In this post, I’ll excerpt the first scene from
“Nanotroopers”, Episode 1, which was just uploaded to Smashwords.com last
week. Here it is….
“Colorado”
Colorado Springs, Colorado
August 2, 2047
2:15 p.m.
Johnny Winger was in Net School, working with Katie
Gomez on some algebra problems, when he learned his mom had been killed in a
car crash. The message was from a deputy
at the El Paso County Sheriff’s office…one
of the worst crashes we’ve seen in years, a deputy had said on the
vidpost. Car went off a cliff, rolled down an embankment, burst into—your father’s at the hospital now--
Johnny snapped the post off. He didn’t want to hear any more. He just wanted to go. Be there. See for himself.
The school let him out without any questions.
Principal Costner tried to be sympathetic.
“Go on, son …get out of here.
We’re praying for you—“ He swung his legs over his turbo and fired it
up, gunning the engine angrily. Then he
scratched off out of the parking lot and made his way screeching and sliding
through several traffic lights to the autoway, heading north. Dad was alive, barely. In a hospital. Colorado Springs.
He just had to be there. And he wasn’t going to give up control of his
turbo to the autoway, not today of all days.
He needed to be in control, feel the road vibrations and the wind, know
for sure there was something he could
control. Johnny Winger steered into the
manual lane and cranked his bike up to just under a hundred. Cars and trucks and road signs flashed past.
He made the Sisters of Mercy Hospital in about half
an hour.
The hospital was a Greco-Roman institutional brick
pile, all fake columns and turrets and gables, some architect’s wet dream gone
awry. The ten-story main building poked
up above a small forest of aspen and birch trees, in a hundred-acre park-like
setting out along Powers Avenue. Johnny
skidded his turbobike to a halt and parked in a delivery van’s spot, then hustled
inside.
He found his sister Joanna in the CCU waiting room.
Joanna was an inch shorter, short blond hair with
some locks hanging over her right eye.
“They just brought Mom in.” She
held up her wristpad. “I was just
talking with the funeral home…she died quickly, Sheriff’s deputy told me. They’re taking the body over there this
afternoon.”
Johnny felt a hard lump in his throat. His eyes were dry, for the moment. Joanna’s were red. He figured tears would come later.
“What about Dad?”
“Just out of surgery…skull fracture…he may have some
brain trauma, the docs said. He also has
a broken arm, some spinal contusions…Johnny, it’s a miracle he survived. From what that deputy said about the crash
scene—“
Johnny put both hands on her shoulders. “I heard.
Let’s do details later—“he stopped when the door to the waiting room
opened. A nurse in blue scrubs poked her
head in.
“You two can make a short visit now…very short, like
five minutes. Your Dad’s semi-conscious,
just coming out of sedation.” She held
the door back and they went in.
The Critical Care Unit was on the fifth floor, north
wing. The waiting area had been half
full, with small knots of people engaged in whispered conversation, two
children joysticking remote action bots along the wall, and a wraparound active
display showing live scenes from Vail and Aspen and Steamboat Springs. The nurse showed Johnny and Joanna down a
hall to the Active Care Unit. Through
the bioshield, a sort of containment zone inside of which active nanodevices
were at work, Johnny came up to the bed where Jamison Winger lay enveloped in
thick ganglia of wires and hoses. Joanna
hung back, her hands to her mouth.
A faint coruscating blue glow surrounded the bed,
the inner containment field pulsating with active nano to protect the patient
from further infection.
A swarthy Egyptian doctor, Sethi Hassan, attended a
small display, with imaging views showing what the bots were seeing. Two nurses also attended.
Dr. Hassan sensed the presence of someone new, but
did not at first look away from the screen.
His right hand manipulated a tiny trackball and the view on the screen
changed with each manipulation.
“How’s he doing, Doc?” Johnny asked.
“About as well as could be expected,” Hassan
said. He had just finished some tests
and scans, looking for peritumoral edema, any headaches, intracranial pressure,
hemiparesis, tremors. Every test had
turned up better than expected.
