Analog Science Fiction and Fact 03/01/11

by Dell Magazines

  “Just keep listening,” Zile snapped. “We kept the Roswellonium to ourselves, but some of the techniques we developed were passed on to companies like IBM and Intel. We taught them what they needed to know to build the first microprocessors. But I wanted much more. I wanted to develop medical applications. Do you know how much red tape there is when it comes to experimenting on animals, much less people?” He didn’t wait for a response. “A shitload. You can’t get a Goddamn thing done without some sniveling activist getting a lawyer to try and cut your balls off. We had the material, we had the techniques, and I had the ideas, but my hands were tied behind my back. After a decade of fighting that kind of crap, I finally said the hell with it and walked away from my cushy government job, but not before pilfering a sample of the Roswellonium.

  “I built a lab in my basement. It took most of my inheritance, but I managed to duplicate the technology I needed. The work went a whole lot faster after that. By the mid-’70s, more than two decades before Freitas published his blueprints for the first medical nanorobots, I already had a working prototype, a microscopic machine that could analyze and repair damage to any cell in the body.”

  Jeffrey fidgeted. “So why didn’t you go public? You could have made a fortune.”

  Zile’s face squinched up. “You don’t steal from a top-secret government facility and then brag about it.”

  Jeffrey leaned back into his chair as Zile continued. “I had tried these little machines, nanites, on mice, cats, dogs, all with varying success. Each new tweak in the design worked a little better and by 1974, they were ready. I injected Ralph first.”

  “Ralph?”

  Zile shrugged. “Some people have dogs, I had Ralph, a gray wolf.”

  “That was your pet that jumped me?”

  Zile nodded. “Call me eccentric.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I wouldn’t be the first.”

  “No doubt. After I injected him, I monitored him closely for the next few years. Everything seemed okay. By that point, I only had enough Rosewellonium left for two more sets of nanites. I wasn’t going to waste a dose on primate research, and besides, age was catching up with me. I injected myself in 1981 and carried the final set of bots with me every day after that, paranoid that the Feds would figure out where I lived and steal them.” He took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. “In the summer of 1985, I was walking Ralph through the woods near our home.”

  “Walking your wolf... Why am I listening to this?”

  “We’d go out at night. I couldn’t exactly walk him around the neighborhood during the day. Anyway, that night he heard you, saw your lights flickering, and it spooked him. He charged you and knocked you down. By the time he realized you were a harmless child, the damage was done; you’d hit your head on a rock and passed out. I got to you a half a minute later, scanned your life signs.”

  “What, you mean like with a tricorder?”

  “This is real, Jeffrey. And I suggest you start taking me seriously if you want to keep your freedom.” He paused and must have gotten Jeffrey’s attention. “I had developed a hand scanner that could measure life signs—pulse, respirations; it was a safe way to monitor my animals without risking my fingers. Anyway, I scanned you. You had stopped breathing and your pulse was thready, barely detectable. So I pulled out the vial and gave you the final set of nanites.”

  “You shot me up with your experiment? What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “It was the only way to save your life.”

  “Ever hear of paramedics?”

  “Your right pupil was already dilated, barely reactive. It was obvious that blood was building up in your head, putting pressure on your brain. You would have been dead before they got you to a hospital.”

  “I thought you said I was dead?”

  “You might as well have been.”

  Jeffrey spun around to his left, and just before he dropped his head into his hand, I caught a glimpse of his face. His boyish good looks had only enhanced with age, but there was something more. Some people age better than others, but Jeffery could have passed for twenty.

  “I guess I should thank you.”

  Zile sat silently.

  “So you used the last of your nanites on me, huh?”

  “Yes. The last.”

  “And I’ve still got those little buggers inside of me?”

  “That’s what’s keeping you... young.”

  “And I thought it was just good genes.”

  Zile grinned. “No genes are that good.”

