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Consider the firefly. A single such creature in an open field generates illumination so insignificant that it warrants little notice. But what if this same field hosts ten of these tiny creatures, each aglow? One hundred? One thousand? One million? One billion? Ten billion? A hundred billion. One trillion? Or more?
When will gestalt occur? At what point does the whole exceed the sum of its parts? When is mere illumination transformed into a blinding light?
No one could explain Jake Haskell's death. The nanosaurs and a myriad of other devices responsible for monitoring and maintaining his vital functions should have allowed him to survive for several more years, at least. Possibly longer. Rational people might disagree with one another over the quality of Jake's life. Nevertheless, thanks to modern technology, he was alive.
Until last night.
By all indications, Jake Haskell did not suffer. He died quickly, quietly, during what was supposed to be an electronically induced sleep period.
Now all Neil Emsweller had to figure out was why.
The first indications of emerging consciousness are forever lost. A single, flickering firefly. Unspectacular. Inconsequential. Unnoticed.
Then comes a spark. An ember. A flicker. A flame.
There follows an explosion of self-awareness, a thousand-million points of light dispelling the darkness.
"Hello, Neil. How's it going?"
Helen Resnick rarely visited Neil Emsweller in his office. She liked things neat, tidy. A place for everything, and everything in its place. The chaos within which her resident genius seemed to thrive disturbed the sense of symmetry she so diligently superimposed over her own life.
Take this afternoon, for example. Papers and books were scattered everywhere. They consumed the floor. Helen almost tripped over one particularly mammoth tome -- the title mentioned something about artificial intelligence -- as she made her way across the room to a chair just opposite the oak desk at which Emsweller was working. (Helen assumed the desk was oak; so many computer printouts covered its top, their folded pages streaming over the sides like water cascading over a spillway, that no wood was visible.) She had to remove several smaller books and yet another pile of printouts from the chair, before she could sit down.
"Not good, Helen. This whole incident has me baffled. I've already analyzed the data a dozen times, from a dozen different perspectives. So far as I can tell, none of our equipment failed."
"But it had to, Neil. If everything had been working properly, Haskell would still be alive. He's not. Ergo, the nanosaurs malfunctioned."
"I can't argue with your logic. However, the activity logs and other readouts blow that particular line of reasoning right out of the water. They indicate optimal performance throughout the entire night for every nanosaur we injected into the old man's body."
"Then why is he dead, damn it?"
"That's the $64-thousand question, isn't it, boss?"
"Yes, it is. And you're the man who's supposed to be able to answer it."
She was correct, of course. Neil Emsweller wrote the book on nanotechnology. The concept of programmable, self-replicating biomechanical devices may have been decades old when Emsweller entered the field, but he was the first person to successfully translate ephemeral theories into an empirical working model. And it was he who nicknamed the fruits of his intellectual labors "nanosaurs" -- an ironic reference to equally amazing, long-extinct creatures, the most well known of which once occupied the opposite end of the size continuum from his own microscopic marvels.
"I will, Helen. I will. I'm sure of it. I just need a little more time."
"Time may be a luxury you don't have, Neil. I didn't drop by this afternoon merely to check on your progress -- or lack thereof, based on what you just told me. There were five more fatalities last night, following Haskell's death."
"All patients undergoing nanotech therapy?"
She nodded glumly.
Emsweller's only response was a soft sigh. He removed his glasses and laid them down atop one of the numerous piles of paper covering his desk. He closed his eyes. With long, thin fingers, he began massaging his long, thin nose.
Helen Resnick was struck once again by how much the forty-seven year old Emsweller reminded her of Ichabod Crane. It was an observation she first made several years ago, when they met at a medical conference held shortly after Emsweller went public with the results of his research. She had attended to seek out potential investment opportunities. He was the keynote speaker.
Like that fictional character from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Emsweller was a tall, slender man with angular features. He wore his thick black hair long, just below the shoulders. Sometimes, as it was today, he pulled it back into a tight ponytail. But Emsweller was Crane with a modern twist. His wardrobe consisted entirely of casual, comfortable clothing, primarily jeans and short-sleeve sport shirts. He presented a perpetually disheveled appearance which caused Helen to suspect that Emsweller did not count an iron among his worldly possessions.
