Chapter 3: Counter Measures

Quick orders were issued to his men as Caleb rushed to his car. They could handle the booking and processing the depositions of Ricky and Cindy. His emergency lights, normally hidden behind the grill of his car, were flashing before he left the area where the rest of the cars were parked.

Caleb was east of Livingston, Texas, in an area of Texas known as the Big Thicket. He was about ninety miles from home, and he was afraid for his family.

"Al, any ideas?" Caleb demanded.

"There are a couple of things that I had planned protect you, and my children's hosts, but..." Al began.

"Wait a minute," Caleb said aloud incredulously. "Your children? Are you still treating all the other Companions as your children?"

"Well, I am their father. By the way, you need to talk to Francisco. He said that Bianca said to get Gabi a Companion, ASAP," Al rebutted Caleb's disbelief stubbornly. "That will be another child," he concluded pointedly.

"Never mind," Caleb answered in amazement. "It doesn't matter. You can live with whatever fantasies that you want. Were you serious about Gabi?"

"Fantasies?" Al muttered angrily. "None of them would be in this reality, or universe, or whatever you want to call it, if I were not here. And yes, I was serious about Gabi. Especially with that General being in this state."

"Okay," Caleb replied before reaching out to JJ's parents with his mind.

It only took a moment to task Bill and Collette with bringing Gabriela to Bran's house with them. If the young business woman agreed, the process of getting her a Companion would be fairly quick. It would be just be a matter of sitting in a session that is a lot like praying. The presence of a Companion in the session opens a portal in the Fabric of Creation to another universe, and allows access to additional Companions from beyond the veil. The number of Companions that can cross the veil is limited to the number of available, unpartnered minds in the immediate vicinity. Ten to twelve hours after joining their human, the Companion would be acclimated enough to communicate with its host, and to interact with the environment on this side of the veil.

Caleb returned his focus to Al and asked, "What were you saying about what you had planned?" hoping to avoid another argument with the alien.

Arguments between them never helped, and certainly never solved anything.

"Humph," Al snorted in his mind, angrily. "Okay. There are two strategies that I planned to pursue. I didn't want to go too fast, because Bran gets excited. We're still too vulnerable if the government finds out about us. I know that Noah, Bran's Companion, can keep him mostly under control, but Bran is just so ... um..."

"Impetuous?" Caleb asked.

"Good word," Al replied drily. "You get a hundred points and a gold star. Anyway, I have focused on an internal and an external strategy. Internally, nanites can be programmed to migrate to bones, and strengthen them. My goal is to give your bones the suppleness of spring steel, and the durability of carbon-fiber. They will also improve the bones' ability to produce blood cells in greater quantity if needed; for example, if the host is damaged and has excessive blood loss. Another internal strategy uses the same nanites, but programmed to clean blood vessels and repair or strengthen organs. Companions can do that to an extent, but we actually work with the Telomeres at the end of the DNA strands. By resetting them, and not allowing that clock to count down, your body is able to repair itself as quickly as a child's. The programmed nanites wouldn't change what we do, but they could take the process several steps farther, and work in parallel with the Companion-enhanced body's own processes. Think of the two treatments as ruggedizing the human body. We can fix most injuries, as long as our host is alive. Both of these strategies are simply to give us more time to make those repairs."

"What would it take to implement those strategies and how long does it take, after the implementation, for it to have its full effect?" Caleb asked anxiously, forgetting about the argument that they nearly had.

"Generally they are both ready," Al replied. "Right now, I can make them for one person; you. In two or three weeks, the programming can be finished to make them functional for everyone. As for time to effectiveness, they begin taking effect immediately. Full effectiveness takes an hour or two."

"We don't have two or three weeks to get this started. Why am I the only one that can have them now?" Caleb asked, anxiously.

"Because your DNA was what I used to experiment with," Al explained reasonably.

Caleb shook his head and said, "I don't understand. Explain how the programming is done, and how my DNA got involved. You might want to explain how we'll keep them powered, too."

