Nanotroopers Episode 11: Engebbe

Nanotroopers

  Episode 11: Engebbe

  Copyright 2016 Philip Bosshardt

  A few words about this series….

  *** Nanotroopers is a series of 15,000- 20,000 word episodes detailing the adventures of Johnny Winger and his experiences as a nanotrooper with the United Nations Quantum Corps.

  *** Each episode will be about 40-50 pages, approximately 20,000 words in length.

  *** A new episode will be available and uploaded every 3 weeks.

  *** There will be 22 episodes. The story will be completely serialized in about 14 months.

  *** Each episode is a stand-alone story but will advance the greater theme and plot of the story arc.

  *** The main plotline: U.N. Quantum Corps must defeat the criminal cartel Red Hammer’s efforts to steal or disable their new nanorobotic ANAD systems.

  Episode # Title Approximate Upload Date

  1 ‘Atomgrabbers’ 1-14-16

  2 ‘Nog School’ 2-8-16

  3 ‘Deeno and Mighty Mite’ 2-29-16

  4 ‘ANAD’ 3-21-16

  5 ‘Table Top Mountain’ 4-11-16

  6 ‘I, Lieutenant John Winger…’ 5-2-16

  7 ‘Hong Chui’ 5-23-16

  8 ‘Doc Frost’ 6-13-16

  9 ‘Demonios of Via Verde’ 7-5-16

  10 ‘The Big Bang’ 7-25-16

  11 ‘Engebbe’ 8-15-16

  12 ‘The Symbiosis Project’ 9-5-16

  13 ‘Small is All!’ 9-26-16

  14 ‘’The HNRIV Factor’ 10-17-16

  15 ‘A Black Hole’ 11-7-16

  16 ‘ANAD on Ice’ 11-29-16

  17 ‘Lions Rock’ 12-19-16

  18 ‘Geoplanes’ 1-9-17

  19 ‘Mount Kipwezi’ 1-30-17

  20 ‘Doc II’ 2-20-17

  21 ‘Paryang Monastery’ 3-13-17

  22 ‘Epilogue’ 4-3-17

  Chapter 1

  “Decoherence”

  Inside the sphere

  Time: 3 billion years ago (?)

  Place: Engebbe, Kenya

  For Johnny Winger, the swamp water soon became unbearably hot as volcanic ash sifted down through the trees. Leaves and branches caught fire and floated on top of the water. Flames licked the edges of the swamp.

  We can’t stay here much longer, he realized, or we’ll be boiled alive.

  “Wings! We got to get out of here!” Tallant yelled. She groped in the water, found Doc Frost, who was already sliding under. She hoisted the Doc up by the shirt collar and the three of them scrambled out of the scalding swamp water, scurrying on all fours through heavy brush. Fiery embers rained down on them from the sky and they could see trees being flash-fried in tongues of hot lava, smell the sulfurous fumes rolling toward them and feel the ground trembling.

  They dropped behind a rotted-out tree trunk and caught their breath.

  “Johnny--“ Frost breathed and coughed out, “Johnny…get ANAD…going. Try to engage that big swarm. Physical interaction….may break the entanglement—“

  “I’m trying…I’m trying…but there’s no master here…got to launch manually—“ Winger got on his coupler circuit and, from memory, commanded max rate replication. He cycled open his shoulder capsule port and was gratified to see the first faint wisps of a swarm forming up overhead. Come on, boys…come on…come on…we haven’t got all day— There was plenty of feedstock around; the only question was the config. Was it right? Was it corrupted? And there was no ANAD master.

  ANAD slammed atoms and built structure as fast as it could. Winger could see the swarm growing and had an idea. “I’ll partition the force,” he told them. “I think I can hack out a config for some kind of cover, so we don’t get boiled alive here. The other part I can steer toward the big swarm.”

  Tallant was covering herself up with wet leaves and rotten branches. “Whatever you do, do it fast!”

  When he felt there was enough mass to work, Winger partitioned the swarm. He pecked at his wristpad, trying different configs out from memory. Some kind of cover. Some kind of shelter. In moments, the small subset of ANAD had thickened noticeably, forming up a barrier over their heads, a sort of poor-man’s MOBnet. It didn’t stop all the flying and flaming debris but it helped. The light level dropped off and the barrier seemed to be working. They were protected for the moment. Winger didn’t figure it would last long. And there was still the approaching lava.

