Nanotroopers
Episode 10: The Big Bang
Copyright 2016 Philip Bosshardt
A few words about this series….
*** Nanotroopers is a series of 15,000- 20,000 word episodes detailing the adventures of Johnny Winger and his experiences as a nanotrooper with the United Nations Quantum Corps.
*** Each episode will be about 40-50 pages, approximately 20,000 words in length.
*** A new episode will be available and uploaded every 3 weeks.
*** There will be 22 episodes. The story will be completely serialized in about 14 months.
*** Each episode is a stand-alone story but will advance the greater theme and plot of the story arc.
*** The main plotline: U.N. Quantum Corps must defeat the criminal cartel Red Hammer’s efforts to steal or disable their new nanorobotic ANAD systems.
Episode # Title Approximate Upload Date
1 ‘Atomgrabbers’ 1-14-16
2 ‘Nog School’ 2-8-16
3 ‘Deeno and Mighty Mite’ 2-29-16
4 ‘ANAD’ 3-21-16
5 ‘Table Top Mountain’ 4-11-16
6 ‘I, Lieutenant John Winger…’ 5-2-16
7 ‘Hong Chui’ 5-23-16
8 ‘Doc Frost’ 6-13-16
9 ‘Demonios of Via Verde’ 7-5-16
10 ‘The Big Bang’ 7-25-16
11 ‘Engebbe’ 8-15-16
12 ‘The Symbiosis Project’ 9-5-16
13 ‘Small is All!’ 9-26-16
14 ‘’The HNRIV Factor’ 10-17-16
15 ‘A Black Hole’ 11-7-16
16 ‘ANAD on Ice’ 11-29-16
17 ‘Lions Rock’ 12-19-16
18 ‘Geoplanes’ 1-9-17
19 ‘Mount Kipwezi’ 1-30-17
20 ‘Doc II’ 2-20-17
21 ‘Paryang Monastery’ 3-13-17
22 ‘Epilogue’ 4-3-17
Chapter 1
“Crooked Halo”
U.N. Quantum Corps Western Command
Table Top Mountain, Idaho, USA
January 13, 2049
1545 hours
For Johnny Winger, doing a full ANAD insert on Doc Frost was like doing a root canal on yourself. They had brought Frost and Mary Duncan all the way back to Table Top, hyperjetted straight from Singapore. Winger had decided not to do an insert until he could get the Doc into better facilities. Going after a Red Hammer halo inside someone you loved and respected wasn’t for the faint of heart.
The two doctors were placed on separate gurneys in Containment Level Four, strapped down and heavily sedated.
It was going to be ticklish, mainly because Johnny Winger had no idea what he might encounter.
Sergeant Gibbs was inside Containment with Winger, working as an assistant Interface Controller for ANAD ops. Winger sprang ANAD from his embedded shoulder capsule and commanded the master bot to assume a special configuration he had worked out on the hyperjet ride from Singapore: Config 55.
He hoped it worked.
It was a whole new way of fighting a war and Johnny Winger knew that half the time, they were inventing tactics as they went along.
"Okay, Skipper," Dana Tallant patted down the incision she had just made in the side of Frost’s skull. "Subject's prepped and ready."
Winger took the injector tube, attached by hose to the containment chamber. “ANAD ready to fly?"
The IC1 came back, "Ready in all respects, Lieutenant."
"Vascular grid?"
"Tracking now. We'll be able to follow the master just fine. You can replicate once we're through the blood-brain barrier. Just watch for capillary flow. When his capillaries narrow, your speed will increase. And viscosity will stay up."
"Like slogging through molasses. ANAD's inerted and stable…ready for insertion."
The insertion went smoothly enough. A slug of plasma forced the replicant master into Doc Frost's capillary network at high pressure. Winger got an acoustic pulse seconds later and selected Fly-by-Stick to navigate the system. A few minutes' run on its propulsors brought the Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler to a dense fibrous mat of capillary tissues. The image soon appeared on Winger's IC panel.
"Ready for transit," he told Gibbs. "Cytometric probing now. I can force these cell membranes open any time."
