***ANAD reads Base inquiry…all effectors stowed…now in config C-1…should I prepare for launch? ANAD desires to be in loose configuration…operating efficiency is improved ninety--***
“ANAD, stow it. Never mind. I was just making sure you were around.”
Now, he truly was puzzled. Maybe puzzled wasn’t the best word. How about concerned? Or alarmed. Slowly, he felt inside his jacket, felt the reassuring solidity of the mag pistol. If it came to it, he could—
Then he knew who or what it was. It was Dana Tallant. Somehow, in ways he couldn’t explain, he knew. It was like when you lay in bed at night and a presence came into the room and you knew right away who it was: the way they smelled, their motions, the creak of a knee joint, the snap of a toe, the pattern of a breath, the gurgle of a stomach. Everything converged on a familiar pattern.
It was Dana Tallant.
“Dana, is that you? Are you there? It’s me Johnny…Wings—“
The reply came back. He didn’t know if it was an acoustic signal, an electromagnetic signature, a cluck of a tongue, or what.
“It’s me, Wings. It’s really me.”
It was a voice that wasn’t really a voice. More of a presence. Winger looked around the Custer Inn bar. Patrons still lined the bar itself. Chip, the bartender, swung back and forth like he was on a rail, serving, tending, refilling glasses, chatting up the pretty ones.
Every table was occupied. The floor was scuffed, dusty, covered with napkins and chips and cigarette butts. A normal night at the Cus. No one had seen anything. Smoke solidifying into a human being hadn’t attracted the least attention, as if it were the most natural thing. In a world where angels and swarm entities that looked like your next-door neighbor were becoming common, how could it have been otherwise?
The Dana-angel was now almost completely formed. It was good, this angel. Textures were near-normal. Colors near normal. The face showed life, not the flat blank stare of a robot that so many angels showed. Edge effects were minimal….just the hands, which she now kept hidden in her lap.
Winger stared and found his mouth almost too dry to talk. “When…I mean, Engebbe. What happened? The whole detachment was—“
Now the thing that resembled Dana Tallant smiled back. The sight of it sent a shiver down Winger’s back and not the good kind. “Lost? Consumed? Swarmed? I guess you could say all those things. I’m not really sure about the others. As for me—“ She held her arms wide. “What you see is what you get. You could do this too, you know.”
Winger sniffed. “I don’t think so. Thing is, I don’t know if you’re really Dana Tallant. Or just a good simulation. How--?”
Now Tallant smiled more broadly. “How did it happen? Much more easily than you might think. It’s really the most natural experience. Oh, sure, I was there all right, at the dig pit at Engebbe. There was a big swarm, coming right up out of that pit. We engaged, we hosed it down with HERF, mag fire, everything we had. It didn’t make any difference. The swarm covered us.”
“Then you…what? Just morphed…into this?”
Dana closed her eyes, let the aroma of the stale beer fill her nose. “I don’t know, Wings. It’s like I went to sleep that night. I was in my own bed somehow, like when I was a little girl. There was a storm, I remember that. Hail, lightning, rain pelting down. The window blew open. I woke up. Everything was different. I saw light and thought lightning had hit the house. Then I thought I had died. But, you know—“ she had that cock-eyed grin on her face that Winger loved, the little smirk that said I know things you wouldn’t believe. “—you know, after I got up, it was all okay. It took me awhile to realize…what had happened.”
“So now you’re a cloud of bots.”
Dana shrugged. “You make it sound so, clinical. So scientific. It’s not like that at all.”
“How do I even know you’re really Dana Tallant?”
She shrugged. Her shoulders and arms tracked well…this angel was good, damned good. “How do I know you’re Johnny Winger? If I look and act and talk like Dana Tallant, shouldn’t I be Dana Tallant?”
Winger didn’t intend to get into philosophical discussions with a cloud of bugs. “You know what I mean. Dana Tallant was consumed at Engebbe. You’re nothing but a simulation.”
Now came the smile. “We prefer to say multi-configuration entity, Wings. Unlike you, I can go anywhere, be anything…I could be this table, I could be that bar or that stuffed bear’s head on the wall.”
“You could be a cloud of dust or particles of cigarette smoke, too. How do I even know what’s real?”
