“What do you need a photographer for?” he asked, unable to get his eyes off the camera man or the camera perched precariously on his shoulder.
She grabbed the man from behind the counter and flung him against the far wall, embossing him in the plaster and cinderblock.
“I see,” Terminal Man said, straining to get the words out, “it’s for insurance purposes. Could you please get that cameraman to do a decent zoom so my wife can collect, and they know I didn’t just will myself to death so she could spend a fortune I could never give her in life?”
She nodded to Photon who did the zoom. “Now where are the keys to the planes?”
The man pointed feebly and then died. “Great shot!” Photon said. “But you don’t have to kill him next time. You can just make it look convincing enough and he can act the dying part. Maybe you should get some directorial pointers from me first next time.”
“Maybe,” she said, grabbing the keys.
“Honestly, I think it will help with the whole becoming human thing.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” she said, walking through the glass wall and not bothering with the door.
Photon, true to form, got it all on camera. “God, this is like the best girlfriend ever.”
She stepped up to the plane that the pilot had just finished refueling. He was giving it a close going over, doing some final tweaks on the engine. He clearly knew what he was doing. “Are you an airplane mechanic by trade?” she asked.
“Yeah, flying these small ones is just a hobby. What, want me to take you somewhere?”
“Your services will not be necessary. But I will need your plane.”
“Come again?”
Photon came between Serena and Plane Mechanic to get in some quick directing. “Okay, she’s going to lay you out right now. If you could just roll with it, might help keep your head from cracking against the tarmac.” He quickly moved out of the way. “Oh, and one more thing,” he said, jumping back in between them. He twisted the mechanic’s cap so the logo was clearer for the camera. “Yeah, that’ll play well.” He read aloud the insignia on the cap, “‘Finer Living through Flying.’ That’s going to be so funny when she sends you flying.”
“You two need to step away from the plane right now,” Plane Mechanic said.
Photon gave her the thumbs up and she sent Plane Mechanic flying. He rolled a few times before coming to a stop, trying to pry himself off the tarmac, and passing out. “Perfect!” Photon shouted. “At least this way, if they don’t all die it’ll make for some variety.”
“Good news, Photon. I think I’m about even with you now on the humanity scale,” she said climbing into the plane.
He climbed in beside her in the passenger seat. “You mean I should have shown more consideration for the fifty stitches and spine surgery he’ll need. Just so we’re clear, I’m not a sociopath. I just think living for drama is a more worthy goal than simply living. I’m sure when he comes to and sees himself on camera, he’ll agree with me. Leastways, his fans will. And who doesn’t want more fans?”
She turned the plane’s ignition with her key and headed towards the runway.
“You do know how to fly, right?”
“I’m downloading the intel now,” she said, her eyes rolling up and to the side until just the whites showed.
He grabbed the steering wheel from her before they hit anything. “We’re really going to have to fix that glitch,” he said.
Her eyes rolled back to normal a few seconds later.
“I was thinking,” he said, as she prepared the plane for lift off, “if you could tutor me in sex, I can tutor you on humanity. Even if I suck at it in real life, I can make it look real convincing on camera.”
“Deal.”
“Really? No compromise? No negotiation?”
“Why? Your terms seem perfectly reasonable.”
He sighed. “God help regular women when your model gets popularized. I feel it’s only fair to tell you men are easy, women usually aren’t.”
“Why?”
He shook his head. “There’s not enough time in the world. Maybe if I had a hyper-mind like you do.”
“I think we’ll start with Gunther’s competitors,” she said, getting them airborne quickly.
“Whoa!” he said, breathing again as the plane leveled off moments later. “You officially know how to get a rise out of me more ways than any woman should.”
“It makes sense what you said, about them setting him up for a fall. If we’re wrong, we can always make our way back to him.”
“Thank God I splurged on the professional grade hi-def camera, the ones the Hollywood boys use,” he said, giving it a kiss. He replaced the full memory chip with an empty one.
