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Nellie and the Nanites - Bk4 - Ch.14
🕑 Added 2024-08-21 08:00:08 +0000 UTCChapter Fourteen
Experimental
Nellie sat in the corner of the small shop she had commandeered on the main promenade and tried to devise a comprehensive defense plan. Every now and again, she would get up and go and check on one of her experiments before heading back to her seat with its scattered datapads and mountains of crumpled paper.
Planning had started with a massive meeting in the conference room. Everyone had come, and they had brought with them their ideas and strategies. The ideas ranged from the practical, such as mining the jump points and rapid expansion of their satellite network, to the frankly ridiculous, such as a lot of space-based mirrors and a fake station packed with explosives like the universe's largest pipe bomb.
She was more than a little suspicious that the last one was inspired by her dreams while connected to the throne. It had a certain toon-like quality that reminded her of a particular coyote. What the meeting had ended up as was an argument—a series of arguments all happening at the same time, often at cross purposes.
So, the next meeting was just Nellie and Salem, with Remy and Dar offering ideas here and there. The ideas had been more reasonable, but nothing like a conclusion had been drawn even after a day of attempts.
So, Nellie decided to work on it alone. She still called people occasionally, getting reports and advice, or expanded her mind to trawl the station's databanks for one detail or another. It was just logical to do.
But the planning was ultimately done alone, at least until she had an initial outline to present.
In the meantime, she had a mission to complete of a more personal nature.
Sometimes, the best way to solve a problem is to think about something else. Nellie was giving that a try by fixing the one major personal problem she actually could.
HyperDrive had been her one constant throughout her life in this bigger universe, and they were fresh out. Her supply was now completely exhausted, and even borrowing the satellite network for an illicit search for any squirreled away by persons unknown had failed to turn up so much as a single can.
Nellie had the recipe now—the original recipe to boot.
Combine that with the resources of a nascent empire, and Nellie was determined to get a decent cup of HyperDrive by the time she finished planning.
So, with a small store dedicated to her use, some equipment borrowed from Paren’s lab, and the assistance of a couple of old friends, Nellie was setting up her first-ever coffee shop.
Oodles had grown substantially since she last had time to hang out, and was now able to consume all of her failed experiments while refilling the mixers with the basic components. People said he was smarter these days, but Nellie had always thought he was bright. It was just that he was too small to show it much.
His chirps and cooing made the whole place feel pretty homey as well, which was nice.
Mixing was being done by her first-ever personal sub-drone, Weasel. Just because he was a genetic nightmare didn’t mean he couldn’t make a perfectly good barista, especially once she had updated his command sets to include the tasks required.
While it was true that a sentient ooze and a fanged monstrosity made her coffee shop stand out, it was nothing compared to the stuff in the back.
There were probably a limited number of coffee shops that featured a gene sequencer and organic printer in their supply sheets.
Needs must and all that.
Nellie was delighted to find the various idiot’s guide books Paren had prepared for each machine, just in case anyone else wanted to use one.
Nellie hardly ever had to look up the words in them these days!
It turned out Paren’s version of an idiot’s guide still required an expert to explain some of it.
“Knock, knock!” Baz said, wandering in even as he did so. “Any chance of a cup yet?”
“Not unless you want to spend the next hour throwing up,” Nellie sighed as the hazardous chemical detector went off again. “But I am getting close; I can feel it.”
“Cool, cool,” Baz sauntered over and tried to pet Weasel, who immediately bit him. “Staff might need some training,” He tucked the bitten hand under his arm. “Or a muzzle.”
“You alright, Baz?” Nellie asked, noticing the hunched shoulders and forced cheerfulness.
“I’m fine,” Baz said weakly. “Honestly, I’m good.”
“Sit and spill, Baz,” Nellie kicked out a chair opposite her. “Consider it an order.”
“Are you sure?” Baz asked as he slumped into the chair. “I don’t want to whine.”
“Spill,” Nellie said again, drawing a circle around one of her ideas that seemed likely to work.
“It’s a little sensitive,” Baz hedged.
“You can’t get venereal diseases, but if you cheated on Salem, she’ll probably rip it off,” Nellie offered.