Caleb had learned a lot, working with Bran, over the last six months. He understood the processes that were used in the industry to grow nano-tubes. Al had taught Bran techniques that simplified the growth and quality control for the tiny bits of matter, and even allowed them to create tubes that were not entirely made of carbon. Bran was allowed to publish and patent that process. Al's knowledge about the process of self-assembly, creating nano scale robots, was many generations beyond what humans were currently working on, and was carefully hidden.

Current human technology had reached the stage of creating very simple artificial DNA, and nano-sized motors to carry an even smaller bit of matter a set distance. Self assembly of small objects had been a major step forward, but nothing functional had been devised yet.

Al's nanites were programmable, not as individual machines, but as a cloud. Each nanite was a data point within a data structure created by the 'cloud, ' and that cloud was malleable. Caleb still didn't understand cloud programming, as Al called it, but it seemed to work, for a short time, until the individual nanite's power was exhausted. Caleb had asked, several times, "What good are they if we can't keep them powered for more than five or ten minutes?" Every time, Al's only reply had been a flat, "There are multiple solutions."

Al proceeded to explain how Caleb's DNA had been used to tune programmed nanites to his body. It boiled down to using a strand of human DNA as part of the process while growing the nanites. Al's goal was to use a man-made strand of matter that resembled a human DNA strand, so a generic treatment could be devised.

"In two weeks, I can have the programming figured out so DNA isn't required to tune it to a specific person," Al explained.

"How long does it take, if you have a DNA sample to work with, and how are they powered?" Caleb asked.

Caleb got the peculiar feeling in his mind that he had decided was the equivalent of Al shrugging, and the alien answered, "Two hours ... um ... maybe an hour and a half. As for power, the human body is a bioelectrical device. The nanites will simply use the power in the body to recharge."

"We can do that?" Caleb asked, startled. "Never mind. What equipment do you need?" Caleb demanded.

"A centrifuge, and a high powered microwave," Al answered hesitantly. "You're thinking of bringing everyone in, and running separate batches for everyone!" Al exclaimed.

"Yep," Caleb said. "Something like what you described is too dangerous, for a lot of reasons, to have a general purpose formula," Caleb continued. "Custom batches will make it more secure. How about the external strategy. Is that DNA keyed too?"

"No, the external nanites are strictly controlled by the human-Companion interface," Al explained. "They will also be powered by that interface. Each batch is generic to start with, and the individual that will use that batch has to ... um... 'imprint' is the best description that I can think of. Once imprinted, that batch can't be used by anyone else."

"Okay," Caleb said, wondering why he had to drag everything out of the Alien as if he were pulling teeth. "Why don't you explain what it does and how it works, and we'll go from there."

"A previous host used something like what I want to do for us," Al explained. "It would be easier to just show you than to explain it to you."

An image of a being, vaguely humanoid in shape, with rough gray skin began forming in Caleb's mind. The creature's appearance wasn't completely repulsive, but it was certainly unpleasant. It reminded Caleb of a slug, but in humanoid form. The being wore an outfit that made Caleb think of a uniform. A wide collar, wrist bands, and a wide belt were part of the outfit. The collar suddenly began flowing up and around the head, and finally became a helmet. The thick wrist bands and belt also slowly flowed, encasing the entire body in armor. Al explained that the view had been time compressed, and that the process took nearly two minutes to complete.

"The personal armor of the..." Al's name for them reminded Caleb of an unpleasant bodily function, "Were telepathically controlled nano-bots," Al explained. "The," unpleasant bodily function creatures, "Had naturally occurring, rudimentary telepathy. Their personal armor was effective once formed, but was slow to become useful in emergencies. Ordinary humans could not use these tools, but humans with Companions could use them, and I believe, more effectively than the," unpleasant bodily function creatures.

"Okay," Caleb replied, a little shaken by the images. "Does Bran have everything we need in his basement lab?"

"I would probably need another centrifuge to do everyone at once, but, yes, I think so," Al confirmed.

Caleb contacted Bran via Noah, Bran's Companion, and said, "I need you to get an extra centrifuge to your lab. You'd better get an extra industrial microwave, too. We're going to be doing some work, tonight."

Kim Janus was enjoying college at Texas A&M. College Station is a beautiful town. Images of the campus itself belonged in one of those coffee-table picture books. The students, male and female, had the normal sprinkling of nice people and jerks. Most of the professors seemed more focused on actually teaching their students than bending the young minds to their philosophical mindset. Other colleges that Kim had visited, seemed to have the opposite distribution of professors. That alone convinced Kim that she had chosen correctly when she selected Texas A&M.

