NanoSymbionts
Page 1
NanoSymbionts
By Joseph Philbrook
copyright 2017 Joseph A Philbrook III
Smashwords Edition
Revision 1
Smashwords Edition License Notes This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. All characters are fictional. Any resemblance of any of the characters to actual people, living or dead, is purely an unintended coincidence.
The following contains mature subject mater.
It's content has not been censored and may not be suitable for all readers.
The story is about a complex future. Where expensive highly technical solutions exist for nearly all diseases, including sexually transmitted ones. A future where some biological solutions have also been discovered. In both cases, the lack of medical consequences for promiscuous behavior, can eventually lead to a change in what is perceived as moral behavior.
The bawdry, often explicit, occasionally humorous and sometimes even erotic concepts found in this story are not the point of the story. But they are part of it.
To those offended by such content. You are hereby warned. It's in there!
Table of Contents
The following contains mature subject mater.
It's content has not been censored and may not be suitable for all readers.
Author's Preface
Dark Dreams...
A fond farewell
Chapter 1 the Crash.
Chapter 2 Campsite
Chapter 3 An Awakening
Chapter 4 An Explanation of sorts
Chapter 5 Back to camp
Chapter 6 Hillside
Chapter 7 After Diner
Chapter 8 Spacebound
Chapter 9 The Garage etc...
Chapter 10 XenDar
Chapter 11 A New Strength
Chapter 12 The People
Chapter 13 Authority
Chapter 14 A Walk In The Woods
Chapter 15 Something About Cindy's Makeover
Chapter 16 To A Backwater World We Go.
Chapter 17 Exercise
Chapter 18 Something Odd In The Sky Of A Strange Land
Chapter 19 The Ruins of XenDar
Chapter 20 The Gift of Wildernest
Chapter 21 Air Power Failure
Chapter 22 Long Distance Transport
Chapter 23 Girls on the prowl
Chapter 24 A Meeting With The Professor
Chapter 25 Saddle Sore
Chapter 26 Surprise Attack
Chapter 27 A Call For Help & A Frantic Reunion
Chapter 28 Into The Pit
Chapter 29 The Burning Sky
Chapter 30 Counter Attack
Chapter 31 Security And Other Lost Causes
Chapter 32 Hysteria
Chapter 33 Monsters
Chapter 34 A Small Spark Of Hope
Chapter 35 A Sad Return & A Hasty Departure
Chapter 36 Sorrow
Chapter 37 Summons
Chapter 38 The High Council
Chapter 39 Audience
Chapter 40 Departure
Chapter 41 Exile
Chapter 42 LosLand Revisited
Chapter 43 a shadow of hope
Chapter 44 the cave
Chapter 45 a rude awakening
Epilogue
Appendixes
About The Author
Galactic Standard Units of Measure
Author's notes
About The Names In This Book
Author's Preface
This is the 3rd E-book I've self-published via Smashwords. Yet in the chronology of the story it's the first book of the series. In fact it was actually written first. When I started it however, I had no idea I would be self-publishing my work as E-books. I also didn't have a clue how to write it properly. At the time my life was also in such turmoil that I couldn't be consistent in my attempt to write about the multiverse that evolved in my dreams of this book.
As a result the plot was broken in several places and it became an unpublishable mess. I should probably admit that lacking any formal training on how to write such a book, I didn't even have a clue how to punctuate it properly. Then when my life became less turbulent and I had the time to return to my writings I started an adult themed trilogy with the book titled ‘Biosymbionce’. Which was actually a continuation of this story. Some of which I drew upon in the form of memory recordings and dream sequences. Neither of which are, in my story, totally reliable.
So when I decided to rework this formerly unpublished backstory and release it as a free prequel to my trilogy before I begin writing my ‘trilogy's’ finale. I spent a lot of time cleaning up the grammatical and punctuation errors. I also fixed a few plot errors. So it is that I now recommend reading Nanosymbionce first. I mean it's free after all and the trilogy will make so much more sense if you read the prequel first. This is likely to be especially true of the finale... Which, unlike the first two books of the trilogy, will be written under the assumption that the reader has already read the prequel.
Dark Dreams...
The dream always started with something like this. But he never realized that fact while he was dreaming it...
Or was it the other way around. He was never really certain if this was the way the dream began, or rather if the last dream before waking, was always something like this just before he actually woke. He never could quite be sure. Either way though, it always felt like this.
A fond farewell
The guildsman began to wake from the protective hypersleep imposed by his cybernetic implants as soon as the temporal distortion field faded. It would have been nice to have permitted his nervous system to take a cyclet or two to gradually acclimate itself to the return of conscious thought but he was too good a pilot to risk it. He needed to be ready to act at once if anything went wrong. So he had his implants accelerate the process of waking up. Thus he was fully awake 0.003 subcyclets after the synthetic wormhole closed behind his ship. This of course, resulted in the headache that he always got when his implant forced his brain to wake up too fast.
