Harvest
Page 7
“Wouldn’t it make sense to just tell them the truth? Don’t we want everyone else’s D-tats removed too?” Vars asked. It just didn’t make sense...
“Oh, it’s just a matter of time before someone else discovers the nanobots,” Alice said. “And then all the D-tats will come out. But first we need to learn what the bots are about. On the journey, we’ll be in an isolated environment, so there’s no harm. Not right away. It’ll be our chance to study—”
“Alice, this is crazy! If these bots are crawling through our bodies, we have to remove them. All of us.”
Alice sighed. “Matteo doesn’t think that’s even possible. We’ve been consuming the microplastics for decades as part of our food and water. And they’re self-replicating. These things are everywhere.”
“Are we…are we under invasion?” Vars couldn’t believe she’d just uttered these words. First interstellar war and now this. But what else could this be?
“Yes. Or, at least, that’s the consensus among the Vault Elders.”
Vars was having trouble taking all this in. “Did my dad agree with this? He wants to keep the nanobots a secret too?”
“It’s only for a little while, Vars. We want to see what these things do once we get close to the artifact. If this is an invasion, we need to know their objectives. We need to understand what their goals. Otherwise how do we stop them? But obviously, Matteo doesn’t want you to get the implants.”
Vars shook her head. “No. You’re both nuts. I have to go tell Ian.” She turned to leave, but Alice grabbed her wrist.
“Vars. There’s more. D-tats are addictive—you know that. My tats were recent, so it wasn’t an issue for me. But the twins have been tatted for practically their whole lives. Can you imagine what would happen to them if they had theirs removed? They wouldn’t be able to go on the mission. They probably won’t even be able to function. I’d bet neither of them ever stoop to using tactile interfaces. They do everything via direct neural commands through their implants.”
Vars didn’t think it was one hundred percent accurate—she had seen the twins touch their wrist implants—but it was close to the truth. The twins flaunted their proficiency with implant technology. It was a matter of pride somehow, too. Removing D-tats would amount to hand amputation for them...or worse.
“And it’s not just them,” Alice continued. “Ian would have to postpone the mission, probably gather a new group of scientists. It would put us back years. Do you think we have that much time? If this is a prelude to an alien invasion, we have to get out there and figure out what we are facing. We don’t have a choice. We can’t wait. You see that, Vars, right?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“Once we’re out of here, we can ‘fumigate’ our ship and perform whatever extractions and purifications are necessary,” Alice said. “But until then, you can’t say anything about this.”
The intensity in the woman’s voice frightened Vars. She didn’t have time to think this through. She had to rely on the conclusions of her father and his Seed Elders; they had deliberated for a long time, it seemed. And Alice was so smart.
“But why can’t we at least tell Ian?” Vars asked. “He should know.”
“Because he’d have to report it, and we’d be stuck in a morass of panic and bureaucracy. I expect our mission would be turned into a military operation, and you can just imagine what that would mean to scientific exploration and decision-making.”
“The nanobots would be considered an act of war,” Vars said, understanding. “But it might not be war.”
“Precisely,” said Alice. “If we wanted to explore another star system, wouldn’t we send nanobots first? Perhaps just a few self-assembling units?”
“Something to explore the environment and report back,” Vars speculated.
“Right. And it’s not a given that these aliens—these Mims—were even aware that we’d be vulnerable to these bots. Matteo believes that if it weren’t for the microplastics in our water systems, the bots wouldn’t have spread as widely as they did; they wouldn’t have invaded our bodies.”
“So it could all be just a huge mistake,” Vars said. She thought back to this afternoon with the twins. They were already talking war. She had to stop the team from assuming the worst prior to gathering the facts.
“Or, let’s not kid ourselves,” Alice said. “It could be a full-blown invasion. We don’t know. But if we tell Ian and the military gets involved, they’ll assume it’s an all-out invasion, and that’ll be the end of that.”
Vars looked at the small woman who was still barely able to stand after her brutal procedure. “I understand now. I just…I’m sorry I reacted the way I did, Alice. The idea of having bots crawling around inside me…”
“I was furious with Matteo when he told me,” Alice confessed. “I wanted to rip my implants out right there and then. Fear clouded everything. Then I spoke to Elder Alaba, our Seed Vault’s senior member, and he made me understand.” She smiled. “He’s an amazing man. He was one of the original Seeds. Back then, he didn’t even have the choice to leave the Vault like I did—being sent into the Vault was a life sentence. But Elder Alaba embraced his duty to raise a generation of humans that could bounce back after a catastrophe. He helped design the Vault systems, figured out the politics and psychological solutions to Seed internment. We couldn’t have succeeded without him.”
“You sound as if you almost miss it,” Vars said.
Alice laughed. “In a way. I mean… I left the Vault as soon as I could. I couldn’t have lived down there my whole life, even though I had the best education, the best teachers, and a very supportive community. But mostly, I’m just glad the Vault is there. It’s comforting to know that there’s a backup for humankind. Just in case something happens, there is someone ready to pick up the pieces and start over.”
