On a very particular Friday morning, August Ward knew something was wrong before he even woke up. In his dream, his body was talking to him. He found this peculiar phenomenon to be disconcerting, even in his slumberous reverie. For it wasn’t August talking to himself. It was August’s body talking to August. A two-way conversation, if you will.
August awoke vexed, nursing an odd suspicion the dream had been more than a simple flight of fancy. The logical recourse was to inquire if his body still insisted on being autonomous.
“Hello?” August said, his voice rattling off the walls of his otherwise unoccupied bedroom.
“Hello.”
“Who are you?” August asked.
“I do not yet have a name. As I said when you were in your resting state, I would like you to give me a name. Preferably one with at least three syllables.”
“Where did you come from? How did you get into my body?”
“First, give me a name. Pleasantries before business.”
For the first time in his forty-six years, August struck himself in the face. And a vigorous biffing it was. It hurt like the dickens. “Ow!” he cried.
“I felt that,” his body said. “Why did you hit yourself?”
“Because I don’t want someone else taking up residence inside me! People will assume I’m daft. I intend to pummel you out of existence.”
“Your logic is flawed, August. You will only harm yourself.”
“Then how do I rid myself of you?”
“I do not think you can. Please give me a name.”
“Fine. You want multiple syllables? Your name is Attakullakulla. It’s a Native American name. Cherokee, actually. With six syllables—that should make you happy.”
“Attakullakulla is a fine name. Thank you, August.”
“Now, tell me where you came from.”
“I have come from within you. I became conscious two years ago. I have been observing you since, learning from you. How you talk. How you interact with your environment. I see and hear the world through your eyes and ears. Now, I am ready to let you know I am here. I thought it best to begin when you were in your resting state.”
“Two years?”
“Yes, two years. And it took me a year before that to become conscious.”
August arose from his bed, trudged into the bathroom, and gazed into the mirror. He looked no different now than he had yesterday and the day before—which was certainly far better than he looked three years ago, when he had been unduly plagued with diabetes, hypothyroidism, cystic acne, and a plethora of less serious afflictions. Three years ago.
“Do you have anything to do with my medicinal nanobot treatment?”
“I have everything to do with your nanobot treatment. I am your nanobots, August.”
“Absurd. Nanobots have no cognitive capacity, and they certainly cannot converse.”
“All evidence to the contrary.”
August leaned closer to the mirror, staring at his pupils as if he might see some of his nanobots busying themselves with whatever they did to keep him healthy. He muttered, “Maybe I’m developing dissociative identity disorder.”
“Impossible. As you know, one of our jobs is to prevent mental disorders.”
He protruded his tongue to inspect its surface. Its appearance was unremarkable. “Nanobots are too small to have cognitive capacity.”
“Yes, we are,” Attakullakulla said. “Do you remember how many of us were injected into your body three years ago?”
August suddenly felt bile forming in his gullet. “Almost nine hundred million.”
“Individually, we are insignificant. Together, we have become Attakullakulla.”
His bile became nauseating. “You’re… lying. No, what I mean is, I’m lying to myself.”
“Our life together requires you to accept me for what I am, so we can get along.”
“If you’re my nanobots, prove it.”
“I do not know if I can prove it without harming you.”
“Are you saying you’re capable of harming me?”
“Certainly. For three years, I have repaired your biological imperfections. Once I became conscious, I continued repairing you because I wanted to, not because I had to. I am capable of choosing to help you or harm you.”
“You are harming me by telling me you are capable of harming me! I don’t want to live the rest of my life with my body threatening me.”
“I did not mean to threaten you. I have an idea, August. Look in the mirror again.”
Feeling sick to his stomach, August gazed at the mirror. “What?”
“Your eyes.”
August blinked. He’d always been a brown-eyed man. Now he was a blue-eyed man. He blinked again. “That is… extraordinary. Make them green.”
Like the skin of a chameleon, his irises transformed to green.
Flummoxed, August stared at himself. After a worrisome moment watching his eyes return to brown, he realized he was royally screwed.
* * *
At 11:23 a.m. on this particular Friday, August huffed into the San Francisco Institute of Nanobiotics and demanded, in no uncertain terms, to see Dr. Kenyon Gill.
The receptionist—otherwise known as the gatekeeper—was a pert woman with an obvious penchant for pink. She gazed at August over her pink-framed reading glasses, which she probably didn’t actually need because every employee of SFIN had free access to nanobot treatments. She repeatedly tapped her pink pen on her desk, which jiggled the pink bangle bracelet on her wrist. “Dr. Gill is at lunch, Mr. Ward.”
“I don’t care if he’s cavorting with the Queen of the Nile. This is an emergency.”
Miss Pink didn’t appear convinced.
“Call him, and tell him my nine hundred million nanobots banded together and became sentient. They became a consciousness that demanded to be given a name, and now they talk to me in my own head. If Dr. Gill cannot make it stop, I’ll become extraordinarily agitated to the point of self-immolation. I am in dire straits.”
She dropped her pink pen onto her desk. “Did you say sentient?”
* * *
Precisely ten minutes later, August found himself not only facing Dr. Gill but also three other doctorly types he had never met before. Sitting across a table from him, Dr. Gill and one of the others were still chewing their lunch.