  We were looking at the back of Jeffrey’s head again, but he appeared to be studying Zile. “So,” he said, “no offense, but then why do you look so old?”

  “I was already sixty-seven when I injected myself. The nanites keep you healthy, but they don’t reverse aging. In your case, they didn’t stop your body from aging to maturity, but once you got there the cells stabilized, and they’ll stay that way for as long as you live.”

  “So why tell me all this now?” Jeffrey asked. “Why risk blowing your cover?”

  “Simple, really. Medical science has advanced to the point where someone might accidentally discover the nanites if you go into a hospital for testing. Up until recently, the technology didn’t exist, but the latest generation of PET scanners is capable of detecting positron emissions from the nanites. And if you’re in one of those scanner tubes when that discovery is made, they’ll make a lab rat out of you. You’ll spend the rest of your life locked up in some government research facility while they try and explain how those things got inside of you.”

  “Which could lead them back to you.”

  “Possibly, but not likely. I just don’t want the guilt of knowing I turned you into that.”

  Jeffrey rocked in his big easy-chair. “So... why would I ever need to go to a hospital anyway? Nothing can hurt me now, right?”

  “You could get into an accident, get shot; the nanites don’t work fast enough for that. But you never have to worry about cancer, stroke, heart disease; the sorts of things that kill most people. Your biggest worry is your looks.”

  “My looks?”

  Zile gave a half nod. “Me, I’m an old man and people don’t look too closely at old men. I don’t have any close friends, and nobody else will notice if I look the same year after year. But you can never stay in any one place too long, never stay with the same group of friends for more than a dozen years or so. People will notice you. They’ll notice you as their own faces shrivel up and their hair turns gray while you still look like your high school yearbook picture. At first, they’ll compliment you, but eventually you’ll make them uncomfortable and they’ll start asking questions.”

  “Can you at least inject my wife?” Jeffrey’s voice had grown barely audible. “I don’t want to not grow old without her.”

  “I told you, there are no more.”

  “Well, make some.”

  “Even if they haven’t used up all the Ros-wellonium by now, I could never get my hands on it.”

  “Then give her some of mine.”

  “Once the nanites enter your body, they imprint themselves with your immune system. That’s how they survive inside of you for so long. They can never be reprogrammed. Even if I could take them out and inject them into your wife, at best they’d have no effect. At worst, they’d make her very, very sick.”

  Jeffrey’s head dropped, then after a brief pause he looked back up in Zile’s direction. “So we keep this between us then?”

  Zile nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  Jeffrey sat silently.

  “And I’d suggest erasing the video file of this meeting.”

  “Oh, shit.” Jeffrey spun around and reached under the desk.

  ***

  The screen on the iPhone went blank and a message came up asking if I wanted to replay the video. I handed the thing back to Mindy.

  “So why did he keep this copy?” I asked her.

  “To show me... and the two of you.”

  “Us?”
Solly said.

  “He always felt bad that you guys took all the heat for that night. He felt he was every bit as responsible for what happened as you were, if not more. He never blamed you for what happened. In fact, since the meeting with Zile, he considers the accident a blessing.”

  “So why didn’t he come here himself, then?”

  Mindy smiled and waved to the midnight blue Toyota Prius parked behind us about fifty yards away. The driver’s side door opened and out stepped a young man with blond hair and blue eyes, a black backpack slung over his right shoulder. Aside from the limited view of him that had been afforded by the iPhone clip, I hadn’t seen him since he was thirteen years old. But he was unmistakably Jeffrey.

  As he approached, I couldn’t help but think he looked closer to my son’s age than my own, betrayed only by the swagger of someone with much more maturity.

  “How the hell are you guys?” His smile gleamed as he extended a hand.

  Solly took it. “Obviously, not as good as you.”

  I couldn’t help but stare. “Jesus, it’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Every word of it.”

  “Then why risk coming here?” I reached out to greet him. “I mean, you don’t know us anymore. It’s been twenty-five years. Why trust us with something like this?”