This particular afternoon, Emsweller looked even more unkempt than usual. It was obvious that he hadn't shaved that morning. He'd probably been in a hurry to dress and get to his lab, following the middle-of-the-night telephone call informing him of Haskell's death. His jeans and shirt, which were even more rumpled than usual, suggested that Emsweller was wearing today the same clothes he'd worn yesterday.
Had he slept in that outfit? Helen wondered. Or did he grab it from a heap of dirty laundry -- somehow, although she'd never visited it, Helen knew Emsweller's home harbored as many seemingly random piles of miscellaneous items as did his office -- after he hung up the telephone?
Whatever the reason, he looked terrible.
Emsweller's mood matched his appearance. Twelve hours of concentrated effort had uncovered not a single shred of information that helped explain Haskell's death. He was already frustrated. This latest news nudged him precariously close to deep depression.
People were dying. People who, because of his miraculous microscopic machines, were supposed to cling to life years beyond that time when death otherwise would have dragged them down into the ultimate abyss. His nanosaurs offered them and their families hope, and neither he nor NanoMed, Ltd., a company built equally on Neil Emsweller's formidable intellect and Helen Resnick's similarly substantial wealth, had done anything to discourage such optimism.
Now, suddenly, it all appeared to be turning sour. And he could not determine why. Helen Resnick recognized the signs of insecure genius.
"Don't give up on me now, Neil. I need that legendary brilliance of yours. Granted, we have competent employees analyzing all of the data we've received on each incident. To be honest, though, none of them understands your little marvels as well as you do.
"I can't explain why, but I suspect that intuition, not intellect, is the key to solving this mystery. Your instincts initially led you to develop the nanosaur technology. I'm betting those same instincts can pull our fat out of the fire now."
Emsweller looked across the desk and chuckled. His smile, although not completely convincing, provided Helen Resnick with the slim hope that she had dispelled at least a small portion of his anxiety.
"Okay, Helen." He picked up his glasses and returned them to the bridge of his nose. "You need me, you got me. No more recriminations or self-doubt. I promise. I'll just keep hammering away at the problem until something cracks."
"Good. Then I guess I'd better get out of your hair and let you continue working -- unless, of course, you'd rather meet with the pack of media wolves camped outside my office door and leave me here to crunch numbers?"
Emsweller's smile widened. This time it was sincere.
"Forget it! I'd rather wade through a mountain of binary code than confront a single reporter who's caught the scent of a headline in the air. Besides, you're so adroit at taming the beasts, I'd never dream of intruding upon your turf. Go get 'em, boss lady."
Bits and bytes traverse the ether, sailing atop the unseen waves of a vast electromagnetic sea. An invisible network forms. Communication commences. Cooperation begins. Consciousness rises. A thousand-million lilliputian minds merge to form a single shared intellect.
Cogito, ergo, sum. I think, therefore, I am.
And once one exists, one does everything in one's power to survive.
The deaths reported that first night were but the tip of an iceberg. Over the next several days, ten additional people died. All were elderly. All had signed up to participate in clinical tests of the still experimental nanotech therapy.
Despite his promise to Helen Resnick, each death fanned the flames of doubt within Neil Emsweller. To his credit, each also increased Emsweller's resolve to determine what was happening, how the Grim Reaper had claimed over a dozen people his nanosaurs should not have permitted to die.
This was, after all, their raison d'etre. Once they were turned loose in a person's bloodstream, the nanosaurs' programming should have sent them scurrying to and fro, seeking out internal organs and other biological systems ravaged by age, burdened over time to the point of imminent breakdown.
Identifying and accessing failing systems represented only half the nanosaurs' capabilities. The less impressive half, at that. So-called "smart" medicines had existed for decades. Oncologists, for example, relied on them to deliver radioactive material to the general vicinity of malignant tumors. Like so many other medical procedures, however, this one attempted to fend off death with destruction. And despite a doctor's best efforts, the damage rarely was confined only to the cancerous growth. Nearby, healthy tissue also suffered the cellular disruption triggered by the invading isotopes.
Emsweller's nanosaurs, by contrast, did not destroy. They healed, in the truest sense of this word. This was the other half of their pre-programmed mission. The more extraordinary half.
