PART TWO
CERBERUS
“NANOTECHNOLOGY… IS DEFINED AS THE UNDERSTANDING AND CONTROL OF MATTER AT DIMENSIONS BETWEEN APPROXIMATELY I AND 100 NANOMETERS, WHERE UNQUIET PHENOMENA ENABLE NOVEL APPLICATIONS.”
PROLOGUE
RUDOLPH
VENICE, CALIFORNIA
NEW YEAR’S DAY, 2042
Emery Miller’s sixth fatal overdose killed him, an untimely death, and quite surprising.
He’d ordered SNAP, the most powerful—and expensive—of the recreational concoctions in the NMech pharmaceutical catalog. SNAP—Synaptic Neurotransmitting Acceleration Protocol—would amplify his mental pleasures. It would simulate the ecstasy of a Bach fugue, an algebraic proof, a perfect sonnet and extend the sensation into to a multi-hour reverie of almost unbearable bliss. So what if the drug was fatal? His NMech immunity subscription included an antidote to the concoction. When SNAP’s nanoagents detected death’s event horizon, it would pick apart the drug, reduce it to its organic constituents, simple wastes to be expelled. That is, as long as he paid his subscription fee. Without the pricey safeguard, Miller’s organs would be left with the vitality of pig iron.
Fifty-nine minutes before blood poured from his eyes and his heart stopped, Miller walked into an NMech pharmacy and greeted the pharmacist with a silent nod. Miller seldom spoke, save perhaps to his cat. The pharmacist said, “Welcome back, Mr. Miller. It’s a pleasure to see you.” His voice carried neither welcome nor pleasure. But Miller was wealthy enough to be accorded at least token courtesy, and as a Rudolph, he warranted special attention.
Behind the counter, sat a nanoassembler. This desk-sized factory built various compounds using prefabricated molecular pieces—carbon chains, neurotransmitters, ethanol, proteins, lipids, esters. Medicines, textiles, building materials, munitions, even food could be fabricated in an assembler. It had produced Miller’s SNAP in less than an hour and loaded the finished dose into an inhaler for the customer’s use.
The pharmacist handed Miller his purchase. “Will there be anything else?”
Miller ignored the man. He waved his datasleeve in payment, tucked the small package into a pocket, and walked out into the balmy Southern California sunset. Even in December, it was shirtsleeve weather.
Despite the day’s warmth, he shivered in anticipation of his SNAP experience. His respiration and heartbeat would slow to a nearly undetectable level. Blood at the surface of his body would plunge deep into its core to protect the vital organs. He would hover at the balance point between nirvana and death. In return for near-surrender to Thanatos, his reward would be hyper-cognition, an hours-long thunderclap of understanding.
Miller hurried eight blocks along Ocean Front Walk to his home, palmed the door open and ducked inside. An orange tabby cat curled around his legs mewling with impatient hunger. He hefted the cat and for a few seconds, the two nuzzled. Then the cat squirmed out of Miller’s arms and yowled. It was past dinnertime and appetite prevailed over affection. While the mouser ate, Miller took his own meal, if six ounces of amino acids, fatty acids, and glucose could be called a meal. It appealed to none of his senses save hunger.
He walked through his modest bungalow to a plain bedroom, furnished only with a smartbed. He programmed it to maintain his skin temperature and ensure a comfortable recovery. He neglected this step once, and upon awakening, every centimeter of his skin burned with the devil’s own pins and needles as warm blood returned to cold flesh.
Naked, trusting the smartbed to protect his skin, Miller lay down and activated the inhaler. He registered a brief tickle as billions of nanoparticles penetrated his nasal membranes. He could almost feel his brain flood with neurotransmitters. These chemical emissaries relayed messages to his body, barking orders to a fleet of corporeal agents. They slowed the nettlesome business of life support, system by biological system, putting vitality in nearly exclusive service to the mind. Miller was to be accorded a multi-hour experience of satori—Zen clarity without the fuss of zazen meditation.
At first he experienced the normal effects of SNAP. Seven seconds after inhaling, he felt his sinuses erupt and knew there would be a brilliant crimson trail where bloody mucus blanketed his face. The red stain was the source of the pejorative nickname: Rudolph. Then SNAP stilled his warming responses and he shivered. Even the hair on his body lay flat as the drug destroyed every source of thermal insulation.
But ah…the high! He was one with the cosmos—transcendent, omniscient. He danced among the stars, sang the music of the spheres and soared along simultaneous paths of quantum particles.
The coppery taste was Miller’s first warning that something was wrong. While he lay paralyzed in ecstatic thrall, blood began to puddle in his mouth. It rushed away from his core towards the skin’s superficial capillaries, a torrent at escape velocity from the body’s gravity well. It seeped from sightless eyes and deafened ears. It suppurated at a rate that would make hemorrhagic fever look like a bridal blush. Every centimeter of his skin oozed. It would be a race to see if he bled out or suffocated first. Five times before, NMech nanobots kept him alive. Today, he was swept across a biological Rubicon towards death’s cold embrace.
Still, the body is stubbornly attuned to one lodestone, the irresistible pull of survival. This most powerful of instincts punched its mighty way through the chemical interference, demanding life for an unresponsive body.
All for naught.
Emery Miller often imagined that his final thoughts would be a flashing montage of his short life’s events or that he would behold a mystical White Light proclaiming the Oneness of All. But Emery Miller’s last thought before blood saturated his thousand-thread-count silk sheets and flooded his smartbed’s sensors, before his heart stilled into silence, was to wonder, Did I remember to feed the cat?
Three thousand miles away, in the sixth-floor management suite of a Boston office building, a chief executive sat at an ebony desk custom-scaled to fit her frame. A long bank of bare windows gave the space a clinical feel that matched the businesswoman’s demeanor. She’d scattered mementos on the opposite wall thinking this is what executives did, but the diplomas, photos, and a framed, jewel-studded gold pin were as out of place in the woman’s barren office as a litter of puppies in an operating room.
A mat of dirty blond curls clung to her scalp like coiled worms. Her hands trembled, her legs kicked, and her eyelids fluttered uncontrollably. The 33-year-old face betrayed emotion for the first time in over a quarter-century. She’d pushed her body and mind beyond the limits that evolution had designed and her endocrine system rebelled.
Confused steps replaced her once-certain movement. Only days ago, her muscles had obeyed with a speed and precision beyond normal human capabilities, but now, on the rebound, she was riddled with tics and twitches. As she lost control within, she sought greater control in the world outside her.
Eva had a plan. The task was a difficult one, to create a master switch that would control every NMech product, every NMech customer. She was a scientist, so she would experiment. She would learn. She’d picked her test subjects carefully, as any good scientist would. Emery Miller was first on her list.