Thicker Than Blood (11 page)

"If I can get a sitter for Finny, you're on." She kissed his cheek. He stared at her wide eyed. "What Joe." "Do you have any food?"

Joe took the van the long way to stop for breakfast. Pulling into the donut shops parking lot, he noticed a familiar looking truck. It was parked in front of an adjacent abandoned gas station. "Lucy that's the truck." Lucy looked perplexed. "What truck? I just see dirty windshield" "That looks like the rig. That night." Joe pointed. Lucy looked around for the truck and then at Joe, looking completely confused. "The trucker. Who saved us?" Joe eyes opened wide. "Oh right, okay, yea him." Lucy looked a little embarrassed. "How could you know?" "It was white truck, like that." "Right, okay." Lucy was mocking him. Joe parked and they walked inside. He looked around and didn't see the intervening truck driver. Joe walked up to the counter disappointed. I just wanted to say thank you, he thought. Joe groggily ordered their unhealthy breakfast sandwiches. In a minute Joe was sipping his coffee. He felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around and there he was, the mystery trucker. He was six feet two inches and half as wide. He had wild curly red hair and a red beard on the short side. He was in good shape but had a small belly. He looked about forty years old. He shifted a couple of bags to his other hand. He was smiling as he held out his large hand on the end of a larger forearm to Joe. "So you're the Cyborg Wars champion. Pleased to meet you." The large trucker had a light southern twang. "You know who I am?" Joe looked perplexed. Joe had thought he had his audience figured out. Joe reached out and shook his hand. Joe's hand felt nearly crushed. "Of course. I look for stops with net TV. I love the whole A-Team thing, I used to watch that show when I was young." The trucker was smiling. "What I can't figure out is how this lovely young lady, Lucy was it?" He paused and turned to Lucy and she smiled. "Figured out how I was a fan?" He doesn't know who I am. He doesn't remember that night, Joe thought. Oh wait he probably never saw me. We had to zoom in on the best frame we could get, just to recognize him up close. Joe looked past the trucker to Lucy for some cue, she just shrugged her shoulders. Joe was about to spew gratitude, when his instinct stopped him. Joe remembered the pride of his coworkers back at Sun Auto. I can't just blubber all over this guy, he'll leave as quick as he can. Then Joe had an idea. "Want to come back to the shop? See the cyborg?" Joe's morning voice was extra gravelly. The trucker paused for a second. "Any other season, I'd tell you no, but right now I don't have no work. Sounds good." "We're in the black van outside," Lucy said, "We were going to take the expressway anyway." The trucker looked outside at their van. He started chuckling. "That's great. You've got the A-team van spoiler and all. It's like a theme park." Joe and Lucy smiled. Suddenly the trucker's face turned sour. "I am so rude, I can't believe my manners. I'm Skyler Godslaw Truman, pleased to make your acquaintance." His smile returned. "Joe Vallone, and this is Lucy Kane," Joe realized he already knew their names. "Oh wait, before I say yes, I gotta ask my wife. She's gotta give the okay." Lucy and Joe watched as Skyler walked to his truck. He got in and disappeared for a minute. Joe thought about Lucy's good deed of finding Skyler. "Lucy, are you okay with this?" "I'll tell Mark about the team later. It probably won't actually happen for a couple of months." "He doesn't know, does he?" Joe meant Skyler. He hoped Lucy understood what he meant. "I didn't tell him. It strange, it's almost like he found us."

The shotgun trucker, climbed out of his cab and walked over to them briskly. He looked a little excited. "It shouldn't be a problem. She doesn't have anything scheduled." I wonder what the wife of a trucker might have scheduled, Joe thought. "Okay follow us," Joe chimed in. "Honk if there's a problem," Lucy said. "Got it." The trucker hustled back over to his rig. Joe and Lucy made small talk as they lead the trucker to the nearby Team A warehouse. Skyler pulled up outside the exterior fence. He left the truck running and walked through the gate to greet them. "It's like a fortress, not what I pictured," Skyler looked around at the warehouse. "I got them to throw in a fence as part of the deal. Not the best zone up here." Lucy paused "Skyler, where's your wife. She can come too." Oh right, Joe forgot all about her. "Oh she has work to do," Skyler didn't elaborate. Lucy looked at Joe as Skyler walked through the door as if to say 'huh?'. Joe didn't know either. Maybe she was cleaning the truck? He shrugged.