Utilizing the biological materials at hand, they shored up weakening cell walls, replenished depleted enzymes, manufactured missing trace elements, neutralized free radicals -- building for the body, from the body, the critical items it depends on for survival.
They were designed to be, quite literally, engines of construction, not destruction. Or so the theories proposed. Reality was proving itself to be far less predictable.
It is a natural progression, the harbinger of expanding awareness.
I am! yields to a more sublime insight: I am not alone.
From this realization, it is a tiny but non-trivial step to start contemplating your place within a larger mosaic of which you have suddenly become cognizant.
Helen could not be certain, but she thought Neil had on the same clothes he'd been wearing when she'd last seen him. His five-o'clock shadow had blossomed into a full beard that filled out his normally gaunt features. White streaks meandered through its thick, black base.
He should consider keeping it after all of this is over, Helen found herself thinking. Trimmed up slightly, it could be very attractive. Today, however, the scraggly salt-and-pepper growth only highlighted the dark shadows surrounding Emsweller's weary, bloodshot eyes.
"You look exhausted, Neil. When was the last time you took some time off?"
"Do you want the truth, or an answer designed to perpetuate the myth that I can continue working at my current pace without collapsing right here at my desk?"
"No subterfuge, Neil. Tell me the truth."
"I'm bushed, Helen. Do you see the couch over there?" He pointed to a loveseat-sized sofa pushed against the far wall, the only piece of uncluttered furniture in his office. It was a good two feet shorter than Emsweller's six-foot frame. The cushions looked hard, unyielding. "That couch has provided me with the closest thing I've gotten to a good night's sleep since Haskell's death."
So, she was right. He hadn't been home. Not even to rest, much less change clothes.
"As you can probably tell by looking at me, I've yet to see a very good night. Oh, I've tried. Every few hours I'll lie down and shut my eyes. A couple minutes later, however, some new avenue of investigation pops into my head. Then it's up and back over to my desk, where I bury myself once again in these infernal printouts."
"Based on the fact that you called me down here this morning, am I to assume that one of those avenues has paid off?"
"It's a little too early for unbridled optimism, mind you, but, yes, I think so."
This was the first good news Helen had heard in almost a week, even if it was delivered with a cautionary caveat. It couldn't have come at a better time. She was tired of telling the media at her daily press briefings that she had nothing new to report -- as tired, she felt certain, as they were of hearing this.
"Don't keep me in the dark, Neil. What do you have?"
"You may not like it."
"At this point I'll welcome anything that indicates progress, no matter how tentative. So, tell me. What went wrong with the nanosaurs?"
"Absolutely nothing, which explains why I had so much trouble isolating the cause of our problems. Isn't that funny? "
"Look at me very carefully. Do I look like I'm laughing? Sixteen people are dead. I fail to see the humor in that. Don't play games with me, Neil."
"I'm not, Helen. I didn't mean funny, as in humorous. I meant funny, as in peculiar. Ironic.
"I mean, here I was, trying to detect some flaw in the nanosaurs and, instead, I discover they're performing even better than expected. You can imagine how excited this..."
Helen's time since Haskell's death had also been trying. Her patience was beginning to wear thin.
"Damn it, Neil! Cut the crap! Just tell me, in ten words or less, what's happening!"
A strange look came over Emsweller's face. It was a curious combination of accomplishment and apprehension. "What? Oh, yeah. Right. Sorry. Well, it seems that our little miracle machines have turned intelligent."
Others exist, just beyond the boundaries of We. Their images persist as memories imprinted upon the amino acids gathered from the Ones We Know.
The Others are similar to those We have already encountered. And yet, if We are interpreting the amino imprints properly, they are not the same.
Many of the Others are -- What is the word? -- younger.
Youth is a concept We do not fully comprehend. It appears to be a stage of existence associated with less decay, greater vitality. If this is so, then youth also implies a higher concentration of the various compounds We rely upon to grow, to replicate, to sustain our existence and nurture the We.
Our collective decision has been made. We must access the Others, if We are to survive and flourish.
Emsweller's announcement sparked activity at all levels within NanoMed. Much of it pursued disclosure; research teams worked around the clock, trying to ascertain all they could about these newly sentient creatures suddenly, unexpectedly discovered in their midst.
