Small Miracles

by Edward M. Lerner

  The Monday morning foot traffic from the Garner Nanotech parking lot hit a bottleneck at the employee entrance. Brent waited his turn, glad to be back but already a bit weary. Practically everyone in the line had a smile or a hug or a kind word for him. Finally, he reached the lobby.

  “Good morning, Major America. Good to see you!”

  Major? Brent looked around in confusion. “Who, me?”

  Watts grinned even more broadly. “Who else? You put this company on the map, and you did it the hard way.”

  “Promoting me sort of defeats the purpose of the all-purpose greeting. You might want to reconsider that, Alan.”

  Brent stopped in his tracks. Since when were they on a first-name basis? Before the accident, he had just nodded or smiled and walked past. Brent only knew the man’s name from the ID tag on his uniform.

  Watts looked just as surprised, but said nothing.

  Security was a subcontracted function; Brent could not remember the name of the firm. The rent-a-cops were part of the background. He wasn’t proud of that attitude, but neither had it ever bothered him. What had changed?

  Who, not what. He had changed. He had ridden along with a bunch of police, and the last one died. He lived and Ron Korn died. Where was the justice in that?

  Now merely to see a police cruiser or a cop in uniform brought everything crashing back. Screening was more rigorous than ever since the Athens airport bombing. If Brent had had to fly commercial, he would still be in Chicago. Or he’d have matched some secret TSA profile, and gotten himself sent to prison somewhere. He could never have held himself together long enough to get through airport security.

  The shrinks had been big on desensitization exercises. The homework assignment Brent had most studiously ignored was to talk to a policeman. Just talk.

  “Alan,” Brent said, trying to ignore the holstered handgun. “Were you a cop before?”

  “Sure was, Major. Lots of us in Security were. The hours here are a lot more predictable.” Watts frowned, and he seemed a different person. “And it’s a whole bunch safer.”

  Hundreds dead, but only one was real to Brent. Only one had a face. “The cop I was riding with that day didn’t make it.” It wasn’t enough, but Brent was at a loss what else to say.

  Watts knew. “Meet me at Riley’s after work. I’ll join you in a beer to your friend’s memory.”

  * * *

  Brent had modest goals for his first day back at work. Sort his in-box. Seek out a bunch of people. Those would have been easier tasks had the company not relocated in his absence.

  As best Brent could tell, the prosperity of what the Census Bureau grandly named the Utica-Rome Metropolitan Statistical Area had peaked with the dedication of the Erie Canal. Griffiss Air Force Base and the affiliated Rome Air Development Center had given the declining area a reprieve—then they, too, closed. It was a region in disarray, with too many unemployed workers and boarded-up buildings.

  Dan Garner was never one to pass up a bargain. Years of assured property-tax forgiveness had brought his fledgling company to Utica. To grow from an R & D shop into a production company took money and space. And more money. Hence the move, while Brent was laid up, into what had started out as a strip mall.

  How better to reorient myself, Brent thought, than by scoping out the new place?

  The company’s administrative and R & D areas were now spread across what had been a dozen retail outlets. Brick had replaced the display windows of the defunct stores. Here and there wallboarding continued, the old insulation being swapped out wholesale.

  Utica got more snow than Chicago, but Chicago winters won for cold. Brent inspected the new insulation with interest. This was good stuff, with aluminum foil laminated to both sides to reflect virtually all radiant energy. No one had asked, but he approved.

  The pilot production lines, not yet in operation, snaked through the lower level of the mall’s onetime anchor store. Interior walls had been taken down, carpet torn up, escalators and display cases removed, partitions and catwalks installed. Beeping softly, automated flatbed carts followed tracks painted on the concrete floor. Overhead, color-coded pipes and conduits ran everywhere. Conveyors were being installed to a storage area on the second level. Paper signs, several hand-corrected, taped to walls and pillars made it clear that the layout remained a work in progress.

