Second Nature

Chapter 2

They locked eyes. His gaze was hard and cool, gray eyes the tint of granite. His mouth tightened, but he did not look away. The only way to confront men like him was to show equal grit, which is why so many women who rose to power became stone-hearted bitches. She hoped she had not become one.  

"The next obvious question is, Why am I being told now?" She made her fingers stop drumming. "I'm almost afraid to find out." 

Eberhard shifted in his chair. "Ma'am, we need your presidential authorization for the underground detonation of a thermonuclear device." 

Chrissake, things are that bad? She blew out a loud sigh. "All right. We'll deal with this secrecy issue later. And I promise you, it will not be forgotten."  

A male aide poured for her a cup of coffee. She sipped it black while glancing around the table at the nation's top defense and security advisors. They all looked scared, and she wondered if her fear showed, too. 

"For now, priorities," she said. "So far, all I've been told is that a bio-warfare project has gotten out of control and become critically dangerous. But the tension in this room...it feels like we're huddling in a trailer park, waiting for a tornado." 

She turned to a man seated on her right, wearing a gray suit, white shirt, and black bow tie. His white, wooly hair and white beard contrasted sharply with his dark brown skin. 

"What can you tell me, Doug?" 

Dr. Douglas Freeman, the White House Chief Science Advisor, licked dry lips. "I can tell you..." he sighed, "I can tell you that I'm terrified. I believe all life on Earth is threatened."  

Behind eyeglasses, his brown eyes met hers with a grim look. Her heart sounded to her like it was pounding from the bottom of a deep well. She wondered if others could hear the booms. She took a breath to calm herself.  

"Start at the beginning." 

Dr. Freeman shook his head. "I've just been briefed about this mess myself, an hour ago. Let me assure you, if I had known about the project, I would have argued vehemently for shutting it down long before this." He looked accusingly at the Army colonel seated across the table. "Col. Eberhard is the project's director. Let him tell you." 

The President's eyes settled on Eberhard again. Back to you, Bullet-head. He rubbed a big hand through salt-and-pepper hair buzzed in a severe crewcut, then folded his hands on the table. "Madam President, how much do you know about nanotechnology?" 

She squinted. "I've heard of it. Small things. Little machines. That's about the extent of my knowledge." 

"Yes, ma'am," he said. "Nanotechnology means engineering machines on the scale of nanometers." 

The President turned back to her science advisor. "Help me out." 

"One-billionth of a meter," he said. "Microscopic." 

She tried to imagine the scale. "Microscopic machines?" 

Eberhard nodded. "Yes, ma'am. We call them nanobots-robots the size of proteins. Millions of them can fit into a single human cell." 

She shook her head. "But...machines that tiny can actually perform work?" 

"Nature's been using them for billions of years," Eberhard said.  

She turned to Dr. Freeman. "Doug?" 

"He's right. The machinery of nature already operates on the microscopic scale. That's where life is busiest," Dr. Freeman said. "Think about the activities within your cells-the oxidation of foods, defense against germs, tissue repair and so forth. Molecular machines do all that work. We call them white blood cells and hormones and such, but one could regard them as tiny...well, as he said: robots. Nanobots. Each cell has factories to build an amazing variety of these machines-one molecule at a time, you see-according to instructions provided by the genes."