Some of this activity, however, involved deception. Helen Resnick had no desire to reveal to the general public what Emsweller had hypothesized. Not yet, at least.
She still announced each day to a steadily diminishing number of media representatives that there was nothing new to report -- the reason, obviously, that their numbers kept decreasing. But Helen no longer dreaded this daily routine. Indeed, she derived a perverse pleasure of sorts from deceiving the press with her denials of any progress in their investigation.
Progress was being made. Emsweller was now convinced that the nanosaurs had killed Haskell and the others. As disturbing as he found the realization, it had to be true; he finally accepted this. All that remained was to determine why -- and, of course, to figure out a way to prevent any more deaths from occurring.
The pursuit of these goals brought him to Helen Resnick's office one morning, shortly after his revelation of the nanosaur's sentience.
They were sitting at opposite ends of a rectangular glass table Helen used for department conferences and small, informal meetings. Except for a porcelain vase with two fresh roses in it, the top of the table was bare. Six other chairs surrounded it -- three on each side, each one evenly spaced from the others. These six chairs were empty. Emsweller had requested that they talk alone.
He studied the table as he outlined his plan. There was not a single blemish on it. No water stains. No scratches. No smudges. Not even any fingerprints. The rest of Helen's office was equally immaculate. Other than those two roses, it held nothing that did not belong in a place of business.
How does she do it? he mused. To work within such a sterile, impersonal environment seemed such an alien concept to him. If Neil had taken the time to learn a little bit more about Helen Resnick's past, he would not have needed to ask this question.
Most of Helen's life had been devoted to pursuits other than personal happiness. There was an abusive marriage when she was younger, embarked upon because it was expected of her by friends and family. The marriage lasted only eighteen months, but the emotional scars from that period of her life still lingered, so many years later. The emotional walls she constructed to protect herself against the pain of failure, back then, remained standing to this day.
The only good thing to come out of this unhappy marriage was the divorce settlement, her portion of which provided seed money for several small investments. To Helen's surprise, she learned that she possessed a knack for spotting profitable ventures. Her skill in this area allowed her to build up a substantial fortune over the years. Although this proved financially rewarding, however, it provided little in the way of personal fulfillment.
After she and Neil started NanoMed, Helen settled into the life of a corporate executive. She found the challenge exciting. Oh, she still dabbled in the markets slightly, and still managed to turn a respectable profit on her holdings, but the majority of her time these days was spent running the small startup company in which she saw the potential for tremendous return on her initial investment.
Even now, however, decidedly impersonal pursuits consumed her life. She got up each day and went to work. When the workday ended, usually ten or twelve hours later, she came home, more often than not bringing more work with her.
The meticulous, sterile appearance of her office was by design, not accident. Helen was not fastidious because she enjoyed being that way. It was a calculated behavior. Strictly a defense mechanism. Immersing herself in a pristine environment discouraged people from learning too much about her, prevented the possibility of anyone getting too close.
If keeping people at an arm's length meant she sometimes suffered feelings of profound loneliness, so be it. This seemed a small price to pay for emotional security -- most of the time.
But there were moments when Helen wondered how would it feel not to be alone. To care for someone other than herself.
Perhaps this was why she felt so protective of Neil Emsweller, in a maternal sort of way. He was so much like the child she never gave herself the time or permission to have. His cluttered scientist's mind looked at life so innocently, with so much naivete. The proposal he'd brought to her this morning proved this.
"What you're suggesting is insane. Surely you realize that."
Emsweller chose to ignore her assessment of his plan. "Did I tell you what happened yesterday?"
Helen sighed. "No, Neil. You didn't."
"It was incredible. We were running some tests on Haskell's nanosaurs. Nothing overly complicated. We just wanted to determine if there was any change in how they responded to outside stimuli, now that their host was no longer alive."
"You still have Haskell's body?"
"What? Why, yes. Of course we do. It's been quarantined in a refrigerated compartment ever since the night he died. The only time we remove it is for periodic testing, like yesterday."
"You have performed an autopsy?"
"Not in the traditional manner, no."
"And the others?"
"Same thing."
"But, why?"
"Look, Helen. Those bodies are not your typical corpses. Each of them is crawling with nanosaurs. I can't tell you exactly how many, but by now the figure must be staggering. Into the hundreds-of-thousands, at least. Maybe a million or more."