  Brent had only vague ideas what a nanotech factory might look like. He walked around seeking his bearings, past a loading dock, various storerooms, a computer center, and wiring closets. Pallets of boxed equipment clogged many aisles. He peered through interior windows into workspaces reminiscent of a semiconductor-chip cleanroom, his college chemistry lab, and hot-zone biocontainment. Behind thick glass, hooded and robed workers in immaculate white protective gear did … he could hardly begin to imagine. A security guard controlled access to the more intriguing areas, behind doors from whose still-unpainted frames dangled loose wires. The height of the wires suggested retinal scanners to come.

  Brent came to an area where prefab wall panels were rising, carving out a big chunk of the first floor of the old anchor store. Paper signs foretold an auditorium. He pictured the days-long progress reviews on which government customers always insisted, and the shorter but still interminable all-hands pep talks of which Dan Garner was so curiously enamored, looking forward to neither.

  Brent eventually found, in the rear of the onetime dry cleaner, a door with his name on it. The doorknob had no keyhole; it turned but did not open. The access controls in this new facility all seemed to be electronic. A cell call to Security earned Brent an, “Oops, sorry.”

  He trudged to the main Security office, had his thumbprint digitized for file, and was authorized for access to assorted common areas and his own office. Killing time until the database update took effect, he worked out why thumbprints to open inside doors made sense. Had the wireless chip in his ID badge controlled the door, he could accidentally unlock his office merely by walking down the hall.

  Ten minutes later the thumbprint scanner outside his office finally decided to recognize him. Inside, a suite of new oak furniture had replaced the cheap metal desk and bookshelf Brent remembered. The upgrade almost compensated for having been exiled to this backwater. The office had a faint chemical smell to it that he told himself was wall paint and furniture polish, not old dry-cleaning chemicals. A welcome-back banner hung between the two lally posts that flanked the low credenza. At least the posts had been painted to match the walls.

  The computer on the otherwise empty desk had been hooked up. Knowing he would be horrified, Brent logged in and checked e-mail: 1,327 unread messages.

  Everything from his previous office must be in the boxes stacked along two walls. One stack of bulging cartons was labeled “Mail.” With the penknife on his key chain he slit the tape that sealed the top box. It was crammed. He dug through the first few inches, finding mostly technical journals, flyers for company parties long passed, and probable ads.

  Who was he kidding? Merely locating his office had left him bushed.

  Brent closed the office door and logged into VirtuaLife. Onscreen, bright sunlight shone down on the secluded beach. He imagined the warmth. Gulls wheeled overhead. Combers rolled slowly up the white sand. In the distance, porpoises cavorted. The only overt changes since his last visit were the position of the sun, the level of the tide, and a new tangle of driftwood. His avatar dozed in a canvas beach chair.

  Eyes closed, Brent immersed himself in the sounds of “his” island. Sandpipers warbled. When the birds fell silent, he heard the lapping of waves. Upslope, palm fronds rustled in the breeze. Did palm trees and sandpipers mix? Did sandpipers actually warble? It hardly mattered. Such constraints did not apply here. Reality faded …

  To be evoked by an increasingly insistent meow.

  Growing up, there had been cats in the family for as far back as Brent could remember. Back to when he believed all boy cats must be named Tom and thought it unfair.

 
Brent opened his eyes. Schultz, a large black cat, studied him through jade-green eyes. The sprite was one of Brent’s favorite customizations, and—by choice—often his only company on the island. Alarm clock was the least of Schultz’s talents. The feline was an excellent listener.

  “Isn’t today a workday?” Schultz purred.

  “Very true. Thanks.” Reluctant but refreshed, Brent exited the simulation. In a server farm in Osaka, winds still blew, birds flew and sang, the world continued its stately rotation, and Schultz continued to pad about. Elsewhere in the world of VirtuaLife, over the horizon from Brent’s island, were millions of avatars and sprites.

  Maybe someday he would again feel like mingling.…

  Sorting his accumulated snail mail could wait for another day, but other things should not. Brent headed back into the maze to do something far more important. People here had been very supportive these past several months. He meant to thank them.

