Johnny Winger and the Europa Quandary

  Chapter 1

  Haleyville, Idaho USA

  December 23, 2120

  8:30 p.m.

  Johnny Winger spotted Liam just as he came off the jetway. Boise Airport was busy two days before Christmas, as busy as the terminal ever became. Winger spied his son straight away, lugging a shoulder bag.

  He’s taller than I remember, Winger thought. He waved and Liam came over. They shook hands and, after a moment’s hesitation, hugged briefly.

  “Professor,” he smiled at the boy, “so glad you could make it.”

  Liam Winger had become a newly minted professor of computational neuroscience at Cambridge University in the last year. Winger and Dana Tallant were as proud as parents could be.

  “Dad…please. It’s just me.”

  “Let’s get the rest of your bags. Come on…your mom’s got a special dinner waiting for you.”

  They retrieved the rest of Liam’s luggage and headed out, toward Haleyville, a two hour drive northeast, from Boise. Highway 21 was moderately busy, but Winger let auto-drive do the job and sat back to regard his son with a mixture of pride and curiosity.

  He watched as the snow-capped peaks of the Sawtooth Range drew closer. Somewhere up there, past the front range, was Table Top Mountain and a lifetime of Quantum Corps memories. “The Brits are treating you well?”

  Liam seemed lost in thought. “I’m up for tenure, Dad. You knew that. Committee’s supposed to make a decision in February.”

  “You have a big teaching load? The kids driving you nuts yet?” Winger chuckled at that; Liam was in his mid-twenties, still a kid himself to he and Dana.

  “Not so bad. I teach two classes this Winter semester, both fourth level: Neurosynch 310 and a Special Projects course. I’m spending a lot more time in the lab now…which I like.”

  “I’ll bet. I read your paper from the Geneva conference. ‘ANAD Applications in Cortical Cognitive Enhancements’,” he recited from memory. “Seems like it was well received…what I understood of it.”

  Liam shrugged, but he was secretly proud. “The Q&A went on so long, the Conference referees had to turn out the lights, it’s true.”

  They were quiet for awhile. It was Monday afternoon, snowing lightly, and Johnny Winger was looking forward to the special dinner Dana had promised. Christmas eve was tomorrow night. Having Liam home for the holidays was the best present they could ever have gotten.

  “How about you, Dad? Still itching to get back into the field…fight those bots and slam some atoms?”

  Winger snorted. He‘d been retired for several years now. “Maybe. Hey, I stay busy. The Corps calls me in for consultations on things. I’ve still got my clearances.” He refused to admit the truth, even to Liam, perhaps even to himself, though it surfaced often enough, usually when he least expected it. He did miss atom-grabbing, chewing the fat with Quantum Corps troopers, hot-rodding ANAD bots into and out of every crack in the universe of atoms and molecules. “I have a lot going on.”

  “Yeah,” Liam chuckled softly, “we both know just how much you love that gardening.”

  The car’s autodrive led them unerringly to the Winger household, nestled in the brow of a low wooded hill, just outside Haleyville. It was a two-story ranch house, surrounded by over a hundred acres of pasture and woodland. There was a barn nearby, silver with age, where Winger kept a quartet of Arabians. Snow was everywhere and more was falling, but Liam and Johnny Winger bantered and lied to each other good-naturedly, swapping jokes as they hustled Liam’s luggage inside, dropping the bags off the with the housebot.

  Dana Tallant came out from the kitchen. She gave Liam a light hug and clucked and fussed over her son…how are you feeling?…are you eating enough?…you look a little thin to me…why do you wear your hair that way?…it’s so good to have you home…why don’t you come home more often?....

  Pleasantries aside, Liam worked with the housebots to get his luggage to an upstairs bedroom. Truth was, he felt a little uneasy about being home; he hadn’t kept in regular communication with his parents and he didn’t really want to. He’d had enough of the Corps growing up with his sister Rene and his Dad and Mom never home. With Johnny Winger and Dana Tallant both giving their lives to the Corps, and slamming atoms halfway around the world and the other side of the solar system, Liam had left for college and never looked back. Now a professor at Cambridge, he just wanted to live his own life and forget the Corps.

