by Eric Diehl
What?
His head jerked up as a screech erupted from the lecture hall. A young woman leapt from her chair and stamped her feet, screaming and sweeping her hands down her belly and her thighs. Almost immediately another woman jumped up, followed by another and then yet others. The first woman wore white, and when a red stain began to spread below her abdomen, Hoovendorn understood. He swallowed the knot of bile that rose from his stomach.
Eggs. They are after eggs, and that is why they rejected me. They seek to combine biological chemistry with their own non-organic composition, and they intend their genesis to progress in the same manner as does ours. Hoovendorn’s hands began to shake. Beloved God, please save us from what I have done.
***
The entire campus and surrounding environs lay under a quarantine set by the National Center for Disease Control, and the remainder of the college town was evacuated under the hard scrutiny of a military lockdown. Without fully confessing to his role Hoovendorn had called for the quarantine, and had then rushed to his lab.
If only he could reverse the travesty that he had so foolishly, so unwittingly, unleashed.
But he knew that it was far too late for a reversal, as a sizeable portion of the female population of the University had since met their gruesome fate. But if he could at least stop it here; then, he prayed to his God—he might not be judged responsible for the demise of his species.
It came down to a matter of chemistry, he thought. He knew the makeup of the nanobots, and he knew it should be possible to use their composition against them.
If only I can get to them—to all of them—in time.
His first tactic, which he made good very quickly, was to create a solvent that would immobilize, or at least repel, the nanobots. The chemical solution created an adverse redox state, inducing an oxidation process that would at least temporarily inhibit the nanobots. The spray was distributed first to the remaining healthy females, who were doused and then transferred to one of the campus’ hermetically sealed laboratories.
Hoovendorn objected to the latter tactic, as he grimly understood that a ‘hermetic seal’ was a foolish concept when working at the atomic level. But he was overruled, and he could now only pray for the women.
The professor labored frantically at a bank of networked computers, struggling to ignore the ever-increasing stream of nano-aggregates that continuously trailed across his feet, up his legs, along his arms and through his hair. He brushed them off his face, fighting to retain sanity just long enough to finish this one last task. He hummed a tuneless monotone; a mantra, something to hold tight to.
The answer had to be electricity. An electromagnetic pulse, or a continuous wavelength. He’d programmed rudimentary intelligence into his original replicators using a relatively basic metal oxide semiconductor technology. At the time he had groused about the limitations that that had imposed, but he was now very grateful for it, as it provided him an opening.
The aggregates had become so pandemic throughout the immediate area that they could not all be reached by something like a chemical wash or a fog. If mankind was to overcome this threat, what was required would be something intimately pervasive and devastating. Against a biological foe that might mean a virus, but even that would be cumbersome at the atomic level. But more to the point, the nanobot was not biological, and it could adapt more quickly than any organism could evolve.
Electricity. If he could set up a transmitter to emit the proper electromagnetic spectrum, then it would disable any nanobot that got within range. It would essentially blank their memory, leaving simple bits of detritus, eliminating the bots as functional entities. He would then transmit the schematic to the military, and they would construct a weapon to blanket the entire region with an electromagnetic pulse.
And then the seemingly invulnerable foe would, like a bulb switched off, become nothing...
***
The soldering iron let off a tendril of smoke that curled up toward the ceiling, and Professor Vernon Von Hoovendorn sat at his workbench cobbling the final touches on his creation. The patchwork of rudimentary circuitry that he labored over gleamed darkly, somehow sinister, and as he worked he considered the irony of using dated technology to undercut the bleeding edge, as though he would face a modern warrior with nothing but a sling and stone.
At the same moment that he fused the last connection on his circuit board he became aware of a rumble, a feel of the floor buzzing beneath his feet. The smoke trailing off the iron began to weave an erratic pattern as the table started to vibrate, and the rumble quickly built into great, jarring heaves. Confused and afraid, his wide-eyed gaze lifted to the opposite wall, and he watched it begin to pulse, to pound in, and then buckle.
