About the Author
To: Lear
From: Nijinsky
Wilkes is alive and back with us.
Ophelia is alive despite the loss of both legs below the knee.
Keats and Plath are both well and performed magnificently.
Vincent is suffering from a deep depression following the loss of one biot. The second biot was badly injured but is recovering. Vincent is being cared for, outcome very uncertain.
We failed in our main objective.
We await instructions.
To: Nijinsky
From: Lear
During Vincent’s incapacity you are in charge of NYC cell, Nijinsky. You’re the wrong person for the job. Become the right person.
Central Intelligence Agency–Office of Technology Threat Assessment
Transcript of interview with Professor Edwin H. Grossman, February 28, 2012
(Page 7 of 9)
Q: In your opinion then, this is a serious threat but not an urgent one?
Grossman: I don’t know your definition of urgent. Look, the gray goo scenario is not science fiction, not any longer. Nanotech is advancing by leaps and bounds. There is some very important research going on at MIT, and at UC Irvine, as well as in my own department at Texas.
Q: But anyone researching nanotech is aware of the danger.
Grossman: Fermi was aware of the danger of nuclear fission. Watson and Crick were aware of the danger of DNA. Alfred Nobel was aware of the danger of dynamite when he invented it. No doubt the first cave man to swing a club was aware–
Q: I take your point, Doctor, but you aren’t seriously comparing nanotechnology to nuclear weapons.
Grossman: Actually, yes, I am. You see, in either case, we are talking about enormous, catastrophic power in the hands of human beings.
Q: Only a madman–
Grossman: Only a madman? (Laughs.) Has there been a shortage of madmen in human history?
Vincent felt the laugh building inside him. It was like a build-up of steam in a covered pot. Like a volcano whose time to erupt has come at last.
He was being torn apart.
His arms were handcuffed to two parked diesel locomotives, and they were huffing and puffing, and smoke was coming up out of their undercarriages, and the locomotives were so hot that the steel side panels were melting.
He stood there between the tracks.
The chains were long. The engines would be able to build up speed.
“Hah-hah-hah-hah-hah!”
He laughed, because it would be funny when his arms were ripped from his body, when the flesh tore and the bones popped out of their sockets like pulling the wings off a barbecued chicken and . . .
“Come on, man, lie down, lie down, lie down.”
Choo choo. Choo chooooooo!
“You’re going to be okay, Vincent.”
Who was Vincent? His name was not Vincent. His name was . . . What was his name?
A dragon, one of those Chinese dragons, loomed over him, a giant face, and there was smoke coming out of its nostrils and it was the same as the smoke from the trains that were starting to move now, starting to pick up speed, now.
“Uh. Uh-uh-uh! Uh! Uhhhh! UUHHH!”
The chains clanked as the trains pulled away.
“Take this pill. Take the pill, Vincent.”
Vincent thrashed, had to free his arms, they would rip his arms off, his arms would be dragged off behind the trains!
“Uhhh-uhhh-UUUHHHH!”
“Goddamn it, take the pill!”
The dragon was ripping his mouth open; he was going to split Vincent’s head open so that brains came gushing out of his mouth, vomiting his own brains and . . .
The Chinese dragon was a nurse now, no, a dragon, no, no, no.
“Nooooo!”
A vice closed around his head. He smelled a masculine perfume. Vincent felt muscles like pythons around his head and something was in his mouth, and the dragon/nurse held his jaw shut even as he tried to scream and beg for help.
“Keats. Help me! Get water.”
From the sky came a bottle.
Fiji water. Oh, yes, that was the one with a square bottle, sure he would drink some water, yes, dragon, I’ll drink some water like a good boy.
“Get his mouth open.”
But