Gibbs used ANAD's acoustic coupler to sound the tissue dam ahead, probing for weak spots. "There, Lieutenant, right to starboard of those reticular lumps…that's a lipid duct, I'd bet a hundred bucks. Try there."
Winger steered ANAD into the vascular cleft of the membrane. He twisted his right hand controller, pulsing a carbene grabber to twist the cleft molecules just so, then released the membrane lipids and slingshot himself forward. Seconds later, ANAD was floating in a plasma bath, dark, viny shapes barely visible off in the distance. The plasma was a heavy viscous fluid. Winger tweaked up the propulsor to a higher power setting and took a navigation hack off the vascular grid.
"Ventral tegmentum, Lieutenant. Just past the mesoencephalic nucleus. Looks like we're in."
Winger navigated ANAD through the interstices of Doc Frost’s brain for the better part of an hour. He had programmed the assembler to send an alarm when it encountered any kind of unnatural activity…especially assembler maneuvering or replication. If there were any halo bots left in his brain, he wanted to be ready.
At 1724 hours, ANAD sent the alarm.
The imager screen was at first murky, crowded with the spikes and cubes of dissolved molecules. Lumpy, multi-lobed sodium molecules darted across their view like shadowy ping-pong balls. Winger studied readouts from ANAD's sounder…something was there, hidden in the data traces on the scope. He fiddled with the gain on the imager, tweaking it, subtracting foreground clutter.
Something approximately sixty nanometers in one dimension, narrow with a globe structure at one end…and scores of probes, effectors, cilia, whatever. Incredible mobility…triple propulsors beat an idling rhythm as ANAD closed in….
Gibbs let out a whoop. "Will you look at that?"
Tallant came closer, squinted at the vague, fuzzy outlines on the screen. "Red Hammer halo, up close and personal. A whole colony of them. A welcoming committee, it would appear. Come to see what we're about."
Winger's fingers flew over the interface controls. "We're about to check this joker out…" Quickly, he signaled ANAD to prime its defensive mechanisms, and slowed its approach to a crawl.
Reconnoiter first. He remembered a line from Sun Tzu, the greatest nanotrooper of all…
He who is skilled hides in the most secret recesses of the earth.
Under Winger's guidance, ANAD maneuvered among the jostling molecules of chlorine and sodium and potassium. A huge kinked snakelike cluster of hematite molecules drifted by. Winger had an idea. He signaled ANAD to grab a few hematites as a shield. Seizing oxygen atoms with its effectors, ANAD clutched several molecules.
Gradually, the shape and size of the halo bots became clearer. Bristling with effectors and arms, they looked like a miniature Apollo Lunar Modules. The head was a multi-lobed cluster of spheres and hexagons; inside the churning electron cloud dimmed out any detail.
Below the head was a cylindrical sheath, covered with pyramidal facets and undulating beads of proteins - the assembler's probes and effectors. Winger was frankly awed at the sight.
"Hell of a lot of gear for this bastard," he said.
"So many different kinds of effectors," Tallant marveled.
Indeed, the horde of halo assemblers were rigged out like battleships, with devices for every conceivable mechanical or chemical
action. Winger examined the nearest bot more closely. A flatplane baseplate capped one end of its sheathed body. The tail structure was dense thicket of fibers, each tipped with penetrator clusters. The penetrators enabled the bot to attach to and enter any structure.
Winger brought ANAD to a complete stop. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled. Something wasn't quite right, but he couldn't put his finger on it. The data was all wrong…
"Dana…what do you make of this?"
Tallant was amazed at the images ANAD was returning. "I've never seen so many effectors. Amazing. That probe for instance--" she fingered a dark, indistinct structure to one side of the nearest device--"looks just like a saw. And that--I believe I recognize…I'll be damned--"
Winger had seen it too. "Sorting rotor?"
"That's what it looks like." At Tallant’s request, Winger fiddled with the resolution, managed to tweak the view even sharper. Dim outlines became clearer. "A segment of a sorting rotor. Cam-driven with carbene grabbers and--" she squinted down at the imager, adjusted her glasses "--looks like--yep, diamondoid follower rods. "Probably process upwards of several hundred thousand molecules per cycle." Tallant shook her head with grudging respect. "Neat workmanship. Q2 always told us these halos were ANAD clones. But I'd bet my aunt Emma's life savings that bugger's not part of the original template. This is new."