“No!” Baz waved his hands frantically, “I’d never!”
“Then stop dancing around it and tell me already, Baz,” Nellie put aside her work and looked at him. “I want to help.”
“Okay,” Baz scratched the back of his head nervously. “Umm, do you think I did something wrong? Maybe Lucy mentioned I was a disappointment or something like that?”
Nellie felt her heart sink into her stomach.
“I mean,” Baz went on, “I know I joke around a lot and stuff like that, but I always do my work as well. I mean, I try to be responsible, you know?”
“Baz, you did nothing wrong,” Nellie said, sealing her tear ducts before she could start crying, “Lucy loves you and is super proud of you. Both of us do and are. Lucy did what she did because she had been alone for a long, long time and had seen the chance to have a connection to people. She just didn’t think.”
“But she wasn’t alone anymore,” Baz protested. “She had us.”
“I honestly can’t tell you what she was thinking, Baz. I wish I understood it; I really do. The only thing I CAN say is that it wasn’t your fault.”
“You’re sure?” Baz asked, the desperation and hope in his face breaking Nellie’s heart into slightly smaller pieces.
“Completely,” Nellie nodded emphatically.
“Okay,” Baz nodded, smiling a little. “Thanks.”
“Anytime,” Nellie smiled back.
“Umm, if she comes back…” Baz hesitated. “You’re not going to, like, throw an asteroid at her or something, are you?”
“I don’t plan on it, Baz,” Nellie laughed. “But we will have to talk.”
“Talk, yeah! Talk is good!” Baz grinned and waved goodbye.
Nellie turned back to her planning, the conversation rattling around in her head like a nagging thought.
If nothing else, it had given her another idea.
An hour later, a particularly loud chirping caught her attention, and Nellie hurried over to see what was up.
A long tendril of greenish jelly extended from Oodles, waving a test strip madly.
Even with her increased reflexes, it took Nellie a few tries to grab it from her excited little friend.
All green.
The test strip was made to detect all the various components in HyperDrive. A second test strip contained all the known lethal compounds that could arise by accident. There was still the risk of unknown lethal compounds, but Nellie had the nanites for that eventuality.
She picked up Oodles and spun him around before moving over to Weasel and watching anxiously as he brewed the first cup of the new mixture.
Once he handed her the cup in his long, clawed hands, Nellie took a careful sniff.
It smelled really good.
An experimental sip followed… and it tasted almost perfect.
Nellie added an extra half spoonful of sugar and tried again.
“That’s it!” Nellie jumped up and down in triumph. “We did it! We did it!”
Oodles chirped and waved his tentacle-like arms happily.
Weasel celebrated by eating her cup.
“Okay!” Nellie clapped her hands, “Now all we need to do is clean up!”
Two dejected stares suggested they knew who would be doing that.
They were right.
===<<<>>>===
Paren ran a critical eye over the connections and decided it was good enough. Nanites, she had realized, were excellent at bridging the gap between flesh and metal. Most of the time, they simply manipulate and construct things. Or sometimes become the very pathways needed to emulate organic functions, such as a sense of feel and temperature. Where she and others had been missing the genius of them was the point where they joined metal and flesh together. It was more than simply forming a ligament on one side and a metal on the other. Somewhere halfway between the two was something else.
A metal/flesh interweaving that she had until recently ignored.
In her own defense, Paren allowed that she did not have a large amount of spare flesh with which she could experiment before.
Or five spare minutes to think.
Up at the station, there were a dozen tasks and projects that were always pressing for her attention and time. Here on the planet, she finally had time to think. Robot pretty much spent the day exploring, while her adopted sister ‘The Girl’—who was not getting back on the Indomitable without choosing a name if Paren had anything to say about it—was still doing her weird combat training hunting trips. In short, she had time to really get things done.
Her things.
For once.
Satisfied with her tests on the design, Paren stood back and issued the command to initiate.
A tremor ran through the frame as the muscles tensed for a moment, and then it smoothly stood upright, the metal bones manipulated easily by the organic muscles. The frame was squat and powerful, with slightly longer front legs that doubled as arms when it stood on the back legs.
