Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

Evan, Louise, and Andrea look so tired these days. Even with alternating and only going in half-days, it’s been a grind for them to get recalibrated with the new implant. Andrea finished yesterday and Evan wrapped up this morning. Louise is going in again for another session this afternoon. She still doesn’t have an end date. She seems to be having a tougher time with it. They’ve all got the bigger phones, but I don’t think Louise has enabled most of the new features yet.

Andrea, on the other hand, is happily restoring her old control set to work on the new system as we sit around our table in the cafeteria. She stares at one long finger, flexes it partially, extends it, flexes again, extends, flexes, stares blankly for a few seconds, then repeats on the next finger. I wonder if I looked like that when I was setting things up. Probably, but infinitely less graceful. Even her hands seem to dance as she moves.

“Hey Andrea, are you going to have your part ready in time for the big party?” I ask her.

She nods. The hand that she just finished starts weaving and ribbons of color form in the air.

“Great. Thanks again for helping. Let me know if you need anything.”

She nods again, smiling broadly as she finishes the fingers on her other hand. My predictions came true and her hesitance about the new implant has evaporated. We get up from the table, and she tosses the notepad she’s been carrying around into the recycling bin on the way out of the cafeteria. I guess she’s ready to go back to a purely visual vocabulary again.

“How about your part, Evan?” I ask as we reach the grass of the commons.

“Almost done with it. The highlights of his whole life, ready to roast him.”

“Don’t be too rough on him,” I laugh. “We don’t want him to kill you before he goes.”

“Don’t worry, brother. I’m keeping it light.”

“How come I didn’t get a part?” asks Louise.

“Because you can barely walk and talk at the same time these days. You just focus on getting your implant working again.”

She scowls at me, but then yawns. “I’d totally punch you if you weren’t right.” She glances off to the side. “Anyway, time to go back to the lab for more fun with Father.”

“Have a good brain adjustment.”

“You know I will,” she responds snarkily as she heads to the Research Center.

“You still want to come with me out to the boonies?” I ask Evan once she’s gone.

“Sure. I’ve got time. I’m not growing any bigger than what I’ve got, but I’ll provide you with my scintillating company.”

He follows me as we head out through the front gates. I zip up my jacket against the cold desert wind. Since my last check-in with Father, I’ve had access to come and go as I please. The desert outside the compound walls is a great testing ground for all sorts of things.

BUILD(SAND-BUGGY)

My bots spread out to gather minerals and create a solar-powered two-seater buggy mostly made out of something that looks and feels a lot like sandstone. Made from sand, for travel on sand. With the winter sun high in the sky, its solar roof starts charging and is ready to go in a few minutes. I hop onto the hard driver’s seat and once Evan gets situated, I start driving toward the mountains west of campus.

“You sure you want to do this?” he asks. “It would be incredibly stupid if you’re wrong and Jeff was right.”

“Absolutely certain,” I reassure him. “But if I’m wrong, go ahead and kill me before the swarm AI makes me act like Chad.”

Evan laughs. “You start acting like Chad, I’ll kill you just on principle. One Chad is already too many.”

“For sure.”

We drive in silence for a while, bumping across the sandy wasteland. The suspension on this thing leaves a lot to be desired, but if I was worried about a smooth ride I would have borrowed something with four-wheel drive from Father’s garage. Something about the situation feels familiar, me and Evan and a bumping vehicle moving across the desert, but I can’t remember why. Evan gets a serious look on his face as we go.

“Are we really doing your Jeff plan?” he asks.

“I haven’t been able to come up with anything better, have you?”

He just sighs and we spend another couple of minutes in silence.

“It’s just a really shitty thing to do.”

“I know, brother,” I tell him. “I know. If there were any other way that wouldn’t get some or all of us killed, I’d jump on it. But I’ve seen what he can do. You’ll see it soon when you get the weapons training. There’s no way we’d all survive doing it any other way.”

Another dozen minutes go by in silence. The mineral-rich foothills loom ahead of us. We’re close enough now. The party tricks I’m planning are the perfect pretext for the cloud growth I’ve wanted to do anyway.

“All right. I’m starting. We’ll know for sure whether Jeff is right in a few.”

