Nanobots Part 2 - Terminal State

This story takes place seventy years after Nanobots – Part 1 (Treatment)

Sunday, June 12, 2101

My wife Jena lay on her side in the hospital bed, her eyes wet with tears.  All the equipment had been turned off except for the heart monitor, and all intravenous medication bags had been removed.  At eighty-four the coronary artery disease had weakened her, and now pneumonia was finishing her off.  She had rallied for a time under powerful antibiotics but it hadn’t lasted.

I smiled at her, but inside I felt a deep mortal wound in my soul. To my eyes she was still the young woman I had married some sixty years before.  It’s hard to explain how it feels to watch someone you love and have spent a lifetime with die in front of you.  Especially when you hold the key to their survival.  And it would be so easy.  She wouldn’t even know about it until a week or two after recovery.  But that would betray all those years of years of love and trust.

I said, “Jena, there’s still time.  Just say the word and I’ll give them to you.  Please, Jena, don’t go.  I need you.”

She stared at me for a long moment, and then spoke softly in a voice husky from medication.  “You know my feelings, Ryan.  I don’t want to be a machine.”

“It’s not like that.  I’ve told you before - I’ve learned how to control them.  I can teach you.”

“No, Ryan.  I’ve had a good life.  A great life with you.  You’ve always respected my wishes.  I’m done now.  Please let me go.”

I stood, stepped to her bedside, and bent down to kiss her cheek.  I whispered in her ear, “I love you Jena and I always will. “  A tear rolled down my cheek and dropped onto her pillow.

A few minutes later the heart monitor let out a screeching alarm, but I just stood there holding Jena’s face in my hands. “Goodbye,” I whispered.

A nurse came in and shut off the monitor.  The no-resuscitation order Jena had signed meant that there would be no running feet and crash carts.  The nurse paused and looked at me.  “Take all the time you need, Mr. Franklin.  We’ll check in on you from time to time.”

I closed Jena’s beautiful eyes, smoothed out her tangle of white hair, and after ten minutes I collapsed back into the chair.  The room seemed unreal to me. Life seemed unreal to me.  What was life without my Jena.  A wave of despair deeper than I had ever experienced washed over me.

Then came the pain.  It started as a dull ache in my chest, and it progressed to my jaw and left arm.  I knew what it meant; what eighty-six-year-old didn’t.  But I didn’t fight it.  I welcomed it.  Soon I would be with my Jena again.

Sunday, July 10, 2101

I wandered in oblivion for a while.  I have no idea how long I drifted.  Sometimes I heard disembodied voices, and some of them may have been yelling.  At some point I thought I had been moved.  Time passed like this; days, weeks, maybe.  I lay there just on the far side on consciousness, unable to cross the barrier.

I vaguely felt a stab of pain in my upper arm and a bright light flicked across my eyes.  “Mr. Franklin, can you hear me?  Mr. Franklin, I’m Doctor Heath.  Blink twice if you can hear me.”

Moving anything felt like walking through waist deep snow.  I opened my eyes with glacial slowness. Everything had blurred edges. I blinked once.  Then again.

“Very good.  Mr. Franklin, you’ve had a heart attack and some minor brain damage due to lack of oxygen.  You have been in a coma for twenty-eight days.  Do you understand?”

My mouth felt like cotton balls and my throat was raw.  I tried to speak but all that came out was a dry wheeze.

“Don’t try to speak Mr. Franklin.  We just removed your feeding tube and your mouth and throat may feel uncomfortable for a day or so.  Your progress has been nothing short of remarkable.  Rest easy; we have someone staying with you.

As my thoughts cleared, a dawning realization came over me.  I should have been dead, no question.  Apparently it had been a while before they had found me, otherwise I wouldn’t have suffered brain damage.  There was only one possibility.  With some trepidation I mentally queried my nanos.

System status?

(Emergency reactivation commenced six-hundred fifty-one hours, twenty-three minutes, forty-three seconds ago.)
(Heart valve anomaly repaired, heart restarted. Heart repair elapsed time six minutes, 12 seconds.)
(Rerouted damaged synaptic pathways.)
(Systemic maintenance protocol initiated.  Baseline maturity reference age twenty-one years, four months, seven days.)
(Systemic maintenance complete.  Restored to baseline maturity age.)
(All systems nominal.  Secondary programs enabled.)

My vision was clearing, and my motor coordination was slowly returning.  With an effort, I raised my hand to my face and looked at it.  Smooth skin.  No age spots. Damn, I was a kid again. 

This meant that the people in this facility were probably not my friends.  Nanobots disease cures had been outlawed over fifty years ago after several cases where nanos had taken over their hosts.  I still had mine because of an accidental reintroduction from contact with personal effects after my cancer treatment.  I was more fortunate than most though since I had studied nanobot technology in college and had learned how to program them.  I had found a way to sequester them in a hibernation state in my spleen, and retain the ability to call them out in an emergency.  Using hibernation mode had kept the Marine Corps from finding them during my physical exams.  I had also programmed them to self-destruct by default if they ever got out of my body. This had allowed me to live a mostly normal life, and prevented accidental transfer of the nanos to my wife and children.

In the military I had used them quite a lot in combat situations, but after that only rarely.
In the past fifty years I had only let them out of hibernation only a few times.  Twice when my cancer came back, and during my first heart attack.  After the heart attack I had adjusted their hibernation location to my pericardial cavity just in case.  If I hadn’t done that I’d be dead now, because the nanos normally used circulating blood to move about the body.  Having them stationed at my heart had saved me. But apparently while I had been in La-La land they had had free-rein.

Execute hibernation mode

(Hibernation mode initiated.  Estimated time to full hibernation two hours four minutes fifteen seconds)

Putting my nanos in hibernation mode was probably water under the bridge, but it couldn’t hurt.

I looked around the room.  A young nurse with brown hair in a tight bun and wearing a pale blue uniform sat in the visitor’s chair, tapping away on a touch-pad.  I studied her.  She was certainly pleasant looking and attractive in an athletic way.  I craned my neck around surveying the rest of the room.  No windows; that was a bad sign.  The walls were block concrete and painted a light olive green.  Strike two.  A guard in a pressed white single-piece uniform stood at rigid attention just inside the door.  Crap.

I turned back to the nurse and whispered to keep my throat from burning, “Nurse, can you get me some water?”

She turned to me and smiled, but she wasn’t looking at my face.  I followed her gaze and noticed for the first time that I was as naked as the day I was born.  “And a sheet please.”

She said, “Why Mr. Franklin are you the modest type?  How refreshing.  But it’s really not necessary.  After all, I’ve been sitting here with you like that for the last few weeks.”

I said, “If that’s how you feel then perhaps you would honor my nakedness by removing your clothing as well.”

She chuckled and said, “Oh, that won’t be necessary.”  She pulled a white folded sheet from a wall cupboard, snapped it over me with military precision, and tucked it under the mattress edges.  Then she held a water bottle straw to my lips and I sucked greedily.

She pulled it back and said, “Take it slow, Mr. Franklin.  I don’t want you getting sick on me.”

My throat felt much better even from that little taste of water.  I muttered, “Give a nurse a little power and look what she does with it.”

“Mr. Franklin, I really don’t think that’s an appropriate thing to say.  If you promise to drink it slowly you can have the bottle.  Is it a deal?”

I nodded and she handed it to me with a latex gloved hand. 

“Please call me Ryan.  And what do I call you, besides nurse?”

“You may call me Miss Manners.”

“That seems hardly likely.”

“What does?”

“Never mind.  What is your first name?”

She hesitated for a moment, as though unsure whether it was wise to divulge such sensitive information.  “Mora.”

I snorted a bit of stinging water out of my nose as I assembled her name in my head.

She said, “Be nice, Mr. Franklin, or your precious sheet will disappear.”

“Yes Miss Mora.  And please, call me Ryan.”

Monday Morning, July 11, 2101

The following morning I was provided with a drafty hospital gown, put into a wheelchair, and my wrists were zip-tied to the armrests.  The orderly rolled me down a hallway into another room.  I don’t know why they bothered, as it was nearly identical to my recovery room with the same bare green walls.  The only difference was the ancient gray metal table and chairs, and an inset glass mirror along one wall.

“Mr. Franklin, your present chronological age is eight-six years, three months.  Is that correct?”  Doctor Heath sat across from me studying a large touchpad on the table in front of him.  He was a balding man in his mid-forties with an extra thirty pounds around the middle and an air of superiority.  I took an instant dislike to him.

“I‘m sorry, who did you say?”

He looked up at me and took off his glasses.  The gesture looked oddly practiced, as it undoubtedly was since no one wore glasses anymore.

“Mr. Franklin, we have extensive files on your activities all the way back to 2031 when you had your original nanobot treatment.  We have confirmed your identity through DNA matching.”

I said, “Are you saying I’ve been under surveillance for the past seventy years?  Why on earth would you do that?  And who the hell are you anyway?”

Doctor Heath’s expression remained impassive.  “Occasional surveillance is routine for all living patients who survived nanobot treatments and their subsequent eradication.  Your case came under closer scrutiny though when you survived two recurrences of your cancer without any treatment. As a result we’ve been monitoring you quite closely.  You also apparently survived a previous heart attack, and now this more recent one without treatment.”

He opened some files on his touch-pad.  “I also have a copy of your military service discharge form DD-214.  It says here that you were in the Marine Corps, Force Reconnaissance, and have a pile of commendations including two purple hearts and a Silver Star Medal.  You know what I think?”

I shrugged.

“I think you used your nanobots.  A man can get mighty brave when he can heal himself.”

As far as I knew no one in the Marine Corps had ever discovered that I had nanos in my system.  My purple hearts were for injuries that could have been fatal, but I only used the nanos to keep from bleeding to death.  Otherwise I let my healing take its normal course.

I said, “All that proves nothing.  It’s all supposition.  Why am I here?”

“We want to know how you do it.”

“Do what?”

“Oh come now Mr. Franklin, you know as well as I what I’m asking.  How do you control your nanobots?”

“I chuckled.  What are you talking about?  My nanos were killed off after my original treatment.”

He leaned forward in his seat.  “Mr. Franklin, this is not a game.  While you were comatose we did a full body scan of you and extracted a large quantity of nanobots from your blood for analysis.  You had twenty-two times the normal nanobot concentration.  They appear to be similar to the original beta-two version, but with some unusual enhancements.  We know that you studied nanobot technology in college.  Do those enhancements allow you to control them?”

My stomach turned sour.  They had me dead to rights and knew it.  I said, “You ask a lot of questions.”

