Nano Man

by Dean C. Moore

  “It’s been my experience that greedy people in power resist change because why screw with what already works?”

  “Yeah, but what if you’re one of the ones whose status quo is building the future? The We-R-Intels, U.S. Cybernautics and New Silicons of the world?”

  “Speaking of We-R-Intel, they made the list,” Finelli said, working his latest magic with the internet and his keyboard.

  “Let’s go pay a visit.”

  ***

  “Holy shit!”

  “Contain yourself, Finelli.”

  “I think they used this set for I, Robot.”

  Cronos took in the We-R-Intel lobby. “I guess building the future pays. Who’d a thought, listening to all those Exxon commercials?”

  The instant they looked lost in the maze and Finelli started bringing up blueprints on his laptop, a hologram appeared before them. “Mr. Santos will see you now.”

  “How is it he knows I’m even here, never mind who I am?” Cronos asked.

  “Intel is who we are, sir.” The hologram lit up the path to Santos on Finelli’s laptop monitor for him.

  “That was a little creepy.” Finelli gulped.

  “Speak for yourself. I’m a lot more than just a little creeped out.” He climbed the staircase first, figuring it was the bold thing to do, and tried to resist the temptation to go for his gun.

  “Whoa,” Finelli said once they were high enough to survey the lobby from an Eagle’s point of view. “I’d love to hang-glide off this balcony. With that updraft, I could probably stay afloat a couple hours, easy.”

  “Suit yourself,” Santos said. “We’ve got the hang-gliders stowed away in the hall closet just behind us. We try to encourage our geniuses to let off some steam once in a while. Hell, most of their best ideas come during their downtime, so who am I to smother them?”

  “I appreciate you toning down my Big Brother fantasies,” Cronos said, shaking his hand. It had been left hanging in front of him since Santos’s mouth started moving. Cronos figured he could wait to alienate the guy for when he deserved it. Right now he could use some charm school pointers himself, so who was he to begrudge the guy for giving him some?

  Santos led them into his office. The conference table was filled with well-appointed suits, both sexes equally represented, but not a whole lot of people over thirty. If they weren’t sexist, they were definitely ageist. From the handsome facades, Santos’s included, this could just as easily have been a modeling agency.

  Santos gestured for them to have a seat to either side of him along the conference table. He sat at the head, of course. And the giant screen, which Cronos suspected would be highly forthcoming in a minute, was at the opposite end of the table just big enough to land a jumbo jet on.

  Without further ado, Santos gave the nod. One of the female suits, halfway down the table, fired up her power point’s embedded video. “This is where we were last year, after injecting with the nano beta serum.”

  The Rhesus on the screen played with the combination lock on his own cage, listening closely to the tumblers, until he found the combination and let himself out. Halfway to the guard on duty, snoozing at his desk, the Rhesus picked up a pipe wrench. The plumber had evidently left on lunch break, meaning to return to fix the leaking steam pipes he’d been commissioned to fix, judging by the rest of the tools lying about and the other signs of work in progress. It would soon turn out to be a lucky thing he was out of the lab.

  The monkey screeched to wake the guard before swinging with the pipe wrench. That, for Cronos, was the truly spooky part. It was as if it wanted the guy to know he was facing down nothing worse than his own karma coming back at him.

  “I saw this movie,” Finelli said, leaning into Chronos. “Thought the sequel was way better.”

  The Rhesus set down the pipe wrench, then scurried into the arms of the plumber coming back from lunch. Plumber took one look at the guard, and at the pipe wrench on the floor, and said, “Yeah, that’s pretty much how I’d feel about being poked and prodded.”

  He wiped the Rhesus’s face of blood with his napkin. “I don’t mind rescuing you, but you have to agree to do the same thing to the wife. She’s hitting me up for alimony and the accident insurance on her is through the roof.”

  The monkey jumped out of his arms and went back for the pipe wrench, then jumped back in his arms. The rhesus then tellingly clapped the tool against his other hand. “Now that we understand each other,” the plumber said, “Let’s get to hell out of here.” He opened the door, looked this way and that, then fast-walked it down the corridor toward the exit sign. “When they go to put you down, just let yourself out of the cage like you did here, and we’ll meet up in the tree house in my backyard. I’m on about twenty acres of dense forest. We’ll live happily ever after off her insurance policy. How are you with hand jobs?”

  The monkey screeched and nodded vigorously. “Good, glad to hear it.” Plumber picked up the pace.

  “This is racier than the sequel,” Finelli said, leaning into Cronos. “Gets my vote. Enough with the family friendly nonsense already. Like anyone under the age of thirteen is ready for the future. We need to just keep the pod kids in the incubators until then.”

  “Whatever became of the monkey,” Cronos said, raising his voice to be heard across the table.

  “I’m afraid that’s classified,” Santos said.

  “You can bet he’s not still running around out there,” Finelli said, whispering in Cronos’s ear.

  “You made any progress yet in curtailing the nano’s non-lethalness?” Cronos asked the entire table of suits.