“Frankly, Mr. Winger here’s doing a lot better than he should be. We still have some work to do, more surgery,
basically repairs and reconstructive sessions.
He’s suffered substantial trauma to the frontal and parietal lobes. After that, more tests…memory function, basic
motor skills. You’ve got five minutes,
no more.” With that Hassan retreated to
a small control station by the door.
Winger bent over the bed, pressing lightly against
the field. A keening buzz changed pitch
and invisible forces pressed back against his fingers, forcing his hand
away. Standard mobility barrier, he told himself, almost without
thinking. He’d read about bots like this
on the Net just the other day. He moved
aside to let Joanna come closer, then drifted toward Hassan’s station.
“Doc, what do all these bots do?”
Hassan sighed, flexed his fingers around the
trackball at his panel and did some more manipulations, delicately driving the
medbots under his command.
“Two hours ago, we perfused his brain with a small
formation of neurocytes…these neurocytes are working now. I detached a small element just an hour ago,
got them into position to block a serotonin avalanche that was firing off
inside his limbic system…some kind of seizure, that was. We got the convulsions mostly
stopped…although there’s been some leakage into the hippocampal regions.”
Winger studied his father’s face. His eyes were screwed shut, tension lines all
converging along his forehead. He was
clearly still in pain. His lips trembled
and a rhythmic twitch made his fingers and feet move in fits of shaking. His head was wrapped in bandages.
Mr. Winger started to convulse—his arms and hands
went rigid, then spasmed fluttering off into the air, brushing against the
barrier. The mechs buzzed back. Beside the bed, Hassan busied himself
driving the herd of neurocytes onward, tracking down the errant
discharges. Seconds later, as he swarmed
the ‘cytes toward the center of the convulsion, the spasm gradually died
off. Mr. Winger’s arms dropped, his
fists unclenched. The doctor looked up;
his eyes saying that was too close.
“We’re running the latest here at SOM…Mark III
medical autonomous assemblers.
AMADs. Most of the exterior
trauma’s already stitched up…that went pretty well, I must say. But hunting down these spasms and figuring out
the firing patterns, timing the cascades and the uptake rates…that’s taking
time. I’ll get it figured out
eventually…if we can keep him stable for the time being.”
Joanna leaned over the bioweb and sighed with
sadness. “Brad’s flying in from Frisco
tonight. One of us needs to pick him up
at the airport.” Brad was the oldest of
the Winger kids, now a resident at Stanford Medical.
“I just have my bike…Brad won’t want to ride that.”
“I can go,” Joanna offered. “If you’ll stay here with him…you’ll have to
sign some paperwork when they bring Mom in.
And Dr. Hassan may have questions about further treatment.”
That’s how it was decided. Joanna and Johnny ate a quick and tasteless
meal at the commissary, consoled each other for a few moments over cake and
coffee and then Joanna was off.
Johnny went back to CCU. Slouching on a beat-up vinyl couch, he
googled ‘AMAD’ on his wristpad and studied the images and the reports, browsing
and skipping quickly through the details.
At any moment, he expected to get another five-minute visit with his Dad
and he had a few questions for Hassan and the second shift surgeon, Dr.
Morse. He kept one eye on the
double-doors to the trauma suite and one eye on his screen….
‘Autonomous
nanoscale assemblers…the bots sport quantum processors…unique operating
parameters…surgeons need special skills to run the bots…working at the scale of
atoms takes a different mindset…it’s like a carnival ride down there, with van
der Waals forces and Brownian motion….’
Winger watched a small snippet of video, taken from
a bot’s acoustic sounder inside a living brain.
Someone was narrating….
“Right
now, Dr. Volk is steering AMAD into the vascular cleft of the membrane. He’s twisting his right hand controller,
pulsing a carbene grabber to twist the cleft molecules just so, now releasing
the membrane lipids, slingshotting himself forward. Now, AMAD seems to be floating in a plasma
bath…there are dark, viny shapes barely visible off in the distance. The plasma is a heavy viscous fluid. Dr. Volk is tweaking up the propulsor to a
higher power setting and taking a navigation hack off the vascular grid….”
