From my work in progress, Wake the Sleepers...
As I headed for the maglev train that would take me home, I saw a beautiful woman, raven haired, well dressed with dark eyes and full lips. She was queued up at the embarkation point. I got in line about 15 people behind her. Abruptly she stepped out of line and turned to face me. She was wearing a tiny smile, inviting and for me alone. She stepped out of line and walked toward me, stopping in front of me.
“May I join you?”
“Of course.” I shifted to make space for her. She stepped up beside me and faced the front of the line, no longer meeting my eyes. She was only a handful of centimeters shorter than me. The small smile still played around her lips and I searched for something to say.
“I’m Scott.”
She glanced over with an eyebrow arched.
“I know.” She knew? A warning bell went off in the back of my mind. She eyed me appraisingly for a moment before looking forward again. After a moment spoke again. “Are you excited about your trip? It’s quite a long way to go.”
“My trip?” I had been told not to advertise I was part of the mission.
“Yes. K14.” K14 was the internal only designation of the colonization trip. I decided she must be a part of the mission as well. I relaxed.
“Yes, who wouldn’t be?”
“You’re right.” She again turned to fully face me, her expression becoming serious. Small lights began to flash around the platform and soft chimes announced the impending arrival of the maglev. Around us the crowd surged, eating up the small empty spaces between people and the woman was pushed into me. I was conscious of the line of her against me, intimate and exciting. She stared up into my eyes and the rest of the station seemed to drop away a bit. Despite the crush of commuters it was as if we were alone.
She worked to raise her arm, pulling the small drinking bottle up. She leaned her lower body into mine, fitting snugly against me as if we had been designed for one another, and at the same time she leaned her upper torso slightly away, creating a small space. She put the bottle between us and began to twist the cap slowly.
“You are going to have to remember, Scott.” Her voice was low but I heard her easily despite the chaos around us. “When the time comes, you must remember yourself. End this cycle. Become.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. What cycle? I wondered if she was mentally unbalanced—a strange thing in a world of advanced genetic manipulation where even chemical imbalances in ones brain could be adjusted. Fixed.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She continued to unscrew the bottle and paused, leaned in and gave me a warm, passionate kiss. Her lips were soft and the world went away, leaving only me, this woman and the taste of her mouth on mine.
Eventually she broke away and smiled at me wistfully.
“Remember.”
With that last word she removed the cap and drank deeply from the bottle. Then she simply released it to drop on the ground, and put her arms around my waist, pulling closer. She still kept her face back, staring at me intently.
Then a mist began to emerge from her mouth and nose, tendrils reaching outward, questing. Immediately on the heels of that her face began to disintegrate, skin melting, her features seeming to slag together into a slow flow of flesh. Blood burst from her pores and she staggered a bit, the pain obvious in her eyes. But she never stopped staring at me. After a long moment I realized what was happening.
Mites. There had been mites in the bottle. Replicators—the most dangerous kind of nanotechnology. The machines ate everything in their way, turning the raw materials into copies of themselves, growing exponentially. I tried to back away but her hands held me tight. The mist was flowing thickly out of her head, reaching out toward me, and nearby commuters. The mist touched my face, disturbingly warm and wet.
I tried to speak but the expanding cloud darted forward to fill my mouth. I felt the first hints of burning on my face and in my mouth—my throat as the mites began to break my cellular structure.
Around me people began to shriek and scream as the mites started reducing them to melting forms, candles with waxy skin and features trailing slowly down their bodies, slowly at first but gaining speed as each person was turned into more of the machines.
The woman who had started all this pulled me closer and I heard her broken voice come from the ruin of her face.
“Remember yourself.”
Then her disintegration accelerated and she literally melted against me. The cloud of mites became a torrent—almost solid as it forced itself down my throat, my esophagus into my upper body. The pain became excruciating.
Moments later the woman was entirely gone, leaving me standing with the converted remains of her mass coating me, quickly turning into more mites and swarming away and around me, a tornado of tiny voracious machine. I glanced around and saw the wave of destruction rolling outward from where I stood. Alarms were blaring now and partitions were slamming into the ground, careless of the bodies obstructing them, slicing down to click into place, now smeared with the blood of the bodies that had been dismembered in a second. The station defenses came alive at the same time, spraying counter measure mites down into the melting, screaming crowd. Slowly the screams choked off as throats were destroyed. The pain in my body began to fade and I slumped slowly to the ground, the world going black around me.
Then mercifully it was over and I was gone.
And now, without further ado, I return you to...
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