Nano Bytes

DeanCMoore Time Out

The deer looked up from licking the mud at the sudden blur of movement. The jackal was nearly at her now, coming straight on across the parched field. The doe’s entire being was telling it to flee. But it held its ground. Nowhere to hide really. It had made the mistake of straying too far into the open. Not like it had had any choice. The parched, cracked soil beneath its feet could barely support this one recessed bit of water.

The wolf pounced, confident in the outcome that was never to be.

The deer yawned, exposing its fangs, and with an effortless flick of its neck dispatched the coyote. Its dupe’s one yelp swallowed up by the endless barren landscape as readily as the rain. The gray and black coated predator’s windpipe had been crushed and its head half–severed.

Peter popped his head up from his camouflaged outpost, barely ten yards from the deer. He’d dug a trench for himself shaped like a wine barrel, making sure to keep the «lid of the barrel,” the circular patch of mud hardened to cement–like consistency, above his head. And his stink in. That wolf didn’t need any pointers on what was going on; let him think he had it all figured out.

Climbing out of his earthen casket, Peter raised his fists to the sky in an outcry of joy. «So you think you’re smarter than me, do you, little doggie? Quel surprise.»

He pet his deer, «You’re quite the con artist, pal. Couldn’t have done it without you.» Unsheathing the Bowie knife strapped to his leg, Peter commenced skinning the wolf.

«Careful,” the deer said. «I need to lap its blood. Tired getting my salt ration out of clay. Besides, I’m nearly as parched as this desert.»

After peeling back the hide, Peter obligingly leaned back so the deer could drink its fill. One thing about these codependent relationships, they didn’t exactly hinge on loyalty so much as mutual benefit. Wouldn’t do any good to make the deer resentful by making him wait until Peter had had his share.

Finished drinking, the doe craned her head toward the sun. «Curse this heat.»

«Don’t you start. It’s not a desert, and you know it. I’m not so foolish as to steer us into a real wasteland. Just part of the con. I only hope you can remember where we put the holographic projector, or we’ll be stuck here for real, the foils of our own trap to draw him out.»

The deer took a step back so Peter could do his work. «I suppose you’re going to make me carry those strips of meat once the sun has had its way with them.»

«We’re hardly going to wait for them to dry out.»

«Lovely. Even more weight to haul.»

«You never stop angling for a better deal, do you? I swear, as plotting and scheming as you are, you’d think you were the trap setter.» Lucky for him the deer wasn’t quite that high functioning. And her lack of hands and opposable thumbs put her at a distinct disadvantage come time to refurbish any pre End Times tech they stumbled upon. He may be the last person remaining alive on this Godforsaken world, but that just made everything not entirely consumed by the holocaust part of his bounty.

Maybe bounty wasn’t quite the right word. The animals were getting harder to find, predator and prey alike. He’d be a vegetarian soon at this rate. Providing he could find some device that could make anything growing digestible to him. Most of the more edible plants were long gone too. If he could learn to eat bark, that could buy him some time.

A few hours later, he’d salvaged as much of that coyote as he could. The animal’s blood and stink was all over him, making him gag. His drying skin felt stretched in places, crimped in others. «Some more blood for you to lick off,” he said to the deer, standing and glancing down at himself. «No rush. Can’t hurt to have a predator’s funk all over me.»

The two of them meandered to the edge of the «endless» desert, another hundred yards or so away. At least he thought that’s where he’d stashed the holo projector. The damn thing was so good at concealing itself, he was already down on his hands feeling around for it, overturning every rock and cracked piece of mud.

«For a plotter and a schemer, you’d think you’d have figured out a less trying way of crawling out of your own delusions,” the deer said.

«Yeah, what’s with that, I wonder?» There. He’d found it. He picked up the nearly perfectly round piece of red clay, and squeezed.

The desert disappeared and in its place was the world he’d left behind. Not too much more enticing, all things considered. The high chaparral country was nearly as dry and as lonely looking. The half dead shrubs and squat trees mostly rubbed him the wrong way whenever he brushed up against them. Got rid of the dead skin cells real good though, which cut down on the need for bathing. Mindful of the painful grooming in store for him, he sucked in a deep breath and took his first step forward.

