More Stories from the Twilight Zone (11 page)

“You don't understand us at all!” Francois Beguelin protested. He was the team's nano-designer. “Your own technology is astounding. So lifelike. But still you're a machine.”

“And have been, for half the modern era of this planet. A long time ago I was a scientist like the five of you, except for certain variations of form. That was in my old neighborhood, another little dot on the map. The rise of technology followed a similar course there—slowly, impeded by the rise and fall of hostile cultures and pathological religious convictions. But I grew up during a century of accelerated scientific progress, one product of which were self-replicating nanobots. I built them, loved them too much, didn't recognize the danger. Because my carbon-based nannies, like yours, had no programmed intelligence. No conscience. They were infinitesimal eating machines.”

Walpole said, “But we do know the dangers of—”

Nobis stopped him with a look.

“And you only intended to kill a few key leaders, persuading their political heirs to fashion lasting peace treaties with one another. The wrong means justifying righteous ends. That's what I had in mind as well.”

The silence that followed became as oppressive as a thick cloud in the room. Nobis didn't look at anyone. The brightness of his eyes had dimmed. A couple of the men freshened their drinks. Walpole stood behind the wheelchair of his wife. They both stared at Nobis.

“Did you build yourself, Nobis?”

“Yes.”

“Only one of you?”

“One is enough.”

“So that your mind, everything you've gained intellectually for a millennium, will never be lost?”

Nobis shook his head slightly. He seemed tired.

“I left most of that stuff out. Like I said, I do investigations.”

“What happened on your world, Nobis?”

“It got smaller. It's just a piece of rock now, the size of one of your lesser asteroids. My self-replicating, robotic bacteria were carbon-based. In a matter of decades they destroyed every living thing on the surface of the planet. Then they ate the planet. Only then did they stop replicating, although I don't have any doubt a few of them are in interstellar space right now, looking for a galaxy to gobble up.”

“My God,” Zane Red Star said. He lost his grip on his whiskey glass and it shattered on the tile floor.

Walpole said sharply, “We have nothing to fear!
Our
nannies were designed to live on proteins unique to the human heart valve! When their food supply is exhausted, they—”

“Mutate,” Nobis said.

A Mexican houseman appeared in a doorway to announce, “Dinner is served.” Nobody moved or looked at him. He shook his head and retreated.

“Impossible,” Walpole said.

“Very little remains of the corpses of your first nine victims. What's left has been placed in sealed titanium containers; they're on the way to the deepest hole in the oceans—the Mariana Trench.
That will slow the nannies down, but not stop them. They'll continue to multiply from the minerals in seawater once they're exposed to it. As for the tenth victim—”

“There is no tenth victim!” Mian cried. “We only wanted to make it clear to five of the world's most powerful men that they must cooperate or they would be next.”

“There are men who are pure in their faith, others who are pure in their evil. I'm sorry. At your level of social development conflict never stops. As for the tenth victim—I ate one of your little cars yesterday; what it contained is now eating me. Doesn't matter. I've had a dozen different bodies since I was removed from my planet and given a second chance.”

“Removed? By whom?” Mian asked. There were tears on her cheeks.

“Other galactic investigation teams. There are four hundred billion stars in this galaxy alone, and it's not one of the biggest. My dot on the map contains a hundred million star systems with cognitive life on at least that many planets. Some as pretty as this one. But there are always kids who like to play with matches, and supposedly grown-up scientists who come up with foolproof schemes to ensure a more perfect world. You ought to have considered unintended consequences. Too bad.”

Sven Ullberg said, “Are you telling us Earth is—”

“On the endangered list? I wish the news was that good, Sven. No, we're writing the planet off.”

“We?”

“The Intergalactic Union.”

Walpole said, “B—but . . . there must be something—”

“No. I am sorry about that. Our only concern is that the nannies you've infected yourselves with don't spread to other planets in the system. Anyway, I'm being removed. The work goes on, sniffing out other misguided tinkerers before they succeed in destroying entire planets.”

“Is that all we are?” Walpole said in a fit of ego. “Misguided tinkerers?”

“What are you going to do to us?” Mian asked Nobis.

“There's something worse than what you five already have set in motion?”

“I . . . I guess not.”

“But we're always on the lookout for talent. I think if you hadn't been turned into a quadriplegic ten years ago by a drunk driver, you would've been thinking a little more clearly, Mian. Your mind is the best of the lot. I've been downloading it for the past ten minutes.”

“But I'm—”

“We'll fix you up, when we get to my little dot on the map.”

“What about me?” Walpole said. “You can't just take my wife away from me!”

“How do we get there, Nobis?” Mian asked.