“Mr. Franklin, the only way you will ever leave this facility is if I say you can. And in case you’re curious, this facility is specially designed for confinement of nanobot patients.  Among other measures, it has automated nanobot detection and lock-down capability at all exit points. Think about what I’ve said, Mr. Franklin.  When we meet again tomorrow, you had best be more forthcoming.  Remember well what I said - whether you ever leave this facility is entirely up to me.”

Heath stood abruptly and marched out the door.  A moment later a sour faced orderly came in and wheeled me back to my dismal room.  Mora was waiting for me and freed me from the chair after the orderly left. I climbed back onto the bed.

Mora said, “Doctor Heath instructed me to take another blood sample.  She pulled on a new pair of surgical gloves, wrapped surgical tubing around my upper left arm and inserted the needle.  Bright blood gushed into the glass tube.  Since I had my nanos sequestered in hibernation mode there wouldn’t be any found in this blood sample.

When she was done I said, “Mora, I seem to get fatigued rather quickly.  If you don’t mind I’d like to take a nap.  Would you please turn off the lights?”

“I’m not allowed to turn them off completely during the day, but I can turn them down.  Will that be okay?”

“Fine.  Thanks Mora.”  She smiled at me and said, “You’re welcome, Ryan.”

Hmmm, she used my first name.  Progress.  I closed my eyes.  I wasn’t the least bit fatigued but  I needed quiet time to dialog with my nanos.

One nice thing about the nanobots recent restoration activity was that they restored many neural pathways that had long ago gone quiet.  I had let the deterioration happen; it’s a natural consequence of the aging process after all.  But now I had full access to a lifetime of memories, and my training in nanotechnology was back to full strength.  A little out-of-date perhaps, but perfectly attuned to my version of the nanos.  My jailors had no idea what I was capable of.  They knew I had them and had extracted samples, so continuing hibernation mode was pointless and possibly dangerous.  I might need them.

Execute activation sequence

(Activation sequence initiated.  Estimated time to full activation six minutes twelve seconds)

Activation was a lot faster than hibernation because the nanos just leapt back into my blood stream.  Getting them all back in one place took a lot longer.

Back when I had first discovered that I could communicate with my nanos I had discovered a lot of classified and encrypted military code in them.  In college I had cracked the encryption and carefully analyzed the source code.  There was a lot of scary stuff these little guys could do, although I had almost never used them that way.  That hadn’t kept me from writing some of my own less deadly code though, and that’s what I needed now.  I waited.

(Activation complete.)

Initiate replication sequence.  Muster site, pad of left thumb.  Single executable code Gamma-four.  Confirm.

(Gamma-four replication sequence confirmed.  Estimated time to completion one hour, seventeen minutes, forty-two seconds.)

I waited and pretended to doze.  I was too amped up to get any actual sleep.  Instead, I thought about Jena.  I seemed to be able to remember every major event in our lives together in great detail, but was surprised that I didn’t feel the deep sorrow I expected.  No doubt the nanobots had something to do with that, but at least I was able to mentally function.

(Gamma replication sequence complete.  Standing by for trans-dermal introduction.)

I opened my eyes and yawned.  “Mora, when’s lunch?  I’m famished.”

“I’ll call it in for you.  I’m sorry but the fare is pretty basic.  You’ll get used to it though.”

She used her touch-pad for a moment and said, “Today’s lunch is tomato soup and a salad.  It’ll be up here in a few minutes.”

“Thanks.  Can you get me some water please.  My throat is still a bit scratchy.”

“Sure.”  She stood and I held the empty water bottle out to her with my left hand.  I fumbled the bottle as I passed it to her and slid the pad of my left thumb onto her wrist above her glove.  It would only take a few moments for the nanos to get through her skin and into her system.

(Trans-dermal introduction initiated.  Estimated time for full efficacy seventeen minutes, twenty-six seconds).

The food took longer than expected to arrive, but eventually an orderly came in and placed a tray on short legs over my lap.  I picked up the plastic spork, a combination of a spoon and fork, and said, “Do they really expect me to eat soup with this thing?”

“I’m afraid so.  They don’t even let the staff use regular utensils.”

(Projected efficacy threshold reached.)

My Gamma-Four code was quite simple.  All it did was temporarily suppress activity in the  prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for inhibition and control.  It also suppressed long term memory storage of new events.  After an hour or so the nanos would deactivate and eventually exit her body as waste.  In the mean time I might be able to learn something.  Since the effect was not a complete loss of inhibition, I still had to take some care with my inquiries.

“Mora how long have you worked here?”

“Oh, a couple of years.  The security crap is annoying but the pay is great.

“Really?  I wouldn’t think working in a rundown hole like this would pay much.”

“You’d be surprised.  Scuttlebutt has it that this place is funded by some black government program.  I don’t know if it’s true, but when your paycheck says Eldercare International and there are never more than a few old nanobot patients here, something’s not right.”

I chuckled, playing along. “Yeah that sounds weird.  So there are other patients like me here?”

“Not right now.  Most patients are here for a week or two for evaluation and then are gone.  We generally have only a few here at any one time.  You’re our only patient right now.”

“You say the patients are gone after a week or two? Where do they go?”

“Why out the chimney of course.  There’s an incinerator--- oh, but I’m not supposed to say anything about that.  I try not to think about it.  It’s too scary.”

A cold knife of fear cut through my belly but I kept a smile on my face.  “Don’t worry Mora, I won’t tell. I would image that some patients leave on their own two feet anyway.”

She looked doubtful.  “I suppose.”

I changed tack.  “Who is Doctor Heath?  I never met him before I woke up.”

“Doctor Heath?  Why he’s the pompous program manager.  The PPM.  That’s what we call him behind his back.  He treats us nurses like we’re his personal servants.”

“You know I’m really confused about how I got here and what happened before I woke up.  You told me before that you’d been sitting in here with me for a few weeks.  Were you here when I arrived?”

She pinched her face in thought.  “Yeah, you were a shriveled up old man.  At first you were sweating profusely and smelled really bad.  You used up more intravenous glucose than anyone I’ve ever seen.  Then you started changing.  I thought I was seeing things, but every day you seemed, well, younger.  Finally Doctor Heath saw it too so I knew I wasn’t going crazy.”

“So you examined me then, while I lay here naked and comatose?”

“Examine you?  No of course not.  But giving you daily sponge baths is part of my job.  I like your junk.”

The gamma-four effect must have been peaking because she seemed to be getting less inhibited by the minute.  “My junk?  What do you mean?”

She blushed and glanced at my midsection.  “Well, I did need to clean all of you, and if I spent a few extra minutes with your junk who was going to know?  Say, you know I think it’s time for your sponge bath.  Would you like one now?

“Why yes, Mora, I think I would.”

***

When Mora’s shift ended at four in the afternoon she seemed a bit dazed.  I knew the Gamma-four nanos were shutting down and she was probably confused about what had happened after lunch.  She showed me the call button and informed me that a guard was posted in the hall outside.  I was glad she left, not because I didn’t enjoy her company, but because I had preparations to make for my next interview with Doctor Heath.

Tuesday, July 12, 2101

When I awoke the next morning Mora wasn’t in the room.  I got up and pulled on the door but it was locked from the outside.  I poked around in the built-in cupboards and cabinets, and found my old clothes in a lower drawer.  Deciding I was sick of the open-backed hospital gown I pulled them on.  I knew that the elderly shrink as they age but this was ridiculous.  My pant cuffs ended about two inches above my ankles.  We used to call them flood-pants, although I have no idea why.  At least it was better than the drafty gown.

The clock on the wall read nine when an orderly came in with a tray of cereal, toast and orange juice.  He was a brute of a man, and he wore a full face shield in addition to the latex gloves.

I said, “What’s up with the mask?  You think I’m contagious or something?”

“Something like that.  Eat up, we’ll be back to get you at nine-thirty for your interview with Doctor Heath.”

I ate rapidly, thinking about the added facial protection.  Clearly they knew something had happened.  Perhaps Mora had remembered more than she should have, and told her supervisor.  That might mean a slight change in my plan was necessary.  As I ate I prepared a few nano programs just in case.

The orderly was back on the dot of nine-thirty with a wheelchair and another big orderly.  One of them held my wrists to the wheelchair arms and used zip-ties to secure them there.

“Come-on, is this really necessary?” I complained.

The one that had brought me breakfast said, “Doctor’s orders,” and pushed me down the hall into the interview room.  He pushed me behind the table opposite Doctor Heath, set the chair’s brake, and left.

Doctor Heath looked up from his touch pad and glared at me.  He wore a full face shield and gloves just like the orderly.  His bald head poked up through the shield’s head band. A glass of water sat on the table in front of him.  He said, “What did you do to nurse Manners?”

“I didn’t do anything to her.  Why, is she sick or something?”

“Something like that.  She set off the automated nanobot detector when she tried to leave last night which put the building in lockdown.  Now why do you suppose that happened?”

“I have no idea.  But she does work in this nanobot research lab, so I suppose she could have picked them up anywhere.”

“What makes you think this is a nanobot research lab?”

“You told me yesterday.”

He sat back and stared at me.  “I think you infected her with your nanobots to get information from her.  As it happens she now resides in the room next to yours.  We’re now studying the apparently deactivated nanobots in her system.  My guess is that they’ll be a good match to yours.”

A chill ran through me as I remembered Mora’s words about the way patients left the facility.  I hadn’t meant to get Mora into trouble, especially since I was getting to like her.

I stared up at the mirrored panel behind his head.  I had seen enough movies in my time to recognize an old one-way mirror when I saw one, and I had even seen one once in a supervisor’s office.  But I suspected that there was no one behind this one.  There were scratches on the mirroring which could only happen on the far side, so the surveillance room beyond had probably been converted to storage.  Besides, one-way mirrors were old-tech.

I said, “You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?”

“Of course not.  The building is secure and all staff who are assigned to you are wearing full protective gear.”

I said, “Then why am I---.“  At this point I was overcome with a coughing fit.  I coughed hard and painfully, my throat still raw from the feeding tubes.  I rasped, “water” between fits of coughing.

He was slow to help but eventually he rose from his chair and came around the table with the water glass.  As he bent down to pour some into my mouth I jerked my wrists up.  My specially made nanos had spent the last twenty minutes weakening the zip ties and they snapped easily.  I shot up out of the chair, turned, and grabbed his neck under his face shield with both hands. I pressed hard on his carotid arteries. He flailed his arms and made gurgling sounds until his eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped to the floor.  I checked his pulse and breathing - he was still alive.

(Trans-dermal introduction complete.  Estimated time for full efficacy eighteen minutes, twenty-one seconds).

I lifted his body, dragged him around the table and dumped him back in his chair.  I managed to balance his head on his braced forearms so that he looked like he was studying his touch-pad.  I didn’t want a curious orderly to look in the small window in the door and see anything out of place.  I returned to my wheel chair and put both hands on the wheelchair arms below table level.

