Vertebrate hosts serve as reservoirs which periodically reinoculate the nanobe into the external environment, increasing the chance of self-sustaining outbreaks.
Diagnostics: Methionine labeling is effective in culture. Free-living ßehemoth in concentrations of greater than 1.35 billion/cc exert detectable effects on soil pH, conductivity, porphyrin counts, and chlorophylls A and B (Table 2); the extent of these effects varies with baseline conditions. ßehemoth can be infered in asymptomatic patients by the presence of d-cysteine and d-cystine in the blood (unsuccessful attempts to cleave bound sulfur sometimes stereoisomerizes the molecule).
Present Status: See Figure 3. 4,800km2sterilized at last report. 426,000km2 under immediate threat.
Ecological Trajectory: If current trends continue, present models suggest long-term competitive exclusion of all competing life forms between 62°N and S latitude, due to monopolization and transformation of nutrient base. Ultimate fate of polar components unknown at this time. Sensitivity analysis generates 95 % confidence limits of 50 to 94 years for EL90.
Recommendations: Continue ongoing efforts to alter present trajectory. Allocate Fallback Options budget as follows:
1. Orbitaclass="underline" 25%
2. Cheyenne: 5%
3. M.A. Ridge: 50%
4. Metamorph: 20%
Anemone
She'd become a scavenger in her own home.
Sou-Hon Perreault virtually lived in her office now. It held everything of importance: a window on the world. A purpose. A sanctuary.
She still had to eat, though, and use the toilet. Once or twice a day she'd venture from her cave and see to life's necessities. Most of the time she didn't have to deal with Martin; his contracts took him into the field more often than not.
But now—oh God, why now of all times? — he was in the living room when she came back.
He was digging around in the aquarium, his back turned. She almost got past.
"The male died," he said.
"What?"
He turned to face her. A damselfish, pale and stiff, weighted the dip net in his hand. One milky eye stared blindly through the mesh.
"He looks like he's been dead for a while," Martin said.
She looked past him to the aquarium. Brown algae filmed the glass. Inside, the glorious anemone was shrunken and frayed; its tentacles twitched feebly in the current.
"Jesus, Marty. You couldn't even be bothered to clean the tank?"
"I just got home. I've been in Fairbanks for the past two weeks."
She'd forgotten.
"Sou, the prescriptions aren't working. I really think we should consider wiring you up with a therapist."
"I'm fine," she said automatically.
"You're not fine. I've looked into it already, we can afford it. It'll be available around the clock, whenever you need it."
"I don't trust therapists."
"Sou, it'd be a part of you. It already is, in a way, they just haven't—isolated it yet. And it runs pathways right to your temporal lobe, so you can talk to it as easily as you can talk to anyone."
"You want to cut out a part of my brain."
"No, Sou, just rewire it. Did you know the brain can support over a hundred fully sentient personalities? It doesn't affect sensory or motor performance at all. This would just be one, and it'd take up such a small amount of space—"
"My husband, the walking brochure."
"Sou—"
"It's multiple personality disorder, Martin. I don't care what cute name they give it these days, and I don't care how many of our friends live happy fulfilling lives because they hear voices in their heads. It's sick."
"Sou, please. I love you. I'm only trying to help."
"Then get out of my way."
She ran for shelter.
Sou-Hon. Are you there?
"Yes."
Good. Stand by.
Static. A brief spiderweb of connections and intercepts, orange filaments proliferating across a continent. Then no visual front and center, darkness everywhere else.
Go ahead.
"Lenie?" Perreault said.
"So. I wondered when they'd get around to this."
"Get around to what?"
"Hijacking my visor. Sou-Hon, right?"
"Right."
"They got that right, at least."
Perreault took a grateful breath. "You okay?"
"I got out. Thanks partly to you, I guess. That was you in the 'fly, wasn't it? At Yankton?"
"That was me."
"Thanks."
"Don't thank me. Thank—"
A damselfish flashed across Perreault's mind, safe in a nest of stinging tentacles.
"…anemone," she finished softly.
Silence on the line. Then: "Thank an enemy. That makes a lot of sense."
Perreault shook her head. "Sea anemone. It's this undersea ambush predator, it eats fish but sometimes—"
"I know what a sea anemone is, Suze. So what?"
"Everything's been perverted, somehow. The 'flies, the matchmakers— the whole system's done a one-eighty, it's protecting the very thing it was supposed to attack. You see?"
"Not really. But I was never that big on metaphors." A soft laugh. "I still can't get used to being a starfish."
Perreault wondered but didn't ask.
"This anemone of yours," Clarke said. "It kicks ass. It's powerful."
"Yes."
"So why is it so fucking stupid?"
"What do you mean?"
"It doesn't seem to have any kind of focus, you know? I saw the threads—it described me a thousand different ways and then it just went with the one that stuck. I don't know how many head cases it threw at me, through my watch, my visor—they even started coming at me out of vending machines, did you know that? — and it wasn't until I stopped talking to anyone else that it settled on you. Any haploid would've known better than to audition most of those assholes, but your anemone is just—random. Why is that?"
"I don't know."
"Didn't you ever wonder?"
She had, of course. But somehow it hadn't seemed to matter that much.
"Maybe that's why you made the cut," Clarke said.
"Why?"
"You're a good soldier. You need a cause, you follow orders, you don't ask embarrassing questions." A whisper of static. Then: "Why are you helping me, Sou? You've seen the threads."
"You said the threads were bullshit," Perreault said.
"Most of them are. Almost all. But they blew up Channer. They must have known the kind of collateral that would bring down, and they did it anyway. They burned the Strip. And the life down there on the rift, it was—God knows what was down there. What I brought back."
"I thought your blood tested clean."
"Tests only see what they're looking for. You haven't answered my question."
And still she didn't, for a very long time.
"Because they tried to hammer you down," she said at last. "And you're still here."
"Huh." A long breath whispered through the headset. "You ever have a dog, Sou-Hon? As a pet?"
"No."
"You know what happens when you keep a dog locked away from every living thing, except you visit once a day and kick the shit out of him?"