BZRK Reloaded

by Michael Grant

  He opened his hand slowly. The massive scarred fingers swept back and away, like watching one of those time-lapse things of a flower opening its petals, bud becoming blossom.

  Light flooded over his troops, his nanobots.

  His tiny army.

  But enough of palms and fingers, he wanted to see more. He

  wanted to see what the older BZRKers had always talked of in awed tones. He wanted to go down in the meat. He wanted to confront the beasties. He wanted battle.

  He wanted game.

  He glanced at Burnofsky. The man looked at him with an expression that reminded Billy of rats he had seen in the alleys behind his foster home. Knowing. Wary but not fearful. Contemptuous.

  Billy sent his nanobots speeding across his palm—leaping, cavorting, even lowering the center wheel for a bit, though this proved to be not a practical idea on this terrain. He cartwheeled a couple of the nanobots in the process of learning this fact.

  The nanobots raced madly, legs motoring along like blue-tinged cavalry. He picked the middle finger to climb. And it was a climb now: when they slipped the nanobots fell backward, like Jack and Jill falling back down the hill. But gravity hadn’t too much meaning for nanobots. A slip, a fall, meant little, which gave him a reckless courage. He laughed.

  “Fun, eh?” Burnofsky said. “Hurry and get off your hand. Get somewhere more interesting.”

  Billy shot him a suspicious look. Burnofsky prodded him. “Don’t be scared, little boy,” he crooned. “You’ll be part of history. A first. And I’ve got a ringside seat.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Burnofsky made a lopsided grin. “It doesn’t matter. Game on, Billy the Kid.”

  The nanobots reached the end of Billy’s finger.

  He raised that finger toward his face.

  In the up-is-down and none-of-it-matters world of the nano, the fingertip seemed to plunge down toward the face. Like a massive rocket aiming for impact, and Billy was riding that rocket.

  Yee-hah.

  Billy went around the circumference of his finger. He crossed from plowed farmland to an eerie moonscape, like the dried-out salt flats of Death Valley, hard-baked shale plates, not nearly as smooth down at the nano level as fingernails were up in the macro. Down here what was up there was like roof shingles.

  But ahead, oh, there was the stuff, there was the world-wide wall of meat, the cheek, and above it a globe like the moon sunk into a pulpy earth. The eyeball. His eyeball.

  The nanobots leapt from the crusty ground of the fingernail onto an endless curved plain of fallen leaves, and then slowed.

  “Three minutes,” Burnofsky said. “It will begin now.”

  The nanobots deployed curved hooklike blades from the ends of their rear legs. The front legs continued to power forward and the rear legs sank into the dried outer layer of epidermis, those fallen leaves of dead flesh, and began to plow them up.

  When they had plowed a furrow—and there was no pain in harvesting dead skin cells—they stopped.

  They turned.

  Billy punched the virtual controls. He frowned, and Burnofsky saw that frown.

  “I wish I could see what you’re seeing, Billy.”

  The nanobots revealed then a feature that was unexpected. A jaw, toothless, but curving like the Joker’s slashed mouth, opened at the bottom of the nanobot.

  The ripped and torn skin cells were sucked into the unhinged jaws.

  Within seconds the nanobots began defecating a pinkish paste.

  What happened next was a blur Billy couldn’t even see. The nanobots ’ legs moved like a spider on speed. Or like a sculptor, wasn’t that what they called guys who carved statues? A shape began to emerge from the pink goo.

  Other things—tiny needles, busy sculpting cilia, jets of flame, on and off in an instant. A faint haze almost that was the MightyMites crawling across the nanobots like fleas on a dog, a scarcely visible blur of activity.

  He was seeing programmed activity, he knew that much. He was seeing something that he was not controlling.

  He looked for a Stop button. He searched the controls, punching this and that, trying to distract the nanobots, trying to make them do this or that. Or anything.

  But his controls were no longer controlling. A prompt appeared, demanding a code.

  “What’s happening?” Billy asked.

  “Watch,” Burnofsky said with an almost sensuous whisper.