  Now for the main event, Winger told himself. Driving an ANAD swarm without a master was like driving a car without a steering wheel. Back to atomgrabbing basics. They didn’t exactly teach this in nog school. He decided to go ‘over the waterfall’ and try out ANAD’s view of things.

  Switching from macro to nano was a dizzying, sometimes nauseating experience. He let the images come, let the sleet of polygons and spheres and cubes and pyramids stream past, felt the bruising and bumping of Brownian motion as molecules jostled and slammed him left and right. Presently, things settled down and he was in the pilot’s seat.

  Now, to get a heading. He scanned ahead, sounding for high thermals, high electromagnetics, forces indicating bots at work, breaking bonds and grabbing atoms. There. That had to be it. The return came back strong and loud. Two five five degrees. Winger commanded his tiny bot army to full propulsor and steered in the direction of the source.

  Doc had said the quantum world was different. Physical interactions with the environment collapsed entanglement states. With any luck, if he could use ANAD to engage Configuration Zero, they’d get yanked out of his hellhole and wind up somewhere else, maybe even back at Table Top, if you could believe that.

  “We’re still there,” Frost insisted. “And at Paryang. And here at Engebbe. We’re in all three places at the same time, superimposed. That’s what quantum mechanics allows.”

  For Johnny Winger, it was all too weird.

  The great mass of bots that was Config Zero was dead ahead. Winger slowed ANAD and commanded what effectors he had to attack position. He took a quick inventory, noting that he did have a barebones bond disrupter, a few grabbers and probes.

  The first bots of Config Zero soon materialized into view. They were like dual pyramids, mounted base to base, with effectors and whirling gadgets and all manner of things spinning and snapping and flexing.

  This is going to be like walking into a hornet’s nest, ANAD, he muttered. He revved forward, extended his grabbers and dove into contact.

  There was a flash of light, and a roaring rush of deceleration. It was like riding the Cyclone at Daytona Beach, with your eyes shut. Your head spun and your ears almost flew off. Your arms and hands and legs weighed a ton and you were hurtling down a long, curving corridor at breakneck speed until at last…

  At last.

  For the briefest moment, an instant really, the blink of an eye, Johnny Winger was floating weightless at the center of the universe. It was outer space all right; he could see stars and nebulae and galaxies too numerous to count, splattered like child’s paint on a black curtain.

  He was inside something, cocooned, enveloped, surrounded by uncountable other somethings and he realized with a start they were bots, dual-pyramid bots just like Config Zero, only way more of them, and what he was staring at wasn’t stars at all but a swarm of bots, from the inside.

  It was the Mother Swarm, though he didn’t really have words for it.

  And then—

  When he came to, he felt hands helping him up. He was on the floor, surrounded by people, and they were helping up sit up. At first blurry and indistinct, he let the hands and arms hoist him up onto some kind of gurney and
dimly recognized Corporal Thielen’s bald head and black moustache.

  They had somehow made it back to the Containment lab at Table Top.

  Winger winced. His head throbbed. “How long were we gone, Corporal?”

  Thielen’s face mutated into a frown. “Gone, Lieutenant? You weren’t gone at all.”

  Winger tried to jerk upright but was pressed firmly back onto the gurney. An orderly was insistent that he lie still.

  “Not gone…what the-“

  Thielen accompanied the litter detail as it headed out through the containment lockout. Two other gurneys bore Dana Tallant and an unconscious Doc Frost. “Sir, when the three of you reached into the chamber and touched that sphere, you all collapsed right onto the floor. I thought you’d gotten a shock. We got the medics here right away…are you feeling any better?”

  Winger scrunched up his eyes and decided not to fight anything. Had nothing happened? The Paryang monastery. The sphere. Engebbe and the swamp. Config Zero. Volcanoes.

  Winger let the exhaustion wash over him and he slipped into unconsciousness.

  Recovery in the Infirmary ICU took a day. Winger was about to check his shoulder capsule and see if any residual ANAD bots had survived when the door to his room opened. He lay back.