THIRTY-SIX
“This is a big improvement. Walking the arctic tundra was hell on my ankles,” Cronos said, still trying to master the control levers Finelli had rigged for him. The giant spider was making good time across the frozen desert of northern Alaska, even missing the tip of its eighth appendage, which Cronos was trying desperately to do without to keep them from dipping to the side suddenly every so many paces. Finelli threw a glance back at Michael and Jane, cocooned in the spider’s syn-thread, for all practical purposes, dead to the world.
“Strange the drug you gave them hasn’t worn off yet,” Finelli said. “They usually bounce back faster.”
“Could be playing possum, I suppose.” Cronos seemed too preoccupied with his new toy to process the implications of his own revelation.
He looked up from his makeshift dashboard at the sight of the Saharan desert. Suddenly the spider looked too small for the landscape. “That’s troubling.”
“Holy shit!” Finelli exclaimed. “How the…?”
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
Finelli bobbed his Adam’s apple a few times as if a fish was tugging on the line at the end of his throat. “I guess her theory about the nanites being able to tap zero point energy for all the power they need wasn’t just wishful thinking.”
“But they’re not so lovey dovey as they once were. I saw to that.”
“They’re in dream state. Maybe they’re both dreaming about when they were so close.”
“We better wake them up.” Cronos brought the spider to a halt. “Wait a minute? Are you saying they linked minds in their sleep? And the boost from the psychic connection is causing all this?”
“Actually I hadn’t even gotten around to thinking that, but now that you mention it, could explain the sudden teleportation abilities as well as support my theory.”
“But why the desert?” Cronos put his hand up to shade his eyes from the sun.
“We were dressed for the cold. Let’s see how long the two of us last out here without a drop of water.”
“Nah, there’s more to it than that.” Cronos gave the cocooned members of their team the evil eye. “How much you want to bet that Jane’s behind this. Miss Bleeding Heart, herself, out to rescue the environment and save the starving of the world with her nano, all while having her beau protecting her on her grand adventure, to make sure she gets her adventure fix too.”
“If you’re looking for the most starving people per square inch and the environment most in need of repair, Sub-Saharan Africa would definitely make the short list. Hey, if they’re focused on saving the world instead of killing us, I can live with that.”
“I should cut that tongue out of your mouth. I didn’t come this far just so, in the heat and delirium, we could absentmindedly forget to kill each other.”
“Oh, yeah, forgot about the betting pool. I guess the sun must already be getting to me.” Finelli flitted his tongue like a lizard, trying to pull moisture out of the air, a nervous tic that would likely cause him to lose more of it.
While stripping off his excess clothing, Cronos cued Finelli to do the same with a nod. Cronos supposed the delayed reaction to the heat could be chalked up to their being frozen to the core just moments ago. Playing wi
th the joystick, he got the spider to bury the clothing with one of its legs.
Cronos jumped out of the spider’s thorax. He took out his knife and looked back at Finelli, who was trying to slide down one of the legs awkwardly rather than risk throwing out his back with such a steep fall. “Let’s keep this between us,” Cronos said. “When they come to, just say we flew here.”
“What about the giant spider?”
“We flew here in a C-130 cargo transport.”
Cronos cut the strands cocooning Michael and Jane, hurriedly slipping them out of their casings, and slapping them about the face to wake them up.
He wasn’t getting anywhere. “Maybe if you make them feel as if they’re under attack,” Finelli prompted.
“Good idea.” Cronos cut them both across the face with the knife diagonally, watched them heal as they came to.
“I was just thinking it was getting damn cold,” Michael said, sitting up and feeling the sun on his face.
Cronos and Finelli exchanged ugly looks. “I didn’t want you to freeze to death, putting a premature end to my clinical trials,” Cronos said.
Michael helped Jane to her feet. They both surveyed the vista. “So you dropped us down in the middle of the Sahara?” Michael said.