  “Because you’re the only ones I can trust. See, I’m not so sure old man Zile’s leveling with me. He’s so paranoid that somebody will find out about that meteorite dust he pilfered that he doesn’t ever want anyone to see his research.”

  “And you can get your hands on it?”

  “Nah. Even if I knew where the old coot was, he’s probably burned it all by now. But technology has advanced quite a bit since he made those nanites thirty-plus years ago. And I’m betting that there are a couple of guys who could reverse-engineer the things if they could get their hands on them, use something else to substitute for the Roswellonium.”

  I mopped back my thick damp hair and tried to fan a breeze in my direction. “Mind if we...” I motioned toward the shade of the oak. Jeffrey stuck out a hand. “After you.”

  As we turned to move into the shade, Mindy said, “I’ve heard this all before. How about I go get us something to drink while you boys catch up? I saw the Quick Stop is still there. I can be back in fifteen minutes.”

  The Quick Stop. Camp. I couldn’t shake the thought... “I’ll have a Yoo-hoo.” I wasn’t even sure if they still made the stuff.

  Solly and Jeffrey broke out in laughter.

  “Make it three?” Mindy asked.

  “Sure,” Solly said. “Disgusting, but what the hell.”

  We watched her walk away, then sat under the shade of the tree.

  “I’ve done my homework on this,” Jeffrey said. “There are a handful of guys in the world advanced enough in nanomedicine research that they might have a chance at doing this, and two of them are right here in Maryland, one at Hopkins and the other at UM. If we can get the nanites to them and let them each know the other is working on it to fire up their competitive juices, I think we’ve got a chance.”

  I let out a deep breath. “It still doesn’t explain... why us?”

  “Like I said, you’re the only ones I can trust.”

  “That’s pretty pathetic,” Solly said. “All these years, and we’re the closest thing you’ve got to friends.”

  “I’ve got plenty of friends, but none who have had absolutely no contact with me since I was thirteen. None who can’t be tied to me without a background search that would stretch the imagination of even the most anal government agent.”

  He swung his backpack around onto his lap and unzipped it, then pulled out two brushed aluminum cases. They were each about a foot long, ribbed along the sides, and with a black plastic handle that folded out from the top. He handed one to each of us.

  “Each of these contains a sample of my blood; there should be dozens of nanites in each one. There’s a note in each case explaining what the sample is and what I want them to do with it. Those cases, along with everything in them, are untraceable as long as you don’t leave any fingerprints.” He reached into the backpack and pulled out two envelopes. “These will tell you everything you need to know: who the researchers are, where to find them, every detail of their lives you’ll need to get these cases to them anonymously. Follow my instructions to the letter and you’ll never get caught.”

  “And if we do?”

  “People will be pretty curious where you got these, people who can make your lives miserable. Just do what’s in the letter and you’ll be okay.”

  Solly studied Jeffrey’s face. “You’re just afraid we’ll lead them back to you.”

  Jeffrey shook his head. “I’ll be long gone. I’ve got considerable financial resources and my friends were already beginning to question the way I look. Once I knew what was happening, I started making arrangements to disappear. Dr. Jeffrey Blondell no longer exists. When I drive away from here today, Jeffrey will be dead to the world. My concern here is for you two... and for the success of this project.”

  “Touching,” I said. “And why should we risk our necks for this?”

  “Because I’ll be tracking the work of these two labs, and by the time either one makes the breakthrough, I’ll own a controlling interest in the company that will take it public.”

  Solly nodded. “So it’s about the money.”

  “Not about the money. It’s about the nan-ites, about Mindy. I don’t want to be without her. I don’t want her to grow old. I need those nanites, and every day counts. Mindy will be first in line to get them. And you two will be next... if you help me. Is eternal youth worth the risk?”

  Stupid question.