The nanos I had given the doctor were not the same ones I had given Mora.  These were coded with one of the scary military subroutines I had identified in college.  I had tried this code once on an unsuspecting college coed and vowed to never use it again.  But desperate times called for desperate measures. Theses nanos somehow affected the brain’s neural chemistry, resulting in a highly suggestive state deeper than any hypnosis.  While the nanos were active, the subject would do anything you asked of them but would otherwise appear completely normal.  I waited nervously, praying that I had enough time to carry through with my sketchy plan.

After fifteen minutes by the clock on the wall, Doctor Heath began to groan and his head slipped off his hands and thumped onto the table.  He groaned louder and drooled from his open mouth.

He lifted his head and stared around the room in apparent confusion. “What happened?”

I said, “You passed out.  I yelled, but apparently no one could hear me.  Are you alright?”

“You--- you did something to me, didn’t you.”

“Of course not.  I’m zip-tied to this damn chair.  What could I have done to you?”

He reached up to his throat and touched it carefully, wincing as he did so.  He pushed himself up with his arms and took a staggering step toward the door.  I said, “You’re fine, Doctor March.  Why don’t you sit back down.”  The nanos weren’t at full efficacy yet but that didn’t mean they were completely ineffective either.

He hesitated and turned toward me, rubbing his neck.  “Yes, perhaps you’re right, I’m probably  fine.”  He sat back down.

I waited. For several minutes he simply stared down at his touch-pad. He looked catatonic.

(Projected efficacy threshold reached.)

I said, “Doctor Heath, listen to my voice very carefully.  Focus on my voice.  Are you listening?”

“Yes.”

“Doctor Heath, my second lab test results have come back negative.  You have found no nanos in my system.  This was all a big mistake.  You are angry at your lab technicians.”

“Damn technicians.”

“Nurse Manners must have picked up some errant nanobot fragments on her clothing and set of the door alarm.  Her tests came back negative too. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes.  Her clothing.”

“Nurse Manners is tired from this ordeal and you should send her home to rest.”

“Tired, yes she must be very tired.”

“When I count to three you will wake up feeling refreshed.  You will not feel any pain in your neck.  You are very happy because you got me to promise not to say anything to the media.  You will release Mora from her room and escort us both out of here.  If I ask you anything or ask you to do something, you will respond without hesitation.  Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“One---Two---Three.”

Doctor Heath’s head snapped up and he looked around the room.  “Well, I guess we’re finished here.  I’m awfully sorry to have inconvenienced you.  Let’s get you released shall we?”

He came around the table.  “Here, let me get those zip-ties off your wrists.”

Damn, I hadn’t thought of that.  I said, “But you already took care of that. See?”  I raised my arms to show him that I was free.

“But---“

I put an edge in my voice.  “Forget about it, Doctor. It’s not important.  Let’s go get Nurse Manners.”

He looked uncertain but turned toward the door.  “Follow me Mr. Franklin.”

I followed him out the door and down the hall.  We walked past my room to the next door and he put his hand on the door scanner.  A status light turned from red to green and he pulled open the door.  I followed him inside.

Mora lay strapped to the bed and looked up in alarm as we entered.  She said, “Doctor Heath, thank god.  The security men dumped me in here last night when the door scanner went off, and another nurse took blood samples.  There must be some mistake.  I did nothing wrong.  I don’t have any nanobots.  I took every precaution.”  Her voice took on a note of pleading.  “Please, you have to let me out of here.”

I said, “Doctor Heath, why don’t you sit down in the chair and take a nap.”

He sat down and his chin fell onto his chest.  Within moments he was snoring softly.

Mora watched in obvious fascination.  “Ryan, how did you do that?”

“I’ll explain about him in a minute.  I’ve come to get you out of here.”  I undid the straps holding her to the bed.  “You see, there was no mistake and it was my fault.  I’m really sorry, but I needed information.  I gave you some temporary nanos to make you more willing to talk to me.  They’re all deactivated now and will all pass out of your system as waste in a day or so.  But now Doctor Heath appears to have made you a patient, and from what you told me that tends to be fatal. I couldn’t leave without trying to get you out too.”

Her face turned red and she glared at me.  In a forceful whisper she said, “You did what?  Shit, I can’t believe you would do that to me.  You could’ve gotten me killed.  Even if we get out of here you’ve made me a fugitive.  These people won’t rest until they find me.  Or you for that matter.  What makes you think you can get me out of here anyway?”

“I gave the good doctor here some rather special nanos.  They’re temporary, like yours, and we have maybe forty-five minutes before they start to shut down.  The effect is like a strong hypnosis.  I told him our results came back negative, and that he should escort us out of the building.”

She said, “If he’s convinced that the results were negative, then why should I run?”

“As I said, the effect is temporary.  As soon as the nanos deactivate he’ll realize that something is wrong.  We have to get out of here now.  Whether you come is your choice; I’m not going to force you.  But you have to decide right now.”

“Shit.  Fine, get me out of here.  Can you give me a minute to get dressed?  I can’t leave in this hospital gown.”

I stared straight at her and said, “Sure, go right ahead.”

She frowned and said, “Turn around,” punctuating each word with a thrust of her index finger in my direction.”

“Don’t I get to see your junk?” 

“My what?”  Her faced turned bright red.

“Never mind.”  I turned to give her some privacy.

When she was ready I turned to the slumbering doctor.  “Wake up Doctor Heath, it’s time to go.”

Tuesday, July 12, 2101, 11:15 AM

Mora said, “Wait, we still have to get through the nanobot detector at the door.  I might still set it off, and you most certainly will.  If it goes off all the building exits will lock down automatically and we’ll be stuck inside.”

“Damn,” I muttered.  I turned to Doctor Heath.  “Doctor, do you enter and leave this building through the public doors?”

“Why no, of course not.  I run the place after all.  I use the executive express elevator that runs from the administrative level on the fifth floor down to the garage.”

“Are there any guards or nano scanners if we go out that way?”

“There is a manned security station at the bottom of the executive elevator, but no scanner.”

“Doctor, please take us to your elevator and escort us out.”

Mora turned to me and whispered, “What about the guard?”

“I’m working on that.”

The Doctor took us up an elevator to the fifth floor. The décor went from drab military hospital to high-end executive as we passed through sliding doors into the administrative section. Mora’s raised eyebrows were all the clue I needed to see that she had never been up here.  Doctor Heath stopped at a small stainless steel door and put his hand on an adjacent hand scanner.  A bar of light went down the scanner and a moment later the door slid open.  The elevator was tiny and we had to squeeze ourselves in.  The door slid shut and the elevator descended automatically.

Engage combat mode.

(Combat mode engaged)

I hadn’t used this nano capability since my stint in Special Forces, but if ever there was a need, this was it.  My vision brightened and filled with projected movement vectors and possible attack patterns.  It was a confusing display in such a confined space but I didn’t want to wait until it was too late.  A squirt of adrenaline from the nanos made me jittery, ready for anything.  I said, “Doctor, you go first and talk us past the guard.  Mora, stay behind me.”

The door slid open and we entered a small concrete vestibule.  A wiry guard with slicked back hair sat behind a tiny security desk, staring the various surveillance views.  He wore a tiny ear bud that had a boom microphone in front of his mouth.  He looked up and said, “Doctor Heath, I saw you in the elevator.  Why have you brought these folks down with you?  You know it’s against security protocol.”

Doctor Heath said, “Good morning Tim.  Nurse Manners and Mr. Franklin here had a mishap with our malfunctioning door scanners.  We’ve tested them both thoroughly and they came up clean.  They keep setting off the door scanners though, and we can’t keep the building locked down forever.  So I’m taking them out this way just until we can get the problem fixed.”

The guard squinted at me and Mora and said, “Doc, I haven’t been informed of any door scanner problem.”  He stood and pulled a pulse taser from his holster.  “All of you take a step back and keep your hands where I can see them.”

It was clear the guard was going to call the main security office for instructions.  Instead of taking a step back I shot my left hand out and knocked the mike from his head.  He reacted by raising his pulse taser in my direction.  The nanos had me amped and his moves were being telegraphed by my combat mode.  I was under his line of fire as a blue bolt of lightning sizzled just over my head, filling the air with the stink of ozone.  Mora let out a screech behind me but I couldn’t spare a glance at her. The guard’s pulse taser whined as its capacitor built up charge, giving me a two-second window of opportunity.  It was more than enough. I whirled in a spinning rear kick that connected solidly with the guard’s head.  His jaw snapped with a sound like a dry branch and several teeth flew across the small room.  His head bounced off the wall behind him and he went down in a boneless heap, his pulse taser skittering across the floor.

I turned to check on Mora.  She sat on the floor against the other wall cradling her right arm and whimpering softly.  I stepped over and crouched next to her.  “Mora, are you alright?”

Her words came out in short huffing breaths.  “Tased me.  Grazed my right arm.  Stings like hell.”

“You’ll be OK in a few minutes.  Just sit there a moment.”  I walked over and picked up the guard’s taser.  It was a hefty weapon, capable of twenty pulse shots before it needed a full recharge.  I aimed it at the camera turret overhead and fired.  It exploded in a shower of sparks.  My hope was that the power surge would fry the whole security system, buying us some time.

I turned to the Doctor.  “Take us to your car.”

He looked confused.  “Car?  What do you want with my car?”

His nanos were apparently dying off but he was still far from his normal self.  I said, “I heard you have a very nice car.  May I see it?”

He brightened, “Yes, it’s a brand new Ford Lightning.  Let me show you.”

I offered my hand to Mora to help her to her feet, but she just stared at it without moving.  She said, “I’m not sure I want to touch you.  The nanobots in your system could infect me again.”

I said, “My wife of sixty years and our two children never contracted nanos from me.  I’ve always kept them out of my skin even when I let them out to do maintenance, and they’re programmed to self-destruct if they leave my body.  The specialized nanos I used on you and the good doctor here are deactivated.  You have nothing to fear from me, I promise.”

“Controlling nanobots isn’t possible.”

I chuckled.  “Yes, it is.  If you don’t believe me just look at Doctor Heath.  Come on, we have to go.”

She hesitated a moment, then took my hand and I pulled her to her feet.  She wobbled so I put my arm around her and followed Doctor Heath into the garage.  Lucky for us his parking spot was the best one in the garage, right next to the guard vestibule.  His car was a sleek yellow two-seater with a driving position in front and a single seat behind.  He put his hand on the canopy lock and it popped open with a puff of air.  It swung up on silent hinges.

I said, “Sweet ride. I’d like to take it for a short spin.  Is that OK?”

He looked uncertain, “I suppose---“

“Great.  Can you code me in so that I can start it?”