  “Yes, this generation isn’t nearly so smart. It only self-evolves within limits,” Santos explained. “The monkey ends up being just as smart as a six year old. Hell, we can make it as smart as your average twelve year old. So what you end up with is low maintenance pets, or life partners, if you prefer, that can pretty much take care of themselves, while being the perfect companions. They can sniff out cancer in their human owners, intervene when their hearts stop, even put through the call to 9-1-1.

  “Even animals in the wild will benefit by being smarter, able to avoid poachers better, and alert us when there’s something off balance in their ecosystem that needs attending to before species loss is a certainty. In short, Cronos, a future we can all live with, not ideal by any means, but nothing like you witnessed on Finelli’s laptop before we erased the footage. No run away effects like with this Nano Man. No future no one can control or predict that can only end badly for all of us.”

  Cronos took a deep breath and let it out. “Fine. I buy the sales pitch. What do you want me to do?”

  “What it is you do best,” Santos said, letting the spring in his spring-back chair push him forward. “Find him, get him to see reason, so he turns himself in. If we can control the reaction we can give him some kind of life, away from us and everyone else determined to go after him. I’m not entirely convinced you’ll beat our people to him, but I like hedging my bets.”

  “Yeah, okay. I’m guessing he could use a few less sleepless nights, wondering himself what he’ll turn into.” Chronos stood, not wanting to take any more of their time or wanting to be taken off the hunt any longer than necessary.

  “You’re just going to take our word we’ll keep up our end?” said the female suit who’d thrown up the video of the monkey earlier.

  “No, but I like your take on the future better than Nano Man’s. I’m not looking forward to seeing this planet reduced to a battleground for Nano Men with the rest of us standing on the sidelines watching them slug it out. It’s not like they can seem to do so without leveling at least one city block.”

  “Everyone’s got their take on the future, Cronos,” Santos said. “What makes you think ours is any better than a hundred or so other corporations out there all vying for control of it?”

  “I don’t have the time for that many board meetings. Splitting hairs isn’t what I do. Splitting skulls, maybe. You’d do
well to think about that if you do turn out to be the devil in disguise.”

  “Please tell me you have some idea of how to hunt these things,” Finelli said once they were out of the boardroom and heading back downstairs to the lobby again.

  “Not a clue. And they’re not things, they’re people.”

  “You sure? The instant they become nano-infested they become corporate property. Someone had to pay for Jane’s research, might even have been these guys.”

  “I’m not the one to be holding philosophical debates with on the matter, Finelli. I’m just a human hound dog, with a pit bull bite, no more. If you want to go about dehumanizing us, you can start with me.”

  Finelli grunted. He opened his laptop. “Maybe they’ll pop up on the grid. I guess there’s always a small chance, like the one about holding on to our humanity from here on out. And I’m not speaking about us and the two of them, I’m speaking about all of us so-called humans.”

  ***

  “I wonder how you got on their radar?” Finelli said before he and Cronos were all the way to the lobby of We-R-Intel.

  “I do have a good track record for bringing in adversaries that are both smarter and more lethal. That’s hard to ignore going after big game like this.”

  Finelli chuckled. “Dragon Slayer. Love the nickname.”

  ***

  Giradelli came flying through the locked door—the metal door in the metal door frame in the solid metal wall—taking half the wall with him.

  Now that he was in the hallway, which gave him considerably less room to navigate, and before he could get his bearings, Cronos injected him with a needle and put him to sleep before he could continue the unscheduled building demolition. “Take a note, Finelli, sometimes the last man standing is the last man to enter the room.”

  Cronos stepped into the hi-tech computer lab to survey the damage. Giradelli must have been after some cutting edge software on one or more of the computers. Self-evolving algorithms perhaps. They were all the rage. Some were a lot better at evolving within limits than others, which made them a hell of a lot more valuable. To foreign governments. To private corporations. All sorts of folks. And despite Giradelli’s crude tactics, even he could have managed to stick a USB drive into a computer port loaded with just the right proprietary software nabbing algorithms. Giradelli was a DARPA project, but he’d long gone rogue, after being hacked by a private party, who then used him for smash and grabs for high paying clients.

  A dozen or more agents were dead. There might have been some field agents among them worth their salts, but most would have forgotten their field training or had had that part of their regimen shortchanged in favor of their geek status and responsibilities. No matter. The best field agents weren’t going to last long against Giradelli.

  Some of the agents hung from the walls, or more accurately speaking, were embossed in the walls, while others were impaled on flag poles meant to convey patriotism; the dead operatives had certainly gone out fighting for their country.

  The rest of the bodies on the ground were twisted in painful positions that suggested multiple bones were broken in their bodies, including their spines and their necks. “I appreciate you doing my research for me, gentlemen. Take a note, Finelli, our guy likes to work in close. If he can’t get his hands on you, he’s not going to hurt you.”

  “I guess that’s how he keeps those big muscles in tone.”

  “That and the hydraulic undercarriage. The guy’s fifty-percent titanium. What were they thinking slugging it out with this guy?”

  “They couldn’t very well shoot it out, not without getting caught in the crossfire themselves.”