  “The controls aren’t working.

  “No, they won’t now unless you punch in the code. Thirty-two characters, alphanumeric,” Burnofsky said. “If you just start guessing, you should be able to hit the right sequence within, oh, probably a year—”

  “Give it to me!”

  It was now clear to Billy what was happening. New nanobots was being built from the pink goo.

  As he watched the new monsters rose. They were crude, postapocalyptic versions of the original nanobots, less sharp-edged, rougher, simpler.

  And then, they began to dig.

  It was then that Billy screamed.

  Minako woke from troubled sleep. She gasped as memories came flooding back. She rolled onto her side, swung her legs off the bed, and stood up. She still smelled of urine. She had not had the strength to shower before.

  Would they come for her again?

  Please, no. Please. No.

  The ship was pitching and rolling far worse than before. Somewhere outside, in the world beyond this terrible gleaming sphere, a major storm must be raging. She felt sick to her stomach and ran, wobbly, to the tiny bathroom. But by the time she made it there the nausea had lessened. She closed the door with barely room to sit down on the toilet.

  She had to lace her fingers together to keep them from shaking, but even then they trembled, and the trembling went all the way through her.

  She sat and there was the door directly before her and there was something on the door.

  A piece of toilet paper, just a single square held there with a tiny piece of tape.

  Someone had written on it in pen.

  It said: Be strong. You are not alone.

  “Yes, I want a goddamned cigarette.”

  “But, Madam President, you don’t smoke.”

  That was from her chief of staff, Ginny Gastrell. Gastrell was painfully thin, with a sort of concave chest, knobby elbows, and hands that could almost have belonged to a man. She was often described by detractors as looking like the weak horse in the third race at Belmont.

  “I did smoke, though. I gave it up. Now I want it back,” Helen Falkenhym Morales said. She was in the Oval Office, staring through the bulletproof glass at the south lawn. “I gave it up and I want it back. I want a cigarette. Surely someone in this place still smokes.”

  “Madam President, you—” “I want a goddamned cigarette! I’m the goddamned president of the goddamned United States, and I want a goddamned cigarette!”

  “Yes, Madam President. I think one of the Secret Service agents . . .” She let herself out.

  The president went back to reading a report on her pad, an endless, dire report on the rash of bizarre terrorist or suspected terrorist incidents.

  The plane crash in Jets stadium.

  The bombing and shootout at the United Nations.

  The murder of the sole surviving suspect from that bombing— she had been identified, finally. A good girl, of course weren’t they all, from a good Indian American home in Connecticut. Someone had gotten into her secure hospital room, incapacitated the FBI agent in the room with her and pumped liquified white phosphorous into her brain. By the time anyone had discovered her, she had a meatless, empty skull sitting atop her shoulders.

  A massacre in a house right on Capitol Hill.

  Worst of all, for the moment at least, Washington, DC police were all over the massacre in the bookstore. The FBI had tried hard to federalize it and been told in no uncertain terms to drop dead. A cop had been shot. No way the PD didn’t investigate.

  And what they
were turning up was Rios’s ETA. Evidence was mounting that the witnesses had been right: the lead shooter had ID’d herself as ETA and she was, in fact, ETA.

  The president had scheduled a meeting with Rios. She liked him. She liked him a great deal, although she seemed to remember that at first she hadn’t. He’d grown on her, then. Lately she had come to think he reminded her of an early political mentor, Senator Reynolds, a man of unshakable integrity.

  Not that Rios looked or sounded or acted anything like the senator. Just …well, there was some connection there . . .

  But now she and her administration were about to be jammed up over Rios’s disaster of an agency.

  “And that’s why I need a cigarette,” she snarled.

  Gastrell reappeared. She held a single cigarette in her hand, and a green Bic lighter. She placed them on the desk in front of the president, every fiber of her being radiating disapproval.

  “You’re too much a Puritan, Ginny. Live a little. I’m going to. What do you think: How soon after the memorial service can I start dating?”

  “Have you finalized your eulogy?”

