Probably soon.
It's two in the morning. The kids finally stopped vomiting. They've gone to sleep. They seem to be peaceful. The baby is asleep. Ellen is still pretty sick. I must have dozed off again. I don't know what woke me. I see Mae coming up the hill from behind my house. She's with the guy in the silver suit, and the rest of the SSVT team. She's walking toward me. I can see that she's smiling. I hope her news is good.
I could use some good news right now.
Julia's original email says, "We have nothing to lose." But in the end they lost everything-their company, their lives, everything. And the ironic thing is, the procedure worked. The swarm actually solved the problem they had set for it.
But then it kept going, kept evolving.
And they let it.
They didn't understand what they were doing.
I'm afraid that will be on the tombstone of the human race.
I hope it's not.
We might get lucky.
Bibliography This novel is entirely fictitious, but the underlying research programs are real. The following references may assist the interested reader to learn more about the growing convergence of genetics, nanotechnology, and distributed intelligence.
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The End