Johnny Winger and the Hellas Enigma

by Philip Bosshardt

  “It looks like the same kind of Sphere we saw at Paryang, ANAD. We’ve got to be smart about how we approach this. Let’s try flying by on a tangential vector first…ANAD, come left twenty degrees…let’s ease up to this bastard—“

  The assembler made a cautious approach, still sounding ahead, probing the Sphere with acoustic, thermal and EM. Even as they got closer and closer, no details became evident. The Sphere was a smooth, seamless surface devoid of marks or edges.

  “There doesn’t seem to be a way in, ANAD…I’m not getting any structure on this thing.”

  ***ANAD sounding at maximum resolution…wait a minute, wait one, please…now picking up something…it’s like a single point return…just at the edge of resolution…let’s move in closer, Base***

  “Moving to five hundred nanometers…I don’t want to get any closer, ANAD. Not until we know what we’re dealing with here.”

  ***ANAD detects a faint return at bearing zero five eight….possibly an edge or a projection of some type…ANAD recommends moving in closer, Base…try to resolve this structure***

  “Okay, ANAD, you’re the boss…revving propulsors, turning to match bearings with that return.”

  The assembler altered course, driving ever closer to the surface of the Sphere. It was like flying over a perfectly smooth planet, like orbiting an enormous egg. Not a single imperfection, not a single scratch or mark was visible.

  “I see it now, ANAD.” Framed in his viewer was a faint echo of a ghostly line, almost a shadow, first there and then not there. “What is it?”

  ***Unknown, Base…closing on structure now…it appears to be a projection or stud of some kind***

  “Maybe some kind of control?” Winger fiddled with the viewer but could get no better resolution. “ANAD, I’m extending one of your carbene grabbers…let’s see what this thing does.”

  ***ANAD recommends caution, Base…further reconnaissance is advisable***

  But Winger had already commanded his carbene grabber to extend. He closed on the ghostly projection and just tickled it with the end of the grabber.

  Instantly, there was an explosion of light, searing, blinding light that flooded all bands and channels. Winger blinked hard…it was like a curtain of needles had been blown into his eyes…

  …and then it came. An image of geometric forms—icosahedrons, polygons, trapezoids—all compressed into a tunnel, a long curving corridor and he found himself hurtling at breakneck speed down this corridor, until—

  With a hard bump, his whole body jarred from the impact and when he opened his eyes, caught his breath and came to his senses, he was in.

  Inside the sphere?

  He blinked and blinked and his eyes watered. Gradually, vision returned and he began to resolve shapes, forms and he sensed a presence nearby.

  WHY HAVE YOU COME HERE?

  “ANAD, is that you…something’s weird with the quantum coupler…all I’m getting is a lot of static and fritzing…ANAD, report status—“

  The buzz in the back of his head went on, but it was reduced.

  As his vision cleared, he tried standing up and the first impression he had was that he was standing in the midst of a great field, perhaps corn or wheat, somewhere in the Midwest. His great grandfather had grown up on a farm like this. Iowa, I think it was, he dredged up a long-buried memory.

  “ANAD, are you getting this…what is this place?”

  ***Base, ANAD detecting large formations of nanobots ahead…all around…pulsing configs now…detecting state (self)…detecting state (self)…***

  “Detecting state (self)…ANAD, what the hell does that mean?” Winger picked himself up and started to move about the grain field. As he swished through the gently undulating stalks, he realized that ANAD was right.

  Everything he touched was nothing but a swarm of bots.

  From one horizon to another, nothing but waving stalks of some kind of grain, only it wasn’t grain. He bent down, ruffled his hands through the stalks, kicked at some. The stalks buzzed, separated into faint clouds and re-aggregated into the same structure as before. The whole world, so far as he could tell, was made of the same stuff. Nanobotic swarms configured to look like…well, like Iowa.

  What the hell? Maybe it was Iowa.

  Something buzzed through on the quantum coupler circuit. It sounded different, deeper, basso profundo, filling his whole mind.

  “ANAD…ANAD, I’m receiving something on my coupler… ANAD…is that you?”

  ***Entity (Keeper) is operating…Entity active in all registers…why have you come here?***

  What the hell was going on? Who was Entity (Keeper)?

