Nanoswarm, page 5
Brian shook his head. “I don’t know. It would take a while.”
“Not as long as you’d think,” Ezra said. “If you’re immersed in their culture, if you start speaking their langue, you’ll find yourself thinking in their language sooner than you might expect.”
Brian sighed. “So, you’re saying I need to immerse myself in my emotions?”
“I’m saying you need to allow yourself to feel. There is no right or wrong when it comes to your emotions, Brian. They are what they are. Until you feel them, embrace them, you’ll never know how to read the roadsigns on your path. And, in terms of navigating the nanoverse, you’ll never find your path. You’ll never complete your mission.”
“How will that help me defeat Flat?” Brian asked.
Ezra smiled. “Why do you presume that defeating Flat is your mission? He programmed the nanoverse. He knows what he’s doing. That’s his domain.”
Brian cocked his head. “Of course, that’s my mission. He has to be stopped. All this crap going on, it’s his fault.”
Ezra smiled. “And that brings us to why Dr. Larson asked me to speak to you.”
“What does he want me to do?”
Ezra bit his lip. “The inhibitors aren’t the answer. Larson accepted the government contract to produce these inhibitors, to share his design, because he thought it might buy you time.”
Brian nodded. “But it didn’t. Now, we don’t have time to waste. We have to figure out how to root Flat out of the system.”
Ezra shook his head. “That’s one path. There’s another one, too. Only you can read the roadsigns and decide which direction you’ll go.”
“What other option is there?” Brian asked.
“Do you know why I’m immune to the nanobots? They are in my system. I was injected by force like many others.”
“They don’t affect you because you meditate a lot,” Brian said.
Ezra laughed. “That’s the means, the method, that gives me control over my mind. But it is not the only path. You can do much and even more than I can do because of your mind.”
“My mind is injured,” Brian said. “Larson said my PTSD works like a firewall, a defense mechanism, that protects me from the manipulations of the nanonetwork. It’s what allows me to take control of the nanobots.”
“Are you a man of faith, Brian?” Ezra asked.
Brian shrugged. “I suppose. I mean, I believe in God. I was raised in a Christian church. I guess I accept the truths I was taught but, really, I’ve never really been a great Christian.”
“Never mind that,” Ezra said, glancing at the hand-carved crucifix on his wall. “By his wounds, we are healed.”
“Isn’t that a Psalm?” Brian asked.
Ezra shook his head. “It’s from the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. But that’s beside the point. Our wounds don’t define us. Not if we don’t allow them to. But we can’t deny our wounds, either. His wounds, they were the result of violence and injustice. So were yours, in a sense. We might debate whether the war you were sent to fight before was just. But no one would argue that it was violent.”
“I’m not sure I get the point, Father,” Brian said.
“Jesus told his followers that if they were to be his disciples and if they were to defeat the death represented by his wounds, they must take up their own crosses and follow his path.”
Brian chuckled. “I don’t think preaching a little Jesus to Flat in the nanoverse will defeat him. No offense, Father. But it doesn’t work that way.”
“And that’s not what I’m telling you to do, Brian. But you can embrace your wounds, not just the wounds of the war but the wound you feel now in the wake of that flight attendant’s death. The wound can be your end. Or, it can be how you save yourself and, likewise, save the world.”
Brian pressed his lips together as he stared at the priest's crucifix. “The Romans crucified him. His followers, believing in his resurrection, changed the world.”
Father Ezra smiled. “And the Roman Empire eventually fell.”
Brian shook his head. “But it wasn’t just because of the Christians. I know my history, Father. The Romans couldn’t defend their borders. The barbarians all around the empire threatened Rome’s dominion.”
“Indeed,” Ezra said. “But the believers who were oppressed and persecuted by the Empire were never defeated. The faith lives on still today. Empires come and go. People of faith, however, endure.”
Brian nodded. “That’s true. But I’m not sure how that helps me. I need something I can do. Not something I can believe.”
“Faith without action is dead,” Ezra said. “You can’t defeat Archimedes Flat by fighting him with his methods. The early Christians couldn’t thwart Rome by raising up armies against the Empire. They survived. They thrived and endured because they stayed true to their own path. If you want to save the world, Brian, you need to use the nanonetwork even as the first evangelists used the Roman roads to travel the Empire and share their message with others.”
“How do I do that?” Brian asked. “Again, I need something practical I can use. I’m a soldier, Father. I need a tactical approach.”
Father Ezra rested his hand on Brian’s shoulder. “You can’t write a program in the nanonetwork to counteract Flat’s innovations. But you can engage the network to touch people's hearts and minds. You can show them their path, their journey. If the people find a path of their own, if they pursue it with passion, the nanonetwork will be powerless to change them, to seize them, to take over their lives.”
It’s a whole different experience walking into the White House as the former President of the United States compared to being the current one. When Harrison was the Commander in Chief, no one searched him. He was the one protected. Certainly, Harrison's agents protected him as well. But now, entering the White House as a guest, he was searched like any other dignitary or visitor to the President might be.