He checked the display before him for any sign of trouble. All the indicators were green except of course for the power reserves which displayed 21% in amber. He quickly deployed the energy scavenging particle collectors and began harvesting power and particles from the local solar wind. He also checked his coordinates. He had arrived a considerable distance further out from the star than the prearranged rendezvous location called for. Which is to say that he had arrived precisely where he intended to. He was well aware that even the stripped down version of the guild stardrive that was installed on small scout ships like his didn't often miss it's target coordinates. However that close to the star's surface he hadn't wanted to risk it. So he had factored in a significant safety margin. He had also arrived far enough ahead of the appointed time to make the necessary corrections. He calculated that it would take four cycles to achieve the prearranged position, in the correct parking orbit.
He redirected a small but steady stream of particles to generate the thrust he needed. The guildsman had no need to check his calculations, His implant insured that he didn't make math errors. Nonetheless he checked his coordinates again to verify that the minute changes matched the results he expected. Then he settled in to wait. While he waited he thought about the disturbing news he carried. He also period
ically rechecked his position and velocity, gradually reducing thrust as he approached the correct vector for the designated parking orbit.
Less than two subcyclets after the guildsman reduced the thrust to zero his view of the star field was suddenly distorted by the formation of another wormhole exit point. Then his friend's ship was there. It's initial relative speed and velocity when it exited the wormhole precisely matched the orbit he had only just achieved. He wasn't really surprised that his friend had managed to plot his wormhole so precisely. Had anyone else been piloting the incoming ship however, he would have been alarmed that the other ship had arrived in such close proximity that the magnetic fields generated by the docking clamps could complete the docking sequence without any help from the docking thrusters.
“You never could resist a chance to show off your skill,” he said when the airlock door cycled open.
“And like I told you when we were just cadets, your skill is just as good as mine,” the other guildsman replied. “You just never dared to trust yourself enough to stop factoring in a safety margin.”
The first guildsman shook his head.
“Maybe so my friend,” he said. “But what would have happened if I hadn't had enough time to finish correcting my orbital position from where my safety margin put me?”
The newcomer laughed.
“I would be more concerned about the likelihood of the star we are orbiting having changed it's galactic orbit enough for my wormhole to funnel me into it's fiery embrace,” he replied. “You, I'm quite certain, would simply have arrived sufficiently early to make the corrections before I got here. In fact you've probably even had enough time to recharge your power cells by now.”
The first guildsman conceded with a chuckle.
“Actually,” he said with a glance at his console. “I'm only at 80% power.” Then in a much more serious voice he added “I've made contact with the professor and I'm afraid you were right about those upgrades that central command is pushing. He says that he is quite sure that the missing safeguards are intentional. What's more, he's under pressure to start implementing them on our group soon. There is one ray of hope however. He's been developing a new decentralized control system that should enable him to actually strengthen the safeguards for those of us ‘his’ team upgrades. In fact the only thing he's waiting for, is that he is still fine tuning it so that the internal vulnerabilities built into central command's design, will appear to be in place by any remote monitoring their likely to use. That way when they inevitably try to turn us all into mindless slaves, there may be enough of us still capable of free thought to make a difference.”
“So your actually going to let him upgrade your implant?” his friend interrupted him in a sharply demanding tone of voice.
“It's not like we're going to have much choice my friend,” the first guildsman replied. “We might know that central command's up to no good. But we can't prove it! Soon their upgrades will become mandatory. They will point at the risk we take of an enemy getting hold of our external control modules. They will make outlaws of any of us who refuse to be upgraded. We would be hunted down like animals. And when they catch us they would either simply remove our outdated implants or worse, they would preserve us alive but replace them with behavior control systems such as those imposed on the most dangerous of criminals.”
His friend silenced him with a hand gesture. Then after a moment he explained.
“In order to catch me, they will first have to find me,” he said. “No I shall have to renounce my allegiance to the guild and disappear. Won't you come with me?”
The first guildsman sighed.
“No, if I go into hiding I won't be able to help the professor make a difference,” he replied. “My choice is already made. Are you sure you won't join me in it?”
“No I will not, my choice is also made,” the second guildsman began. “It may be that the professor can pull this off the way you say. And maybe he won't build in some way to take control of his upgrades himself someday. But I'm not willing to entrust my free will to anybody besides me. Of you my friend, I ask only for your word that you won't help them find me.”