«I guess we’re heading towards the Airstream,” the doe said, absently overturning a rock with a front hoof. «Whose idea was it to stick a mobile home on a piece of land that makes it visible in all directions for hundreds of miles?»

«Maybe eyesores were all the rage once upon a time. And nah, definitely not headed towards the mobile home. The other way.»

«We keep going that way, we’ll be in real desert soon enough.»

«That’s the idea. Supposed to be an airplane graveyard out there. Hoping I can get one of them running.»

«Oh, no. Bad enough I have to figure out how to pivot my backside inside of a mobile home, but this deer don’t do planes. Nope, not enough bucks in the world to get me to gallop onto that thing.»

«Up high we might spy us a piece of land worth spending some time on. You might even find one of those bucks you keep dreaming about. Just don’t smile at him. Could put a real crimp in his self–confidence.»

«Fine. But if what we see from above just traumatizes us more…»

«Yeah, yeah. I’ll crash us into the nearest cliff,” Peter reassured her.

«You better. I’m overdue for a mercy killing.»

«Is this the best you can do, after all this time?» Sasha said, staring into the doctor’s eyes with a look meant to scare his soul back to heaven, where he might obtain the answers he needed for a more authoritative response. Her tone accomplished just what she hoped it would; registering like a knife to the belly, it nearly caused him to double over.

«I’m afraid so,” he said. He was a short, fat, round man. He’d make a hell of a beach ball, which Sasha was all too tempted to kick inside her son’s cage so he could play with it.

She returned her eyes to the observation window showing her son, Peter, in his staging area. The therapy room was meant to be necessary only so long as Peter needed that reality more than this one. She supposed she couldn’t blame him, considering what her reality was like. She’d nearly checked herself into this place herself on more than one occasion.

Her sixteen year old son’s body was lean and sculpted and tanned, not to mention fully exposed with just the loincloth to cover him. His poignant green eyes at once piercing and dreamy. He was marked up like an Indian with his war paint on now that he had the blood of the coyote smeared all over him. He was at that age where he was half boy, half man. Only… «He’s still age regressed.»

«Yes, but now he’s sixteen going on twelve. Last time you checked in he was sixteen going on eight. So we’re making progress. I’m sorry it’s not fast enough for you.»

She caught the you thankless bitch connotation of his voice. Figured she deserved it. But damn it; it had been nearly a year. Would he ever come back to her? «What do you suggest I do?» Sasha asked.

«Go back to your daily routines. Try to find in them something which might entice him back.»

She snorted. «You’d think that would be longing to be with his parents, but, as it is…» Her voice trailed off, lost in a fog of self–recriminations.

«It’s not your fault. Ours is a harsh world. Few adults are coping properly. It’s no surprise most of the children don’t make it. No way to shelter them the way we’d like. And not sheltering them, leads to this more often than not,” he said, pointing to the glass wall that was camouflaged from Peter’s side.

She stared into the doc’s gray bloodshot eyes one last time, registered the empathy he seemed to genuinely feel for her. Maybe that was all she needed from him for today. Some sign he actually gave a damn. Then she turned and left.

Sasha made sure when she exited the underground bunker not to reveal her position. That’s the last thing she needed was to have their little oasis in this desert of the soul taken from them.

«You took your sweet time?» her husband said. She wondered what he looked like anymore under all the camouflage paint. It had been years since she’d seen him without it. Even the square jaw and bird beak she remembered from once upon a time found their lines softened and altered by the makeup. The horror of the scars hidden by the swaths of black and gray grease following similarly irregular lines across his face.

«Come on,” he said. «Let’s get our asses out of here. You know the drill. Never too long in one place.»

«Don’t you even want to know about your son?»

His look bore into her with such intensity she stopped wondering why he hadn’t asked her to remove her face paint, not once in however many years, to say nothing of her camou fatigues, so he could get a better look at her. Those x-ray eyes saw clear through to her soul, layer by layer, and when they hit bottom and came up dry, he probably figured what was the point of getting her to peel it all back. There was nothing to get closer to. She hadn’t just disappeared to the naked eye on the surface where once was a pretty, smoothly complexioned, round face with a shaved head and big brown eyes; she’d disappeared even to herself. What was left of her soul was inside Peter now. And that’s why she couldn’t let go.

