The activation signal arrived in the form of just a few bytes of data sent via a wireless interface from a passing vehicle driving by the Brandenburger Tor, the famous gate just a block away from the Reichstag, where the Deutscher Bundestag, the German parliament, was in full session.
As the Parliament president issued a verbal warning to the fourth speaker of the day—a representative of the German Social Democratic Party, for going over its allotted time—a slim container, secured to the bottom of one of the seats in the plenary hall, opened, releasing hundreds of nanomachines.
Some of the less patient members of the Social Democratic Party’s opposition, the Christian Democratic Union, applauded the parliament president’s move, making the Social Democratic Party speaker return to his seat while allowing the next speaker up to the podium.
The Parliament president sighed. It was going to be a long and difficult day, especially when they reached the most controversial topic on their agenda: the decision to end the CyberWerke monopoly by forcing it to become a number of smaller companies. The German Interior Minister and the German Minister of Economy were present today, along with the German Minister of Commerce and the German Minister of Defense, their faces showing obvious anxiety about the upcoming discussion.
Rolf Hartmann was a national hero, the high-tech tycoon who had founded CyberWerke in Dresden, a city in the former East Germany, and turned it into the largest and most profitable German conglomerate before going international, before conquering the markets in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Rolf Hartmann’s popularity shadowed that of the German chancellor, also present here today to monitor the proceedings and intervene if the debate spiraled out of the control of the Parliament president.
The invisible cloud of nanomachines, powered by atomically precise turbines, followed their embedded programming by evenly spreading themselves over the entire crowd, as measured by their targets’ body heat, before using their scanners to zero in on the unique chemical composition of the liquid secretions of human cerebrum glands, commonly known as ear wax.
The nanomachines, outnumbering those present in the plenary hall ten to one, hovered down to their pre-selected targets according to a program based on the chaotic order of a beehive. The microscopic cybernetic mechanisms navigated up their hosts’ ear canals by using an advanced version of bats’ echolocation to avoid touching the walls of the middle ear, filmed with the sticky paste exuded to prevent dust, germs, and other small particles from reaching the inner ear.
A minute later, when all systems had reported to one another that they were in position, their program jumped to a one-time subroutine, which ordered the full redirection of the nearly depleted charge inside their fusion chambers into a large molecular cluster of advanced nitroglycerin.
Visitors strolling down the spiral walkway around the massive glass-and-steel dome atop the Reichstag later reported that the entire body of the German parliament collapsed in uncontrollable spasms in unison, before going limp seconds later where they sat. By the time security opened the doors and scrambled inside the hall, an eerie silence reigned amidst what had been just seconds before the ruling body of the Federal Republic of Germany.