Northeastern Japan
From his position on the cot, Jon Smith studied the room for what must have been the thousandth time. Clearly Takahashi hadn’t considered the necessity of housing prisoners in this facility and had been forced to repurpose what appeared to be a break room. The kitchenette was still there, including a refrigerator stocked with food. Furniture was utilitarian, and a small bathroom with a sink was on the other side of a pocket door.
More interesting was the construction. The walls were natural rock and hardened mud, while fixtures—even the fridge—were a mix of ceramic, carbon fiber, and wood. His clothes had been taken and he was now wearing the same white cotton jumpsuit as the two workers he’d glimpsed when he’d been moved to this cell. Buttons appeared to be bone and there was no belt that would necessitate a buckle. Shoes were slip-on and contained no nails that he could discern.
So, while he couldn’t be 100 percent certain that the nanotech was being developed here, the lack of materials it could consume suggested that it was at least being stored here.
The question was, what could he do about it? The door wasn’t budging and the best tools he had for tunneling were a few plastic spoons left in one of the drawers.
Even if he could escape, what would he be escaping to? For all he knew, World War III was already being fought on the other side of the millions of tons of earth above him.
Smith stood and picked up one of the folding chairs with his right hand. He lifted it carefully out to his side, the searing pain behind his shoulder blade not quite as bad as it had been the day before. He wasn’t sure if he’d survive long enough for it to matter, but he might as well use the idle time to get some of his strength back.
Halfway into his third set, the door leading to the corridor outside slid back. He dropped the chair and turned, expecting Takahashi but instead seeing someone very different.
The man who entered was probably no more than five feet six, but the fact that he walked slightly stooped made him seem smaller. His hair was long, but growing only in intermittent patches on a damaged scalp. The discolored skin on his face seemed to have collapsed in places, but his eyes were surprisingly clear.
Despite the disfigurement, there was little question as to his identity. And there was even less question that he had been working in Reactor Four on the day of the tsunami.
“Dr. Ito,” Smith said, indicating the chair he had just put down.
The scientist nodded gratefully and took a seat without speaking. His expression was hard to read due to the intermittent paralysis of his facial muscles, but his body language suggested fear. Of what, though?
“My compliments,” Smith said as he took a chair on the other side of the table. “Your nanotechnology is half a century ahead of anything else I’ve seen.”
Ito gave a barely perceptible bow to acknowledge the compliment. “Molecular engineering. It was my dream. Can you imagine the possibilities? Skyscrapers building themselves. The repair, and perhaps even creation, of organs without surg—”
“But that’s not what you created,” Smith interjected.
“No,” he said, a hint of misery mixed with his thick accent. “The closer I got, the more afraid people became.”
“Of the dangers?” Smith prompted.
Ito nodded. “A scientist such as yourself will recognize the irony. The more success I had, the harder it was to get funding. No one wanted to be associated with a potential accident.”
“No one but Takahashi.”
This time the nod was more of a head jerk. Strangely violent.
“He had virtually unlimited resources. And he was very generous with them.”
“But there are always strings attached, aren’t there?”
Ito leaned forward, suddenly seeming to need the table for support. “He wanted my invention to consume concrete, metal, and plastic. This wasn’t ideal from a safety standpoint, but the dangers were acceptable. After I made self-replication work, of course I wanted to branch out in other directions. To find practical uses for the technology. Takahashi, though, wasn’t interested.”
As a scientist, Smith could sympathize. It was easy to become blinded to everything but that next breakthrough. Discovering something capable of changing the world, the opportunity to take a place alongside the great minds of history—all things that could be more intoxicating than any drug.
“So when it became clear that your invention destabilized the materials it fed on, Takahashi wanted you to focus on controlling it.”
Ito looked at him suspiciously.
“I’m not just a scientist, Doctor. I’m a soldier. And I wouldn’t be a very good one if I didn’t understand that weapons that can’t be controlled aren’t very useful.”
Ito was silent for a few moments before speaking again. “I didn’t start my life intending to make weapons, Colonel Smith. But I wanted to create. I wanted to explore my theories.”
“And this was the only way to do it,” Smith prompted. “Takahashi was your only source of reliable funding so you did what he asked.”
Another jerky nod. “I built in limitations to their ability to replicate from the beginning for obvious reasons. Takahashi asked that I also create limitations based on geographic position—so they would shut down outside a preset area. It seemed like a prudent additional measure.”
“And do those measures work?”
“Flawlessly in our tests,” he said with discomfort that Smith understood perfectly.
“How many replications did you perform in your tests, Doctor?”
He seemed to want to stand, but didn’t have the energy. “Tens of millions.”
“And how many replications would you expect if this was used as a weapon?”
“The number is nearly incalculable. Larger than the number of stars in the universe. I’ve explained this to the general many times—that as the number of replications increases, so do the chances of a disastrous mutation. But he seems less inclined to listen with every passing day. He’s changed, Colonel. You’re still a young man, so you wouldn’t understand. Takahashi doesn’t have many more years left. He’s dedicated his life to this. He—”
“Dedicated his life to what?”
Ito looked around him as though someone might be watching. “I thought it was to create a new Japan—one that could rival or perhaps even surpass America. Imagine what the weapons we’ve developed could accomplish. We could destroy North Korea’s military-industrial complex without harming its citizens. Or even specific weapons in precisely defined regions. Can you imagine? There’s no limit to where our technological and military power could have led the world.”
In many ways, Ito was right. What if his nanotech could be targeted at bomb-making materials or even gunpowder in the Middle East and Africa? Hell, in certain neighborhoods in inner-city America. How many lives would be saved? How many countries could be stabilized? The problem, though, was one of intent. America had done shockingly well in wielding its overwhelming power. While imperfect, the US had a stable government with built-in checks and balances, a deep-rooted culture of democracy, and a general reticence to project power unless it was absolutely necessary.
Takahashi, it appeared, had none of those virtues.
“I understand that this isn’t what you intended, Dr. Ito. But you know as well as I do that what you intended doesn’t matter. Takahashi’s provoking a war with China and he plans on demonstrating Japan’s new military superiority by wiping that country off the map.”
Ito nodded miserably. “And he won’t stop there. His vision is the same as his father’s: the rebirth of Imperial Japan. But this time, because of me, he will succeed.”