"Just what exactly are you saying, Dana?" Winger asked.
Then Sergeant Gibbs sucked in his breath, watching the acoustic return on the imager.
"Simply incredible." Gibby pointed out the dendritic branches of nearby nerve cell tissue. "Artificial nerve stimulation, folks. I'm sure of it. These halo bots have been inserted into Doc’s brain, then reconfigured themselves as sorting rotors. Now they’re sitting alongside his synaptic clefts like a circus performer, pumping dopamine back and forth on command. Or more likely, according to a program stored in their processor. What you're looking at is in vivo stimulation of artificial nerve impulses according to programmed nanobotic control. Simply incredible."
Dana Tallant paled at the implications. "Is that what's infected the Doc?"
“And Dr. Duncan, too,” Winger added.
Gibbs shrugged, tugged at some loose hairs on his red beard. "Fantastic engineering, if it's what I think it is. Acetylcholine, dopamine, serotonin…the possibilities are endless. Synthesize enough of the right molecules and inject them across the synaptic gap here. You're basically in control of a nerve impulse."
Unnoticed by anyone, the swarm of halo mechs had begun to re-orient themselves tail first toward ANAD. Their tail fiber penetrators quickly reconfigured, locking into attack position.
He is who is skilled in attack flashes forth from the topmost heights of heaven.
Out of the corner of his eye, Winger saw the maneuver on the imager.
"Look out!" Gibbs saw it too. "He's changing position…all of 'em, coming at us--"
"I'm ready," Winger muttered. His fingers flew across the keyboard. Instantly, ANAD brought all its defensive mechanisms to attack position. It cast off the hematite shield and closed for battle.
Tallant had been expecting this. “We triggered something…here they come.”
"We’re intruders," Winger said. "I’ll need to get closer, grab one of those jokers for analysis--"
As ANAD sped forward, the Red Hammer halo bots grew and retracted appendages and surface structure with blazing speeds. The outer membrane of the mechs seethed with motion, as atoms and clusters of atoms twisted, bonded, twisted again, rebonded, broke apart, recombined, straightened, undulated and whirled.
The gap between them vanished and ANAD grappled with the nearest mech. Other mechs swarmed to the battlefield.
Winger was stunned by the speed of the assault. A battalion of enemy bots soon engulfed ANAD. No time to replicate now…got to get free…signal daughters….Winger fired off a burst of instructions to gather all the daughters ANAD had replicated going in. It might be too late.
The imager screen shook with the collision, then careened sideways.
Several minutes passed. The imager view vibrated with the ferocity of the attack. Chains of oxygen molecules, pressed into service as makeshift weapons, whipped across the screen. The water was soon choked with cellular debris. The halo bots replicated several times, adding new molecule strings. They stripped off electrons to make an armor shield of highly reactive chlorine atoms. In seconds, ANAD was immobilized by the chlorine sheath.
"I can't hold structure!" Winger yelled. "I'm reconfiguring…shutting down peripheral systems!"
Sergeant Gibbs had taken a place beside Winger at the interface controls. "Got to disengage, Boss…emergency truncation. Everything not critical. We've got to get ANAD out of there before we lose him!"
"I'm trying…but the damn mech's penetrated the signal path…if he cuts the link…."
"I know, I know…just keep trying, Jesus…internal bonds on main body structure weakening…I've lost all grappling capability…."
As they watched, the halo bots systematically dismantled ANAD, molecule by molecule. ANAD seemed woefully unprepared for the assault. With ruthless efficiency, the mechs whirred and chopped every device ANAD could generate. ANAD tried to counter, replicating probes, inserters, jaws, cilia, pumps, blowers--but it was no use.
The halo mutated too fast. Somehow, the mech seemed to anticipate ANAD's every move.
Winger was awed by the bots’ combat capabilities. "Incredible," he whispered. "The perfect warrior. Must have a hell of a processor."
Dana Tallant agreed. "Probably quantum, just like ANAD."
They were all stunned at the ferocity of the reaction they had triggered.
