Nano Man

by Dean C. Moore

  “Any ideas why Serena went off the reservation?” he said.

  Gunther pressed a remote, throwing up the footage of Serena’s final showdown with her own FBI task team, then the meet up with her handler, Bumper, a robot himself, out in the hall, which hadn’t exactly gone well for him, his severed head aside. “As far as we can tell, she isn’t taking well to not being the most cutting edge prototype out there.”

  Totos laughed. “What gave her the idea she was the most advanced prototype?”

  “We decided it was best if none of the prototypes knew of one another’s existence,” Campo said, setting down his glass.

  In contrast to Gunther’s well-attended, ageless bronzed beauty, courtesy of his metrosexual inclinations, Campo was in his early sixties, and his rheumatoid arthritis made it so he could barely manipulate the whiskey glass on his own. It was a safe bet he just wanted a new body for himself, and didn’t much care who provided it, or what the prototype was made of, whereas Gunther had placed his bets on being the one to provide that body, still unduly confident in his own immortality, as was the privilege of youth.

  Campo’s company was just one of many who’d furnished the prototypes, all in a play to see whose was the most superior.

  “Their ultimate assignments wouldn’t exactly benefit from them reaching out to one another, even when in trouble,” Campos said, “and could only serve to give them away.”

  “How are we coming with that secondary agenda, anyway?” Totos asked.

  “They’re acclimating well to human life, but so far none of them is entirely invisible. They’re still a little too robot-like to not draw attention to themselves.” That was Bateman, owner and designer of one of the prototypes.

  “As far as replacing any of these third world warlords with one of our robots, I still say mine is the best contender.” That was Luderman. “Though I agree with the consensus, none of them is entirely ready yet. Maybe with a little more real world acclimation…”

  “Well, they’re going to get it,” Totos said, keeping his attention on the flickering flames in the fireplace, using it as a meditative aid to center his mind and help him think. He did his best thinking from an altered state anymore now that his memory was going south and his rational processes weren’t what they used to be either. His Zen mind was holding its own though, so far. “Each of them is going to have to get close to Serena if they’re going to eliminate her without setting off her radar or anyone else’s.”

  “It’s an excellent opportunity to take their undercover work to the next level,” Bateman said. “They do best under pressure. They were designed that way. That’s why they were put in such high stress positions to begin with. But it appears they find a status quo that’s just enough for their purposes and no more, then they cease evolving as rapidly as they could.” They were all nodding.

  “There’s something else,” Totos said, “before we go congratulating ourselves on our good luck, and the chance we’ve been waiting for to compete against each other’s prototypes.” He held his next words until he was sure everyone’s attention was on him. “It’s possible Serena is evolving outside of proscribed limits.”

  There were gasps around the room and scolding faces. “That wasn’t part of the bargain,” Luderman said.

  “We took every precaution to see something like that never happened with our prototype,” Batemen said.

  “And ours,” Luderman said. The rest of them couldn’t chime in fast enough with their latest piece of evidence as to why their prototypes were more reliable.

  “Admittedly her actions could be construed as entirely within her programming,” Gunther said. “After all, we wouldn’t very well want our robot replaced by someone else’s after we’d gone to such extreme measures to maintain control of a country. That being the case, I’d say she has just demonstrated that she truly is the superior prototype.”

  “Or the worst of the lot,” Luderman said to a chorus of supportive grunts, “if she turns into a homicidal maniac at the first sign of pressure.”

  “Self-evolution within limits, gentlemen,” Gunther said. “That’s what we’re all about. We want them to improvise so they can pass for the real person they’re replacing, and keep passing. If that means eliminating those who are in a position to do her harm, who know too much, or who no longer fit with shifting market strategies, then how is that any different from how we operate, and how we want her to operate? Once again, I see only proof so far that our prototype is the best.”

  “Time will tell, gentlemen, and lady,” Totos said, in an effort to quiet the storm of protests, “as it always does. Let’s hope I’m still around to keep you hens from pecking one another’s eyes out when the latest intel is in.”

  Truska had remained silent throughout the meeting, her face impassive. It was just one of the many unsettling things about her. She didn’t believe in showing her hand like the others. Arguably, her culture deferred to whatever the group mind thought more readily than individuals who’d grown up in this country. But Totos wasn’t buying that. She couldn’t have gotten this far just by being a team player. What’s more, there was a lot more behind those eyes than mere strategic smarts.

  “To the best prototype,” Totos said, holding up his glass in toast. “Hear, hear!” the others said, raising their glasses. Truska smiled faintly, but didn’t participate in the toast. Totos found this a strange world they were heading into, one where humans in key strategic positions were gradually replaced without anyone else knowing to facilitate the concentration of power into their hands. A quiet revolution, he supposed, was the most likely to succeed. He’d long stopped wondering how long they could keep the cat from getting out of the bag. As it turned out, keeping secrets was what organizations like his did best. Only those who kept them best rose to the top.

