“They told him this?”
“No, of course not. But the microbots don’t eat it, so…” Suddenly Scott’s voice shifted. Across the phone link, I could sense his body stiffening as he changed the subject: “Look, Sam, I’ve got a business to run here. I’m offering the first North American rights to Max Porlock’s novel. You buying, or what?”
I had read the first four pages of Nano Nanette, and so far it hadn’t grabbed me. Porlock’s prose was clubfooted. His characters were made of the same thing as his manuscript: cardboard. What fascinated me about this novel was its format. I was starting to get big ideas about this microbot process. It could revolutionize the publishing industry, and I was the first one to see it.
My publishing house shells out plenty of money for shipping costs. And the unsold books take up warehouse space, which costs more money. Now I envisioned the future, a future with no books at all. Instead of printing thick paperback volumes, we could issue our novels on thin sheets of cardboard. A single nine-by-twelve rectangle would contain the text of an entire novel. Hell, why stop at novels? If Max Porlock could manufacture his microbots in a full spectrum of designer colors, our publishing firm could integrate them into illustrated cookbooks, art volumes, even children’s pop-up books. I was sure that I could pitch this to the editorial board.
“Count me in, Scott,” I told the agent. “I’ll send you a contract for the licensing rights to your client’s micro-bot process, and—”
“No deal, Sam.” The chuckle was gone from Scott’s voice. “My client was very specific about this. He refuses to sell or lease the rights to his nanotech hardware. He doesn’t want to be known for his tech work; he has his heart set on being a best-selling novelist. I’m offering you a deal on Porlock’s novel, and that’s all You interested?”
Frankly, no. Judging from the first four pages, Nano Nanette wasn’t bestseller material. But Scott Richards had several top-flight authors in his stable—authors who should be sending their best work to me—and I didn’t want to antagonize him. Tactfully, I said: “I haven’t finished reading Porlock’s novel yet, Scott. I’ll get back to you.”
“Great. Please understand, my client’s microbots are designed to perform multiple functions. He refuses to sign any licensing deals that would confine his little brainchildren to a single industry, such as book production.”
Scott hung up. Now I was back to square one: the production gang upstairs had made it clear to me that I had to acquire a novel, any novel, between now and five o’clock… or else my arse would be sparse. Maybe Nano Nanette wouldn’t look so bad on my midlist after all. The cut on my thumb was tingling. I ignored it.
I picked up the cardboard, and started reading Porlock s novel from where I’d left off. Page five was pretty good, but… aha! A typo, at last. Halfway down page five, Porlock had left out the period at the end of a sentence. Well, at least it proved that Wonder Boy was human after all. I could forgive a few glitches; Max Porlock must have written an incredibly complex piece of software when he programmed all his microbots to spell out the dot-matrix text of his novel. As I read page five, I glanced into the mirror: on the backside of the cardboard, all the tiny microbots from page four were scurrying into new positions to become page six. Places, everybody!
I turned over the sheet of cardboard, and kept reading. Aha! Midway down page six, another period was missing. This fellow Porlock was beginning to slip. And his prose wasn’t especially compelling, either.
I turned the sheet again. Page seven was waiting for me, right on schedule. I kept reading. Two-thirds of the way down the page, I found a typo that I’d never seen before. There was supposed to be a colon here, in the middle of a sentence. The upper dot of the colon was present and accounted for, but the lower dot had gone AWOL. Almost as if…
Wait a minute. The bottom half of a colon is just a period. Ever since page five, a period’s worth of microbots were missing from every page of Porlock’s manuscript. Was there a glitch in the programming, or…
I backflipped the sheet of cardboard, scrolling backwards to page one. The first page of Porlock s novel had been error-free the first time I read it. Now I started again.
Halfway down the page, a period was missing.
So it wasn’t a glitch in the microbots’ programming.
Some of the microbots had left the page.
I didn’t want Scott Richards blaming me for losing his client’s precious robots. I picked up Porlock’s “manuscript,” the sheet of cardboard, and started stuffing it back into the same manila envelope that it—
OW! Another paper cut. I looked at my right hand to see if it was bleeding.
A thin trickle of red was seeping out of the cut on my hand.
At the same time, a thin trickle of black was seeping into the cut on my hand.
I swatted the cut with my left hand. The trickle of microbots regrouped, and scurried back to their places on the manuscript. But some of the little buggers had slipped into the cut on my hand. I ought to…
No.
I took the manuscript out of the envelope. I had scrolled back to the first page, but now—as if anticipating my needs—the text had skipped ahead to where I’d left off on page seven.
Somehow the reading was effortless. My eyes scanned each line rapidly, unbidden by my mind. A couple of letters were missing. I knew where they were: their component microbots had slipped off the page, and they’d gone into business inside my bloodstream.
I was reading page eight. This time I didn’t even need to turn the page; when my eyes reached the bottom line, the text on the same page gently rippled and shifted to become the text of the following page. Again, a couple of letters were missing.
I was feeling steadily warmer. What was it that Scott had told me? The microbots were made from self-replicating hydrocarbon molecules. Some kind of… alkali? alkaloid?
Alkanethiols, whispered a voice in my ear. No; it wasn’t inside my ear. It was inside my head. The alkanethiols feed on protein chains, don’t they? Yes, we do, the voice assured me. Editors are not the world’s healthiest people, but even we editors have a few proteins in our bloodstreams. By now, the microscopic robots in my bloodstream must be replicating quite merrily.
Aren’t hydrocarbons poisonous, though? Yes, we are, said the voice in-side my blood again. This time it sounded like a chorus of thousands. No, millions…
Quickly, I flung aside the cardboard containing the microbots. My right hand, unbidden, picked up the cardboard again. My left hand snatched it, and threw it out of my right hand’s reach…
Suddenly I discovered that I knew the entire text of Max Porlock’s novel Nano Nanette, even though I’d read only the first eight pages. Something was altering my brain’s neural pathways and memory cells, removing unimportant bits of information such as my address and my ATM number, and replacing these with vitally important data such as the complete 386-page text of Max Porlock’s novel Nano Nanette. What a terrible book! The plot was mediocre. The characters were contrived. The dialogue was lifeless. Altogether, the book was… was…