Nanotech Read online

  Nanotech

  edited by

  JACK DANN & GARDNER DOZOIS

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  eISBN: 978-1-62579-115-3

  Copyright © 2013 by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann

  First printing: December 1998

  Cover art by: Ron Miller

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  Electronic version by Baen Books

  Acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following material:

  "Blood Music," by Greg Bear. Copyright © 1988 by Greg Bear. First published in Analog, June 1983. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Margin of Error," by Nancy Kress. Copyright © 1994 by Omni Publication International, Ltd. First published in Omni, October 1994. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Axiomatic," by Greg Egan. Copyright © 1990 by Interzone. First appeared in Interzone #41, November 1990. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Remember'd Kisses," by Michael F. Flynn. Copyright © 1988 by Davis Publications, Inc. First published in Analog, December 1988. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Recording Angel," by Ian McDonald. Copyright © 1996 by Interzone. First published in Interzone, February 1996. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Sunflowers," by Kathleen Ann Goonan. Copyright © 1995 by Interzone. First appeared in Interzone, April 1995. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "The Logic Pool," by Stephen Baxter. Copyright © 1994 by Bantam Doubleday Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov's Science Fiction, June 1994. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Maggie Noach Literary Agency.

  "Any Major Dude," by Paul Di Filippo. Copyright © 1991 by Paul Di Filippo. First published in New Worlds (Gollancz). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "We Were Out of Our Minds with Joy," by David Marusek. Copyright © 1995 by Bantam Doubleday Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov's Science Fiction, November 1995. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Willy in the Nano-Lab," by Geoffrey A. Landis. Copyright © 1998 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov's Science Fiction.

  PREFACE

  Although stories from way back in the fifties such as Philip K. Dick's "Autofac" and "Second Variety" can be considered to be the aesthetic ancestors of at least one kind of nanotech story (depicting, as they do, self-replicating robot machinery run amok, reproducing unstoppably, and spreading beyond all human control, laying waste to the landscape—basically a variant of what is now known as the "gray goo scenario" in nanotech circles: where out-of-control nano-mechanisms eat everything in their relentless drive to reproduce more of themselves, turning everything into, well, gray goo), "nanotechnology" as such wasn't talked about much in the genre until after the appearance of K. Eric Drexler's extremely influential non-fiction book Engines of Creation in 1986.

  A speculative look at the eventual possibilities of an emerging future technology—dubbed molecular nanotechnology by Drexler—that might eventually be able to create self-replicating controllable machines, smaller than viruses, that could be used to build or alter almost any structure by directly manipulating atoms or molecules on the nanometer scale, Engines of Creation had an enormous impact on the imagination of many of the science fiction writers of the day, perhaps influencing the consensus picture of what the future was going to be like more than any other non-fiction book ever has (with the possible exception of Alvin Toffler's The Third Wave, or perhaps of Gordon Rattray Taylor's The Biological Time-Bomb, which inspired a subgenre of stories about clones and other marvels of biological technology—and also a flood of stories about the dangers of overpopulation and the destruction of the environment—in the late sixties and seventies).

  In the real world, nanotechnology has not yet arrived, although we continue to inch steadily closer with each new breakthrough in microminiature engineering to the day when nanotechnology will be a functional reality—according to some scientists, anyway. According to other scientists, nanotechnology—of the sort featured in science fiction stories, at least—will never be a practical reality. Only time will tell which of these groups is right. (Perhaps reality will follow a middle course, as it often does, with nanotechnology becoming viable, but proving less all-embracing and omnipotent than some writers have suggested that it will be, perhaps for reasons that have not yet been foreseen. I suspect that if it is possible, it's going to turn out to be much more difficult to do than currently expected, and less magically facile of operation—and that its most far-reaching implications for society may be ones that nobody has even thought of yet.)

  In science fiction, though, nanotechnology is already here, an accepted part of the consensus vision among SF writers as to what the future is going to be like—to the point where, if your future society doesn't feature the use of nanotech, you have to explain why it doesn't in order to give your future world any credibility at all.

  After Drexler, "nanotechnology" became the buzzword of the day, as "virtual reality" and "cyberspace" had been slightly before it, and suddenly every writer with any claim to being au courant with the Cutting Edge of science was writing nanotech stories. There were a lot of nanotech stories written in the late eighties and all throughout the nineties to date, and, since many of the writers who climbed gladly aboard the nanotech bandwagon had little or no knowledge of science or how technology actually works, nanotech stories quickly became a cliche, overused, just as had happened with overpopulation/Environmental Doom stories by the mid '70s. In some hands, nanotech became merely a Magic Wand, a plot device that enabled you to accomplish anything in a story; no matter how difficult or impossible, the Magic Solution to any problem: Just release your cloud of nanomechanisms at any difficult plot point, and you could turn a mountain into a heap of gold (or into a vast mound of chocolate puddings, for that matter . . . or into anything else you could think of), you could instantly reverse aging, bring people back from the dead, change your sex more easily than you can change your socks, turn one character into another, build mile-high skyscrapers in the wink of an eye, effortlessly defeat the villian's Space Fleet in the time it takes you to snap your fingers, and otherwise vault over any corners you may have painted yourself into in the course of telling your story. Needless to say—when anything is possible, nothing has much impact—this quickly became dull.