Paren smiled happily.
Stage one was a success.
Directing it over to the large tank in the corner, Paren eased the body into the growth solution, which stimulated the muscles to grow while she worked on the second stage.
The head.
Dead flesh and skin were very similar to live flesh and skin. If you arrested decay via chemical means and managed to preserve it without causing too much damage, it only lacked a self-repairing function.
Paren’s initial plan was to replace that function with nanites, which were veritable experts in repairing things. The more she examined it, however, the more she began to see it much like a construction toy.
Paren loved her construction sets as a child. All the little parts snapped together and made something new every time. They were the first things to interest her in taking things apart to see how they worked. Unlike with the lights or the entertainment screens, no one complained when she took apart something made with the sets and tried to build something new from them.
Her favorite toys were the building blocks. With them, she could make a building, a machine, a little pet, or anything else.
When she first got nanites, that was what she thought of. A way to turn everything in the world around her into building blocks!
Now, she realized that nature had gotten there before her.
Cells were the ultimate building blocks.
Tiny, self-replicating, and self-repairing building blocks.
Replacing their functions with nanites was merely reinventing the wheel.
So, instead, Paren tried a new approach.
A dead cell was basically a blueprint and complete set of parts for a live cell. The nanites could disassemble a dead cell and reassemble it as a live cell—simple. All those dead bodies she had gotten, and Paren had almost laughed when she remembered that she thought they were valuable because of the tech buried inside them.
Those were mere trinkets compared to the sheer possibility of all those dead cells waiting to be reborn according to HER designs.
The support and care of living flesh separate from a living body was complicated, but again, she had blueprints for that. Nanites had been doing it for ages, so they had all the information she needed.
The only thing she had been lacking was time and space for her experiments without worrying about people screaming and creating a fuss. It wasn’t her fault that they didn’t understand what they were seeing.
Reanimating a dead body.
As if.
That was merely pouring in enough nanites to keep it moving and preserve and stimulate pathways in the brain. It might walk and talk like a person, but it was nothing more than a puppet running on outdated software—a cheap copy of the person that was.
In short, reanimating the dead was a waste of time and resources—a party trick.
The cells and raw materials in the dead body could be used for so many more interesting things that Paren decided that people were right. That much waste was an abomination.
Of course, she had thought about it.
The moment she found Banjo’s dead body, she had thought about it.
Looking down at the corpse, Paren had known she could reanimate the body, preserve the mental pathways, and make it live again.
She had also known it would never be Banjo. It would just be a cheap copy.
He deserved so much more than that.
In the end, Paren had done the only thing she could think of to honor his memory.
She burned the body to ash and had the nanites disassemble the metals and alloys into atoms.
The only way she could think to show how she felt was to tell the universe that there was no greater use for those resources than they had already served by being Banjo.
Paren wiped a tear from her eye as she worked on shaping the skull.
Once the head had scuttled over to the growth tank and climbed inside to attach itself to the body, Paren moved on to the final part of the project. While she experimented with various structures and extrusion methods, the final touches were made to the operating system.
A lot of what people were was programming, whether they were aware of it or not. Everyone got basic programming as a child, and each experience added new lines of code on top of the blank slates they were born with.
In organic creatures, this programming took the form of mental pathways mapped in areas of the brain. Having disassembled so many different ones when processing the bodies, combined with her experiences trying to build and adapt AI systems, had given Paren a deep knowledge of what each pathway meant.
None of it was a whole person, but you could preserve the broad strokes, at least.
That was what she was doing with the operating system for her latest experiment. It would be an animal, of course, but it would also be more. Pathways patterned after those of the people she liked the most and the boy she would one day have had to admit she loved.
He would have been insufferable after that.
Finally, happy with the fur's texture and tensile strength, Paren had the nanites begin implanting the follicles in the sheets of living hide hanging on the rear wall before adding them to the growth tank.
Finally, she uploaded the operating system to the completed experiment and sat back to wait for everything to bind into a whole.
Sighing, Paren went over to her makeshift bed in the corner to get some sleep.
The Girl would be back in a few hours.
It should be ready by then.