GROW

Evan watches me calmly, his face still full of sadness at what we’re going to do to our brother. The sensation of the growth is different than with the old control system. Where before it was a separate patch of skin growing, now it’s me growing. I push it for a long time, letting the bots gather and build. I wish it were warmer. I’d be able to grow so much faster with more energy. The sky darkens as my bots start catching almost all the light above us. I push on, creating more bots as fast as the sunlight I’m collecting lets me do it. The air gets even colder as the new bots suck in all the ambient heat that they can. It feels amazing, like I’m gigantic.

Evan pulls on gloves and starts talking about Valerie again. I’m sure she’s great, but no one could be as amazing as he thinks she is. I mostly just nod and listen. He’s really head-over-heels for that girl. After an hour or so, he runs out of things to tell me about her and goes quiet. I’m still reveling in the additional senses as my cloud grows and grows.

“Feel any different?” he asks.

“Better. Like I can lift a mountain. But it’s the same kind of feeling the bots always give me. Just more of it.”

“And you’re sure you’re past the critical mass point?”

Instead of answering, I pull in my new bots and let them start piling up on the ground near the buggy. After a few minutes, they’re all gathered in from the kilometers around us where they’ve been gathering heat, light, and minerals. The pile is enormous, a cone at least four meters across and two meters high at its peak.

“Well, it might not be quite a dump truck full,” Evan says, “but it’s probably big enough. All right, I’m convinced. Jeff is as crazy as you say.”

I’m not sure what a dump truck has to do with anything, but if he’s satisfied I’m good.

“It’s still a really shitty thing to do to him, crazy or not.”

I look over at Evan. His visage is tortured.

“It is. But it will work. You know it will.”

He nods glumly. I need to get him fully on board.

“Oh, hey, I checked Father’s calendar and I have good news. Valerie hasn’t been on it yet. You know, for one of his future mother meetings.”

“Really?” he asks. A look of relief starts to overtake the pain on his face.

“Yeah. She’s not scheduled until the end of January,” I tell him. “So, as long as we stick to the plan, he’ll never touch her.”

That clinches it. I can almost feel his spine stiffening, his resolve growing firm. I let my cloud grow for another hour, luxuriating in the rich flow of sensations from my uncountable extra appendages. I’m not sure if there’s a hard limit to how big I can go. But I can only allocate so many bots for any given task, so unless I want to build a city or something, I don’t see the point of growing more.

“You mind driving the buggy back?” I ask him, getting out and stepping toward the pile. “I’m going to take the slow way home, get comfortable with my new cloud on the way.”

“Yeah, OK,” he says. “You’re sure you’re not getting your brain eaten by the swarm?”

“I’m great,” I assure him. “Better than ever.”

He nods and says goodbye, and starts driving back toward campus.

I step to the edge of the pile, turn around, and lean backwards. I keep my body straight until my center of mass passes the tipping point, and my body collapses back to be caught by the bed of bots. I let the mass of them cradle my organic self and carry me back to the campus, crawling like a horde of metal ants as they charge up their batteries using the last rays of the day’s sun. It’s slower than the buggy, slower than flying, but it’s a very relaxing way to travel as I let myself fully acclimate to the phenomenal sensations that the bigger cloud brings. It doesn’t even hurt. It’s like my brain is made for this now.

As I let my infinite tiny workers carry me, I run through the preparations in my index for Chad’s big farewell. Between Mrs. Hastings doing the bulk of the setup and the help I recruited from my siblings, the only prep I have left is the presentation I’m supposed to give. Chad provided some really terrible text that he wanted included, but I need to decide on the orchestration of it. I close my eyes and script things out for a while as my swarming self carries my biological core over the sand. I think it will be memorable. I hope so anyway. It’ll probably be the last good memory most of us have for a while.

When I arrive back home, I park the bulk of the new growth outside the campus walls, spreading it thin over kilometers of rocky sand . A trail of bots automatically spreads along the path between the giant mass and me, keeping the dynamic mesh network connected to my phone. Jeff shouldn’t be able to see more than a tiny fraction of what I’ve got out there, even if he bothers to look outside the walls.

So close now. It’s all so close.