  Nevertheless, nanotechnology has not gone away, simply because it was examined in a simplistic fashion by a few writers, any more than the dangers of Environmental Destruction and the potential collapse of the ecosystem have vanished as realworld threats because enough Pollution Stories were written in the '70s that readers became bored with them.

  In fact, many of the potential marvels and nightmare threats—and there are some horrifying scenarios that can arise from the use of nanotechnology, including governmental control of thoughts and emotion, as well as the possible total destruction of life on Earth if nanomechanisms should slip out of human control, or be deliberately employed as a Doomsday Weapon—are only now being examined with any sort of real complexity or sophistication, any radical sweep of imagination or intellectual vigor . . . examined by the very writers in the anthology you hold in your hands, among others . . . writers who will take you along to future worlds stranger than you can imagine, but, fortunately for our reading pleasure, no stranger than they can imagine!

  So turn the page and let these expert dreamers take you to the World of Tomorrow. If you haven't been there lately, you won't recognize the place . . .

  BLOOD MUSIC

  Greg Bear


  Born in San Diego, California, Greg Bear made his first sale at the age of fifteen to Robert Lowndes's Famous Science Fiction, and has subsequently established himself as one of the top professionals in the genre, and seems well on the way to achieving the sort of habitual-bestseller status enjoyed by Arthur C. Clarke. Indeed, he has much in common with Clarke—being, like him, a hard-science writer with a strong streak of the mystic, whose scientifically rigorous scenarios often lead his characters to mysterious transformations and apotheoses beyond the reach of science. He won a Nebula Award for this pyrotechnic novella "Hardfought," a Nebula and Hugo Award for his famous story "Blood Music," which was later expanded into a novel of the same title, and a subsequent Nebula and Hugo for his story "Tangents." His other books include the novels Hegira, Psychlone, Beyond Heaven's River, Strength of Stones, The Infinity Concerto, The Serpent Mage, Eon, Eternity, The Forge of God, Anvil of Stars, Moving Mars, Heads, Legacy, and the critically acclaimed Queen of Angels, as well as the collections Wind from a Burning Woman and Tangents. His most recent books are, as editor, the original anthology New Legends, and a major new novel called /(Slash). He lives with his family just outside of Seattle, Washington.

  Bear has a sweeping, Stapeldonean vision of how different the future must inevitably be from the present. This vision of the strange, inhuman future to come is featured powerfully in the story that follows, which may be the first true nanotech story, even though it was written several years before the term "nanotechnology" was even coined—a chilling story that warns us that that inhuman future may not be hundreds of years away, or even decades away, but may instead lay waiting for us only next week, or tomorrow, or today . . . and that the true frontiers of exploration may not lay Out There, but rather deep inside . . .

  There is a principle in nature I don't think anyone has pointed out before. Each hour, a myriad of trillions of little live things—bacteria, microbes, "animalcules"—are born and die, not counting for much except in the bulk of their existence and the accumulation of their tiny effects. They do not perceive deeply. They do not suffer much. A hundred billion, dying, would not begin to have the same importance as a single human death.

  Within the ranks of magnitude of all creatures, small as microbes or great as humans, there is an equality of "elan," just as the branches of a tall tree, gathered together, equal the bulk of the limbs below, and all the limbs equal the bulk of the trunk.

  That, at least, is the principle. I believe Vergil Ulam was the first to violate it.

  It had been two years since I'd last seen Vergil. My memory of him hardly matched the tan, smiling, well-dressed gentleman standing before me. We had made a lunch appointment over the phone the day before, and now faced each other in the wide double doors of the employees' cafeteria at the Mount Freedom Medical Center.

  "Vergil?" I asked. "My God, Vergil!"

  "Good to see you, Edward." He shook my hand firmly. He had lost ten or twelve kilos and what remained seemed tighter, better proportioned. At university, Vergil had been the pudgy, shock-haired, snaggle-toothed whiz kid who hot-wired doorknobs, gave us punch that turned our piss blue, and never got a date except with Eileen Termagent, who shared many of his physical characteristics.

  "You look fantastic," I said. "Spend a summer in Cabo San Lucas?"

  We stood in line at the counter and chose our food. "The tan," he said, picking out a carton of chocolate milk, "is from spending three months under a sunlamp. My teeth were straightened just after I last saw you. I'll explain the rest, but we need a place to talk where no one will listen close."

  I steered him to the smoker's corner, where three diehard puffers were scattered among six tables.

  "Listen, I mean it," I said as we unloaded our trays. "You've changed. You're looking good."

  "I've changed more than you know." His tone was motion-picture ominous, and he delivered the line with a theatrical lift of his brows. "How's Gail?"