“We close our eyes.”

“It's that fast?”

Smiling, she closed her eyes. No farewell glance at her husband.

 

Pierre Saint-Philèmon and various government and local law enforcement officers were watching from a mesa four miles from the hidden valley when the dwelling and outbuildings of Edward Walpole's compound blew sky-high. Behind them the sun was going down. After a minute or two of silent watching, they all walked down to where the SUVs were parked with motors running.

A senior bureau official said to Saint-Philèmon, “So that appears to be that. What do you think, Pierre? Could Nobis have been right? We've only got ten years, maybe twenty?”

“
Je ne sais quoi
.”

“So what's next for you? Back to Brussels?”

“To pick up my early retirement check. Then I shall catch a
flight to Guadeloupe, buy a small boat, and spend as much of my days and nights as possible enjoying the sun, the sea, the women, the cognac. And the stars. Ah, the stars.”

“Sounds like a plan,” the FBI guy said wistfully.

 

 

Infinitely small, self-replicating eating machines going about their singular business until nothing remains of our planet but another lonely rock tumbling in space. Just call it an anomaly in the progression of scientific ingenuity. Or, to put it another way—there are no limits to the perversity of human beings, and even the most brilliant among us are merely carbon-based fodder for the appetites of our own creations.

 

For your consideration, the desert-preserved remains of one Elliot Leiferman, successful businessman, world traveler, and husband. He had earned everything he felt he needed: a beautiful home in Malibu and all the money he could spend. Talk of the world ending annoyed him, nothing more. His world was orderly, well-planned, and in his control. And he planned on keeping it that way, no matter what his wife believed. What he didn't plan on was an afternoon drive to the end of the world, and the edge of . . . the Twilight Zone.

Elliot Leiferman: Summer 2016 near Death Valley

 

The dust and light sand swirled along the edge of the ancient road like a runner fleeing a threat, twisting in streamers on the dry desert wind, vanishing, then appearing a step or two later. The sagebrush whipped back and forth, its faint rustling quickly snapped away by the force of the hot wind and the empty nothingness of the desert. A fence of rusted wire and old wood ran ragged beside the road, sometimes upright, other times nothing more than a remnant of splinters mostly covered in sand.

The road, gray with age, vanished under sand drifts and piles of dry sagebrush as it stretched into the distance. Nothing but dust and sand and waves of heat had traveled down it in a very long time.

The rusting hulk of an old automobile rested on four flat tires,
tipped slightly in a shallow ditch. One of its two doors hung open and the hood of the car was tucked against a still-upright fence post. The metal figure of a leaping wildcat adorned the hood, and the word
JAGUAR
in metal script rusted on faded blue paint.

A man's body sat behind the steering wheel, the skin mummified in the heat and dry air and constant wind, the old seat belt still holding the body in position. Dead eyes stared at the fence post against the hood of the car as if it were an insult to even the living.

Dust swirled inside the car for a moment and then settled over the thick layer already covering the seats and floor. Sand was building a dune against one side of the car, already up to the bottom of the windows. In ten more years the car and man inside would be nothing more than a large pile of sand, and the highway would be completely covered.

 

Elliot Leiferman: December 20, 2012, Malibu, California

 

Elliot watched in disgust as his wife, Casandra Lieferman—Candy, to her few remaining friends—grunted as she lowered her large bulk into a chair beside the bed. She had a chocolate-covered maple bar in one hand and a large vodka-tonic in the other, three limes of course, more vodka in the tumbler than tonic by a factor of two.

Nothing he could say, no amount of pleading, begging, threatening, had helped Candy to either stop her drinking problem or go on a diet. His thin bride of eighteen years had ballooned in the last three years to over 350 pounds and she now regularly downed ten vodka-tonics in tumblers before dinner. He gave up counting how many she had every night after her huge dinner. She just passed out in her bedroom, eating and drinking while watching television.

He had moved into his own bedroom almost two years ago.

Something had gone horribly wrong in both of their lives and
their marriage, and he had no real idea what. He had remained thin, actually five pounds under their marriage weight, and he seldom drank anymore. His work took him around the world on business trips and for years Candy had gone with him on many of the trips.

But then, three years ago, it all changed and changed suddenly. She started drinking and eating and quickly grew tired of the traveling as well, deciding instead to simply stay at home and indulge herself.

At one point, a year ago, he had begged her to go to counseling with him and she had shrugged and gone along. But in the sessions it quickly became clear she was never going to stop either overeating or drinking. She just didn't seem to see why she should.

When the counselor finally got her to tell him why, clearly, so that he, the counselor, could understand her, she had simply said, “Why not?”