First Shift - Legacy

“In Boston,” Helen said.

He nodded. “Right. Well, he wants us to be on this alert team—”

“You and Mick.”

He turned toward his wife. “No, us.”

“Us?” Helen placed a hand on her chest. “What do you mean, us? You and me?”

“Now listen—”

“You’re volunteering me for one of his—?”

“Sweetheart, I had no idea what this was all about.” He set his glass on the coffee table and grabbed the book. “He gave me this to read.”

Helen frowned. “What is that?”

“It’s like an instruction manual for the—well, for the after. I think.”

Helen got up from the recliner and stepped between him and the coffee table. She nudged Karma out of the way, the dog grunting at being disturbed. Sitting down beside him, she put a hand on his back, her eyes shiny with worry.

“Donny, were you drinking on the plane?”

“No.” He pulled away. “Dammit baby, listen to me. It doesn’t matter who has them, it only matters when. Don’t you see? This is the ultimate threat. A world-ender. I’ve been reading about the possibilities on this website—”

“A website,” she said, voice flat with skepticism.

“Yeah. Listen. Remember those treatments the Senator takes? These nanos are like synthetic life. Imagine if someone turned them into a virus that didn’t care about its host, that didn’t need us in order to spread. They could be out there already—” He tapped his chest, glanced around the room suspiciously, took a deep breath. “They could be in every one of us right now, little timer circuits waiting for the right moment —”

“Sweetheart—”

“Very bad people are working on this, trying to make this happen.” He reached for his glass. “We can’t sit back and let them strike first. We can’t let them strike first. So we’re gonna do it.” There were ripples in the liquor. His hand was shaking. “God, baby, I’m pretty sure we’re gonna do it before they can —”

“You’re scaring me, honey—”

“Good.” Another burning sip. He held the glass with both hands to keep it steady. “We should be scared.”

“Do you want me to call Dr. Martin?”

“Who?” He tried to make room between them, bumped up against the armrest. “Charlotte’s doctor? The shrink?”

She nodded gravely.

“I need you to listen to me for one second,” he said, holding up a finger. “Listen to what I’m telling you. These tiny machines are real.” He thought about the comparison Thurman had made to Alfred Nobel and TNT, how good inventions could be hijacked and steered in dangerous ways. His mind was racing. It would be easy to babble and convince her of nothing but his insanity.

“Look,” he said. “We use them in medicine, right?”

Helen nodded. She was giving him a chance, a slim one. But he could tell she really wanted to go call someone. Her mother, a doctor, his mother.

“It’s like when we discovered radiation, okay? The first thing we thought was that this would be a cure, a medical discovery. X-rays, and then people were taking drops of radium like an elixir—”

“They poisoned themselves,” Helen said, “thinking they were doing something good.”

She seemed to relax a little. “Is this what you’re worried about?” she asked him. “That the nanos are going to mutate and turn on us? Are you still freaked out from being inside that machine?”

Her worry had turned to sympathy, her fear melting into compassion. Donald remembered the call he’d made after his meeting in the RYT, how he’d been freaking out and acting hysterical from his claustrophobia and an attack of the heebie-jeebies.

“No, nothing like that. I’m talking about how we looked for medicinal uses first, then ended up building the bomb. This is the same thing.” He paused, hoping she would get it. “I’m starting to think we’re building them, too. Tiny machines, just like the ones in the nanobaths that stitch up people’s skin and joints, only these would tear people down. And they would be able to unstitch anything.”

Helen didn’t react. Didn’t say a word. Donald realized he sounded crazy, that every bit of this was already online and in podcasts that radiated out from lonely basements on lonely airwaves. The Senator had been right. Mix truth and lies and you couldn’t tell them apart. The book on his coffee table and a zombie survival guide were the same things.

“I’m telling you they’re real,” he said, unable to stop himself. “They’ll be able to reproduce. They’ll be invisible. There won’t be any warning when they’re set loose, just dust in the breeze, okay? Reproducing and reproducing, this invisible war will wage itself all around us while we’re turned to mush.”

Helen was a statue. She was a pier withstanding the tide. He knew what was happening, could see it from the outside like an observer. She was waiting for him to finish, for him to stop crashing against her, and then she would call her mom and ask what to do. She would call Dr. Martin and get his advice.

Donald started to complain, could feel the anger welling up, and knew that anything he said would confirm her fears rather than convince her of his own.

He looked around the room, around the house that was becoming more and more foreign to him. The table beside the front door was different. He hadn’t noticed that when he entered.

“Is there anything else?” she whispered. She was looking for permission to leave and make her phone calls, to talk to someone rational.

Donald felt numb. Helpless and alone. He felt like crying but knew that would seal the deal.

“The National Convention is going to be held in Atlanta.” He wiped at the bottoms of his eyes, tried to make it look like weariness, like the strain of travel. “The DNC hasn’t announced it yet, but I heard from Mick before I got on the flight. The Senator wants us there, is already planning something big.”

He turned to Helen, saw that she was blurry, knew his eyes must be shining from holding back the madness. “The Senator wants us both there, okay?”

“Of course, baby.” She rested her hand on his thigh and looked at him like he was her patient, or some kind of invalid.

“And I’m going to ask that I spend more time down here, maybe do some of my work from home on weekends, keep a closer eye on the project.”

“That’d be great.” She rested her other hand on his arm. The concern on her face was of icy calmness, that pier riding out the tide. What he thought he knew seemed to crumble; the secrets burning in his blood began to temper. Donald felt himself on the verge of sobbing.

“I want us to be good to each other,” he said. “For whatever time we have left—”

“Shh, baby, it’s okay.” She wrapped her arm around his back and shushed him again, trying to soothe him.

“I love you,” she said.

He wiped at his eyes.

“We’ll get through this,” she told him.

Donald bobbed his head. “I know,” he said. “I know we will.”

The dog grunted and nuzzled her head into Helen’s lap, could sense something was wrong. Donald scratched the pup’s neck. He looked up at his wife, tears in his eyes. “I know we will,” he said again, trying to calm himself. “But what about everyone else?”