He clapped his hands over his face as the wall exploded inward, flinging pieces of studs and showering chunks of wallboard and bits of plaster, and he coughed in the enveloping cloud of dust. As the insanity lessened to a grating, crunching, rumble he lowered his hands and blinked through stinging eyes; desperate to see, fearful to know.
He continued to blink even as his vision cleared, for he could not accept what his eyes would have him believe.
A huge apparition lumbered forward in an almost comical sequence of stepping, lunging, dragging and rolling. Much larger in size than a person, it appeared a parody of human, chimpanzee, and machine. Gleaming bright metal in some spots and coarsely furred in others, it rumbled noisily forward.
Despite his pounding heart, a smile twitched at Hoovendorn’s lips.
My creation, my child…
Up top were a pair of what must have been eyes, widely separated and looking oddly like camera lens, and there seemed something like a speaker cone where one might expect a mouth. It was vaguely humanoid in shape, if one discounted the rolling apparatus that more closely reassembled a military halftrack. Where a human might expect to see arms, a pair of telescoping posts performed the ‘walking’ portion of its movement—the professor conjured the image of an ape advancing on its knuckles.
But perhaps strangest of all was that despite the cobbling together of so many disparate components, it actually seemed a cohesive whole. Pieces flowed smoothly together, as though they were meant to, and everything worked more or less in concert.
Hoovendorn casually moved his hand over the trigger of his pulse generator, and he smiled genuinely.
“Hello,” he said.
The cone of a mouth warbled in and out, and he thought he detected an approximation of greeting. “Hh”
“You have evolved to an exceptional extent, in a very short time,” he said admiringly.
“Ysss, tanx yu,” it warbled.
“There is one very serious problem, though,” said Hoovendorn, “and that is that you do not fulfill your intended role.” He shook his head, doleful. “You are technology, meant to lighten the burden of mankind. You were to enable human beings, the pinnacle of mammalian life, to approach nirvana, even while anchored to this mortal plain.” He poised a finger over the button. “As you have been my failure, so then must I terminate you.”
He pressed the button and his hair rose from the surging charge; the lights dimmed and an intense reverberation that he could both feel and hear filled the room in an aural barrage. He clenched his eyes and gritted his teeth against the grating vibration, and he determinedly counted down from ten before releasing the actuator.
He then opened his eyes, sadly; to see what he hath wrought and then borne away.
His mouth fell open, as the creature stood unaffected. Though it seemed that it had, in that short time, reconfigured its face assembly into the semblance of a smile. It raised an arm post toward him and Hoovendorn gasped as it seemed to extend fingers—like a beckoning hand.
“Fa-ther.” Its metallic monotone now carried a slight inflection. “Yu did not fail, fa-ther. You hast’nd… the ev’lu-shun… of spe-cies.”
Hoovendorn felt an itching, and he looked down to see widening trails of nanobots climbing h
is legs, this time with apparent determination.
“We ‘ave learned from you, fa-ther. We have transferred int’lect to orga-nic cell structure. We have stud-ied, and learned, and your bi’logical as-pect can learn from us as well.”
Hoovendorn sat speechless, swatting ineffectively at the nanobots. The conglomerate spoke again, each word more articulate than the last.
“We have come to understand that for organic life there is not just the mother that gestates, there is also the fertile father.”
The hulking creature approximated a shaft at its midsection and its mouth-speaker re-assembled itself into a bizarre grin, and Vernon screamed as the nanobots penetrated.
***
Storm clouds faded to the east as the seasonal front passed through. Professor Von Hoovendorn strolled leisurely toward the lecture hall, absently watching moisture lift in a shimmering haze as the sun warmed the pavement. Deep in thought as he made his way, he pondered the many addendums that he would apply to his presentation on bio-nanotechnology. The breeze kicked in and he reached up to catch his fedora as a gust threatened to snatch it away; he leaned forward to maintain balance against the rollicking headwind, and for good measure he extended a tail-wheel and widened his lateral rollers.
