\newif\ifpaperback %Define paperback condition \newif\ifsnailmail %Define submission condition %Two contrary condidtions set in next two lines, please remove something. \paperbacktrue %Set paperback to true \snailmailtrue %Snail mail submision version \ifpaperback \documentclass[10pt,novel,notitle,nonsubmission,smart]{sffms} \else \ifsnailmail \documentclass[novel,submission]{sffms} \else \documentclass[12pt,novel,notitle,nonsubmission,smart]{sffms} \fi \fi \author{M. A. Newhall} \surname{Newhall} \address{http://www.thickerthanbloodthebook.com/} \title{Thicker Than Blood} \runningtitle{Thicker Than Blood} \wordcount{} \thirty{} \date{} % Copyright 2005,2006,2007,2008 Some Rights Reserved % http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ %Include packages. \usepackage{graphicx} \usepackage{float} \usepackage[pdftex, pdfauthor={M. A. Newhall}, pdftitle={Thicker Than Blood}, pdfsubject={A Creative Commons, nanoterra, scifi thriller}, pdfkeywords={nanotech,scifi,copyright,patents,military,war,nanite,camera,hud,terrorist,terror,president,United States,USA,NSA,Allah,prescription,drugs,doctor,nda,supersoldier,hacking,hacker,robotics}, pdfproducer={texi2pdf}, pdfcreator={pdflatex}, colorlinks=false,breaklinks=true,pdfpagelabels,plainpages=false]{hyperref} \ifpaperback \nosubmit { %Use paperback margins and papersize}{ \usepackage[vmargin=1in,hmargin={.5in,1in}]{geometry} \geometry{twoside,paperwidth=6in,paperheight=9in} } \else \submit{%use geometry but stick to default 8.5 x 11}{ \usepackage{geometry} } \fi \usepackage{changepage} \begin{document} \ifpaperback \else %Non LULU cover \pagestyle{empty} \changepage{}{}{-.45in}{-.45in}{}{}{}{}{} \nosubmit{ %Begin nosubmit pre cover}{ \pdfbookmark[0]{Cover}{Cover} \includegraphics[width=36 em]{TTB-Cover-EN.png} \clearpage \changepage{}{}{.45in}{.45in}{}{}{}{}{} } \fi %Title Page \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Title Page}{Title Page} \chapter*{} \submit{%Single space and add contact info to title page for submission mode}{ \begin{singlespace} \begin{center}\LARGE{\textbf{\href{http://www.thickerthanbloodthebook.com/}{Thicker Than Blood}}}\end{center} \begin{center}\LARGE{\textbf{Matthew A. Newhall}}\end{center} \begin{center}\textbf{1750 Yale Court}\end{center} \begin{center}\textbf{Wantagh, New York 11793}\end{center} \begin{center}\textbf{(516)987-9410}\end{center} \begin{center}\textbf{\href{mailto:M.A.Newhall@thickerthanbloodthebook.com}{M.A.Newhall@thickerthanbloodthebook.com}}\end{center} \begin{center}\textbf{\href{http://www.thickerthanbloodthebook.com/}{http://www.thickerthanbloodthebook.com/}}\end{center} \begin{center}\textbf{Copyright 2005,2006,2007,2008 M. A. Newhall}\end{center} \end{singlespace} } \nosubmit{ %nosubmit title page and beyond}{ \begin{center}\LARGE{\textbf{\href{http://www.thickerthanbloodthebook.com/}{Thicker Than Blood}}}\end{center} \begin{center}\large{\textbf{\href{mailto:M.A.Newhall@thickerthanbloodthebook.com}{M. A. Newhall}}}\end{center} %Copyright info and such \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{License}{License} \chapter*{License} \begin{center}\textbf{Copyright 2005,2006,2007,2008 \\M. A. Newhall, \\some rights reserved.} Please See \href{http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/}{http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/} for the full text of the license.\end{center} \addvspace{.3in} \begin{center}\textbf{This is version 1.01 of this book.} \textbf{First Edition.} The latest version can always be found at \href{http://www.thickerthanbloodthebook.com}{http://www.thickerthanbloodthebook.com}\end{center} \begin{center}A printed copy of the book can be purchased from \href{http://www.thickerthanbloodthebook.com/purchase.shtml}{http://www.thickerthanbloodthebook.com/purchase.shtml}\end{center} \addvspace{.3in} \begin{center}\textbf{This book has been community edited.}\\ If you find errors of any kind in this text, please email a correction to me at \href{mailto:M.A.Newhall@thickerthanbloodthebook.com}{M.A.Newhall@thickerthanbloodthebook.com}\end{center} \begin{center} \begin{tabular}{l} \textbf{Please include:} \\ The nature of the error; \\ The chapter number; \\ The page number; \\ A few contextual words; \\ A suggested correction; \\ \end{tabular} \end{center} \begin{center}I will consider all corrections for the next edition. Thank you for your intelligent criticisms. I hope you enjoy the novel.\end{center} \ifpaperback \else %Begin non-Lulu changelog \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Version}{Version} \chapter*{Version} \begin{center}\textbf{The latest version can always be found at \href{http://www.thickerthanbloodthebook.com}{http://www.thickerthanbloodthebook.com}}\end{center} \begin{center}\textbf{This is version 1.01 of this book.}\end{center} v1.01 4/13/2008 I have made some pretty big changes to the LaTex code and to my .pdf building script. Also the order and form of prestory pages is now different. These are final preparations to generate the first edition ISBN code worthy version of this book. To save money for the readers, this changelog will not be printed in the paperback, but will remain available in this download version. Manged to get the cover image a little bigger, but no luck getting it to bleed yet. v1.00 10/14/2007 ----Nearly two years after my first draft was first released on the Internet, Thicker Than Blood is 1.0. This book has received tens of thousands of edits! It was probably taken as much time to edit it as it took to write in the first place. Was it worth it? Hell yea! The mechanics of the book are solid, which in turn means people can concentrate on the story. Here is the best and possibly most unplanned part. I am most definitely a better writer. If you write a book, release the draft on the Internet, and pursue people to read it, you will have a chance to hone your writing skills on your terms for the structures you are interested in! As you can see there is a new front and back cover! I'm lucky enough to know a couple of great artists who drew some up for me. Thanks to Erica Norwood (front cover) and Brian McElwee (back cover.) Thank you so much. Got a couple of suggestions from Giselle. Also thanks to a suggestion from Regis Smith, and the authors of flex, every other double quote in the .pdf is flipped to face the inside of the quote. All double quotes are matched. I'm certain now that they have been parsed. What does the Future hold? I am well into the next book of the series. I will focus my time on that. I am actively seeking a publisher. I may POD (Print On Demand), but I would prefer to work with an established Internet savvy publisher that makes ubiquitous digital versions available. This book and future books could benefit from the distribution networks, promotional networks, professional editing, and cheaper large printing runs. v0.93 10/2/2007 ----Thanks for hanging in there. I just applied a pile of edits. Thanks for the great edits from my wife and J Katz. Also a big thanks to the meticulous and heroic effort by Mark Drago. Minus one change coming soon, this is ready to go 1.0. v0.92 7/4/2007 ---- I've been in book limbo for a bit, I just changed day jobs. Hacking away on the next one. I fixed word misuse in chapter 21. v0.91 4/8/2007 ---- Fought with automatic for a .pdf pane with the TOC ala latex hyperref. It turns out the sffms syntax for non enumerated chapters means do not index for hyperref's interpretation of chapter directives. I could have lived with that if it where not for the fact that SFFMS insists on setting up chapter headings. Rather than fight with it I used pdfbookmark directives and quietly pointed to each chapter. What a hack, blech. Anyway the book now has a TOC pane for quick jumps to chapters. Thanks for the idea Wes, it looks great. A few awkward sentence edits from JK. v0.90 4/7/2007 ---- This is it folks the big final push. I am once again out of edits. As far as I can tell this book is COMPLETE and ready to print. Please read over it and look for \emph{ANY} errors. On May 7th I am going 1.0 unless I have additional edits to commit. That means two things. I will send it agents and publishers with the hope of making a deal for the exclusive right to print and sell the book, and I will be able to continue work on book 2 in the series. For those folks waiting for the edited version, this is it. Print it, read it, send me edits ASAP, and I will add them. v0.68 3/26/2007 ---- Just got back from ICON 26 at SUNY Stonybrook. I had a blast talking to people about this book and future books. This update includes the latest pass of edits through chapter 45. v0.67 3/18/2007 ---- Continuing my editing efforts. To reiterate I am focused on thought, and emphasis italics, bad quote structure, and repeating character names where 'he' or 'she' would do. I made it to chapter 40. Only 15 to go. v0.66 3/11/2007 ---- Slightly revised cover. Repaired a couple of errors in my artwork. In case you are wondering I am not overly attached to this cover. I'd accept a good professional cover in a heartbeat. It just sucks less than my original attempt. I have completed more edits through chapter 37. v0.65 2/17/2007 ---- More edits. This covers a couple more corrections in chapter 32, and edits up through chapter 34. It's going quicker now. Less corrections to make. v0.64 2/14/2007 ---- Looks like someone (thank you Carl) helped me catch a noticeable science error. Turns out I did not think through the reception and even worse the transmission of ultrasound waves. I feel I must mention the appearance of strange latticework structures in the samples they viewed from Joe's blood in chapter 14 and 31. These structures are source of strange blinking grains that initially look like static in the ultrasound readout. I'll spare you the details I've worked out for now lets just say they work vaguely like tiny ear drums. Also repaired quotes, thoughts and grammar in chapter 25. v0.63 12/17/2006 ---- Just plugging away at the chapters looking for reoccurring errors. Mostly grammar and putting thoughts in italics. I'll catch an awkward sentence here and there, but they are getting less frequent as the book progresses. I am receiving zero edits and no bad reviews, so I'm guessing that's all the creative commons open editing has to offer. Thanks everyone for your help. I'll be going to .90 after this final pass. Up through chapter 23 is complete. v0.62 12/8/2006 ---- Wow. A baby and a promotion later, I'm finally dragging myself back to edits. Editing your own work is hard! The inclination is to study the story and characters ignoring the syntax. I have created a new cover and figured out how embed it in the .pdf. Let me know what you think. I have finished editing through chapter 18. If you find any errors before chapter 19 please email them to me. ttb@thickerthanbloodthebook.com. v0.61 6/16/2006 ---- Major change here. I wrote a new chapter 1 or a chapter 0 if you like. Did a pile of detailed edits on the early chapters. I am in the process of typesetting all the thoughts into italics, I finished up through chapter 15. Thanks Jen. In addition I cleaned up the .tex file enough that the title now appears on the first page of the PDF not the second. v0.52 5/31/2006 ---- Some light edits. v0.51 4/8/2006 ---- Switched the pre--story stuff back to double space. v0.50 4/2/2006 ---- I have finally parsed a substantial pile of edits (thousands). Made further improvements in the weaker early chapters. Set up TeX to generate single spaced .pdfs for easier printing so page numbers have now radically changed --33 percent. In hoping the book is in decent shape, I am announcing version .5. I have no edits pending now so feel free to share your corrections. v0.27 2/21/2006 - supplemental ---- Sorry about the long delay between versions, I was working on the web site. v0.26 1/29/2006 ---- So now I wield a grammar checker Moo ha ha! It seems that a program called Language Tool works with Open Office 2.0. I had to check one chapter at a time but it caught lots of errors. I have a whole edited manuscript from Bobbie Peters and some edits from Giselle I want to fold in, but I thought I'd release this version for now. v0.24 1/22/2006 ---- Fixed some grammar errors submitted by Simon. Looked for some subject ownership errors document wide. Ran another pass with the spell check. I learned three grammar rules today. It's sad, but this is what happens when things like books and people are flying at your head in English class. On the bright side, I know them now. I am trainable. v0.23 1/15/2006 ---- Had to finish a few more CK stragglers. Looked for some style points, another spell check and a couple of specific grammar errors. Rewrite of an unclear passage in chapter 1. v0.22 1/15/2006 ---- Chris Knadle handed me a bucket of changes. Including line by line changes for the entire book, and three repeating grammatical errors. (Hey at least I'm consistent) Thanks for saving me Chris, only I could misspell a word I made up. *hangs head* v0.21 1/13/2006 ---- Regenerated the .pdf file with the courier font and novel style chapter breaks. This totally changed the page numbers. Caught a time--line error, in chapter 28. %End non Lulu changelog. \fi %Thank you page \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Acknowledgments}{Acknowledgments} \chapter*{Acknowledgments} Thanks to my mom Christine, Brad and Jeannine Dillon, Brian MacEllwee, J Vallati, Rich Seckel, Joe Wood, Vinny Vallati, Pat and Jeannie Boyle, Shirley, mama Ketty, my sister Janet, Ribal, Phil and Seth from animal--57, the folks from FLAT, especially Tony Santiago, Tom Rothemel, Pete, and Lori, Everybody from LILUG, especially Matt Suricco, Jim Browne, Tim Sailer, Chris Knadle, Jason Katz, Mark Drago, Jeff Sipek, John Palmieri, and Peter, all the folks at BNL especially, Ian, James, and Akin, Michael Lee from ULS, all my great coworkers at CSHL, especially, Simon Ilyushchenko, Carlos Gomez, Derek Johnson, Bart and Janine Mallio, Myke Malave, Gerald Mccloskey, Elizabeth Cherian--Samuel, everybody from the VMC especially Bob Piacente, Lee Wilbur, Carl Fink, Slashdot, everyone at Foresight.org and nanodot, the EFF, nerds at large, Everybody at ``The Cup" coffee shop in Wantagh, Dawn Zacharakis, Wes Roepken, the guys from Korn, Hatebreed, Disturbed, Static X, and Slayer for writing great music to write to, Mayor Bloomburg, Benjimin Franklin, Linus Torvalds, Martin Luther, Jesus, Mohammad, Abraham, Buddha, and especially Shotgun Trucker, wherever you are, you saved our asses that day. \\ Special thanks to Chris Knadle, Bobbie Peters, Simon Ilyushchenko, Mark Drago, Giselle, Jason Katz, Jeannine Dillion for their heroic editing efforts. Special Thanks to two great artists who pulled off two great covers on very short notice! Erica Norwood and Brian McElwee. \\ And to any friends, family, Linux nerds and coworkers who have either given me a place to write, given me feedback, or even just listened to my insane rants who I have forgotten, I'm not being a jerk on purpose. Thank you for all your help. \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Dedication}{Dedication} \chapter*{Dedication} This book is dedicated to my wife Giselle Newhall. For her endless feedback, infinite patience and boundless love. \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Quote}{Quote} \chapter*{} \textbf{``I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious."} --Albert Einstein } %end no submit \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Chapter 0}{Chapter 0} \chapter*{Chapter 0} Sergio Vallone stared at his reflection in the small mirror over the sink. \thought{I look terrible}, he thought. His pale face was contrasted by his sunken eyes. His face was swollen from a lack of sleep. A dark shadow covered his jaw. He splashed water over his face. The muscles in his forehead and cheeks felt taut against the cool liquid. He opened the bathroom door. "Mr. Vallone?" Sergio felt his stomach wrench. He reached his hand to the wall to hold himself upright. He turned to his sister in law, Teressa. She looked horrified. \thought{Oh God this is it. She's finally gone.