  It turned out Dan Garner was on a real island: vacation on Maui for the next two weeks. Felipe Lopez, the chief operating officer, had taken the company’s execs to an off-site meeting. That was code for golf. After months of gray skies and almost daily snow, spring had sprung.

  The techies were in except for Tyra Kurtz. As chief technical officer, she rated an invitation to golf. Brent started with the director of the nanosuit design group, rapping on the doorjamb.

  Reggie Gilbert was a stocky African-American with a shaved-and-waxed scalp and a truly magnificent black mustache. Looking up at the interruption, he broke into a broad grin. “Good to see you, guy. Come on in. First day back?”

  “Uh-huh. Great to see you, too, Gil.” Brent stepped into the office and leaned against the sidelight. Stacks of sealed boxes lined the front wall. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

  “I unpack as I need things. It turns out I’ve been something of a packrat, and that everything important is here.” Gil patted his computer screen.

  “My new office had the same interior decorator. I’ll have to consider your system.” Brent hesitated. “One other thing. A very big thank-you to you and everyone in your team.”

  Gil blinked. “For what?”

  “Are you kidding? That suit you sent me off in saved my life.” Brent shivered despite himself. “I can still hardly believe it.”

  Gil squirmed in his chair. “We should have done better. You look terrible.” A forced laugh. “Wait awhile before you go on any more sales calls.”

  They chatted a bit, then Brent excused himself and went to thank someone else. And someone else. And someone else again. Only amazingly good work by a lot of people had kept him uncrushed, unimpaled, and unasphyxiated. Kim wasn’t in her office when he happened upon it. That was okay; they were having lunch together. Anyway, he had already thanked her—to her flustered embarrassment—long ago.

  Around eleven, Brent’s meandering path reached the Biology area. The offices were empty, but desktop displays flickered with screen savers. Eventually he found a lab corridor, its doors festooned with biohazard placards. A booming bass voice guided him the rest of the way.

  Charles Walczak, the director of the Biology Department, stood six-six. He towered over the two women also in the break room. His eyes looked huge through thick lenses, and the horn-rimmed frames contrasted starkly with his thick silvery hair. He had heavy black eyebrows, very mobile and expressive, although what they had to say remained cryptic.

  “Hey, stranger,” Walczak called. “I heard you were finally back. I want to talk to you. Just give me a second.”

  “Hi, Charles. Take your time.” Brent didn’t know the women and Walczak didn’t introduce them. New hires, perhaps. Judging from the conversation, they were biologists or research M.D.s like Walczak. They eventually concluded a discussion that, for all the sense it made to Brent, might as well have been in Klingon. The women excused themselves.

  “Brent, sorry about that. Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”

  “No, but thanks.” Brent had exhausted his supply of small talk. “Actually, Charles, a thank-you is why I came looking for you.”

  “Ah, you remember me visiting. I’d wondered if you would. You’re welcome.”

  “I’m talking about surviving. The first-aid modes of the nanosuit had a lot to do with that. Thanks for proving them safe so the suit could do its thing.” Brent did a mental rewind. “Um, what visit?”

  “Right the first time, then. You don’t remember.” Walczak swiveled a chair and sat, his legs straddling the seat back. “Angleton Medical Center, the second morning after the big ka-boom. You were still in the surgical ICU. I came to do specialty tests, of course. The med-center lab didn’t have a clue.”

  “I don’t have a clue. What’s this about, Charles?”

  “The hospital had you on a Diprivan drip.” Brent gathered he looked blank, because Walczak continued, “A top-notch sedative that can also affect memory. Milky-colored stuff.” He guffawed. “We call it milk of amnesia.”

  It was for the best that Walczak had chosen research over medical practice. “Don’t think me unappreciative, Charles, but why were you at the Angleton hospital? What were these tests?”

  It was Walczak’s turn to be puzzled. “The bots, naturally.”