«What son?» he said. «That’s your fantasy. You do what you need to carry on. Just don’t expect me to play along each time.»

Sasha realized he was just being true to himself. Whoever couldn’t hack it out here was dead to him. You were either a survivor or you were nothing. She supposed he kept himself hard and heartless because to get in touch with his feelings wouldn’t exactly be adaptive out here. Their bodies were no less steeled, what with being on the run nearly twenty–four seven.

They darted to the nearest blind in their urban jungle, an overturned jeep. Lebanon, after decades of urban warfare, bombed out, with no building entirely intact, never looked this bad. Of course, they didn’t have robospiders to deal with. All spawned from «Mother.» A suspension bridge stretching across the San Francisco Bay. They had called it The Golden Gate once upon a time. Its value to their world was more priceless than golden. Upgraded to repair itself, it spawned robospiders in response to earthquakes, hurricanes, terrorist attacks of all sorts, able to squirt «spider silk» in the form of metal strands and solder, or asphalt. Except something had gone wrong with the AI. Now it just kept spitting out babies. And those babies were no longer solely interested in maintaining the bridge. They mostly wanted to supply «Mother» with more feedstock to keep making more babies. When they weren’t busy razing humans for getting in their way.

The irony, or more appropriately speaking, the irony of ironies, the day the bridge went AWOL, abandoning its original mission, was the day someone had upgraded it to provide an energy shield that was bombproof. It was deemed the ultimate antiterrorist device. Usually claims of «ultimate» were overblown. Not in this case.

The rest was history.

She laughed inside her head somewhere, too conditioned to make disruptive noises like that on the surface. What had brought humanity to its knees in the end wasn’t a Terminator AI, some super–sentient computer with planet–wide reach; it was a God damn suspension bridge.

All there was to do now was wait for Lawrence to build up the nerve he needed to leave his wife’s side and do what he did best. Bronco ride the beast the size of a three story building. You’d think he wouldn’t need to take a moment after all this time; he must have ridden hundreds of robospiders over the years. But each time was a little more traumatizing than the last, so each time he had to clear all that crap from his mind, start afresh. She envied him his rebirthing exercise. She could never forget anything.

By the third deep breath he was on the move, climbing one of the spider’s legs faster than a cat burglar climbs the outside of a rich man’s home to get to the safe on the third story.

Once he was in the «saddle,” he quickly popped the casing in front of him and hacked his way in, using the only weapons of any value in this war, a screw driver, a pliers, and a few other workman’s tools from his tool belt. The «saddle» was part of the spider’s cephalothorax, and situated just behind the brainpan. The spider’s head came replete with electronic eyes.

«I’m in!» he shouted, indicating he had control of the spider, so she could head on up.

She didn’t have the heart to tell him, his hellacious Coney Island ride that never settled down until the beast was «broken» never came to an end on account of anything he did. It was Sasha, hacking the spider from a safe distance off that allowed him to play he–man. She couldn’t deny him his coping mechanism of being her brave provider, without whom she couldn’t survive a day out here. If he didn’t have that, he’d crumble like a house of cards.

It wasn’t like she had room in her head to pity him. That space was reserved for all the self–hate and more she could crowd in there. Most of it arising from the realization that someone out there had hacked their bridge a long long time ago. Modified its coding to turn it into this. A mama spider intent on turning out baby spiders until the end of time. It had not been a fluke accident as they’d all thought once upon a time. They should have figured as much when the spiders being spawned weren’t merely adapted to procuring bridge replacement parts. The spiders possessed additional modifications indicating that the mini–fab factories adhering to the underside of the bridge were cranking out the appropriately weaponized parts. That was one too many tweaks to pin on one lightning strike, or whatever had caused the malfunction, if it had been just fate involved. Surely at least some of these defects in the manufacture would have been less than adaptive.

Among the robospiders’ many additional features, post the hack, were the ability to lob spit in the form of acid at great distances and with exquisite precision, strong enough to dissolve a person on contact. They could also squirt ignitable liquid; they used the torrents of fire to gut buildings and to protect themselves from humans hiding in their blind spots. Not that they had many of those; their eyes had been adapted to see along the entire electromagnetic spectrum. It didn’t take too much imagination to divine that these recently evolved skills were but minor tweaks to their original bridge maintenance capabilities. She’d watched them make full use of their repertoire many a time, including taking prisoners by binding their arms and legs with the metal threads the robospiders could also excrete. Just what they were doing with those captives, she was afraid to find out.