He hesitated but then turned and typed something into the control panel.  I placed my hand on the canopy lock and it beeped its acceptance of my print lock.

I helped Mora into the back seat because her arm still wasn’t working, handed her the pulse taser, then jumped in front and said to the Doctor, “Be back in a flash.  Just stay right here.  We’ll take real good care of your car.”

I palmed the canopy closed and started it up.  The gyro spun up with a whine.  I released the brake and pressed down on the accelerator.  The three wheeled vehicle silently shot forward and up the exit ramp.  It was only half charged but very fast nevertheless.  A metal security screen was closing at the end of the ramp but we shot through with only a little paint lost on the top.  Beneath my breath I muttered, “Sorry Doc”.

I said, “Are you all right back there?”

“I think so.  My arm is still numb though.”

I drove fast.  The building we had come out of was a large low concrete affair, wrapped by a circumferential road.  Next to the road was a wide grass strip that terminated at a high fence with razor wire at the top, and a dense forest beyond.  I said, “Mora, where the hell are we, and how do we get out of here?”

“We’re in Pickens, West Virginia.  Take a left up here at the front of the building.  That’s the only way out.  What will you do at the gate house?”

I slowed down.  “Gatehouse?  What gatehouse?”

She sighed.  “About a quarter mile down the entrance road there’s a manned gatehouse.  Since the garage gate went down they’ve probably been told to secure it.”

“Shit.”  I looked in the mirror but there was no one following us, at least not yet.  It looked like the security people had locked everyone including themselves inside the building.  I said, “Do you think you can drive?  This thing is pretty easy to drive, even with one arm.  My guess is that you can get through but I need to work up a disguise.”

“I think so.  What do you intend to do?”

I slowed to a stop in the middle of the road and popped the canopy.  “I’ll just disappear while you drive through.”  I got out and helped her trade seats with me.  From the back seat I reached over and helped her strap in, and then she pushed down the accelerator.  The little electric car shot forward and I fell backwards into the rear seat.  “Sorry,” she said.  “This thing’s got new power cells.  What did you mean when you said you’d disappear?”

“Just pretend I’m not here.  Tell them something believable.  Something close to the truth but not the whole truth.  Understand?”

“No, but---“

“I haven’t time to explain.  I need a quiet moment to prepare before we get to the gate house.  Drive leisurely.”

“Leisurely?  How do I drive leisurely?”

“A quiet moment, please,” I said.

She fell quiet.  I concentrated on my nanos.

Initiate Camouflage Delta-two.  Confirm.

(Delta-two sequence confirmed.  Estimated time to completion twenty-three seconds.)

I said, “I need half a minute or so.  Can you give me that long?”

She slowed down.  “Yeah, I think so.”

I yanked off my shirt and stuffed it under the seat.  A moment later we came around a small bend in the access road and I saw the gatehouse up ahead.  It was a concrete blockhouse with the gate down, and an armed guard stood in front of the gate.  I reach over Mora’s seat, unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse and opened it to expose some very respectable cleavage.  With one arm numb and the other holding the wheel she couldn’t stop me.

“Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Giving the guard somewhere to look besides back here.”

(Delta-two sequence complete.)

I examined my chest.  It was now a dull matt black of varying deep hues that blended into almost any shade.    I scrunched down in the seat as low as I could go, melting into the shadows.

I whispered, “I’m ready.  Pretend there is no one back here.”

Mora pulled the vehicle to a stop in front of the guard and popped the canopy.    The open canopy cast a shadow across the rear seating area.

The guard was stout with a barrel chest, and carried a pulse rifle on a shoulder strap.  He leaned over the canopy said, “Ma’am, the facility is in lockdown.”

“I know.  There was some major goof-up with the nanobot scanners.  I got stuck in there overnight trying to verify that the scanners were malfunctioning.”

The guard’s eyes were locked on Mora’s chest. She looked at his name badge and said, “Mister--- Owens, is it?  I’m up here.”

He reddened and looked up into her face.  “Sorry ma’am.”

“I didn’t get any sleep last night, so Doctor Heath let me borrow his car to go home for some rest.  He even took me down in his private elevator so I wouldn’t have to go out through the scanners. I have to be back here in four hours all rested up.  Can’t you make an exception?”

“Ma’am, I’m sorry but unless I get authorization from central security I cannot let you through.”

Mora sighed in exasperation and muttered to me, “Would you please just shoot him?”

I reached over her shoulder and pressed the pulse taser’s firing stud.  A ball of blue electricity shot across the intervening space and hit the guard squarely in the chest.  He fell onto his back and squealed like a stuck pig, jittered around for a moment then lay quiet.  I hopped out, yanked the break-away gate bar out of its clamp and turned back to the car.  Mora was staring at me, her mouth open in surprise.

“What?  Oh, my skin.  Don’t worry about it.  I’ll be back to normal in a minute.”

Tuesday, July 12, 2101, 12:10 AM

I looked behind us but no one was following.  I said, “We need to get away from here.  Preferably somewhere secluded where we can figure out what to do next.  That is, if you still want to come with me.  If you don’t just pull over at the nearest tube station.”

“Tube station?  Not bloody likely around here.  In case you hadn’t noticed it’s pretty rural around here. The nearest ones are in Lewisburg and Charleston, and both are at least a hundred miles away. And anyway they know I left with you and that you infected me with nanobots, so they’ll be after me too.  Sorry bud, but you’re stuck with me for a while.”

I smiled.  “That’s fine, I’m getting used to your company.”

She didn’t say anything, but I could see her grin in a reflection on the canopy.

After driving for fifteen minutes without seeing a tail I asked her to pull over.  She pulled the vehicle into a wayside and parked behind a chemical latrine away from the road.  She popped the canopy and I climbed out.  The air smelled of disinfectant that couldn’t hide the strong fecal aroma.  I said, “Pop the hood will you?”

She did, and it hinged up on air cylinders.  “What are you doing,” she asked from the front seat.

I searched around until I found a square black module about twenty-five millimeters square attached to the back side of the instrument panel.  I pried it out with my fingernails and tossed it to her.

“What is it?”

“It’s a transponder.  In bigger cities they use them for traffic control.  It’s the modern equivalent of a license plate.  In rural areas they are pretty useless unless you want to track a vehicle.  I’d rather they not have that option.”  She tossed it back and I crushed it under the heel of my shoe.

“What’s a license plate?”

I chuckled.  “Now you’re making me feel old.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Technically, yes.”

“So--- a license plate was what all those eons ago?”

I rolled my eyes.  “A numbered vehicle identification plate.”

“Oh, so this way they won’t be able to find us?”

“They can find us lots of ways, but this will make it slightly harder.  Can you jump out and help me?”

I closed the hood as she climbed out.  She said, “Now what?”

“This vehicle is brand new and it’s bright yellow.  It sticks out like a sore thumb.  We need to make it look old.”

“How?”

I grabbed a handful of mud and gravel from a drainage ditch and smeared it on the side, scrubbing hard.  “Like this.”

She bent down and grabbed a handful of muck and threw it at the vehicle.  “Poor, poor Doctor Heath and his beautiful new toy.”  Her lopsided grin told me that she was going to enjoy this.

We scrubbed until our hands began to get raw, then we backed off to view our handiwork. I said, “Perfect.  It looks hideous.”

She said, “I just wish I could see the good Doctor’s face if he ever gets it back.”

I took over driving duties and Mora took on the role of rear seat navigator since she was familiar with the area.  She had us on route 45 south towards Lewisburg.

“Ryan, how did you do that thing with your skin?  I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“First, you need to tell me what you know about nanos.”

She said, “We’ll, we studied them in nursing school of course.  It was pretty basic stuff since they were outlawed a long time ago.  As I recall there were some really bad side effects so they pulled the plug on the program.  We were told that some patients went crazy.”

“Like every good lie there’s a grain of truth to that.  But it’s mostly a smoke screen to hide the real truth.  What’s really going on at that research lab of yours?”

“Firstly it’s not my lab. Don’t lay that on me.  I’ve wanted to quit the place for a long time but it’s hard to quit when they pay more than double the regular nursing scale.  To be honest I have no idea what they do there.  Obviously it has something to do with nanobots but they sure keep the nursing staff in the dark.  The worst part is the incinerator.  One day I’d be monitoring a patient who was doing fine and the next day I’d be told he passed away.  At first I took it in stride since almost all of the patients were elderly and it is part of being a nurse.  But when it happens consistently after patients have been there for a week or two, something begins to smell fishy.  Then six months ago I tried to find another nursing job in Charleston but none of the hospitals there would even schedule an interview with me.  It’s really weird because there’s a nursing shortage.”

“That’s sound pretty suspicious.”

“I know, that’s what I kept thinking.  Anyway you were going to tell me about that skin trick.”

I thought about her answer and felt reasonably satisfied that she was telling the truth about her role at the lab.  It matched up well with what she had told me under the influence of my nanos.

I said, “Right.  What I am about to tell you is not common knowledge.  In fact I’d say it’s probably a classified secret.  Some of this you will find hard to believe.  It scared the shit out of me the first time found out.  Are you sure you want to know?  In this case a little knowledge could be dangerous.”

“I’m already in this with you up to my neck.  What’s another inch deeper going to hurt?”

“Fine, I just had to be sure.  Here goes.  The original nanobot program was advertized as a miracle cure for everything from cancer to athlete’s foot fungus.  And it lived up to its billing in a big way.  I can testify to that.  But the full capabilities of the nanos were never allowed to mature in individual patients.  Their first programmed task was to provide medical cures.  After a certain amount of time in the body, the protocol required their eradication.  No exceptions were allowed.  In my case my cancer appeared to be gone but blood testing still showed indicators of possible cancer.  So when they laid me on the nano eradication table, I made a split second decision and left a finger hanging over the side.  I thought I’d save a few of the little guys to finish the job.”

“And so that’s why you still have them?”

“Not quite.  Later I started noticing that my body was changing.  Small stuff at first, like a mole in my eyebrow disappearing overnight.  I was hungry all the time and eating constantly.  Then one morning I awoke looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime.”

“Who?”

“An old body builder turned actor turned politician.  Way before your time.  My time too, for that matter.  Anyway the next thing that happened was that my face started changing.  Not big changes, but all those annoying features that a self-conscious teenager notices in the mirror just disappeared overnight.  My nose shrank, my ears didn’t stick out anymore, that kind of stuff.  And that’s nothing compared to what happened next.  My nanos started communicating with me.”

“No way.  Really?  How is that possible, since they are individual units?”

“That’s just it – they aren’t just individual units.  After their primary medical task was completed they were programmed to establish their own neural network.  Then that network was linked into my own synaptic pathways.  One day they just started talking to me inside my head.  I thought I was going crazy.”