  Hell, he’d spent more time with Howie the housebot than he had with either General John Winger or Trooper Dana Tallant. Living in the shadow of the Corps and having a normal family life were oil and water…they didn’t mix well and if they did mix, it didn’t taste right.

  Liam was finishing up stowing his gear when he heard a soft knock at the door. His Dad nudged the door open, bearing a couple of beers.

  “Her Majesty wants us down for snacks and drinks in half an hour. I thought you might like a starter.”

  Liam took the beer and chugged down a deep pull. He winced at the taste. “Sorry, Dad…I’ve gone native…you know, stout and that sort of thing. Too much time in the pubs, I guess.”

  Winger sat down on an old footlocker in the corner, rubbing his chin with the cold lip of the bottle. “Your mother and I are both glad you could make it this year, Liam. How long’s it been—“

  Liam shrugged, propping himself up in the bed with some pillows. “I’m not sure…hey, you know Howie would cut off my legs if I did this, a long time ago. No feet with shoes on the bed, Master Liam. House rules. And no drinking in bed…”

  “Yeah, but bots are different now. Take Curly there—“ he indicated the housebot whirring softly at the door, an expectant ‘smile’ on its animatronic face—“now Curly’s got the latest modules…Empathy 2.0, a neat little forgiveness utility you can select settings for, neural processor…right up your alley, son. Curly enforces house rules, but with a grandmother’s touch…a little candy along with the stick. You’d have loved it.”

  Liam had to laugh. “I probably did some of the programming, if it’s a Servodyne product. The Lab consulted on their earliest models.”

  Winger’s smile slowly faded. “Liam, I came by to give you a little heads-up…about your mother. Before dinner, I mean.”

  “What kind of heads-up? What’s wrong?”

  Winger sort of half-shrugged. He downed the rest of his beer. “She’s changed. In the last few months, maybe longer, I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but she’s seems a little distant. Maybe the last few years, actually.”

  “Changed. How?”

  “Little things, really. She seems more distant. When we’re in the family room, I’m watching some vid and she’s creating something on her tablet…she’s loves that tablet…I’ll see her staring off into space. You know your mother always was a chatterbox…but now, she seems—I don’t know—lost, far away, her mind a million light-years away. When I try to talk to her, I get just these real bland, almost canned answers…like you’d hear from Curly over there. Actually, I get more feeling from Curly than I do from her.”

  Liam shook his head. “She hugged me downstairs like she was going to crush me.”

  “Oh, she does things like that…on special occasions. But most of the time…there’s no real feeling. It’s like she’s running on auto, just input and output. And her skin feels funny. Maybe we’re getting old, but we’ve both had all the treatments. She’s got the same cytes and bots inside as me. But something’s not quite right.” Winger smiled a little sheepishly. “Plus the sex is gone too. I miss that.”

  Liam held up a hand. “Okay, I get the picture, Dad. I don’t need to know more. Maybe some bots are malfunctioning. She felt okay when we hugged.”

  Winger debated saying more, his face a battlefield of conflicting thoughts, then he set his lips and made up his mind. “Liam, I don’t know quite know how to say this, but I think you’re mother ‘s an angel.” r />
  Liam blinked. “I’m sorry, Dad…what did you say? Mom’s an angel?”

  Winger gave his empty bottle to Curly, who trundled off to dispose of it. Now they were alone.

  “I don’t have to tell you how good angels are now. I mean, I can walk into the bar at the Custer Inn now and look around and know that half the people there are clouds of bots, and the hell of it is I can’t tell. Nobody can. And I’m not sure how much any of them care either. I mean they’re all over.”

  Liam swallowed hard. “Dad, this is nuts. This is insane.” He looked at his bottle. “What the hell is in this stuff anyway?”

  “I’m serious. Go down to the kitchen right now, if you don’t believe me. Grab hold of your Mom…give her a big hug. Feel her skin. Better yet, just watch her hands. I’m telling you: there are edge effects. I know it sounds crazy. But somehow, some way, Dana Tallant has become a cloud of bots, an angel. And I don’t know when it happened.”

