Nano (The Gift #1)

by Marc Stapleton

He’s a 36-year-veteran of the conveyer belt and looks like a man weary of carrying the industry of sandwich packaging on his shoulders.

Once, after my mother died, Dad fell into a deep depression. Then, he fell into what he considers a deep embrace from God. But in my eyes? He just plain fell.

It’s not that I don’t believe in God. It’s just the performance that I can’t stand.

Some lunatic with too much free time and no streaming TV subscription, renovating the city one bomb at a time. I don’t even pay attention to that sort of thing anymore. Unless this guy had a traumatic run-in with a packaged sandwich, what do I have to fear?

“What do I know about power? I go to work and package sandwiches, I don’t know anything about altering the world.”

“Jesus, I’d hate to be alone in my own head with a clone of my own personality. One of me is surely bad enough.”

Maybe I should learn to drive. At least that’s a better prospect than the city’s strongest crime-fighter - and best hope for catching the Quiet One - arriving on the Green Line number 79.

red-head wearing the lanyard. She has dark brown eyes

I’m sweating heavily. A man with a crazed look in his eye and a scuffed-up suit, running across the city. I must look insane. I love it.

I look back at that image of Alfred Burden – those unintelligible, hidden eyes and that haunting, bereaved look on his face – and I see my Dad. Old and disaffected, living on the fringes of society, left behind by the modern world. Widowed, angry, and handling it in completely different ways.

For all my cybernetically-enhanced strength; for all my lightning-fast reflexes and heightened sensory ability, I’m still struggling to be human.

The defense contractor’s building dominates the skyline – a massive warehouse with shiny steel iron ribs jutting out, and dark red panels beneath. No windows, because why would you want to advertise your crimes to the world?

I’m sure this area looked great once; a street of nice, pretty houses, all single floor, with plenty of space for gardens, pools and whatever else passed for middle-class suburbia 50 years ago. Then the city evidently grew outward, like a great polluting tumor, snatching anything beautiful and turning it ugly.

The only cells your body doesn’t replace are neurons – your brain cells –

Perhaps you’re doing it just because you can.

You fought through more pain than most humans encounter in their lifetime. And you’re still here. He pauses, before continuing. I admire you, Kris.

The only difference between carbon molecules that make up the structure of a cotton mophead and the carbon molecules that make up a diamond is structure.

Sirens are almost ever-present; a wailing going on long into the night, and yet never a single police car in sight. Seems a perfect place to become a new man.

I do feel bad about taking the guy’s passport. And, you know, his identity. My excuse is that I need it more than he does, at least for a short while.

The city’s airport is a dump. I really shouldn’t be surprised; every other building in this dark and gloomy city is derelict or a pawn shop or a liquor store. But the airport is really something else. It looms on the horizon like some giant, sickly animal. Its huge concrete façade is gray and crumbling. The floors are sticky, the windows cloudy, and there’s an ever-present smell of diesel fuel and desperation in the air.

I tell myself that flying out of the country to fight in a war I barely knew about a week ago is a good idea. Am I crazy? Am I self-absorbed? Am I in way over my head? Probably. But for the first time in my life, I’m fighting.

“You speak English,” I say to him, slightly dazed. He dusts himself down and rubs his head thoughtfully. “American TV,” he says, with a sly smile.

my father always said that nothing prepares you for war better than taking fire.

“Always good to have another set of eyes watching,” I tell her. Oh, if only they knew.

“Human life seems so valuable,” Dina continues, “until it doesn’t. Something will cheapen it and then you won’t think twice.”

I make a point to keep it unloaded until we get there. The last thing I want is to accidentally blow my balls off in the car, and then have to explain to everyone how I can miraculously grow them back.

“You call it a gift, but it isn’t. It’s a debt” she says, her tone of voice grave and foreboding. “When you acquired that technology, you incurred a debt. You took something that wasn’t yours, and someday, perhaps someone or some thing is going to want repayment on that debt. You understand that, right?”

“Well, I gotta say,” Mikey breaks the silence, “as a marine, it feels weird to be saving people from a huge explosion rather than causing it.”

“First rule of combat,” he says, looking up at me. “Look after your feet.”

“To glory,” she says, with a coy smile, “or the grave.”