} Sergio hadn't cried since he was a boy. Now he was crying so hard he couldn't speak. Teressa was holding him. She was wearing one of Monica's favorite perfumes. It made him cry harder. He imagined her as he had for years, on their honeymoon. She seemed so beautiful it was unreal. Teressa led him by his hand back to the gray and brown folding chairs. Sergio felt stronger after he sat down. He looked up and noticed the woman doctor had gone. She had delivered her message without saying a word. He looked at Teressa through his tears. She looked angry. "Why couldn't they save Monica?" Sergio paused, "She was so young." Teressa's fury was growing. She was scowling. "I don't know Sergio, medicine can only do so much." Her words seemed so obviously contrived. Her mind was elsewhere. He turned to her screamed, "You have to tell me why!" His voice echoed through the halls. She stared at Sergio. Her face was cold as stone. Two male nurses jogged into to the waiting room. They looked at Teressa. She waved them off. "Sergio, the chemo, the radiation, they hurt the good cells too." Sergio reached in his jacket and pulled out a flask. Normally he tried to be more discrete, but he just didn't care right now. He felt the pain in his stomach numb from the alcohol. "What about Joe?" His Italian accent was strong. She just glared at him. Sergio stared right through her. \thought{Can't even save your own sister, some fucking doctor}, he thought. \thought{I'm so alone.} They sat in silence, disgusted. \thought{I just attacked the one person who had stood by through the whole ordeal. I'm awful}, Sergio couldn't believe how he felt. Sergio grabbed Teressa's hand. She started to pull it away. "Teressa, I'm sorry." Tears ran down his face anew. "I will never scream like that again." She just glared at him. "I, I can't be alone. Joe's so fragile. I can't do it," Sergio stuttered. Teressa's eyes widened. She held his hand with both of hers. "Never again." She stared at Sergio. She was calm and focused. "I promise." "What are you going to tell Joe?" "The truth," Sergio said. He stumbled as he got up. Teressa reached out to help him. He pulled away and wiped his eyes. He trudged toward the playroom. Sergio looked for his son in the pastel children's waiting room. He spotted him in the corner as he stepped in the doorway. The skinny sixth grader looked too old and sad for the colorful playroom. The smiling suns and happy trees painted on the walls seemed to mock his son. Joe was gently rocking back and forth in the plastic chair. He looked at his dad's face and their eyes connected. Joe stopped rocking. Sergio fell to the ground. They hugged his body as he wept. Joe and Teressa held hands. \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Chapter 1}{Chapter 1} \chapter{} Joe Vallone would have to leave work late today. Drivers were mapping out a new crop of winter potholes on the NY streets. The Sun repair shop was busy, but Joe wouldn't rush. He resisted the pressure to keep pace with the tide of walk--in repairs. Joe's boss had asked him to stay late, rather than miss more business. Auto undercarriage had the potential to be exceptionally dangerous for Joe. An array of high power springs, shaved metal edges, high pressure seals, pry--bars, and a two ton car held over your head with a compressed fluid, could slow any mechanic who thought about it. Most of Joe's cohorts seemed careful, but not compared to Joe. One mistake could kill him. He might not survive so much as a one inch gash or bruise. Being alone in the garage was not a good idea, but Joe had some good ideas to compensate. He had made a padded sleeve to reach into hot engine compartments. He built a telescoping rod with tiny infrared, visual, and ultrasonic cameras, out of old palmtop parts and a car antenna. He even had a full robotic arm that mimicked every human joint from the shoulder down. He adapted it from an early flawed robotic prosthetic his aunt rescued from a trash heap. Often his coworkers wanted to borrow the reinforced metal plated arm when pulling a pressed harmonic dampener or stubborn brake drum. His gear did not protect him every time. About two years ago, he had folded back a thumbnail while working on The Combatant, a robot he and some friends were building for a contest show. The pain was subtle, just enough to alert him to the damage. He told his sponsor Lucy Kane about the injury and they decided to drive to the hospital just in case. His thumb had grown to the size of a golf ball by the time they got to the emergency room. The doctors there immediately began a transfusion and eventually drained a pint of blood from his swollen thumb. Joe's Aunt Teressa was there that day. She was due in surgery, so she couldn't stay long. She made some adjustments on his chart, and told him to call her. Joe remembered calling her at home the next day. "Hello." His aunt replied in a sarcastic tone. "Hello Joe. How nice of you to drop by yesterday." "Thanks for being there for me," Joe grumbled. "How is your thumb?" "Better." Joe lied. "Joe, you are headed for trouble. Why? You're smart. There are plenty of hobbies you can do that don't endanger your health." Any hint of sarcasm was gone. "If you want to design machines, fine. But why continue building them yourself. Your friends know how to work a wrench, don't they?" "Yes," Joe said quietly. Joe knew a few things about himself. He liked being athletic, liked building things, and when he had a good idea, he had lots of trouble expressing it. Most of the time it didn't bother him, except at times like this. Joe became flustered. "They can't do things like I can. I can't explain how things fit together, they just do." "I know I am not your mother, but if you continue to do this type of work yourself, then I see no choice," Dr. Graceland said in a condescending, prissy tone. \thought{Here comes an ultimatum}, Joe thought. "We had difficulty obtaining the right blood type for you yesterday. We had to give you half plasma. If you came in for your coagulant shots every week like you are supposed to, it wouldn't have been so bad. You need to be here at the hospital, the Tuesday after next to donate blood to yourself, and every week after that for your shot. I'll be here after six." Joe breathed again. He was off the hook for now. His father and aunt bombarded him all the time with extraneous reminders of his illness. His case was pretty severe. Acne could be an all day affair. Nosebleeds were frequent and endless. Joe's hemophilia could easily kill him. He pretended not to care. He focused his attention on matters more important to men of twenty--two, as often as his health could stand it. As far as Joe was concerned, that was all anybody could ask of him. His mind wandered as he ran a small winch he had mounted to the transmission cross--member. Its braided steel cable was pulling a rusty muffler horizontally toward the passenger's side of the charcoal gray car. The muffler was held against the underside of the car by a piece of heavy threaded pipe. He operated the winch from a remote, attached by a dangling wire that almost brushed the ground. Joe stood about three feet away, just enough to see what was happening in the dim worklight. A rusty bolt snapped. When he saw the tailpipe and muffler give way, he reacted as fast as any human could. The muffler swung to the side and down. The steel pipe holding the muffler to the car was yanked in the direction of the muffler's descent. He leaned back lifting his left foot and pivoting on his right. He felt something brush against his shop jacket. The quick action had thrown his body and leg clear of the diving pipe, but the pipe caught the wire attached to the winch remote. The winch remote was yanked from Joe's hands. The sound of the remote being smashed on the ground was barely audible over the loud clang of the steel pipe. "That was close," he echoed in the silent garage. Breathing heavily, he walked to the nearest wall switch and flicked it on. He tossed his shop jacket on the floor, pulled his shirt off and examined his bare upper body which was lean and muscular. After spending several minutes examining his arms, he determined he was not bruised or scratched. He did discover he was covered with goosebumps. People at work knew of his condition, but had no idea how severe it was. Two years had passed since he started working at this garage, and he had managed to avoid a single incident. To avoid special attention, he built his gizmos after hours. Nervous a confrontation about his unfinished work would reveal the truth, he walked to a desk in the corner of the room and scribbled a hasty note for his boss that he had a family emergency. He was done for the night, his nerves were shot. He was careful about what he said, he liked his job and a good job was hard to find. Times were tough. Joe barely remembered the roaring nineties, he was too young to appreciate the spoils of the time. He did remember his mom and dad being too busy for him with all the work they were doing. His father compared the hard times to the depression his great grandfather lived through. He called it the endless recession. He lifted the phone receiver and dialed a thirteen--digit number. He held the receiver to his ear, but the sound of the ring tone still echoed in the vacant shop. "Hello?" A voice answered in a light Indian accent. "Hi Mark. How's it going?" "Hey what's up. Are you coming by tonight?" Mark asked. "No... Well, maybe. What are you doing?" Joe sputtered. "I don't know yet. I'll call you when I do." "I made a mess here. It's gonna be a half hour before I can leave." Joe was still a bit dazed by his near miss. "So I'll see you in thirty--five minutes then." Joe could hear Mark smirking on the phone. "I don't drive \emph{that} fast." Joe grinned. "I thought you were going to strap a jet engine to your car this month?" "Nope. No jets in the scrap this month." Joe smirked. "Talk to you soon," Mark uttered in his almost singsong accent. "Later." Joe looked at the pile of tools and broken parts on the floor and shook his head. \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Chapter 2}{Chapter 2} \chapter{} \thought{Why was Mark in a silly mood? Perhaps he has good news about our entrance into the next cyborg wars}. Joe walked out the shop door scanning for strangers in the shadows. Satisfied that no one was lurking, he let his mind wander. \thought{The name cyborg wars was inaccurate, even funny,} he thought. \thought{The main factor differentiating the cyborg war from the other robot battle shows, was the two--legged, two--armed nature of the machines. Not that these robots actually used the legs to walk, they typically had tracks for oversized feet.} The key Joe had inserted into the shop door refused to turn. He examined the keychain and inserted the right one. \thought{Pay attention}, he thought to himself. He had to be careful. He was physically large and possibly even intimidating, but his baby face revealed his age. If he were attacked he would be in trouble since ambulance response times were slower than ever. Joe walked cautiously through the cool foggy night toward his classic Camaro. The '73 Camaro looked strange with its red door, silver body and black hood. The air intake system stuck up through a hole in the hood, hinting at the power it might conceal. Joe thought it was probably a good thing it looked like a junk heap, otherwise it might not stay in the parking lot. The suspension groaned as Joe climbed in the car. He started the engine and the whole neighborhood knew it. \thought{This could never pass an honest inspection}, he thought. Joe smiled. He turned on the stereo, loud, but then reached up and shut it back off again. He reached under the seat and retrieved a small computer and a pair of glasses. He strapped the computer to his arm, and put the pair of Clark Kents on. Clark Kents or "clarks", as the computer savvy liked to call them, were thick framed non--prescription glasses. They weren't just any glasses. They had a thin film display inside each lens and two simple color cameras embedded in the bulky frames. Joe tapped the flat panel screen on the small bland rectangular computer strapped to his arm. This activated the binocular heads up display in Joe's clarks. Some text flashed by as the computer booted and synchronized with the computer Joe had retrofitted to the old Chevy. A semi--translucent tachometer, speedometer and nitrous oxide gauge appeared on the lenses of Joe's clarks. Joe preferred the style of gauge used in the antiquated game Wipe Out, because it matched the graphics on his LCD stereo readout. Sensors on the car's hood and doors fed information into his Heads Up Display to visually enhance possible obstacles. Most modern cars had HUDs built in, but Joe couldn't justify the windshield projector since he had a decent pair of clarks. He looked at the wireframed objects on the street, scanning for police. He attracted a lot of negative attention with his Chevy, so a little patience was needed. Joe tapped his computer's screen and made an arching thumbs--`up motion in front of his clarks. A symbol shaped like a double clef flashed by. He turned the black knob on his 80s style car stereo. Static was followed by a few clicks and then the Rolling Stones. Joe mashed the gas, and the tachometer displayed on his clarks redlined. He couldn't hear the tires squeal over the music and exhaust. Joe scanned for cops as he drove. He was cranking along the Southern State Parkway at about seventy--five miles per hour. The inverted pitches built into the road made the Southern State the most challenging to drive. It was the only local parkway whose speed limit was not raised from the once mandatory fifty--five miles per hour. The highway patrol had lost some funding after the Seaford Oyster Bay Railroad line was opened, so there were considerably more speed traps. Lots of people used mass transit now, so the police had to work harder to meet the once reasonable quotas. Blue blobs of varying intensity flickered across Joe's clarks. The car computer was calculating the odds that any combination of bush covered reflectors, CB radio traffic, and radar signals meant a speed trap. He enjoyed taunting the turns with his old Chevy. Hearing the engine revolve as he drifted around the turns drew him away from his day job and its worries. Having built this car really did it for him. It was the feeling of a job well done that made the grease and sweat worth it. His horizontal and mental drift were interrupted by the double beep of his cell phone's ringer. Joe straightened the wheel while reaching for his phone. He muted the radio. He pinned the phone between his head and ear. The phone shifted Joe's clarks so he had to watch the road around the edge of his glasses. "Hello, I'm driving." "Okay, here's the deal. We are going over Amman's house. Lucy's going to meet us over there." It was Mark. "Uh, okay." Joe wasn't listening. Joe saw a blue blotch flicker in his lens, his driving knee twitched as he hit the brake with his other foot. "You mean your crazy cousin?" Joe sounded a little worried. "He's not crazy." The sound of Mark's voice faded out of range as Joe let the phone drop to the seat. Joe released the brake as he drove by a shiny black car parked on the roadside. Joe yelled through his teeth. "Mark hold on, cop." He tried to look casual driving his loud multicolor muscle car. Joe yelled at the phone on the seat. "Mark what the hell are you hanging out with that guy for? You know Homeland Security has gotta be watching him. I don't really feel like being watched. I'll get busted for something." He followed the gently curving road out of the black car's sight, driving as if he were a hundred and three years old. He reached down for the phone and lifted it back to his ear. Mark was still talking. It seemed to Joe, Mark must have been talking the whole time. "Just because he is a physicist from Iran doesn't mean he's a bad guy. He showed me this great little computer he's been writing programs for and..." Joe cut Mark off, "Mark, wooa. I have no idea what you said. Hold on, hold on, tell me when I get there. 