Mark and Kento looked up from the microscope's screen as Skyler opened the door. Kento revealed a controlled smile, and Mark was grinning from ear to ear. Joe was certain that Mark was going to start gushing from the look on his face. As he came into view, Joe put his index finger over his lips to signal Mark to be quiet. Mark's face suddenly went glum. The trucker walked right over to Mark and held out his hand. "I love your show." "You're a fan?" Mark looked excited again. "Hell yea. I plan my stops around Cyborg Wars and Cycle Heaven. Rest stops that is, I'm a trucker." The trucker inadvertently over-explained. Mark looked at Joe totally confused eyebrows raised. He really wants to say something, Joe thought. After a moment of awkward silence Lucy spoke up. "Joe why don't you and Mark unload the van." "Right, good." Joe said awkwardly and quickly headed for the door. "I'll help too." Kento said too, seemingly catching on. "Skyler, do you want to see all our cyborgs from the past two years?" "Absolutely." Skyler was grinning. Mark was left standing where he was as Skyler followed Lucy to less used far end of the shop. He looked kind of miffed. Joe waved to him and mouthed, "Come on." Mark's eyebrows dipped to his eyelids as he shrugged his shoulders. He mouthed, "Why?" "Come on, lazy bum," Joe said. Mark reluctantly started outside. As soon as the door closed Mark turned to Joe. "Is that the trucker?" "Yep, he doesn't know it's us," Joe said. "Us who?" said Mark.

"Us the team?" Kento said smiling. "Who's the team?" Mark said to Kento. "Which team?" Kento said grinning. "I'm asking you," Mark said exasperated. "Asking us what?" Joe caught on to the joke. He couldn't help but grin. "Asking you," Mark said. He was red in the face. He pointed at Joe. "Asking me what?" Joe asked with a straight face. He couldn't help it, he burst out laughing. He fell on the concrete. "What's so funny? Why are you laughing," Mark was almost yelling now. That just made the guys laugh more. After a full minute of laughter Kento was the first to compose himself. He stood up and explained to a cross-armed Mark. "I think what was going on was, Joe was afraid of you gushing all over the trucker. You would scare him off." Mark looked kind of embarrassed, his face turned red. Joe scrapped himself off the ground. "He's a big Team A fan." "I figured that out now." Mark was still a little red. "You are such a nerd," Joe said. "You're a grease monkey," Mark replied. "Nerd," Joe repeated smiling. "Grease monkey," Mark replied. "Guys, the van?" Kento looked them both over with a crooked smile. "Right." Joe walked over to the van and opened the back. Mark and Kento started unloading toolboxes, computers and boxes of gear from the van. Joe was staring off into space. It's too bad about Lucy, he thought. She was a great boss. Nice body too. She was really good last night. Joe was grinning. It's not that bad that she's leaving. The next time they were all outside, Kento interrupted their work, "Mark figured them out." Joe stopped in his tracks. He immediately knew what Kento meant. "How do they work?" Mark was suddenly smiling again. "I typed 'help'." "Get out of here," Kento said. "I thought it was some elaborate hack." "Nope. There is zero security on these things once you know how to connect. All you need is an ultrasound device and the know-how." Mark looked a little more glum. "That could be dangerous," Joe said. "Definitely a prototype," Kento remarked.

"Good thing too, I think we'd be nowhere right now if they weren't wide open," Mark said. "Where are we? Can they do anything?" Joe asked. "I don't know for sure, but I examined an internal table," Mark explained. "I think I made a nanotech nutrient soup with the right ingredients. It took two hours and a chemistry book along with that internal table to figure out how to add every needed atom and molecule and not make it not explode. Kento was a big help with that." "Explode?" Joe sounded confused. "They require about thirty different elements in fifty different molecules in abundance in order to build a new nanite. Their design seems very complex and they only have a few tools each," Kento stated. "Holy crap!" Joe look shocked. "They can reproduce?" "I put about fifty of them in a tub of stuff and told them to build fifty thousand more of themselves." Mark smiled "So far so good. Who's the nerd now?" "Uh, still you," Joe replied. "Right, okay. I guess that's true." Mark looked confused. "If this works I have some colleges I need to mail these to," Kento casually stated. Both Joe and Mark looked shocked. "Hello? Scourge of the earth? Tools of terrorists? Hundred thousand dollar reward? Treason? Any of this sound familiar from the radio and the TV?" Mark sounded stressed out. "Mark, do you believe any of it? What are we trying to do here? Keep these for ourselves so we can hold our breath underwater? Think long term, do you think you are safe from the federal government without involving other people? You think you can go it alone?" "No, not really," Mark sounded ashamed. "Nor do I. You have to trust someone sometime. Now it's do or die." Kento paused. "Anyway one hundred thousand ain't that much these days." Kento smiled, trying to lighten the mood. "Right," Joe said sarcastically. He turned back towards the door with the tool box he as carrying. How long before they arrested him? Would it happen on tomorrows meeting at the hospital? A week later? A month? I have to get Kento to show me some Kempo, I can't lose a fight in the joint. I'll be dead. Joe looked glum as he worked. After a few minutes the gloomy trio finished moving all the small stuff. Joe pulled Marksman's tread remote out of a cardboard box and guided it down the van's ramp and inside. Joe could have sworn he saw something move inside the truck as he drove the robot inside. Joe resisted the urge to stare at the truck. Was it SG's wife? Joe led the robot through the main door as Skyler watched mouth agape. "Is this the new Cyborg?" Skyler asked. "It's Marksman in the sheet metal," Lucy said proudly. "These guys are brilliant." "Nah just lucky," Joe said. He winked at her. They all walked over to Skyler and Lucy. "So Lucy's given me the grand tour. I just have one question. What is that? Last years lunch?" Skyler pointed at a covered clear glass bowl with foamy muddy grayish water floating in it. Duct tape held an ultrasound paddle to the makeshift cover and held the cover to the bowl. The paddle was attached to a miniature PC with a thick cable. Lights blinked signaling the tiny computer was on. Joe didn't need an explanation to know what it was. His heart jumped. They all stared at Skyler as if he was a martian. Great, Joe thought, the cat is out of the bag. After our reaction he'll know something is up. Joe wished his arm computer was on so he could send a message to the other guys. What should I say? "Skyler, I need to know something in earnest from you," Kento started. "Do you trust the government?" Joe stopped breathing as the trucker raised his eyebrows to answer. "Hell no! Not even a little," Skyler said with extra twang. "Do you ever break stupid laws?" Kento asked. Lucy glared at Kento, "Bob!" Joe looked at her, eyebrows raised. I trust Kento, he's insane, but I trust him. "Yeah of course. Not that anyone would notice half the time," Skyler smiled. "They might notice us. Those are government nanites. Joe got them in his blood when he went the hospital. He exposed the lie to us." Kento kept it simple. "Aw come on you're kidden right?" Skyler's smile was fading. "You're not kidding." The group was silent. "You all think I'm gonna turn you in don't you? Well I'm thinking about it. Why don't you tell me the whole story?" Skyler sounded stern.

