Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

I know he’s done when I get the message on my overlay that he sent the override control signal again to shut down my cloud. This time though, with my final code change, my interface knows what to look for. My bots reject the command, and my bulwark stays in place as I see the almost invisible medical bots slipping out from Jeff’s head and swarming toward me. No matter how well I can multitask, there’s no way I’ll catch them all. Defense is tremendously harder than offense for this.

“Help!” I shout, though I don’t need to. Evan, Andrea, and Louise are already springing into action.

My overlay shows my siblings’ red, blue, purple and green bots surging into the room, attacking Father’s medical bots as my cloud does the same. It’s a pitched battle that my siblings and I are conducting more by feel than by sight. Father’s face twists with rage.

“Why don’t my overrides work?” he demands.

I don’t bother to respond. Instead, I release Jeff and focus all my will and bots on making sure that not a single one of Father’s medical menaces reaches me. Jeff begins howling again, screaming and crying as he very slowly uses both arms to get himself into a sitting position. I see the red bots—Andrea’s—falter and start to withdraw, but they’ve done enough. The tide of the nanobot war is clear, Father’s dwindling number of bots are all contained and slowly being destroyed as their tiny, darting shapes get caught by the ravenous hordes controlled by the rest of us.

“Of course, of course,” Father says. “You would have thought of everything. Well, it’s done. He’ll live. Do what you feel you need to.” Tears form in the corners of his eyes. I didn’t expect that. I wonder whether the pain of betrayal hurts him more than the knowledge of his imminent death.

I break off a few bots to help Jeff get to his feet, nudging him just enough to let him get up and get his balance.

“This is our only chance, Jeff.” I whisper to him urgently. “I’m infected and I can’t break free. You need to kill him. He’s the key to everything!”

Surgical tools are near at hand on one of the shelves, and he scrambles to grab a scalpel. He doesn’t bother to unbag it, just stabs wildly as he stumbles toward Father, who shrinks back from him and the plastic coated blade.

“Evan, go call for help!” I shout. I feel Evan book it out of the building and hear him start to yell as he nears the exterior doors. Louise and Andrea follow close behind him.

Jeff continues to stagger toward Father, his legs unsteady. He’s got Father backed into the corner. It’s even the best one for getting a clean shot with the security camera. I help Jeff with another little nudge from my cloud, and then he’s on top of Father. The scalpel in his fist stabs down again and again into Father’s face and neck. Blood spurts up, covering both of them. As he hacks away with the small blade, I feel Father’s pulse weaken and slow. The last of his medical bots drop to the floor, inert.

Father is dead.

Finally.

Jeff collapses, sobbing.

“Jeff, you did it.” I say softly. “I’m free now. We’re all free. You saved us. He was the key to the whole thing. You did it.”

Of course it’s not true. It doesn’t even make sense. But Louise insisted on this small mercy that might calm Jeff down now and give him comfort later when he looks back on when he killed Father.

No.

When I killed Father.

Jeff was no more at fault than the scalpel.