98th, right?" "Yes," Mark said. He sounded a little hurt that Joe missed his rant. "Alright I'll see you." A loud bang came from outside the car. Joe was tossed forward and back. The steering wheel lurched, and he straightened it. A second bang sounded as the Camaro's rear end passed over the gaping pothole. It launched him off his seat a second time. Looking in the rearview mirror, Joe saw the monster. It was four feet wide and at least one foot deep. His heart was pounding, and Mark was yelling something. He glanced in the rear view mirror to check for damage. None seemed obvious. "Holy crap!" he exclaimed to Mark. "That was a pothole!" "Are you alright? I heard that here." "When are they going to fix the frigging roads?" Joe growled. "I'll get off, see you later," Mark said. "Okay later," he pushed the button on the phone and lowered it to his seat. His heart was still racing. He almost smashed his head on the steering wheel. \thought{That was too close}, he thought. He felt embarrassed and angry; embarrassed that Mark heard the fear of injury in his voice, and angry that the condition of New York was deteriorating. He un--muted the radio and heard "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen. \thought{The perfect music for my car}, he thought. \thought{Same era, same attitude.} He shed his fear and accelerated again. He began to dream of his latest robotic creation, looking for ways to shave its weight down. He thought about drilling three four--inch holes in an over--engineered torso support. \thought{I could compensate with a triangular cross brace}, he thought. \thought{It would work, but it would be ugly. Would it clear the hip servo?} Click. \thought{Maybe not.} Click. The click was not part of his daydream. He recognized a familiar fear, the wasted time and money repairing his old car. \thought{Damn it!}, he thought, \thought{I must have damaged the car.} Click, click, BANG! The car lurched to the passengers side. The steering wheel was no longer responding. He heard the sound of scraping metal and screeching tires. He stomped the brake pedal. The steering wheel fought back as the remaining tie rod end tried to convey his counter steering. A strange calm came over him as he tried to compensate for the random action of the loose front tire. The Camaro swung sideways with a horrible screeching noise that only all four tires can make. Joe looked for headlights or headlight markers but just got a pair of red Xs on his clarks. The car's computer didn't know what to look for when sliding sideways. Joe looked out the driver's side window and saw another giant pothole. He heard a crunch and a bang simultaneously, the sound of glass breaking and metal folding as the car's body hit the pavement. He smashed into the drivers side window as the rear of the car lifted in the air. The car was rolling, he knew he was done for. Joe woke up coughing black smoke out of his lungs. A small flame flickered out of the hole cut in the car's hood. He knew he hadn't been out for more than a few seconds, because he would not have had woken up at all. Blood was running into his eyes. He didn't have much time. He moved his legs and arms, and they still seemed to function. He unbuckled his shoulder harness, and climbed across the seats under the buckled roof. He felt broken glass cutting his hands as he scraped them across the passengers seat. Staggering out of the missing passenger's side door, he flung his broken clarks off. "Where is the phone?" he mumbled to himself while scanning the ground. He mindlessly reached into his back pocket, and then his coat pockets, looking for his cell phone. He couldn't think clearly anymore. He collapsed to the ground. He knew he was going to die. \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Chapter 3}{Chapter 3} \chapter{} \thought{I smell glass cleaner. No wait, not glass cleaner, ammonia.} Joe stretched his right arm to scratch the left. \thought{Why are my sheets itchy? Who's cleaning around me?} Joe listened. \thought{It's really quiet. I hear a machine, maybe a computer?} Joe reached across his chest to scratch again. \thought{Why am I bandaged?} Then Joe remembered everything. The accident came back to him in more detail than when it happened. The song, the clicking part about to fail, the pair of giant potholes, the blood running in his eyes. \thought{How long have I been unconscious?} Joe wiggled his toes and his fingers. \thought{I don't seem to be paralyzed}, he thought. \thought{I can feel the sheets, so my limbs aren't phantoms. Wait, I walked away from the car. It was on fire. Oh crap I loved that car, it was demolished.} He began to try to visualize the damage to the car. He began to take stock of the damaged parts and how he would begin to fix them. \thought{Oh wait}, he thought, \thought{what if I'm blind?} Joe opened his eyes. The light was intense, so he blinked them shut. He squinted and tried opening them again. His vision was snowy but his eyes worked. He was afraid the broken clarks might have damaged his eyes. Every direction he turned his eyes, his vision was speckled with little gray spots, like pepper. He heard voices in the hallway. One was his aunt. He closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. "You don't have that right. Life and death, is subject to a higher morality. It's not like any damage was done to the project." Joe recognized his aunt's whispering voice. "This hospital participates under a specific auspice," Joe heard a man say. He had a southern drawl. "Our research effort counts on the limited funds allotted to this project." "Don't cry poverty to me!" His aunt shot back, "You people have more money than you know what to do with. That boy is like a son to me. You would have done the same thing for your daughter. The need was real and immediate." \thought{They're talking about me}, Joe thought. He immediately felt anger toward the man who spoke to his aunt like that. "Okay, okay. I believe..." the strange man paused, "I believe I can convince the committee that any risk of exposure is a risk of a public debacle. I think that they will see it's far too risky to end the project here. What you do need to do is disable them immediately, and you do need to be far more careful with other people's property." The man paused and then said, "I will expect full analysis and data." His voice faded and echoed. He was walking up the hall. Joe heard a shoe squeak. "You foolish child," Dr. Graceland whispered, startling Joe. She was closer than he thought. Joe's eyes blinked open. "You're awake," she proclaimed, suddenly ecstatic. "Yeah barely," Joe mumbled. "I have to call your father," Joe's aunt was brimming with joy. "I'm glad I'm alive too... I thought I would die for sure." "How do you feel?" "Lousy, and my eyes are grainy. You aren't going to give me a speech are you?" Dr. Graceland chuckled. "No, Joe, not this time." He grimaced. He was thinking about the accident. "How did they find me? I don't remember finding my cell phone." "The explosion." Joe felt the hairs on his body stand on end. "The explosion?" He abandoned any hope of repairing his car. "I guess you were unconscious before it happened. Your car sent a fireball into the sky." "The explosion?" Joe repeated in a gravelly voice. "Oh, wait. It was on fire." "A state trooper saw the explosion from his speed trap up the road. He saved your life," Teressa said. She drew close to his face. He thought she looked worn. "If your car hadn't exploded you would be dead." Joe stopped worrying about his un--fixable car. "Do you think the explosion damaged my eyes?" "It's possible." She reached for her pen light. She shined it in his eyes and squinted. "So, you are having trouble with your eyes? Can you see?" She shined the light in his left eye. "I see little pepper specks everywhere." "It might be the nanites." Joe looked confused. Then his face lit up. "I have nanites in me? Cool!" Joe almost shouted, his eyes widening. Joe felt excitement and dread at the same time. A huge fear campaign had been aired on TV over the past year. Government commercials talking about the unprecedented risks of unbridled nano--size machinery in the hands of terrorists. \thought{On the other hand, they're tiny robots}, Joe thought. \thought{What's better than that? Who cares about the three letter agencies anyway?} "You'll be sad to hear I have to shut them off, daredevil," Dr. Graceland said with a straight face. She reached for a wheeled machine and pulled it toward her. She flipped a switch on its top. "They're still on?" Joe asked in amazement. All of sudden it all snapped into place. The nanites must have had some responsibility in Joe's good fortune. That conversation in the hall with the angry man was about the nanites. Aunt Teressa must have taken a big chance to keep him alive. Joe's smile faded. "I'll be right back. I need another machine." Joe's aunt walked out of the room. Joe forced his guilt aside and began to search around for something that could hide some of his blood. \thought{I have to get some of these to Mark}, Joe thought. He heard his aunt's shoes squeak as she approached. Joe laid back down, trying to copy his original position. His aunt was carrying what looked like a small old laptop with a cable dangling from a port by its hinge. "We have never had a conscious subject before with active nanotech. That might be what is causing the distortion of your vision. The nanites are more dense than natural blood components. There may be other side effects too." She plugged the laptop into the device. A small light on the device began to flicker. "So what do the nanites do?" Joe asked hoping to find out more. Joe's aunt continued plugging in wires and booting the laptop. She pulled Joe's tablet off the end of the bed. She faced him and tried to look serious, "You need to rest now. I'll tell you more later." With that, she turned and left the room. Joe wondered why she didn't answer his question. \thought{Maybe, she's still fuming about that man}, he thought. Joe's head was starting to swim, but he was determined to save a little of his own blood for later. He spotted his cell phone on the nightstand. He groaned as he reached behind his head. He pulled the phone closer by the extended antenna. It beeped as Joe pushed the outside cover off. He pulled the fuel cell from the back of the phone's exposed innards. He turned the fuel cell upside down and poured the alcoholic contents under his pillow. The strong smell was making him more tired. "I hope this works," Joe mumbled to himself. He held the empty cell container to the wound on his other hand. He pulled the bandage away and aggravated the cut underneath with his fingers. Only a few small drops of blood dripped into the cell. \thought{I must be loaded up with coagulants}, Joe thought. Joe snapped the fuel cell back into it's compartment. He dropped the phone on the distant stand behind him, wincing in pain with the awkward movement. He was tired. He lay still with his eyes closed, waiting to hear his aunt return. \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Chapter 4}{Chapter 4} \chapter{} "You can't wake him up." "Why not? He's already been awake. They let us in here." Was this a dream? Joe heard middle eastern accents all around him. "Do you want to make him sicker?" "No, I guess you're right," Mark uttered. \thought{I know that voice}, Joe thought. "Where am I, Pakistan?" Joe wasn't going to let his friends have one more moment of sympathy and pity for him. "No, New Iraq, and you're our prisoner. Moo-ha-ha!" Mark tried to sound Arabic, but still sounded Indian. "I thought so," Joe shook his head, "I woke up hearing crazy accents. I wasn't sure what I did last night." Another voice said, "Mark, your accent was terrible." Joe recognized the voice. The other person in the room was Amman. Joe opened his eyes and looked through the doorway for Feds. \thought{Obviously they hadn't arrived yet}, Joe thought sarcastically. "Hey, how's it going Amman?" Joe asked. "How are \emph{you} feeling?" Amman replied. Amman was in his early thirties. He looked short next to the tall, slim Mark. His dark skin and deep accent gave away his Middle Eastern decent. His unkept clothing, hair and beard hinted at his nerdy ways. "I feel worse than yesterday," Joe said. "Oh, so you've been awake. Why didn't you call? We're sunk without you. It took me two days just to install the new hip servos." Mark sounded indignant. "Two days?" Joe mumbled. "Yeah! What do you think, everybody is some kind of mechanical superman? The program for the servos is tied to..." Mark was interrupted by Joe. "That's not what I mean. I was out for two days? What day is it?" "Monday," Mark responded. "How long has it been?" Joe asked. "A week and five days," Mark said. Joe started sounding angry, "What? I felt fine two days after. I've been asleep for a week?" "Your aunt said you are very bad, and that you almost died... twice." Mark was talking in an even calm voice. He seemed to think Joe was becoming too agitated. "Twice?" Joe mumbled. His head was spinning. He definitely felt worse than the other day. Joe was staring at Mark when he realized the room was no longer filled with gray dots. \thought{I almost died the second time when they shut the nanites off}, Joe thought. Joe snapped his neck back and forth and saw the discharged phone sitting on the end table. "Yea, some complication. What do you need?" Mark was watching him. Joe reached up to grab Mark's arm and pull him closer. He stopped short when he almost yanked the IV out of his arm. Joe grimaced when he saw a little blood drip from the needle in his arm. Joe struggled to lift his head up and whispered in Mark's ear, "My cell phone, take it with you. Store the blood in the cell in the fridge. Don't mention this to Amman." Joe let his head fall back on his pillow. He looked relieved. "Huh? Do what? Are you delirious?" Mark looked concerned. Joe felt his heart pounding in his chest. "He probably is." Teressa Graceland said as she strode in the doorway. "Perhaps it was too soon for you boys to see him." \thought{Oh no. Mark come on. Do as I told you. Don't say anything about the phone}, Joe thought. He stared intently at Mark, trying to look as stern as possible. "Why don't you let him rest and come back tomorrow?" Dr. Teressa Graceland stared at Mark and Amman. She grabbed the computerized tablet from his beds foot board and glared at Joe's vitals. It began beeping rapidly in tune to his heart when she touched it. It's graphs were moving erratically. If his aunt knew about the hidden blood, she would make it worse for both of them with her honesty. \thought{Just take the phone}, Joe thought. Mark walked past Joe's aunt and grabbed the cell phone off the end table. Dr Graceland gave Mark a strange look. "Joe asked me to please check his messages. I need the password off the scratch pad." He plunged the phone into his pocket. "Oh. Okay," she said. Joe's face relaxed. He felt exhaustion creeping in. Looking at his friend, he managed to say, "Thank you, Mark." Joe closed his eyes and went to sleep. The clipboard began to beep more slowly. \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Chapter 5}{Chapter 5} \chapter{} "Dad, I'm going over to Lucy's," Joe announced. He strode through the sparse kitchen to the table where his father was sitting. His father looked up at him through a smoky sunbeam. His brow furrowed, deepening the lines on his forehead. "You sure you're up to it?" He asked in a deep scratchy voice with a slight Brooklyn accent. Joe was staring at the smoke wisping up from the cigar in his fathers ash tray. He snapped out of his trance, and said, "Yeah I am. I have to go out sometime." He was staring at the long ash on the cigar. "I can't be afraid