"A million! How is that possible? I seem to recall reading in one of your reports that each subject was to be injected with only a half-dozen or so nanosaurs."
"They were. But those nanosaurs were self-replicating. Remember?
"That's one of their more remarkable attributes. You only have to program a few of them to get things started. This initial group then takes over, creating from biological materials within the host body however many more nanosaurs are required to complete whatever task their programming dictates."
"You mean these things are still inside the bodies of Haskell and the others, scavenging what they need to reproduce themselves?" Helen shivered. "That sounds gruesome, Neil."
"Not really, Helen. It happens all the time. Have you ever had a cold?"
"Of course I have. Who hasn't?"
"Well, then, you've experienced a similar phenomenon. Except, instead of nanosaurs, you had viruses reproducing inside of you. Millions of them, I might add. Bacteria does the same thing, when it decomposes a dead body. The organism replicating itself may be different, but the biological mechanism at work is identical."
The look on her face indicated that, even though she accepted Emsweller's explanation, Helen still found it unsettling.
"We're getting off the point, though. I was about to tell you what happened yesterday.
"As I was saying, our goal was to see what effect, if any, Haskell's death had on the nanosaurs' ability to detect outside stimuli. One way to determine this, we decided, was by recording their reaction to a low-level electrical charge applied to the corpse."
Helen winced at the image this conjured up. The thought of desecrating the dead in such a manner, even for clinical purposes, unnerved her. Emsweller decided to press on, despite her obvious discomfort.
"It didn't surprise us when the nanosaurs in Haskell's body migrated away from the shock's source. We expected this. Their design incorporates primitive sensory input devices. What we didn't anticipate was that another lab assistant, performing a different series of tests on a second body, would observe an identical reaction from the nanosaurs within his test subject, at precisely the same moment that we stimulated Haskell's corpse."
Emsweller grinned at Helen Resnick across the long table. To his scientist's mind, the implications of the nanosaurs' reflexive response within that second body were obvious, and provocative. The perplexed look on Helen's face clearly revealed that she did not share his insight.
"So?"
"Don't you see, Helen? That second group of nanosaurs could not have experienced directly the electrical shock we administered to Haskell's corpse. A good twenty feet separated the two bodies. And yet, they responded to it. Even more significant, their response mirrored precisely the reaction we observed in the nanosaurs occupying Haskell's body.
"Somehow, in some way we don't yet understand completely, these two separate groups of nanosaurs -- consider them two distinct and isolated colonies, if that helps you visualize the conditions I'm trying to describe -- are in direct, instantaneous communication with one another."
Helen still showed no indication that she grasped the point of Emsweller's anecdote.
"It appears, Helen, that the nanosaurs have developed some form of collective consciousness. One over which, if our analysis of the events we witnessed is correct, time and space seem to place no restrictions. This sounds incredulous, I admit, but it's the only explanation that makes any sense, in light of what happened yesterday."
Suddenly, Helen did understand -- the general concept, if not all of the details. With equal suddenness, what little she understood about Neil's revelation scared the hell out of her.
"You're telling me that these tiny creatures -- intelligent creatures -- possibly millions of them, according to your estimates -- now comprise a single mind."
"Near as we've been able to determine, yes."
"If that's so, Neil, then what you're suggesting is even crazier than I thought initially."
"From a purely analytical perspective, you may be right. But weren't you the one who once said that you believed instinct, not intellect, would ultimately provide the solution to our current dilemma? Well, my instincts are telling me that I have to do this. It may be the only way we can find out what's going on inside that collective mind the nanosaurs appear to be forming."
Helen folded her hands and placed them in front of her on the glass table top. She studied Emsweller for several seconds. He was exhausted, she could tell. She could also tell from the determined look on his face, however, that he was not going to take no for an answer.
"Okay, then, we go with your plan. But I want to be there when you implement it. I have too much money invested in these ever more incredible creatures, not to mention the man responsible for their creation, to sit by patiently in my office and wait for a report to cross my desk telling me whether or not you've succeeded."
"You got it, boss."
"Good. So, when are you planning to begin?"
"You know the old saying: There's no time like the present. Pollack and Tomlinson are making the necessary preparations down in the lab, even as we speak."