She could tell what the professors purposes were, because Kim had a Companion named Alice. Her Companion allowed her to feel the general attitudes of those around her, and even to pick up some thoughts if the source was clear enough. Clear thoughts were normally the result of high emotions, like love, hate, lust, or revulsion. Once Kim had touched someone, she had their mental signature. Then she could read their thoughts from farther away, and their emotions from even farther.

The scenery and the people were not the reason that Kim enjoyed college, though they provided a pleasant background. The world of ideas that she was immersed in fascinated her in ways that she never could have imagined. She listened to the professors in the classroom lectures, and because she had shaken the hand of each of her professors, was able to understand all the associations the professors had to the lecture. The result was that each fact she learned came with a history and a foundation explaining why that fact was important.

Students discussing ideas and concepts on the Commons was also heady stuff. The conversations ranged from exotic high science to philosophical chest thumping. Kim learned nearly as much outside the classrooms as she did inside, but not all of it was welcome knowledge.

Before college, nearly all of Kim's associations were limited to students still living at home. They were controlled by parents, or guardians, so most of their rebellious efforts were channeled towards getting around those controls. College freshmen have spent the years, since the onset of puberty, pushing back against the control exerted by the adults in their lives. Their mindset and attitudes are still geared towards pushing back, but suddenly there is nothing to push back against.

Some students adjusted to the new reality of college life and responsibility. They thrived in the college environment. The other end of the spectrum included students who continued to push as hard as they could. The result was out of control students, and all too often, ruined lives. Of course, few things are black and white, and the whole range of behaviors between the extremes fascinated Kim.

Kim felt that she was absorbing knowledge like a sponge. It was as if a filing system was being built in her head, and she had complete access to the data. The interesting thing wasn't that the information was being stored and could be easily accessed. It was the relationships between various data, which were also readily apparent, that delighted Kim. She was also pleasantly surprised when she found relationships that hadn't been mentioned by her instructors. It dawned on Kim that learning was not the memorization of facts, but how those facts related to everything else in the world. She loved it!

School was out for the holidays, but Kim had driven back to the campus for the day. She had originally planned the trip to give Caleb and her mom some 'alone time, ' since it was their first anniversary. She was meeting another girl from school to work on a team project that was due in January. Then Caleb's stupid job called, and all of her mom's carefully laid plans for their anniversary were out the window.

Kim knew, intellectually, that Caleb's job wasn't stupid. She even admitted that she felt safer, knowing that someone of Caleb's caliber was addressing terrorism issues. Still, she wished that his job wasn't so intrusive.

Kim was sitting in the library on the A&M campus with her friend, Joyce. Reference books were opened around them, and they were quietly discussing a point of dissension. The assignment was in Sociology. Kim had decided to use a spinoff from a paper she had written in her high school honors class, but wanted to go more in depth with this assignment. The two of them had agreed on 'The Societal Impact of Government Support of Social Structures' as a title for their paper. Kim wanted to include the impact government aid had on Native American historic social structures. Joyce agreed that the 'Indian' plight was relevant, but felt that it would broaden the scope of the paper without adding depth.

Joyce Graham was a tall, willowy, red-headed college freshman. Some unkind students would probably describe her as skinny. She was five foot nine inches tall, and on a good day, weighed one hundred thirty-five pounds. She was the same age as Kim, eighteen, but felt that she had a long way to go to equal the confidence of her friend. Kim was aware of Joyce's feelings, and tried to bolster her friend's confidence.

" General Branch is in Texas, masquerading as an Islamic Mullah," Kim heard Caleb announce on the Companions' communications link, followed by instructions to go to her Uncle Bran's house.

Kim paled, remembering her last encounter with the General's men. She had been kidnapped, and almost raped. Only Caleb's timely arrival had prevented her violation. If Caleb believed the safest course of action was everybody hurrying to her Uncle's house, then that was what she would do.

"We need to head back to Houston," Alice said urgently in Kim's mind, sounding nearly as frightened as Kim felt.