called glutamate…helps open a second voltage-gated channel inside the post-synaptic membrane--"
Lofton intervened. "Allow me, Lieutenant. In plain English, Chief, what it boils down to is that we can construct crude renditions of memory traces existent in the subject's brain, up to ten to fifteen days after the memory trace is laid down. We've been doing it experimentally at Table Top for the last six months. ANAD shuttles around inside the subject's head like a bunch of bees, sniffing out calcium sinks in every neuron, looking for equal concentrations, down to the parts per trillion. Everywhere that concentration is equal is a pathway, burned in, a memory trace. ANAD follows it, sends back data on whatever it finds--calcium levels, sodium levels, activation times, lots of stuff. We can re-construct a very crude version of what originally laid down that track. Then we put it on the imager, cobbled out of visual and auditory sensory traces in this particular case. They're the easiest."
"It's sort of like painting somebody's portrait from their shadow," added Winger. "I've been to the Northgate lab before. They actually used me as a guinea pig too. Kind of an echo of a memory, if you like."
Chief Wise was dubious. "Sounds pretty nebulous to me. Why did we just now lose the trace?"
"Unknown," said Winger. He took a seat next to Corporal Neves. “If I may--?” His fingers were soon flying over the keyboard, managing ANAD's configuration, checking its parameters. "Somehow, we lost the trace…just petered out. It happens. All you can do is backtrack to a known point and start sniffing again."
Wise stared from the image
r display to Stovacs’ still body, lightly breathing, and back again. He half expected to see the poor sap twitch or move a leg or something. "So where is ANAD now?"
Lofton was keen to keep the upper hand in this demo. He didn’t appreciate being upstaged by some newly minted boy wonder atomgrabber. Winger occasionally drifted off into outer space with all his explanations. Kraft’s kids were all space cadets like that. It took an old beat cop like Lofton to keep his feet planted firmly on Earth. "Here's the vascular grid, Chief--" he fingered the IC display to the side of the imager. The grid was a 3-D iconic image of Stovacs’ skull. "--I'd say…right about here…basal hippocampus region. Most of the swarm's about a hundred thousand microns anterior to the lateral septum."
"We're picking up something," Winger muttered. As Lofton watched over his shoulder, hoping to learn something more to impress the Chief with, Winger and Neves steered through a dense bog of dendrites. Thickets of axon fibers clouded the imager, now slaved to ANAD's electromagnetic sounder. "--strong trace…this one's holding, looks like--"
"Stay with it," Lofton encouraged him.
"I'm altering config--" Winger said in a low voice. "It'll help us sort out the traffic--lots of chem crap around here--"
Stovacs stirred lightly on the gurney, until Jung steadied his body. "He's coming back through Level 4," the sergeant muttered. "We'd better hurry, Lieutenant, if we're going to get anything out of this--"
"I'm trying,” Winger glared at the imager, flexed his fingers around the hand controllers. He let ANAD finish changing config, noting that all the other trillion mechs slaved to the master had done likewise, then maneuvered the device into the lee of a dendritic 'breakwater'…sniffing for calcium, sodium, anything it could follow, grabbing molecules left and right, until at last, Winger cracked the barest hint of a smile. Deep inside the unconscious brain of Milan Stovacs, the Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler blazed away at incredible speed, spasmodically sorting and advancing along the barest whiff of a chemical highway.
Seconds later, a green light illuminated alongside the screen. The sparky haze began to part--ANAD sent back a signal indicating readiness--
Start Trace Matching….
…and that’s when the first bots emerged from the tear ducts of Stovacs’ eyes.
Unseen by anyone, a small force of Red Hammer halo mechs, deeply buried in Stovacs’ ventral tegmentum, had detached from the main formation. Detected but not noticed, the force exited the ventral tegmentum and beat its way at flank speed toward the optic nerve, a bundle of fibers in Stovacs’ visual cortex near the front of his brain. Passing the Nodes of Ranvier, the force silently cruised outward along the fiber bundle, steadily closing on the inner membranes of the intern's eyeball.
It was the quickest way for any mech to exit the brain.
"Reading high heat signature," Neves reported. "Vascular grid's registering something like a hundred thousand picojoules, and rising."
Winger acknowledged the figure. "This fellow's out like a slab of stone and he's emitting like a supernova." He refreshed the imager with more data. "Quick count, Major…look at that, will you? ANAD's pulsing the plasma and the density's dropping."
Lofton saw the data. The barest hint of a suspicion came to his mind. "Fewer mechs, maybe? Or a tissue leak?"
"Hard to say at the moment. Maybe ANAD's holding its own. Sure wish we could get an image--"
"When the dust settles, Lieutenant. Patience. Let’s just try to get a trace back." Lofton watched the same density readings Winger had pointed out. Sure enough, the numbers were falling. But it might not mean anything…you could never tell with these blasted bugs, Lofton said to himself.
And still unnoticed, a small detached force of Red Hammer mechs had finally reached its objective. Slowing to transit the narrowing tube of interstitial fluid, the force passed through the lachrymal duct at the corner of Stovacs’ eye and surfaced like a fleet of miniature subs through the corneal film to the outer surface of the eyeball. There they floated for a few seconds, until the replication order came.
Johnny Winger had seen this type of signature before. Something about-- "Major, I've got the strangest feeling," he admitted. "Like I'm dueling with a very keen intelligence here--"
The hunt for a fresh trace went on for several minutes. Taking a fix from the vascular grid, Winger navigated Stovacs’ Islet of Duchin and cruised in expanding circles through jungles of thick axons, stopping from time to time to listen, occasionally sounding the debris for telltale pulses.
It was damned frustrating but Winger tried not to show it. He didn’t want Neves or Jung to think he’d somehow lost his touch with ANAD.
"Nothing, Major," he said. "It's like all traces have just disappeared."
"Maybe ANAD is being blocked somehow, or decoyed. Any other signatures around?”
Winger had begun to wonder the same thing. "Sergeant, anything else on the vascular grid?"
It was Sergeant Jung who saw the pressure spike from Stovacs’ eye, a fraction of a second before the swarm ballooned out into the cell.
"Ah…Lieutenant, something seems to be--"
"LOOK OUT--!!" Neves’ scream filled the entire cellblock.
Nanotroopers Episode 4: ANAD Page 10