  Almost as if his mind had been read, he got a response.

  ***Entity (Keeper) operates the portal…and maintains the Archive. WHY HAVE YOU COME HERE?***

  Johnny Winger stopped right where he was, standing still in the thick sheaves of nanobotic grain. As he stood, stalks and limbs began curling around his ankles. “Where am I? Where is here?”

  Entity (Keeper) didn’t reply at first. Winger concentrated on kicking his legs free of the swirling grain stalks. Most peculiar—

  ***Access to the portal is controlled. Authorization is required…state authorization and present configuration for inspection***

  “Hey, I’m not a bot…I’m not ANAD…where am I?”

  ***Base, ANAD detecting new configs…have not characterized these configs before…pulsing now…analyzing…Base…this is all new…this is so…*** ANAD stopped for a moment and Winger was sure he had ‘heard’ the tiny assembler suck in his breath.

  ***Config Zero….***

  So that was it. Winger watched as Doc II glided…flowed…maneuvered…itself across the grassy quadrangle, through several bushes and shrubbery banks…heading for…where, exactly? He realized he had no idea. That nanobotic swarms could roam uncontained, unsupervised across the base, like any trooper….that was going to take a lot of getting used to.

  “I don’t know, Wings….” Tallant had been nearby, seen the whole exchange. “—seems like Doc II doesn’t need you anymore. I don’t think he needs any of us. That’s what happened to ANAD. Hell, it’s not even a Symbiosis project any more. The swarms have evolved too far for that.”

  “Independent entities,” Winger agreed. “Come on…let’s get to the mess hall before Deeno gobbles up all the doughnuts.”

  Halfway across the quad, Tallant brought up something that had been nagging her. “Doc II mentioned Config Zero. Isn’t that what you and ANAD encountered when you got zapped by that generator at Candor?”

  “Something like that. The best way I could figure it: Config Zero is like some kind of initial state…or maybe a mother swarm configuration. I could never tell if it really exists or was just part of ANAD’s original programming.”

  “Maybe this Doc II knows, since Doc must have programmed it with everything he knew. Maybe Doc II’s even in contact with this Config Zero.”

  “Could be,” Winger agreed. “If that’s true, then there may be more of these Keeper devices around than we’ve accounted for. So far, we’ve run into Keepers at the Paryang monastery and on Mars. There may be others….there’s been talk of one near Jupiter.”

  The two of them picked up a few more troopers on the hike across the mesa to the mess hall. D’Nunzio and Reaves were engaged in a spirited debate about just who the Old Ones were.

  “The way I figure it,” D’Nunzio was saying, “we’ve got maybe seventy years before they arrive…remember the reports we all read? I’m thinking that Doc II, whatever he is, is like some kind of advance guard, sent here to spy on us, maybe prepare the way. Kind of a secret agent.”

  “But that makes no sense,” Reaves told her. “Wouldn’t that have to mean the real Doc Frost was in on the secret too? Wouldn’t that mean he’s part of the advance guard?”

  “Not if Doc II got somehow corrupted, by this third Keeper everybody thinks exists. Say it
went like this: Doc Frost develops a swarm to follow in his footsteps when he dies, sort of like a son. He embeds it inside of his body, just like we’ve done with our ANAD embeds. But once Doc dies and the swarm is activated, it receives new instructions from this new Keeper. Now, Doc II isn’t really what the original Doc conceived. He’s been taken over, like a double agent…for the Old Ones.”

  “Please,” said Reaves, grabbing the side of her head, “you’re making my head hurt. Doc II, swarms, Doc Frost, Keepers, the Old Ones…maybe it’s all a bad dream.”

  “Or a quantum wave,” Tallant teased her. “It makes me uneasy too, all these swarms out of containment now. Humans haven’t had any real competition on this planet for hundreds of millions of years.”

  “Now we do.” Winger was sobered at the prospect. “As an atomgrabber, I ought to be drooling at all the possibilities. But I’m just not sure what it all means.”

  “And what about Red Hammer?” Tallant asked. “We’ve battled them for twenty years. What’s happened to them? Is the cartel finished? Could we still use them to contact the Old Ones, since they’ve obviously been in contact? Might be better than just waiting around for whatever’s going to happen.”

