Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

Thu 10/20 17:23:16 PDT

Mom used to take me to church with Grammy and Gramps sometimes, usually just on Easter, but a couple of other times too. I remember the priest or bishop or whatever they called him talking about God. This guy in the sky with all the power in the universe, who could see every person on earth at once and do anything just by wanting it. A being who could move mountains, split seas, and build worlds.

This has to be something like that, but I don't think God ever got the mind-ripping headache that goes with my new cosmic powers.

I play with the options as I wait for the throbbing to subside before I give the controls another try. The upgraded overlay floods my mind with images and information. The console and bot controls are just the beginning. A hundred more displays hang within easy mental reach, covering everything from the chemical makeup of the air around me, to the mass of every object I can see, to the distance between me and anything that my bots can detect.

I gasp like I'm literally drowning in data. Mom's reassuring voice comes back to me. Breathe, Noah. Calm. Breathe.

The pain will subside. I know it will. Focus on something simple. I turn my attention to the air monitoring overlay and watch the numbers for how much nitrogen and oxygen I'm taking in and the small increase in carbon dioxide near my face every time I exhale.

Breathe.

I can see everything. I see whatever I'm looking at, and I see around and past it. I look at the chair next to the bed and simultaneously see the front, back, sides, top and bottom of it. I know its volume down to the cubic millimeter.

I check the diagnostic view of my brain. There's no tissue damage. It's just pain. I can push through pain. The blood flow is elevated all over. Almost every part of every lobe. But none of the blood vessels are in danger of bursting. It's just my gray matter adjusting itself to the new inputs. Another deep breath, hold, exhale.

I'm ready to try again. The old interface felt like an extra piece of skin. This one feels like a whole new body, complete with a new set of muscles that I'm slowly learning to flex. I extend my consciousness, guiding the bots with nothing but thought. I feel the surface of the desk chair, where hundreds of them are making contact with it. I grab onto that sensation, and exert the tiniest mental pressure upwards. My floating army rushes to obey, and it lifts smoothly from the ground, supported at thousands of points by tiny clusters of bots. I release it and it lands back on the ground with a thud.

I reach out to my desk and pick up my tablet. Of course not with my hands. Why would I use hands? The tablet floats above the desk and on an unconscious whim I didn't realize I had, it begins rotating. Another push, and it's spinning on two axes at once, frantically flipping. And then it's still, and then it's gently putting itself back on the desk.

That wasn't so bad. The headache is getting better. Or maybe I'm just getting used to it. Either way, I can do this.

I reach along my physical frame, feeling the contours of my body from outside of myself. I feel the outline of my shape from underneath where my bots have found their way under me without me even realizing that I told them to do that. I give a mental push upwards against my own flesh. It feels like I'm being lifted by a soft foam mattress that cradles every inch of my body. I open my eyes and glance down, seeing the pillow forty centimeters below me. What is that, a foot and change? Why did I think that in metric? Of course. Stupid. The overlays are showing distances that way.

I lift and twist myself up and onto my feet without moving a muscle. I'm tempted for a second to float around, but I think of Jeff and decide to walk. I take a hesitant step, transitioning back to normal motor controls. My legs and feet feel almost alien to me for a moment until my mind remembers how to drive them. Once I'm sure my coordination is back to normal, I pull my satchel over one shoulder and drop the new appliance inside.