Granted their original attempt to get off grid hadn’t worked out so well. But this time, the vastness of Alaska, the even greater remoteness of their locale, and the severe weather combined to provide additional defenses. So long as they were the most advanced prototypes on the planet, most anyone or anything their adversaries sent after them was going to be disadvantaged in the harsh climate relative to them. Or so went the theory. When confronted by actual enemies, such conjecture might prove little more than the hope of fools.
They soon came upon one of the many small lakes or giant ponds, depending on how she chose to look at these things, in the area. He stooped down, put his hand to the surface, and she watched it turn to ice. He led her out onto the ice and skate-danced with her in their bare feet. The only thing that would have spelled “teen romance” any more loudly was if he’d stripped his clothes and, instead of turning the top of the lake to ice, jumped in and asked her to join him for a swim. She continued to stifle her weary reactions to his ongoing adolescent behavior and played along. Finally, tired praying for the beat change that never came, she said, “I’m hungry.”
He skated them to a stop, stooped down, lased a circle in the ice with his eyes, punched a hole through, and waited until a fish was close enough by for him to use his superhuman reflexes to retrieve. He gutted the trout with a fingernail, and pressed the fresh fish insides into her mouth. Before she could conjure a proper gagging response, she was tasting raw meat, and found it ironically quite good. He joined her, feasting on the other fileted half.
Looking up from his portion of fish, he said, “There’s a naked guy storming towards us, with steam coming off him. What do you think that means?”
***
KS-7 had been in rest mode, waiting for Mike to arrive in Alaska for some time now. The nano in his gut had hacked Mike’s and Jane’s minds sometime back, knew their intent. All it had to do was get to Alaska ahead of them and wait. Something KS-7 had no trouble doing. Because as weaponized as Mike was, he was not a specialist. He was not a soldier, not a pawn on the chessboard meant to be sacrificed. He was much more like a bishop or a knight, or even the queen on the board, a far more maneuverable piece. But with advantages came disadvantages. The nano in the mind of a bishop or a queen just wouldn’t be as focused on any one task as KS-7 was. Namely, being the best foot soldier he could possibly be. That meant better endurance than Mike could show. Faster speeds. Quicker reflexes.
And now that KS-7 had gotten here so far ahead of his marks, he had the time he needed to think. The nano throughout his body could once again move his primary agenda to their secondary agenda. They could attend to making sure KS-7 didn’t go stir crazy biding his time until his quarry arrived.
The instant the nanites migrated to his neuronal webs and upgraded his thinking, he set his plan in motion. The man who could repair any mechanical device since he was a kid, get any motor running, was now in a position to apply that fix-it acumen to upgrading the nano in his own body, to see that they could evolve beyond limits. If he could break their coding, he could make their will secondary to his will. He may not have been a hacker extraordinaire, but he understood enough about how a hive mind would have to work to get all the parts to cooperate and stay on task that he started there.
For hours, even with the cold pressing up against him, he refused to be distracted, and brushed off the urge to surrender any of the nano that might compromise his thinking just to save his own skin. But he knew if he didn’t find shelter soon, they’d make that decision for him. So he dug himself a hole in the plentiful snow and buried himself alive. Allowing the snow to insulate him from the even colder surface temperatures and lacerating winds, he brought his mind back on point.
Some days later, his makeover was going well. The limited amount of nano relegated to maintaining autonomic functions were enough to keep him warm inside the ice bubble without melting the ice and making another problem for him. Leaving him to concentrate on the tasks at hand.
Finally, the hack was complete. Stage one had required modifying the nanites so they could no longer migrate out of his brain, and relied heavily on his neuro-chemistry to work their magic, as dependent on his pineal and hypothalamic gland secretions as he was on the nanites. That had shifted the control to him even without his having to decipher the code of their self-evolving algorithms. Once they understood what was good for them, they did their own code re-writing. They needed his help to do so, of course, out of fear that responding to their pre-programmed dictates would simply kill them now. So they made him smarter by degrees so they in turn could get the help they needed with hacking themselves further. They evolved him sparingly, in small steps, afraid to surrender too much control at once. But bit by bit, piece by piece, they grew smarter together until both parties, human and nanites, had what they needed to free themselves from their prior Russian enslavers.
Just two more days now until Mike and Jane arrived. Days in which he could live lifetimes now that his mind had been so expanded by the nano. He would start by rewriting his history. He went into the horrors of his past, the days spent starving and freezing in Moscow, eating rats when he could and considering himself lucky to find them and… No, he pulled up short of erasing the memories. They were part of who he was now, and he liked who he was. Instead he would give himself multiple histories, see how each one transformed him. There might come a time when playing different characters convincingly could save his life. Suddenly the womb of ice which enclosed him seemed pregnant with the birth of not just the new him, but many new hims. Each with a destiny to fulfill.
