Storymania - Nanobots by Jeffrey L Henager

Nanobots
Jeffrey L Henager

Nanobots
by Jeffrey Henager

Chapter 1

I awoke feeling a little stiff, and at first, didn't suspect anything other old age, or at worst, possibly the beginnings of a cold. After my first cup of coffee, though, it was time to start worrying. My joints were becoming more immobile by the minute. I headed down to the lab. On the way in, I called Steven and woke him up.

“Hey, are you already at work?”. I knew he wasn't; he knew I knew. “Are you kidding? What's up?”. “Nothing, probably. I might have something, and I want to run some tests.” I didn't want to start a panic or anything.

About two hours later, I had an answer, and it wasn't good for me, but it was a double edged sword.

The problem was nanobots. The ones Steven and I engineered. They were throughout my body, and doing exactly what they were designed to do. Kill the target. Only one thing wrong with this picture – they were designed to kill someone else. How they locked onto my DNA and started dismantling it, I had no idea.

First step was to get one programmed to turn them off and get it inside. I was really starting to hurt. My fingers were moving like they were someone elses. Steven had to take over the last ten minutes. We decided that the quickest way to stop the damage was via the bloodstream, so the minute we got it programmed, he sucked it up in a syringe and hit me up with it. Within minutes, the message would be passed from one to the next to stop work.

I was still feeling like hell, so Steven worked on the repairbot. The way the nanobots were designed, they worked on the little connectors holding the DNA lattice together. It wasn't that big of a job to program them to do the reverse. The targets would be the same place in the structure, but instead of breaking the links, they needed to stitch them back together.

By the time the repairbots were done, at least I could tell the destruction inside me had halted, and I was not getting any worse, at least. We introduced the construction manager to my system, and he got to work finding all the other nanos in my system and giving them new instructions. Since we could delegate the authority to change 'missions' to each reprogramee, the progress was rapid once it began.

By lunch, I was back in business. Looking back, it was lucky I wasn't hit earlier in the night. If I had suspected a cold or flu, and taken some pain reliever with a sleep aid, for example, I'd probably not have woken up.

Now the big question: How did these end up in my body? It wasn't like I had never seen them before. (Actually, I HAD never seen them before, because they were so small they were measured in Angstrom units. A micron was huge compared to these little beasties.) They came from my lab; they just weren't supposed to bite me. They were supposed to bite HIM. Of all the people in the world, he was the only one they were to find and infect.
Had we done something wrong here in the lab? Possibly some coding that allowed them to mistake other DNA for the target? It would take some time to tell.

Being so small, there was no way to look at them directly to see. We had to get some diagnostic nanos out and run some code checks on a few of the malformed ones to see what was going on inside.

By 6:00 or so, we had the answer. It was no mistake. There was one specific set of DNA my diminutive pit bulls were trained to attack - mine. Actually, it was the RNA they sniffed out, because RNA is simpler to identify, yet as unique as the DNA. To extend the canine analogy, as George said on one of my favorite Cheers episodes, it was a dog eat dog world, and I was wearing Milk Bone underwear.

The question was, how did I get this huge target painted on my chest? The diagnostic nanos were finishing up breaking down the algorhythms and feeding the data back into the computer by 9:00.

It had been a long day, and I was feeling pretty tired because of another 16 hours in the lab, plus I was still recovering from the attack.

“Let's finish this tomorrow, bud.” Steven looked up from his monitor and said, “You don't want to go home now.” “Yes, I do.” “No. you don't.” Normally, I liked playing that game for at least five iterations, but didn't feel like it today.

I knew he was thinking about them being all over my domicile. “If any of them get in again, they will be reprogrammed almost immediately, so we don't have anything to worry about.”

Steven pointed to his monitor, and said, “Sure, but this isn't my code, and it is too ugly to be yours, if you can believe that.” I ignored the poke at my programming skills.

My heart almost stopped. Whatever was in my hands, I dropped it on the way over to see what he was talking about.

Chapter 2

Looking at the text on his screen, I could see what he meant. Steven was a brilliant programmer. He could write a program so tiny and elegant it was like haiku. Even if you didn't know a thing about computers, it was beautiful to read.