  “I’ve finalized everything. Final.” She lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Oh, sweet home.” She looked at the chief of staff and said, “Let me have women about me that are fat / Sleek-headed women and such as sleep a-nights. Yond Gastrell has a lean and hungry look. / She thinks too much. Such women are dangerous.”

  It was a speech from Shakespeare. From the play Julius Caesar.

  “Madam President,” Gastrell said, choking down her anger. “I have to tell you something. You may get a question about it.”

  A deep inhalation. The president blew a smoke ring and laughed at it. “What now, Ginny? What now?”

  “There’s a video. It just showed up and it already has two hundred thousand views. It will hit ten times that within twenty-four hours.”

  “An especially cute kitty?”

  “It’s a fake, of course, but it’s very well done. It appears to be video of you. No, not actually of you. Video as if someone had a camera mounted …actually …Let me show you.”

  The chief of staff leaned in with her own pad, turned it to landscape and tapped the screen.

  Rough, jerky, maddeningly low-quality video showed various scenes, all apparently within the White House private quarters.

  “So?”

  “Wait.”

  Suddenly the picture changed and there was Monte Morales. There he was lying on his back, chest bare, face contorted. And there he was talking, though there was no audio.

  And there he was with hands, feminine hands, on either side of his head.

  “Ah-ah-AHHH!” the president cried. She wanted to cover her mouth but instead grabbed her own blouse as if roughing herself up.

  Gastrell put a hand on the president’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, I should have warned you. It’s despicable. Even by Internet standards it’s vile.”

  And now Monte was being dragged.

  And now he was slipping below the water in the tub, and the blood was a swirling smoke pattern around his head.

  “Ah,” the president said. “Ah. Oh. Oh God.”

  “We can try to get it taken down, but it’s already propagated everywhere. Anonymous is claiming credit. They claim …well, it doesn’t matter.”

  The president’s fist clenched around the cigarette. It burned into her palm and gave off the sickening barbecue smell of burning flesh.

  “Are you all right, Madam President?”

  “It’s a fake. It’s a fake.”

  “Obviously. But it’s well done, as I said. The backgrounds look very much like the actual bathroom. The Secret Service is analyzing it, so it can be thoroughly debunked.”

  “Debunked,” the president whispered.

  “I wanted you to know.”

  “Debunked.” She opened her hand and saw an angry oval burn in her palm, right over her lifeline.

  “Get out,” the president said.

  “There’s the briefing on the Azerbaijan situation in twenty minutes.”

  But the president wasn’t listening. She pushed abruptly away from her desk and ran toward the private quarters.

  TWENTY-ONE

  KimKim, a second crewman, and a middle-aged woman from two levels up came for Minako. Minako had seen the woman around. She thought she might be Australian.

  “My name is Kyla. You must be so honored,” the woman gushed. “I want out of here,” Minako said. “I want to go home. You people have no right to keep me here! Let me go!”

  “Oh, that’s silliness, dear. Everything is fine. Everything is wonderful. This is the most wonderful place in the world.”

  “You’re brainwashed. You’re crazy!” How many times could she say that? What was the point in yelling at crazy people?

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Kyla said. “I couldn’t be happier.”

  “It’s what they’ve done to you,” Minako said, trying desperately to communicate, to make the woman understand. “You aren’t thinking right. This place …those horrible men, those monsters!”

  The slap came hard and fast. It was open palm and hit its intended target perfectly. Minako’s cheek stung, and she was shocked into silence.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie, but you simply must not insult the Great Souls. They know best. They’re geniuses, don’t you see that? You’re too young to understand.”

  “Enough, let’s go,” the second crewman said impatiently. “The bosses said fetch her, so let’s fetch her and be done with it.”

  “Absolutely!” Kyla said. “And quickly, too!”

  The two crewmen each grabbed an arm.

  “This one wants to hurt me, is that part of your madness, too?” Minako demanded of Kyla.

  “Nothing happens in Benjaminia or in Charlestown, either, unless it is the will of the Great Souls,” Kyla said. “I wouldn’t worry.”

