Nano Crisis

Earl sat in a rocking chair near the fireplace savoring the first cup of real coffee he had in over a year. He couldn’t believe his luck having found the nearly full canister sitting near the back of a cupboard in a half-ruined house. It had been a stroke of luck to even happen upon the place. These days rummaging around in old houses was a good way to get killed, or worse. Most sane people avoided old neighborhoods and suburban areas. Looking at the canister sitting on the small wooden table next to the fireplace, he read the label aloud “Northern Best Premium Coffee.” It was one of those generic store brands. He chuckled to himself, before the “nanos” had come he would have turned his nose up at cheap coffee like this. Now, it was a treasure to have coffee at all, let alone the real stuff. Anymore the best you could hope to come across was the freeze-dried stuff. The occasional packet of instant latte was a rare treat, but REAL coffee! His mind reeled at the value of something as simple as a can of coffee. He could easily trade it for a months’ worth of supplies. Or just exchange it for a few boxes of ammo, several batteries, and a case of liquor.

The nano crisis had thrown into sharp relief just how simple us humans really were. Paper money was worthless now, for currency people used bullets, batteries, and booze. The 3 B’s. As time wore on the latter was the easiest to come by since it could be manufactured with little more than a few hardware store parts, anything containing sugar and time. Bullets weren’t all that useful against nanos, but they would slow them down long enough for someone to get away to safety.

Nano’s was the collective term we used to describe the ones infected, some would say possessed, by humanities greatest achievement. The nano bot. At first it promised a dream world free of disease and long happy lives. It became apparent a few weeks into testing that our optimism had been misplaced. The tiny machines were a marvel of modern technology, able to self-replicate and build specialized versions of themselves. All with one simple directive. Detect and correct problems. At first it was like a miracle. Deathly ill individuals were getting better practically overnight. Some of humanities most lethal illnesses were a thing of the past. Cancer, HIV, Covid-28, even birth defect were correctable with a single dose of the tiny machines. Then strange things started to happen. Some of the first patients, who’s blood was now teaming with nano-bots began behaving oddly. Seeking each other out and performing strange projects together. Slowly it dawned on the medical and scientific community that the nano-bots, equipped with wireless networking capability so that they could work together, were able to communicate with nano-bots in other hosts. That’s what they were at this point, just hosts. The nano bots had formed a collective consciousness and the same way they improved their hosts conditions, they eventually improved themselves. Now able to spread on their own, people that had never received the nano-bot treatment started to join the ranks of the nanos. The machines had replicated on their own and spread like a virus. Even re-animated the recently deceased into some kind of bizarre cybernetic zombies. Nanos could go anywhere and be anyone. It was not long before the major governments of the world were taken over and dismantled. The societies they supported collapsing into ruin.

That was over 20 years ago. Since then, small groups of non-infected humans live in isolated pockets. Protected by strong electromagnetic fields. It was discovered that a field strength of just 2 Gauss was enough to disrupt the bonds between individual nanos. It didn’t destroy them, but it disabled them enough that they could no longer control whatever host they were in. Small settlements of people never numbering more than a few hundred existed on the outskirts of what used to be suburbia. We built simple EMF transmission towers in the center of our settlements and ran them on solar power. Staying near the ruins of society helped us blend in and allowed us to occasionally do raids for supplies. That is how I found the coffee. Raids were always dangerous, if your batteries died or it suddenly got cloudy and your solar cells lost efficiency, your personal g-field, the slang term we used for gauss fields, would die and then it was just a matter of time until you joined the ranks of the nanos yourself.

Earl turned the canister over in his hands and heard a soft clink inside. Curiosity perked, he scooped his hands through the grounds and felt something small, smooth, and cold to the touch. He carefully pulled it from the grounds and discovered it was a locket, heart shaped and affixed to a long slender chain. The locket had a button on the top to release the tiny latch and allow the spring-loaded hinge to pop it open. The heart shaped silver locket was buried in the grounds of coffee. That explained why such cheap coffee was in what used to be such a nice house, no doubt none of the of the former occupants would have touched it. The perfect hiding place, hidden in plain sight but never touched due to coffee snobbery. Inside the locket was a micro-SD card. As well as a picture of Michael and Eda James. Both cybernetics experts that worked on the original nano project. Could this have really been their house? Perhaps a relative? He popped the SD card into an old cell phone to see what was on it. The card was encrypted. Earl knew Michael and Eda were rumored to have lived in the area. Maybe Jack would know where they lived, Jack knew everyone. He lived on the same settlement as Earl, but he traveled more than anyone else. He had an electric truck mounted with a g-field that ran on solar. He could travel for miles. Earl tucked his coffee away in the stash beneath the floorboards, slipped the locket in his pocket and headed over to Jack’s place.