  When Mindy returned, we nursed our Yoo-hoos as we strolled around what was once an adolescent’s paradise. We argued about the spot where the barn was, where we’d hang out on rainy days, how many baseball fields were on the vast lawn by the camp entrance, whether that old wooden house was really the original white house where the camp nurse was always available, and most of all, which pine tree provided the best cover for a first kiss.

  The sun was beginning to set as we found ourselves standing next to the blue Prius. Solly and I waved as they drove off. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever see Jeffrey again. But if I did, I knew what he would look like. If things went well, he’d know what I would look like too.

  Copyright © 2010 Brad Aiken

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  SHORT STORIES

  Julie Is Three

  by Craig DeLancey

  There’s more than one way...

  “Will you let her go?”

  That was the question I had to answer before the next morning. Kristine Louvrier asked it of me, standing with her hands on her hips, her mouth compressed into an angry line. I was glad that my desk stood between us.

  “She’s my niece,” she added. “I’m next of kin. You have to give her to me.”

  “I have to do what’s best for the child,” I said.

  “You know what’s best for the child. It’s to let her come home with me.”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “It’s not... not so obvious.”

  Ms. Louvrier’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I’ve told you too much. And you wondered why we keep it a secret. You’re actually considering locking a seven-year-old girl in a mental ward—imagine the trauma!—because I told you the truth.”

  “That’s not fair,” I said.

  “You exploited me and you’re going to destroy her. Or worse: Does this mean you’re going to tell other people about us?” She was a head shorter than me, but I was sitting and she seemed to tower over me. She gazed at me so fearlessly, with such anger, that I was starting to wither. Or maybe, just maybe, I suspected she was right to be angry.

  “Please. Sit.”

  She didn’t. “I’m getting a lawyer. I’ll be back. I’m going to sue you, your hospital. You send her to a mental ward, and I’m
going to make it my mission to destroy you in court. I’m gonna sue your dog.” She turned and yanked on the door to my dim little hospital office, and the heavy steel swung open so hard it slammed into my bookcase, bounced off, and slowly swung closed in her wake.

  I stared at the calendar page on the back of my door. It was seven months behind.

  Would I let the girl go? Would I tell others? Those were the important questions, I knew. But the question that haunted me, the question that was going to follow me later as I crawled along in traffic on my commute home, was a different question she had asked me: Aren’t you lonely? “We have a girl,” Thomas, the head nurse, told me just three days before. He waved me down as I tried to hurry past the front desk in the morning. I was in a rush because I had to oversee the transfer of a criminally insane schizophrenic who landed in our emergency room. There was just enough time to squeeze in my rounds before seeing to the transfer.

  And, truth be told, I just wanted to get everything done as quickly as possible, so I could sit in my office and drink some tea and zone out for a while. Maybe surf the web.

  “I, uh...” I pointed at the open corridor behind him, to indicate I had to get moving. Thomas was a big man, and just by politely standing before me he pretty much blocked the whole hallway.

  He continued in his long drawl, “Parents got killed in a car crash. She was center of the back seat—broke her arm but otherwise no damage. But Dr. Wells thinks you should see her.”

  “How old?” Thomas called pretty much any female human a “girl.” The age range could be large.

  “’Bout seven, I guess.”

  “Traumatized?” I’m a psychiatrist, so Wells’s referral meant the girl potentially had a psychiatric problem.

  “Sure. Who wouldn’t be? Saw her mommy and daddy get killed. She seems all shook up. But, more than that, it’s... well,” and Thomas leaned forward, exaggerating the confidentiality of the detail, “she talks funny. Like she’s going in and out of it.”

  I nodded. “That would be expected of a kid in shock.”

  I decided I’d better see her first. I found her room, on the pediatric hall. It had water-stained walls that looked squalid under the too-bright ceiling lights. A small girl, beautiful in the way any seven-year-old must be, lay asleep on the bed, twisted in her white covers, barely bigger than her pillow. A snowy white new cast covered her right forearm, from the elbow down over the palm.