limits.”
“But,” James questioned, “will I still be me?”
“Yes, James. Even before the advent of nanotechnology, the human body replaced over 90 percent of its matter every month, yet the people remained themselves. It is not the physical material that matters, James, only the integrity of the core pattern.”
The information continued to blaze golden into the horizon, shimmering and undulating against the perfectly black backdrop. It was as if James was standing upon a precipice, looking out into a vast ocean, about to take the leap he’d been waiting for his entire life. It felt right.
“I won’t be like other people anymore,” James observed, “but that’s the point, isn’t it? I don’t have to be. The future should never have made people more and more alike—it should have increased our individuality. I will be the first, but everyone will be able to be as they wish to be from now on.”
The A.I.’s eyes suddenly lit up, beaming with pride in his protege. “There. You see what I mean about knowledge, wisdom, and imagination? You are ready.”
“I’m ready,” James agreed as he began to design his new material form. “How much time do we have?”
“Very little,” the A.I. answered, “but in the operator’s position, your mind works far faster than in the material world, meaning time seems to move much slower. You will have the time necessary to become that which you need to become.”
15
“We’re coming up on our targeting area,” Neirbo announced, barely audible over the uncanny warping of sound generated by the wormhole. Open, black, unwarped space was suddenly visible at the end of the tunnel and then, in an instant, the ship cruised out of the kaleidoscope of light and sound and fury. There was no warning. The vessel jumped out of the wormhole and directly into the waiting mouth of a massive cloud of nans.
“Evasive maneuvers!” Neirbo shouted out as the sun and stars were immediately blotted out by the unrelenting attack of the nanobots.
The attacking nans were everywhere. Old-timer looked directly above him and then directly below his feet through the invisible skin of the ship and watched as the nans shredded the hull surface. “That is one big cat,” he muttered, “and we’re the goldfish.”
“How long can this hull withstand an attack like this?” Thel desperately yelled to Neirbo.
Before he could answer, the ship power abruptly cut off, leaving the ship in the dark. Everyone inside was tossed brutally around in the darkness as the nans batted the ship from side to side, jerking it wildly the way a lion shakes a rabbit to snap its neck. The artificial gravity gave way as the figures inside tumbled like coins in the piggy bank of a child hungry for ice cream. Djanet’s face smashed roughly into the unforgiving wall, breaking her nose and shifting it noticeably to the left side. Rich, who had been struggling desperately to reach her, threw his body over hers to protect her.
“They’ve cut off our power! The engines are dead!” one of Neirbo’s subordinates reported.
“What do we do now?” Old-timer demanded of Neirbo. Both men had managed to grab hold of a small metallic outcrop and had hedged themselves into relative safety as the ship continued to be battered relentlessly.
“There’s no power! We can’t target or fire the missile!” Neirbo shouted back.
“We can’t just wait here to get ripped to shreds!” Old-timer replied.
Neirbo looked down at the missile, still docked in the center of the room on a low, long platform. “One of you will have to detonate the missile manually!”
Old-timer’s mouth fell open in shock and disgust. “What? One of
“We’ll have to repair the ship and navigate home! Only we have the technical knowledge to open the wormholes!”
“You rotten piece of filth!” Old-timer shouted, reaching a level of fury that he hadn’t been to in many decades. “You knew this was going to happen, didn’t you? All that bull about how ‘it’s our law’ and ‘only people native to a solar system can destroy it’ was just a ruse to get us out here!”
“That’s not true,” Neirbo responded.
“Shove it!” Old-timer continued to fury.
Thel, Djanet, and Rich looked on in awe, never having seen Old-timer in such a state. “This isn’t your first rodeo! You’ve done this before with other solar systems! You knew the nans were most likely going to be here already, and you brought us here as sacrificial lambs!”
“That is ridiculous!” Neirbo fired back. “You are here of your own free will!”
“Bull! You tricked us!”
“Old-timer! They saved us from the nans! You told us that yourself!” Thel interjected. “Now you’re saying they tricked us?”
“We’re not here freely, Thel!” Old-timer responded. “Look around you! There are two of them for every one of us!”
“You are here of your own free will,” Neirbo repeated.
“We shouldn’t even be considering this!” Thel interjected. “We should be working together to get the power back online!”
“They’ll tear through the ship before we can do that!” Neirbo countered. “One of you has to manually detonate the missile and lead them away!”
“You can manually shove that missile up your ass!” Old-timer spat back.
“If none of you will make the sacrifice, all of us will die!” Neirbo shouted. “One of you must guide the missile toward the sun and lead the nans away from us!”
“And detonate it?” Rich shot back. “That’s a suicide run!”
“It’s a sacrifice to save the rest of us!” Neirbo replied.
“Then sacrifice one of
“Any loss of one of my men lowers the chance that we’ll be able to repair the ship in time and open a wormhole fast enough to escape!”
“And we’re expendable, isn’t that right?” Old-timer bellowed.
James’s deletion suddenly flashed in front of Thel’s eyes again—vividly. She jolted with the memory. The picture of the shadowy nan consciousness, the figure that finally destroyed the most important person in Thel’s life, blazed in her memory. At that moment, she suddenly realized that she was in its presence once again. She looked up through the invisible skin of the ship, through the dark, smoky swarm of the nans, and saw the shadowy man standing just above her, looking down at the trapped, pathetic people below. The figure had no face, but Thel swore she could see a mocking smile in the blackness.
“We’re running out of time!” Neirbo warned. “They’ll be in here with us in a matter of minutes! Maybe seconds!”
“I’ll do it,” Thel suddenly said, calmly and cooly.
16
“Thel! You can’t!” Djanet exclaimed.
“There is no way in hell that I’m letting you do that,” Old-timer growled.
“You don’t have the right to stop me, Craig.”
“They’re using you like a pawn,” Old-timer replied.
“She has made her choice,” Neirbo stated, a slight sense of relief in his voice. “You should honor her sacrifice.”