It was just protocol. Nothing to get worked up over. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…
The prayer Harrison had clung to, recited at least twenty times a day, during his first ninety days of sobriety was about to be put to the test. The first time he walked into the White House as President was a surreal experience. The portraits on the wall. Antique furniture, each with its own story about how one of his predecessors used it or brought it to the presidential mansion. It made him feel like he was a part of history—and he was. But not just that. Everyone is a part of history, in a sense. But this kind of history would be written in textbooks. Provided they still used textbooks in the future. At least it would be in the electronic equivalents of what textbooks were when he was a child. Now, though, the chapter of President Harrison Neuhaus was written. He was a man of vision but a man blind at the same time. He never saw how a member of his own cabinet not only betrayed him but conducted the worst terrorist attack to ever take place on American soil. He’d forever be remembered as one on a shortlist of men who’d resigned before the end of his term.
Every man has a legacy. For some, it lives on only a generation or two before whatever he added to the world is mostly forgotten. For a former President, however, his legacy would endure for centuries. And in Harrison’s case, it was a legacy he’d prefer to be forgotten.
We neither regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it…
That was one of the “promises” they’d recited in his A.A. meetings. How could Harrison not regret what he’d permitted to happen on his watch? If he could shut the door on all the mistakes he made, he would. The security team led Harrison to the Oval Office. Rowland Neuhaus, his former Chief of Staff who now served in the same role to his successor, President Regina Davis, met him at the door.
“When you come inside, I need you to remain calm.”
“Calm?” Harrison asked. “Why?”
Rowland shook his head. “Follow me.”
Rowland opened the door to the Oval Office and ushered Harrison inside. President Davis sat at her desk. Her eyes, staring forward. Was she looking at him? It felt like she was looking through him.
“Regina?” Harrison asked.
The President said nothing. She stared forward as if her gaze was transfixed by something in front of her. Something that wasn’t there.
“What’s going on, Rowland?” Harrison asked.
Rowland sighed. “She’s been like this ever since we removed her inhibitor.”
Harrison scratched his head. “Everyone else, the people I’ve heard about who were affected, their inhibitors were removed, and they were healed. They returned to normal.”
Rowland nodded. “All her vital signs are normal. We’ve tried to move her. When we do, she reacts violently. With an unnatural strength.”
Harrison sighed. “Flat has something to do with this.”
“I agree,” Rowland said. “The question is what.”
“Have you reached out to Larson about this?” Harrison asked.
“Not yet. We would prefer if this situation not be spoken of outside of this office.”
“When you called, you said she wanted my help.”
“A bit of a fib,” Rowland said. “Sorry about that. I couldn’t tell the truth. Not over the phone. Still, I needed to bring you here.”
Harrison shook his head. “I don’t know what I can do. My nanobots, they’re still in my body so far as I know, but they don’t work.”
“I thought, perhaps, you could tell us how that happened. If we can shut down the nanobots in the President’s system, we might be able to awaken her. At the very least, disconnect her from whatever force in the nanonetwork has her trapped like this.”
Harrison sighed. He reached into his pocket and recovered the small device that he’d used as President. It shut the nanobots down in his system when he used to drink. It was made for him, specifically, by Dr. Flat to permit him the chance to indulge his addiction. A privilege, Harrison thought at the time, for which he was grateful. He only carried it with him, still, to remind him of all he’d done. To serve as a token, now coupled with his ninety-day chip, to keep him focused. When the phenomenon of craving struck, he reached into his pocket and touched his coin and the device. Doing that didn’t eliminate the craving entirely. Still, it bought him an extra half-second or so to resist, to reconsider the urge to drink again.
“I don’t know if this will work,” Harrison said. “Flat gave it to me, before, so I could drink. It deactivates the nanobots temporarily. I think what happened to me was that the last time I used it, something malfunctioned. It shut down all my nanobots permanently.”
“Are you sure it was a glitch?” Rowland asked. “Or, could it have been like that by design? Perhaps Flat wanted you disconnected from the nanoverse.”
“I think you might be right. Either way, there’s a chance this device might work. If something in the nanoverse has Regina caught in this state, it should disconnect her. But it might be risky.”
Rowland pressed his lips together. “If this works similar to the inhibitor, it might trigger that self-destruct sequence that hit her and everyone else before.”
Harrison nodded. “And if that happens, we won’t be able to just pull it out of her, like you did with the inhibitor. This device might save her. It could just as easily kill her.”
6
Inhibited
Brian cleared his throat as he re-entered the control room. He wasn’t accustomed to heart-to-heart conversations with priests. Sure, in the Marines, he’d had a good relationship with the chaplains. He’d spoken with them, a few times, about what it was like to kill at war. This was different. Sure, killing the enemy could be traumatic. Brian always knew that every man he killed had a family who’d have to mourn the loss of their husband or father. As a soldier, he had no problem with it. As a father, now, he saw it differently. As much as those memories haunted his mind, it was nothing compared to the weight he felt crushing his soul after the flight attendant’s death. Talking to Father Ezra, surprisingly, assuaged his anxiety. At least for a time. Chances were, eventually, the heaviness would return. Usually, he buried it. Brian couldn’t deny, though, that talking about it helped.