Lucy looked distraught, even frightened. Like she might start to cry. Joe jumped in first. "There was an accident. Remember that month our matches were rescheduled?" SG nodded. "I wrecked my car and died." Mark jumped in. "Nearly died. Joe lost too much blood. His aunt who is working on research for this army company MUR or something." Kento interrupted, "M. I. R." "Right," Mark said. "Anyway he was taken to her hospital. She put them in him to save his life. Joe heard he had nanites in his blood and stole a drop of blood." "Stole his own blood?" Skyler sounded confused. He was visibly thinking. "She got in a lot of trouble, I have a lawyer meeting tomorrow," Joe said. Mark continued, "We borrowed a microscope and figured out how to control them." Skyler's eyes widened. "Why didn't they just do a blood transfusion?" Everyone looked at Joe, hesitant to reveal his sensitive secret. Joe sighed. "I'm a hemophiliac. More blood wouldn't help if wounds don't close." "Oh." Skyler looked lost in thought again. Kento took his turn. "We are reproducing the nanites so we can try them on Joe again. We think we may be able to help people like him long term." Skyler's face relaxed a little. It looked as if they were making progress. "Can I see the microscope?" "Sure," Kento responded. As they walked over to the microscope Joe noticed that Lucy just stood there silently crying. He put his arm around her and held her to his shoulder. She must be worried about Finny if he turns us in, Joe thought. Skyler looked back at the couple and frowned a little. Joe led her over to the microscope. Kento waited for Lucy and Joe to catch up. "This was recorded a few days ago. See the nanite. That blob next to it is glucose. Watch it eat it." "Wow." Was all Skyler could say. Mark explained further. "The weird thing is they use a variant of something called Propensky gate to eat. About six years ago Dr. Propensky engineered a mechanism to mechanically imitate osmosis at the cellular scale for almost any molecule. He disappeared and several rebuttals were pub- lished that are accepted as fact today. Yet his theories seem to be laid out right in front of us, used in these machines." Joe said, "Somebody's lying at the top." Skyler looked a little suspicious, "Why would they lie about it. Why not just make a law." Kento replied, "Because there is no way to enforce a prohibition. Not as long as the Internet exists." Mark brought up a text terminal on the computer next to the microscope. "This is the login to one of the actual nanites. We were able to figure out how to communicate through ultrasound. It was actually pretty easy to access them." Skyler's brow was furrowed, "Why so easy?" "We don't think they had a choice. The computer controlling each nanite is very slow and simple. It barely supports a command interpreter. They use a simple hardware addressing scheme to address network communications. Lots of direct register manipulation and no memory protection." Mark smiled. Shotgun looked confused. "Huh?" Joe looked right at Mark. "Nerd." "Grease monkey." "They are very simple, like PC's running DOS in 1980," Kento stated. "Oh okay, I remember DOS." Skyler's face lit up, and then sunk. "I'm getting old." Skyler looked at Kento. "Who knows about this?" "We have been trying to build a web of people we can trust. We suspect that we can cure most disease with variants of these nanites." Lucy looked furious. She raised her voice over Kento's, "What is this we. I told you I'm out of your crazy schemes. I have a daughter to look after. Skyler's going to go tell the cops and I'll never see my daughter again." She started to cry loudly. "Now wait, I didn't say that." Skyler looked offended. They were all quiet while Lucy sobbed on Joe's shoulder. SG broke the silence. "Why trust me with this? What good does it do you?" Mark replied as he typed. "We saw you in action. Look." Mark played the video and blew up the shot of Skyler. Skyler's jaw dropped again. Joe had a straight face. "You might have saved my life."