Dana said, “Real is whatever the current config is. Look at you: you have one configuration. It never changes. If it gets damaged, you’ve got a problem. Me: I can change my config in the blink of eye.”
“Dana, whatever you are…you know you can’t win. We’re going to fight you…everywhere, all the time. I intend to stop this, Dana. I’m doing everything in my power to stop the Keeper, stop Config Zero, stop Red Hammer, to give us a chance.”
“Us? You are us, you dope. Don’t you see that? Johnny, there’s some sort of paradise coming. I know it. I feel it—“
“Dana, you feel it because it’s in your program. You don’t feel anything other than what’s programmed. That’s where we’re different. My feelings are real. They came from up here—“ he tapped the side of his head. “Yours came from…Jeez, who knows where they came from?”
“Wings, don’t fight this. There’s no reason to fight this. There’s a peace now, a serenity I can’t explain…everything’s provided. No more 0400 hour briefings, no more midnight hyperjet hops to places I can’t even pronounce, no more long distance calls on the vid, or absentee husbands or screaming kids and cranky housebots. This is where I belong. That’s become more and more clear to me. You too, Wings. Look—“she started to rise, spilling her drink. Instead of liquid flying off the table, the bots that had formed the drink shifted into a different algorithm and dissipated into thin air, leaving only a faint trail behind. “—look, maybe I should just leave…seems like we always argue…can’t you just listen to me for once--?”
Winger got up too.
“Dana, I don’t want to lose you. Not again. I don’t know what I have to do, but—“
For now, they understood it was best if they parted. Maybe it was the program, something in the Prime Key that pushed them apart. Individuality was an enemy. The collective was everything. The mother swarm would look after them.
Winger tried to kiss her. It was never the same with angels. Lip to lip, it looked good. But Winger knew a kiss wasn’t supposed to feel like this…it was like kissing sand. The bots that had formed up the Dana angel were even now breaking down, delinking, disassembling, throwing off atoms and molecules, re-configuring.
In moments, she was gone. Just a little smoke remained. But unseen, a few bots were left behind, still drifting in the air over the table. One was the swarm master bot. As Winger reached for his jacket and swiped his thumb over the paypad, the master bot, smaller than a virus, made its way on internal propulsors to the open flap of his shirt pocket. There, it used effectors to grab hold and bury itself into the lattice of molecules that comprised the shirt fabric.
Winger left Custer Inn, jumped onto his turbobike and sped off into the night. Table Top was a half hour ride west on Highway 7.
He made his way to the Containment building the next morning in time for a briefing at 0700 hours. Kraft was there, along with Doc Frost, Dr. Mary Duncan, Frost’s Scottish assistant and several containment techs.
Kraft had gathered his troopers just outside the hatch to Containment Bay 1. He launched into his best sales pitch. “All of you were especially selected for this project. The Symbiosis Project is the future of the Corps, so I don’t want to hear any more bitching or whining or moaning. Having every trooper loaded with his own ANAD system and a
ble to launch, command and recover said ANAD individually, will give you tactical options other soldiers have wet dreams about. Plus it allows the Corps to send you into harm’s way in situations too dicey for your average Joe or Joan Trooper. I don’t have to remind you Red Hammer’s got technology and nanobotic chops that we’ve had trouble with. All of you follow the news: there’s Symborg and the growing menace of angels. There are fab lords and matter hackers coming out of our ears. Nanoscale threats are growing and you’re the cops on the beat. And now, there’s this Engebbe stuff…Q2 hasn’t even had time to digest all that. Some people—like Lieutenant Winger here—“ Kraft indicated the platoon commander—“—think Red Hammer may even be in contact with little green men from outer space…and he’s not the only one who thinks that. So—“ Now Kraft motioned toward Dr. Frost and Dr. Duncan, who stood beside the containment bay hatch –“each one of you will undergo the embed procedure. You’ve all been briefed on it. When you’re done, and Dr. Frost assures me he can send me a fully embedded nanotrooper, after the surgery, rehab and training, once every week in about a month—you’ll all get new assignments. Oh, and one more thing: because of the extra duties you’ll be pulling, due to your hopefully increased abilities, you’ll all get a higher rating, up to QX1 if otherwise qualified.”