A bad guy, at least, who had fathered this brave new world, gave her someone concrete to hate and someone that might well yield to her actions over time, certainly a lot more readily than fate ever would.

Only…

She had never been smart enough to track the guy down, or overwrite his coding. Thus the growing pool of self–hate she drowned in most nights.

Maybe if there were other hackers out there, and she could just find them. Maybe working together… they could each take a piece of the code, a segment suiting their specialty, until they managed to come up with something a good deal more robust and resistant to Mr. X’s overwriting. Then, maybe, she’d only have the guilt over what she’d pulled over on her husband all these years to get past. Keeping him infantilized worse than her son, Peter, no less regressed in his own way. Lawrence deserved better.

Wiping her eyes, she stuffed her laptop in her backpack, zipped and shouldered the satchel. Then she traded in one big picture view for another as she climbed the spider’s leg to get up to her husband waiting for her to take the ride of a lifetime with her. The one where he’d do the monster mash and battle it out with any other spiders coming his way. They’d barely survive, of course, explaining the accrual of battle scars over the years. But she had to keep it real so he didn’t grow suspicious. So the hero myth he spun about himself didn’t unravel. And what the hell, it was one less spider. Never mind that the parts would just be recycled to make more spiders, meaning they were accomplishing nothing. He never once voiced any such lament. Maybe he kept this insight at the periphery of his awareness because it challenged his sense of self–importance.

With her in the saddle behind him and her arms wrapped around him, Lawrence set the robospider in motion, straight up the side of the nearest skyscraper. The robospider on the roof was waiting for them. Others were already bounding their way from the vertical surfaces of the nearby buildings. They seemed able to sense when one of them had gone rogue. Soon she and Lawrence would feel as if at the bottom of a pile of tackled bodies on a football field. Only the limbs wouldn’t just be wriggling on top of them. They’d be doing their damnedest to slice and dice them into chunked meat.

«Sasha!»

Sasha craned her head behind her in the direction of the female voice. In time to see the leaping spider descending on her and Lawrence. Its eight legs with their pointy tips poised to make human shish kebabs of them. The robot arachnid was washed away in a torrent of fire before it could carry out its intent. «Next time go with the acid,” Sasha said, noticing Monica rode her spider with an enviable level of skill even Lawrence had yet to master.

«And risk raining acid down on you?»

«Why not? I could do with a good face peel.»

Monica stretched a thin lipped smile across her face as she took the lead, leaping over Lawrence with her spider. «We’ve got to get to the roof,” she said.

«Why?» Lawrence asked. «The cries are coming from the fifth floor.»

«It’s a decoy,” Monica shouted back at him, before turning her spider to face him directly, while walking backwards with it, continuing to head them toward the roof. «They’re getting better at setting traps for humans. No, word is, the human prisoners are being taken to the roof.»

Monica didn’t wait for their consent. She rotated her spider yet again to spearhead their ascent, with or without Lawrence and Sasha. Tired dodging the spitballs from the robospider on the roof, she shot one of her own, taking him out. The arachnid sputtered and smoldered before toppling over, hoping to use its mass and girth to take out its attackers in one final stab of revenge. It might have succeeded, but Lawrence and Monica were both too good at controlling the spiders they were seated on.

Lawrence used the pointed tips on two of the arachnid’s legs at his disposal to lance the brainpans of two spiders that had managed to reach them ahead of the others, taking them out in mid–leap, when they were most vulnerable. For whatever reason, they needed to finish a leap before engaging whatever weapons they wished to use. Probably just an oversight in the code writing and a loophole that’d likely be closed sooner or later.

They heard Monica scream from the rooftop, the yell conveying horror, fear, and the fury of hell’s last survivor in one. «You think she’s finally gotten herself into a situation she can’t handle?» Lawrence said.

«Doubtful. All the same, I’d appreciate you getting us there in time to see the show.»