“Is that the grain of truth you mentioned before?”

“Yeah.  Only I had some an idea about what it was so I pretended I was on a computer and started issuing mental commands.  What I discovered was a host of encrypted military programs that only activated because they were in my body for so long.”

“How did you know they were military?”

“When I sent a mental query about program authors all I got back was ‘Author Classified’.  That’s what scared me most. My guess about the military code was that the nanos were actually created to make super-soldiers.”

“So then what?  You ran back to the hospital and had them eradicated?”

“Not quite.  I was in a high school gym class wrestling class and the military programs turned on.  I didn’t kill anyone thank god, but it was a near thing.  My doctor showed up and tased me.”

“I may not know that much about nanobots, but I do know that tasing kills nanobots.  That’s why all the guards at the lab carry pulse tasers.  So how did you end up with them again?”

“I don’t know exactly, but my best guess is that some nanos survived outside my body in my hairbrush or sweat socks.  When I used them again they got back in.”

“And you’ve had them ever since?  What’s it like?  Do they talk to you like I’m talking to you now?”

“No, not quite.  They aren’t sentient in the way you and I are.  They can’t think for themselves.  I give them commands and they carry out my instructions.  But they will also respond autonomously on a seemingly instinctive level in certain situations.  I say ‘seemingly’ because it’s not instinct at all, just programming.  It’s quite sophisticated programming, but just programming none the less.”

“I don’t think I could deal with that.  I’d feel like something was invading my mind.”

“Apparently I was one of the rare ones that could deal with it.”

She paused for a moment, then said, “You said before that you never infected your wife and children.  I don’t see how that’s possible.”

“As a teenager I was what we used to call a computer hacker. I quickly found a back door into my nanos programming source code, and from then on I had full control over them.  The funny thing is that the nanos actually helped me gain full mastery over them.  With their neural net linked into my own I actually became much more intelligent.  I once took an unofficial IQ test and scored well over one-hundred fifty.  Anyway, the medical treatment programs they were originally used for were targeted for specific diseases.  They never got into the skin unless that was the problem.  I once read in my studies that nanobot patients with skin disorders were quarantined to keep them from spreading the nanos to others. Once I was into the nano’s code I was able to sequester them in certain parts of my body, well away from my skin.  Eventually I found a way to sequester them in a hibernation mode.”

“So are you immortal then?”

“Dunno.  Ask me again in a few hundred years and I might have a better answer. All I know is that without them I’d have been dead many times over by now.”

She paused and I peered in the rear view mirror.  Her head was tipped back and she appeared to be looking out the top of the canopy at the sky.  Eventually she said, “Does any of this scare you?  I mean, it all sounds so bloody dangerous.”

A ray of hope bloomed in my chest.  She sounded like she was putting two and two together. In a neutral tone I said, “What do you mean?”

“Well, if a teenage hacker like you could get into the nanobot code and do the things you’ve been able to do, what would happen if someone a bit less ethical got into the code?  Just look what you did to me and Doctor Heath.”

“What makes you think that hasn’t happened?”

“Are you telling me it has?”

“I don’t know for sure but the signs were all there.  Just before they discontinued medical nanobot treatments there was a rash of weird cult organizations with decidedly oddball leaders.  The followers had all the earmarks of small nano-controlled populations.  Since I knew a lot about nanobots by then, I figured I knew what I was looking at.”

“So you’re telling me that’s why they discontinued medical nanobot treatments?”

“You’re making an assumption that they really were discontinued.  We don’t know that for sure.  As far as the general public was concerned they probably were.  But who knows about the military.”

“But all this leaves me confused about you.  You’ve had them for, what, seventy years or so.  With your control I presume you could have eliminated them from your system at any time.  And yet you never did.  Why?”

I chuckled.  “You have no idea how many times I’ve asked myself that same question.  In some ways I feel like the packrat who can’t get rid of junk because someday he might need it.  In my case, I’ve needed it several times over.  Later I justified it to myself by promising never to use them to hurt or manipulate anyone.  And now I’ve done exactly that.  And I fear that the only way out of this mess will be to use them again.”

A red light appeared on the vehicle’s instrument panel.  “We’ve got some issues to deal with.  First off, the car’s going to need recharging soon.  Second, I’m afraid to use a palm scanner to access funds.  They might try to track us that way.  Third, we need to find food, changes of clothing, shelter for the night, and maybe even a disguise for you.”

“That’s it?  No disguise for you?”

“Nah.  My nanos can change simple things like my skin color pretty quickly.  Major changes take a longer and a lot of calories too.  At least for now a change in skin color should do the trick.”

“Then what can we do?  I’m no good at this fugitive stuff.”

“I have an idea but it’s not exactly legal.  On the upside, as long as we’re careful it’ll keep us off their radar.”

Fifteen minutes later we pulled up to a self-service recharging station.  A red vehicle was already connected to the first charging stand and next to it paced a heavy-set middle-aged man in a blue one-piece with the name Grant emblazoned on his upper chest.  I popped the canopy and got out.  I walked toward the man and when I got close I extended my hand. I said, “Grant, long time no see.  What’s it been, ten years?”

He followed custom and shook my hand.  I tightened my grip and he yanked his hand back and said, “Mister, I don’t know you from Adam.”

“Sorry, you look a lot like a guy I went to school with.  Have a nice day,” I said, and turned away.

As I got back to our vehicle I turned and saw the red car pull away from the station.  Apparently he didn’t want to hang around after such an odd exchange with a total stranger.

Mora said, “What was all that about?  Did you really know him?”

“Of course not.  Now I am him.”

“Huh?”

“My nanos copied his hand print, and are now hard at work modifying my right palm.  We can use it for buying what we need.  I just hope the guy has sufficient funds.”

Mora muttered, “What the hell have I gotten myself into.”

Several minutes later my nanos reported that my hand print modification was complete. I put it on the charging station’s scanner and up popped the name of the guy from the red car.  Mora plugged the charging cable into a slot behind the canopy and we waited.  Battery technology had come a long way but it still took five minutes to charge a car.

I said, “Well, Mrs. Davidson, do you know of any nice hotels?”

She tilted her head and said, “Who?”

“The guy from the red car was one Grant Davidson.  I figure we should hole-up in a hotel tonight.  Since I’m temporarily Grant Davidson, that would make you Mrs. Davidson.  How about we pick a nice sunny name for you.  I’ve got it, how about Sunny?  Sunny Davidson.  Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think.”

“Ugh.  And our children are what?  Cloudy and Drizzle?”

I smiled at her.  “You make me so glad I married you, Sunny.  You’ve given us two fine children.  Now if only I could tell if they were boys or girls.”

She somehow managed to smile and smirk at the same time.  “With all that you have going on inside you, I think I be lucky to have lizards.”

Behind the recharging station was a small strip mall.  There weren’t many stores but there was a small thrift store that sold used clothing.  We each got several changes of clothing, shoes, and a suitcase each.  In the neighboring drugstore we bought hygiene supplies and then headed back out onto the main road.

Tuesday, July 12, 2101, 4:30 PM

Two miles down the road we pulled off at a sign reading “Come-on Inn”.  We drove up a narrow winding driveway through thick trees.  The place was a one-story motel with peeling yellow paint and a flickering neon sign.  It reminded me of a place that would rent by the hour, but we couldn’t afford to be choosey.

Mora said, “Not exactly the Taj Mahal.  Shall we ask for the honeymoon suite?”

“I think we’ll be lucky to get clean sheets.  I need a few minutes to prepare a disguise.  You can watch if you want to, but you have to be quiet at first while I dialog with my nanos.”

“This ought to be interesting.  Go ahead.”

I tipped the seat back and she peered over it at me. I closed my eyes to concentrate.

Initiate Camouflage Delta-one.  Confirm.

(Delta-one sequence confirmed.  Estimated time to completion three minutes, twenty-three seconds.)

I opened my eyes and looked up into her upside-down face.  I must have been nuts to think of her as a bit plain.  Her new disguise was quite simple – she had simply let down her hair and it had completely transformed her. I found myself staring at her lips and wondering how they would feel on mine.  They were mere inches away.

She said, “Are you done?  I don’t see anything different.”

“Just wait a few minutes and you will.”

“Why are you staring at my lips?”

“Ummm…”

She sat back and said, “You’re eighty-six years old, right?”

I nodded.

“And your---equipment---was last functional when?”

I smiled.  “A long, long time ago.”

She brushed the tips of her fingers across my lips and I involuntarily shivered.  She said, “My, my, it has been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Uh-huh.”

She bent her head toward mine and lightly kissed me.  I closed my eyes and fell into a deep hormonal high that I hadn’t felt in a quarter century.  The kiss lingered until she nipped at my lower lip and my eyes popped open.

She sat back.  “What the….?  Oh – you’re changing.”

I shook my head and my reddish hair fell away from my scalp.  My upper lip became prickly as a brown mustache grew with amazing speed.  Simultaneously my skin changed to a Mediterranean olive hue.

(Delta-one sequence complete.)

I said, “What do you think?”

She sat back and stared at me.  “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it.  I can’t say I’m particularly fond of bald men but it seems to work with your new skin tone.  Why did you go for the bald look?”

“I can only change internally.  The nanos activated my melatonin skin cells for the olive color and similarly for my mustache.  But I can’t change hair color because it is exterior and hair is essentially dead protein.  Since red hair is rather remarkable it seemed better to get rid of it.”

She harrumphed.  “Well I guess I’ll just have to get used to it.”

“I’m glad you didn’t tell me you hated it and that you’re out of here. “  I smiled.  “I think I’m getting to like having you around.”

She rolled her eyes and yanked my seat back into the upright position.  She said, “Well---Grant --- hadn’t you better get us a room?”

I popped the canopy and said, “I thought you’d never ask.”

***

The hotel lobby was just as shabby as the outside.  The worn brown carpet had a bare track that led up to a Formica counter.  A teenager sat behind it wearing a pair of VR goggles, and was oblivious to my presence until I cleared my throat.

He whipped the goggles off and said, “Sorry mister, I didn’t hear you come in.  Don’t tell my Mom OK?  I’m not supposed to use it at the front desk.”

“My lips are sealed.  You got a clean room for two for one night?”

“You can have your pick.  Hunting season hasn’t begun yet and we’re just about empty.  And while we may need a good paint job we keep the place real clean.  Just scan here.”

He turned a scanner toward me on the counter and I placed my hand on it.  It beeped and the clerk spun it back.  “Well, Mister Davidson, you can have room twenty-three.  It’s got a queen bed and it’s the only one with a vend.  Any vend charges will go right onto your bill.  I’ve coded the door to your hand print.  If your wife needs door access just send her up here and I’ll code her print too.  Twenty-three is halfway down the row.  Checkout is at eleven hundred. If you need anything else just let me know.”  He pulled his VR goggles back on and tuned me out. 

