Free Thicker Than Blood by Matthew Newhall Page B

calmly. "Wow, oh, hi," Mark's heart was pounding, "You still here? Did you sleep?" "For about four hours on the cot," Kento said, "I was just finishing my morning forms." "Kay," Mark was returning to his groggy morning mode, "Are you hungry?"
    "Nope. Joe and I ordered in last night. I saved some rice for breakfast." Kento sounded awake. He began to stand up and grabbed his shirt. "Right. Rice for breakfast. I prefer donuts myself," Mark was amused, "Did you decipher Amman's notes?" "Something doesn't make sense." He talked as he donned his shirt. He walked to the large LCD on the microscope's side. He touched a button and the screen was filled with a spider web of connecting rods. "Did Amman mention this? I don't see it anywhere." He stared at the screen. "What is it?" "Those dots at the joints are nanites." Mark's jaw dropped. "Wow." "Look carefully." Mark squinted at the screen. The connecting rods between the nanites seemed to be slowly changing length. Wait! The rods aren't growing, they are moving toward me. "The web is drifting." "Keep watching." The web drifted for a few more seconds. Then it expanded snapping into perfect symmetry. A few seconds later it was drifting again. "So you turned them on?" Mark was really excited. He worked at not being childish. "No. I mean I don't think so. The good news is it doesn't seem to getting any bigger." He pressed another button on the microscope's side. "Take a look at this." He pointed at the screen. The image on the screen flickered and changed. On the right there were two small blobs with a few triangles sticking out, pointed here and there. The smaller blobs where alternating between blue, green, and red on the edges. The curved horizon of a much larger brown jagged sphere was on the left. The triangles on the larger left hand blob were seemed more random. Kento reached down and pressed a play shaped button on an adjacent touch screen. The objects started shimmering and wiggling. "See the blob on the right, that is a simple sugar," Kento spoke slowly. The image suddenly zoomed out and several more distant glucose molecule blobs were visible. Then a number blinked into life at the top of the screen and the shimmering slowed to a crawl. "I slowed it here so you can see the whole thing happen."
    The triangles in a small section of the brown blob began fading in and out of sight. A nearby glucose molecule snapped into the side of the giant brown sphere. Suddenly the triangles stopped shifting, then moved again and then stopped. They waited for a few seconds and then the glucose molecule was sucked violently into the big blob. It looked positively mechanical. Mark started to understand what he was looking at. "Did the nanite just eat that sugar?" "It sure did," Kento said, "About ten times a day per nanite. I'm going to need a new set of heads for the microscope. I had it scanning constantly all night. The nanites are huge compared to a single molecule." Mark was truly impressed. He felt a little heady. "We mapped the whole sample. How did we miss that web?" "I don't think you did. I think it was built while I was watching another part of the sample." The smile fell off his face. "Do you know what this means?" "What?" Mark's brain was moving quickly. "It means these nanites were meant to run indefinitely," Kento looked somber. "And." Mark was trying to think why he would want nanites to run indefinitely. "Not exactly the one time use emergency oxygen suppliers they appeared to be in the hospital," Kento was speaking patiently. Mark was frustrated with his own slow responses. I'm not awake, he thought. "I think I need some tea." Mark was thinking out loud. "How long can you swim under water if you don't need to breath?" Kento said, "How much faster can you run if your heart rate accelerates half as fast?" Mark looked a little afraid. Kento was clearly frustrated. He looked Mark in the eyes. "How long can you be dead before it actually starts to hurt your brain?" "Holy crap." Mark's