«If the spiders want to imprison us in these towers, I say let them. Lock me in with some TV and running water, and I’ll take the unpaid retirement. A pair of fortysomes, we don’t have the reflexes to last much longer. Monica though and…»

He was about to say Peter, before he stopped himself. He and Monica were about the same age. So, Lawrence had a soft spot after all; it was probably just a tumor in his brain from which the dreams of a better tomorrow originated, one where Monica and Peter were somehow happily married and having the time of their lives turning their endless robo war into one big rodeo for one huge family of grandkids.

At least he was content to entertain these dreams in his sleep, as the daydreaming could well cause Monica her life. Lawrence reached the rim of the roof moments later, using the time Sasha had taken to figure out what’s what to his advantage.

The second they were over the roof it was clear she had no idea at all what was what.

There was no contingent of spiders to greet Lawrence and Sasha on the rooftop in overwhelming numbers, sort of what they’d come to expect. Instead, Monica was surrounded by the human prisoners, freed now that they had been modified. They were trying to take Monica down. She was fending them off only half–heartedly, slowed as much by the tears in her eyes which blurred her vision, as by the thoughts of killing her own kind.

One of her human opponents came at her on eight robotic legs. Another tried to lase her with his hollow bionic eyes, converted to leaser weapons. She deflected the lasers with the shined–to–a-mirror’s-reflectiveness tips of two of her spider’s legs. She kicked away the human spider on eight legs with another of her spider’s legs each time he tried to climb up her.

The two pregnant looking males, their bellies swollen like women in their ninth month with child, kept squirting fire and acid at her respectively along throats and out mouths that had been modified. Monica fended off the blasts with metal plates yanked off the rooftop air–conditioners, using another two of her spider’s legs.

Lawrence emitted a shriek that startled Sasha out of the trance she’s slipped into, hypnotized by the unfolding horror. He painted the entire scene with a swatch of fire extending from their robospider. Only Monica, perched high up on her spider was spared. The humans on the ground didn’t stand a chance, modified or not.

Monica turned at him with fire of her own, only for now it was just up in her eyes. Sasha thought for certain they were but a heartbeat away from feeling the flames of her robospider.

«Come on!» Lawrence shouted. «There are still others who can be saved.» It was only then that Monica and Sasha even noticed the assembly line in progress against the far walls. Humans laid out on assembly lines. The robospiders popped over the rim of the building just long enough to deposit one of their partially cocooned victims, bound by metal strands that cut into their flesh. The strands were used just sparingly enough to keep the humans from wriggling free.

As the conveyor belt moved along they were modified according to which rolling ramp they were on. There were ramps along each of the four riser walls. The scene was easy to overlook amid the confusion as the ones doing the modifying were themselves human, or at least humanoid. At first glance they looked like little more than captive and cowering humans standing as far back from the conflict as they could get.

Lawrence busied himself with snipping the lines about the partly cocooned humans, using the tips of his robospider’s legs. Monica, for her part, had calmed down enough to keep the humanoid surgeons away from the assembly line where Lawrence was doing his work, or they’d have kept right on working on their victims. Staring at them with their hollow bionic eyes, cutting away with their cold steel manipulators where once they had hands.

Sasha climbed down from the spider, ripped open her backpack and pulled out a pouch of syringes. They were usually used to sedate those dying an otherwise painful death. She used the syringes instead to take out the humanoid surgeons, putting them to sleep for now until she and the others of her kind could determine what to do with them. The surgeons were so lost in their work, few gave much resistance because few even noticed her.

As the humans on the conveyor belts were cut free of their bonds, many made it to the surgeons ahead of her and gave them a piece of their minds, ending them with the same finality that Lawrence had shown earlier.

«No!» Monica screamed. She rushed over and dangled two of the vengeful humans up off the ground, slipping the tips of two of her robo spiders’ legs under their pants belts.

«Everyone stop!» Sasha shouted, seeing Lawrence redirecting his attention away from the cocooned victims toward the remaining surgeons. He’d already pinned one against the wall and spit asphalt over him, making a permanent bas–relief of him. And was preparing to do the same with another one he was dangling off the ground.

«Lawrence,” Sasha said, «like it or not there are three species now, and you’re holding one of the emissaries from the one species that might well be able to broker a peace between the other two species.»