to live." "I may not be here later. Call me if you have any trouble." "Do you have an interview? Or work?" Joe asked. He knew his father wasn't sensitive about unemployment. He was not alone. Many people were looking for work. "No, I'm going down to have a beer. I've had enough today." His father eyes looked as if he had. "Sometimes you can just feel when you are wasting your time in your gut." Sergio put his hand on Joe's bicep. "My gut tells me good things about you. You're tough as nails." Joe replied in a deeper voice, "Thanks, Dad." He turned and walked from the room. He turned his head but couldn't see his dad through the cigar's growing smoke cloud. He clicked the screen door shut behind him. Joe loved his dad but could not spend too much time with him. It was not in his nature to provide the level of emotional support his dad needed. Joe wondered if his dad would ever get over the death of his mother. \thought{I know I won't}, he thought. Joe walked up to the front door of Lucy's house. He reached up and used the wrought iron door knocker. The metal clank pierced the soundless expanse of weekday suburban sprawl. The wooden door creaked open an inch. "Oh, hi Joe," Lucy uttered groggily. She rattled the chain and pulled the door fully open. "I fell asleep," she said, pushing her dark brown frazzled hair away from her face. She stumbled back inside and Joe followed her. She turned around and hugged him, "I'm so glad you're okay." Her warm body distracted him from thoughts of his dad. It felt good to be touched. He had not felt a woman physically comfort him since the crash. He hugged Lucy back. Their embrace lingered a little longer than normal. Maybe she didn't notice, but Joe did. "I'll be right back, and then we'll go." Lucy smiled. Joe sat down and watched her leave the room. Lucy was twenty--seven years old, not that you could tell. She posed as a convincing teenager, of medium height and athletic build. She carried herself out of the room in a feminine lighthearted way, swimming a little in her light loose shirt. He watched her figure, but knew better, Lucy was a focused mature woman. Joe was sure he would never let himself have feelings for her other than friendship. She wouldn't want it any other way. A minute later, she strode in the room donning her older blue "A Team" shirt. The new shirts would eventually read "Team A", since they officially changed the name. The Cyborg Wars producer got a nasty call from a lawyer claiming trademark infringement. They ended up sarcastically correcting the announcer during every interview. As a cheap shot, the announcer read the name in the original order at every interview, only to be corrected by a team member. Their elaborate plan turned into Team A's very own trademark of sorts. Joe was surprised they hadn't been told to stop. Joe said, "We'd better keep winning, or we'll have to make new shirts." Lucy fumbled through a desk drawer by the door. Gritting her teeth, she pulled some keys on a stretchy chain free from the overflowing drawer. "Okay lets go." "Were you planning on going to the shop?" Joe said, a little perplexed by the shirt. "No, we really need to go soon though." She glanced at the A on top of her breasts, "Cyborg wars have been pretty accommodating, but they can't keep us out of the lineup past next week." "Crap." Joe muttered. He recalled his idea to modify the cyborg in the car three weeks ago. He began to imagine the cross member supports again. \thought{How many holes was I going to drill again}, he wondered. Lucy saw the telltale idle stare. "Worry about that stuff tomorrow," she said. "Where is Finny, isn't she coming?" Joe asked, looked at Lucy out of the corner of his eye. "I left her at her grandmother's last night. I need a break." Joe thought that was a little strange. The crew liked answering Finny's endless questions, and she liked watching the team build stuff. She wasn't a troublesome kid. Moping a little, Joe led the way out the door. Lucy clicked the button on her key chain and the lights blinked on a black van across the street. Joe heard the engine turn over. They climbed into the shinny windowless van, and Lucy clicked on the broadcast radio. A love song was playing. Joe flipped through the stations. "I hate the radio," he muttered, "Internet stuff is better." "Then why do you turn it on?" Lucy smiled knowingly. He clicked the tuner button and stumbled onto the weather. "Today it will be sunny and forty--one, a little cool and clear tonight at thirty--two degrees," the announcer paused, "In Seattle, forty six unruly protesters were arrested today, twelve were held on charges of disrupting a police investigation into potential terrorist activity." A new voice began. "When we tried to arrest the suspects for breaking and entering, thirty five students attempted to physically block the law officers." Joe drowned out the quiet radio. "The announcer can't even count," he sounded frustrated. Lucy suddenly slammed on the brakes. The van rapidly decelerated on the dry side street. Joe looked up to see a man in front of the van. The van stopped it's dive a few feet before the man. The man was wearing tight, dirty clothing. He stared right at Lucy. The man tried to look surprised, but looked too calm. "What are you trying to kill me?" the man yelled. "Uhh." Lucy just groaned. Joe leaned out his window, "What do you think this is, buddy? Huh? A free lunch? I saw the look on your face." Joe knew it was an attempted insurance scam, albeit a painful one. The man may have even wanted to steal the van. It was not uncommon for staged accidents to turn into car jacking. Joe stared the man down. His eyes widened and his knuckles turned white from his clenched fists. After sizing Joe up, the man stormed away. Joe continued to stare at him as the stranger quickened his pace to a jog. Joe had learned to communicate physically in way he could not with words. "Quick! What were you thinking?" Lucy asked. "You could have gotten us killed." Lucy was clearly shaken up, she rarely called him by his nickname. Joe had earned the nickname "Quick" in high school. He had the best reflexes and was the fastest runner. He had to be, in order to keep his secret. "There are two guys behind the shrubs over there," Joe pointed. "And the look on the guy's face wasn't right. It was an ambush." Lucy looked at him wide eyed, but said nothing. "I had to trust my gut. If I was right..." he paused. "Okay," she said, "I'm glad you were here." Lucy pulled away from the intersection. "Lotsa desperate people lately." Joe interrupted her while she merged onto the parkway. "Lucy?" "Yes." "Why did you form the team?" Joe was thinking aloud. "I guess it was \emph{my} gut," Lucy smiled. "You seemed focused on the mechanical aspects of robotics." "You mentioned something about men, ambition, competition," his voice sounded weak and unsure. "How do you see me? As a friend?" "Sure, Joe," Lucy said sheepishly. "No, really." "Really. If you want to quit the team, I understand. This is risky business for you." Lucy looked sincere. He paused. He hadn't even considered quitting the "A" Team. Not only did he need the creative output for his mechanical abilities, but it was less dangerous than his day job. "That's not what I meant. I need the money, and it's easier than Sun Auto." Joe paused, \thought{I have to trust her. What choice do I have}, he thought. "Would you drop the team for me?" he asked. "Why?" "No, it's not like that," Joe paused. "I did something crazy." "Yeah you flipped your car, blew it up and almost died twice." "No.... Yeah... That last thing. Don't you wonder about that?" "What?" "That I almost died twice," Joe said. "Your aunt said there were complications." "The complication was they shut the nanites off." Lucy's eyes widened. "They put nanites in you? They have medical nanites? I thought they could only be built for a vacuum?" "So did I. This guy told my aunt to shut them off. But before they did, I stole some by draining my blood into my cell phone." Lucy paused. Wide eyed she asked, "Where's the phone?" "Mark has it." "Holy crap." "Yeah." They both sat and soaked in the implications. "Mark's gonna flip." Lucy started. "We have to be careful," Joe paused, "Amman is crashing with him. I don't trust him not to actually start some Jihad with them." "No, me neither. He needs too much acceptance. He isn't sure of himself. Like he might say too much if he opens up." Lucy paused again, "Quick, you rock!" \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Chapter 6}{Chapter 6} \chapter{} Mark opened his apartment door. He was grinning. "Holy shit, Joe you are the coolest guy on the whole planet!" Mark exclaimed. "Cool, right?" Joe said. Joe was amazed that Mark already knew. "What are you guys talking about?" Lucy asked hesitantly. "The nanites!" Mark exclaimed smiling. "Uh how did \emph{you} know?" Lucy asked pointedly. "I never told him." Joe said. "I've seen them," said Mark. "What? How?" Lucy asked. "A microscope, duh." "How big are they?" Joe asked. "About a tenth the size of a red blood cell in a ball shape. They look really far out." "Wow, cool. Do they do anything? I'm not even sure why they were in me," Joe said. "Why don't we go inside instead of broadcasting this to your neighbors?" Lucy half whispered. "Oh right, yeah," Mark said sheepishly. Joe and Lucy followed Mark inside. The living room was bathed in earth tones. There were many red rugs with tan and brown patterns. All the furniture was covered with intricate carvings. A gray stone Buddha watched them from the far wall. After Mark closed the door, Lucy turned to him, "Mark, where is Amman?" "He is over at the shop..." "Thank God," Joe exclaimed. Lucy sighed, "Good, then we can talk about this now." "He knows." Mark said. "He is at the shop trying to bring them to life." Joe and Lucy looked at one another. He reached up and held Mark's shoulders, "Why did you tell him?" "He's cool," Mark uttered. Joe couldn't even tell if Mark believed himself. Lucy and Joe stared at Mark. After pausing a for a second, Mark turned to Joe. "I know you guys don't trust Amman. He's pretty mysterious about things we share, but I believe he is a good--hearted guy. We would have been up the creek without his knowledge. I told him what you said, and he stopped me. I wanted to put the blood in the fridge and he suggested that we should wait until we knew what we where dealing with. He put them under a microscope and thought he was looking at a gigantic virus. He called somebody, and we picked up a scanning tunneling microscope." Mark began to digress. "It's so cool, the nanites have these little recessed squares, they have to be..." Lucy started talking over Mark. "I'm still not seeing how he saved us Mark." She didn't look convinced. "He stopped me from following Joe's instructions. We experimented with a few nanites and put them in the fridge. It's great for blood cells, but it destroys the nanites." Mark looked at Joe, "They break into about fifteen pieces. Looks like they were designed to fail if they get too cool. We've been keeping them at ninety--eight degrees ever since." "Oops." Joe was turning red. "In my defense I was a bit delirious." "Point taken." Mark said. Mark looked at Lucy. "Okay. We can't make him \emph{un}--know," Lucy said. She strained her face into a half smile. "One small problem," Mark said, "They don't do anything. Maybe they were just being used for data collection?" "Even then they would need to be powered on to communicate," Joe said. His friends watched him stare into space. "I think I know why," he continued. Joe didn't elaborate. He focused on recalling his time in the hospital. "Okay want to share?" Mark asked. "No." Joe matched Mark's sarcasm. "I think my aunt turned them off. That's why I almost died." "Oh." Mark paused. "How?" "A machine," Joe muttered. He was staring intently. "And gee I thought it would be a sacred dance." Mark was smiling. "Hey why not. Doctors definitely don't have enough fun," Lucy said. The guys both looked at her, eyebrows raised. "It could be done that way with nanites in the eyes... What?" "There was a paddle, attached to a wheeled machine with a screen, and a laptop." "A defibrillator on low power!" Mark shouted. "Who's the man? Who's the man?" He began do dance around the room. "Watch out, you'll turn them on." Joe said, laughing. "So let's go. I want to see them," Lucy said. "Okay, we need to get over to the shop. Wait. Let me call Amman and tell him how to turn them on." Mark circled around changing his direction three times. He walked out of the living room. When he emerged, he was talking on a phone. "Hello Amman. You turn them on with a low power defibrillator, and some kind of laptop signal current control thingy. Yes, I'm sure. That's what Joe saw from his bed. Okay, we'll be there soon." Mark hung up the phone. "Amman is going to try some basic signals with current. This is going to be so cool!" "Don't you think you might fry them if you send too much power out?" Lucy asked. "Nah. Amman's been separating them one or two at a time to experiment with. We must have ten thousand in that sample." Mark seemed confidant. "Let's get some lunch." "Sounds good to me. I'm starving," Joe said. Lucy looked deep in thought. "You know, I think you are a little off." "Yeah, so?" Mark reached out to grab his keys. "A defibrillator is still way too powerful and too simple to turn the current down that much." "Should I call Amman back?" He started to walk toward the phone. "No, but we will need to stop at the store on the way. We need a chip and probe," Lucy said. "What did they use on me?" Joe asked. He was trying to read Lucy's face. Lucy touched her stomach. "One paddle not two, \emph{right}? And a big screen?" "Yeah, that sounds right," Joe replied. "It sounds like an ultrasound machine." Lucy smiled. \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Chapter 7}{Chapter 7} \chapter{} Joe looked at Lucy's troubled face as they drove. It was obvious that Lucy was concerned about Amman, but what could they do? They could ban him from working with the nanites, but who is to say he didn't stow some away for later? No, they would have to let him play around and watch him carefully. Mark's dedication to his family seemed outside common sense. Mark lacked the emotional quotient, or imagination, to realize the anger that the people of Iran must have with Americans and their most recent war. \thought{Amman must have come here out of desperation or rage.}, Joe thought, \thought{He wasn't here for business, or to satisfy his thirst for adventure. He wasn't like Mark and his family.