  Gail was doing well, I told him, teaching nursery school. We'd married the year before. His gaze shifted down to his food—pineapple slice and cottage cheese, piece of banana cream pie—and he said, his voice almost cracking, "Notice something else?"

  I squinted in concentration. "Uh."

  "Look closer."

  "I'm not sure. Well, yes, you're not wearing glasses. Contacts?"

  "No, I don't need them anymore."

  "And you're a snappy dresser. Who's dressing you now? I hope she's as sexy as she is tasteful."

  "Candice isn't—wasn't responsible for the improvement in my clothes," he said. "I just got a better job, more money to throw around. My taste in clothes is better than my taste in food, as it happens." He grinned the Vergil self-deprecating grin, but ended it with a peculiar leer. "At any rate, she's left me, I've been fired from my job, I'm living on savings."

  "Hold it," I said. "That's a bit crowded. Why not do a linear breakdown? You got a job. Where?"

  "Genetron Corp.," he said. "Sixteen months ago."

  "I haven't heard of them."

  "You will. They're putting out common stock in the next month. It'll shoot off the board. They've broken through with MABs. Medical—"

  "I know what MABs are," I interrupted. "At least in theory. Medically Applicable Biochips."

  "They have some that work."

  "What?" It was my turn to lift my brows.

  "Microscopic logic circuits. You inject them into the human body, they set up shop where they're told and troubleshoot. With Dr. Michael Bernard's approval."

  That was quite impressive. Bernard's reputation was spotless. Not only was he associated with the genetic engineering biggies, but he had made the news at least once a year in his practice as a neurosurgeon before retiring. Covers on Time, Mega, Rolling Stone.

  "That's suppose to be secret—stock, breakthrough, Bernard, everything." He looked around and lowered his voice. "But you do whatever the hell you want. I'm through with the bastards."

  I whistled. "Make me rich, huh?"

  "If that's what you want. Or you can spend some time with me before rushing off to your broker."

  "Of course." He hadn't touched the cottage cheese or pie. He had, however, eaten the pineapple slice and drunk the chocolate milk. "So tell me more."

  "Well, in med school I was training for lab work. Biochemical research. I've always had a bent for computers, too. So I put myself through my last two years—"

  "By selling software packages to Westinghouse," I said.

  "It's good my friends remember. That's how I got involved with Genetron, just when they were starting out. They had big money backers, all the lab facilities I thought anyone would ever need. They hired me, and I advanced rapidly.

  "Four months and I was doing my own work. I made some breakthroughs"—he tossed his hand nonchalantly—"then I went off on tangents they thought were premature. I persisted and they took away my lab, handed it over to a certifiable flatworm. I managed to save part of the experiment before they fired me. But I haven't exactly been cautious . . . or judicious. So now it's going on outside the lab."

  I'd always regarded Vergil as ambitious, a trifle cracked, and not terribly sensitive. His relations with authority figures had never been smooth. Science, for him, was like the woman you couldn't possibly have, who suddenly opens her arms to you, long before you're ready for mature love—leaving you afraid you'll forever blow the chance, lose the prize. Apparently, he did. "Outside the lab? I don't get you."

  "Edward, I want you to examine me. Give me a thorough physical. Maybe a cancer diagnostic. Then I'll explain more."

  "You want a five-thousand-dollar exam?"

  "Whatever you can do. Ultrasound, NMR, thermogram, everything."

  "I don't know if I can get access to all that equipment. NMR full-scan has only been here a month or two. Hell, you couldn't pick a more expensive way—"

  "Then ultrasound. That's all you'll need."

  "Vergil, I'm an obstetrician, not a glamour-boy lab-tech. OB-GYN, butt of all jokes. If you'
re turning into a woman, maybe I can help you."

  He leaned forward, almost putting his elbow into the pie, but swinging wide at the last instant by scant millimeters. The old Vergil would have hit it square. "Examine me closely and you'll . . ." He narrowed his eyes. "Just examine me."

  "So I make an appointment for ultrasound. Who's going to pay?"

  "I'm on Blue Shield." He smiled and held up a medical credit card. "I messed with the personnel files at Genetron. Anything up to a hundred thousand dollars medical, they'll never check, never suspect."

  He wanted secrecy, so I made arrangements. I filled out his forms myself. As long as everything was billed properly, most of the examination could take place without official notice. I didn't charge for my services. After all, Vergil had turned my piss blue. We were friends.

  He came in late one night. I wasn't normally on duty then, but I stayed late, waiting for him on the third floor of what the nurses called the Frankenstein wing. I sat on an orange plastic chair. He arrived, looking olive-colored under the fluorescent lights.

  He stripped, and I arranged him on the table. I noticed, first off, that his ankles looked swollen. But they weren't puffy. I felt them several times. They seemed healthy but looked odd. "Hm," I said.

  I ran the paddles over him, picking up areas difficult for the big unit to hit, and programmed the data into the imaging system. Then I swung the table around and inserted it into the enameled orifice of the ultrasound diagnostic unit, the hum-hole, so-called by the nurses.