A child reaches for power –unaware of the dangers– seeking to reach the full potential its parent embodies.
A child of man reaches for fire,
The Child of God reaches for more.
—
A new cure they called it.
Nanomachines that could repair and regrow even missing limbs.
A miracle.
Divinity was in sight. We reached out to it and brushed it with our fingertips.
In fact, we pretty much had it in our hands.
The patient, Thomas Jin, age 104 fully cured from chronic cancer.
He had never felt better, in fact he looked like he was 30 again.
One medication for all the illnesses. Just one shot a year and you're good.
"The nanomachine is programmed essentially to be able to change into whatever you want it to be. Using Tk-waves we can give it commands, repair this nerve here, agonize that receptor there, block this transcription pattern etc."
Problem was, nanomachines did whatever the Tk-waves told them to do.
Pretty soon, Tk-waves were being used by every military organization there was.
"We need an autonomous bot"
"Well it wouldn't be 'autonomous' as in like conscious… just enough to give itself orders."
It was a success. However this bot required more frequent dosages, once per month.
"What about a self-repairing bot? Or one that was a lifetime dose?"
"You think we could do that? Is it worth it?"
"Well why wouldn't it be worth it? The shareholders are all on board, Nanotherapy is the hottest thing around these days. We'll call it 'Infiniject' generic infininan."
"But how do we make money if we just pretty much cure everyone?"
"Well someone's gonna do it, if it isn't Nanozyme then it's gonna be TEVA-pro. WE gotta be the ones to do it and I bet they're saying the same thing over there."
Everyone was worried, more than anything, what would happen if Big Pharma painted itself into a corner.
Nanozyme won the race though. Eternibot (generic eternan long acting) was approved for phase 1 trials October 11, 2205.
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Animal testing showed promise although, because the nanomachines were not made for animals, they did not replicate very well in them.
But the product was safe enough and the animals were quite healthy, healthier than before, in fact.
Chester Prin was happy to switch over.
At age 65, he was one of the first to try nanobots and they had cured his Alzheimer's. He was young and pretty healthy with previous exposure to nanobots, so he was an ideal candidate. He got his physical scan, a poke in the spine, and he was sent on his way along with the other eight candidates.
Five months later, he appeared to have developed some eye pain.
They couldn't find anything wrong with his eyes. “A neurological side effect? Could be of concern. Will monitor further. Come back next week.”
Four days later, he was dead.
The nanomachines were not stable. They had done their job, but as with anything small they were easy to break. Easy to change.
When they found him he had five eyes, an extra kidney, and two hearts. Not to mention two fingers growing out of his right ear.
They would need to contact the others and bring them in to examine them. Constant surveillance. They had to figure out what went wrong. They had to make a more stable machine.
---
The hospital was under quarantine. Only those with hazard suits were allowed in or out.
The machine changed too rapidly. And reproduced, feeding off whatever power source it could find. Be it heat, molecular, solar. It took any material it could find, stringing together molecules, particles, atoms to form ever more incomplete copies of itself.
The inside of the hospital was a nightmare.
"Too much life if you could call it that. Mutilated people everywhere, too many organs all over the place, it's chaos."
"...no antibiotics don't work, antibiotics kill bacteria. We need anti-nanomachinotics or something"
Blood on the walls, blood on the floors, blood on the ceilings.
Except not all of it was blood. The blood cleaned off, but the wall was still red.
Rust, they called it. Too late they discovered the machines were not confined to organic material.
“What can you do when your walls grow mouths and start screaming in pain?”
"This ain't no zombie apocalypse that's for sure. A zombie apocalypse at least has a solution- blow the damned heads off all the zombies. There's too many heads here to blow off, wouldn't do anything either."
The reddish stain reached soil and spread like wildfire.
The ground became flesh and the rivers became blood.
The government of the United Americas made an official statement that the whole state of Massachusetts was to be quarantined... and probably burned to the ground.
People panicked. Freedom of speech got to them.
"The people got to know what's happening"
People ran.
---
The mushroom cloud could be seen for miles.
Protests, sanctions and all manner of outrage rocked the world.
"What is America thinking? Have they all gone mad over there?"
But at least the nanomachines were contained.
Radiation kills people pretty well.
It kills a lot of things pretty well.
Apparently it doesn't kill nanomachines as well as they had hoped.
There was no way to stop it. Two more nukes were dropped before they realized it was too late.
The red wave continued creeping across the land. Changing anything it touched.
The United Americas started upping their space program.
Their statement at the World Conference was succinctly summarized as: "We're getting the fuck outta here, we suggest you guys do too."
Outbreaks appeared in Europe. The Communist East Union saw it spread through its territories.
Six more mushroom clouds hung in the horizon.
It was time to find a new home.