Johnny found himself
mesmerized by the scene. That would be so cool to do that, he
told himself. Just a few weeks ago, he’d
met with the guidance counselor at Pueblo Net School, Mr. Holley.
To say that Mr. Holley
was fat was like saying Mt. Everest was tall.
He squinted through folds of fat around his puffy eyes at a small
tablet. “It says here on your forms that
you’re interested in Engineering. Mr.
Winger, I’m sure others have told you that to get into Engineering school, some
place like Stanford, Cal Tech, Michigan
and so forth, you’ll have to get those marks up. To be honest, Mr. Winger, most of the
basketball team has higher marks than this…especially in Math…what is it with
Math anyway? Don’t you like
numbers? Your whole ten years at Net
School, you’ve struggled.”
Well, he had only heard
that about a million times. He’d developed a set litany of
responses. “Numbers don’t like me, Mr. Holley.” That
was Number Fourteen. He had dozens
more.
Now, watching the video
on his wrist, watching some surgeon whose name he couldn’t even pronounce,
joystick his way through a living brain, riding heard on a platoon of nanoscale
bots like really small cattle, Johnny Winger had a moment’s inspiration, a
vision handed down from the future he would tell himself later, of doing the
same thing. Grabbing atoms and fighting
off viruses and disassembling oligodendrogliomas like the U.S. Cavalry…that he actually could see himself
doing. Numbers…shmumbers…maybe this was
something he ought to look into. After
all, Dad had been beating on his head that he had to start thinking about his
future after Net School. Maybe this….
Dr. Morse, the
late-shift surgeon, cleared his throat.
“Ahem…Mr. Winger….”
Johnny jumped a
foot. He didn’t even realize someone had
been standing next to him.
“Huh--?”
“You can visit your Dad
for several minutes, if you want. He’s
resting now…”
Johnny went in.
The bioweb was still
up, flickering a faint white-blue.
Johnny knew he couldn’t physically touch his Dad. Jamison Winger’s head was half-covered in a
sort of helmet-like device. Johnny
looked up questioningly.
“A docking station for
medbots,” Dr. Morse explained. He
stepped away from a rolling console that was positioned next to the bed. “We’ll be doing an insert in another hour,
trying to hunt down and fix neural pathways that were damaged… imagery shows
some pretty serious peritumoral edemas in several regions. We’re going to try and fix them tonight.”
Winger leaned over to
look at Morse’s console. “I was just
watching a vid about bots like this.
This is pretty new stuff.”
“State of the art,”
Morse told him. “We’ve been using
medical nano-robots for surgeries for several months now. It’s cleaner than invasive, more accurate
that endoscopic. In fact, we’re still
training our staff…there’s an artificial body just down the hall…in the
training suite.”
Winger looked over his
Dad. His face seemed at rest. No more tension lines, no more tightened lips
or strained cheeks. There was really nothing he could do at the moment
anyway…but pray. And hope Morse and his
staff knew what they were doing.
“You expect to be using
these bots more and more.”
“Sure,” said
Morse. He went back to his console. “Once we get all the kinks worked out…oh,
don’t worry…we’re not doing anything unusual tonight. We’ve used bots to repair neural damage
dozens of times now. In fact,” Morse
kind of half smiled, “Sisters of Mercy knows more about these bots than just
about anybody…and that includes Quantum Corps.”
Johnny’s eyebrows went
up. “Quantum Corps…I’ve heard of
them. Some kind of UN agency?”
“Exactly. They use bots all the time…in fact, that’s
their mission, from what I hear. But
we’ve got way more experience with this kind of stuff than they do. In fact, I just saw an ad the other
day…they’re looking for applicants now.”
“Really.” Johnny stood up and went to take a closer
look at Morse’s console. “Can you show
me what these little buggers can do?”
