The Shrink Program

Chapter 105

"Well... Don't panic... or blame me.... because it's totally not my fault..."

"The Underground." Artemis finished for me quietly, when it became obvious my self-preservation instincts were getting in the way of the truth.

Garmen stiffened, visibly wincing when the movement aggravated his injury.

"I was hoping that wouldn't be the case." He said, stepping into the elevator.

Once he was in and the doors closed, Garmen leant heavily against the wall, eyes closed, breathing deeply with the pain.

"Mr Garmen." I leant forward on the tall man's shoulder. "Are you really okay?"

After a moment, Garmen's eyes opened, staring intensely ahead.

"I'm perfectly fine. Like I said earlier, the wound is already in the process of healing."

"But... You said that the System was hacked into, and your eyes aren't glowing, so how..."

"My personal nanotechnology has a certain level of autonomy. Even disconnected to the System, it is capable of maintaining the optimum state of health, accelerating the bodies ability to heal and...Didn't you already learn all this at the orientation?"

A faint memory of being forced to go to a lesson about something before I was shrunk flittered through my mind and I blushed.

"Um... Yea, I was sort of bitter about the whole shrinking thing... So I ignored the lesson and drew rude pictures on my desk instead."

".... not the ones with that cat and the...."

"...Yea."

"....The Shrink Program turned that into a motivation poster, you know. Havoc has it up in his office."

"Uh..."

"It says Look at this whenever you feel guilty for dehumanising children, and know that at least one of them probably deserves it."

... satirical.

"...I'm really sorry..."

Garmen closed his eyes again, preparing himself to explain time travel to a three-year-old... Or in my case, a pet turtle

"Nanotechnology uses a combination of millions of individual machines that function on a microscopic scale and...."

One look at my innocently blinking eyes and Garmen surrendered all dignity with a sigh.

"... Imagine it like a colony of bees, only each bee is much smaller than a single cell. Each bee is capable of following instructions, or simply performing predetermined tasks."

"The technology inside my body is controlled by a separate machine called the core.... which is like the queen bee... This core has been surgically implanted into my body. You don't need to know where."

He sent me a look out of the corner of his eye as if I had just asked to see him naked. I raised my hands, letting him know that I had no interest in knowing where they had hidden his bug core thingy.

"The Core is programmed with an image of the body it is implanted too. A picture that shows every single detail of the person, right down to their DNA."

"The core then sends out instructions to its associated nanomachines, using them as a workforce to maintain this image."

"Ah... Could you dumb that down...? Just a little bit more..."

Garmen removed his broken glasses, tiredly rubbing his temples.

"The Queen Bee tells all the minion Bees how she wants her Hive decorated, and all the Bee's work very hard to make sure that the hive looks exactly the way it looks on the blueprint."