An excerpt from one of the books I'm working on, called "Plague of Steel."
My name is Jamie Dhukkan, and I am
about to become a terrorist.
When the first refugees arrived, my
husband and I campaigned to deport them. It was ironic: we were both second-gen
immigrants, his parents from Kolkata and mine from Sri Lanka, and here we were
petitioning to try and reject frightened, scared people from our shores.
America is beautiful, yes… but as they say, you must pay the toll to get in,
and the toll was far too high for these people, escapees of the first infestations
in Ukriaine, in Sierra Leone, in Indonesia. My husband overheard the military
discussing the plague; they thought might have been “delivered” to developing
nations on purpose. “Developing”… Well, they developed under Silver’s
influence. Very quickly. They developed into angry hives of furious, faceless
half-machine monsters, their last sliver of humanity allowing them to
understand the pain and betrayal of border closures, UN firing squads, the last
resorts of a terrified Europe. Can anyone be blamed for trying to run from
these things?
If we had permitted a few more to
make landfall, if we’d seen the face of the disease instead of sharpening
bayonets and building higher fences, we might’ve managed a cure. We might have
had enough time, enough human specimens to work on. Applied EMP bursts worked
temporarily for pushing back the infected, but it was like using a sledgehammer
against a swarm of gnats—by the time the FDA had approved the manufacture of
EMP belts and necklaces, Florida was already neck-deep in nanites, and the
first cases had surfaced in New York. We waited too long; we saw only in the
short term, planning for today instead of thinking of tomorrow. Now we’ll pay
for it.
My husband has been gone for three
weeks.
He was working on Project Kessen—a “breakthrough” he claimed
would turn the tide of the plague. Two days ago the Army came and confiscated
all his work, right down to the last sample. I was furious; I demanded
they tell me where he was, what had happened. They served me a death
certificate on the spot, like stone-faced magicians producing a rabbit. Reach
into the black top hat and poof, Annie, your husband is gone. So sorry. An accident
at the lab, casualty of the war, these things happen.
They stripped the lab and left me standing in the kitchen,
hyperventilating like an idiot. I sucked life from my inhaler, struggled for
air as they piled into an armored truck and pulled away. I wish I’d fought them
on it, asked more questions, forced my hand… but would it have helped? We all
know what happens when you ask too many questions about the nanites. About
where they came from. The president has stopped issuing denials—Silver is a
federal experiment gone wrong, and everyone knows it. My Farook wouldn’t say so—but
I saw the guilt in him. The shame. The terrible knowledge that his adopted
country had unleashed something on the world, something that was eating men and
women and children alive. Changing them. That kind of guilt can’t be shaken off—you
live with it all your life.
I should know; I’m a cellular biologist, like my mother
before me. When I was five, she was working on malaria for the Sri Lankan
government, trying to neuter infected mosquitoes. Somehow a single insect
escaped from the lab—my mother would never say how, but she suspected that
someone simply left a door open. One fault in a specimen cage, one door left
ajar, and hundreds of people died from a completely preventable disease. The
elderly, the weak, and the poor died in droves. Such are the wages of knowledge.
Sorry, I’m rambling. I’m getting bitter in my old age. Just
forty, and I’ve lost my husband, my career, my government grants. No golden
years for us, no peaceful retirement—it’s not like there’s a Florida or an
Arizona for us to retire to, anyway. But I refuse to believe I lost him in some
idiotic accident. Farook wasn’t like the other Army hire-outs, the ones who sucked
the CDC’s teats and outsourced their work to agencies that didn’t even wash
their petri dishes. Farook was smart. He could sense a change in the wind
before anyone else—it’s how he survived the budget cuts, the havoc at DARPA
when funding for his cellular automata disappeared. He never quit, naturally: he
was patient, he was precise, and above all he was committed. He loved the whole
concept of nanobots, I took to making fun of him for it. “Don’t make anything
that can think,” I would warn him, and pinch his ear. Oh, how he hated that.
Guess the joke’s on me. Because if he didn’t have a hand in
making Silver, who did? Some backwoods Iranian engineer? Those madmen in
Pyongyang? I don’t think so. These machines are not logical; they do things to
human cells that shouldn’t be possible, that defy the laws of physics. They
move so quickly and evolve so fast it borders on—I hate to say it—magic. If
human hands were behind this thing, I’ll eat my doctorate.
The Army is running out of doctors. Silver cases among the
enlisted are through the roof, and of course the nanites can chew through a
clean-suit now. They’ll do anything to get at a vulnerable human host. Which
makes no sense; the wet, hot environment of human organs should be anathema to
machines. We should be inhospitable to them. But the ‘why’ of the disease is no
longer important. The plague’s hunger is my ticket into Farook’s Army base.
It’s been a long time since I left med school for
epidemiology. I didn’t have the heart for being a medical doctor… Watching
people sicken, watching them die. I wasn’t strong enough to watch for that, because
I knew for every man or woman I saved, there would always be two more who died
of leukemia, or bone marrow cancer. No, that life was not for me. Until now.
I found a man who will forge me
credentials. He smells strange, like curry gone rotten, and doesn’t speak much.
But he’s ex special-forces and he knows what they look for—the personality
quirks they check you for. He thinks he can get me into the base, to “treat”
their sick. As if anything can stop the machines, once they take root.
There’s
an on-site lab, very secure, hidden below fifty feet of bomb-proof elevator
shaft. I have Farook’s codes. I took them, before the army came. I thought he
might want them, if… if he ever came back.
I’m
packing now. I’m leaving this tape recorder because, well, once I get in there
I can’t guarantee what will happen. If they disappear me, if they wipe me from
the records and ship me to Guantanamo or some other blacksite, Chicago maybe,
at least someone might find this. At least someone will know why I did what I
did, why I turned traitor. It wasn’t for a big agenda, not for fundamentalism
or money. It’s just love. I loved that ridiculous, eccentric, occasionally
stupid husband of mine, and I am going to get him back or find his body. One way
or the other.
Project
Kessel… They think they’re so clever. They think just because I’m a biologist
by training, there’s no chance I could have understood his notes. They didn’t
even take me in for questioning. But I know what they’re up to.
They’re
trying to tame it. Turn it to their side, or a piece of it, or a colony. And
then… what? Weaponize it? This thing has already threatened us as a species.
How many more will die when they try to turn it loose, a dog on a very brittle chain?
Right now, the machines convert people at random. It’s all arbitrary. Some hosts
merely get sick; others warp into monsters with gears for teeth and titanium
fingernails. But if we make it angry, threaten it… It’s not stupid. It can
respond to stimuli, evolve. If we declare war on this thing, turn nanite on
nanite, how long can our species survive?
I’m
going. I don’t know what I’m going to find, but I know this will be the last
time I see the house. The photographs in the hall; the shrine near the
coat-rack. All of it, I must hold in my memory. When they catch me, and
waterboard me, and put battery clamps on my loins, it will be this house I
think of. Our peace that we built, here, in spite of the plague. In spite of a
lack of children. We made this house our child, and it breathes in and out with
the essence of us. The essence of what we were.
I’m
coming, Farook. Wherever you are, please don’t give up.
It’ll
take more than a little plague, to stop me loving you.