Morse studied the
teenager closely. “I can do better than
that. There’s a training session
scheduled for second shift tonight…around 2100 hours, I think. If you’re around CCU, come down to room
5125. I’ll give you a temporary
password. We can do a little demo for
you…show you what’s happening with your Dad later. It’s really quite extraordinary.”
Johnny looked at his
Dad. Recovery would take weeks, maybe
months, and that was if Morse could
make his repairs. Then would come months
of rehab. “I’ll be around most of the
night. My sister’s picking up my older
brother at the airport tonight. They’re
coming straight here but it’ll be several hours.”
Morse deftly shoo’ed
Johnny out of the room. “Go get
something to eat. Then come to
5125. I think you’ll be impressed. Your Dad’s getting the best care we can
provide…come watch. It’ll put your mind
at ease.”
Johnny promised to do
just that.
The training suite was
down the hall and around the corner from CCU Critical Surgery. Johnny got through the security barriers with
Morse’s temporary password with no trouble.
He came into a room dominated by a large hemispherical tank, draped with
thick ganglia of cables and tubes, surrounded by control panels and
consoles. Overhead, a tray of strange
gun-like devices hovered over one end of the tank.
“Electron beam
injectors,” said a voice from behind him.
It turned out to be a
white-jacketed technician. His name
plate read Stefans. He was a burly and bearded fellow, clad
in latex gloves and a white cap as well. He was built like a lineman, which he
had once been eons ago. Now there was a
substantial paunch around his belly; what had once been muscle was now sagging
into middle age.
“You were wondering
what that was,” Stefans went on.
“Protective measures…in case the little critters get loose…and start
multiplying.” Stefans stuck out his hand
and formally introduced himself. “Dr.
Morse told me you might show up…sorry….about your Dad, I mean. But he’s in great hands down the hall.”
Johnny looked around. “This is all for training…on these bots?”
Stefans nodded
proudly. “Want to give him a test
drive?”
Johnny looked over the
console. “Can I? For real?”
“For real. Sit there.
I’ll go over the basics.” Stefans
explained that the tank was a containment structure and inside was a device
called an Autonomous Medical Assembler/Disassembler. “AMAD for short. Here, I’ll show you—“
"I don't see anything." Johnny stared intently at the imager
screen.
Stefans sat at a console next to the tank. “We call it TinyTown.” He tweaked the
sensitivity controls of the quantum flux imager.
"Keep watching, son…you will, soon--"
The image on the monitor sharpened slightly. In focus in the center of the screen was a
rectangular grid, wavering in the aqueous solution in which the grid was
submerged. Johnny studied the image
carefully.
"Deflection at the probe tip is steady,"
Stefans muttered. "That's about as
close as we can get. The grid is
ready. Let me check a few
things…solution parameters are normal.
Pressure is twenty point two bars.
Temperature right on the curve.
PH normal. Concentration gradient
is what we expected. You ready for the
ride of your life?”
Johnny nodded.
Stefans rubbed his gray moustache. "Activation instructions are coded and
set for transmission. Replication factor
set for the template that's loaded.
Safety systems armed."
Stefans scanned the panel displays. Poised around the periphery of the insulated
tank in which the grid was suspended, were three rows of six electron beam injectors
each. At the slightest hint of trouble
during operation, Stefans would quickly toggle the firing switch on the control
panel. Several million electron volts of
energy would flood the tank, stripping atoms from molecules, and electrons from
atoms. Only a cloud of nucleus fragments
would remain.
"Now we’re set…injectors are ready,” Stefans
said. He pointed to a small
joystick. “You drive AMAD with that.”
Johnny wrapped his fingers around the small
stick. He indicated the device on the
screen, clinging to a scaffolding like grapes on a trellis. “I’m driving that?”
“You will be a moment.”
Johnny flexed his fingers. He was practically licking his lips at the
prospect of playing with this thing.
"You said you've improved a few things. What exactly do you mean?"
Stefans pointed to fuzzy projections on the
screen. "Along with a new
processor, AMAD has stiffer diamondoid effectors. More reactive or 'stickier' covalent bond
ends too, basically carbenes and hydrogen radicals. That lets him grab atoms and move molecules
more securely."