} \thought{Amman is exactly why the Feds started their witch hunt on the public use of nanotech. Allah must not be allowed a perfect bloodless revenge at that scale. I'm taking a risk with a world full of lives, so I can play with yet another robot. I must be really selfish}, He felt ashamed. He looked up and noticed the sun was gone, obscured by endless clouds. He was gazing up into the gray sky as the black van pulled through the ten foot fence. The sight of the drab warehouse on the endless blanket of concrete felt good. It signified independence and prestige. Lucy parked the van. With the moist cool air weighing on them, The A--team members started their march toward the main door. A neuron fired in the back of Joe's brain. He had seen movement out of the corner of his eye. Joe whipped his head around. "What?" asked Mark. Joe stared at a distant building beyond the fence. "I could swear I saw something move over there." "Probably a tumbleweed. That warehouse is \emph{very} out of business. Missing a roof, lacking windows." Mark said. "Maybe it's somebody having sex!" Lucy joked. "It's still daylight," Joe mumbled. Looking distracted and serious, he turned on his heel and began to run. His team looked on in shock as he launched top speed toward the building. "Damn he's fast." Mark spoke in his jovial Indian accent. He turned to Lucy and shrugged. "I guess he really wants to see live sex." They turned and walked toward the shop door. Joe closed in on the building. He lost sight of his friends as he ran through a parking lot covered in tall weeds. His pace slowed as he approached the far corner of the dilapidated concrete and brick edifice. Peering around the structure, he saw a distant figure in jeans and a dark jacket. He was hustling toward a newish black Lincoln Towncar. He squinted as the large man opened the driver's side door. As the man climbed in the car, his jacket lifted. Joe noticed the man was wearing a holstered gun. He pulled his head back around the corner. His breathing hushed to a whisper. \thought{It must be an undercover police car}, Joe told himself. He looked around the corner and examined the car. He did not see the extra lights in the back window. \thought{I had better get the license plates in case I need them later}, he thought. Just then the Towncar started, and it's driver shifted it into gear spinning it's wheels. Joe craned his neck around the corner too late. Dust and smoke from the car's tires obscured the license plate as it sped away. Joe jogged into the shop. After his eyes adjusted to the lower light. Vast clutter and equipment lined the walls. He scanned through piles of hydraulics, circuit boards, and half--finished five foot tall robots for Mark and Lucy. He spotted them at a small desk. They were behind several tall black servers on top of a work bench. Amman was sitting at the computer. He was dressed in a t--shirt and jeans. His large beard stuck out from either side of the back of his head. Hearing footsteps in the quiet room, Mark turned around. "Oh, hey Joe. Feel better? Where they doing it or just kissing?" "Ha--ha. Very funny," Joe said. "It was a guy with a gun getting into a Towncar." Joe's accent was stronger. \thought{That sounded different out loud}, Joe thought. Mark's face dropped, like he suddenly realized something. "What? Was it a cop? Did he see you?" Amman turned to face them. The muscles in his face flexed. It showed his age. Joe regretted his haste. Amman looked at Joe. "That sounds like every taxi driver in New York city." He spoke English fluently with a heavy Persian accent. "Anyone you know?" Joe's expression changed to a grimace. He thought of a hundred reasons he shouldn't have said that. Amman asked, "So Joe, should I ask you that too? How did you get these? Is it legal? Did you build them yourself?" All eyes turned to Joe. "They're probably not totally legal, but they've gotta exist to be illegal right?" Joe grinned. He was proud of his clever logic. He hoped his insight would change the mood. Amman stared at Joe with a straight face. "How did you get the one thing that everybody wants but are impossible to build? Where did you steal them from?" "My aunt asked me to look at them." Joe's hopeful smile was fading fast. "That's why they were hidden in your cell phone? That's why you don't even know how to turn them on?" Amman's face had changed. He looked angry. "Who asked you anyway?" A venomous look began to creep over Joe's face. The two men glared at each other. Lucy's eyebrows were raised. Mark looked nervous. "What shocks have you tried? Any luck?" Mark looked nervously between the two men. Joe decided it wasn't worth the risk of seeding the religious army of Amman's choice. He turned and walked to the other side of the shop. \thought{I need coffee}, he told himself. Amman turned to Mark. "I think you were wrong," Amman said matter--of--factly. "I did the math on voltage not harmful to the host, and I believe few nanites in a living being would be reached this way. I tried many patterns of signal with plain DC current but no reaction occurred. Most non--vacuum nanite plans I found on the net use ultrasound to talk. I need an audio transmitter and microphone to continue. I found a program that might work with some changes." A stone--faced Lucy dropped a white plastic bag on the table. "One used ultrasound paddle." She turned to Amman, but spoke loudly enough for Joe to hear. "Bought with cash for the extra paranoid." Amman looked at her as if she had sprouted horns. Joe turned his head from the coffee machine and smiled. He suspected Amman was not used to being admonished by strange women. \thought{Welcome to Long Island.} Joe listened to Mark discussing the poor choice of molecular bonds in a set of theoretical plans Amman had found on the Internet. Lucy strolled over to the coffee machine as the discussion accelerated into long strings of letters and numbers. "Joe you have to cool it. He's in now. Don't make him \emph{crazier}." She grabbed her mug from the nearby sink. Joe curled his upper lip inward to indicate he understood. He poured water into the top of the dirty coffee machine and whispered, "We're screwed! He's going to turn around and kill us all with this stuff." Joe lowered his eyebrows. "I understand some simple physics and chem, but I can't keep an eye on him. Even Mark doesn't understand half of what he says." "Maybe we need to tell your aunt," Lucy suggested. The suggestion clearly stressed Joe out. "No way, Lucy. You had to hear the way this guy told my aunt to shut them off. She would definitely be fired, and then nobody would have a job. My pops still can't find work, and I can't help him." "Which guy?" Lucy paused. "Oh, right, you told me about him. That guy with the southern accent," Her face lit up. "Why don't we mix it up? We need to bring someone else in." Joe could hear Mark babbling in the background. Joe and Lucy stared at each other. "How about Kento? Errr, I mean Bob?" Joe suggested. "Are you sure he would be cool with it?" Lucy asked. "I haven't talked to him in a while." "Lucy, are you kidding? That guy could talk to me for two hours about one 2099 comic." Lucy shrugged. "There have been lots of references to nanites in 2099." "He's a processor designer, right?" Lucy asked. "Last I checked a laid off one. Nothing going on in chips at his pay." Joe shuffled to the nearest window. "He should be able to keep up with Amman." Joe stared out of a clean spot in the corner of the filthy pane of glass. "We should ask Mark first," Lucy said. Joe nodded and looked at Lucy, "My clarks were destroyed in the crash. Can I use the house glasses?" "You don't have to ask permission every time you want to use something that doesn't look like scrap. I wouldn't have funded the team if it had to be like that." "Don't worry, you guys are gonna make us rich." Lucy smiled a crooked smile. "How are you feeling?" Joe was feeling a little weak, but he didn't want to admit it. "I'm fine now that I have clarks again." He smiled. "I was going through withdrawal." Joe looked over at Mark. "We need him alone." "I'll get him." Lucy volunteered. Joe paused. "Wait, I'll get the clarks and show him the latest Kamikaze plans." "Won't Amman want to see them too?" Lucy wondered. Joe looked over at Amman and Mark. Amman was squinting and furiously typing. Mark was sitting on the bench next to him dissecting the ultrasound wand. "Nah." Joe smiled widely. He poured coffee into a green mug with the faded name of a long forgotten dot--com. He wanted to talk to Lucy about the man with the gun, but he decided it would be better to save it until Mark was there too. He walked over to the bench next to an open space set aside for testing robots. He donned the clarks and connected their thin wire to the computer in his jacket pocket. He pulled the small computer out and strapped it to his arm. He touched the small computer's screen, and it's backlight lit. Words flashed across the display as it restored the program he was using during his accident. He pulled a case out of his pocket and removed a pencil--like wand. He ran a cord hanging from the wand through the wristband of his watch and plugged the end into his arm PC. He twisted the wand in the air. Tiny air flow sensors and mercury switches in the wand sent signals to his arm PC. The wand's sensors combined with input from the cameras in Joe's clarks, indicating movement to the computer. He much preferred the wand when his hands were free. It was far more accurate than just the mounted camera's estimations of his commands. The dual screens in his clarks lit up and displayed a classic two--dimensional web browser on four sides of a three--dimensional cube. He flicked the wand, spun the cube, and chose a side. He locked it in place with another movement. He dropped the wand, and began to type in the air directly in front of him. Not nearly as many letters and numbers appeared as his finger movements might indicate. Joe had forgotten he had to set up the new pair of clarks. He would have to spend some time running the tedious typing calibration program later. Frustrated, Joe picked the wand back up. He pressed a small button on the wand to select each of a series of links. Satisfied with the web page, Joe let the wand dangle from his watch band. He picked up a small box from the top of a nearby computer monitor. It had an image of red lips printed on one side. He touched the lips to the LCD screen on his arm PC, and the lips box beeped. He touched the lips to a desktop monitor, and it lit up with the latest revised plans of the Kamikaze rocket. "Cool!" Joe deliberately spoke loud enough for Mark to hear. He gazed over at Mark, who was looking in Joe's direction. Amman was not. "Mark, check this fuel pump design on the Kamikaze." Mark walked over and looked at the schematic on the monitor for a minute. Finally he said, "Joe, you hadn't seen this? It's three weeks old." Mark paused. "Oh wait, I guess you wouldn't have." "I must have missed it before I had the wreck." Joe lied. "I don't think it's any better and it uses point three amps more juice," Mark said. "It saves two pounds in heat shield weight," Joe offered. He looked over at Amman as Mark stared into the monitor. Lucy strolled over to them, her coffee mug in hand. "Hi guys. Kamikaze again?" Lucy asked. "Yeah, catching up." Joe lied. Mark looked up at Joe and Lucy and cocked his head. "Something's not right here." He looked right at Lucy. "Why are \emph{you} interested in the Kamikaze?" Lucy glared at Mark. "Fine, be that way." Lucy smiled to show she was joking. "Mark, we want to bring our friend Kento in on the nanites." She choked on the last word. "Who is Kento?" Mark asked in an unusually flat voice. "He's a buddy of mine from high school. He was a senior in my freshman year. We took shop together." "Okay, but why him?" Mark asked, "What is in it for us?" "He's a jobless chip builder." "Oh. I want to meet him before I agree first. I want to make sure I can talk to him." "Uhh, errr okay." \thought{That was easy}, he thought. "You think Amman will be okay with it?" "Does it matter?" Mark asked, shrugging. \thought{Maybe Mark noticed Amman's anger more than I realized}, Joe thought. He saw Lucy smile. He looked back at Mark and saw Amman glancing their way. He responded to Mark. "No. I guess it doesn't." \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Chapter 8}{Chapter 8} \chapter{} Joe was walking through the hall of a hospital wing. An assortment of patients were strewn about the floor moaning and wailing. Many of them looked pale, almost bloodless. He walked over crawling patients toward an open door. A flickering light blinked in the doorway. There was a pile of bodies. Doctors and nurses, clearly murdered, were still wearing their blood stained work uniforms. A single florescent light dangled from the ceiling. Joe heard a rhythmic pair of sounds both ticking and rumbling. He looked at the source of the sound. The far wall of the room had full size windows, but nothing was evident in the night. Nothing, just a perfect blackness. He wanted to get a closer look but was afraid of the growing noise. The window wall exploded inward. Glass flew into the room and then back out again as if sucked into a vacuum. Daylight streamed in through the giant window frame. The silhouette of a helicopter was visible through the blinding light. The dark green Apache attack helicopter hovered in place, missile launchers nearly full. Joe's heart stopped in fear. He turned and ran up the now empty hall. There was an open daylit window at its end. Joe wanted to jump out of it. He knew he would be safe if he jumped, yet Joe couldn't take the plunge. It was a twenty story window. \thought{How could that be safe that's crazy.} A phone on the wall near Joe began to ring. He stared in confusion, not sure why the phone didn't belong there. He reached for it. In a start, Joe woke up. He was covered in sweat. The phone next to his bed was ringing. After it rang a few times, Joe picked up. "Hello?" Joe asked. His voice was hoarse. "Joeee, I got your message. How are you holding up?" A strange voice asked. "Uh, uh, okay. Considering everything." Joe slowly began to gather his thoughts. "What? You all right?" the voice asked, "I haven't seen you on N.Y.N. in a month. Cyborg Wars is nothing without their A team." The young man started to sound familiar. "Thanks," Joe replied. "Those bastards didn't kick you off because of the whole A team thing? Right? You'd think Hollywood would give up and not harass you guys anymore! All they've got is lawyers now. I read that their total connection rate was way down this month." He recognized the voice. \thought{I know who this is.} "No not yet," Joe said, smiling. "So what's going on?" Kento asked. "Do you have an interview today?" Joe asked. He felt his stomach sink as he thought about how awkward the question sounded. He looked out of the window in his bedroom. He felt embarrassed about living in his father's house. \thought{I'm too old to live in my Dad's house}, he thought. "Nah, nothing lined up... so be it." He sounded no less chipper. "Can we meet for some coffee?" Joe asked. "Cool, man. Let's do it. I'd love to catch up." "How about today?" \thought{What if he says no}, Joe thought. "Sure, but I've got to shower. I've been training and boy, do I stink." "What are you up to now?" Joe asked. "Fifth degree, and brown in karate too. But you're so quick you'd probably take me anyway." "Don't wanna try, Kento," Joe replied. "I can meet you in an hour at our cafe on Sunrise Highway," Kento suggested. "Sounds good. See you there," Joe said. Joe didn't move, listening to the dial tone. He didn't usually have bad dreams. What was that all about? Dead doctors, opaque windows, explosions, zombie patients? It was an unusual setting and cast for Joe's night show. \thought{I to have stop taking afternoon naps}, Joe thought. His thoughts were interrupted by the prerecorded instructions on how to use a telephone, blaring in his right ear. He pressed the button on his receiver, and quickly dialed. He glanced at one of his band posters hanging from the slanted ceiling. Joe stared at the image of musicians leaning up against a wall. "Hello?" Lucy's voice interrupted his thoughts. "Hi," Joe said. "Joe, how's it going? Are you coming down to the warehouse today?" "Maybe later?" Joe asked himself out loud. "Did you talk to Kento?" "I need to borrow the van. I'm meeting him over at the cafe," Joe said. "Oh." "I won't crash it, Lucy." Joe spoke as deliberately as he could. "Are you sure you're ready? I could drop you off." "How would I get back? He rides. Remember?" "Oh... I guess I could work from home today. You had better get him on board." "Hey. I talk smooth!" Joe said. "Yeah, right." "I'll see you in a few," Joe said. "Okay. Finny will be happy to see you." Joe could hear Lucy smile as she talked. Joe hung up the phone and put his favorite boots on. He hustled downstairs, anxious to see Finny again. His father was sitting in the living room with his checkbook and a calculator. "Hey Joe. You owe me three hundred dollars. I'm sorry to ask now, but the bills are due." "No problem, Dad. I'll have it for you next week," Joe said. "I need it tomorrow." Joe wondered when he became more responsible than his dad. His dad wouldn't need to lean on him, if he didn't drink his problems away. Three hundred was so little. Maybe it would pay for a few hours at the bar. Joe's heart sank. His dad was totally gone. He felt anger building up inside of him. "I might be able to get it tonight," Joe lied. He headed for the front door. He was frustrated he couldn't tell his dad how bright his future looked right now. He felt alone. "Good night son." His dad looked distant and embarrassed. Joe's emotional roller coaster was plunging from rage to guilt. It was time to go. \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Chapter 9}{Chapter 9} \chapter{} Joe zipped up his coat tightly as he walked through the chilly evening air. He shuffled past a small strip of stores as he transversed the empty suburban blocks to Lucy's house. He thought of Kento's misfortune as he walked. His high school friend had worked on the final generation of general purpose computing chips at Charles Peterson United, before Moore's law totally broke down. Business and science news often blamed the hard times directly on projections of it's demise. It's funny how those same channels praised Gordon Moore just a few years ago. \thought{If only they could fabricate chips beyond the safe harbor of a vacuum.