More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
everybody was playacting, now. Everything was staged. And I didn’t understand why. But as I watched Mae with Julia, I noticed that she was being extremely careful with my wife. Almost as if she was afraid of her, or at least afraid of offending her. That was odd. And a little alarming.
I said, “let’s black out the window, and turn the lights out in there. And wait a few hours, until the swarm loses power.” “Jeez, I don’t know,” Ricky said doubtfully. “What do you mean, Ricky?” Julia said. “I think it’s a great idea. It’s certainly worth a try. Let’s do it right now.” “Okay, fine,” Ricky said, immediately deferring to her. “But you’re going to have to wait six hours.” I said, “I thought it was three hours.” “It is, but I want extra hours before I open that door. If that swarm gets loose in here, we’ve all had it.”
I wanted her to go to bed.
Is that why they originally locked him in his room until he woke up? The other guy was asleep before he was killed by the swarm, so maybe it makes people tired if it survives inside them?
Probably not though because the main character's been up for like 17+ hours and is only just now feeling tired
“This is completely unnecessary, it will take care of itself.” And Ricky said, “There are constriction coefficients for deterministic algorithms if you do interval global optimization.” And she said, “It won’t hurt you if you don’t fight it.” She turned on the light in the room and walked out.
I was very thirsty, my throat painful and parched. And my stomach felt a little queasy.
oh no
She stopped on the camera that showed Ricky and Julia. “Ten frames.” The movement was blurred and jerky. Ricky and Julia moved toward each other. They embraced. There was a clear sense of ease, of familiarity between them. And then they kissed passionately.
Suddenly, Charley stepped several paces back. For a moment, he was completely still, as if he had discovered something that stunned him. Ricky said something to him. Charley began pointing and shouting at both of them. Ricky tried to approach him. Charley kept backing away, and then he turned to the phone, mounted on the wall. He lifted the receiver. Ricky came forward, very quickly, his body a blur, and slammed the phone down. He shoved Charley back—hard. Ricky’s strength was surprising. Charley was a big guy, but he went down to the floor, and skidded backward a few feet. Charley got to his
...more
Charley was panting, his chest heaving, but he no longer struggled. Julia came into the room. She looked at Charley, and had some conversation with him. And then Julia walked up to Charley, and kissed him full and long on the lips. Charley struggled, tried to wrench away. Vince grabbed a fistful of Charley’s hair and tried to hold his head steady. Julia continued to kiss him. Then she stepped away, and as she did I saw a river of black between her mouth and Charley’s.
Charley sagged, dropped to the ground. He appeared dazed. A black cloud came out of his mouth, and swirled around his head. Vince patted him on the head and left the room. Ricky went over to the panels—and pulled out wiring by the handful. He literally ripped the panels apart. Then he turned back to Charley, said something else, and walked out of the comm room. At once Charley sprang to his feet, closed the door, and locked it. But Ricky and Julia just laughed, as if this was a futile gesture. Charley sagged again, and from then on he was out of sight.
The black cloud that seemed to come from Julia’s mouth. Had it really been there, on the video? Because as far as I knew, swarms killed their prey on contact. They were merciless. Now Julia seemed to be harboring a swarm. How could that be? Did she have some sort of immunity? Or was the swarm tolerating her, not killing her for some reason? And what about Ricky and Vince? Did they have immunity, too? One thing was clear: Julia and Ricky did not want us to call anybody.
I couldn’t comfort her. Because I knew she was right. There was no way out.
the very presence of phage in the tank was an evolutionary change, a viral response to the bacteria that— “Mae,” I said. “Wait a minute.” “What?” I said, “There might be something we can do to stop them.”
HAHAHA I ALSO PREDICTED THEM USING THE PHAGES TO KILL THE SWARM
“What’re you saying? It could explode?” “No, Jack. I’m saying it will explode. In a matter of minutes after the safeties are shut off.
I mean that's a good backup plan if everything else goes downhill
I picked up the test tube, took a breath, and swallowed it whole. It was disgusting. My stomach heaved. I thought I would vomit,
Is this what the whole "I had to make them sick" at the beginning of the book was? Purposely giving them ecoli so the pages would be in their system to defend against the swarms?
“He took the jug of virus,” Mae said, “and he’s putting it in the water sprinklers.” “Is he?” Julia said. “That’s really very clever of him. Thank you, sweetie.” And she kissed Mae on the mouth. Mae squirmed, but her back was against the wall, and Julia held her head. When Julia finally stepped back, she said, “Try and stay calm. Just remember. It won’t hurt you if you don’t fight against it.”
This was not in my plan. I hadn’t expected it; I didn’t know what I could do now. I struggled harder, kicking and twisting, but they were both immensely strong. They just dragged me forward. Julia opened the heavy steel door to the mag room. Inside, I saw the circular drum of the magnet, six feet in diameter. They shoved me in roughly. I sprawled on the ground in the room. My head banged against the steel shielding. I heard the door click and lock. I got to my feet. I heard the rumble of the cooling pumps as they started up. The intercom clicked. I heard Ricky’s voice. “Ever wonder why these
...more
The sound was a rapid chunk-chunk-chunk, like a muffled jackhammer. It was loud, and getting louder. I could hardly hear Ricky over the intercom. “Now Jack,” he said. “You have a family. A family that needs you. So think about your choices very carefully.”