This stuff was junk.I actually saw the difference from about three feet away. It was bloated, kludgy, and I was surprised it worked, but we had already seen the results of the test.

One of the things about programming and computers that is interesting is that there are many ways to accomplish a task. Different people will come up with different ways to search for a text string, or add two numbers together. Someone like me, who uses what Steven laughingly called the 'sledgehammer' approach, might take ten lines of code. Someone like Steven (and there aren't many, which is why I found him and offered him a job) could do it in one line. Then, he would make it smaller. It was embarrassing, almost. Anyway, we worked well together. I knew better than to try to tell him how to code, and my background in nanotechnology only interested him because it let him program, which he did better than anyone I ever saw. I knew his digital signature well enough that this crap stuck out like lipstick on the Mona Lisa.

“So who do you think wrote it?”, I asked. He just shook his head. That could have meant he had no idea, or it could have been his revulsion at the hacked up instructions he was looking at, or both.

“The main thing we need to do is get some of those trackers back. The ones here in your body and any left in the lab are useless now. We only had time to deprogram any and all we could find. They are all clean as a slate. The ones scurrying around in your bed still have the altered instruction set in them, and the trackers are going to be able to tell us where they have been.”

I couldn't go back there. Not because I was in any danger, but because the nanos in my system would immediately destroy the information we needed.

I gave Steven the keys to my house. We did a sweep on him, the keys, and anything else that he might carry that could ruin the detective work we had in front of us. He grabbed a couple of clean containment units, and was gone.

While he was gone, I started going through this code, trying to document it in order to learn more about it. I could see that whoever did this, used our code base, but it was like a Neanderthal was trying to learn programming by copy/paste. That was my first tipoff when I saw it. I doubt the nanobots we called 'surgeons' had more than 100K of code in them. All they had to do was identify two molecules, and snip the bonds that held them together. This instruction set I was looking at was ten times bigger than that. Like I said before, I wondered how it even worked, but we knew that already. Even a zip gun can kill someone, even if it looks crude next to a well machined Baretta.

This stored code was closer in size to what we'd find in a tracker. I took a look at what nanos we had at the lab. All but a few were cleaned, and although really cool little machines, useless to us at this point. We had some surgeons, sniffers, a couple rollers and climbers, and a parachute. No tracker on the parachute, which was crappy coding. I was actually surprised to find any of them other than the surgeons and sniffers. Upon finding the prey, (which by the way wasn't supposed to be me!!!) except for the trackers, they were programmed to either deactivate themselves, or discard any unneeded components and rebuild themselves into another model of nanobe, and continue to work.

The more I learned about these mutations of my work, the more I realized how lucky I was. Lucky that whoever found this and had the knowledge to modify them didn't do a better job of it.

Chapter 3

The fact that they were found and modified in the first place was another issue entirely. Nobody was supposed to know these little assassins existed in the first place. After years of independent research into nanotechnology on a shoestring budget and a grand total of one research scientist (me), this wasn't exactly a high profile project. Thanks to the NSA and some 'grants', I was able to keep my work going. Hell, Steven made more his first year than I had made in the previous ten, and that was in addition to submitting papers for publication, teaching, and cutting coupons. He was worth every penny, though.

I heard the outer doors closing, and knew Steven was back. He was in a hurry to get some data back from the little buggers, and I knew I better grab the containment vessels and keep him from screwing them up by exposing them to the lab environment, which by now was deadly to the nanos, at least, deadly to the modified code. Steven was brilliant when it came to coding, but I wanted to make sure we didn't blow it and have to make another run to my house to get more samples of the little turncoats.

He did impress me by bringing back my pillowcase. The sniffers would have been attracted there, and it was also probably loaded with climbers, rollers, and what we really were interested in, trackers.

The trackers were the biggest of the nanos, because they needed to store location data. They also needed the tools to mark their location, which was accomplished by determining magnetic north, and the strength of the pull. That, combined with some photosensitive molecules, which helped determine longitude, would give you a position anywhere on the globe, after compensation for the time offset from the launch. It was no GPS system, but we had narrowed the margin of errror to under a thousand meters, and that would be close enough for government work.