  When the time was right, he surmised they’d make the announcement introducing the “new” options for the “first” time to the populace, once they could make a more compelling argument for why everyone should upgrade to one prototype or another. By then each of the companies represented in this room would have a version worth scanning and uploading to and leaving the human body behind for, as part of their respectful share-the-spoils approach to keep them all from going at one another’s throats. By then the kinks in the algorithms would have been worked out so this kind of mutinying behavior Serena was displaying was impossible. Just as impossible as having any thought that wasn’t monitored by corporate HQ, or possibly any sense of identity at all that wasn’t in the best interests of business. He wouldn’t be surprised if Truska’s model won out in the end where it counted, for the same reasons that the last shall be first, if the bible was to be believed. Why wouldn’t the least democratic first world society on earth not be the first among them for the ultimate solution to the ultimate citizen?

  As to anyone who might object to their plans who would be in any position to thwart them, they would have long been contended with quietly by their robotic replacements.

  ***

  Truska didn’t join the toast celebrating their latest coup to send the various prototypes after Serena, because when the time came, she wanted to be able to deny any complicity in the plot. The plan, of course, was everything she had hoped for and more; she just couldn’t share that with them. According to the AI running Digital Nirvana, this kind of escalation of warfare between rival companies determined to see their prototype trumped the others would create the kind of unsafe world that would compel people to upload in droves to Digital Nirvana. Just what she wanted. So long as people felt secure uploading themselves instead to various robotic prototypes, there wouldn’t be much demand for Digital Nirvana. But the path the alliance was paving now, even without realizing it, was sealing their fate as well as hers.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Agaton pulled the plastic straw and made all the marbles fall down. His two younger kids, Johnny, seven, and Marnia, five, screamed and clapped with glee. After staring at them flabbergasted, he managed a
weak smile.

  “There he goes again, mom,” Jake, the teenager said. He was sitting on the couch engrossed in his iPad and only absently keeping an eye on the game in progress, mostly for the younger ones’ sakes. At least that was Agaton’s guess. Jake had been filling in in that capacity a lot of late. “He never does anything right. He can’t even laugh on cue.”

  “We talked about this, Jake. Your father has Asperger’s. He doesn’t see the world the same as us. You’re old enough now to understand.”

  “Yeah, right. He doesn’t even understand it. Look at him, he doesn’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

  Agaton was following the exchange closely between Jake and Tabitha for clues as to why both were so upset. Their emotions seemed genuine but overblown and not particularly related to current events. His wife sighed, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I don’t want anyone picking on anyone in this family, and that’s that. Be thankful your father is around to teach you patience and understanding for others. There are all sorts of people in this world you’re not going to get, Jake. Better learn to befriend them anyway if you plan to get anywhere.”

  “I’m sure that lesson will make sense in another seven years when my then twenty-one year old brain is big enough to squeeze in all the bullshit that gets spewed around here.”

  “That’s it, young man. Go to your room,” Tabitha said. Jake stormed up the stairs, cursing all the way.

  “Why don’t you reprimand him for cursing?” Agaton said.

  “He’s got Tourette’s, dear. We talked about that.”

  “That outburst is not consistent with Tourette’s,” he said, trying to show the proper amount of patience. “I can tell the difference. Would you like me to call up some videos on the internet so you can see what I mean?”

  “No,” she sighed. “I should have guessed he was faking it, the little bugger. I tell you, you’d think the two people who would understand one another better in this family are the two of you.” She lifted herself up and trudged up the stairs after Jake. Agaton calculated the likelihood of her reprimanding him accordingly at 98.5%.

  His phone rang. He flipped the cell open and listened to the coded progression of beeps moving too fast for human hearing to decipher. In fact, to human hearing, the beeps would not have appeared as beeps at all, but as one lingering sound merely fluctuating in intensity.

  He closed the phone and walked out the door, leaving it open. Going by the urgency of the call there was no time for non-essential actions. He hopped in the car and sped off.

  Tabitha came down the stairs to find the door open and their five year old playing jacks in the center of the street. From the fact that their car was no longer in front of the house, she inferred the rest. “God forgive me for saying it,” she said, picking up the child, “but I may just have to trade him in for another model of husband.”

  She walked back inside the house and closed the door.

  ***

  Gorman walked the miniature poodle around the butcher block island in the center of the kitchen as he attended his bread making with his free hand, the four pots on the store, stirring in a different spice with each walk by into one pot or another. He’d stationed the dog’s food dish so he could eat whenever he paused for just a brief second to attend the pots on the stove, but the dog was getting frustrated with not being able to eat all at once and just having to grab a bite at a time. Twice he’d taken a nip out of Gorman’s leg.