“After all,” she said, “you’re an integral part of this. You killed the wild type for us, Jack.” “So the benign type could flourish …” “Exactly, Jack. So the benign type could flourish. And create a new synergy with human beings.” “The synergy that you have now, for example.” “That’s right, Jack.” She smiled. It was a creepy smile. “You are, what? Coexisting? Coevolving?” “Symbiotic.”
“Just tell me one thing, Julia. It’s been bothering me.” “Sure, Jack.” “Why did you refuse to have an MRI in the hospital?” She frowned, leaned back to look at me. “What? What do you mean?” “Are you like Amanda?” “Amanda?” “Our baby daughter … you remember her. She was cured by the MRI. Instantly.” “What are you talking about?” “Julia, does the swarm have some problem with magnetic fields?”
“Sorry, hon,” I said. I kicked the plate with my knee. And there was a loud whang! as the magnet pulsed. Julia screamed.
In a way it made everything easier. Because I understood I wasn’t dealing with Julia anymore. I didn’t have to worry about what might happen to her. I just had to worry about Mae—assuming she was still alive
“There’s a safety system for the plant. And when we saw you going for the sprinklers, Ricky turned the system off. Safeties off, sprinklers off.”
Oh it's going to explode, isn't it
“No safety systems, remember? You turned them off. Now it’s blowing virus all through this room.” “Not for long,” Julia said. “We’ll have the safeties back in two seconds.” Ricky was already standing at the control board, frantically hitting keys. “Good thinking, Julia,” I said. I lit my cigarette lighter, and held it under the sprinkler head. Julia screamed, “Stop! Ricky, stop!”
I said, “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” Julia turned in fury and hissed, “I hate you.”
The screens flashed red with the excess concentrations of methane and other gases. The main screen showed: SAFETY SYSTEMS ON. And the sprinklers burst into cones of brown spray.
“Fly this fucking thing!” I yelled. “Sorry, it’s a regulation, and it’s not safe—” Black smoke started to pour out of the power station door we had just come out of. It billowed into the blue desert sky. The pilot saw it and said, “Hang on!” We lifted off
“Doing what?” “Looking for more thermite.” “Find any?” There was no sound. Just a flash of yellow light that spread across the desert horizon for an instant, and then faded. You could almost believe it never happened. But the helicopter rocked and jolted as the shock wave passed us.
My daughter’s rash was caused by gamma assemblers—the micromachines that assembled finished molecules from component fragments. The gammas must have been on Julia’s clothing when she came home from the lab. Julia worried about that possibility; that was why she took a shower as soon as she got home.
The magnetic field of the MRI cured her in an instant; all the assemblers were yanked away from her in the first pulse. (Apparently that is also what happened to the guy in the desert. He somehow came in contact with a batch of assemblers. He had been camping within a mile of the Xymos desert facility.) Julia knew what was wrong with Amanda, but she didn’t tell anybody. Instead she called the Xymos cleanup crew, which showed up in the middle of the night while I was at the hospital. Only Eric saw them, and now I know what he saw. Because the same crew arrived here a few hours ago to sweep my
...more
After her car crashed, Julia called for the cleanup crews. That’s why they were there on the road late that night. They were waiting to go down the hill and clean up the site. I don’t know what caused the crash itself, whether it was something to do with the swarm or whether it was just an accident.
The facility in the desert was entirely destroyed. There was enough methane in the main laboratory to produce a fireball in excess of two thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Any biological materials would have been incinerated.
They never found any bodies in the ruins, not...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
I mean make it hot enough even skeletons will dissipate. Think of the skeleton-less holes in Pompeii
Sometimes I have ringing in my ears, which is a worrisome sign. And I feel a vibrating in my chest and abdomen. I can’t tell if I am just paranoid, or if something is really happening to me. I try to keep a brave face for the kids, but of course you can’t fool kids. They know I’m frightened.
What bothers me most is an email I found on Julia’s hard drive earlier today. It was from her to Ricky Morse, with a CC to Larry Handler, the head of Xymos, outlining the procedure to follow to get the camera swarm to work in high wind. The plan was to intentionally release a swarm into the environment.
They reconfigured the nanoparticles to add solar power and memory. They rewrote the particle program to include a genetic algorithm. And they released the particles to reproduce and evolve, and see if the swarm could learn to survive on its own. And they succeeded. It was so dumb, it was breathtaking. I didn’t understand how they could have embarked on this plan without recognizing the consequences.
it was one thing to release a population of virtual agents inside a computer’s memory to solve a problem. It was another thing to set real agents free in the real world. They just didn’t see the difference. Or they didn’t care to see it.
Julia’s original email says, “We have nothing to lose.” But in the end they lost everything—their company, their lives, everything. And the ironic thing is, the procedure worked. The swarm actually solved the problem they had set for it. But then it kept going, kept evolving. And they let it.