Once the convoy of these little devils made their way to the target and executed their programming, we wanted a body to display. We knew that the object of all this publicly announced that he would never be taken alive, and his followers were dedicated to making him a symbol for their cause. Ideally, he would become a martyr, and his death could be used to recruit more of them. The last thing they wanted was for his body to fall in the hands of the infidels, and be subjected to an autopsy, and sacrilage, etc. in the Western decadent unholy world. Of course, we wanted to throw a monkey wrench in those plans, and publicly display the body to show that the guys in the white hats win, and evil doesn't pay. Since the conventional means weren't working getting this thug to justice, alternative methods were sought, and that's where me and my microscopic buddies came in.

Speaking of which, Steven brought me out of my mental wanderings by blurting out, “Agh, here it is.” Needing more information, I ask, “What?”. “Your RNA. What they used to find you. We never deleted it from the sniffers. “

Originally, during development and testing, we used my RNA. Owing to Steven's ability to create efficient and compact code, we never got close to using the limited amount of 'memory' on the sniffers. Otherwise, we'd have needed to go back and wipe out excess lines, documentation, and test data like my own information, and re-optimize.

Which explained a lot. All day, I had been wondering how I was targeted. The previous mark of the nanos was well known. I wasn't. There was only one Al-Umada. There were thousands of us geeky research people, and that doesn't include those outside of the nanotechnology field. We had obtained Al's RNA from a paper he personally authored back in the early 90s, before he got so paranoid and went underground. You can change your looks, grow a beard or shave your head. You can get plastic surgery or change your sex, but you can never shake your genetic footprint. That's where the nanos excel. They work tirelessly once released. They have one target (under ideal circumstances). They can travel anywhere, although they aren't the speediest method of transportation, and they don't give up. Best of all, they are self replicating. When the sniffers identified a match, they would trigger the replicators to spit out more sniffers. When they go for long periods of time with no hits, they concentrate on moving around. After extremely long periods with no traces to go on, they suspend the tracking and work on moving as far away from the current location as possible. Then, after confirmation from the trackers, they resume the search.

And that information from the trackers is what we needed. Although I was interested in who did the modification of my invention, I was more interested in where it happened. Fortunately, they were clumsy enough to not erase that from the trackers, and Steven pulled that from at least half a dozen of them he found on my bedclothing.

So now we had some better info on the location. It turns out that our first deployment site was almost right on the mark. The Pashtun region of Pakistan. Our little friend Musharrif had steadfastly declared that it wasn't possible that he was there, but since the nanos were so cheap to replicate, it didn't hurt to make some extras, and drop them in overflights in the supposedly safe regions. Trust, but verify. :)

Now that the target area was smaller, we could drop a heavier concentration of nanos in a smaller area, and probably get to the mark more quickly. Since the originals were detected, and defensed, however, a new tactic was required. It wouldn't be possible to use the original strategy of just destroying the DNA. If they were smart, it wouldn't even be possible to get nanos inside the body. If they were really smart, and possessing the code, they would be able to setup a perimeter of defense nanos, which could detect the presence of hostiles and neutralize them. The trick would be to get them past any anticipated countermeasures, and ensure that this time it would work.

After almost a day and a half at the lab, we were getting diminishing returns on our efforts, and both of us agreed that we needed to recoup. We had a modified copy of all the nano models, and just to be sure, Steven made me a batch of about five million guards that would disinfect my home and surrounding area. I went home, and starting by walking the fence around my yard, dropped them everywhere. The only bots that were safe from the mechanical pesticide were the ones in my body that were programmed to intercept any invaders and dismantle them. I walked into every room and closet, and then left the open vessel on the nightstand, for good measure and peace of mind. Then, I slept like the dead.

