A creative endeavor

John rolled his fingers across the table. Each finger following the one before it almost like a stream, pinky to index finger and then back the other way. He had a seductive way of moving his hands; it was just one of the man’s subtly attractive features that lured women to him without them realizing it was happening. The bar he was sitting in right now, Rust, it was called, was even one that he frequented to get in on a bit of deviant behavior, and that thought had occurred to him several times already tonight. Several times he would also wish that he was at this particular bar for the reasons he usually was, but that simply wasn’t the case. The man sitting across from him didn’t give a shit. He didn’t notice how John’s fingers moved. He didn’t know why John normally came to this bar, and he was completely ignorant to the number of semi-inebriated woman John had left with on previous nights. It’s not that they were uncomfortable around each other, but john, for once in his life, was not sure how to act.

Roland was not worried about how to act, or at least, he wasn’t any more worried socially than he was at any given time. He looked nervous, but aside from social situations, not too much bothered him. He had never been to Rust before tonight, he preferred to drink at home, and at six foot three, two hundred and twenty pounds, he saved a lot of money that way. Besides that, he figured it was the best idea, given his present situation. That situation also applied to his views on meeting women, which was not something he was good at anyway. At his size, one would be inclined to think that he would stand out more in a crowd. This is only natural, but not the case. He may have been tall, but when someone pictured him in his or her mind, Roland wasn’t a tall person. He wasn’t muscular or reserved either, nor was he the opposite of these things, he simply was not. Before you knew it you would forget his name altogether and then he disappeared. You might say he was the opposite of John; he had the subtle knack of not being noticed. This could be considered a genuine talent given his current position.

“This guy of ours is… well he’s pretty late I guess…” said John, desperate to break the silence.

“People often are.” Said Roland, calmly.

“ Yea, I mean he must be nervous, this is probably a big deal for people that aren’t old pros like us huh?”

“I’d hardly consider us pros John. This won’t be as easy as it was for us the first times.”
“Well, right, I guess I was trying to make a joke. Oh hey look at that girl at the bar, I think I picked her up once, Christ I hope she doesn’t recognize me…”

“I doubt it, that would have been a long time ago. Before you left Particlecorp. Wait, no, if it had been that long this wouldn’t be an issue, you wouldn’t remember her . John do you mean to tell me that you’ve been prowling this bar since your incident at Particlecorp?”
“You’re a sharp one Roland… I…”

“You asshole. You’ve got to be fucking kidding.”

“Take it easy man, I mean, keep your voice down, I mean, I’ve been using John as my name, and only going to places where there aren’t any temps to check your blood. They aren’t too many places that don’t anymore.”

“Great. You avoid the places where they don’t need to look for us for the places they will be looking for us. Ah Fuck John, what if they figured out we were here, nabbed our guy and now they’re probably strapping him up with a wire. He’ll have to help them out or go to jail. They might be watching us right now, waiting for us to slip up. Then they’ll nab us too. Fuck it, I’m leaving, now.” Roland got up and started walking towards the door, he was moving quickly, but not running.

John, catching up to Roland just as he was walking out the door, “Take it easy Rol, we can’t pass up this chance.”

“The hell we can’t, you drive,” said Roland, moving to the passenger side of the small car that they shared, the door unlocked and opened as soon as it recognized his hand, and started up quietly as soon as John touched the handle on the other side. It ran on a combination of solar power and battery, as cars most did. Cars themselves were a rarity these days, public transit had become efficient and economic before the switch to clean powered cars had been made. Driving had mostly faded out of the fore grounds society, but was making a comeback now that it was clean. The place where they had been, however; was not only off the public transit grid, but was also off the guided road system. You had to drive yourself to this place. Gutsy. John liked the kind of people that frequented it, but that apparently was the cause of their current situation, be it real or imagined.

Just our luck, though John, “you think that car is following us or is it just… on its own?”

Roland had already pulled a large handgun from under the seat, not that he ever really was the think-twice kind of guy. The gun looked like a larger-than-life semi-automatic pistol, but had an elongated barrel that was attached to the rest of the gun by a metal part that was specifically designed to look like a spine with ribs that went around the barrel, but didn’t connect at the bottom. This allowed the barrel to dynamically change size, depending on the ammunition. The barrel also typically expanded after a shot had been fired to better disperse heat. “When I vape this guy you better put the pedal down, ok buddy?”

“Hold on, don’t kill him, we don’t even know if he’s a fed!”

“Fine” Roland tapped a few things into the computer on his wrist, which in turn relayed instructions to his gun. He swiftly twisted in the seat and fired, shooing out the back window and into the engine of the car behind them. At first it looked like the car had hit a nasty pothole, but that was only because Roland’s shot was a little low. A decent sized explosion destroyed the engine, front axle, and probably gave the passengers a few nasty burns to deal with. John pushed the car’s accelerator to the floor his nerves were now visible in his face; Roland on the other hand looked strangely calm, much calmer than he had looked inside Rust. “We need a place to ditch the car, stay off the grid.”
They found a suitable place after driving for about fifteen minutes, an empty field with not too much plant life, low fire risk. Roland gave a few instructions to the spine-gun from his wrist computer and then shot the car towards the back of the engine. At first nothing happened, Roland threw the gun into the driver’s side window, as well as has wrist computer. The car sat quiet for just a few more seconds; John followed Roland’s unspoken advice and moved further away from the thing. They were both still retreating when a large, but perfectly controlled blast destroyed the car from the inside out. A blast of heat caught up to them, as well as a mild sonic shockwave, but that was it. The car, gun and computer were completely gone.