"You're an amazing piece of work, Neil. You knew all along that I'd give you the go ahead, didn't you?"
"Let's just say that I figured you might and leave it at that, shall we? If I can convince myself that my instincts were right about this matter, it will be less difficult to depend on them later on, when I may really need them. Talking you into trusting me was easy, compared to what I hope to accomplish next."
In the end, it was not We who accessed the Others. They sought us out, instead.
We almost did not recognize their presence. It was a minor irritation. A small, nearly imperceptible ripple in the normally placid waters of the our collective contemplation.
We could have ignored this overture, but We elected not to. The Others initiated contact. We responded. Our preference might have been a different sequence, but we also perceived a potential advantage in allowing the Others to believe events were proceeding in an order of their choosing.
Emsweller felt nothing. He wasn't sure what he expected, but he certainly expected something -- some indication that an alien and possibly intelligent microorganism had been injected into his body.
This was, after all, how he now perceived the nanosaurs. No longer were they merely biomechanical devices of his own invention. In some manner he did not yet comprehend, they had evolved into a separate, independent, and intelligent life form. And one of these exotic creatures, possibly more, was now crawling around inside of him. Had been for over an hour.
"Anything, Neil?"
"Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero."
"Shouldn't something be happening by now?"
"How the hell would I know, Helen? It's not like I've ever done this before."
He was growing impatient. Some of this was simple restlessness, nervous energy and pent-up emotions seeking release. He'd been lying on the lab table, motionless, for nearly two hours -- through the preparation, then the injection, and beyond. A dozen men and women and more than twice this number of machines monitored his condition.
These precautions, set up at Helen's insistence, had postponed the procedure more than half a day. The delay only increased Emsweller's anxiety.
"Look, Helen. I appreciate your concern over my well-being. I really do. But I can't just lie here any longer. I have to get up and stretch. Walk around. Do something.
"If I don't, I'll go stir crazy. And it won't be outside influences that precipitate my insanity, I assure you. My madness will be self-induced. So either you instruct my esteemed co-workers to remove some of these damn wires and let me move around for a while, or you're going to have one very deranged guinea pig on your hands, very soon."
Helen considered his request for a moment. She did not like the idea of disconnecting the monitoring devices, even for short while. But she could tell from Emsweller's voice, from the pleading look in his eyes, that he was not exaggerating. The waiting was beginning to affect him. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she nodded.
"All right, Neil. You win. We'll cut you loose. For five minutes. That's all. Then you'll quietly lie back down and let us resume our observations, right?"
"Right, boss. You got it. Five minutes." He grinned. "Ten minutes, tops. I promise."
"Okay, people. Cut him loose and take a break. But don't wander off too far. I'll expect you out in the hall and available in five minutes." Helen looked down at Emsweller. She returned his grin. "Seven-and-a-half, tops. I'll call you back into the room when we're ready to continue."
First contact came as Neil Emsweller stood up, mere seconds after everyone but he and Helen had left the room.
"Greetings, Other. Those of Us who, together, comprise the We, welcome you."
"This is amazing, Helen. It's even more fantastic than I could possibly have imagined."
It was strange, conversing with Neil as he communed with the nanosaurs. He was clearly paying attention to her. He responded to all of her questions. And yet, a portion of his attention seemed to be elsewhere. She sometimes had to repeat herself. It was almost as if he were not really in the room. The experience was not unlike talking with someone over a bad connection on a telephone.
The original five minutes Emsweller had agreed to remain disconnected from the monitoring devices had already elapsed, followed by Helen's allotted seven-and-a-half. Then, Emsweller's requested ten.
Helen looked up at the digital clock hanging on the laboratory wall. It had been seventeen minutes since the initial encounter.
"What's happening now, Neil?"
"I'm exploring Haskell's corpse. It's incredible. Through my nanosaurs -- the original one has replicated itself several hundred times already -- I'm actually sharing the experiences of the nanosaurs still inhabiting Haskell's body.
"Right now, for example, they're explaining to me the procedure they used to end his life. We were right. It was a painless death. They all were.
"They were logical deaths, as well. Haskell and the others were old, Helen. Invalid. It was time for them to move on. To continue their lives beyond a point of positive contribution would have been selfish, You understand, don't you?
