The basic structures were there: the peculiar way the individual molecular engines unfolded; the instantaneous networking that suggested entanglement communication; the beautifully complicated tertiary beta sheeting studded with proteins dense with information and vulnerable to oxidation.
With a sense of nearly superhuman calm, I opened the data files. Charts and reading appeared before me.
It was the experiment. My experiment. Only it also was not. The basic structures were there: the peculiar way the individual molecular engines unfolded; the instantaneous networking that suggested entanglement communication; the beautifully complicated tertiary beta sheeting studded with proteins dense with information and vulnerable to oxidation. I had the sudden, powerful memory of being in the lab on Phoebe seeing the nanoparticles express those sheets for the first time. Krantz had described it as snowflake castles looking for the nearest blowtorch.
They were still beautiful, still fragile, but they had defied the blowtorch. They had found ways to express themselves, creating what appeared to be massive constructions implied first in their microscopic structure, like an infinite cascade of fractal design. There were maps of control points that were clearly cellular machinery that had been hijacked and modified, complex layers of pattern-matching mechanisms that stank of human neocortical structures, and something…else.

