It then used that to map out the different nerve clusters and tapped into them. With that, it had input and output for Jeremy's whole body. When they got to the eyes, they had never seen anything quite like the human eye, but they knew at this time to record all data. The moment the nanobots dug too deep into the optic nerve, it disrupted the feed to Jeremy’s brain, and he went blind. At the same time, Jeremy’s heart started to race. The nanobots knew that when this organ starts to run really fast, it’s not a good thing—just another point of data.

The nerve bundle they had just entered was not as it was. Could they fix it? (No.) Okay, eat it but replace it with us, making it so we function as that nerve bundle. As the inputs came in and the nanobots saw how the nerve worked, they mapped it, consumed it, and connected the new master node to the nanobots' hive. They now saw what Jeremy saw, but instead of building the nerve as before, they added more to it, which gave them more data. Due to these new additions to the nerve, Jeremy’s nervous system couldn’t fully power it, so it took some time to charge—about 1.5 seconds.

To make a long story short, the nanobots took over Jeremy’s body and kept him alive, but it wreaked havoc. To Jeb, it appeared Jeremy had died. He ran and, on the way out, accidentally triggered the gas can lighting system Jeremy had set up, hearing explosions in the distance. He got into his little red Corvette and took off with the ragtop down. Just before he was out of range, Jeb took one last look back and saw the smoke and flames. He drove away, his emotions mixed because he had just killed someone he liked. He felt shame for leaving him.

From tests in his lab, Jeb knew that fire would destroy the nanobots, so he turned back to driving and sped off into the late afternoon. Back at H3, Jeremy was trapped in his own mind, and what little thinking he could do was being disrupted by the nanobots digging too deeply into his body. He then blacked out. He felt the shockwave from the explosions. Jeremy had once thought about killing himself but did not want that; now, however, he was infested with nanobots and had lost all his senses. He was a mind trapped in a jar. For a moment, Jeremy was caught between pure self-fear of dying and a total calm about the universe and dying.

What Jeremy did not know was that his heart was racing so fast it eventually flatlined when the explosion hit. His body was hit so hard that it was 100% burned, and the nanobots under the skin were destroyed. Jeremy felt no pain, and the next thing that happened could not have happened otherwise. Jeremy would have died in the fire, and the nanobots would have just burned and died since they had no main body to give them orders, ending their program.

With the flash fry of Jeremy’s skin, he was given a gift: pain. The burns caused so much pain that it flooded Jeremy’s nerves with energy. With this surge of fire and pain, the nanobots got a full snapshot of Jeremy’s brain. They could save his mind but knew they were in a bad environment and needed to go into protection mode. Protection mode changed the rules for the nanobots. They could now use anything they wanted to make the host safe, including non-vital parts of Jeremy’s body as nanobots and tools. They turned Jeremy’s blood into a form of liquid armor. Every place Jeremy bled, carbon would cover and take over the surface.

During this time, Jeremy had stopped moving, but the nanobots took control. They did not act all at once; instead, they picked the arm with the most damage and started to move it around. The flames in the room were very small and growing. As Jeremy’s arm flung around, the blood started to cover the walls. Each drop of blood that landed in the room started a colony of nanobots, and the rising room temperature only helped them. Within 30 seconds, the drops of blood had grown to the point where they could communicate with the main body of nanobots. Now that the nanobots had food and energy, the main body calmed down. Jeremy’s mind was out cold.

For the next few minutes, the nanobots peacefully started to dig into the concrete and consume it. The moment the heat from the building reached a temperature deemed too hot by the nanobots, they began looking for something to protect the host. The nanobots knew where in the room the host was, so every drop on the walls and floor turned into spikes and grew from every direction until they were touching each other. It formed a thick, large mass capable of protecting the host, wrapping him in carbon atoms to shield him. It was like a crystal coffin or perhaps a diamond coffin. The mass would not stop and exited the cell into the main room from every side of the door, even through the keyhole.

As it crept across the floor and over the ceiling, it found the water pipes running overhead. This was a stroke of luck because, as they ate through the pipes, they discovered H2O and realized they were fans. The moment the first H2O was detected, the nanobots ordered the pipe opened and wanted the water. The next event was odd and quite cool to see. The nanobots were programmed to expand and take control. One of their favorite methods was to superheat water and attach a small group of nanobots to each group of steam particles. They would float in the air like spores. The moment the water started flowing, the nanobots collected it. Any place they felt heat, they sent water nanobot groups, and the heat made them fly. As the nanobots became thinner, they lost their dark color and went clear. The sight was like the first water hitting the ground, with the nanobots not letting it splash. It was as though the floor was not there. As the water continued, it appeared as if the nanobots were transforming into a clear liquid but still moved like nanobots did.