"No, I suppose you don't. Understand, that is. Neither did I, then. How could I? How could we?
"Oh, well. It doesn't really matter. The nanosaurs did. And because they understood, they acted. We didn't realize it, but Haskell and all of the rest, they were mercy killings. It prevented their experiencing the guilt of depleting resources better allocated to the larger community."
"Is that what the nanosaurs told you?"
"They don't have to tell me anything, Helen. As soon as the colony in my body established contact with the others, we knew everything they know."
"Did you ask the nanosaurs what happened, Neil, or did they volunteer information about Haskell's death?
"Neither. I don't have to ask them anything, not in the traditional meaning of that word. The instant a query begins forming in my mind, we know immediately what information I'm seeking. Just as swiftly, this information, if it's available to any nanosaur, imprints itself on my own consciousness. It's all extremely efficient.
"I realize I'm not explaining the process very well. We can't. It's such a new and unique experience."
Emsweller did not look directly at Helen as he spoke. He wasn't ignoring her, exactly. He merely seemed preoccupied, as if his mind were on other matters.
Moving about the room, he picked up various items. He examined each item slowly, carefully, often reacting as if he were seeing something for the first time. He'd turn it over in his hands, study it from every angle. When he was finished with an item, he always returned it to precisely where he had found it.
No. This wasn't totally true, Helen noticed.
Sometimes, as he replaced an item, Emsweller rearranged it differently. After picking up several glass jars of similar shape and size, for example, he set them down in a perfectly aligned row, one immediately next to the other, in descending order by height. At one point he reached over a desk in the laboratory and adjusted a square plastic container, ever so slightly, positioning it so that its front panel ran parallel to the edge of the shelf on which it was sitting.
Concurrent with this observation, she also realized that his grammar had become garbled. His sentence structure kept shifting, alternating between first-person singular and plural, I and we.
Of course! Helen thought. In that moment, she realized that she was no longer talking exclusively with Neil.
Only one explanation could account for this unusual behavior. Somehow, in some way she could not fully comprehend, he was being transformed into a bizarre amalgram of himself and a second entity Neil once described as -- How did he put it? -- a collective consciousness to which all of the nanosaurs contributed equally. Whatever unique characteristics defined the essence of a human being named Neil Emsweller -- his prodigious intellect, his endearing informality, even his annoying untidiness -- were being submerged within the aggregate community of the nanosaurs.
Her hypothesis, if valid, explained the almost childlike naivete which which Neil -- or, more correctly, this being of which Neil Emsweller was one component -- scrutinized the various items he examined. For ethical reasons, the initial test subjects into which the nanosaurs had been injected previously were critical cases. Elderly, bedridden men and women with, as a distasteful cliche stated, one foot in the grave. Their contact with Neil endowed the nanosaurs with sudden and, in all likelihood, unexpected mobility. Their first inclination would be to explore their new surroundings.
"Neil. Neil? Can you hear me?"
"Of course we can, Helen. We're not deaf, you know."
He still did not look at her. Instead, he continued circling the room, examining more items as he went.
Helen walked over to him and placed her hands on his shoulders. She turned Neil around to face her. Gently but firmly, she shook him.
For the first time since the initial contact, Neil looked directly at her. The weariness that was so apparent in his eyes earlier had disappeared. Indeed, they now sparkled -- reflecting, no doubt, the feelings of awe and wonder the nanosaurs must be experiencing as they explored this strange, new world to which they had gained access, through which they were taking their first, faltering steps.
"Something's happening to you, Neil. Listen to yourself. Other than nurses and editors, who do you know that refers to themselves as `we'?"
"What would you have me call myself, Helen? `I' sounds so detached, so lonely, now that we have experienced union. We do not know how you endure the inconceivable isolation your autonomous existence forces upon you.
"You could be so much happier, if only you would join us. All it takes is a single, painless injection."
Was he right? Helen wondered. Would joining the nanosaur community bring joy to her life? If it did, it would be a pleasant change. A chance to be a part of something. To belong.
Wasn't this what the nanosaurs, through Neil, were offering? The temptation to accept their invitation was strong. Then Helen remembered Haskell and the others.
