Postsingular | Page 8

But I'll find a way. I'll infect the nants,
and an hour later my virus will actuate--and everything'll roll back.
You'll see. You'll like it. But those assholes at Nantel--"
"Assholes," chirped Chu. "Assholes at Nantel."
"Listen to the language you're teaching the boy!" said Nektar angrily. "I
think you're having a mental breakdown, Ond. Is Nantel giving you
severance pay?"
"A month," said Ond.
"That's not very long," said Nektar. "I think it's time I went back to
being a chef. I've sat on the sidelines long enough. I can be a star, Ond,
I just know it. It's your turn now; you shop and make the meals and
clean the house and keep an eye on Chu after school. He's your child as
much as mine."
"If I don't succeed, we'll all be gone pretty soon," said Ond flatly. "So it
won't matter."
"Are you saying the nants are about to attack Earth?" said Nektar, her
voice rising. "Is that it?"
"It's already started," said Ond. "The nant hive-mind made a deal with
President Dibbs. The news is coming out tonight. Tomorrow's gonna be
Nant Day. The nants will turn Earth into a Dyson sphere too. That'll
double their computational capacity. Huppagoobawazillion isn't enough
for them. They want two huppagoobawazillion. What's in it for us? The
nants have promised to run a virtually identical simulation of Earth.

Virtual Earth. Vearth for short. Each living Earth creature gets its
software-slash-wetware ported to an individually customized agent
inside the Vearth simulation. Dibbs's advisers say we'll hardly notice.
You feel a little glitch when the nants take you apart and measure
you--and then you're alive forever in heavenly Vearth. That's the party
line. Oh, and we won't have to worry about the climate anymore."
"Quindecillion," said Chu. "Not huppagoobawazillion. More
pork-rice-spinach. Don't let anything touch." He shoved his empty plate
across the table towards Nektar.
Nektar jumped up and ran outside sobbing.
"More?" said Chu to Ond.
Ond gave his son more food, then paused, thinking. He laid his sheaf of
papers down beside Chu, thirty pages covered with line after line of
hexadecimal code blocks: 02A1B59F, 9812D007, 70FFDEF6, like that.
"Read the code," he told Chu. "See if you can memorize it. These pages
are yours now."
"Code," said Chu, his eyes fastening on the symbols.
Ond went out to Nektar. It was a clear day, with the now-familiar
shimmering BZ convolutions glowing through the sky. The sun was
setting, melting into red and gold; each leaf on each tree was like a tiny,
green, stained-glass window. Nektar was lying face down on the grass,
her body shaking.
"So horrible," she choked out. "So evil. So plastic. They're destroying
Earth for a memory upgrade."
"Don't worry," said Ond. "I have my plan."
Nektar wasn't the only one who was upset. The next morning a huge
mob stormed the White House, heedless of their casualties, and they
would have gotten Dibbs, but just when they'd cornered him, he

dissolved into a cloud of nants. The Virtual Earth port had begun.
By way of keeping people informed about the Nant Day progress, the
celestial Martian nant-sphere put up a full map of Earth with the ported
regions shaded in red. Although it might take months or years to chew
the planet right down to the core, Earth's surface was going fast.
Judging from the map, by evening most of it would be gone, Gaia's
skin eaten away by micron-sized computer chips with wings.
The callow face of Dick Dibbs appeared from time to time during that
horrible Last Day, smiling and beckoning like a messiah calling his
sheep into the pastures of his heavenly kingdom. Famous people who'd
already made the transition appeared in the sky to mime how much fun
it was, and how great things were in Virtual Earth.
Near dusk the power in Ond and Nektar's house went out. Ond was on
that in a flash. He had a gasoline-powered electrical generator ready in
their big detached garage, plus gallons and gallons of fuel. He fired the
thing up to keep, above all, his home's air filters and wireless antennas
running. He'd tweaked his antennas to produce a frequency that
supposedly the nants couldn't bear.
Chu was oddly unconcerned with the apocalypse. He was busy, busy,
busy studying Ond's pages of code. He'd become obsessed with the
challenge of learning every single block of symbols.
By suppertime, the red, ported zone had begun eating into the Dolores
Heights neighborhood where Ond and Nektar lived in the fine big
house that the Nantel stock options had paid for. Ond lent their
downhill neighbors--Willy's parents-- an extra wireless network
antenna to drive off the nants, and let them run an extension cord to
Ond's generator. President Dibbs's face gloated and leered from the