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friend Willy. Chu had thought to plug the video into an extension cord leading to the generator. Ond's dog-eared pages of code lay discarded on the floor.
"It's radical in here, Chu," Willy was saying. "It feels almost real, but you can tell Vearth is an awesome giant sim. It's like being a toon. I didn't even notice when the nants ported me. I guess I was asleep. Jam on up to Vearth as soon as you can."
"Turn that off!" cried Nektar, darting across the room to unplug the video screen.
"I'm done with Ond's code blocks," said Chu in his flat little voice. "I know them all. Now I want to be a nant toon."
"Don't say that!" said Nektar, her voice choked and hoarse.
"It might be for the best, Nektar," said Ond. "You'll see." He began tearing his closely written sheets into tiny pieces.
"What is wrong with you?" yelled Nektar. "You'd sacrifice your son?"
All through Nant Day, Nektar kept a close eye on Chu. She didn't trust Ond with him anymore. The constant roar of the generator motor was nerve-racking. And then, late in the afternoon, Nektar's worst fear came true. She stepped into the bathroom for just a minute, and when she came out, Chu was running across what was left of their rolling backyard and into the devastated zone where the nants swarmed thick in the air. And Ond--Ond was watching Chu from the patio door.
The nants converged on Chu. He never cried out. His body puffed up, the skin seeming to seethe. And then he--popped. There was a puff of nant-fog where Chu had been, and that was all.
"Don't you ever talk to me again," Nektar told Ond. "I hate you, hate you, hate you."
She lay down on her bed with her pillow over her head. Soon the nants would come for her, and she'd be in their nasty fake heaven with moronic Dick Dibbs installed as God. The generator roared on and on. Nektar thought about Chu's death over and over and over until her mind blanked out.
At some point she got back up. Ond was sitting just inside the patio door, staring out at the sky. He looked unutterably sad.
"What are you doing?" Nektar asked him.
"Thinking about going to be with Chu," said Ond.
"You're the one who let the nants eat him. Heartless bastard."
"I thought--I thought he'd pass my code on to them. But it's been almost an hour now and nothing is--wait! Did you see that?"
"What," said Nektar drearily. Her son was dead, her husband was crazy, and soulless machines were eating her beloved Gaia.
"The Trojan fleas just hatched!" shouted Ond. "Yes. I saw a glitch. The nants are running backwards. Reversible computation. Look up at the sky. The scrolls are spiraling inward now instead of out. I knew it would work." Ond was whooping and laughing as he talked. "Each of the nants preserves a memory trace of every single thing it's done. And my Trojan fleas are making them run it all backwards."
"Chu's coming back?"
"Yes. Trust me. Wait an hour."
It was the longest hour of Nektar's life. When it was nearly up, Ond's generator ran out of gas, sputtering to a stop.
"So the nants get us now," said Nektar, too wrung out to care.
"I'm telling you, Nektar, all the nants are doing from now on is running in reverse. They'll all turn back into ordinary matter and be gone."
Down near the bottom of the yard a dense spot formed in the swarm of nants. The patch mashed itself together and became--
"Chu!" shouted Nektar, running out toward him, Ond close behind. "Oh, Chu!"
"Don't squeeze me," said Chu, shrugging his parents away. Same old Chu. "I want to see Willy. Why don't the nants eat me?"
"They did," exulted Ond. "And then they spit you back the same as before. That's why you don't remember. Willy will be back. Willy and his parents and their house and all the other houses and people too, and all the plants, and eventually, even Mars. You did good, Chu. 70FFDEF6, huh?"
For once Chu smiled. "I did good."
CHAPTER 3
Orphid Night
Running in reverse gear, the nants restored the sections of Earth they'd already eaten--putting back the people as well. And then they reassembled Mars and returned to their original eggcase--which was blessedly vaporized by a well-aimed Martian nuclear blast, courtesy of the Chinese Space Agency.
Public fury over Earth's near-demolition was such that President Dibbs and his vice president were impeached, convicted of treason, and executed by lethal injection. But Nantel fared better. Indicted Nantel CEO Jeff Luty dropped out of sight before he could be arrested, and the company entered bankruptcy to duck the lawsuits--reemerging as ExaExa, with a cheerful beetle as its logo and a new corporate motto: "Putting People First--Building Gaia's Mind."
For a while there it seemed as if