The hotel room was shabby but clean and the bed still had some life in it.  We dragged our small bags and the pulse taser into the room and dumped them on the bed.  Mora stuck her head into the tiny bathroom and sniffed.  “A bit musty but it seems OK.  Mind if I jump into the shower?”

“Be my guest.  Save some hot water for me.”

A while later after we had both had a turn at the shower Mora’s face turned serious.  She said, “For the record, I’m not going to sleep with you.  At least not tonight.  I’ve only known you for a few days, you know.  I’ll take the bed.  You can sleep---“, she looked around the room.  “Wherever.”

I looked around the small room but there wasn’t anything else to sleep on except the floor.  I changed the subject.  “You hungry?  The clerk said vend charges would be added to our bill and Grant is feeling generous.  What would you like?”

She batted her eyes at me.  “Oh, Grant, you sure know how to show a girl a good time.  I’ll have the veal cordon blue and a nice chardonnay.”

I looked at the vend machine’s menu and said, “A hot dog, chips, and a bottle of water it is.  Maybe there’s some veal in the dog.”

The preprocessed and irradiated vend food was bland but at least it was filling.  I also got a small pile of candy and granola bars from the vend for the road.

Mora said, “Except for my grandparents who passed away a few years ago, you’re the only old person I ever spent time with. I’ve never felt comfortable around other old folks.  Maybe I’m comfortable around you because you don’t look old.  If it’s not too weird a question, what’s it like getting old?”

I considered.  “That’s a pretty broad question but what jumps out at me is this.  Until my mid-sixties it wasn’t all that different from my younger years.  Sure the body starts to get tired and things don’t work quite like they used to, but its friends and loved ones that make life worth living.  Our children got lives of their own and moved away a long time ago.  We rarely saw them in the last few years.  Then my friends began to die off.  We’d all meet at funerals, wondering who was going to be next.  Now that my wife’s gone I’m all alone.  I can’t exactly visit or vidcall my kids like this.  Hell, my voice even sounds young again.  The worst part is the increasing isolation and loneliness. I think your uncomfortable feelings about seniors are not all that uncommon.”

She came over and sat on the edge of the bed next to me.  She put her arms around me and we silently hugged each other.  When she pulled back I said, “Thanks, I really needed that.  What about you?  Do you have any family?  A boyfriend perhaps?”

She chuckled and said, “A boyfriend? With my schedule at the lab?  Not bloody likely.  My life’s been eat, work, sleep.  Pretty damn boring.  My parents live in Arizona and I have one brother who married a girl from Indiana and moved to South Dakota.  We try to get together for Christmas every year but it’s been hit and miss.  We’re not exactly a tightly knit family.”

I reached out and tucked a stray lock of her hair behind her ear, then leaned in and kissed her.  The contact was brief because she pulled away and stared into my face.  She smiled and said, “You’re still not sleeping in the bed.” 

Wednesday July 13, 2101, 1:17 AM

(ALERT---ALERT---ALERT.  Footsteps detected.)

My eyes popped open and my heartbeat pounded in my chest.  It took me a moment to regain consciousness from a dead sleep.  Before bed I had programmed my nanos to alert me to any unusual sounds and apparently that had happened.  I turned my head to the right and in the gloom I saw Mora snoring softly next to me on the bed.  I smiled as I remembered how wrong she had been.

Initiate Surveillance Alpha-four.  Confirm.

(Alpha-four surveillance confirmed.  Estimated time to completion nineteen seconds.)

I reached over and touched Mora on the shoulder.  She startled and I put a finger to her lips.  I whispered, “We may have company.  Get dressed quietly and pack your stuff.  Leave the lights off.”

(Alpha-four sequence complete.)

I walked soundlessly to the front window and peered out through a gap in the curtains.  The surveillance mode made my eyes far more sensitive to ambient light and extended the visible range into the infra-red spectrum.  At this time of night the most I should have seen was the heat signatures of a few small animals.  Instead I easily saw five man-sized heat signatures in the tree line beyond the parking lot.  They were spaced about ten meters apart and lying down on the ground.

I whispered, “Get down.  Stay low to the floor.  There’s at least five out front.  Can you pack up my stuff?  I’ve got to get the connecting door open.”

She nodded in response and I moved to the closed connecting door to the adjacent unit.  The hotel was almost empty except for us, so the likelihood that someone was in it was remote.  I examined the scanner next to the door but the status light was dark.  No surprise there, as they weren’t usually activated unless it was arranged in advance by the occupants of both rooms.  I grabbed the pulse taser from chair and set it to the lowest discharge setting.  I needed to disable the door lock without a bright blue flash. I put the muzzle about an inch from the hand scanner and pushed the firing stud.  Electricity arced from the muzzle into the scanner accompanied by the smell of ozone, and the locked popped open.

“Are you ready?” I whispered.

“Yeah.  I’ve got all our stuff.”

“Get into the next unit.  I’ll be along in a moment.”

I grabbed a small chair and a pillow from the bed and went into the bathroom, which had an old fashioned frosted glass exterior window in the shower.  I placed the chair in the shower, climbed onto it, put the pillow against the glass, and punched. The glass made a muted pop and fell to the ground outside where it shattered.  My enhanced hearing made it sound like a grenade going off, but I knew it hadn’t been very loud.  This was just a diversion anyway.  I ran my hand along a few shards in the window casement, and dripped blood along the frame.  I ripped a small strip from my shirt sleeve and impaled it on one of the shards, and liberally dripped blood on it.  Already the blood flow was slowing as my nanos sewed up the wound from inside.

Mora whispered in an urgent voice, “I think I hear someone coming.  Hurry up.”

I walked into the adjacent unit, pulling the connecting door closed behind me. Even though I had forced it open with the taser, the mechanical latch components still worked and the lock popped back in place.

Mora whispered, “What now?  We’re still trapped in here.”

“Get into the bed.  If they come in, hide your face in the covers and don’t let them identify you.  I’m going to change my appearance some more so that there is no way they’ll recognize me.  We’ll pretend we’re a different couple.”

We both stripped down to our underwear and climbed into the bed.  I dialoged with my nanos.

Initiate Camouflage Delta-three.  Confirm.

(Delta-three sequence confirmed.  Estimated time to completion three minutes, twelve seconds.)

This was going to hurt.  I’d never run this code before, but knew that it would take a heavy toll on me.  Minor changes like skin color were relatively painless, and body modifications that were done overnight were exhausting but relatively easy to recuperate from.  This was a different animal altogether.  My appearance was about to undergo a massive change in only three minutes.  I just hoped I had enough time.

As the first wave of nausea hit me, an amplified voice from outside blasted through my enhanced hearing.

“MR. FRANKLIN AND MISS MANNERS, WE KNOW YOU ARE IN THERE.  WE HAVE THE HOTEL SURROUNDED.  YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS TO COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR.  IF YOU FAIL TO COMPLY WE WILL USE FORCE TO ENTER AND SUBDUE YOU.”

Through gritted teeth I moaned as the changes started in earnest.  Mora turned to me and asked, “Are you okay?  You didn’t have this problem last time.”

I groaned again, and all I could get out through gritted teeth was, “bigger---change.”

I heard the sound of running footsteps and the loud thunk of the door of the next room being forced open.  Footsteps pounded through the adjacent unit.

“Bedroom clear.” 

“Bathroom clear.  Check that, signs of forced exit.”

“Blue leader, this is blue-one. Unit is clear.  The occupants may have exited by the bathroom window. Recommend pursuit.”

More sounds of running feet but I barely heard it.  My bones, ligaments, and muscles were reconfiguring, and it was agonizing.  Sweat poured from my body, drenching the sheets.  I panted heavily as though running a marathon.

I turned my face to Mora, and as a flashlight probed into our room through the curtains she caught a glimpse of my face and gasped.

(Delta-three sequence complete.)

The pain vanished instantly and I lay in the bed breathing heavily to catch my breath.

Mora said, “My god--- you look --- amazing.“

I knew what she was seeing since I had programmed it myself, but since I had never tested the code I couldn’t be certain.  Mora’s exclamation was all the confirmation I needed.  When I had originally coded it back in college, I had used a routine to average the looks of my favorite old movie actors.  I was part Arnold Schwarzenegger, part Brad Pitt, and part George Clooney.  No one knew who those guys were anymore, but that didn’t lesson the effect.

“Help me get to the door, then climb back into bed and hide your face.  I’m going to crash in a few minutes so we haven’t got much time.”

She came around the bed and used a nursing trick to flip me onto my feet.  I said, “That was a good trick.  Glad I have a nurse with me.”

I stumbled to the door with her support, and leaned against the wall between the door and the window. She climbed back into bed and pulled the covers over her head.  She whispered, “Ready.”

As I reached for the door handle there was a loud knock on the door.  A commanding voice said, “We saw heat signatures in this room.  Come out with your hands in the air.”

I counted to twenty in my head, figuring that was about the time it would take someone to comply.  Then I yanked the door open.

A man wearing green protective hard-shell armor stood in front of the door pointing a high power pulse taser and a light beam at my chest.  I pretended to be drunk because that was far easier in my current condition than anything else.  I swayed on my feet and yelled, “Whothefuckareyou.  Getouttahere.  Weretryingtosleephereasshole.”

He held up a touch-pad and looked from it to my face.  He lowered the muzzle of the weapon to the pavement and turned the touch-pad to show me the screen.

He said, “I’m sorry sir.  Have you seen this guy or this lady around here?  They are armed and possibly dangerous.”

“No, but if I do I’ll mash his face in for ya.  Now leave us alone.”  I slammed the door shut in his face and sagged to the floor.

Wednesday July 13, 2101, 6:12 AM

Mora shook me and said, “Get up, get up, Mister Adonis.  We can’t stay here because you didn’t check in with your current appearance, and this room is supposed to be vacant.”

I moaned into the pillow.  “Goaway, lemmesleep.”

I heard her walk around the bed, and she did that weird nurse trick again and I was instantly on my feet.  “Ughhh,” I mumbled, as I went lightheaded and stumbled a step.  She put a supporting arm around me.

“Take it easy, Ryan, I’ve got you.  I’ve drawn a hot bath for you.  That should help.”

I said, “I need food.  Lots of it.  Do me a favor and get me all the extra junk food I got from the vend last night.  The changes took all my energy reserves.”  I wobbled in the bathroom doorway and used it for support as she pulled off my sweat stained underwear.

She said, “Pee-Eww, you stink like rancid sweat socks.  But on the flip side, you sure look yummy.  I can’t wait to try you out.  But you have to get clean first.”