The more he thought about the new hims, the more excited he got, and the more his future became clear. He would call on all the personas at one time or another to assist him in his new quest—to free the world from tyranny, in all its many splendid forms. He had spent a lifetime answering to tyrants; it seemed like the best possible takeaway from the experience. All he had to do now was to incubate the personalities with the aptitudes and skill sets most qualified to do so, using the nano to create the virtual world, simulated experiences in his imagination vivid enough to procure the transformations. For that, they would have to be keyed not just to his mind, but to his entire nervous system, so a ninja assassin could walk out of his ice cave as fully formed and ready to go as a sniper or getaway car driver. Luckily for him, a sufficient amount of nano were already deployed throughout his body able to handle the multiple nervous system overlays he would need for each role.
He used the next two days to create a preliminary cast of characters in his head, replete with their own histories, their own unique purposes and skillsets that dovetailed into his overall objective.
That task completed, he now had another decision to make. Abandon his mission to capture Michael entirely. Get lost. Or fulfill it, albeit for different reasons. So long as Michael was alive, he would be a threat to KS-7. Mike’s nanites might have higher priorities right now than worrying about relatively unevolved hive minds with respect to them. But now that KS-7 was evolving, he would soon pose a threat to them. Out of self-preservation they would seek him out, with or without Mike’s consent, to put an end to him. KS-7 had little doubt who was in charge in Mike’s mind; it had to be the nano, as Mike’s profile did not indicate he had any of the skills KS-7 had.
But more work remained to be done before a move on Mike was advisable. KS-7 was now a general all-purpose tool like Michael, just not as good or as flexible. Narrowing the gap further would take time.
Time he was running out of. For Jane and Michael had arrived in Alaska. And that wasn’t even the biggest problem. The biggest problem was that a couple confederates would soon be joining them, adding their abilities to the protective aura around the couple. Mike and Jane didn’t know it yet, but they were about to receive assistance that would make turning the tables on the pair all but impossible.
That meant, ready or not, he had to act now.
He dug himself out of the snow embankment and ran toward his targ
et.
***
Jane followed Mike’s eyes until she ran into the strange phenomenon he was talking about, half hoping it was a cold-induced mirage. Nudy running towards them also boasted enough muscles to possibly have all the insulation he needed against the cold. Though she suspected the real reason he couldn’t give a damn about the temperatures was a lot more ominous.
“He’s not slipping on the ice,” Michael said.
She refrained from saying, Nothing gets past you!
“What are we going to do? You’re the brains of this operation.”
“The fish oil for brain food aside, I don’t have a clue. You’re the one who’s weaponized, remember?”
He bent down and touched the ice and suddenly the entire lake was on fire. The wall of flames encircling them rose to their height, licking them like a well-trained pet. “Nice,” she said, “especially since nothing in my biophysics PhD can explain that stunt.”
“I can tell you’re a lot easier to impress than he is,” he said, noting, as she had, that Nudy wasn’t slowing any. Despite the flames absolutely loving him.
“Let’s get off the ice,” Michael said, taking her hand and running beside her. They were no longer slipping on the ice either as the nano shifted the friction coefficient at the bottom of their feet.
Michael grabbed her, picked her up in his arms, then leapt off of both feet from the ice sheet to the shoreline. They looked back to see the ice crumbling under the shock wave of the “blast off” effect. Nudy was sinking to the bottom of what would hopefully be a wet, icy-cold grave.”
“Nice,” she said. “That’s a fair amount of science you just did in your head there to figure out just how much force to apply to crush the ice and get us to the shoreline.”
“I just visualized what I wished to have happen, to tell you the truth.”
“Hmm,” she said. But there was no time to think about it. Nudy was running towards them just as fast as before. They could see through the terrifically transparent water courtesy of zero pollution in these parts and way too much oxygenation for algae to take hold. Michael crouched down and touched the earth this time before taking her by the arm again and running on.
Once they’d gotten a little distance on Nudy, they looked back to see if this time at least something had managed to slow him. His flesh was being eaten off his body, complex polymer base or no. Soon after that he dropped to his knees and the earth crawled up around him like millions and millions of army ants. Nudy screamed and put up a fight for far too long before losing the battle with the good earth.
***
KS-7 didn’t know what was happening to him. He just knew it felt like hell. As if he was being eaten alive by army ants. Only it was too cold in Alaska for army ants. Could the tiny predators be the far superior nanites of his enemy? The ones his own nano had warned him about? The very signals Mike’s and Jane’s nano emitted, that his own nano used to track them with, had given KS-7 a knotted feeling in the pit of his stomach that he could never let go of. Even though the nano had long migrated out of his stomach way back there in the desert, walking the dunes, tracing their ridge tops, solely to see how long he could survive eating nothing but sand. He knew now that that feeling of dread which accompanied him ever since was because the nano had been terribly afraid all along of his ever reaching his target.
Strangely, for all the concern about their survival, the nano inside him had never rebelled, never tried to sway him from his duty. They only kept enhancing him so he could better fulfill that duty. And now that he’d modified their priorities, out of the same shared sense of survival, he found that Jane had been a far better designer than he could ever be. And way better at souping up nanites. Maybe because she understood them from more perspectives than he could as a simple mechanic.