Chapter 4

I woke a couple times the next day, and saw the sun was up, but had some catching up to do, so I laid there and tried to go back to sleep. In addition, I had no ideas. How was I going to get something past my own invention? I needed a silver bullet this time. A golden bullet. A magic, silver colored golden bullet with a nuclear payload. I kept trying to relax, but half a minute later, I was tensed up again trying to figure out the answer. Eventually, I found myself awake again, and it was 2:10 in the afternoon. I had the solution. I don't know if it happened while I was sleeping, or if it just came to me the moment I woke up. We had his DNA. The Trojan Horse. Defenses couldn't attack his DNA. The cure would be worse than the disease. I called Steven, and woke him up again. Somehow, I think if I never called him, that he would sleep forever.

“Hey, man.” “Hey.” “Ready to punch in?” “Sure.”

Half hour later I arrived at the lab and he was pulling in behind me. I waited for him at the door. Walking up the stairs, I asked him, “Can you make a nano look like a skin cell to another nano?” “He said, “I can make it appear to be Cyndi Lauper if you wanted.” That made me laugh, half because he was so cocky and half because it made me think of the 80s. “Ok, hotshot, get your compiler warmed up. Why don't you write a cool screensaver or something to occupy yourself for a few?”

We were going to need some major structural changes to all the models, particularly the surgeons and sniffers. The strategy was to make the assassins look like the victim, or at least look like one of the guards. We wrapped the existing code inside a harmless looking exterior that had the genetic footprint of a sloughed off skin cell. Most people know that your skin constantly renews itself, and there are a dozen or so layers of cells, constantly forming, growing and pushing their way to the surface, and that old cells die and fall off. A person in an area for even a few minutes, unless he is wearing a clean suit from head to toe, sheds hundreds of these cells. Our nanos would simply blend in with the crowd. It took me about half a day to get the structure re-engineered. It was still nowhere near the size of a skin cell, but still too small to be seen. It could pass for a broken off piece of a skin cell, though, and now we had room for lots of code. Steven was way ahead of me.

I needed something to drink, and on the way to the kitchen, he called me over. “Check it out, man.” It was awesome. On the outside, just like the hard candy shell of an M&M, you had this innocous looking DNA signature of an ordinary derma class dead piece of organic matter. Inside, was the poison pill. Now, if it is intercepted by a guard nanobe, it looks like a piece of discarded trash. However, it now had intrusion detection measures. Once something tried to penetrate the wrapper, it acted like a virus, and injected it's own code into the attacker. Now we have a defector, working for us, with all the capabilities of our guys. “We would theoritically only have to get one of these in Al's vicinity, and the battle would be over.”, he said. Pretty cool. He had some spare time because my re-engineering took me longer that it took him to write his wrapper, and he had an animated model showing one blue nano amongst a million red ones. It was fun to watch, like the parting of a red sea, red turning to blue in a radiating wave. “If you are going for a coke, can you get me one?” “Yeah, like I work for YOU!”, I said, “Hey, that'd make a great screensaver.” Damn, he was good. I didn't want him to know how impressed I was. He might want to get paid what he was really worth.

Chapter 5

We tested it on me again, with guard nanos 'walking' up to the suspect, 'asking' for his papers, and suddenly abandoning their post and turning traitor. Steven also modified the code of the surgeons, just in case. Now, not only would any potential guard nanos in Al's bloodstream not see anything wrong, even other red and white blood cells would not be able to tell there was a foreign substance there. The wrapper had all the earmarks of an ordinary red blood cell, even though it was one five millionth the size. The payload was changed, too. Now, any red blood cell or platelet it touched would be injected with code that would mark it with my DNA. In effect his entire bloodstream would be rejected by his own body.

The final touch was for all the nanos to dismantle themselves following the success of their mission.

Deployment went place a week later, without incident, via airborne drone.

We didn't get to witness the assassination, but firsthand accounts indicated it was a fairly quick and very painful death. Their doctors worked feverishly, but even knowing what was happening, it was no use. They tried to keep the news quiet, and hoped to bury the body and use the whole episode as a propaganda tool, but that also didn't work. A special forces unit overpowered the security and recovered the body. An autopsy showed death from lack of oxygen, as if there were no red blood cells. Oh, he had plenty of them, allright. They were just busy defending themselves against the rest of Al.

The End