  “The bots,” Brent repeated.

  Walczak finished his coffee, set down his mug, and slipped his hands into his lab-coat pockets. “When you hit that brick wall, your chip implant screamed. The nanosuit jet-injected you with painkillers, of course—and also the full load of first-aid nanobots.”

  Surgeons had removed the wireless sensor chip when they rebuilt Brent’s multiply broken humerus. The chip had not shattered with the bone—luckily for him, or the suit would not have known to act. Still, with all the metal pins the docs needed to put in, why take chances with a nonessential object that might irritate his immune system?

  Brent kneaded his left upper arm, the implant’s absence still foreign. “I only knew about the painkillers.”

  “Your blood was flooded with pain and injury biomarkers. Sure, the suit injected drugs for the pain. You also had massive internal bleeding. Stopping that took nanobots. The bots did what they were supposed to. They backtracked the highest biomarker concentrations to the bleeders and pinpoint-delivered artificial clotting agent.”

  Brent had known the suit could do that, not that it had. “I suppose I was pretty lucky, Charles.”

  “Lucky would have meant being someplace else. As for the nanobots, it’s simple. Without them, internal bleeding would have killed you long before the rescuers arrived.”

  The nanobots had been extensively tested in guinea pigs, mice, and human volunteers—bots were safe. Brent had known that, in extremis, the suit could inject them. That wasn’t the same as accepting machines smaller than blood cells swimming throughout his circulatory system. He shivered. “So about the tests?”

  “What you would expect, Brent.” The tone was injured: You question my work? “The bots went kaput after a day, just as it was supposed to happen.”

  Brent was content to know what technology did. How he left for the people who built it. Technobabble was counterproductive on sales calls.

  For months, doctors had told Brent he would be okay. They had bedside manners better than Walczak’s, but the same message. “Trust us” had worn thin long ago; Charles’s supercilious manner had just worn it through.

  To come to terms with things, Brent decided, he had to understand exactly what had happened to him.

  * * *

  “Walmart and a bunch of tents. The town fathers, and trust me, all the town elders are men, love to boast that Washington and Richmond—and Harrisonburg, for crying out loud—are within a two-hour drive. A bright five-year-old can figure out that’s code for ‘in the middle of nowhere.’”

  “So I’ve heard,” Brent said.

  Because Kim had told him. Everyone she got close to heard, sooner or later, about Colesville, Virginia. Often more than once.

  She found Brent
unfocused today. Preoccupied. Oddly difficult to engage. To be fair, it was his first day at work in almost nine months. He was entitled to be distracted.

  Her own dark, distracted thoughts weren’t helping the conversation. Saturday had been another anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre. You never get over a lunatic with a rifle stalking your campus, killing thirty-two. She had known none of the victims personally—but. She remembered as though it were yesterday the long, fearful hours in classroom lockdown. She remembered being glued to every horrifying rumor, speculation, and scrap of news spread by instant messaging and grainy cell-phone vids. She had lived, her freshman year, in West A-J, the dorm where the shooting began. She had had classes in Norris Hall, site of most of the killing. She would never forget the heaps of flowers and teddy bears, the memorial services, the funerals, the abrupt mid-April ending of the semester, the tears.…

  And so she babbled, trying to ignore the images that reasserted themselves at every awkward silence, sure that memories of Angleton must do something similar for Brent. “I got into the District often enough to know what I was missing. Real museums. Theater someplace other than the high-school gym. Thai and Indian and Brazilian restaurants. I promised myself that when I grew up, I’d live somewhere cosmopolitan.”

  “Well done.” Brent glanced about the shopping-mall food court where they had gone for a quick lunch. Every restaurant within sight was a franchise. “Luckily, I felt like a calzone.”

  In the Utica area you could enjoy any ethnic food you wanted—as long as it was Italian. What the locals considered a Mexican restaurant Kim had dubbed Casa del Swill. “The irony is breathtaking, I know.”