} \thought{Oh wait. They can.} Joe walked wide eyed thinking of the depth of his discovery. He was in it now. A strange man's voice called to Joe, "Sir, do you have a fifty?" Joe turned his head to the voice. A homeless man was hidden in shadow beside the last store. There was a conspicuous hole in the six foot fence between the stores and a house. Joe wondered if he was squatting in the dark abandoned house. The man looked clean, but scruffy and old. The remnants of his jacket, dress shoes, and slacks looked as if they had been worn three years too many. He wondered if the house was once the homeless man's. Squatting in a house you once owned was not unusual. Saddened, Joe walked toward the man, making sure to keep himself outside of the shadows in case it was a trick. Joe couldn't face his aunt if he got hurt again. He pulled out his wallet and handed the man a hundred--dollar bill. The man took the money and smiled graciously. "Thank you. I can eat tomorrow." "Every day counts," Joe said smiling, "What \emph{happened}?" "It's those Iranian bastards. They killed my son in the war. They ruined me, our life..." the man said. Anger was changing the shape of his eyes. "What do you care? You look like you've got it easy! You think this is easy? Where was your family? Huh?" The man began to stir and straighten like he might confront him, and Joe began to back away. He turned his back on the man and hustled away, ignoring the furious rant. \thought{That was a mistake}, Joe thought. \thought{Sobriety isn't always sanity.} When he arrived at Lucy's, he opened the door and called inside. "Lucy, you home?" A pair of small eyes peered around the corner. "Did I see something?" Joe wondered aloud. Joe heard a child laughing. The eyes reappeared, then disappeared just as quickly. "What was that? A troll? A goblin? A toad?" More laughing. "Boo!" Finny jumped out. "Aaahhhhh!" Joe yelled. "It's you Finny. I was scared!" "No you weren't," Finny said giggling. Joe walked over and picked her up, kissing her on the cheek. "Hi, cutie." "Hi. I missed you Uncle Joe." "I missed you too." "Hi, Joe." Lucy walked out in her nightgown. Her form was accentuated by the silky nightwear. She pulled a terrycloth robe over her shoulders hiding her breasts and slim waist. Joe had trouble hiding his attraction to her. "I'm doing laundry," Lucy said. "Oh, right." Joe turned away, embarrassed by his boyish ways. Finny seemed to noticed all this going on from Joe's hip and was delighted. She was grinning from ear to ear. "Joe, can you stay and play?" Joe went to open his mouth but Lucy interrupted. "No honey, Joe has stuff he needs to do." Lucy shot Joe a sly look. Finny stuck her lip out and hugged Joe. She looked him in the face. "Mommy is right. I have to meet another friend. I promised him I'd play today," Joe said. "I don't call her Mommy anymore." Joe looked confused. "I call her Mom. I'm a big girl." Joe kissed her cheek and put Finny down. Lucy grabbed the keys from the top of the night stand. "Joe you know how weird this whole thing can get. Be careful. Don't just spill it." Joe grinned. Lucy frowned. Joe thought about telling Lucy about the run in with the homeless man. He decided against it. "Bye, kiddo," he said. "Bye Uncle Joe. We have to play sooon!" Finny was struggling to restrain herself. "I promise," Joe said smiling. Joe walked toward the Team van. \thought{Man, I have to remember to date. I'm turning into such a nerd.} \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Chapter 10}{Chapter 10} \chapter{} Joe noticed Kento's motorcycle as he pulled up to the cafe. The five year old touring style bike was shaped to allow the rider to sit in a hunched over position. It was covered with scuff marks and dirt. Joe couldn't help thinking, \thought{Kento was worse off than he let on. The bike was looking a little sad.} Joe parked Lucy's van in front and walked inside. The cafe was a diner converted into a coffee shop. It was dimly lit and had comfortable mismatched chairs and couches scattered all around. Joe tapped the screen on his arm computer three times. His clarks blinked, and the driving HUD yielded to a series of colored arrows that pointed to every visible person in the room. A small green triangle pointed toward Kento's position. Joe smiled at a waitress, as he walked toward the back of the cafe. Kento was tall and slender, with dirty blond hair that was short on top and covered his neck in the back. Loose blue and red clothing that looked like silk was draped over his frame. His collar was sticking up. A slender arm band computer and a pair clarks were laying on the table. Kento turned his head toward Joe. "Joe! Long time no see." Kento smiled. "Kento. Your fashion has improved!" "And your mastery of expression in the English language has not," Kento smiled. Joe pulled his clarks off. He was blushing. "So what's the new robot going to look like? I heard on the net that Cyborg Wars might disallow spinners and wedges. You'll need a more humanoid design." "Where did you hear that?" Joe mumbled as his jaw hung. "I have my sources." "I have to kill you now." Joe smiled. He pointed at Kento's computer. "Nice." "Oh yeah, a genuine unreported C.P.U. perk." "Figured you stole it." Joe was surprised. Kento was usually painfully honest. "Hey, I helped design the thing! I should!" "I guess I'm kind of lucky. I don't think they'll have a waterproof case out for another year. Designed the prototype myself." \thought{Has Kento ever stolen anything before? He must be kidding.} "Remember when you stole Baker's tire gauge from auto shop? How many times a day did he say it was rare?" Joe was grinning. "Yeah, that was nothing. How about the time you wired the windshield washer pump to the interior light of that old Cadillac," Kento retorted, laughing. "He was completely soaked," Joe said, roaring with laughter. "I thought that vein on his forehead would explode." They both laughed for a while. A young brunette waitress appeared and took their orders. Joe ordered coffee, Kento ordered tea. Joe lowered his voice. "Kento, I need your help. My team is working on something." "So you need robot help from the Kempo master?" Kento was clearly still feeling silly. Joe looked Kento in the eyes. "We stole some nanites." Kento chuckled in a loud voice. "Nanites? So did Indonesia and the Philippines. Big deal. Don't look so serious." Joe waited patiently for Kento to stop smiling. "Non--vacuum nanites." "They don't need a vacuum? They're not even temperature controlled?" "Not only that. They're blood--borne nanites." "What?" Kento's face screwed up. He looked around as he whispered. "They exist?" "They were in me." "In you?" "A lot of them." "How? Why? Joe, this could be serious." Kento's voice sounded more adult. "If you want me to stop here, I can," Joe said. At first Kento was glancing at him, eyes darting back and forth. Then he stared at Joe for a while, not saying a word. Joe's mind raced. \thought{What is Kento thinking? Is he going to turn me in? Perhaps he isn't the same guy I went to school with?} Finally he broke into a boyish grin. Joe knew he was in. "Okay, how did you manage to get the one thing that Homeland Security has effectively banned, and every molecular physicist says is impossible for another ten years." "I nearly died." "That sounds about right." "I destroyed my car. It blew up. I was almost dead. My aunt is part of some project. She injected them in me." "Wow. Good thing you went to her hospital. When did this happen?" Kento was wide--eyed. Joe touched the emergency medical bracelet on his wrist. He knew he would have to tell Kento, just not yet. "It was about three weeks ago." "Can I see them?" Kento inquired. Joe decided to fill him in about Amman. Joe told Kento about the friction between Amman and the rest of the team. Joe expressed his fears about the ongoing Jihad. The waitress stopped at their table and dropped off their drinks. "Don't worry. I can run circles around a theoretical physicist." "I hope so." Joe was sure he could. Pretty sure anyway. "So are they in you right now?" Kento asked. "I don't think so. My aunt shut them off after she got a talking to. I hid some blood." "Where?" "In my cell phone fuel cell." "You slick bastard." Kento was grinning again. He sipped his tea. "You said your aunt shut them off. Have you turned them on again? What exactly did they do?" "We haven't turned them on yet. We're not sure what they do. They are definitely machines though." "How big are they?" Kento asked. "About one tenth of a blood cell," Joe answered. "Wow, so..." "Excuse me." A girls voice interrupted them. Joe's heart jumped. He turned his head and looked at the girl standing beside him. She was about five foot six and had brown hair dyed blond with a blue streak. She looked Indian. Had she overheard? What did she want. "Are you Joe Vallone?" the girl asked with a with a Long Island accent. She looked about sixteen. "Maybe?" Joe choked a little. "Well, my friend and I watch Cyborg Wars, and we always root for your team, and she likes you and thinks you are totally hot." Joe looked over at her friend. She was also about sixteen years old with straight black hair and looked halfway between Indian and oriental. She covered her face. Joe looked and was immediately felt attracted to the slender girl. Joe felt goosebumps on his arms. \thought{No}, Joe thought, \thought{she is way too young. At least mentally.} Kento was hunched back in his chair covering his mouth. He was clearly laughing. Joe blushed. The girl pushed a pen and pad in front of Joe. "Could you please, please sign this to Amy Sue from Joe Vallone." "Uh, okay." Joe grabbed the pen and signed the pad 'to Amy Sue from a completely embarrassed Joe Vallone'. "Oh wow thank you so much, I can't believe you wrote her a personal message. She's a chicken so here's her number in case you want to hang out or something, and I think you should because she is really nice," the girl turned and said, "Oh and my name is Anna." She smiled a broad smile at Joe. She hurried back to her friend, who had crawled into a ball. Joe was mortified. Kento was laughing harder than ever. "You always had a way with the ladies." "You want to go to the shop tonight?" Joe changed the subject. "Do I ever, I've been out of work for six months. I'm going nuts." Kento was still grinning. "I don't know where it is so I'll have to follow you." "It's on the north shore." "Hmmmm. Do mind if I drop the bike off at home? It's getting pretty cold." "No problem." Kento smiled at Joe. Joe shook his head. He wasn't going to live this down for a while. \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Chapter 11}{Chapter 11} \chapter{} Joe watched the sun set as he waited outside Kento's apartment building. He nervously watched a group of warmly dressed kids through the windshield of Lucy's van. They were in their late teens and twenties, drinking from bottles covered in paper bags. His eyes danced between the many multi-- colored arrows displayed in his clarks. The triangular graphics were busy indicating where each individual was, their current direction, and speed. The arrows where all pointed straight down right now, but Joe was ready if they started to move. A new color arrow appeared pointing towards the young men. He turned his head to include it in his view. Kento opened the front door of his building, and walked straight towards the youths. One of the kids noticed his approach and alerted the others. Their arrows stirred like warming molecules. Kento also observed this and quickened his pace toward them. Joe blindly reached around the floor of the van for a weapon of some length or girth. He settled on a two foot socket extension jammed under a tool box. \thought{I haven't seen my aunt for my clot shot yet, I can't get hit}, he told himself. "I hope Kento can handle this," Joe confessed to no one. Joe stood up and opened the door in one swift movement. He looked up as his left foot hit the ground. Kento was walking toward him, backwards. "Okay, thanks. I owe you." Kento was talking to the unruly mob. The kids found this uproariously funny. Kento turned and strutted toward the van. Two of the larger young men waved. Joe sheepishly sat back down in the drivers seat. He tried to subtlety wedge the two foot socket extension behind his seat as Kento got in the van. Kento looked over and saw the weapon as he reached for his seat belt. "You thought I was going to fight them?" Kento looked amused. "Well, yeah," Joe said reluctantly. "Those are guys from the neighborhood. I taught them everything they know." Kento observed his frazzled look. "You should come to Kempo too. With your speed you could be very dangerous." "It's not that simple." "It's no different than track. You're strong and coordinated, it should be a breeze." Joe thought about how much he ached from all the running at school. If he hadn't been a natural runner and athlete, he never could have succeeded at all. He wondered how much faster and stronger he would have been without his weakness. Joe hated being alive. "You always stepped up to fights, but you didn't finish them. Why do you hold back? You should be a natural." Joe shot Kento a look. He was obviously angry. Joe stuttered quietly, "I'll email Mark to be at the shop." Joe double tapped the LCD on his arm computer. The Cube desktop returned in the center of his vision and Joe turned the cube to the email side and began to type in the air. Kento sat in silence. He watched Joe out of the corner of his eye. In a few seconds Joe's rapid typing was complete. He tapped his computer screen once again, and without saying a word, started the van and drove away. Joe drove in silence for a few minutes, dwelling stone--faced on his misfortune. \thought{I should talk to Kento}, Joe thought, {it's not really his fault.} Joe thought about what to say as he merged on the expressway. Kento interrupted his thoughts. "Joe I'm sorry, we're all different now. We are different people now, than we were then. I was a cocky bastard back then, I have learned a lot." "Kento that's not it. I'm different." Joe hung his head. "You always seemed like a normal guy to me," Kento said smiling. "I have a condition." Joe held his arm out to Kento, his medical wrist band dangling. "What? You?" Kento asked. Kento did not seem to understand that the medical bracelet was meant for him to read. Joe's eyes darted to the side of the road. His arm slowly reached back for the steering wheel. Kento squinted at Joe. He looked confused. An old, pale blue, Toyota was parked on the side of the expressway. It's parking lights were on, and flames were flickering out of the open hood. Two men looked scared and were yelling at each other. A dark skinned man without a jacket lay a few feet away, cushioned only by decaying leaves. He looked unconscious. Joe's mind flashed back to his accident. "We're stopping," he asserted. Joe checked the rear view mirror. He mashed the brakes to pull over in time. "Joe, I don't know if that's a good idea." "Call the cops," Joe said. Joe didn't know if Kento had a phone, but he hoped so. He brought the van to a halt, and put it in park. "At least back up fifty feet away so we can escape." Kento was nodding, eyebrows raised. Joe looked at Kento with confusion. He realized he hadn't even considered it could be a trap. He backed the van up some distance. He tried to calculate the situation as he drove. \thought{No}, he answered himself, \thought{we have to help in case it's real.