  Liam regarded his Dad with a quizzical stare. “I think retirement’s done something to your head. I realize angels are almost like Normals now…it’s hard for me to tell them apart. But Mom…my Mom? Come on—“

  Winger held up a hand. “You know what they say about angels: edge effects, blurry fingers, they walk through furniture, don’t bleed right. I can prove it…it’s not just my imagination.”

  Liam was skeptical. “How?”

  “The way she bleeds. I’ve seen cuts, scrapes, that sort of thing. The ‘blood’ doesn’t look right. It doesn’t flow right. Sometimes it’s a subtle thing, but hell—I’ve got forty years as an atomgrabber. I know what nanobots look like. How they operate. I just don’t have the gear here to prove it.”

  Liam rubbed a control stud along the side of his glasses. “Maybe I do.”

  Winger went on. “I’ve been trying to get her over to Table Top, tried to concoct some kind of reason to have the medics take a look. You know we both have PX privileges. Medical coverage from the Corps. But she won’t go. A month ago, she had some kind of bad cough. Wouldn’t even talk about seeing a doctor. That’s not like your Mom.”

  “Dad, don’t you think this is just age—“ When Winger looked annoyed, Liam held up a hand. “What I mean is that you two aren’t kids anymore. I know you’ve had treatments and you’ve got all kinds of bots and cytes inside of you. That’s probably what you’re seeing. She just needs a few adjustments, maybe a re-load, that’s all.”

  Winger considered that. “Of course, you may be right, Liam, but I’d like you to take a closer look yourself.”

  “What do you mean, exactly?”

  Winger was already ducking out the door. “Just an idea I’ve had for some time. You’ve got those fancy glasses, I see.”

  Liam pulled off his SuperQuarks. “Just got ‘em. The Lab coughed up enough money for all the staff to have them. Hyper-imaging, nano-scale resolution, bioscan on a hundred different channels. I could send you a live signal of my cortical EEG right now.”

  “That’s okay. Just make sure you bring them to dinner…” he checked an old-fashioned watch on his wrist. “Which if this is accurate, should be in about half an hour.”

  “Where’d you get that thing…the museum?”

  Winger smiled. “Grabbed it off a dinosaur, Liam.” He ducked out the door and Liam dropped his now-finished beer onto a tray Curley held out. The bot had returned and now took the empty and whirred off happily down the hall.

  Dinner was to be a pot roast, with enough trimmings to make a battalion happy. Dana bustled about the kitchen cheerily, not saying much, but with a pleasant half-smile to her face. Winger helped with the salads and the drinks, while Curley finished setting the table, laying out silverware and festive napkins with robotic accuracy and aplomb.

  A huge crock pot simmered on a burner nearby. A beef stew bubbled inside, tomorrow’s lunch being made at the same time. Winger caught Liam’s eye as he peered inside the pot to take in the aroma. Something about the crock pot. Liam studied the top edge, while Dana was busying herself getting the roast out of the oven. He felt gingerly around the edge, felt the sharp points under the grip. Somehow, the grip had been—

  “Careful, honey…that’s hot.” Dana Tallant came over to stir the stew, took a deep breath herself and pronounced herself satisfied. She started to lift the lid completely off.

  “Want me to do it?” Liam asked.

  Dana shook her head. “No, of course not. I’m not that feeble yet.” She pulled the lid back and immediately yanked her hand away. “Ouch! Ow…that hurts---I’m cut a little—“ She started to raise her fingers to her mouth, to suck at the blood just beginning to flow.

  “Let me see,” Liam offered. He saw the slight nod Winger made and in that moment, Liam knew his Dad had somehow arranged this little accident. While he was examining Dana’s cut with one hand, he tapped a quick sequence on the control studs of his eyepiece with his other hand. The pictures were snapped instantly, four in all, all-bands, all-channels, full effects. Then he clucked sympathetically. “Maybe we out to wash that off and get it bandaged.”

  Dana pulled her hand away. “Don’t be silly…it’s just a little cut. I’ll do it. Go help your father with the salad and the plates.” She jerked her hand away like she had been stung and vanished from the kitchen, heading toward a nearby bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

  Dinner was a quiet affair. Mostly Liam answered questions about his work, his research.