  Major Kraft and Major Lofton came in. A nurse scowled at the unplanned visit—he needs his rest, sir…this really is outside normal hours—but she dropped the bioweb and Kraft and Lofton came near.

  Kraft seemed almost grandfatherly. “Lieutenant, the docs say you’ll survive…that was quite a jolt you took from that sphere.”

  Winger still had trouble explaining what had happened. “The tech said we didn’t go anywhere…that we contacted the sphere and collapsed to the floor. But that isn’t what happened, Major. Doc Frost said we became quantum entangled…we were at the Paryang monastery, we were at Engebbe three billion years ago and…other places too.” He remembered the feeling of floating through space inside a vast swarm.

  Lofton was skeptical. “Two other people said you never went anywhere, Lieutenant. But save it for the debriefing. If you’re up to it, I’m holding an after-action in my office at 1700 hours today.”

  Winger gave them a brief rundown on how he had used a few leftover ANAD bots to grapple with Config Zero. “Doc said we had to create some kind of physical interaction…that was the only way we could break down entanglement.” When Kraft and Lofton both looked dubious, Winger shrugged. “Sir, I can’t explain it either. They didn’t teach us this in nog school.”

  “Rest up, Lieutenant,” Kraft told him. “That’s an order.” He and Lofton left the room and Winger lay back, frustrated, wondering. I couldn’t have imagined all that. He wondered if Doc and Dana Tallant were recovering, but before he could get up, he felt something tickling the coupler in the back of his head.

  ANAD?

  There was something in his capsule.

  ***ANAD to Base…detecting increased neural activity in all higher centers…Base, is that you? ANAD transmitting on all channels, requesting comeback…***

  Johnny Winger sat up abruptly. “ANAD, you old nano-goat…that is you! Where the hell have you been? You’ve got to be in my capsule—ANAD, report status--“

  ***ANAD in configuration one…all effectors safed…requesting permission to exit containment, assume loose config—***

  “Sure, ANAD, sure…let me open the port—“ Winger fumbled and finagled with the thing until he had his capsule port open. “ANAD, launch and assume loose config…I don’t care what. Grab some atoms and show yourself…we need to talk.”

  A few moments later, a faint trail of lights, almost like a dotted line, issued from his left shoulder. Winger fluffed up his pillows and lay back to watch, studying the configs and aggregation of the few straggler bots that had somehow been left over in his capsule. A little ragged, ANAD, but we can fix that. You need some feedstock. Hell, we both need feedstock.

  Winger pressed a button on the side of his bed and moments later, an orderly came in. She was a corporal from her insignia, Medical Division, brunette pony-tail and upturned nose.

  “Yes, Lieutenant…eeek! What do you think you’re doing, Lieutenant!” She stopped short when she saw the ANAD swarm trying to form up a ghostly image in the air over his bed. “You’re supposed to be resting…this is ICU…”

  Winger said, “Corporal, really, it’s okay. I’m feeling fine…I’ve got permission—“

  “I doubt that…what is that, anyway?”

  “It’s ANAD…my embed. I’m authorized to—“

  But the nurse huffed and started backing out of the room. “We’ll see what the doctor says about this.” She was gone in seconds.

  Winger sank back against his pillows. “Well, ANAD, that went well, don’t you think? You and I…no respect.”

  ***Parsing ‘respect’…defined as a noun meaning admiration, deference or esteem…Hub, I don’t always understand single-configuration entities…they are static and unchanging…unable to adapt to the environment***

  Winger closed his eyes, giving that some thought. “I suppose you’re right. The thing is: I kind of like being single-config. I’ve grown attached to my body. It may not be perfect but it’s mine. It’s who I am.”

  The ANAD swarm brightened noticeably. It was grabbing more atoms, forming up a faint likeness of Doc Frost. It always took a lot of atoms to keep a structure up.

  ***Multi-configuration is different, Hub…with multi, you can be anything you want…any form or shape…very liberating***

  “Yeah, I’m sure of that, ANAD. Look, I’ll stick with my own flesh and blood for now. Still, it might be wicked to look like someone else, go anywhere, be anything, at least for a while. Troopers could use that ability in our missions.”