  “For my money, I’m hoping Red Hammer is finished,” Winger said. “I’d rather take my chances with Doc II and others like him. Maybe our best hope is ANAD or something like ANAD. I know Doc II’s basically like ANAD in origin, only souped up inside. But, hell, we’re all atomgrabbers. We ought to be able to figure this out…figure out what makes the Old Ones tick by studying what happens with Doc II.”

  “I don’t know, Wings,” said Tallant. They had reached the mess hall and went inside. “If this Keeper’s really downloading new configs and algorithms to Doc II all the time, I’m not sure we can keep up. I’m not sure we can even reliably detect these signals.”

  “And who wants to turn the Earth into a big lab anyway….excuse me for saying so, sir,” said D’Nunzio. She had already veered off toward the doughnut trays, plate in hand. “I say put Doc II back into containment and let’s take our planet back from the swarms. They’re all basically viruses anyway. Just viruses with brains.”

  D’Nunzio and Reaves barged their way toward the doughnuts while Tallant and Winger scouted out a good table. There was a genial buzz about the mess hall this morning, Winger noted. Table Top was coming back to life. And there weren’t any swarms around to spoil the convivial atmosphere.

  “Maybe Deeno’s right,” Tallant conceded. She filled a big mug with steaming coffee and slurped at it loudly. “Put all the bugs back in the bag and take the Earth back. No more of this letting swarms run around out of containment, trying to integrate themselves into our lives.”

  Winger said nothing. He wasn’t so sure. He studied the noisy gathering for a moment, as it they were themselves nothing but a giant swarm…something ANAD had noted many times in the past.

  “Dana, I’m afraid it may be too late for that. Let’s face it: we’ve been fighting viruses on this world for millions of years, ever since humans became human. They’re still here. And now we’ve given them brains and intelligence and effectors to rival us. I’m thinking we may need to make an alliance with them, even if it changes how we live. An alliance to be ready for the Old Ones. Especially, if the Old Ones turn out to be some kind of race of swarm entities themselves…like I think they are.”

  “Maybe so, Wings,” Tallant said, dribbling coffee out of the corner of her mouth. “But that’s a battle for another day. Let’s just enjoy the morning, why don’t we? You and me together…we did it. We beat Red Hammer again. The Earth survived an asteroid hit. Table Top’s coming back to life. And I’ll bet we can still resurrect old ANAD if we have to and get him working. All we have to do is put that giant atomgrabbing brain of yours to work on it.”

  Winger smiled faintly. “Seventy years, Dana. That may be all the time we have. Life on Earth was always about change and adaptation. That’s the real lesson of evolution. Adapt or die. Something’s coming…something big…and I’m not sure we’re ready for it.”

  I’m ready for a change right now. Tallant was wistful but Winger never seemed to notice. “Hell, maybe it’s just another doughnut tray,” she suggested, rising halfway out of her seat. “Right over there…just came out of the kitchen. The poor servbots are about to get run over by sugar-crazed troopers. Race you to the jelly buns—“ She shot up out of her seat and charged off into the crowd.

  Johnny Winger hesitated only a second, then sprang up after her.

  Old Ones or not, nobody beats an atomgrabber to his objective.

  He dived into the throng and soon forgot the uneasy sense of foreboding that had been dogging him all morning.

  Two hundred meters away, outside the mess hall, the Doc II swarm had been making its way inexorably across the base toward the Mission Prep building and the Ordnance bunker at the north end of the mesa. At the exact same moment that Johnny Winger had seen the new tray of doughnuts, Doc II stopped in mid-flight and hovered at the edge of a small flower bed. The swarm winked and sparkled in the crisp, bright early fall morning sunshine.

  Unknown to anyone, undetected by any instrument, the Doc II swarm had just received a new wave of quantum signals from the Keeper buried dozens of kilometers below a cold, nearly frozen ocean, below the ice crust of Jupiter’s moon Europa.

  A new algorithm was being downloaded.

  About the Author

  Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He works for a large company that makes products everyone uses…just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He’s been happily married for over 20 years. He’s also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3-4 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children. They do, however, have one terribly spoiled Keeshond dog named Kelsey.