  Shifting his attention from the dog, he caught the toddler as she was about to crawl off the butcher block island, turned her around so she could crawl the other direction. He moved his bishop to take black’s knight and called out the move to whoever it was on the other end of the speaker phone playing against him halfway around the world. He flicked the TV channel on the counter to catch the news, which he didn’t pay any more attention to than anything else.

  His wife entered the kitchen, dropped the two grocery bags on the counter, took one look at the scene and screamed, “Gorman! How many times have I told you, you don’t multitask when you’re minding the toddler!”

  “I have everything under control, dear. You worry for nothing as always.”

  His cell phone rang. He flipped the top open and listened to the protracted sequence of beeps spelling out his instructions in cypher. He set the dog on the counter so he could stir the soup, turn down the flame on the chili, and change the channel to the weather station. The dog jumped off the counter to get to his food and broke two of his legs. Gorman saw it happening out of the corner of his eye, but the news about the hurricane devastation in Iowa stole just a bit too much of his mind at the wrong moment. His wife screamed unremittingly with frustration, making it hard to hear the beep sequence on the phone. So he snapped her neck. She fell to the floor, face askance, looking straight at the toddler as she fell to the tile floor a couple feet from mom’s face. They both got to say goodbye to one another with their final breaths. He felt terrible about the loss of both. Trying to keep up with a toddler, a toy poodle, a wife, and the neighbors in suburbia constantly competing for who had the best house and neatest yard as it turned out was perfect cover for his ADHD. Most days she seemed fine with it, just not today. That was unfortunate, because today he was receiving priority instructions to go kill another of his kind, who, apparently, was more dysfunctional than he was. He hated these factory recalls. They always made him wonder when his day would come to be decommissioned.

  He noticed on his way out the door that the poodle, which had broken all four legs now after having been dropped twice, still managed to slither to his doggie dish for his dried food. Now that was focus. Tuffy had no idea how much Gorman envied him.

  ***

  Agaton braked at the red light and panned his head over to the front seat passenger in the car to the left of him. They locked eyes for a while and then the passenger started yanking at the arm of the driver. “Run the light!” he said. “What?” “Run the fucking light!” “I can’t just…” The passenger, without taking his eyes off Agaton, stomped on the accelerator and raced the car through the light. His eyes never left Agaton, and so he never saw the truck running him and the driver over. Both the car driver and the passenger were killed on contact. Agaton could hear their hearts stop from his perch still parked behind the red light.

  He turned his attention back to the road and the light as it turned green, driving around the accident. Perhaps his face wasn’t in as neutral of an expression as he’d hoped. He data-mined the back of his head for relaxation options and found one for “listening to the radio.” He flicked on the dashboard music box.

  “Sound of the funky drummer

  Music hitting your heart cause I know you got soul…”

  His music identifier recognized the song title of Public Enemy. It wasn’t doing the trick. He pressed the button to the next station.

  “We've only just begun to live,

  White lace and promises

  A kiss for luck and we're on our way.

  We've just begun.”

  His music identifier recognized this as a Carpenter’s song. It seemed even more irritating than the last. He pressed the next button on the radio.

  “There's a man goin' 'round takin' names.

  An' he decides who to free and who to blame.

  Everybody won't be treated all the same.

  There'll be a golden ladder reaching down.

  When the man comes around.”

  His music identifier parsed this number and realized it belonged to Johnny Cash. Maybe Agaton didn’t like music. He’d braked again for the light. He glanced right at the man climbing in the front seat beside him, holding a gun on him. “This is a carjacking, man. Did you hear what I just said? Get to fuck out!”

  Agaton ripped out the radio and clubbed the man to death with it. It seemed the simplest way to deal with both problems. He didn’t like music and he didn’t like strange carjackers. He made no effort to expel the body from the car as the light was green and
he couldn’t waste any more time on delays.

  Two cars that were trailing him accelerated until there was one to either side of him. The one on the left rolled down his window and pointed a pistol at Agaton and fired. Strange morning. He wasn’t sure whether or not to apply the “Road Rage” explanation he’d just pulled up off the internet via the wireless interface in his head to this situation. Perhaps this man had something to do with the first, and they were still trying to “jack” his car.

  He pulled his car closer to the shooter to the left of him. Took the gun in his hand, and turned the gun on him until he blew off his head with it. He then aimed it at the driver who was trying desperately to pull his car away. But Agaton had a hold of the door with his other hand, so the man was essentially driving both cars the same direction wherever he went. Agaton fired the next bullet into the driver’s head and let the car fall away from them.