Johnny Winger and the Europa Quandary

  Chapter 29

  Buckland Center, Alaska and inside the WorldNet

  November 28, 2121

  0330 hours (Earth U.T.)

  Johnny Winger had a dilemma. The human being that had once been called Johnny Winger was now a dematerialized cloud of bots, what most people would call an angel. He was circulating around the Net, surfing bytes and packets and he knew he had a mission, a mission assigned by no less than Symborg himself. His assigned mission was simple: to fight and defeat Cyber Sweep and Valerie Patrice, who didn’t yet realize just who or what she was dealing with.

  It was just like a fist fight in a sleet storm, this combat down at the level of atoms. As an atomgrabber and a nanotrooper for years, Winger had worked with ANAD systems and driven bots through every kind of environment you could think of, including solid rock. Now he was one of them, living and fighting with the molecules that made up this crazy, roller-coaster world.

  It was better than riding the Cyclone at Daytona Beach.

  “Doc, maybe Liam was right, maybe you or your ancestors were right…this is cool stuff. It’s a little bit like swimming uphill, or tacking against strong winds in a sailboat, but once you get the hang of it, it’s a real head trip.”

  Doc III chimed through on the coupler circuit. ***Multi-config is the way to go, General…we’ve always maintained there’s nothing like it…***

  Winger found maneuvering through the packet stream inside the Net was something like fighting currents in the ocean. As a child, he remembered riding the waves on a board, tumbling end for end as the waves broke into a crescendo of foam and slammed him headfirst into the sand. You could fight the currents or you could flow with the currents. Just dodging the speedway of cotton balls was tricky enough, for that’s what the packet stream seemed like to him.

  Doc III chimed in again. ***General, long-range scan is detecting a point source of thermals…plus electromagnetic signatures suggesting a bot formation nearby…estimating approximately seven thousand microns…***

  “That’s got to be Cyber Corps’ force. Give me a vector—“

  Doc III transmitted heading and distance and Winger steered his own picowatt propulsors in that direction. He checked his own config status: operating with config C-3308, bond disrupters at full charge, grabbers and probes in defense one, enzymatic knife ready to slash and burn. He decided he might need a little company, as Doc had already informed him the enemy formation was large and growing…a swarm in the making.

  He wanted to meet fist with fist, so he toggled the replication pickle and felt the shudder and heat of nearby bots slamming atoms to build more copies of himself. Something else a nanobot could do…humans took nine months. Bots could grow babies in minutes, gazillions of them.

  Steadily, Winger closed the distance to the target.

  He could feel the heat of the enemy’s own replication and soon enough, waves and currents began buffeting him, as the cotton balls of the packet stream slammed into each other and spun out of control, knocked off course by the swelling formation of bots erupting in their midst.