“Very well, you have my word,” the first guildsman said. “It saddens me to think that we shall not meet again my friend. But so long as my free will is intact, I'll not hunt you down for them. But if you ever do see me looking for you, then you will know that you were right and I'm no longer myself. If that should happen, you will need to terminate me before I find you. You would in that case, be doing me a favor. But for now I think it would be best if you wait until I leave to begin forming your wormhole. That way even my sensor logs won't show which direction you took.”
The former guildsman simply stepped back into the airlock.
“Farewell. I shall treasure the memory of our friendship,” he said just before it closed.
“As will I my friend,” the guildsman barely had time to say. Then he repeated to himself after the door had sealed between them “As will I...”
The guildsman continued to charge power cells as he began climbing out of the star's gravity well. His thrusters were using power nearly as fast as his collectors could replenish it. So by the time he had both escape velocity and sufficient distance to safely open an inverse temporal dilation wormhole his power cells only had a 90% charge. His calculations indicated that it would be more than sufficient for the relatively short range star flight to the guild base where the professor would be waiting for him. So he opened the wormhole and disappeared from his friends scanners.
The former guildsman had to wait two cycles before he had enough power to generate his own wormhole. By then he had calculated his departure. He began to redirect a stream of particles as a form of thrust. It took him another two cycles to reach the minimum threshold velocity. At which point he activated his wormhole generator. As his ship entered the wormhole he felt it's inverse temporal dilatation field begin to take effect. He had plenty of time to think about his plan before his implant imposed hypersleep took full effect.
His exit point formed so close to the planet he had chosen that not even the guild's best long range scanners would be capable of detecting it from outside of the local solar system. His own scanners were good enough to have detected any guild ships inside the system. He didn't waste any time recharging his power cells. There was just enough energy for a powered grounding. He wasn't planning on leaving this backwater world. So he didn't much care how long it would take for his ship's power cells to recharge at the reduced energy levels that would be available to his collectors on the surface. It took much less energy to generate thrust by passing atmospheric molecules through the induction thrusters than it had to supply them with particles scavenged from the solar wind. Even so it took more power then he had anticipated to reach the ground. The weather patterns were producing extremely strong winds which buffeted his ship with sudden changes in intensity and direction that required power draining compensations from his thrusters.
There wasn't even enough power left to open the main cargo bay doors when he finally touched down with a bone jarring thump. So he used what little there was to initialize a stealth protocol program that would use what solar energy it could passively scavenge to recharge the ships systems. Meanwhile the ships systems would hibernate until there was enough power for the ship to properly conceal itself. Then satisfied that he had done all he could to reduce the chance of his presence here being detected, the former guildsman exited through the manually operated escape hatch.
Chapter 1 the Crash.
Steve walked quietly down the path, stopping occasionally to scan for traces of his quarry. He was fairly sure the cybernoid had passed this way. As good as they were at covering their tracks, they always left some short lived traces of the complex electromagnetic field patterns generated by their microfusion reactors. He was getting closer. He paused again, this time to check the status of his weapon systems. Steve didn't have much to worry about, his weapons were at least twic
e as good as the best the cyborg was likely to have and his defense shield had a full charge.
Still, it was best to be cautious, So he asked his nanosymbiont to do a comprehensive perimeter scan. A moment later he began to exhale a stream of nanites which quickly transformed themselves into a hundred nano-scouts. A dozen of which embedded themselves in the outer perimeter of his shield's sensor field. While the majority could have flowed along it until the field intersected with the ground. Where they could have extracted the minerals and other materials needed to build their own insect sized robotic augmentation shells from the dirt and sand. That would have taken a cyclet or two however, which was time he didn't want to waste.
So instead Steve's nanosymbiont commanded some of the nano-morphic material Steve kept in his pockets to transform itself into the needed shells. Thus it took less than a subcyclet for the nano-scouts to begin using Steve's nano-net to request the energy they needed to charge their completed robo-shells. A small fraction of Steve's defense shield's charge was then beamed directly to the robo-shells. As soon as it had sufficient power, each wasplike robo-shell launched itself on a fast reconnaissance flight.
Almost immediately Steve's head was filled with alarm messages. It was a trap. There were at least two drone class cyborgs ahead of him and three more rapidly approaching from behind. Worse still, they were all starting to emit high energy radiation. This radiation would have been dangerous. Even if the majority of it wasn't composed of an energy field type, that was particularly disruptive to his nano-net. He was beginning to lose nano-scouts at an alarming rate. Worse still, his personal defense shield was quickly being overloaded. Steve was amazed and a little scared. This was all wrong. His shield was rated to handle more energy than even a dozen of the microfusion reactors that powered the cybernoids were supposed to be able to yield.