  “Another takeaway. If you’re going to surround someone, make sure you can aim worth a damn.”

  Giradelli was stirring in the background. “So much for the tranquilizer that could knock out a horse,” Cronos said. “Remind me to shoot that doctor. And for the record, I can aim just fine.”

  Giradelli was getting to his feet fast, leaving Cronos precious little room to think. Cronos aimed the gun at the overhead lights until he’d put out every last one that Giradelli hadn’t managed to put out already tossing guys to the ceiling. “That wasn’t terribly bright,” Finelli said. “For all we know, he can see in the dark. We sure as hell can’t.”

  Giradelli charged Cronos like a bull. Cronos sidestepped him at the last minute, shoving the cut cabling into his mouth. The resulting electrical discharge knocked him out for yet a second time in as many minutes.

  “What gave you the idea that would work?” Finelli said.

  “This is a high-value computer bank. Stands to reason it’d be backed up up the yin yang, probably multiple generators at the other end if the electricity cut out. So even if he could withstand the shock from tripping every switch in the building…”

  “There was still the monster generators at the other end. Nice. I’m sure you appreciate his titanium undercarriage better than the last people in here. Conducts electricity just fine.”

  “There’s no denying the value of quality manufacturing.”

  Giradelli was stirring for yet a third time. “Do you believe this guy?” Finelli said, passing his handheld scanner over Giradelli.

  “Back up electrical systems of his own. Organ redundancy, down to a second heart,” Cronos said, regarding the scanner’s display. “Nice.” Cronos ran his hand through his hair. “I should really consider a career as an electrical engineer in the next life.”

  “Oh yeah, pays way better.” After taking a second to swallow hard, Finelli said, “Think fast, boss.”

  “Why do you care if we live or die? We work for the city.”

  “The betting pool is up to 50K that you’ll never make it past this latest assignment.”

  “50K? The cheap bastards. In New York? That won’t take me a year past retirement.”

  “I’m trying to talk you up, boss. That is to say, run you down. I point out the lack of personal regard for life and limb, the recently deceased wife, the alcoholism… I think it should be clear to anyone you’re in a hurry to die.”

  “And you still can’t get the pot past 50K?”

  Finelli shrugged. “They’re government. It’s not like they have a lot to invest.”

  “Yeah, but their retirement is assured. Now that corporations own government, they can look forward to a cushy-post election or appointment job making even more money than they made on the government dole.”

  “I fear your reputation is catching up with you.”

  “As is this guy.” Cronos realized that Giradelli had nearly recovered the last of his senses. “I think it’s time you hacked the DARPA databases, Finelli. There’s got to be some way to bring this guy down. They wouldn’t have built him without an off-switch.”

  “Oh, thanks for reminding me. Yeah, did that earlier. They think throwing him into the sun might work. Of course, it hasn’t actually been tried.”

  “Smart ass.”

  Cronos sighted the service elevator with the doors stuck open, thanks to the dead bodies lying across the threshold, and the forklift just to the right of it. The poor guy who had been trying to unload the latest pallet of desktop computers, was currently skewered to the end of the forklift blades. Cronos hopped on the forklift, powered it up, and drove it over until he had the still groggy Giradelli in its arms. He promptly drove to the window, smashing the glass with the tines of the forklift. Tilting the blades down, he watched Giradelli roll off them to street level about a hundred and fifty floors below. If his aiming was right, he’d land in a garbage truck, and the driver, feeling said impact, would commence the compacting. Never let it be known that Cronos entered a building after a crazy man without a Plan B. The hardest part was judging the aim from this high up. But Cronos had hedged his bets there as well. The belly of the city trash truck had been magnetized after being electrocuted, as part of Cronos’s prep work prior to entering the building. It was now summoning Giradelli, as he fell, into its loving embrace. It was anyb
ody’s guess if the truck would be strong enough to even dent Giradelli’s undercarriage, but Cronos couldn’t imagine that the human part of him would survive the compacting.

  Finelli stared over the lip of the window. Cronos had to pull him back to keep him from falling out of it in his zeal to know if he was still in the running for the betting pool lotto. He whistled. “Yeah, he’s not walking away from that anytime soon. And that’s assuming he survived the fall.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. Leastways, we live to have another go at him, which isn’t a half bad consolation prize.”

  They walked towards the freight elevator, stepping over the dead bodies. “You know any of these agents?” Finelli said.

  “I’ve done some of their wives once or twice.”

  “I’m sure they’ll appreciate you stepping in to help them with the bereavement process.”

  “Bereavement? I’m thinking bacchanal is more like it, considering the ploy I used to get in their pants in the first place was a video of each of them cheating on the wife.”

  “I still don’t see as that detracts from the sentiment any. Video? You moonlight as a private dick?”

  They both laughed. “Sorry, that pun actually wasn’t intended.”

  ***

  There were loud cheers, which included the “Dragon Slayer!” moniker as soon as Cronos and Finelli made it back to the office. The guys were holding up beers, and stuffing Metts tickets in Cronos’s and Finelli’s pockets.