  Back in the room. The same machine lay waiting. The monsters had not yet returned.

  “You can go,” KimKim informed Kyla.

  “I’m sorry, but you don’t dismiss me,” Kyla said. “You’re just crew. You aren’t even enlightened. You are not sustainably happy.”

  “Whatever, just bug off,” the second crewman said.

  “No!” Minako cried. “Don’t leave, they’ll do terrible things to me! It’s a trick!”

  “It is a bit of a trick,” the second crewman said with a sigh. His left fist shot out, and Kyla’s head snapped back. She fell straight back onto the deck, her head bouncing from the impact.

  Minako yanked free of KimKim but didn’t make it far: he was quick. His hand closed around her arm like a vice. And he said, “You are not alone.”

  Minako froze.

  Then, in Japanese so flawless it could only have come from a native speaker, he said, “My full name is Kenshin Sugita—KimKim is my nickname. I work for the Naichō, the intelligence service of Japan.”

  “But you tried . . .” she gasped.

  “No. I knew they would never break the rules, the men are too afraid. But it made them trust me.”

  She looked at the second crewman, who shrugged and said, “Listen, I’ve only been on this floating hell for a couple of weeks. I needed work. Bad. But enough is damned well enough. My name is Silver. Formerly Gunnery Sergeant Silver. U.S. Marine Corps.”

  “My father is …my father was a marine.”

  “That’s why I’m going to get myself killed with this crazy Nip, here,” Silver said. “And you should know better than to say anyone was a marine, past tense. In or out of service, alive or dead: once a marine, always a marine.”

  Minako drew a shaky breath. “Semper fi?”

  “Damn straight. Now, let’s get the hell off this boat.”

  “How . . .” Minako began, faltering. Then she tried again. “How old are you?”

  KimKim looked at her like she might already be crazy. “I’m twenty-nine.”

  “As I recall, I’m forty-seven,” Silver said, puzzled.


  Minako smiled her first smile since Okinawa. Twenty-nine and forty-seven. Both were prime numbers.

  Keats took the rickety steps two at a time, with Plath hot on his heels. Burnofsky was still tied to the scaffold. Billy had a twitcher headset on, a glove on one hand, the other hand clawing at his face.

  Billy shrieked. “They’re eating me!”

  “What?” Keats shot a hard look at Burnofsky, but the old man seemed to be almost dreamy, a slight smile on his bloodless lips, eyes half closed.

  Nijinsky and Wilkes came running.

  Keats ripped the twitcher goggles off Billy’s head and settled them onto his own.

  Plath said, “It just looks that way, Billy, you’ve never been down in the meat before.”

  But while she was placating, Keats was seeing.

  At least two dozen nanobots were busily scraping at Billy’s skin. There was something like pinkish ash lumped here and there in piles. And as he watched a stray dust mite came lumbering along, oblivious to everything, nearly blind, a harmless but grotesque consumer of sloughed skin cells.

  The mite was about the size of the nanobots, a fat, swollen spiderlike creature with stubby legs. The nanobots ignored the mite as they tunneled eagerly into epidermis. Then the mite blundered into one of the nanobots and in an invisibly fast motion the nanobot cut the mite into two pieces. Other nanobots rushed to help, and the mite spasmed as it died.

  The nanobots ate the pieces of the mite.

  Other nanobots ate Billy’s skin.

  They began to extrude a paste, and other biots rushed to that paste and with a blur of tiny tools and jets of flame—

  “They’re building more nanobots!” Keats said.

  “What?” Nijinsky had come running from downstairs. He angrily snatched the goggles from Keats. He looked. He pulled the glove from Billy’s hand and slipped it on. Like he was the responsible professional who would tell them all . . .

  “Can’t be,” Nijinsky said.

  “Oh, I think it can,” Burnofsky said.

  Nijinsky took the goggles from his head and dropped them on the floor. “Self-replication is biological, not mechanical,” he said, repeating what he’d been told once, somewhere. “Those nanobots are complex machines.”