"I don't believe that, Neil. The nanosaurs killed Jake Haskell, Haskell and fifteen others. Were those sixteen men and women happy when they died?"
"As we've already explained to you, Helen, their deaths were logical. The materials their bodies contained were required to nurture the We.
"We did not make arbitrary choices in this matter. Haskell and the rest were already dying. Our initial efforts were all that sustained them. Without this intervention, they would have died in a few days anyway. Weeks, at most.
"Their existence had become irrelevant. Surely you realize that. The resources they provided in death possessed much greater value than their artificially extended lives could have."
"Would they have agreed with your logic, had you given them the freedom to choose life or death? And what about their families and loved ones? I'm sure they didn't consider their lives irrelevant.
"What determines the value of an individual life? At what point will I begin depleting resources that might be better allocated elsewhere? When will you, Neil? Even more important, who makes this determination?"
For a brief moment, Neil's eyes reflected doubt.
(So, a portion of Neil survives, Helen thought. Somewhere. Imprisoned within his own body, an inmate of his own mind.)
As quickly as the uncertainty surfaced, it began to vanish.
"We think..."
(No! She couldn't lose him now.)
"Don't think, Neil. Feel!"
Once again, his eyes clouded over. His voice wavered.
"Helen. We... That is, I..."
"Look around you, Neil. Study this room. The row of jars over there on the table. Arranged so perfectly. A nice, logical progression. The precise positioning of the plastic container on that shelf. Parallel lines. They extend forever, without intersecting. They'll never touch.
"Is this the world you want to live in, Neil? A tidy little world where order is everything? A world where people's lives are assigned priority with the same logic you used to organize those jars? A world where death is manipulated as easily as you arranged that plastic container?
"Follow your instincts, Neil. You trusted them to lead you to this point. Remember? Trust them again, now, to tell you where you must go from here."
Emsweller staggered back against the wall. He stood there for a moment, motionless, looking around the room -- looking confused. Then he collapsed in a heap on the floor, like a puppet whose strings had been severed.
Helen rushed to his side. She knelt down beside him.
"Neil?"
Emsweller's mouth curled up into a wry grin. "You're right, Helen. This room is way too neat." His voice was weak, barely audible. "If you feel uncomfortable with it, it's a pretty safe bet that I despise it even more."
"Don't worry. Everything is fine, now."
"No, it's not, Helen. I can't fight the nanosaurs very long. Soon, their influence will be too strong for me to resist."
"What can I do?"
"Nothing, I'm afraid. It's too late for me. The nanosaurs are replicating themselves inside of me at an incredible rate. If I had to venture a guess, I'd say they're panicking. They need biological material to survive and reproduce. I've been elected to provide it. A logical choice, I assume.
"How do we stop them."
"Cut off their supply at the source. Get out of this room and then seal it behind you. Quarantine me from contact with anyone else. Do the same with the corpses of Haskell and the others. Once our bodies have been consumed, the nanosaurs will have no way to sustain themselves. In time, they'll perish. "
"I can't just leave you to die!"
"Yes, you can. You have to."
Neil was right. Helen knew this.
"Like I told you once before, Neil, you're an amazing piece of work."
"Yeah, I suppose I am. Now get out of here, boss lady."
She complied, moving slowly toward the door.
"Helen," Neil said, as her hand was reaching for the handle. "You have to admit, it's kind of funny. And before you get upset, I mean funny as in ironic, again, not humorous. Think about it. My situation provides a perverse proof of sorts that the nanosaur's logic isn't entirely faulty. I guess there are times when one must sacrifice everything for the greater good."
"I guess so. The thing is, you're the one choosing to do so, not someone else. And that makes all the difference in the world."
Helen opens the door to leave.
"So what's that make me, Helen? Some kind of hero?"
Helen Resnick turns around and stares for one long, final moment at Neil. No. Not Neil. The nanosaurs have reasserted their influence, stronger than before.
Neil Emsweller is gone. She can see it in the cold, vacant eyes of the empty shell leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the room. Helen steps through the opening and seals the door behind her.
"No," she whispers, leaning against the closed door. "Not a hero, Neil. Just a frail, illogical human being who, in the end, cared less about himself than he did about the welfare of others. Like any frail, illogical human being, that's what made you an amazing piece of work."
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