«You’ve lost your mind yet again.» Lawrence spat out the bile rising in his throat. He pinned the victim he was dangling against the wall and was about to signal his robospider to spit asphalt on him when Sasha came between Lawrence’s victim and him.

«Maybe you think there’s some other way we can win this?» she said.

«The spiders don’t have brains you can reason with, just programming.»

«Maybe at one time,” Sasha said. «Now, I’m not so sure. Hell, if we can’t broker a peace, then we can at least turn the humanoids against our enemy. They still have more in common with us.»

«So you say,” Lawrence said, undeterred, sidestepping her and blasting the latest victim in his hands with asphalt and making a bas–relief of him.

Sasha emitted a primal scream. «Why must you be so inflexible! It was this very same unwillingness to adapt that sent our son to the sanitarium.»

Lawrence seemed to come out of his fugue some at the mention of Peter. He released the third victim he’d scooped up intending to bas–relief.

«Give Monica and I a chance to get through to the humanoids,” Sasha said, noticing that Monica was using her own robospider to cocoon the humanoids and the determined vengeful humans both, just enough to put them out of commission for now without hurting them.

Lawrence took a second to take in the big picture. «Yeah, sure, one hell is as good as another.»

«I don’t understand how even after all this time…»

«We don’t think they’ll ever come out of it,” the doctor said.

«Ask anyone and they’ll tell you, Sasha and Lawrence were two of the toughest people they ever knew,” Robin said, her eyes glued to the therapy room where her parents were battling for their lives against giant robotic spiders, or so they thought.

«Maybe that’s the problem,” the doc suggested. «Hard as nails, just not pliable enough to deal with what this world had to throw at them.»

«But our world is a relative utopia compared to that post–apocalyptic hell.»

«One man’s heaven…»

She regarded the Native American doctor, towering nearly a foot above her, his hair braided tightly and running nearly to his waist. His ripped physique barely hidden behind a stretched tee shirt and peel–them–on–and-off jeans. He must have figured one look at his contours was more placating than a typical doctor’s smock and stethoscope. He was gorgeous enough to be a supermodel. You could put his face under a microscope and look for hours without finding a flaw. Nano–enhanced, of course. They all were.

«What do you think really triggered this?» Robin asked.

The doc shrugged. «Legions of nanobots swimming around inside our bodies… You had to imbibe a cocktail once upon a time, tailored to whatever enhancements you wanted. Nowadays the air is so saturated with them there’s no way to be rid of them, to be a luddite any more than to adopt the Amish solution and retreat into a more primitive place in time. Save for what you see here of course,” he said, gesturing to the glass wall. «Some people can’t handle the sense of their minds and bodies being invaded. No way to know if they are who they are because they’re being true to themselves, or because they were hacked. About five percent go mad. The hospitals are filled with rooms just like this.»

She shook her head. «And my brother, Peter?»

«He might be the result of a recessive gene he inherited from both his parents, one you were spared. It’s too early to tell if he’ll come out of it or not.»

«But the longer he spends inside…»

«You hear of people coming out of it after decades locked in rooms like these, but yes, as a rule, the longer they’re in, the less likelihood they’ll ever…»

«Thanks, Doc. I trust you’ll apply the latest breakthroughs as they come on line, whatever it takes.»

«That’s more a matter for the courts than for me. The tide ebbs and flows with that one. This is all paid for with taxpayer’s money. Every once in a while people get tired coddling the weak–minded. Its deal with the here and now or else.»

When Robin made a pained face, he added, «As long as they don’t slash our funding too soon, in all likelihood future generations of nano will be able to procure the same escapes for them far more cheaply in the comfort of your home.»

«How’s that for irony?»

«Their minds’ll have to be severed from their bodies, of course, to keep them from tearing your place up. But maidbots to attend them once they’re confined to a wheelchair are cheap enough.»

Robin smiled ruefully and walked away in the direction of the elevator.

Once she was outside the hospital she barely had time to duck a car careening into her. Its anti–gravity mechanism had failed. Cars weren’t allowed on the roads anymore; too much damn wear and tear on the infrastructure. Flying around overhead on a three–dimensional grid of invisible freeway lanes only the vehicles’ onboard navs could detect, there was nothing to damage or wear out. The electric cars didn’t pollute, didn’t make noise, and flowed like the lifeblood of the city through transparent arteries.