Back in the control room, Seneca was still analyzing the codes that blinked across his monitor. Eloise was still concentrating on the large, shared monitor in the front of the room. John Larson was on his phone in the corner, plugging his free ear with his index finger. If Larson had seen a ghost, he wouldn’t have been so flush of color. Brian knew the look. He’d seen it on his fellow Marines’ faces when one of their own fell in battle. He’d seen the same expression in his own mirror when his wife lost her battle with cancer. Whoever Larson was talking to clearly hadn’t called to deliver good news.
It wasn’t just the problem with the inhibitors that was bothering Larson. Brian had seen him before. Then, he was determined. Concerned and upset, but focused. This was different. It wasn’t his children. They’d had inhibitors in place long before the latest batch was distributed. Before Brian had joined the resistance. Since the malfunction or the program Flat had initiated didn’t affect Liza, it certainly didn’t hit Larson’s children either. Still, what else could leave someone in such a state of concern and shock?
Brian stared at the code. He couldn’t read it. Not unless he went into the nanoverse. He could focus on the code. His mind, interfacing with the nanobots in his system, could take him to whatever he was seeing. Still, that was a bit like jumping in the ocean, unsure if a frenzy of sharks circled beneath the surface. Unless Seneca or Larson told him he should engage the code, he wouldn’t. Entering the nanoswarm, as Brian called it, and exploring was one thing. He had control over what he interfaced with. Diving into the code, though, was something different entirely. For all Brian knew, Seneca was looking at a self-destruct code, something in Flat’s new program. If Brian engaged it, he’d experience what the code dictated. Due to his abilities, he might be able to overcome it. Doing that, though, was sort of like telling Michael Phelps—a legendary Olympic swimmer who still held most of the records for swimming gold medals—to dive right into that shark pool because, after all, he could swim fast. Even Phelps, in his prime, couldn’t out-swim a shark. Brian still didn’t know the limits of his abilities within the nanoverse.
Liza wasn’t in the control room. She’d probably left for the same reasons that Brian felt out of place. She was a soldier of a sort. A fighter. What Seneca and the Larsons were doing in the control room was more akin to intelligence gathering. During the war, strategy and intelligence were above his pay grade. His higher-ups studied the enemy, learned their most vulnerable targets, and devised strategies that Brian and his fellow Marines were later commanded to implement. There wasn’t much that Brian or Liza could do at the moment to contribute. Most likely, Liza was training. Refining her already well-toned body into an even more effective fighting machine. Or, given the late hour in the evening, perhaps she’d gone to bed.
Brian figured he’d leave and catch up with Susie. She was probably engaged in video gaming with Bonecrusher at the moment. Bonecrusher wasn’t exactly the alias one would typically associate with a babysitter. Of course, if he was a literal babysitter and actually sat on Susie, his nickname would likely fit. He was a mass of a man but, so long as you weren’t on the opposite side of a battlefield, he was as harmless as a teddy bear. And he had a heart that matched the size of his gigantic frame.
Still, he was a soldier. Babysitting probably wasn’t the first thing he’d choose to do with his time given a choice.
Brian casually stepped out of the control room and headed down the hall to his room. He listened at the door for a moment before going inside.
“Boo-yah!” Bonecrusher shouted. “Who’s the boss? Yeah, girl, I’m the boss!”
Susie laughed. “I’ve killed you fifteen times in a row, and you killed me once, and you’re the boss now?”
Brian chuckled. Call of Duty was one of those old-school games from Bonecrusher’s childhood that you’d think he’d excel at since he had real-world tactical combat training. When it came to gaming, though, Brian knew better than to challenge Susie. Keith might have given Susie a run for her money back in the day, but maturity tends to come with a lack of gaming skills.
Brian cracked open the door. Susie was so transfixed by the screen in front of her she didn’t so much as look and nod.
“I’m here,” Brian said.
Keith didn’t respond either. They were playing on a split-screen. By looking at Susie’s screen, Brian could see that she was about to snipe Keith’s soldier from a hundred digital yards out. He was running from tree to tree, oblivious to the fact Susie had a perfect line of sight from her sniper rifle to Keith’s head from the vantage point of a high hill. Why Bonecrusher didn’t bother to look at Susie’s screen as he navigated the battlefield was his greatest blunder.
Bang!
“Crap!” Bonecrusher shouted.
Susie laughed. “Who’s the boss now? I’m the boss. Susie’s the boss. Say it, Crushinator!”
Keith sighed. “You’re the boss.”
“I didn’t hear you,” Susie said, smirking. “Say it louder.”
“You’re the boss!”
“Don’t you forget it. I own you, Crushinator.”
Keith turned and looked at Brian, shaking his head. “Can you believe this kid?”
“Join the club,” Brian said. “She’s been owning me at video games as long as I can remember.”
“Back in the day, no one killed me on Call of Duty. No one.”
“It’s a new era,” Susie said. “Bow down and pay homage to my greatness.”
Bonecrusher rolled his eyes. “I think I’m going to go home and curl up in bed in the fetal position.”