At the thinly veiled hint my equipment became interested.  She saw my flag at half staff and giggled, “My, my, that’s---enormous.  Now get in the bath.”

She helped me into the tub and the heat of it felt wonderful.  In a moment she had brought in all the junk food and was feeding them to me one at a time.  After I had eaten four candy bars and six granola bars, she got a wash cloth and began cleaning me.  At that point I had enough energy to do it myself, but she sure seemed to be enjoying it.  When she got to my mid-section she took special care to clean carefully, which was easy considering how hard I was.  Even I was amazed at my size.  I had forgotten about that little piece of modification code.

I groaned in ecstasy as she finished cleaning me.  Then she stood, peeled off her underwear, and climbed on top of me in the bathtub.

***

We peered out between the curtains of the borrowed hotel unit.  Doctor Heath’s grimy yellow car was gone.  They had apparently figured out that it was the right car and taken it with them.  Mora said she had heard them in the woods in the early hours of the morning, but now there was no one around that I could see.

“Where are they?” asked Mora.

“I don’t know.  I don’t see anybody at all.  They could be gone or they could be hiding in wait for us.”

“We can’t just wait here.  The cleaning staff is sure to notice something.”

“Mora, I think you should wait here.  Don’t turn on any lights or use any power, and keep the curtains closed.  I’ll hike back to the strip mall and appropriate some transportation.”

“Appropriate?

“Yeah, no sweat.”  I looked at my watch.  “I should be back by ten.  I’ll park right in front of this unit.  Have everything packed up and we’ll make a quick exit.”

She frowned.  “I want to go with you.  Staying here makes me nervous.”

“We can’t both hike with all our stuff, and they have your picture in circulation.  If someone recognizes you it’ll be game over.  I don’t want to leave you alone here either but I don’t see a choice.”

She didn’t look happy about it but she slowly nodded her head.  She said, “Can you make it on your own?  You still look like hell.”

“It feels like a bad hangover.  My head feels like it’s in a vice and my joints ache, but I’m hoping that the walk to the strip mall will help.  I’ll be fine.”  I stepped over to her and kissed her.  She was delicious, and the kiss lingered much longer than I expected.”

***

I trudged through the trees along the main road, staying out of view.  Anyone walking along this road in full view might attract attention, and that’s the last thing I wanted.  It took forty-five minutes to get to the strip mall, and I hid behind the mall in the employee’s parking area next to a big recycling digester.  The mall would open soon, and the first to arrive would be employees who would park back here.  Stealing a store employee’s car would likely go unnoticed for several hours.

Fifteen minutes later my patience was rewarded when a middle-age slightly overweight man arrived in a non-descript family vehicle, and parked right next to the back door of the drug store.  I waited another twenty minutes for the store to open, then walked around to the front of the store and went in.

Initiate hand print patterning.  Confirm.

(Patterning sequence confirmed.  Standing by for contact.)

The man I had seen enter from the back of the store was now behind the front counter.  He had a good humored face and a name badge that read “Earl”, and I felt bad about what I was about to do.  I promised myself I would make it up to him somehow.  I walked over to him, and he smiled and said, “How can I help you?”

I smiled a broad salesman smile.  “Good morning, Earl.  My name is Bill Williams.”  I extended my hand.  He looked at it and hesitated, but then reached out and shook it.

(Pattern recorded.  Print modification commencing.  Estimated time to completion thirty-three seconds.)

I said, “I represent the Bug-Be-Gone pest eradication service.  Several of your neighboring businesses have used our services in the past few months and I thought perhaps---“

His good humor vanished and he cut me off. “Buddy, I don’t need no damn bug service.  The last thing I need is for my customers to think I got bugs.  Get the hell out of my store.”  He reached under the counter and I sensed he was reaching for some kind of weapon.

I raised my arms in a placating gesture and said, “Whoa Earl, I’m just doing my job too.  I’ll be going now.  Good day sir.”  I backed out the door and his glare followed me the whole way.  Maybe I wouldn’t be repaying him after all.

I walked to a small coffee shop, got a cup of black coffee, and sat down in a position where I could see the front of the drug store. Within ten minutes several customers went in, so I knew Earl would be busy.  I quickly downed the rest of my coffee and walked around to the back of the mall.

Earl’s car was a four seat family vehicle with a good charge range.  Best of all it looked like a million other cars on the road.  I slapped the palm of my right hand on the canopy scanner and it popped open.  I climbed in, closed the canopy, and started it up.  The nice thing about electric cars is how quiet they are.  Great for the car thief who doesn’t want to be heard driving away.

Wednesday July 13, 2101 9:34 AM

As I drove back up the road toward the hotel, three identical dark gray enforcement vans passed me going back in the direction of the lab in Pickens.  A cold dread filled my belly as I pulled into the motel’s driveway.  The door to our borrowed room was wide open and several cleaning ladies in white smocks were milling about in front of it.  I pulled the car up in front of the room and got out.

I stopped one of the women who appeared quite agitated and said, “Ma’am, is everything all right?  I was supposed to pick up my girlfriend here about now.”

She sputtered a rapid stream of unintelligible words that sounded like an eastern European language.

I said, “Slow down, and in English please.  What happened?.”

She said, “A group of men arrived in three gray vans, pulled a lady from this unit and tossed her into one of the vans.  She was screaming the whole time.  There wasn’t even supposed to be anyone in that unit.”

“Were they police?”

“They wore blue uniforms, but I think they were security guard uniforms.  No, not police.”

I ran into the room and looked around.  All our meager supplies were still there.  Apparently they had just grabbed her and ran.  I quickly collected our stuff, including the pulse taser which I found under the bed.  I wrapped it in my jacket and jogged back outside to the car.

I had gotten Mora into this mess and I had to get her out of it.  But I had to hurry.  I raced out of the parking lot and headed back toward Pickens.

Thirty minutes later I pulled onto a gravel side road and drove about a quarter mile until the road curved enough to hide the car from view of the main road.  I performed the same operation I had done previously on Doctor Heath’s car, removing the small black transponder and crushing it under my heel.  Then I used the car’s on-board navigation system to locate Doctor Heath’s home in Pickens. 

Wednesday July 13, 2101 2:05 PM

Doctor Heath’s house was in the outskirts of Pickens.  There were no vehicles in the driveway as I drove past, although that wasn’t proof that no one was home.  The house was in a planned community, and all the homes were of similar, boring, uniformity.  The exteriors were all standard solar arrays interspersed with rectangular windows and doors.  The only sign of variety between the homes was a limited palette of accent trim colors.  I parked in a visitor slot in front of a house five doors down.

I pulled the pulse taser from the back of the car, rewrapped it in my jacket and carried it toward the house.  As I walked I used my nanobots to blank my hand prints to smooth perfection.

Next to the Heath’s front door was a standard hand scanner.  If the handprint belonged to someone with full access privileges, such as a homeowner or a girlfriend, it would open the door.  If the print was on a friends list, it would announce you to any occupant.  If it didn’t recognize the print it would simply alert the occupant of an unrecognized visitor.  Since the body I now wore bore no resemblance to the one Doctor Heath knew, I had nothing to lose.  I could always make up a story if someone answered the door.

The scanners checked two things – palm temperature and print.  The temperature check was a simple means of making sure that it was a hand and not just a printed facsimile.  My smooth palm should be able to easily fool the temperature sensor.  The print itself was another matter.

I breathed on the sensor plate and a ghostly latent print appeared.  Before it evaporated I laid my smooth hand directly over the print.  A moment later the door latch clicked and an electronic feminine voice said, “Welcome home, Doctor Heath.  The laundry and maid programs have been completed.  You have zero guests in residence.”

It was awfully nice of Heath’s house computer to tell me that no one was home.  I poked around a dozen rooms, and since there appeared to be no feminine touches and no extra hygiene products in the medicine cabinet it looked as though he lived alone.

I walked back to the front door and used the interior door scanner controls to access the history list.  It appeared that Heath returned home almost every night between six and six-thirty.  That gave me about four hours to cool my heels in his house.  I didn’t know what the scanner software would do if a second Heath print attempted to gain access and I didn’t want to find out, so I cleared the history list.

I made myself comfortable, and prepared a few nano programs I thought I might need.

Wednesday July 13, 2101 6.22 PM

The door scanner chimed and its status light turned from red to green. The same electronic voice as before said “Welcome home, Doctor Heath.  The laundry and maid programs have been completed.  You have zero guests in residence.”

I sat in a chair in the living room but he did not immediately notice me.  He looked tired.  Dark circles were present under his eyes, and his clothes were rumpled.  It looked like he hadn’t slept much recently.  I knew the feeling.

In a conversational tone I said, “Please come in and have a seat, Doctor Heath.”

He whipped around to face me.  He yelled, “Who the hell are you, and what the fuck are you doing in my house.  I’m calling the police right now.”  He reached into his coat pocket for something, but paused as I leveled the big pulse taser at his chest.

“I’ve already informed the Police of my presence.  Please slowly remove your hand from your pocket.  That’s it.  We wouldn’t want any unpleasantness now would we?  Have a seat, Doctor.”  I kept my voice soft and mild.  In my years in the military I had found that soft spoken superiors were the most dangerous.  The loud ones tended to be full of hot air and nothing else.

He sat heavily on the sofa across from my chair.  He said, “Who the hell are you?”

“Come now, Doctor Heath, haven’t you figured it out?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t think your little playground was funded by a charity did you?  No, of course not.  Your laboratory, for lack of a better word, has had some serious outside funding.  I represent your funding, and we are not pleased.”

He looked taken aback.  “We’re funded by the National Institute of Health.  Everything’s above board.  Why our charter says…”

I looked at him with a sad expression, as one might look at a foolish child.  I said, “Let’s see, the mission statement of the NIH is something like: to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce the burdens of illness and disability, blah, blah, blah.  That doesn’t sound like the kind of enterprise that would condone killing former nanobot patients, does it?”

“Those nanobot infected people are a danger to the population.  They’ve somehow retained their nano populations in spite of the eradication treatment protocols.  They have to be removed to keep from infecting others.”

“Really.  So you couldn’t just re-eradicate their nanobots and send them on their way?  Think about it Doctor.  What else do you do there?”

“Well, our primary mission is to learn the affects of long term nanobot exposure, and determine… “ He stopped.  “I need to see some identification.  Now, or I will have to call the Police top confirm your identity.”

As I raised the muzzle of the pulse taser, Heath vaulted over the back of the sofa.  His quick move surprised me, and the blue ball of electrical energy from my pulse taser scorched a circular burn in the sofa.    The taser whined as it recharged it’s capacitor, and I stood in a crouch.  Even though I hadn’t hit Heath the taser blast was close enough that it would have fried any of his personal electronics, including his phone.  If I was lucky he would have felt some of it too, perhaps enough to slow him down.