“Bitchin.” Muttered John.

“Efficient, but a shame.” Said Roland.

“Ah forget the car, we can get a new one, but who needs cars anyway?”

“Not the car, the gun. That gun was probably worth fifteen cars.”

“No way, did Aldor give it to you?”

“Well one of his guys did, yea.”
“Shit, well don’t worry about it, Aldor could probably buy a spine-gun for everyone in New Mexico”

“Yep, and we’re working to keep it that way”

“Hey don’t get all economic on me now Rol. We’re above that stuff remember, we have the greater good at heart here. Aldor is just a means to the end, financing.”

“Right, I’ve just been having this feeling lately that even though we’re trying to stop one set of assholes we’re just helping another one.”

“Aldor’s temps aren’t so bad; they’ve only killed a few people. We aim to save the whole damn planet. He is a greedy bastard though.”

“That’s what I was referring to. He’s using us to keep his business alive.”

“Let’s talk about this later. Rifttech is still the biggest problem. Let’s get moving though, we’re still a couple kilometers outside town.”

The walk was uneventful, apparently the police weren’t that hot on their trail, or maybe they had actually blown up a civilian’s car back at Rust. It was also completely possible, Roland realized, that they simply weren’t prepared to deal with a spine gun, and had decided to back off. Roland found comfort in realizing that John was, for the most part, right. All that Aldor Creff wanted was to keep his massive temp empire from slowing down. His company and revolutionized nanotechnology almost twenty years ago with the invention of the first nanobot, now referred to as a “temp” due to their temporary power supplies. The temps were used for a variety of purposes, including medicine and military, but there most widely used for surveillance. Many establishments now had a temp hub, a box about the size of a rubik’s cube, at the entrance. The temps would enter a body entering the building and scan DNA, as well as check for concealed weapons. It was against the law to keep a record of someone’s DNA, the temps could only run it against criminal records, and then it had to be deleted. It was common knowledge, however; that many shady establishments illegally modified temps to raise alarms when people with certain DNA came knocking. The temps were accepted socially because they only had a limited power supply, the best technology available allowed a temp to have about a twenty-four hour power supply, most commercial temps however, only ran for about ten hours at a time, and charged when businesses were closed; when their power supply ran out, the temps had to return to the hub and connect and charge. During this time, an authorized person could change their programming, or even stop the temps from going back out of the hub all together. The system was highly controlled.

What Roland and John were trying to stop was the fast arriving scenario where nanobots constructed other nanobots on their own. This removed a level of control from the system by allowing nanobots to be in charge of programming other nanobots. This sort of technology would have hit global markets about a year ago, but Roland, which is not his real name, had stopped it. He had been working as head of security for a company called “Microsoft”, who were on the verge of creating self-replicating nanobots, when he decided to go rogue and blow up a large section of their Seattle based nanotechnology laboratory with a respectable amount of illegal explosives. The attack had sufficiently crippled Microsoft, and Aldor’s massive company had been able to buy it out a year later.

John had done his part as well when, about eight months ago, he hacked into the mainframe and a company called Int.Tech, Particlecorp being yet another pseudonym. Int.Tech had been getting close to developing self-replicating nanobots as well, and during this time John was working for Int.Tech as a mid level programmer. One night, on his own authority, he hacked into the Int.Tech mainframe and spread a virus throughout their network that effectively deleted most of their data on self-replicating nanobots and even deleted John’s personal records with the company. His attack had been so successful that Int.Tech went completely bankrupt soon afterwards.

John and Roland had only met each other about four months ago, thanks to Aldor Creff who had swept both of the fugitives up and put them in hiding. Now rumor was that a third company, Rifttech, was close to developing self replicating nanobot of their own; it was at this point that Aldor decided it would be good idea to set John and Roland against them, since they had been so successful in the past. John and Roland were too happy to help at first, partly because Aldor was the only person keeping them out of jail, but also because John and Roland both didn’t want self-replicating nanobots to become reality. The man that they were planning to meet at Rust was a Rifttech employee who was supposedly going to help them get inside Riftech and sabotage it.

Both Roland and John readily realized that if they were caught, they were most likely dead. Most civilians had no real use for self-replicating nanobots, it was the government who wanted them created. Uncle Sam was livid, and his war hammer was seeking John and Roland with the ungodly efficiency that only the U.S. government could muster.

In short, John and Roland were currently America’s most wanted. National terrorists who were employed by a fat cat CEO who wanted to keep his massive company bloated with capital for as long as possible. Personally, John and Roland, they were just afraid of a grey goo scenario, and were pretty damn devoted to stopping it from ever having a chance of taking place.

They got back to their apartment at about three in the morning, both of them exhausted. Before he went to sleep, Roland came into Johns room and spoke his mind, “Listen, I’m gonna let you explain this to Aldor tomorrow, ok? You’re better with word than I am anyway. Oh and I understand if you don’t want to tell him about my spine-gun, that’s ok, but I think you should, I think it’s a good idea that we have one”

“Sure, thanks a lot.”

“Yea. Goodnight.”

Roland switched out the lights for John who quickly fell into a not entirely peaceful sleep.