The Catalyst

-Chapter 33-


My nap didn’t last long. I was back to limping down the corridors of the cruiser before two hours had past. I took a shower, and felt a lot better. It was odd, looking down at my oozing foot while I showered—or rather the missing chunk of it. I thought I would have to have special boots made, as I couldn’t go hobbling into battle.
Everywhere aboard Jolly Rodger people hustled and worked hard. We weren’t out of this yet. We all knew we might survive…and we might not. When my marines caught me looking at them, they nodded, or just tossed me wide-eyed glances. Then they went back to work. They were focused, diligent and scared. No one knew what the Macros would do next. We were still on the defensive, and it’s hard to win any fight without making a move of your own. I couldn’t see any easy way to reverse things on the Macros, however. We hadn’t had time to regroup and rebuild. We’d been under a constant battering since we’d landed on Helios and were terribly under-strength. The only asset I’d gained in all that time was the cruiser, and that seemed to be little more than a fat target for our implacable enemy.
I tilted my head as another thought struck me. We had one other new asset: Marvin. I hadn’t had time to make much use of him, but he had warned us about the Macro assault ships. I decided to seek him out and see if he knew what their next move would be.
I went to the Macro laboratory with the big bag of biotic soup. In all the excitement, I’d almost forgotten about the billions of tiny beings imprisoned there. I didn’t even know if the Macros had wrecked the tank and killed them all. I figured Marvin might just be in that chamber. I’d seen him hanging around the place.
I found him standing very close to the gurgling tanks. When I stepped into the entrance and saw him, I froze in surprise. Marvin had changed. He wasn’t a cube with four short legs and a tail any longer. What had he done with his legs?
“Marvin?” I asked warily. “What are you up to?”
He still had a camera for an eye, but he stood erect now on two heavy, grasshopper-like legs of thick metal. They had clearly been salvaged from dead Macro systems. He’d salvaged them and affixed them to the sides of his brainbox using the short nanite legs I’d given him as connectives. He had one nanite limb left over, and this he now employed a small forearm to poke at the bag of tiny biotic creatures in their prison.
Marvin’s camera eye swiveled to glance at me then returned to the transparent polymer window that allowed observation of the churning biotic soup in the tanks. I noted he moved his camera with more precision than he had previously. He was getting comfortable with his new body.
“Colonel Kyle Riggs,” Marvin said. “As you instructed, I have made myself useful. The prisoners are requesting instructions.”
“Instructions?” I asked. I walked into the room slowly. I looked around, and saw the cable that led to the shock rod in the tank. It had been reconnected, and a tendril of steam rose from it. “Marvin…? Tell me you didn’t shock those poor creatures again.”
The camera swung back in my direction. “I have done as you requested. I have made myself useful.”
“If useful means killing millions of tiny intelligences, please stop.”
Marvin went back to studying the tank. I took a few steps forward into the room.
“Your instructions have become contradictory,” he said.
“How so?”
“You asked for my help, and now you reject it.”
“I’m objecting to your methods, Marvin, not your intentions.”
Marvin paused, thinking that one over. I was stricken with the thought that Marvin was the most independent-minded AI I’d yet encountered. He definitely didn’t think like a human—but he did think. The Nanos had been limited to variations of their original programming. The Macros were dogged and adaptable, but they could be tricked and outthought. Marvin struck me as a real mental equal. In some ways, that made him more frightening than the others, even if he was apparently friendly.
I thought I knew what was coming next in our conversation. I figured I was about to be put on the spot and required to explain the tenets of morality to a machine. I didn’t relish the prospect. But Marvin was already way ahead of me.
“Your approval patterns are inconsistent,” he said.
“How so?”
“You destroy machines without compunction, but protect the lives of biotic creatures such as the colony in this tank.”
“Well, that’s easily explained. The Macros have attacked us. They are attempting to destroy us, so I’m destroying them in self-defense.”
“No,” Marvin said, “you do not understand. I’m not talking about the Macros, I’m talking about the Nano creatures you freely create and force to serve you.”