I rounded the sofa, the muzzle of the pulse taser held out in front of me.  Heath wasn’t there.  Crap.  The hallway behind the sofa led to the back bedrooms, and that seemed his most likely escape route.  I took two steps in that direction and saw the muzzle of a weapon swing around an open door frame at the end of the hall.

I dove for the floor as a smaller ball of purple electricity shot over my head and impacted on the entertainment console in the far side of the living room.  A shower of sparks and smoke flared from the unit and the lights dimmed momentarily.

This was bad.  If I got hit by a taser blast my nanos would be toast.  I crawled in a crouch back to the living room.

Heath yelled from the bedroom, “Who the hell are you?”

I paused to consider my response.  I said, “You’ve been a very bad boy, Doctor.  You’ve been scheduled for termination.”

He didn’t answer.  Instead I heard what sounded like furniture moving.  Was he building a barricade?  He grunted and I thought I heard the squeal of a tight fitting window being forced open.  If he got out the window my chance of rescuing Mora would be slim to none.  Taking a chance that he was busy forcing the window, I ran down the hallway and paused just outside the open door.

I took the coward’s way out and poked the muzzle of my pulse taser around the door frame in the general direction of the scraping sounds.  I pushed the firing stud and a bright blue reflection lit up the hallway.  I heard a low groan and a thump of something hitting the floor.

I took one step around the door frame, leading with the muzzle of the pulse taser.  What I expected to find was Heath lying prone on the floor.  Instead he was standing not three yards from me with the muzzle of his hand-held taser pointed straight at my chest. Before I had a chance to fire, a purple bolt of energy hit me square in the chest. Every muscle in my body seized rigid at the same time and I fell over like a solid statue.  My vision went dim, and the last thing I heard was Heath saying, “Goodnight, asshole.” 

Thursday July 14, 2101 5:52 AM

I woke slowly, the pain in my hands and feet dragging me from unconsciousness.  The awful stench of stale urine and feces hit me next, and I snapped my head up.

I was naked and seated in an ancient wooden chair with my ankles and wrists zip tied to the legs and arm rests.  A single bulb hung from the ceiling, illuminating a dim concrete cellar.  I felt completely hung over.

Heath sat in another chair about ten feet away with his chin on his chest and snoring loudly.  In his lap was my big pulse taser.  It took me a few moments to remember where I was and how I got here.  Damn, this was bad.  I queried my nanos.

System status?

(Restoring corrupted systems)

List architecture milestones

(System failure 11 hours 18 minutes ago)
(78.8%  of nanobot population corrupted)
(All corrupted nanobots shut down)
(Initiated self-replication)
(Primary directive invalid, secondary programs enabled)
(Neural network reestablished)
(Synaptic pathway integration complete)
(Present nanobot population 74% of nominal)
(Host modification tasks enabled, on standby)

I was lucky, no question about it.  If he had used a bigger taser on me, like the one he now held in his lap, my nanos would be completely gone.  The only reason they weren’t was because his little hand weapon didn’t pack a big enough punch.

I stayed quiet and set my nanos to work weakening the zip ties that held me to the chair.  I also set up a few other surprises as well.  It would be a while before my nanos would be full strength again, but 74% would have to do for now.

The only advantage that I had was that Heath had no idea who I was.  Had he known he would have called in his recovery team and I’d have woken in his incinerator.  I shivered at the thought.  As I watched the sleeping Heath I noticed that he wore no protective gear.  That suggested ignorance, because if he had known I had nanos he would have taken precautions.  And since I was apparently still in his house he must have feared at least a little bit that I had told the truth about being from NIH.

When my nanos were all prepared I feigned being ill and began a ragged coughing session.  Not surprisingly, the fake cough became a real one and my face turned red with the effort.  Heath’s head snapped up and he stared at me with baleful eyes. He stood, pointed the taser at me, and walked slowly around my chair.

In a measured voice he said, “So, who the hell are you.  I don’t believe that NIH crap for one minute.”

I hung my head and sweat poured from me, soaking my skin and hair as though I was ill.  I groaned but didn’t answer.  He walked around the front of the chair and all I saw were his feet and the muzzle of the taser.

He grabbed me by the hair and yanked my head up.  My neck screamed in protest but it was worth it.  He yelled into my face, “Tell me who the fuck you are, or you’ll taste the muzzle of this big fat taser.”  The nanos I had released into my sweat glands were now all over his hands and soaking in fast.

I said, “We met once before, Doctor, although I’m not surprised you don’t remember me.”

He stumbled a step backwards and the taser fell from nerveless fingers.  I said, “My name’s Ryan Franklin, and you just made a big mistake. Now it’s your turn to say goodnight, asshole.”

Heath sagged to the floor like a deflating balloon, and only managed a wheeze before passing out.

It was another ten minutes before my nanos had chewed through enough of the zip ties that I could break free of the chair.  I found my clothes tossed in a corner of the basement and dressed quickly.

What I had in mind next sickened me, but I really had no choice.  I stooped beside Heath’s body and checked his pulse and respiration.  He was alive and would be awake in another hour or so if I just left him there.  Instead I placed the index finger of my right hand against Heath’s temple and executed nano program Epsilon-four.  I had never used this program, but I knew what it did from examining the source code.  Nevertheless it was still a shock when my finger slid sickeningly into his head up to the second knuckle.  Heath’s body twitched in several spasms until I released a dose of Epsilon-four nanos.  He went slack and a wave of dizziness came over me.  I sat down heavily next to his body as my nanos invaded his cerebral cortex.

Friday July 15, 2101 9:12 AM

Doctor Heath sat in his office, luxuriating in the deep leather of his chair and taking in the view from his panoramic window.  He stared for long moments, reflecting on the events of last night and what course of action to take now.  Eventually he touched the intercom on his desk and said, “Janice, please have the orderlies bring Nurse Mora Manners to my office.”

Ten minutes later two orderlies pushed Mora into the room in a wheelchair.  Her hands and feet were zip-tied to the chair, and her face was a mask of hatred.  She screamed, “You fucking psychotic bastard.  What have you done with Ryan?  Did you kill him like all the others?”

Heath sat back in his chair.  “Nurse Manners, please calm down.  I assure you that Mister Franklin is quite fine, and I have no intention of harming him.  When we are done here, I will send you down to see him.”

Mora’s face turned ashen.  “Send me down?  You mean down to the incinerator don’t you.  That’s what you did with Ryan, isn’t it?”

Heath sighed and touched his intercom.  “Janice, would you please step in here a moment?”

Heath’s administrative assistant stepped into the room. “Yes, Doctor Heath?”

“Janice, what was my first order to you this morning?”

She looked at Mora in confusion.  “Ah, sir?  You had me instruct the orderlies to lock down the incinerator.”

“And please tell me how many times the incinerator has been used since Nurse Manners was captured.”

“We have had no other guests in that time, so that would be none.  Sir.”

“Thank you Janice, that will be all.”

Janice’s eyebrows knit together as she looked from Heath to Mora.  After a brief hesitation she turned on her heal and walked out, closing the door behind her.

Heath said, “Satisfied?”

“You forget that I’ve seen you in action Doctor.  This is some sick charade of your making.”

Heath sighed.  “I brought you up here to make you an offer, Nurse Manners.  No strings attached.  If you decide you don’t want it, you are free to leave our employment forever.  We will do nothing to inhibit your search for a new job.”

“I’d be more inclined to believe you if I wasn’t zipped tied to this chair.”

“I will release you once I have your answer, one way or another.  So here is my offer.  Effective immediately, I would like to promote you to head nurse.  You would, of course, receive a large bump in salary.  You and I would work closely together to remake this facility into the place it should have been in the first place.  And the first step will be the complete removal of the damn incinerator.”

Mora’s mouth sagged open.  “You--- you’re going to what?  I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t sound like the Doctor Heath I know.”

Heath laughed.  “Mora, you have no idea how right you are.  Do you remember what you said to me the morning after our one eventful night in the motel?  You know, right after you peeled off my clothes and put me in the tub?”

Her eyebrows knit together.  “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You said, and I quote, ‘My, my, that’s enormous.’ That’s not something a guy ever forgets, you know.”

Mora swung her head from side to side.  “You’re ill, you know that?  What were you doing, spying on us?”

Heath sat back in his chair.  “Lord, you’re a hard one to convince, so I guess I’ll just have to do this the hard way.  After all, it’s as plain as the nose on my face.”

Heath closed his eyes, and said nothing for half a minute.

Mora said, “Heath, what the hell’s going on he---.”  She stopped abruptly as Heath’s face began to ripple under the skin.  His features seemed to flow in bizarre waves around his face, eventually settling in a familiar arrangement of features.  Then he got up, pulled a pair of scissors from his desk drawer, and walked over to Mora.  He bent down and kissed her gently on the lips.

“So, Nurse Manners, do you want the job?”

Mora stared, her mouth open and eyebrows raised.  Finally she said, “My god, Ryan is it really you?”

“Yes, it’s really me.  And the job?”

She smiled.  “I accept.  Now get me out of this damn chair so I can kiss you properly.”

Epilog, Friday July 15, 2101 12:37 PM

Mora stared at me across the table in the otherwise empty executive lunch room.  I had Heath’s face back on and she didn’t look happy about it.

She said, “I wish there was some other way.  I hate that body you’re wearing you know.”

“I know.  You just don’t like bald, middle-age fat men.  I can’t say that I do either.  Maybe when things settle down I can arrange for Heath to retire, and I can take his place in another guise.”

“That would be great.  Which brings up a question.  What happened to the real Doctor Heath?”

“He’s not dead, at least not physically.  I caught up with him at his home the night after they captured you.  To make a long story short, I knocked him out and had my nanos copy his memory engrams.  That doesn’t make me him, thank god, but I can act like him and use his memories whenever I need to.  He was a sick man, you know.”

“I think that’s quite evident.  But what do you mean by ‘was’.  What did you do?”

“Well, I couldn’t exactly have him running around, could I?  I’m afraid I did something terrible.”

“What?”

“After I copied his memories, I had my nanos cut all his non-essential neural connections.  Basically he now has the metal state of a six month old baby.  He has no memory, and barely a sense of self.”

Mora sat back.  “My god, you’re right, that’s horrible.  Not that he didn’t deserve it.”

“It’s worse than that.”

“How could it be worse than that?”

“I couldn’t leave him looking like Doctor Heath, could I?  Someone in this town was bound to recognize him, and then questions would be aimed at me.”

“So what did you do?”

“Do you remember when you first saw me, and I aged backwards from eighty-six to twenty-one?”

“Yes, how could I forget that?”

“Doctor Heath is six months old in more ways than one.  Tell me, Mora, have you ever considered adoption?”