Winger's fingers flew across the keyboard. He had no choice but to disengage to save the ANAD master. Extract before ANAD was chopped to pieces. But he just couldn’t leave Doc Frost in the grubby little effectors of these bastards.
"We're losing signal strength, Lieutenant!" Gibbs yelled.
"I see it! Damn bots penetrated the matrix. Main processing functions in danger…I'm counterprogramming…." Winger pecked madly at the keyboard.
Dana Tallant shook a fist at the imager screen, now a dark, swirling mass of shapes and forms. "Come on, damn it! Come on…."
But ANAD couldn't hold. Every move was countered by the halo. Winger, Gibbs, and the others watched in amazement and horror, as one by one, ANAD's capabilities--fine motor control, attitude and orientation, propulsors, sensors, molecule analysis, replication--were rendered inert, or completely excised.
ANAD was helpless.
"Got to get the hell out of Dodge," Winger muttered. While I still can.
Sergeant Gibbs was checking status. "It's bad, Lieutenant. We've got no electron lens. No enzymatic knife. Hardly any effector control. ANAD's crippled."
Johnny Winger gritted his teeth. "Not just yet…" His fingers flew over the keyboard. "We've gotta get some data…got to probe that bugger, get some structure on him…if I can just get stabilized--"
"Lieutenant--there's nothing left to stabilize--"
Doc Frost’s prostrate body shuddered and convulsed. Dana Tallant held her breath…behind the frothing outlines of the assault, the imager showed swarms of mechs beating back through his cranial plasma, ready to resume their mindless pumping of dopamine. A low moan escaped his lips.
Despite all odds, Winger wasn't about to give up. Grimly determined, he piloted what was left of the ANAD horde back for another wrestling match with the enemy.
"Whatever this thing is," he swore to himself, "it reacts like ANAD itself." He worked the config controller, while Gibby managed status, crossing his fingers that the ANAD master would hold together.
Extend a grappler there. Poke a carbene there. Do the hokey-pokey and you turn yourself around—
While Tallant and another technician helped hold Frost still, Winger disengaged ANAD, scrunching up an atom group as h
e tacked against the churning plasma, closing steadily on the nearest mech. Inside a few dozen nanometers, he siphoned off the mech's outer charge and let the zap break him away.
Reams of bond energy data and config details burst onto the imager. Gibby let out a yelp. The enemy mechs had given up vitals on structure and ANAD snatched the info right out from under him, storing it, pulsing it back to the IC's.
"Now, I gotcha, you little bastard--"
Winger knew he had to get ANAD away while he still could. Halo bots swarmed forward at the same time Frost convulsed again.
Dana Tallant couldn't hold him down. "Neural seizure, Johnny…halo's eating him alive…"
Undetected by ANAD, the halo master bot had already scanned and analyzed ANAD itself. As the battle raged on across Frost’s ventral tegmentum, spilling out into other regions of his brain, the halo master quietly changed configuration, grabbing atoms to remake itself into a nearly perfect facsimile of the ANAD master. When the time came for ANAD extraction, the disguised halo master would hitch a ride and exit Doc Frost’s skull as if it were ANAD replicant itself. If all worked according to its programming, no one would be any wiser.
"Executing quantum collapse…NOW!" Come on baby, get small for me…get real small….
Deep inside Frost's brain, the ANAD master collapsed what was left of its own structure in an explosive puff of atom fragments. Base, effectors, probes and grapplers, even the core shell surrounding its nanoprocessor, went hurtling off into the plasma in a big bang of spinning atom parts.
Instantly, ANAD disappeared. To all intents and purposes, ANAD had effectively vanished in a cloud of blurry quantum waves. All except for a small cluster of molecules that clung precariously to the last remnants of ANAD’s core.
Less than four minutes later, making its way on quantum wave propulsors, ANAD was finally extracted and re-inserted into the mobile TinyTown, its nanoprocessor still dogging electron states to bring the nearly invisible device home.
One minute later, ANAD’s unrecognized hitchhiker emerged. But no one noticed.
Half an hour later, Winger watched as Gibby pulled what was left of the ANAD master into the re-gen chamber. Regenerating ANAD from scratch would be ticklish and it would take several days. He left the Level Four Lab and went outside with Dana Tallant. He needed some fresh air. He needed to think.