  ***Then perhaps such a change should be made…disassemble all single-config troopers and re-create them as multi-configuration entities. ANAD and Humans blended together…is this not the ultimate goal of Dr. Frost’s Symbiosis Project? The perfect warrior…able to execute any missions and function as any kind of weapon, even to become unseen, dispersed beyond detectability…is this not the ultimate goal?***

  “Probably,” Winger had to admit, “but it would wreak havoc with the organization. How do you set up the chain of command when everybody’s like a swarm, just buzzing around like flies? That’d drive old Ironpants crazy, for sure.”

  ANAD had thickened a bit, still trying to fill out more and more of Doc Frost’s face and shoulders. It was like looking up at a shadow, an outline with very little substance.

  “I see what you’re doing there, ANAD. There are still edge effects. Your config buffer needs work.”

  ***You know I do have the greatest enthusiasm for our mission, Johnny. It’s an honor and a privilege to be assigned to the nanotroopers. Yet I find working with single-config entities at times frustrating.”

  “Me too. How so, ANAD?”

  ***I find that single-config are limited in their point of view…limited in creating and assessing options…limited even in what they think is possible…for multi-config, anything that is templated can be created…it’s all a matter of the configuration programming…***

  Winger smiled at that. “ANAD, did I ever tell you that you sound like a very precocious five-year old? Doc Frost says maybe your deep-learning neural net needs tweaking. I need to have you respond like a trooper, not like a child.”

  ***Parsing concept ‘child,’…defined as noun: adolescent, offspring, teenager. Is not a child a form of single-configuration entity…this entity changes state over time and assumes different form…a kind of multi-configuration entity, in my view***

  “If you mean, children grow up and become adults, you’re right. I didn’t mean I think you’re a child…I just think that sometimes you respond differently from how a trooper should respond. Troopers don’t argue. They say ‘yessir’ and complete their mission. Troopers get the j
ob done, no matter what. ANAD, sometimes, you remind me of a child. Learning fast, but still a child. Sometimes, you correlate…inappropriately. Doc says it’s just a matter of adjusting your neural nets.”

  ***ANAD is programmed to provide assistance to any and all troopers in the conduct of their missions…the purpose of the Symbiosis Project is to blend Man and Machine to--***

  “Hey, I know what the purpose is. That’s not what I meant. That’s one way you and me are different, ANAD. You’re a trooper because you’re designed to be a trooper. It’s your processor. As for me…--“ Winger closed his eyes. Why exactly had he become a trooper? To be somebody? To get away from the North Bar Pass Ranch and shoveling cow shit all day? To fill a void? Make his Dad proud? Make a name for himself?

  All of that was true…and more. ANAD talked of becoming a multi-configuration entity. There were days, like today, when that sounded appealing…go anywhere, be anything, look like a hyperjet one day and a table the next. But to what purpose?

  That was the question he kept coming back to. And he had no answer that satisfied him.

  ***ANAD detecting galvanic skin response changes…erratic heart rhythm, slight respiratory insufficiency, blood oxygen levels unstable…these physiological state changes correlate at ninety-four percent with concept “sadness’. Please explain***

  Jeez, I can’t hide anything from this guy. “If you’re asking me if I’m sad, I guess I am—“

  ***Please provide detailed explanation of physical correlates***

  Winger sighed. “I’m sad…single-config entities are sad when something makes them sad. Something makes them melancholy, depressed. We have emotions. Sometimes, emotions make us happy. Sometimes emotions make us sad.”

  ***Correlates indicate high probability of ‘sadness.’***

  “I guess I’m just feeling a little sorry for myself. I kind of miss my family…especially Mom.”

  The ANAD swarm had begun to break down the Doc Frost likeness, becoming more diffuse, more dispersed. ***If Config Winger, J. will permit, this ANAD can perform memory trace procedure…develop neural correlates of ‘Mom’ entity…restore physiological correlates of stability and promote trooper health***

  Winger smiled. “Make a facsimile of Mom from my memory…I don’t think so, ANAD. That’d be pretty creepy. No, I was just thinking…wondering. Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea joining Quantum Corps after all…you do things, see things, but you have no family. Jeez, ANAD, it’s like you’re my family. Imagine that. My brother is a bot sixty nanometers tall—“