Vars realized she had no idea what it was like to be a Seed. What it had been like for her dad. What might it have meant for her, if she had stayed. Even after she found out that she was a Seed, she hadn’t tried to figure it out.
“There’s a taboo in our culture that arrests the desire to know more about the Vaults,” Alice said, as if reading her mind. “All those stupid stories about Seed prostitutes? The tabloid nightmares and horror movie fodder? Those are just something the Elders came up with to keep the Vaults safe. Because in a time of plenty, there would be a desire to dismantle the whole system. People are quick to forget the past.”
Vars knew Alice was right. If there was an open debate today, people would choose to end the Human Genome Heritage Project. The fear engendered by the Keres Triplets was gone...well, greatly diminished, now that asteroid sentinels and guidance systems were in place to remove dangerous rocks from Earth collision orbits. People felt safe.
“So,” Alice said. “We make sure you don’t get the D-tats. We move forward with the mission as planned. And once we’re far enough away from the Earth’s influence, we tell Ian and the others about the nanobots.”
“Unless they’ve already discovered the bots by then,” Vars said.
“Then it will be a moot point,” Alice agreed. “In that case, our job will be to keep the mission from falling under military control.”
“I understand and agree,” Vars said.
They returned to the EPSA dorms with Vars practically carrying Alice. Behind them, Vars thought she heard soft footfalls on the thick carpet of redwood needles. But perhaps she imagined it.
Chapter Seven
Matteo huddled next to a large heater. After decades of living in a relatively mild climate, he found the harsh Finnish winter difficult. His bones ached, and he felt out of sorts.
Of course, it might also have been because Vars had left for Mimas and he hadn’t even gotten a chance to hug his little girl goodbye. But Elder Alaba had insisted it be done this way. Nothing was to slow down that mission. Nothing.
What do these aliens want? Matteo asked himself over and over again. What would I do if I could infect billions of humans with nanobots that could interface directly with implanted devices that plugged into the planet-wide information and communication network? The possible answers to these questions kept him up late into the night and drove him out of bed early every morning.
“Matteo? Are you awake?” A tall, thin, redheaded woman placed a hand on his shoulder, and Matteo jumped. “Sorry!” she said.
“It’s okay, Phoebe. I guess I’m just not used to the quiet ways of the Seeds. Not anymore.” He looked up at her. “Had a good first night?”
He knew she hadn’t. Phoebe was a lifer by choice; she had never wanted to leave the Vault. But Elder Alaba insisted she joined Matteo’s team here at the facility. Phoebe was Matteo’s Seed-sister—as babies, they had been “donated” to the vault in the same year. She was born to parents who “won” the Vault lottery, while he was born in another Vault and transferred into Elder Alaba’s care as per Seed custom. Neither of them remembered their birth parents. Seed families tended to cause friction inside the Vault and were rarely allowed to stay together. Seeds were required to make regular deposits of their genetic material, just not to have children...but for another extinction-level event. As Seed-siblings, Matteo and Phoebe grew up together, studied together, worked together. Phoebe was the first person Matteo turned to when he discovered Vars as an abandoned baby outside the Vault’s door many years ago. She was really the only one, other than Elder Alaba, that Matteo had kept in personal contact with all this time. More importantly, she was a brilliant biologist—and that was what had gotten her attached to Matteo’s team, against her will.
Phoebe must have read the expression on his face. “Don’t blame yourself for my being here,” she said. “This was the only way.” It gave Matteo the creeps to know that little nanobots floated freely inside his body. It made him feel even worse to know that now Phoebe had them, too. “Elder Alaba promised me I’ll get cleaned and allowed back in someday,” she added.
Matteo doubted that would ever happen—no one who left the Vault had ever returned. But he didn’t say anything. If Phoebe needed to believe that she would be let back in, he would let her maintain that fantasy for a while.
“Well,” Matteo said. “I guess we’d better get to work.” He stood up with fake enthusiasm. His body creaked audibly—damn, he was getting old. “I’ve been working on putting together the lab we need. I have shipments coming from all over the world.”
“So I was told,” Phoebe said.
She followed him into the working wing. Given the punishing environment of Northern Finland, the facility was mostly underground. In this way it was similar to the Vault, and Matteo knew that it gave Phoebe some level of comfort. She wasn’t used to open spaces, a sky overhead, great expanses of land. Those things frightened her as if she had a bad case of agoraphobia. Matteo knew she felt that way because he remembered feeling that way himself, in the early days of life after the Vault. Even now, he felt it some. It was one of the reasons he was so comfortable inside ocean submersibles.
“Don’t you think we’re being a bit too paranoid?” Phoebe asked. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to just to have everything we need built at one place and shipped here?”
“I subcontracted that bit of paranoia to the Elders,” Matteo said. “I’m freaked out enough about the bots without considering greater implications.”
“When will our first group of volunteers arrive?” Phoebe asked. She stumbled on the word—she was “volunteered” too, but Matteo hoped that she would have chosen to come and help even if she wasn’t asked. She knew he needed help.