She made her way to the café across the street where she was meeting her boyfriend. The waiter pulled out her seat for her. «An apéritif?» he said, scooting in her chair.

«Screw that. You can bring the entire bottle of cabernet.»

He smiled. «Getting off night shift?»

«This might be your dawn, but it’s my twilight.»

He bowed and went to get her the bottle of wine.

Robin cued the nano inside her to stand down, to not neutralize the effects of the liquor. And she asked the little buggers to migrate away from the synapses in her brain for a moment so she could see things as they actually were. Her recent visit to the hospital seemed an ample enough spur to do just that. Several of the animated billboards were out of commission. And there were a lot more street people, of course, begging for twenty dollar bills, this generation’s idea of ‘got a dime to spare?’ And it was snowing, frigid, and blustery. The old snow, pressed up against the sidewalk was brown and compacted and rather ugly. Okay, she thought, restore my picture perfect day, if you please. Only keep the falling snow. Just lose the brown compacted ice. And I don’t want to feel cold. Trying to be seductive under a hundred pounds of clothing is more challenge than I’m up for this morning.

The nano doctored her perception of the outside world even as she turned her attention inward to focus more closely on the molecular design she was working on with the nano’s 3D HD modeling abilities to assist her. Neural processing accelerated ten–fold was what allowed her to visualize with this level of detail and to engineer new biotech wonders at superhuman speeds. Currently up at bat, a protein molecule she was turning over in her mind’s eye that might well help make the biological parts of their bodies every bit as indestructible as the nano–parts.

A musky scent startled her back to the here and now. The wine bottle the waiter had left for her had been opened and a glass poured; it smelled paradoxically like fresh blueberries. But it was the distinctive, familiar manly aroma which had caught her attention.

Nolan was walking upwind towards her along the sidewalk on this side of the street. As boyfriends went, he wasn’t half bad. His mop of unruly platinum blond hair crowded his forehead like a forest in autumn encroaching on the clear blue twin lakes of those eyes. He was the picture perfect Swede, including the fair skin. His six–foot–two stature fit for a Rodin sculpture, down to the iron–hardness of his muscles. But the Harlequin book cover look was the first clue; he was a droid. The nano could make people nearly as beautiful these days, but it couldn’t lend them such an air–brushed look. The microscopic sized bots were married to human biology, after all, not silicon.

Her girlfriends gave her hell for her choice of beau. Screw them. He was the only one who could keep up with her in the bedroom. He could play the part of a soulmate, forever in sync with her, finishing her thoughts, with the push of a button. Or she could just as easily dial up his abrasiveness if she got tired of her perfect little life. In the end, real people exhibited no less programmed behavior. But they were just that much harder to re–program. All the nano seemed to do was make them more fully who they were, like erasing the last vestiges of self–doubt from a complete egomaniac. No, that path wasn’t for her.

Nolan kissed her and took his seat opposite her on the round table for two. They were close enough to keep pecking one another by just leaning into each other slightly, which they did for a while.

She should have checked how she looked in her compact when she saw him sauntering towards her. Instead she made do with the blacks of his eyes, showing her chiseled, birdlike features, and her orange hair cut short above her neck in what might fondly be called a beehive cut. She drew conscious of her smile this close to his pearly whites and sent nanobots scurrying to her teeth to scrub away the yellow. As nano–saturated as she was, there wasn’t room in her body for a nano solution to everything. That meant prioritizing. It wasn’t like she was going to be designing protein molecules in her head while Nolan was around.

Peeling his lips off of hers from the latest round of smooches, he said, «You’re feeling amorous, this morning.»

«Actually I’m feeling pensive.»

«What’s on your mind?»

«What if all this is just some hallucination we’ve sold ourselves on?» She gestured to the Times Square sights of New York City around her.

«You’re not talking about your nano–filtered take on things, are you?» She shook her head. «Is this the age old philosopher’s question, are we dreaming our lives, or is someone dreaming us? Just some idle speculation to stimulate the mind this morning?»

«I wish.»