I opened my mouth, but it just hung there. He had a point. I did regularly create masses of Nanos for various purposes. Billions—probably trillions had been destroyed fighting for me. I’d never considered paying any kind of homage to them. I thought of telling Marvin they were only machines, and thus had no moral value. But I wasn’t sure how that would go over with him….
“There are moral differences,” I said, wincing at the use of the word. I knew we’d get here somehow. Like all engineers, I preferred to study what worked and why—not whether it should or not. “I never threatened the Nanos or otherwise forced them to serve me. They are created for that purpose and do not resist service. These biotics have been abused. They are prisoners, frightened slaves.”
Marvin extended an arm and fooled with the collar around the tank. The electrode shivered and a tiny hiss of steam rose from it.
“You aren’t going to shock them again, are you?” I asked, approaching him cautiously.
“It is no longer necessary. The merest calibration of the mass-death device causes instant obedience.”
“I don’t think you were listening to my little speech about not abusing these creatures, Marvin.”
“So many of them have already died to reach this point of total obedience,” Marvin said, swiveling his camera to focus on my face again. “Wouldn’t it be a terrible waste if you didn’t accept their tiny gifts? Wouldn’t it magnify the wrong that has already been afflicted upon them?”
I stared at Marvin, getting that creepy feeling again. Who was giving whom the educational talk, here?
“Okay, tell me what they can do for me,” I said.
“They rebuild things, edit things—or make entirely new things.”
“What kind of things, Marvin?”
“Things like you, Colonel Kyle Riggs.”
I stared into the tank for a few seconds. “You mean like my foot?” I asked.
“Yes. Anything biotic. Given a few cells, they can grow duplicates and attach them into appropriate structures.”
I swallowed hard. “What am I supposed to do? Put my foot in there?”
“There is a feeding port on top of the tank. Insertion into that orifice would allow them access to your injury.”
I craned my neck, but couldn’t see the orifice he spoke of. I rubbed my face thoughtfully, feeling my stubble. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d shaved. Sandra would never have put up with it if she’d been around to complain. I blinked as I thought of Sandra. “Could these little guys fix anyone?” I asked.
“No. They must have living cells to duplicate. They require complete DNA strands to read as models. Complex creatures such as yourself with a great deal of cell differentiation provide them with a serious challenge. But they are capable of duplicating every cell in your body if they have the blueprint.”
“The blueprint? Meaning what?”
“A single living cell. Each of your cells contains all the information to build all the others.”
I shook my head. “Marvin, how did you learn all this in such a short time?”
Marvin pointed with his new, solitary forearm built of construction nanites. I noticed it ended in the traditional three-thumbed hand. The hand pointed at the tank in front of us. “I learned most of it from them. They know about your kind. They have tasted your flesh before. They have leeched away your genetics as part of Macro dissections.”
I stepped back and stretched until I could see the top of the tank. There was a fleshy bulb up there. It looked like a rubbery orifice all right. “There’s no way I’m going to climb up there and shove my foot into that tank. Especially not with you down here in trigger-happy mode with that shock-rod.”
Marvin didn’t object to my distrust. He simply turned and stared into the tank. I assumed he was communicating with the tiny beings inside, so I didn’t interrupt.
“There is another way,” Marvin said. “I will extract a sample of them and deposit them into a container, where you can insert your damaged appendage.”
“Um,” I said, not really liking the idea. But I thought of Sandra and Kwon and all the others aboard that could be helped if this stuff worked. I figured I owed it to them to try. “All right,” I said at last. “I’ll get a bucket or something.”
“You will also need a good source of biotic compounds to work with. Make sure the proteins and sugars match in chemical composition.”
I blinked at him. “You mean I need a human body as raw materials?”
“That would work best. If unavailable, any biotic base-material from your world will suffice.”
In the end, I found myself with my bare, charred foot bathing in a bucket full of slime. I shared the bucket with several billion terrified microbial creatures and a raw pork chop from the ship’s stores. The pork chop provided the organic materials, and my good cells provided the blue print.
The microbes tickled as they did their magic. It felt as if I’d put my foot into highly carbonated soda water. I figured if this worked and these bugs were able to turn raw pork into a living piece of Star Force marine, we would have an even better reason to call ourselves Riggs’ Pigs.