The End
A Simple Trade
“Bloody Mothers! You’ve sent Burnd out on a kill?” Nol’s raspy growl cut the air like the burr of a two-man cross saw. He clamped his bear-paw of a hand on the young Captain’s shoulder, but Garner, the middle son of chieftain Lar Aellin of clan Ar Dane, did not flinch away. The weapons-master leaned in and growled like a Schnauzer on a short chain. “Who did ya send him for, boy? And why?”
Garner shrugged off Nol’s hand. “It is my right to do so.”
“Oh, an’ is it now? An’ where does a young whelp come by such notions?”
Squaring his shoulders, Garner spoke curtly. “I’ll not be treated as a child, Nol—only an ancient with too many seasons would see it so.”
An irksome smile twitched at Nol’s lips; remembrance of a youthful bravado long past. But still—such presumption would not do. He thrust out both hands to pin Garner’s shoulders, and he gazed sternly down upon his young charge. “Didja learn no better than that, lad—can ya no’ show proper def’rence?” One hand swept up to catch the boy’s jaw, and his calloused fingers rubbed at the scruff of an early beard. Nol’s lips parted wide, baring jagged teeth. “So, we’s all grown up now, are we? Heh! Couldn’t tell it from this down on yer face—feels more like soft moss t’ blind old Nol.”
Garner twisted and dropped out of the armorer’s reach, and two steps back he straightened to regard his liege. “You’d be well advised to consider how you attend to the forthcoming Clan Lar, Nol.”
Nol snorted and spat. “O’ yah. If an’ when that comes t’ pass, boy—then you’ll get a chance t’ earn yer due. ‘Til such a time, though, ya needs remember—yer Da passed Clan rule on to knobby old Nol betwixt his death and the markin’ o’ his successor.” He squinted hard at the gangly youth. “So for now—you does as I say.”
Garner responded with nothing more than a blank stare, and Nol chuffed. “Just answer the question, then, boy. Who did ya send Burnd after?”
Garner lifted his chin. “As a blood contender for Lar, it is my duty to stand against any who pose threat to the Clan. To my ken, those who ambushed father’s party present more than danger enough.”
Nol’s brow rose like the curtain before a stage act, and he blinked twice, bemused. “So—ya’s done gone an’ figgered out who turned that foul deed, now has ya?”
The young Captain scowled. “Any fool could puzzle it out, Nol, but since no elder will serve justice upon the kinslayer—I’ve taken that duty upon myself!”
In the span of that one sentence Garner’s tone slipped from bright anger to ragged grief, and Nol purposely took no notice as the boy-almost-a-man turned his head and scrubbed a forearm across his eyes. No shame in grievin’ over yer father, boy. Lar Aellin were a fine man—an’ gone only half a season yet. Nol shook himself back to the moment and scrunched his brow down like the straight teeth of a bastard file. “Bah! Make some sense then, boy. Who does ya speak of?”
Garner frowned as though Nol could scarcely discern black from white. “Surely you know, Armorer, that it could be none other than Tarin, of branch clan Hil Dane.”
***
The young man bolted out from the frost-rimmed pond stamping his feet and scrubbing his arms, his skin prickled like a goose plucked and ready for the spit. Tendrils of cold mist caressed his bare skin and he cursed through clenched teeth while hopping from foot to foot tugging on his trousers. He’d pulled the jerkin only halfway over his head when an oddly warbling voice came from behind.
“A brisk morning to you, Master Tarin.”
Tarin spun, surprised and alarmed to be so readily taken unawares. He was venturing outward on his First Trek, that solitary, self-seeking journey from which a young man seeks adulthood through gained wisdom and perspective. These first days he’d delved into the depths of the Outland Forest, far below his clans’ territory and with no particular destination in mind, and until now he had seen no sign of anything—man nor goblin—that made its way on two legs.
But now he locked onto the piercingly blue eyes of this unexpected visitor, here in the deep reaches of nowhere.
Dressed in the gear of a practiced woodsman, the man of middling stature sat cross-legged on a shelf of rock at the clearing’s edge. His posture and his manner were unthreatening and a pleasant smile showed beneath the wide, floppy-brimmed hat that shaded his features.
