The Shrink Program

Chapter 105

"More Bee metaphors....?" I muttered.

"Simile..." Garmen corrected instantly, only to stop. I gave him a disbelieving look.

Slowly, I pointed at myself.

"I want you to look at us, a group of shrunken delinquents consisting of a chronic class skipper, a guy who's been institutionalised most of his high school years, and Nigel, and I want you to explain to us exactly what a Simile is. Or..." I held up my palm in the "wait" sign as Garmen went unbelievably pale.

"You can just be grateful that I know how to pronounce the word metaphor, and we'll stick with the stuff I know, if not necessarily understand...."

".... After thinking it over, I realise you're right. It was a Bee Metaphor." Garmen surrendered, clearing his throat nervously.

"The point is, that is how Basic NanoTech works. It is what is inside my body right now, and is what will heal my injury."

"Oh, okay, good. Thanks for the lecture. It all makes sense now." I smiled at him cheerfully, giving him the thumbs up.

"I'm not finished yet." Garmen brows lowered in frustration.

"... oh." I said.

I didn't really want to sit around and learn about something that was pretty much going over my head.....But even as he spoke, Garmen seemed to be collecting himself.

If having something nerdy to focus on was going to help him work through the pain, I wasn't going to ask him to stop.

"Once nanotech has been put in the body, it only knows how to complete the task it has been programmed with."

"All the Bee's know how to do is follow the blueprint, spending all their time maintaining the hive in the exact way that the queen wants it. They don't think of new idea's to improve or change the hive, and they won't ever stop unless the queen is removed... Which rarely ends well."

"So it's pretty much a lifetime commitment." I rolled my eyes. "Bet they hide that little detail in the fine print."

Garmen lowered his gaze uncomfortably.

"...the limited functionality of the basic tech is why the System was created. The System can send new instructions to the queen bees, giving them new blueprints and telling them how they should decorate their hives. "

"... So the System is like... a super queen?" I ask excitedly.

I'm so smart.

"....yea, sure. The System is like a super queen. A super queen that we, the hives, can control." Garmen seemed less than impressed with my brilliance.

"With the super queen, we can give the bees in the facility new and far more complex instructions. Like deconstructing and reconstructing the hive at different scales."

"With the super queen, we can make the nanotech touch things it normally wouldn't, like inorganic tissue or brain matter, giving us the ability to alter clothing and rebuild the human mind without replacing it with an earlier image..."

"Okay! Okay! I get it." I cried, clutching my throbbing head.

"So someone has hacked into the Super Queen and has become like the Mega Super Queen emperor, telling the super queen to tell the queen bee's to make the bees attack the hive, which is why you disconnected from the super queen, so now your queen bee has gone back to her boring old decor design and you can't do ninja stuff any more. I get it."

What followed my grand deduction was stunned silence, each of us struggling to make some sense out of what the hell I had even said.

"Oh, bother..." Nigel murmured. "Now I really want some honey."

I punched him the arm. Hard.

Completely unfazed, Nigel sent me his sweetest smile. Ignoring him, I turned to analyse Garmen once more.

"Also... Are you sure that you're okay?"

"I just explained..."

"I know." I interrupted, pointing meaningfully to the elevator buttons. "It's just that we've been standing here for ages because you forgot to press what floor were going to."

After a moment of awkward silence in which we all realised that we were standing in an unmoving elevator, Garmen reached over and pressed the G for the ground floor.

In response to the question of whether or not Garmen and Havoc recusing us was truly a miracle...

I rest my case.