It’s hopeless. We didn’t get here in time. The city is going to be leveled, the country next, and eventually we’re all going to die. The headache is splitting me apart. My diagnostic scan shows the blood vessels in my brain about to burst from the pressure. I’ve never had it hurt this bad before. If I grow any further, I think I might literally die. Even the infinitesimally small number of bots that made up my flight suit are committed now, even though my distant body shivers with the cold. Andrea’s illusions are long since gone. I shrug through the pain. Stopping this is more important than my health or sanity will ever be.
I feel my siblings’ clouds, and Lin’s, and Valerie’s. None of them are growing anymore. We’re all capped out, and we’re not holding the perimeter. And nevermind the parts of the swarm that are digging downward, we can’t even stop the edges of the circle from encroaching, centimeter by agonizingly slow centimeter.
From Evan: We’re so close to having it stopped. Can you go bigger?
To Evan: I’m giving it everything I can.
Options. Options. Do we have any options? Is there anything else we can do? We’ve got everything on the surface that they can use cleared away or consumed. Try as I might, I can’t make any progress in getting underneath to block the minerals and warmth underneath the swarm. There’s just too many of them and when I wedge into the constrained space underneath them, I can’t maneuver and end up pinpricked.
If Jeff had left them with any smarts, there might be a chance to try to hack them like Father did with the original gray goo so long ago. But these aren’t responding in any way to anything on any communication channel. They’re not even coordinating with each other, except that they seem to have some directives that keep them together and stop them from cannibalizing each other. I guess it’s probably better that they’re dumbed down. If they had any smarts and wanted to spread, they’d have flown out of our containment zone in an unstoppable flood way before we had arrived.
I wonder, if anyone survives this, if they’ll ever figure out that all of this traces back to me. I broke Jeff. I killed our father, the man that could have reined him in even if Jeff had ended up a madman anyway. Everything here is fundamentally my fault. I ended the world.
From Louise: We’re not holding.
To Louise: I know. I can’t do anything else.
From Louise: I can.
To Louise: Then do it. Whatever it is.
From Louise: I’m holding you to that. You can’t be mad at me later.
To Louise: I don’t care about anything but holding back this swarm. Whatever you have planned, just do it.
From Louise: Hold the line as well as you can then. I need most of my attention for this.
I feel a weakening in the perimeter to my right. I strain to pick up the slack. What’s she doing? What was in that crate? I wish I could spare the attention to find out, but I exist for one purpose only, and that’s to contain and destroy wild nanobots. I dance and evade and kill and push back in trillions of places, only to be overwhelmed again and again by the unstoppable tide. The line is slipping faster. Meters escape me as the minutes tick by at a glacial pace. It’s most of the way across the firebreak, we’ll have to clear another ring of city blocks soon.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
The ring of my phone distracts me. It’s General Whitman again. I don’t have time or attention for him. I reject the call and hand the phone to Lin.
“Text him that we’re working on it and to keep away,” I request. “And tell him thanks for not nuking us.”
She nods and starts tapping the phone screen. She’s still paying attention to the battle, but for her keeping a close eye on it is less critical. Her interface isn’t like mine. She can’t micromanage the action to optimize performance like I can. She mostly just needs to keep directing her bots to chew back where they are being chewed.
I try to rededicate my focus to the melee, but having paid some attention to my body once, my flesh pulls my attention back to it again. It’s freezing. My fingers, ears, and nose are numb. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but the task at hand. I can’t spare a single bot or a single joule of energy on anything but that.
Lin hands back the phone and notices my shivering. She’s still wearing the oversized sweatshirt that she often puts on when we work together in the office. She unzips it and pulls me towards her, wrapping the sweatshirt around my torso along with hers. She starts to zip it behind my back as I slide my arms inside, around her waist. The warmth of her body and the coverage of the soft, stretchy material make all the difference. Lin makes all the difference. I’m not going to let her die.
I’m not letting anyone else die.
I’m an infinite spread again, my human form already a fading memory. I know I’m only gaining a little bit more performance over the automated algorithm, but it’s enough. The spread slows again. Even more than before Louise went off to do whatever she’s doing. The swarm has almost stopped.
Almost.
I can grow more. I can stop this. I expand again.
The splitting headache seems to focus into a stabbing point of white hot pain right behind my left eye. It’s so much worse than any headache I’ve ever had, like a knife plunged directly into my brain. Even the dim light coming from the edges of the sun shield suddenly seems too bright. I stagger and almost fall, but Lin keeps me up. She disengages me from her sweatshirt and half-carries me to the steps of the yellow apartment building on the far edge of our firebreak. She clears debris from a small area of the first two steps with one hand and sits me down. She’s strong for her size.
“Are you OK, Noah?” she asks, her voice full of concern.
“Fine,” I say, returning my focus to the defensive perimeter. My diagnostic scan shows a ruptured aneurysm in the primary motor cortex. That’s not great, but the medical bots that constitute my implant know how to handle that. They’re already working on resealing the arteriole. Anyone without an implant would be in trouble, but I’ll probably be fine. Mostly fine. Voluntary motor functions are overrated anyway. I make a note to talk to Louise about not having permanent brain damage when we’re done with this.
From Louise: Help incoming. Keep holding it.
Who on earth did she call in? Everyone who can fight this is already here, except for Antonio’s crews, and they’ve got to still be hours away.
To Louise: I’m trying. What are you up to?
From Louise: You’ll see.
To Louise: Why won’t you tell me?
From Louise: You might try to stop me.
I’m tempted to argue, but I decide not to care. Whatever she’s doing, there’s no other way. I’ll take salvation at any price.