} His view of jacket--less man was blocked by the burning car, but he could still see him in his mind. He slammed the gearshift into park again. Grabbing the keys, he jogged toward the men. He heard the two men yelling as they approached. "If your car wasn't such a piece of shit, I wouldn't need my phone," The first man yelled at the second. The second man, red in the face yelled back, "You forgot your phone! You need to run for help!" "He'll be dead if we don't find his pills!" the first man yelled. "What happened?" Kento yelled as he caught up. "We think he's having a heart attack," the first man said. "The car caught fire, he grabbed his chest and fell over." Kento looked at the second man. "Wave a car down. I don't have a working phone." Kento pointed at the first man. "You, find his pills." Joe walked over to the injured man. The man on the ground was in his late thirties and fit. \thought{That's strange}, he thought, \thought{he looks too young.} He crouched over the man and held his hand over his mouth. "He's still breathing." The man opened his eyes. Joe saw him swing his arm up to grab his shoulder. He rolled backwards over his shoulder and stood up as the man jumped to his feet. "Still quick." Kento was grinning. "You ain't given me no C.P.R," The dead man said to Joe. He had a deep Spanish accent. "Give me the key to your ride." Joe's heart was beating hard now as he crab--walked for a better position. He assessed the other two men. They were of moderate build, in poor shape, and unarmed. Kento stood straight and seemed calm, giving nothing away. He was about two feet away from the pill man. Joe smiled, they didn't have a chance. "You and what army?" Joe grumbled. Joe heard a loud whistle and turned his head toward it. Six figures appeared at the top of the nearby bridge hill. They were all larger than the other men. "That army," the dead man bragged, grinning. He threw his fist at Joe. Joe easily leaned back avoiding the telegraphed fist. Everything was moving in slow motion to him. He saw Kento out the corner of his eye. The pill man lunged at Kento. Kento moved aside and used his hip to pivot the man head first into the car's bumper. Joe saw movement out of his left eye. \thought{The man must be throwing a second punch}, he thought. As he swung his body the other way to avoid it. He felt time slow even more. The adrenal gland in the top of his spine began pumping out chemicals. He felt fury overcome him, as the adrenaline charged through his veins and down his arms. The tiny hairs all over his body stood on end. He was pissed. Really pissed. \thought{I won't die because I tried to help you.} He leapt backwards to dodge the dumb swing from the dead man. He saw the phone man change direction and hurtle towards Kento. The phone man wasn't even looking at Kento as he lunged. He was too busy looking at his newly unconscious comrade. The dead man reached out some distance to hit Joe. Joe spotted the movement and his attention snapped back. A wicked smile came across his face. He hunched down and spun on his right foot, swinging his left foot through the air. Joe's leg seemed to glide fully extended just above the ground. His foot pulled up and arched through the air. The heel of his left boot stuck the man in the temple. He felt the dead mans head give as his roundhouse kick made contact. His momentum wasn't significantly slowed by the man's skull, so he pumped his left leg inward to accelerate his rotation, and lifted his right leg into the air. He pulled his right boot up just in time to strike the mans head again. Blood spattered out the mans mouth and they fell to the ground. Joe broke his fall with his bare hand on a patch of grass. He felt the pressure as his hands absorbed his full momentum. He cleared the man and landed beside him. He pushed himself up onto his feet and looked around. The men were running down the bridge hill in slow motion. They were mainly looking in Kento's direction as they ran, the puffy arms of their winter jackets swinging. Several of them had knives and threaded pipes brought to bare. Joe turned towards Kento, and saw the phone man lying on top of the body of the pill man. His smile turned crooked as he imagined the second man falling for exactly the same hip throw into the bumper. Scanning the car, he saw something through the open door. A bat tucked under the drivers seat of the burning car. \thought{I'm not ready to die}, he thought. He ran for the bat. Joe hopped over the body of the dead man and sprinted as only he could toward the side of the little blue car. He reached in and grabbed the bat. He spun to see the men closing in on the calm Kento. Joe reached his right hand across his shoulder and single tapped his computer switching his clarks to human vector mode. Meaningful arrows appeared pointed this way and that. An arrow pointed straight down by the dead man. He wasn't getting up. Joe swiftly crab--walked around the mob now stabbing and swinging at Kento. He swung the aluminum bat full force at the biggest mans head. The man's head gave but he didn't stumble. He swung around wielding a knife and bleeding from the ear. He started at Joe. Joe backed away easily keeping the distance. Several men swung and stabbed at Joe trying to circle him. He was quicker, backing off and maintaining a bubble with his bat. One of the men swung at Joe with a pipe. He felt it tickle his rib through his leather jacket. His mortality came back to him. A single bruise could immobilize him for a week. The adrenaline was beginning to wear off. He scoped a clear path back towards the bridge hill. \thought{I have to get some distance}, he thought, \thought{I'm going to get hit again.} Joe took a swing towards the man closest to the road and forced him back. He sidestepped to his left and ran back towards the hill. Joe looked at Kento dodging and weaving his assailants. One of the three new challengers was laying motionless on the grass. The other two looked tired and moved very slowly. Joe heard a horrible noise. A series of rhythmic tire screeches and thumping. He turned to the ruckus as he ran to see an eighteen wheeler screeching to a halt on the opposite side of the road. Two cars leaned on their horns as they screeched around the huge truck at the last second. The truck bounced one final time as the door swung open. A large hairy man hung out the door wielding a shotgun. The man yelled in an ear--busting crescendo. "What the hell is going \emph{on here}?" He pumped the shotgun, aimed it in the air, and let one shot ring. Joe was dumbfounded. He stopped running and turned to see the distance he had put between him and his attackers. They had stopped running and turned as well. \thought{Looks like they don't know what to do}, he thought. \thought{Neither do I.} "Let's go man," one of the men yelled. He turned and ran. "C'mon lets get out of here. He's crazy man." Another man ran toward the trees. "We're gone man." Another turned and ran for the far side of the hill. The trucker calmly surveyed the fleeing assailants from the perch of his truck's cab. Joe looked at Kento and Kento shrugged. Joe and Kento walked back toward the van. Stepping over the unconscious bodies of their fallen enemies. Joe looked back to the trucker to yell in thanks and saw him close his door, apparently satisfied. Joe yelled, "Thank you." The trucker was already pulling back into traffic. He didn't seem to hear. Joe grabbed Lucy's keys from his pocket and then noticed gravel indents in his hands from his fall. His hands did not bruise this time. Joe pulled his shirt up as he walked and looked at the rib that was grazed by the pipe. No bruise there either. Joe sighed as he opened the van's driver side door. Joe looked at Kento as he closed his door. "I thought you had a cell phone. I was crazy to rush in there." "Are you all right? You were great back there. We had them dead to rights." Kento smiled. "It was stupid. I got mad. Stopped thinking." He started the van. "You had total control. You had them running in circles." "I could have been killed," Joe said distracted. He was anxious to get away from the scene. Joe put the van in gear and inched up to merge into traffic. He looked over his shoulder, then looked Kento right in the eye. "I'm a hemophiliac. We probably should have just called the cops." Joe started pulling away. "I did," Kento said. He was looking at Joe. He pulled a cheap looking cell phone from his pocket. An automated message was clearly audible in the quiet van. The phone droned, "Do not hang up, someone will be with you momentarily." "It was on the whole time. They never came." \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Chapter 12}{Chapter 12} \chapter{} Mark tried, and failed, to comprehend other people's competitive drives. Re--writing the small driver to read the newest type of gyroscopes was not about self image or pride for Mark. He programmed, to expand his understanding of accomplishment, not for the accomplishment itself. Doing whatever it took had always seemed a bit barbaric to Mark. He had led a life of shelter and moral privilege, and desired to continue it as long as he could. Mark's mind began to wander off his task. He much preferred the smell of incense over machine oil. The stew of synthetic chemicals seemed to pull him from inner peace. He loved his work with the A--team, but he did it for the worldly experience and money, not for emotional stimulation. Mark dwelled on his childhood vacations in India. His family could create a whole other world. Mark would use that world to escape, and learn about himself. \thought{When did Amman start trying to beat me}, Mark thought. \thought{When did I indicate to him that I would crush, insult, degrade, or otherwise ostracize him if I activate the nanites first. Perhaps Joe is right}, Mark thought. \thought{What the hell keeps a man focused for three days straight?} Mark glanced over at Amman's now scraggy beard. He was hunched over his borrowed computer terminal and several pads of paper. Mark wanted to contribute more to the process, but every time he tried to cooperate with Amman he grew impatient. \thought{I need to get another one of those microscopes}, Mark thought. He wished his cousin would rest and give him a shot at cracking the nanites. With his brain sufficiently relaxed from his mental break, Mark walked to the cyborg's naked base. The base consisted of two tank style treads and a mess of wires, batteries, and motors. He flipped a switch in the mess of wires and the base sprung to life. It wiggled left, right and left again to indicate that all is well. Mark walked behind his bench and typed a command at a strange blinking prompt on his screen. The base began traveling around a blocked off area in a seemingly random fashion. A pair of numbers smaller than one printed on the screen with each turn. As the routine drew to an end, Mark felt his spirit lift. He had done it. Two gyroscopes down, one hydraulic to go. Mark couldn't hold back the grin. Joe and a strange skinny man burst in the door. Mark felt the cold draft as the wind swung the door shut. \thought{So this must be the chip guy}, Mark thought. "Joe, I see you have brought the man with the power," Mark said in a silly voice. Mark shuffled to the door, hoping distance would hide his excitement from Amman. "Mark, meet Kento." "Nice to meet you." Kento spoke as if on a job interview. He reached out to shake Mark's hand. Mark shook his hand. \thought{He seems well adjusted}, Mark thought. \thought{He seems confident. If there were such as thing a chi, he'd be brewing with it.} "Joe, I've got the gyroscopes programmed." Mark felt the grin returning to his face. "You have to see this." Joe ignored Mark's invitation. He started walking toward his work bench. The smile fell off Mark's face. Would Joe obsess over the nanites as well? Would Kento? Mark didn't think he could cope with any more competitive people. \thought{My feelings are distracting me. My emotional damage control is already at full throttle}, Mark thought. Joe stopped and looked Mark in the eye. "We were attacked," Joe said. "Holy crap!" Mark exclaimed. "Again? It's getting crazy out there. People are so desperate. What the hell do they do with all that money they steal from us?" \thought{What was I thinking}, Mark asked himself. \thought{Joe doesn't want to beat me. I must be losing perspective.} Mark heard a clang as Amman got up, staring at them. He walked toward the group. Mark felt embarrassed. He had let his own emotional peril derail his concern for Joe. "Are you okay?" Amman sounded concerned. "Yeah," Joe mumbled. Kento shook his head, "I called the police, but they never came." "They may come now," Amman stated. He was almost unintelligible between his thick accent and his scratchy voice. "I doubt it." Kento looked somber as he spoke, "One of my students is jailed for murder in a fight the police never responded to. His only crime was effectively defending himself. The prosecutor insisted his fleeing the scene proved intent. None of us make the mistake of subscribing to a cell service anymore. I use disposables and pay with cash." He pulled his cell phone and a separated fuel cell from his pocket. He tossed them in a nearby garbage can. "You are smarter than these two," Amman said. \thought{It sounds like Kento and Amman might get along}, Mark thought. Joe stopped typing into the keyboard on his desktop computer. He stared Amman in the eye, "What'd you say?" \thought{Oh shit}, Mark thought, \thought{here it comes.} Mark went to say something, but Kento jumped in first. "He's right Joe," Kento said coolly, "You act with too much haste. You should control your temper and divert your anger into improving your restraint. Victory is in the mind." \thought{He's pretty cool}, Mark thought. \thought{I think I like this guy.} Joe looked surprised and defeated, his shoulders slumped. He turned and typed a few more keystrokes. Joe had recorded the adventure with the cameras in his clarks. His monitor blinked and the roadside battle began. The men all watched with rapt attention. Kento's words rang in Mark's head as he watched the fight. \thought{I wonder if Kento knows about Joe's disease. I guess they will have to find out if we ever want to use these things again}, Mark thought. Joe knocked his assailant unconscious and fell to the ground next to him. "Joe you are so quick. We should dub this to a hyperbeat song. All I see are those guys reacting." Mark was very excited. "It's four frames a second," Joe said. "See Kento's pile of bodies." The truck screamed into view, and the trucker fired his gun. The men ran off. "Wow," Mark's mouth was open. Mark reached over Joe and paused the recording. He shuttled backward until the trucker was in plain view. "Wow what a great guy. Shotgun trucker..." Mark paused looking lost in thought. "Send me this video." "Okay." Joe stared at the image of the mystery trucker. Amman walked away from Joe's bench and toward his messy pile of papers and the microscope. Kento looked in his direction and then followed him. Mark caught Amman glancing over at their absent gaze. \thought{He can't think we are watching him}, Mark thought. He turned to Joe. "\emph{Now} will you checkout the gyroscopes I just hooked up?" Mark purposefully sounded a little childish. "Yeah okay. I should work." Joe turned away from the video. They shuffled over toward the pen containing the robot base. Mark hit a couple of keys beginning the sequence once again. Mark strained to hear the conversation across the shop over the whining motors. The routine stopped, leaving Mark with nothing to say. He was relieved when Joe chimed in. "I have an idea." Joe looked tired. "Okay?" "How about a second pair of arms?" Joe sounded hopeful. "What about regulations?" Mark said, "Aren't we supposed to be getting closer to a human form? Isn't that the point of the new rules?" "I think it's legal," Joe said, "The rules say only human style arms, and tracks or wheels for feet." "So it's legit because it's a human part, there are just more of them." Mark sounded excited, "Joe you're a genius. Two could grapple and two could attack! But what if they disqualify us?" "We can make them detachable." Mark's brain was whizzing with possible attachment points and remote control changes when Amman passed by. Mark was so distracted he was briefly shocked by Amman's proximity to him. Amman looked at Mark. "I'm going home. Robert's in charge." He was slurring badly. He was visibly exhausted. He went to the back of the shop to get his coat and keys. Kento was reading through Amman's numerous disorganized notes. \thought{Who's Robert}, Mark wondered. \thought{Amman has completely lost it. He's imagining people. I guess sooner or later he had to give up. He has been going for three days straight.