  “Enhancement is the long-term goal,” he was saying. “Trying to develop nano-scale bots that can live inside the tissues of our brains, cohabit as it were, and make neural operations more efficient. Make axon and dendritic linkages stronger, better self-repair mechanisms. We’ve got one project going now to double synaptic capacity, really soup up the serotonin cascade, improve yield on re-uptake, boost the whole process. It won’t be long before you can swallow a capsule and have it dump a few gazillion bots into your head and start thinking like an Einstein the next day…we’re seeing orders of magnitude gains in signal flow and connection density. That’s what it’s all about…the more connections the better.”

  Dana picked at a few scraps of beef on her plate. “I don’t know, Liam. I’m not sure I can handle an enhanced Johnny Winger thinking like an Einstein.”

  Winger sniffed. “I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that. Hey, I’m up for dessert.”

  Curly took the orders and was soon rolling around the table with a tray of assorted chocolates and finger cakes, buzzing about like a metallic maître-d.

  When dinner was done and Curley was cleaning off the table, bearing plates and glasses to the dishwasher, Dana excused herself for a few moments, to freshen up in a nearby powder room. She patted Liam on the cheek.

  “I want to hear all about life at Cambridge. Just give me a few minutes, okay? Your Dad can tell you about all the horses and the grounds and all his landscaping ideas.” She padded off.

  Winger caught Liam’s eye.

  Upstairs. In the study.

  Liam followed.

  Winger closed the door behind Liam and they went to the big cherry wood desk in the center. “Let’s see that gadget,” he said.

  Liam took off his glasses. “Just press this button here. Make sure the imager is on the right channel. You’ll have to select display properties on your device.”

  The two of them finagled with the SuperQuark glasses for a few moments. Finally, the first images of Dana’s finger cut materialized into view.

  Liam adjusted the view. Extreme resolution was selected. Liam’s eyes widened as the view settled down.

  “I know you both have all kind of bots and cytes inside of you. Isn’t that what we’re looking at?”

  Winger studied the images from several angles. “I don’t think so. Liam, at this resolution, I should be seeing a hell of a lot of blood cells with a few bots drifting around, doing repairs and thing
s. Look for yourself—“ He stood aside.

  Right away, Liam could see a small army of bots…studded with effectors, propulsors, grabbers. There were no blood cells. Nothing but bots, as far as they could see. Odd multi-lobe structures festooned with gadgets and whirling like miniature cyclones.

  “Let me see if I can go to max on this thing,” Winger said. He fiddled with the imager controls. “Those pics you took should have skin cells in the background. There—“

  Liam studied the images with growing unease. “All bots. That should be tissue, dermal cells, fibroblasts, macrophages, adipocytes. All I’m seeing is bots…and more bots.”

  For Johnny Winger, the view on the imager was a sobering experience. Here was the proof of what he had long suspected. Even down to the level of her blood and skin, Dana was a cloud of nanobotic devices. The density, the level of coordination, the tissue response was stunning. A cloud of bots, an angel as they had been known for years, configured to resemble a human being so closely as to be nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.

  Winger swallowed so hard it was audible. “Just like Rene,” he muttered. “How it happened…when it happened….” He shook his head.

  Liam had a different take. “I don’t know, Dad…I think it’s kind of cool.”

  “Cool?” Winger was incredulous. “Are you nuts? This is your mother we’re looking at. You’ve already lost a sister.”

  “I know, I know…I mean…I didn’t know. But you know Assimilationists and angels are everywhere now.”

  Winger was drumming his fingers on the desk, looking from the imager view to his son and back, trying to figure out which was harder to take. “I need to talk with Doc.”

  “You’ve still got that old swarm?”

  “He’s not that old,” Winger was saying. He extracted a small oval pod from his sweater pocket, a tiny containment device. He activated it by pressing a button on the top, then set the pod on the desk.

  Instantly, the pod was enveloped in a fine, sparkling mist, as the embedded swarm was released from containment. While Winger and Liam watched, the mist thickened as the bots gradually formed up into a floating, faintly phosphorescent image of the head and shoulders of Doc Frost. The config developed like an old film emulsion, slowly but surely filling out structure. In less than three minutes, a reasonable facsimile of the original developer of ANAD hovered over the desk, an avuncular smile beaming down at both of them.