The scientists joining them here were mostly Seeds who left their Vaults years ago plus a few individuals that they’d vouched for and who had passed whatever hurdles the Vault Elders had thrown their way. In addition to competent researchers, the unspoken truth was that Matteo and Phoebe needed access to test subjects if they were to learn how nanobots evolved and reacted to different environmental conditions. In a way, they were all to be scientists and subjects of their own research. It wasn’t something Matteo wanted to dwell on.
“The first three arrive later today,” he said.
They entered the newly repurposed lab—a huge underground room partitioned by structural glass into several distinct areas.
“Shiny,” Phoebe said.
“These are all environmentally isolated, of course,” Matteo said, gesturing. “We’ll set up a surgery area in the far corner there, with Seed Sophie in charge. She was volunteered from the Australian vault.” Sophie’s work was all about developing advanced cyberhumatics, and she was a good surgeon. She also had some ideas on panspermia—the theory, now verified, that life originated on Earth and spread throughout the solar system via dirt fragments launched into space by large meteoric impacts. Matteo needed her expertise.
“You should stop calling her ‘Seed Sophie,’” Phoebe said. “You might accidentally slip.” Unlike the Vault, their lab could theoretically directly maintain ties with the outside world. It wouldn’t help their interactions with “civilian” scientists if they announced their origins too loudly.
“You’re right, of course. Elder Alaba yelled at me, too. We are to call him ‘Dr. Alaba’ now.” It was just an extra precaution; communications beyond the immediate team were not very likely given how ‘Dr. Alaba’ felt about their work. “I’ll do my best with Sophie,” he added. “Please feel free to kick me if I mess up.”
After years of feeling like an outsider, Matteo cherished every moment he would get to work and live with fellow Seeds. It was especially good to be with Phoebe again. He just wished Vars were here to meet his Seed-sister.
“Missing your daughter?” Phoebe asked. She could still read him like an open book.
“For so many years it was just me and her,” he said.
“It must have been hard,” Phoebe said. “I remember that until Vars came along, you weren’t sure if you even wanted to leave the Vault.”
“I would probably have decided to go eventually,” he said. “I wasn’t like you.”
“Like me?”
“Well, I mean to say, I always knew you’d stay. You were a scientist from the earliest moments I can remember.” He looked her in the eyes. “I know being here is brutal for you. I’m so sorry about that. Thank you for helping, Phoebe. It means the world.”
“You survived it,” she said. “And I will too. And it’s really not too far from home for me. We’ll be in close contact with the Vault. Compared to what you lived through, it’s nothing.” It sounded like a mantra.
Matteo showed Phoebe around the rest of the lab, including her new workstation and the machines that he’d managed to unpack, if not set up, before she joined him. The real work would start when Sophie and the other “volunteers” arrived. The plan was to test the nanobots directly in the subjects’ bodies. Rats first, but humans too. They needed to know what to expect before Vars’s mission got in trouble.
“Look, I don’t bite,” Sophie said.
Sophie was a six-foot-three Amazon of a woman, with wheat-blond, almost white hair that was closely cropped, making the D-tats implanted on both sides of her lower jaw and neck all the more noticeable. She wore a sleeveless top, and her long arms were also heavily covered with cyberhumatics gear. Matteo would bet that she probably had a few other D-tats underneath her clothing. She might not bite, but she looked scary as hell.
“If it becomes a problem, I’ll deal with it,” she said when he pointed out that it mi
ght be dangerous for her to be so connected. What if the bots take over? “I’m implanted with a kill switch. All Australian Seeds have one. We aren’t stupid, you know.”
“I’ve just never…” Matteo raised his hands, trying to signal that he meant no disrespect. Different Seed Vaults had different cultures. He understood that. Sophie’s Vault, the Australian Vault, was the only Earth-based one where the Seeds received implants.
“Your Vault went your way,” she said, “and we took a different direction. Come on, let’s get this show on the road. I was told we’re under extreme time pressure.”
Matteo nodded. He was only reluctantly in charge of this operation. He had argued for Phoebe to take over that role—after all, she was the head teacher and the lab director back at their Vault, as well as being a natural-born leader—but she had refused, on the basis that she had no experience with the outside world. So Matteo was stuck in command, not where he was comfortable operating.
“You’re right,” he said. “Let me show you what Phoebe and I managed to grow last night.”
Matteo ushered Sophie over to the shared bio-bench. In the middle of a smooth metal surface sat an isolation chamber with lights pointed at it. Inside, easily visible without any special magnification, was a metallic-
looking structure with an irregular Menger sponge fractal pattern. It was made from what looked like hundreds of Rubik’s Cubes—three-by-three-by-three cube structures—with every central cube removed and then repeated a few hundred times, preserving the structure at every magnification. Each cubic building block was an exact miniature replica of the whole structure. And the whole thing shimmered.
“Is it…moving?” Sophie asked.
“Yes,” Matteo replied. “The structure continues to grow and repeat. Not perfectly; there are slight variations.”
“Some sides progressed farther and have developed a bit of lopsidedness,” Phoebe chimed in. “But the process is ongoing.”