Today’s prompt was “Will They or Won't They?” This turned into a fun experiment, one which I will see about expanding into a novel, or at least a short story. I did alter the title a bit...

Will He or — Won't He . . . ?
1014 words | By Me

Dr. David Nichols was on the run. Graduating MIT’s Nanotechnology Laboratories eight years earlier, and now at the ripe old age of 31, this was the last way he thought he would be ending a career he had indeed come to love. Murder, grand theft, followed by a rather long list of serious traffic violations. The authorities were some distance away but still following and gaining. Through his personally deployed fog of four trillion nanite investigator drones, trailing in a long, thinly wisping stream a full mile along his wake, his mechanically enhanced senses could perceive the many police cruisers closing in.

With his Jaguar XKR tearing around the corner at Wilshire and 5th, he was sure Vancouver, Washington, had to be completely engulfed in flames. There was smoke everywhere, people shouting, screaming, accompanied by the startling bursts of not-so-distant gunfire on all sides from the terrified populace. The car’s satellite radio carried sporadic news reports of whole cities throughout Europe and Asia also ablaze, with sweeping revolutions rocking across all of Africa and South America. The entire planet’s citizenry was in a furor, with much of that population looking for him in particular, though without the knowledge that he had become their primary target. Be that as it may, they all wanted him and his kind dead, buried, and forgotten. The truth was, Dr. Nichols, and all nanotech/biotech engineers in general, were the living, breathing precursors for the end of the world, and killing them would have saved billions of lives -- once upon a time.

He pulled into the tower parking facility of a downtown mall, nearly striking a small group of running children in the process.

Swerving around the kids, it occurred to the good doctor that running them down might have been a blessing, saving them all from the very real agony of molecular disassemblage, but that favor was now gone from them.

With all the surrounding turmoil, and gunshots sounding, now less than a block away, he had to crash the flimsy stick of a gate to get quickly in, cracking the passenger side of his windshield in the process.

Up in the relative security of the fifth level of the tower parking facility, he stopped, positioning the car to face down the exit ramp, engine idling. There, he was finally able to breathe, settling back in the driver’s seat, collecting his thoughts. He could feel the changes coursing through his veins. He stared down the ramp before him, thinking of the days that had so violently altered his life, as well as the future of all life on the planet. He glanced a double-take at the refrigeration pack on the passenger seat, now lightly splattered with Marcia’s blood. He grimaced, recalling the stunned look on Dr. Marcia Brewer’s face not even an hour ago while he was stealing the case. That was when he stabbed her with his extended hand.

What he had seized was essentially a vast assortment of tiny machines, a nanoscopic treasure-trove of synthetic molecules that just happened to be stored around, on, and within the living cellular matter of the purloined specimen. By now, the man was quite certain the nanotech-enhanced product he had taken from the lab no longer required refrigeration. Also confirmed was that he did not need the orangutan hand in the pack to keep the machines functioning. It was quite the other way around, but the hand served as a suitable container for the lot. Dr. Nichols was confident, beyond all doubt, that, without the cooling system, the nano-devices working within the ape’s hand would keep the severed primate tissue not only fresh but very much alive.

He raised his own bloodied hand before him, recalling how easily that reinforced appendage had become a weapon. It had so easily penetrated the woman’s frail form, crushing through her sternum. And there had been the surprised expression on her face as she crumpled to the newly waxed floor, the look of stunned bewilderment frozen upon her lifeless face. He and Dr. Brewer had worked side by side as friends and colleagues for years, and now there could be no doubt in his mind that he had killed her, though it really could not have been helped. It was the fastest way to get past her with the small refrigeration pack.

He knew he could have carefully fought with her, wrestled a bit, shoved her aside, and possibly have gotten away, but this would have delayed him, and a possibility of success was no guarantee of success. Security had already called for the police, and he needed to be out of that facility immediately. The fate of all humanity, of all life, depended entirely upon him, as much at that moment as at the moment he now faced. For this reason, and this reason alone, his friend had to be killed.

A blessing? he still silently wondered, recalling the children he had not run over.

She had been coming in for the start of her day, having no idea what had occurred overnight up in the lab. He had killed her, and so she was going to miss the monster they had together created and just unleashed upon the world. His closest colleague and friend had been spared the worldwide agony to come.

He thought of his nanite cloud and instantly linked in, able to again see the pursuing squad cars. They were driving slower, now, searching for him, with spotlights, trying to pierce the thickening clouds of smoke. The murderer, Dr. David Nichols, was still on their collective minds, for the moment, but that, too, would pass.

He revved the engine. He had to get home, set up his defenses. The police were likely already there, but the end was coming, the disassemblers now accelerating exponentially. He was indistinguishable to the nanites and had been working on an unquantifiable nano-bunker, which was far from complete, and here it was, already time for him to save the world.

The last surviving human being was quickly finding himself to be so woefully unprepared.

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