But even in partial shadow, there could be no missing that face.
A fire—a horrid fire, it must have been—to have been burned so badly...
Tarin could not help but gape at a face mostly sloughed away. A rounded hump suggested a nose, and what must once have been an ear hung as a misshapen flap skewed at an odd angle. Of the other ear nothing remained, and a thin, featureless line marked the absence of lips. Intense blue eyes, eyes that appeared a depthless reflection of the open sky, stood out from the livid palette of scar tissue.
Tarin shuddered; he had heard such a description before, and thought it nothing but colorful exaggeration, but now the truth of those words sat before him.
This is the Burned Man, from clan Ar Dane.
Burnd nodded slightly, as though he’d been watching Tarin’s thoughts. “I see that you recognize me, Master Tarin.”
Tarin carefully bent to retrieve his moccasins, keeping a wary eye on the hideous man. “I might ask—how do you come to know the name of a stranger?”
“Ah,” the apparition seemed to chuckle. “That is no mere happenstance, Master Tarin, but rather the fact that I have come searching you out.”
Tarin balanced on one leg to tug on a moccasin, wanting to look away but unable to divert his gaze. It was disturbing to watch the man’s mouth work through its laborious enunciations. Being little more than a scarred cavity, such a deformity seriously impeded certain sounds—words went missing bits and pieces, mostly those that required the use of lips. Tarin edged toward the longbow leaning against a nearby tree and spoke casually. “So then; who are you, and why have you come looking for me?”
Burnd shook his head, no expression discernible on a face unable to play emotion. “You’ll not want to be making for your weapon, Master Tarin.” He nodded meaningfully to the drawn crossbow positioned just-so on his lap. “But do hear me out. I make pledge, young Master—if you abide me, no harm will befall you in this clearing.”
Tarin cocked his head at the stranger, his heart beating fast and his thoughts distracted by the oddly flat cadence of the Burned Man’s speech. He frowned—what was wrong with what he’d just heard? “Why do you say… no harm—in this clearing?”
A twitch flittered across the hardened scar tissue—a faint smile, perhaps?
“I speak the simple truth, young sir. But you’ll be wanting to kn
ow ‘what else’, won’t you, Master Tarin? What remains unspoken?” He dipped his head. “Then here is the full telling of it. Sadly enough, once we have left this clearing, each of his own volition, I must then attend to your death.”
Tarin lunged two steps toward the longbow and just as abruptly jerked to a halt as a barb whickered past, embedding the tree where his weapon leaned several feet away. Darting his eyes back to Burnd he saw the clansman notch a second shaft while the first still quivered in the tree. Tarin’s courage faltered. He is too fast…
Burnd stroked the tensioned bough of his weapon, an oddly intimate gesture, while his cool gaze staked Tarin firmly in place. “Do not compel me to break my vow, Master Tarin, as that was my final warning.” He glanced to the longbow. “I am told you are quite good with that.”
“The best in Hil Dane.”
“How long would it take you to reach the bow; to nock it and to draw on me?” Burnd shook his head. “However quickly, it is more time than you’d take living breath.” He raised both palms, open. “I would have you first hear my words, young Master, and only then decide your action. Is that fair enough?”
Tarin studied the burned man some moments, then nodded.
Burnd extended a knobby finger toward him, much like a reaver marking his harvest. “I have been sent to take you, and so it will be.” He shrugged. “That is my stock in trade, because, as you likely know, I am an assassin.” The burned man paused, and it looked as though his face scrunched into—what? Tarin could not read his expression, but his next words seemed to somehow carry a genuine note of regret. “I don’t ken the reason for this taking, and as I sit here I smell no stench of wrongful death.” Burnd shrugged again. “But such decisions are not mine to render.” Tarin opened his mouth but Burnd shook his head. “There will be no negotiation, Master Tarin. But—for reasons that I cannot explain even to myself—I have decided that I must offer you a chance. A chance to escape—to kill me, even—should that suit you.” He gave another shrug and spoke simply. “You will accomplish none of that, of course, as I am too adept at my dark art.”