Deeno D’Nunzio piped up with a question. “And the pay to go along with the rating, Major?”
Kraft smirked. “Sergeant D’Nunzio, the Corps is well aware of the fact that you burn through your paycheck every month like ice on a hot stove. Now you’ll have even more to burn through…any questions?”
Their faces showed they had about a million questions, but no one said anything. Kraft scowled at each one in turn: Winger, who had already gone through the procedure, D’Nunzio, Barnes, Nguyen, M’Bela and the others.
“1st Nano is effectively standing down for the next month,” Kraft added. “I don’t like it one damned bit but you’ll all be out of commission, officially detailed to Dr. Frost for upgrade and maintenance. That’s means all the nasties out there will have a free run for at least four weeks. This is not a vacation and it’s not liberty time. The Corps is investing a hell of a lot of money in each one of you. When you’re cleared for active duty, you can expect to be slammed with missions and threats like you’ve never seen before.” Kraft’s big moustache twitched, like a mouse seeking food. “You can count on that. Now, dismissed…and good luck to all of you.”
One after another, the troopers came up to shake hands with Johnny Winger, who had a few choice words of encouragement for each.
“—Deeno, don’t give Doc any trouble, okay?—“
“Mighty Mite, I can’t wait to see what you look like in a hospital robe—“
“Buddha, your ancestors can’t help you now.”
Unseen by any of them, the master bot that had once commanded the Dana Tallant angel at Custer Inn, revved up its propulsors and detached itself from Winger’s shirt fabric. Loaded with unique and unknown algorithms, the master silently replicated a few hundred daughter bots, grabbing atoms from local feedstock and copying itself over and over again, until the commanded quantity had been achieved. No emissions were ever detected inside or outside of Containment Bay 1. The master was possessed of replication abilities unsuspected and unseen anywhere before. There were no thermal signatures. There were no electromagnetic emissions. There were no acoustic or visual effects detectable.
Only replication. When the counter value that had been commanded was reached, the Dana Tallant angel commanded a small swarm essentially invisible to all known means of detection.
Another set of commands, transmitted as quantum entanglement state changes, was sent from the master to its swarm. This command segmented the swarm into five equal parts, five sub-swarms of approximately equal size.
Each sub-swarm then rode on propulsors to its selected destination: the troopers of 1st Nano about to undergo embed surgery inside Containment Bay 1. One after another, D’Nunzio, Barnes, Nguyen and M’Bela were silently infested with the subswarms. The bots grabbed hold of molecules of hair, molecules of skin, molecules of shirt fabric. Each buried itself into the lattice of atoms comprising its destination.
Each subswarm then powered itself down to a quiescent state and awaited further instructions.
Doc Frost had already worked out the schedule ahead of time with Major Kraft. Deeno D’Nunzio would be the first. Like a dog being led off to the kennel, D’Nunzio briefly mugged for the others like a helpless mutt, until her antics earned an official frown from Major Kraft. She was quickly hustled into the Containment bay and the hatch was shut and sealed.
Dr. Mary Duncan then arranged for all the remaining troopers to make themselves comfortable in a small waiting area adjacent to the bay.
“Just relax. I’ve arranged for some medicinal Scottish tea to be served. The surgery only takes about an hour for each of you.”
Oscar M’Bela was already fingering some kind of trinket of beads nervously. He mindlessly rubbed an amulet on a neck chain with his other hand. “Doctor, what’s it like, having this capsule in your shoulder…with a port that opens and shuts? Doesn’t that hurt?”
“Witchy,” scolded Mighty Mite Barnes, “what are you…five years old? Of course it hurts. The way I hear it, it’ll be like having a can in your shoulder, with a pop-top and a five-year old kid in charge of it. Isn’t that right, Skipper?”
Winger waited until Major Kraft had finally departed, grumbling, moustache twitching and muttering under his breath.
“Sort of. There is a brief sting when ANAD enters and exits, but that’s normal, it’s just a sting and you’ll get used to it. Learning how to talk and command ANAD through your coupler link…now that’s a bitch. That takes some getting used to.”
“Swell, yet another voice in my head, telling me what to do,” Barnes retorted. “Just why I joined the Corps.”
It went on like that for most of the morning.