} Mark and Joe walked toward Kento as Mark pondered Amman's strange statement. They cautiously slid over to Kento, afraid to encourage further domination of the microscope and ultrasound panel. They looked over Kento's shoulder at Amman's cryptic notes. They heard him close the door. "I think Amman is losing it. He was talking about somebody named Robert." "Oh that's me," Kento sounded amused. "I got the name in high school." "Robert?" \thought{Oh, that was dumb}, Mark thought. "The dumb kids couldn't say Kempo. I think they thought they were clever." Joe smiled. "Oh," Mark sounded relieved. "So what did they call Joe?" Joe frowned, and Kento smiled. "You don't want to know." Kento grinned looking at Joe. Joe stared Kento dead with his eyes. Mark couldn't help but smile too. \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Chapter 13}{Chapter 13} \chapter{} Nathan Jones hated group trips to the gym. He appreciated the virtues of a good workout, but that's not what usually happened. He and several of his coworkers would stand around and patiently wait for the menace to finish his work out. The menace would boast and brag as he benched the same hundred twenty pounds as he did every week. No one dared best him in athletics, so the whole thing was a giant waste of time for the larger men like Nathan. After the usual awkward shower experience, the men would silently reflect on the egotism that ruined their lives six days a week. Scott Conner, the menace, insisted on being naked in the locker room as long as possible. Strutting around and standing, in a pose that seemed almost meant to jut his flopping member further forward than anything attached to his body could be. The other men in MI Robotics seemed to suspect homosexuality, but Nathan knew better. Scott did this to intimidate and unnerve the other men. Surprise, shock and deprivation presented the best opportunities to instill fear and loyalty in other men. Nathan wouldn't have needed his time in the service to recognize the singular virtue of surprise. Yet, while continually unnerved, nobody was caught off guard any more. Nathan and the other men followed Scott to the checkout counter at the base gym. Scott bragged to the young woman soldier manning the desk. "Two hundred and sixty pounds. That's how much I could bench in the service days," he said in a southern drawl. "If I didn't spend so much time in pointless meetings I'd be bettering that right now." "Yes sir," the woman stated coldly. "You know my company is very important to the service. We have brokered over twelve major contracts and earned the Marines fourteen billion in patent revenue alone." "Of course sir," The unengaged woman replied. Scott continued as the men dropped their towels in the desk mounted hamper. "That uniform you're wearing was paid for by one of MIR's carbon catalyst patents. You'd be naked without us." Nathan scowled. \thought{Only a civilian could get away with such talk.} "Thank you sir." The beleaguered woman kept her resolve. "Well I have to go chat with the joint chiefs." Scott spoke with a twang. "I hope we can talk again \emph{soon}." Scott quickly walked away. Nathan missed his daughters and longed to be home. After a sleepy morning of Saturday cartoons, they would be playing outside with the neighbors or their mother. If he was back home in Chicago, they would be throwing snowballs or making snow angels. Nathan was lost in thought as he walked. "Cicely, you and Laurence go to the shop and payroll the new design from DCR. Give Michaels a call and get his ass over here. Jones you're with me for the chiefs." "Yes sir, we're on it." Cicely sounded relieved. They immediately walked toward the parking lot. "Jones, go change. Meet me at thirteen hundred and forty five hours at the conference room." "Yes sir," Nathan stated weakly. Nathan walked toward his temporary quarters. When he arrived he changed into formal business wear. Nathan looked at his watch and decided that he had time to call his wife. He walked to the nightstand and dialed the phone. Nathan stared out the window at the base as it rang. The machine picked up and four voices sequentially answered. "Hi you have reached Luise, Emily, Malinda, and Nathan. Were not here right now, but please say whatever you like at the beep." "Hi everybody, I miss you. I'll call you again tonight. Something came up at work and I won't be home tonight. I'm going to try for tomorrow. Hope you're having fun." Nathan did his best not to sound as disappointed as he was. He was mostly successful. Nathan hurried out of the apartment to meet Scott at the chiefs meeting room. Scott was waiting. He was standing in the back of the room reading a legal sized paper. The spacious waiting room was empty other than the two men. Scott looked angry. He walked to Nathan's side and talked to him quietly as they waited. Scott moved his face as close to Nathan's as he could without touching it. "This breach is your responsibility. This is by far our most ambitious project and your security framework sucks. If the chiefs realize how poor your contingency plan is there will be hell to pay." "But sir I had advised you of that initially," Nathan responded weakly. "When I want to hear what you think, I will ask. Now I have to think for you, and whose fault is that?" Scott's growing vocal anger worsened his now almost unintelligible accent. "Yes sir." Nathan automatically repressed his anger and desire to speak. "I expect that a sufficiently effective quarantine program is ready in case the chiefs so order it." "Yes sir." Nathan grew more angry every second. He couldn't wipe Scott's spittle off his face. His distant hand gripped into a fist. "Sir, the chiefs will see you now," a woman's voice drifted in from the door to the waiting room. Scott moved naturally away from Nathan wearing a broad smile. "Thank you ma'am." He began to walk toward the large double doors. The office was comfortable and sparse. It was decorated with wood furniture and moderate colors. Two large American flags hung by the far wall. Four men in uniform were waiting at the opposite side of a large wood table. As Nathan entered the room the woman closed the door behind him. One of the chiefs looked to Scott. "Counsel Conner, what brings you here?" Scott straightened and did his best to look neat. "Hello generals. MIR has a problem." "Weren't you starting new trial systems in New York?" the last general asked. "Yes, a civilian gained consciousness during an unplanned trial." "Unplanned?" the first general asked slowly. "His aunt, a doctor, used the oxygen nanites during an emergency procedure." There was a brief pause, "So you think he knows what happened?" a general in the center asked. "We don't know, MIR does not have those resources," Scott admitted grudgingly. "How long was he awake?" the youngest General asked. "About a half an hour according to the doctor in question." The oldest general spoke. "We should not act with haste. This sounds like a non--detrimental event." "We are deeply concerned about the breach. We do know, the man has a technical mind. There is the remote possibility, he understands what was done to him." "So we may need to discredit him," The last general asked. "Prepare a variety of legal actions against him, council. But do not act until we can confirm carnal knowledge," the first general suggested. "I need your permission to treat the subject as an enemy combatant," Conner stated almost robotic like, "We would be able to prevent the leak from spreading if we detain him." "Make sure to focus the charges on something else, or he may spread the contamination on the way to Guantanamo." "We will prepare a case. I am anticipating the results of your probe." Scott smiled. Nathan understood the need to arrest the boy, but was still appalled. \thought{It was shameful how depraved and indifferent the world had become. Damn them all for not helping America isolate their enemies. How many innocents needed their lives disrupted or destroyed, because there was no cooperation to be had.} \newpage \pdfbookmark[0]{Chapter 14}{Chapter 14} \chapter{} Mark's Toyota was sputtering again. \thought{Why did I have to buy a Japanese car}, Mark thought. \thought{At least it's not German. My dad is livid about the cost of parts for his Beamer.} Mark scanned the parking lot as he approached it. He noticed the van was gone, but it looked as if a light might be on inside. Mark pulled the sputtering Toyota over. He got out of his car and pushed the unlocked gate open. The activity light on a nearby motion detector failed to blink. \thought{Somebody forgot to shut the lights off and turn on the alarm}, he thought. \thought{Amman went home late last night and his car wasn't here. He couldn't be back yet, \emph{could he?} There's no way Joe slipped in, he doesn't do mornings, then again neither do I.} Mark pulled his car inside and hurried to the door. It swung right open when he pulled it. "Damn!" Mark said aloud. He was frustrated with somebodies lack of care. Mark's optic nerve flickered with movement. He looked to his side and nearly jumped out of his skin. "Ah!" Mark yelled. Kento was sitting on the floor Indian style, with his shirt off. He was wiry and slim. He looked powerful despite his light frame. "Hello," Kento said calmly. "Wow, oh, hi," Mark's heart was pounding, "You still here? Did you sleep?" "For about four hours on the cot," Kento said, "I was just finishing my morning forms." "Kay," Mark was returning to his groggy morning mode, "Are you hungry?" "Nope. Joe and I ordered in last night. I saved some rice for breakfast." Kento sounded awake. He began to stand up and grabbed his shirt. "Right. Rice for breakfast. I prefer donuts myself," Mark was amused, "Did you decipher Amman's notes?" "Something doesn't make sense." He talked as he donned his shirt. He walked to the large LCD on the microscope's side. He touched a button and the screen was filled with a spider web of connecting rods. "Did Amman mention this? I don't see it anywhere." He stared at the screen. "What is it?" "Those dots at the joints are nanites." Mark's jaw dropped. "Wow." "Look carefully." Mark squinted at the screen. The connecting rods between the nanites seemed to be slowly changing length. \thought{Wait! The rods aren't growing, they are moving toward me.} "The web is drifting." "Keep watching." The web drifted for a few more seconds. Then it expanded snapping into perfect symmetry. A few seconds later it was drifting again. "So you turned them on?" Mark was really excited. He worked at not being childish. "No. I mean I don't think so. The good news is it doesn't seem to getting any bigger." He pressed another button on the microscope's side. "Take a look at this." He pointed at the screen. The image on the screen flickered and changed. On the right there were two small blobs with a few triangles sticking out, pointed here and there. The smaller blobs where alternating between blue, green, and red on the edges. The curved horizon of a much larger brown jagged sphere was on the left. The triangles on the larger left hand blob seemed more random. Kento reached down and pressed a play shaped button on an adjacent touch screen. The objects started shimmering and wiggling. "See the blob on the right, that is a simple sugar," Kento spoke slowly. The image suddenly zoomed out and several more distant glucose molecule blobs were visible. Then a number blinked into life at the top of the screen and the shimmering slowed to a crawl. "I slowed it here so you can see the whole thing happen." The triangles in a small section of the brown blob began fading in and out of sight. A nearby glucose molecule snapped into the side of the giant brown sphere. Suddenly the triangles stopped shifting, then moved again and then stopped. They waited for a few seconds and then the glucose molecule was sucked violently into the big blob. It looked positively mechanical. Mark started to understand what he was looking at. "Did the nanite just eat that sugar?" "It sure did," Kento said, "About ten times a day per nanite. I'm going to need a new set of heads for the microscope. I had it scanning constantly all night. The nanites are huge compared to a single molecule." Mark was truly impressed. He felt a little heady. "We mapped the whole sample. How did we miss that web?" "I don't think you did. I think it was built while I was watching another part of the sample." The smile fell off his face. "Do you know what this means?" "What?" Mark's brain was moving quickly. "It means these nanites were meant to run indefinitely," Kento looked somber. "And." Mark was trying to think why he would want nanites to run indefinitely. "Not exactly the one--use, emergency oxygen suppliers they appeared to be in the hospital." Kento's words were slow and deliberate. Mark was frustrated with his own slow responses. \thought{I'm not awake}, he thought. "I think I need some tea." "How long can you swim under water if you don't need to breathe?" Kento said, "How much faster can you run if your heart rate accelerates half as fast?" Mark looked a little afraid. Kento was clearly frustrated. He looked Mark in the eyes. "How long can you be dead before it actually starts to hurt your brain?" "Holy crap." Mark's jaw was open. "Well said." Kento turned to stare out the window. They both stared into space for a while. Shocked by the enormity of Joe's prize from his trip to hell and back. Mark walked over to the electric teapot and filled it with water. He focused on the simple task of preparing a mug while the back of his mind processed the implications of such a find. Mark shouted across the shop. "Kento. You know whoever this belongs to is going to figure out we have it, sooner or later." Kento paused and said, "Mark, something this important can belong to no one. We are all surely damned." The door burst open as Lucy, Joe, and Finny shuffled inside. Joe looked catatonic. Lucy and her daughter seemed chipper and alive. "Kento whats up," Lucy asked affectionately. She walked over to Kento and gave him a hug. "You smell," Lucy grinned. "What kind of workshop doesn't have a hot shower?" Kento smiled. "Yeah you smell," Finny chimed in. Kento looked from side to side, pretending he didn't know she was talking to him. "Hey Joe," Kento yelled, "You look like you need some coffee." "Uhhhhhhh," Joe responded. He trudged toward the coffee machine. Mark was looking for something to do and began to prepare some coffee for Joe. He was still reeling, thinking about whoever these nanites belonged to. \thought{They would come looking for them. What was Joe's aunt mixed up in. What kind of sha