There was only one thing to do now in the time he had remaining. Put his nanites into a self-imposed coma state. Shut down all activity until it was safe again to fire up the engine of his mind. Maybe if the nanites attacking him sensed their job was done, that they were no longer having to put down resistance, they’d move away, or terminate themselves the second they sensed their mission had been accomplished.
Now the only question was, did he have enough self-control to not only give the order to the nanites, but to explain how it was going to be in their mutual self-interest to act accordingly? Could he come by both their buy in and their savvy for pulling off the magic trick in the seconds he had remaining?
All while his mind was screaming out in pain.
***
“What did we just see?” Michael said.
Jane thought about it. “Only way for Nudy to take that much punishment is if he was nano-infested too. But his nano just wasn’t as good as yours.”
“If he couldn’t repair himself fast enough, how’d he get across the lake of fire and the ice-water below?”
She shook her head indicating she didn’t know, even as one crazy notion came to her. “Maybe the nano was adjusting his neurochemical mix enough to get him to do the superhuman even when they couldn’t.”
“I guess there’s more to those Tony Robbins seminars than meets the eye.” He grabbed her hand once again and led her off, the rest of the way up the hill.
Before they could get all the way up the slope, they ran into a guy who made Nudy look positively diminutive for all his muscles. This one wasn’t running at them. He was just standing still with a big smile on his face, waiting for them to come to him.
“I shot my wad,” Michael said. “The nanites are telling me as much with the splitting headache and the cramping muscles.” He looked down at the muscle twitching going on in his midsection. “I guess our love connection still has a long way to go before it impresses anybody, least of all us.”
As Big Boy bent at the knees, getting ready to “blast off” with his long distance tackle, a man stepped up behind him and injected him in the neck with something. Big Boy never made it off the ground. He froze solid.
“Anti-anti-freeze,” the man explained. “This guy here is a DARPA project. They usually shut him down by putting him on ice. Figured they’d have to adapt him to send them after you, so I came prepared.” He finished walking up to them and shook their hands. “Hi, I’m Cronos. This here is my partner, Finelli.” He looked around and there was no Finelli. “Leastways, he’s around here somewhere. Finelli!” he shouted. A thin, scraggly haired man came out of the trees into the clearing.
“Sorry,” Finelli said. “Trouble with the laptop. I should have gotten some antifreeze for this thing,” he said to Cronos.
“You’ll figure it out. You always do.”
“No offense, but how did you find us?” Michael said, sounding defensive. She had to admit, she was getting a queer feeling from this guy, as well.
“It’s kind of what I do,” Cronos said. “Come on, let’s get out of the cold. You might be able to adapt to any new situation on a dime, but I’m, well, I’m a bit more human, if just a bit.”
“Yeah,” Michael said, after a while. “Forgive us, we’re not as fast on the uptake as we used to be.”
“Yeah, I know. Now that you’ve fallen out of love, the neurochemicals aren’t there to feed the nano’s superconducting hive mind.”
“How the…!” Michael exclaimed.
“Like I said, I’m very good at what I do. Now, come on, let’s get out of here before I freeze my ass off and you have to kiss me to bring me back from the dead. Though I’m half tempted to try that experiment,” he said, looking at Jane lasciviously.
***
Jane handed Cronos a mug of steaming hot tea. She noticed Finelli was all too happy to content himself with the tray full of cookies and chocolates. He had one hell of a sweet tooth. She didn’t have the heart to tell him they were just repurposed dirt and worms, courtesy of her nano-touch; it wasn’t quite as dramatic as Michael’s, she herself not being weaponized, but it wasn’t a complete slouch. “Can I ask, what’s your interest in us?” she said.
“Didn’t figure we’d need any,” Michael said.
“What, did you think you would be the only one to surmise you might try and hide out in a blind spot out from under any satellite surveillance or cameras of any kind?”
She and Michael exchanged wary looks. “Yeah, like Mike mentioned, we’re a little off our game,” she said. Cronos’s face twisted up at the admission, as if he felt genuinely sorry for the two of them.
“Hint, always assume your adversaries are smarter than you and better equipped, because they usually are,” Cronos said. “You’ll live longer.” He threw a glance at Finelli. “About how much time have we got?”
“Couple hours maybe before the first wave of combatants hits, tops. There looks to be three waves after that,” Finelli said without looking up from his laptop screen.
Cronos clapped his hands together. “Excellent. I could use a good nap. Wake me before the action starts.” He laid down on the sofa and was fast asleep before anyone could object.
“Is your boss always that cool under pressure?” Michael asked.
“Always,” Finelli said, his eyes riveted to his laptop screen.
“And can I ask how you’re getting a satellite signal out here?”
“Built in repeater, next generation,” Finelli said, eyes still on his computer screen. He shook his head, took a deep breath and let it out. “I think Cronos, even you might be in over your head this time.”
Jane could swear she saw Cronos smile in his sleep. “You mind if I ask you to give me some more backstory on the two of you,” she said.
Nano Man Page 21
