I had Mike open the door to the Room for me, then I grabbed Mikhail out of the bathroom. I told Mike to control the nanomachines through Mikhail without him knowing. I ordered him to duplicate a batch of the nanomachines and have them jump on me and hitch a ride.
I explored the spacecraft only perfunctorily as I made my way to Mike. The doors were small and I bumped my head several times. I also had Mike increase the lighting in the corridors to maximum. Three floors over and two down I was at the computer core. It was not that impressive. There were multiple fiber optic cables running in and out and around the room and down to a cabinet where Mike explained that he resided behind a two-inch-thick wall of condensed matter. It took the nanomachines five minutes to weaken the structure and break through to Mike. Another five minutes and I had Mike connected wirelessly to all of the ship inputs and was holding him in my hand. Mike was orange and green and about the size of a sugar cube—just like Mikhail.
I held the little crystal alien computer against my navel and both my navel and the crystal grew fuzzy. The place where my skin stopped and the crystal started melted together. My stomach started stinging and itching and then the crystal slid completely from view and my abdominal muscles looked normal again—tight and ripped. I felt them to see if I could find the computer but I couldn't feel it anywhere.
This time when I melted through the wall into my and Tatiana's suite it woke her.
'Where you been, lover?' she said in Russian.
'I went to find Mikhail. I made a copy of him for me and I would like you to have one as well.' I held Mikhail in my hand and pulled the covers back off Tatiana. She squirmed naked in front of me and giggled a bit.
'Naughty boy. I'll get cold,' she said teasingly.
I placed Mikhail against her navel. 'Mikhail meet Tatiana,' I said and then: Mikhail, meet Tatiana. Place yourself under her abdominal muscles in a way that will be safe for both of you. Also keep the Room nanomachines on her for her use.
What is this about, Steven? thought Tatiana
The little crystal dissolved through Tatiana's navel as Mike's had done through mine. Tatiana winced once and looked concerned.
'Don't worry,' I assured her. 'It stings a bit.' And then it was over and we each had an alien computer inside us and billions of swarming nanomachines crawling on us—all programmed to do our bidding. Cool, hunh? Tatiana thought so. In fact it excited her so much that she pulled me back into bed with her and, uh, well, we got up about an hour and forty-five minutes later.
Tatiana and I were discussing our situation over breakfast a bit later. She had her long dark hair pulled up on top of her head, with strands of it dangling here and there. She had made the nanomachines fashion her a pair of light blue athletic cotton and lycra tights and a jogbra sports top to match. She was presently barefoot, but I guessed that if she needed shoes that a pair of designer cross trainers would appear in matching color. I had initially made myself jeans and a T-shirt, but she added a short-sleeve button-up turquoise satin shirt and she rolled the sleeves up over my bulging biceps.
Other than being fashion emergencies, we were much more sane today than we had been in years. I told her that Mike—my copy of Mikhail—had data that showed that The Rain was an advanced war of some sort and not meteors at all. We discussed this for some time. Then we came around to the subject of the number of abductees —I didn't mention the isolated ones—and Tatiana thought of something that startled me.
'If they have abducted so many of us recently, then there must be more than this one ship here!' she said.
'Oh my God! You're right.'
Where are they? Tatiana asked.
We both were given images of the Sol System and blinking red dots as to where the Gray ships were. Three were in orbit around Titan—not counting us—and two were near Earth and two were out near the Kuiper Belt, way past Pluto.
Three Gray ships were here at Titan!
