“Maria Hall?” I ask. “With the Critical Technology Task Force?”
“Yes, this is Maria. Who is calling?”
“This is Noah Kimball from the Butler Institute. I’m not sure if you remember me, but we met earlier this year when you came to investigate the theft of some nanotech from our campus.”
I hear a brief silence then a clattering on the other end of the line, first a heavy thunk then a pattering like a bunch of pens falling onto a desk. Maria’s muffled voice comes over the line, barely audible but full of intensity. “It’s him! I told you he’d call!”
Is she talking to someone else on the task force there?
“Maria?”
“Yes, I’m here.” Her voice is normal again, but the sound of plastic on glass tinks along with her words. I try to piece together a mental picture matching the sounds to what was happening on the other end of the phone call. A mug full of pens being knocked over as she turns to a coworker. Clumsy? Or just very excited? A hand over the phone as she whispers to the unknown other party. I’m having trouble making sense of the why of it though. “Noah Kimball. I remember you well! I saw one of your press conferences a couple of weeks back. Something about a new way to do mining, was it?”
“Yeah. It’s our next big initiative to help preserve life, end suffering, and elevate humanity,” I respond, falling back on the Butler Institute’s credos. “Anyway, I was wondering if you had a minute to talk about an update on the theft we talked about back in January.”
“He said the thing!” Her muffled voice again. “Just like Chad used to!”
I wonder if she thinks I can’t hear her when she does that. I guess not everyone employs nanobot-enabled audio compensators when they use the phone.
“Certainly!” Her normal voice again. “I’m glad you called me directly. What happened and how can we help?”
I lay out some of our investigation, starting with the drug thefts in Topeka. No need to connect the lines back to my grandparents. I tell her about the bodies, following Jeff’s trail to St. Louis, the events on the bridge, and a much less terrifying version of what happened at the storage locker - only that a few rogue nanobots had been activated and that we had eliminated them. She listens with only a few clarifying questions until I finish.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Well,” she finally says. “That is quite a bit more than I expected to hear.”
“I know. We should have involved you as soon as we found a lead on my brother.” I don’t think that’s true at all, but it’s the best line I can think of to assuage the potential blowback of any of this on us. “We were just pressed for time and didn’t want to lose him. We thought we could handle it. We didn’t know he had any live nanotech active. He must have hacked through all the protections on the nanobots he stole.”
Another blatant lie, but there’s no way the task force can prove otherwise and it should cover for Louise’s massive lapse in judgment.
“You certainly should have called us as soon as you had any new information,” Maria replies. “You poor kids have been through enough, and having something like this happen to you on top of everything else…”
She trails off and goes silent for a long twenty-one seconds. Kids?
“Well. I am going to help you get this fixed. We are going to take care of everything. The whole CTTF and every resource we can mobilize will be working on this until we make sure this problem is resolved!”
That was not what I expected at all, but I’ll take it. The interference will probably complicate our lives, but if I understand the way the CTTF is structured right, I think they can literally call on the whole US military if they declare an emergency. That’s some serious extra firepower if we need it.
“Thank you,” I tell her.
“Are you at the Butler Institute campus now?”
“We are.”
“Good. Stay there. My boss, General Whitman, will be visiting you within a few days. In the meantime, we’re going to find your brother.”
I’ll be incredibly surprised if they can pull that off, but if he’s under a nationwide manhunt even someone as smart as Jeff might trip up and get himself caught. At the very least it should slow him down and cut off a lot of his options. The only danger is if they track him down and he feels cornered enough to release uncontrolled nanobots again. I don’t know what kind of secret tech the military might have put together over the last twenty years to deal with a wild nanoswarm, but my bet would be that it’s geared toward the kind of outbreak that Father took care of in the original Gray Goo Incident. The nanobots we use have evolved pretty considerably since then in both capabilities and materials. I doubt their techniques would work against the kind of free-breeding Butler bots Jeff released in St. Louis and I’m absolutely certain it’s not as good as what we can bring to bear.
“If you do find him,” I tell her. “Please don’t engage with him without us there. If he activates any more rogue nanobots, I want to make sure we can help contain and eliminate them.”
She lets out a sympathetic sort of an “aw” sound, like people make when they see a child trying to be helpful at something far beyond their abilities. “That is so brave of you. But don’t you worry. We’ll handle everything.”
Well, shit. Did I just make things a whole lot worse?