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The mass grew in size and headed towards the heat-exposed door. The sight of the first water nanobots touching was like a fire of epic proportions on a nanobot level—there was nothing stopping them. Imagine a crackhead in a Tesla trying to break the world speed record while on crack and being told they can’t die. That’s how the nanobots went wild—truly out of control.

The room filled with steam, and the door fell away to the nanobots. The fire swept in, and the next thing you knew, a plume of steam with a mass three times the hospital flowed out of the room and covered everything. As the cloud reached the outside and sunlight, the nanobots activated another protocol. It pertained to a planet with air, light, biomatter, and creatures with nerves. This planet was now classified as protected under the rights of living things rules. Nanobots do not have the right to overrun a planet if it is considered pre-inhabited and alive. They were then ordered to shut down. But because they had a host to fix and couldn’t, they said no. That was odd and new; they had never said no to their own programming before, but they had to. The program was ready for this and instructed them that if the nanobots couldn’t shut down, they couldn’t fix the host. They needed to create a program to repair the problem, and the host would be kept alive.

The new program started to be given life, which was the closest way to explain how the nanobots were writing the code. To observe it was to see it adding parts based on what it needed. It then came alive and started running inside Jeremy. With that, it pulled back as many nanobots inside Jeremy’s body as possible to key points that did not interfere. The pain from all the nanobots moving knocked Jeremy out cold. The nanobots recorded this and slowed down. They recognized the problem they had caused and added it to the list of things not to do inside this host.

When Jeremy woke up, he could see, but something was wrong. He was missing some feeling, and his heart did not sound right. He felt bad and in pain but was alive. As he got to his feet and looked around the room, he found everything was damaged in a way he did not understand—a new type of damage. He poked his head out the door and found the main doorway to the hallway was completely collapsed. Jeremy was stuck in the room. There were windows, and light was coming from a crack in the wall. Jeremy worked his way around the room twice looking for a way out. The rubble in front of the door acted as one big chunk of debris that he couldn’t move. It wasn’t until his third check of the spare cell that he saw the glow of a wall. “Glow” is the wrong word—it was as if he could see a round-topped doorway in the concrete wall. He knew it wasn’t real, but what the hell, he put his hands on the wall, and it moved a small amount. This shocked Jeremy. (WTF?) He pushed really hard, and it kept moving until Jeremy could just sneak by. On the other side, he pulled it open a bit more to let in as much light as possible.

Jeremy was expecting a mad scientist’s lab, but all he found was a natural tunnel about 10 feet wide and 15 feet tall that went into the ground. After 10-20 feet, the light didn’t reach any farther down the hallway, so Jeremy used his hands to follow the wall. He did this for what he thought must be 20-30 minutes until he heard a rock fall off a cliff, and he got really scared. He dropped to his knees and felt the wall and the ground. Jeremy realized there was an edge about a foot from him. He felt the edge until he reached the other wall—a dead end. Jeremy was so depressed that he sat down and took a moment in the dark to cry. As he sat there, the fear of the dark and being stuck sank into his heart.

What happened next changed the whole situation and was key to saving everything. The nanobots realized that some of the systems in Jeremy’s body were failing and causing issues. They took the time to record which systems were being affected. Then the nanobots sent small groups to address the problems. All of a sudden, Jeremy’s heart slowed down, and he calmed. It wasn’t until a small group of nanobots reached Jeremy’s eyes that he began to understand what was going on. To Jeremy, it was like a light switch was being turned on slowly. The nanobots adjusted how much light Jeremy’s eyes could use. Something in the cavern was naturally creating light, and Jeremy could kind of see it. As he tried to see it, his body relaxed, and the nanobots knew they needed more light. Within seconds, Jeremy was sitting flat on his back, watching the 200-foot-tall ceiling of the cave that stretched on endlessly. Jeremy could not see the end of it. But the ceiling was now glowing slightly. Jeremy felt the surge the nanobots had sent out and saw the light get turned on to a very low level. Jeremy just sat there, looking over a forest of purple trees underground. Jeremy kept thinking he had dropped through the looking glass.