“They say moderation in everything is the secret to life.” Cronos folded the knife and put it back in his pocket. “I guess this proves more than anything that I march to a different drummer.”
“I know where we are,” Michael said.
“You’re kidding? In this featureless expanse of endless dunes?” Cronos ran his hand through his hair and gave Mike and expectant look.
“Yeah, part of my old training. Unless I miss my guess, we’re close to a small village of subsistence farmers, trying to keep the dunes from spreading and eating up any more of their arable land. Not that there’s much of that. The last satellite photos I checked suggested they were just keeping a couple goats going on genetically altered grasses that can make do in saltier earth. Couldn’t even afford to kill the goats, just bled them once in a while for some protein, and milked them, of course. This way,” he said, pointing and leading the way.
“You’re going to let him boss you around like that?” Cronos said to Jane.
“Nice try. I don’t think you can come between us anymore,” she said. “You’re going to have to find some other way to weaken us.”
Cronos scowled and lowered his eyes, trekking after Michael.
“You gonna leave that thing here?” she said, gesturing to the robotic spider.
He took advantage of her brief distraction to bury the piece of his parka that Mike’s footsteps had unearthed with his foot. “Better the sands swallow it up than the natives see how we got here,” Cronos replied. “Hard to talk to people in a state of shock.”
An hour later they were at the village.
The situation was even worse than Michael had described. The villagers looked a few shades past anorexic. The well water was more mud than water and it smelled foul. The few date trees they’d planted weren’t bearing dates, not surprisingly, as the ground was a hard patina of clay, with virtually no topsoil, and the supplemental water the villagers could afford to give the date trees too sparse. The salt grasses seemed to be making even the goats sick; their milk was deficient and tasted off. Michael turned to Jane. “Can you do anything about this?”
“I can try.” Jane stooped down and set her hand to the ground and meditated on creating an oasis in the desert. When she opened her eyes the reaction had already started. Michael grabbed her hand. “Better not get too carried away,” he said. “They track this stuff by satellite. If you reclaim the earth too fast there’ll be too many questions.” She closed her eyes again and concentrated on what she wanted the nano to do. The genesis effect continued just long enough to bring prosperity to the village and support a population about four times the size, then it slowed to a trickle. Just slow enough to make it so the villagers could pass this off as hard work and good fortune.
Speaking of the villagers, they were falling to their knees and clasping their hands and murmuring their thank yous to the gods. So far no one had associated the sudden good fortune with the advent of the strangers. But their timely arrival was taken as a good omen all the same. It wasn’t long before baskets of dates and cups of goat’s milk started materializing in the form of offerings from the villagers. Jane had procured a few camels in her oasis-effect, figuring the villagers could stand to get some loads off their backs and onto the camels. It was a smart strategic move from Michael’s perspective as it could explain how the local citizens packed in the top soil they needed to kick-start the ecosystem.
“Solve one problem, create a hundred others,” Cronos said. Jane and Michael turned to him, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “The powers that be will never stand for this. Around these parts that translates to maniacal warlords. They’ll claim the land for themselves, kill the villagers and won’t even bother to thank them for the sudden bounty which they will devour like locusts.”
Michael turned to Jane. “A few more modifications to those instructions you issued to the nano are in order, I think.” Jane closed her eyes to concentrate as he continued to prompt her. “An energy shield to stop all incoming fire, bullets, RPGs, whatever. And a perimeter control system so if anyone enters intending to do harm, the nano devours them and reclaims the dust as part of the ecosystem.”
“Done,” she said, opening her eyes at last. They turned back to Cronos. “Anything else?” they said in sync.