"I can actually grab atoms with this thing…like
sling ‘em around?”
Stefans smiled proudly. "A little trick we've patented. You can grab atoms and put them wherever you
want. You can also replicate…make as
many copies of yourself as you want.
AMAD’s got new carbon group fold lines.
Basically a new type of architecture more easily cleaved and
collapsed. For patients like your Dad,
it makes tracking down and removing damaged cells, tumor cells, whatever, much
easier.”
Winger tried out the control sticks on the
panel.
Stefans continued.
"This guy’s a real hot rod…optimized for faster folding and
unfolding. A very ingenious design, I
should add…based on ribosomal proteins…nature's own assemblers of proteins from
DNA instruction. AMAD can break bonds
much more rapidly, under quantum-scale control.
Orders of magnitude faster than ribosomes, I'm certain. And he's got new fullerene 'hooks' for more
secure grasping and attaching, which makes for better accuracy."
Johnny was anxious to get started, get a feel for
this wonderbread gadget Stefans was so proud of.
"Am I powered up? How do I start this thing?”
"Fully powered.
Just select a mode--here--" Stefans fingered a side panel.
Johnny settled into his seat, let his reflexes take
over. Though he didn’t know it, it was a
basic axiom in nanoscale work that you didn't so much 'fly' the buggers as
'feel' them. Stefans knew that to a
rookie, dodging molecules and groping van der Waals forces was like playing
dodge ball with a sleet of sticky balls.
It took timing and finesse, something that could only come with time.
"Layout's pretty straight-forward,"
Stefans went on. "Operation
controls you have your hands on are for the propulsors. AMAD’s beefed up to sixty picowatts
power. Six degrees of freedom in
attitude…that's your left hand plus translation control in your right."
"Feels jumpy," Johnny reported. He twisted both sticks and the imager scene
careened crazily. "The slightest
touch and he just takes off."
"I'm sure you'll get the hang of it. I've got the gain boosted up high. Imager is acoustic feedback. You can overlay heading, attitude and state data
on the image." Even as he spoke,
Johnny already had the imager screen tiled with shifting mosaics of information.
"You seem like a natural at this,” Stefans
observed. “Let's try to dock with
something," he suggested, spying a few molecules drifting by.
Johnny tickled the imager for better resolution and
clucked at the view. “There’s some kind
of molecule floating by—“
"Why that looks like an old friend of
ours. Mr. Acetylcholine Molecule. What say we scope him out for a parking
place? Go for it, son. Give it a try. By the way, that's a
covalent bond--"
"Oh--!"
Johnny grunted sheepishly. The
acetylcholine's carbon 'fingers' flicked AMAD away. He'd approached on a poor vector and gotten
bounced by the stiff bond forces.
"I'll just try--" Johnny grimaced, trying to regain control of
the device. "That's weird--molecule
just up and spun me around…what gives?”
Stefans sniffed.
"Something new." He
pressed a few buttons on the keyboard.
"AUTO-RESET. With something
like acetylcholine, dopamine--complicated structures like that--it's best to
let AMAD do the piloting. This is
fly-by-stick, electronically controlled.
It seeks equilibrium and calculates resistance instantaneously. Let the computer and auto-maneuver system do
the work now. AMAD knows what to look
for. You sure you haven’t done this
before? It’s like you’re born to this.”
Johnny frowned.
"It seems easy…just twist here and it does that—“
On the imager, AMAD careened around like a beach
ball.
"It’s not
easy but some trainees just have a better feel for the forces involved.
Frankly, what you’re doing right now is pretty amazing. And working AMAD this way saves molecules
from being smashed to bits by hotshot doctors.
Before, doctors would just fly in and smash and grab molecules. Bust up
everything in sight. Trust me, molecules
don’t like that. Now, with AMAD, docking
with a molecule is essentially automated."
"What else can this thing do?"
Stefans pressed a few more buttons to inject
additional molecules into the solution.
