Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

Fri 01/20 06:59:42 PST

My eyes snap open just before my alarm goes off. For some reason, I'm feeling great this morning. As usual lately, I have no idea what's going on, no context for anything, but that's just life now. My schedule pops up on my console with things I need to do today.

Task: Kill Father.

Hmm, short list.

Well, I guess that's what I'm doing today. I even marked the task as critical, so it must be important. It takes me a minute of reading in the index entry about Father before I remember enough that it sounds like a good idea. Another index entry pops open with a detailed plan for how to do it. I can tell as I read it that I've put a lot of work into this. There are detailed contingencies for all sorts of things that could go wrong. I trust my past self. I have to.

This should totally work.

According to what I've written, I need to get Evan, Andrea, and Louise up and ready early. We all have to be in the cafeteria before Jeff arrives. It takes me a moment to remember who they all are, but as index entries for each pop up for each of them I start getting enough of a working memory that I think I can get started. The system is working. They should all know their parts for this. I need to remember to let Andrea think that Jeff is just faking his breakdown, even though he won't be. I grab some clean clothes and hit the bathroom. After showering and getting dressed, I knock on Evan's door.

"Yeah?" Evan calls, his deep voice groggy.

"It's me. You decent?"

"Decent enough. Come on in."

I open the door and step inside. Evan is sitting on his bed in a t-shirt and boxers, rubbing his eyes, his covers tossed to the side. His face looks strained and tired.

"How you doing, brother?" My entry for him shows that he's been in self-imposed semi-quarantine since he got his final implant calibration done. My own recollections of getting acclimated to my full cloud capabilities flow back into the wet parts of my brain as the reference pops in the index. "The cloud upgrade still giving you trouble?"

"Just a little," he answers, getting up. "Control's not hard. It's the sensory overload that's killing me. I turn it up from the lowest settings, and I feel like my brain is going to explode."

"That's fine, keep it at the lowest settings for now. Or just turn the feedback all the way off until we need it."

He nods slowly.

"I don't know how you do it, man. You really keep this thing on all the time?"

"Yeah, full blast. It took me a while to get used to it, but it's not that bad once you do. I hear a little pain is good for you. Builds character or something."

He laughs. "I doubt it. I miss the old stuff. I had that all figured out. I don't need to know most of this stuff ever. Why does it keep telling me how much everything weighs? Why would I even care about that?"

"It's useful," I assure him, "especially when you need to move a lot of things and need to calculate how much of your cloud you need to commit to each one."

"I'll take your word for it," he grumbles. "I guess you want me to come out and rejoin the world?"

"Yeah," I say, "but more than that. It's today."

He looks confused for a second, then realization dawns across his face.

"Today, today? Like we're doing it today?"

"Yeah. Jeff is going to do something on his own if we don't. You know how that ends."

"Yeah, I guess so. Are you sure we can do it?"