Cronos took a deep breath. “You two are going to be the death of me. Just so we’re clear, I’m supposed to be the death of you.” Cronos scratched his head as his face grew pensive. “If you can manage to spread this genesis effect throughout Africa, it will put a serious crimp in anyone’s plans to manipulate these very needy people. If they’re self-sufficient and want for nothing…”
“Got you,” Jane said. She turned to Michael once again for additional prompting. “You’ll have to make it so the nano can’t be modified to do anyone else’s bidding. Basically they self-reproduce to maintain themselves when their original task is done, but beyond that they’re useless. And we should probably limit the genesis effect for now, maybe to no more than a third of each beleaguered country. Just in case the path to hell is paved with good intentions.”
“Permit me to do some future forecasting for you,” Cronos said. “The powers that be—and I mean the real powers that be, not these local yocals—will freak that you’re cutting into their end game. People who want for nothing can’t be pressured into working as wage slaves for them and into constant upgrades of one kind or another just to keep up with the competition, forcing people to become more like, well, like robots with each passing day, and then even better robots, until ultimately they arrive at being you. The ruling elite may even have a point. Look at the Native American Stone Age people who lived in such harmony with the land they ceased to evolve for thousands of years.”
“So which side are you on now, Cronos?” Michael said. “Ours or theirs? It’s hard to keep track.”
Cronos had to think about it. “Never did much like bullies, that’s why I came after you, Michael. But if I can take down even bigger bullies by way of you, as part of mentoring you to reach new heights, I guess we’re back on the same team, at least for now.”
“I don’t see why I shouldn’t just spread the reaction through the entire world,” Jane said, “take the one percenters out of play entirely. If they can’t deprive people any more of what they want, force them to do their bidding by alternating carrots and sticks, like training dogs…”
“Utopias don’t exist, Jane, except up in your head.” Cronos scraped the muck from under his fingernails with his bowie knife. “Besides, in chess you make a move, then they make a move, and they always make a countermove, there is no final move on the board, trust me. Good and evil have been going at each other for time immemorial because neither side takes a rest. Let’s wa
it and see what their next move is. I like the idea of limiting the land reclamation to a third of each country. Just make sure the parts you leave the one percenters are rich in oil and other mineral rights and other exploitables. Let’s not antagonize them too much if you want your new world order to last more than five minutes. Who knows, if the reaction doesn’t spread beyond that, and it’s sufficiently contained, the powers that be might just take claim for doing it themselves so they can help themselves to the precious oil and mineral rights without having to pay a penny. Always let the other side think you just did them a favor. Less likely to provoke retaliation this way.”
“We really tapped into the devil’s higher brain functions with you,” Michael said. Cronos took a bow, taking it as a compliment.
Jane concentrated with her eyes closed. Cronos watched snaking lines extending in all directions from the edges of the oasis she’d created, as the nanites went in search of the perfect sites for the next genesis effect.
The chain reaction initiated, Jane opened her eyes and clasped Michael’s hand. “It’s like something I always dreamed of. I guess I can thank you guys for helping me fill in the missing pieces.”
Cronos and Finelli eyed one another conspiratorially, while Cronos made a sour face.
“It’s like you’re reading my mind and my heart’s intent better than I am these days,” Jane said, looking into Mike’s eyes. They held each other and kissed.
Cronos studied her latest handiwork before lowering his eyes to his nail cleaning to help him center and concentrate his mind. And what were the fruits of such centering? He was curious to find out what the nanites did with a group mind quantum measures more powerful than any that existed inside Michael’s and Jane’s heads put together. Could the “evolution with limits” paradigm really hold with them? Or would they have all the mind power they needed to overwrite it? And what would they do with such power? If the nano remained in his service indirectly because they maintained allegiance to Michael and Jane, who more often than not followed his advice, then he would soon be defacto ruler of the world by way of his ongoing “mentoring.” That was one hell of a way to pay back those bullies that had terrorized him as a young child and permanently scarred his psyche until years later, here he was, actually feeling titillated by the idea of global domination and beating the bastards bullying everyone on the planet into submission now at their own game.
Nano Man Page 32