"Say you're in an alien medium.
Parameters unknown. Try a basic
replication cycle."
When Johnny looked puzzled, Stefans pointed out the
right buttons and switches.
Then, with Stefans’ help, Johnny scoped out the
medium with AMAD's sensors: pH, concentration gradient, pressure. He toggled the 'rep' pickle on the left
stick, one cycle. In the blink of an
eye, the imager screen jostled slightly.
"I'm waiting…nothing seems to be
happening."
Stefans smiled.
"You missed it, son."
"What?"
"AMAD’s already replicated. Check your state vector…here--" he
pointed to a screen of dials and columns on the left. "See what I mean?"
Johnny was dumb-founded. "I'll be damned--this baby's a real hot
rod. And Dr. Hassan’s using this on my
Dad…?”
“As we speak…he’s more experienced than you, of
course. But you’ve got talent…that much
I can see right now. You seem to be a
natural at working with atoms and molecules.
It takes a special touch…not every doc or intern can come here and do
what you’re doing right off.”
The thought had been forming in the back of Johnny’s
mind for a few minutes. “You mentioned
that UN agency—“
“Quantum Corps?
Sure, they use the same technology.
I’m not sure exactly what they use it for…we sometimes run demos and
seminars for them, advise them on things we’re doing here.”
Johnny studied the little device now caroming around
the imager. “I need to find out more
about them.”
Stefans went over to a desk and pulled out a small
disk. “Here’s a little training vid we
did for them…I think there’s some contact info on it. It should run on your wristpad.”
Johnny pocketed the disk. He would definitely check this out. Maybe this Quantum Corps was the answer to
all the questions that hippopotamus Mr. Holley had been throwing at him: you’ve got to make some decisions soon, son,
about what you want to do with the rest of your life…Jeez. Really, Mr. Holley?
A month later, Jamison Winger had been discharged
from Sisters of Mercy and was back home again at the North Bar Pass ranch a few
miles outside Pueblo. And Johnny Winger
had applied for an interview and a test at Quantum Corps.
Mr. Winger sat a bit unsteadily on a stool in the
barn he had converted into a lab and workshop.
The bench and surrounding tables and shelves were crammed with parts,
pieces of parts, loose wiring, circuit boards, and assorted actuators, motors
and things that looked like disembodied legs and arms. There were even a few robot heads stashed
around, leering down at them like Halloween masks. Jamison Winger was forever a tinkerer, even
when he was supposed to be in rehab.
“I want you to do whatever your heart tells you to
do, son… but Quantum Corps? Really? Do you even know what they do?”
“Sure I do…they operate the same bots that the
doctors used on you…the ones that fixed all your injuries.”
Mr. Winger went back to a circuit board he was
soldering. “Not quite all of them…but I
know you always liked bots. You realize
what this means…Quantum Corps is a military outfit. You apply and get accepted and you’re
committed for several years, at least.
Is this what you want to do? Your
Mom and I always figured you’d go to engineering school, maybe Stanford, like
your brother…or Cal Tech.”
Johnny sniffed at that idea. He’d fight to do anything other than what Brad had done. They were always
comparing him with Brad. “I can get my
schooling with the Corps…Dad, I can go
to the Academy. I’d be an officer. I’d travel around, see things. Work with bots. Grab atoms and fight off viruses, things like
that. It’s way better than—“
Mr. Winger put down his soldering gun, flipped up
his safety glasses—you could still see a scar where the melanocytes hadn’t
quite finished their work on his face—and said, “Than what, son…than this? Working like a dog on the ranch—“
“Dad—“
But they were both interrupted by the clatter of
hooves outside the barn door. Soon
enough, Misty, their brown and white Arabian poked her big snout in, guided by
Joanna. His sister had taken Misty out
for a short ride along the lower passes.
Jamison Winger motioned his daughter over, after she
had secured Misty and set her up with water and oats. He explained what Johnny wanted to do.