Approaching jacks place he could hear music playing from the small trailer Jack lived in, AC/DC back in black. Jack had an old iPod with all the good rock music on it. Earl knocked on the door and the music stopped. Jack swung the door open. He was wearing an old leather jacket that cracked at the seams. His sun worn leathery skin had a few glistening beads of sweat threatening to soak into his blonde dread locks. Jack fixed his piercing blue eyes on earl and said “What’s up earl? I was just finishing up an upgrade to my g-field. Should run about 30% longer on the same charge when I’m done.

Earl was too pre-occupied with his recent wealth and curiosity about the locket to engage in idle chat about electronics projects. “Jack, Do you know where Michael and Eda James live these days? I uh… found something they may be interested in.” “oh yeah? What is it?” “Just an old locket I found in an abandoned house, was hoping that it had sentimental value to em and I could trade for some batteries. “ No use telling Jack what he actually found, Jack was obsessed with tinkering and electronics. He would demand earl let him try and hack it. He would probably fry it in the process. Jack stared at earl for a moment and said “Well, they stay over the ridge next to the old chicken farm, have a hell of a g-field generator. No nanos for half a mile around that place. All along the edge though there are glitched nanos, stuck between coming and going and life and death. I could take you if you have something worth trading for the trip” Earl smiled. “Do you like coffee, Jack?”

45 minutes later Jack and Earl were cresting the ridge. The truck had a rough ride, 20 years with no new shock absorbers and being ridden rough, it might as well have been a fixed frame. Near the base of the ridge there was what looked like some kind of dysfunctional rave. Obviously, these people were nano hosts. Some were in normal condition, others, biology long dead looked like techno zombies. Dead nanos had to be some of the creepiest things to ever exist. Once the soft tissue started to decay the nano machines would arrest the growth of bacteria and prevent the more disgusting forms of decay. This resulted in something that looked like a living mummy as the proteins in the flesh denatured. There were even a few of what looked like originals. Originals were original injection subjects. Their nanos were less advanced, and they held the joints together with interlinked nanos. Muscles replaced by strands of interlinked nanos and soft tissues long gone. Looking like cyber-punk skeleton. The g-fields disrupted the nano interlinks. So, their internal communications were operating like a bad phone connection, dropped commands and lost packets. The overall effect was like an animatronic zombie glitched out. Repeating motions and failing to affect any real locomotion. Some flailed and rolled around on the ground. They were caught int eh edge of the g-field. Further in there were just bones covered in what looked like metallic dust. The dust was clumps of individual nanos, unable to communicate or move. Through the center of nanos, there was an open road. It looked as though it had literally been plowed. Following the road from the base of the ridge and up a small hill there was a farm and a tall transmission tower. Obviously, the g-field generator and the James house.

Jack took off down the road in a fearless charge, seeing the glitched nanos up close turned earl’s stomach. He was thankful the passage was brief. Upon arriving at the farm house they were greeted by a man carrying a shotgun and flanked by two robotic dogs. Aiming the gun at Earl and jack he shouted “STATE YOU BUSINESS!” Earl spoke up immediately, shouting to be sure he was heard “I’m looking for Michael and Eda James! I found a locket that I think belongs to them.” The man looked shocked and dropped his gun. “You… you found my locket… Thank god.” Confused, Earl asked if he could approach the man. The man nodded and looked relieved. As Earl walked up, he could see tears in the man’s eyes. The man spoke with a quivering voice. “Was there a micro-SD card in the locket?” Earl nodded with a smile. “What’s it worth to you? Don’t suppose you’d have a few extra batteries to spare?” The man half chuckled and looked at Earl “Son, you have no idea what you have, you won’t be needing batteries much longer. My name is Michael James, most people know my wife Eda and I were involved in the creation of the nanos. What they do not know is that I single handedly developed the core of the nano OS. The nanos exchange data in a block chain. This ensures no errors in the in transmission. After seeing so many sci-fi movies about machines taking over the world, I embedded a contingency command. Block zero of the OS contains a kill switch. It will instantly unravel the entire nano dataset. During the fall I gave the private key to that block to my daughter to hide. I had no idea where she put it and sadly, she was one of the first casualties. You are literally holding the key to saving the world in your hand. A 1024-character encryption key that will shut down every nano on the planet in one single transmission. It is built into their core, an undetectable fail-safe. Let us go inside and save the world, kid.”

-FIN