Joanna just rolled her eyes. “So what is this, some kind of glorified Cub
Scouts? Do you run around in uniforms
and play shoot-em-up with the bad guys?”
Mr. Winger held up a hand. “Jo…that’ll be enough of that. It’s what he wants to do. I just wanted to let you know…I’ll email
Brad…he’s still stuck in residency at Stanford Medical. If John here wants to join Quantum Corps,
hey, I think that’s great. I just want
to make sure he knows what he’s getting into.”
Joanna wasn’t convinced. “Mom would never go for this.”
Johnny came back, “How do you know?”
“Kids, kids…no more, okay. The Old Man needs some peace around the
barn…I’m working on a new flyer design…it’s no bigger than a fly. John, go do your application.” He turned to Joanna. “And as for you, young lady, how about
finishing what I told you to do...clean up the kitchen and the living
room. Then you can groom Misty and
Marcy. I might even go riding with you
after lunch.”
Joanna agreed with that and Johnny sprinted back to
the house. An hour later, he had
finished his online application to Quantum Corps and submitted it. By supper time that evening—over beef barley
soup and sandwiches—Johnny reported that the Corps had responded back.
He read the reply over the dinner table. “It says ‘Report
by 0800 hours on 22 June, 2048 to the Recruit Processing Center, Table Top
Mountain, Idaho. Bring all applicable
identicards listed below, including a current healthchip and a week’s clothes. Your contact will be Lieutenant Jeremy
Wormer.’ Dad, can I take my bike,
huh… what about it, huh?”
Jamison Winger sopped up some soup he’d dribbled on
his chin. He crammed a square of
cornbread in his mouth and chewed, thinking.
You knew he was thinking when his eyebrows started canting down toward
each other.
“You’ve finished all your projects for Ms.
Gomez? Net School’s done?”
“All done. My
certificate’s already posted on their web site.
I can print it—“
Mr. Winger took another bite and sighed. “No need.
I just wish your Mom were here.
You know she’d give you a big hug and a kiss.”
“Yeah, a big wet kiss.”
Joanna could just imagine it. “Like Misty gives you, all tongue and teeth—“
“Okay, that’s enough. Johnny, this is serious business. You’re sure about this? You’re sure you don’t want to shovel hay the
rest of your life. Or tear up all my
inventions?”
Johnny knew a gotcha
from his Dad when one came. There was a
kind of twinkle in his eye, a slight smirky lift to his lips.
“I’m sure, Dad.
I know what I’m doing.”
Jamison Winger put his spoon down and arranged the
utensils just so. He’d always been a
neat freak but after Ellen had died—well, it was one of a lot of things that
had changed around the place. “Then,
don’t forget to write, son. If they give recruits the time to do
things like that.”
“I won ‘t, sir.”
The next day, Johnny cinched up a bag to the back of
his turbo and sped off down the twisting gravel drive of the ranch. He picked up I-70 a few minutes later and
headed north for Denver. And no autoway
this time either. He wanted to be in control
of something…he’d always liked to be in control of things.
Idaho was two states west, up through the Front
Range and one state north. The trip
would take the better part of two days.
But he had his gear and he didn’t plan on sleeping any longer than
necessary, just enough to rest up from the road.
Table
Top Mountain, here I come.
He throttled up the bike nearly to redline rpms and sped off toward the
mountains, still snow-capped even in summer and silent, now beckoning him on to
new and unknown places.
***
So, now you’ve looked at the first scene of
“Nanotroopers” Episode 1. Let me know
what you think. You can read the whole
episode at Smashwords.com. By the way, it’s
free. And Episode 2 is only a few weeks
away. The early volume of uploads is good. Episode 1 had started out strong and there seems to be a lot of interest. Plus if you upload it, you'll see the publishing schedule for the other 21 remaining episodes.
On my next post, I’ll detail what’s happening with
my other major effort for 2016, my new science fiction novel called The Farpool. I’ll give you a peek at what this series is
all about and what you can expect to come in follow-on stories of the
series.
That’s it for now.
See you on January 25.
Phil B.