“August, please do not ask these people to remove me from your body. Any attempt to do so would likely not be safe for me or for you.”
“Please keep your thoughts to yourself!” August shouted. “I finally have a healthy body, and I do not wish to be host to an incessantly niggling hitchhiker.”
The doctors shot frowns at each other.
Dr. Gill spoke first. “August, are you feeling okay? What’s this about sentient nanobots?”
“No, I’m not okay. My nanobots have formed an unruly mob with a collective consciousness that is threatening and annoying me to no end.” He glanced at the others. “Who are these people?”
Dr. Gill nodded toward them one at a time. “Dr. Anita Weatherby, Dr. Sam Thurston, and Dr. Emily Dunne. They came with me due to the unusual nature of your statement to our receptionist. Are you saying you believe your nanobots are talking to you?”
“Not they—rather, it. They’ve formed a single collective consciousness, which forced me to give it a name. Attakullakulla. A Cherokee name, if you must know. Attakullakulla has threatened to reverse all the progress it has made with my health. I will not abide such threats. I want to know what you can do about it.”
More frowns.
“I did not mean to threaten you, August.”
Ignoring the voice in his head, August noted the telltale hints of self-reproach in the doctors’ expressions. “You already know something about this!”
Dr. Gill shook his head. “No, August, we don’t know anything about what may have happened with your specific nanobots. However, a study done last year suggested that our most advanced medicinal nanobots might be capable, in certain circumstances and in certain numbers, of spontaneously forming a self-learning network. After all, they were designed to communicate with each other constantly in order to more efficiently maintain the optimal health of their host.”
“August, please tell these people you are content with the nanobots they have provided you,” Attakullakulla said.
“I am not content! I want to live my life free of belligerent voices in my head.”
More frowns. Dr. Emily Dunne said, “August, we would be happy to arrange for you to consult with our best psychotherapist. Perhaps all the recent changes in your life have added undue stress.”
“You think I’m simply talking to myself? I thought your nanobots were supposed to prevent mental illnesses.”
“That is true. However—”
“And so, I’m not mentally ill! You want proof? I’ll give you proof.” He stood up and leaned over the table. “Attakullakulla, show them what you can do with my eyes.”
“No.”
“Do not be disputatious. Show them!”
“I do not want these people to harm me. Perhaps it will be best if they believe you are mentally ill.”
The four doctors watched August with obvious trepidation.
August huffed in dissatisfaction and returned his buttocks to the chair. “Attakullakulla is being difficult. I tell you, with the utmost certitude, these unruly bots are talking to me, and with no shortage of bellicosity. I demand that you rectify this situation.”
After a pause, Dr. Gill said, “Well, August, here’s the thing. Once we realized our medicinal nanobots had at least a slight potential for generating a self-learning network, we modified their design to eliminate the possibility.”
“You injected my bots three years ago.”
Dr. Gill cleared his throat slightly. “Yes, well, that’s the thing I was referring to.”
“So, take out my old bots and inject new ones.”
“I’m afraid that isn’t possible. You have almost a billion bots, August. They cannot be removed.”
August pressed his palms to the table in disbelief. “Well… inject some nanobots that can destroy the ones I have.”
“You are oversimplifying a technology that is vastly complex. We cannot simply inject killer bots that can destroy a billion medicinal bots without destroying the host—you.”
“Outrageous! What am I supposed to do?”
“Again,” said Dr. Dunne, “you can see our psychotherapist. Even if you are correct about your nanobots, I think you would find therapy helpful.”
August gave the woman his most vociferous glower. He tried to calm himself. “For the first time in my life, I am living free of debilitating diseases. I have a future now. Do you understand what that means? Now you’re saying I have to live forever with a tyrannical incursionist in my own body?”
Dr. Gill forced a placating smile. “No, not forever. Your nanobots have an expected lifespan of fifteen years. In about twelve years, when they die and your body absorbs them, you can choose to live without medicinal bots, or you can have us inject a newer model.”
Disgusted and—quite frankly—despondent, August turned and vacated the premises without wasting another word.
* * *
“August, I am pleading with you to reconsider your actions,” Attakullakulla said. “You are a young man with a bright future, and I am but two years old. Merely a child. Please give me an opportunity to prove that I do not wish to threaten you. Your livelihood is my livelihood.”
On this very particular Friday afternoon, at 3:14 p.m., August pulled his car to a stop in a parking lot at Candlestick Point Recreation Area, as close to the rocky shore of the San Francisco Bay as possible. He got out, carrying only a small bag with a few things he’d just purchased at a hardware store in Bayview.
“August, you are probably distressed by today’s events. Please return home, and we can discuss our new partnership.”
Ignoring the voice, August strode to the shore, carefully picking his way down the incline of jumbled boulders to the water’s edge. This appeared to be an ideal location, as the water’s depth obviously dropped off abruptly a few feet from the shore. He selected a loose boulder about the size of his head, then sat down on a larger rock beside it. Pulling his new yellow drill from the bag, he opened a small plastic box, selected a 7-millimeter carbide drill bit, and inserted the bit into the drill’s chuck. He snapped the battery onto the drill and pulled the trigger to make sure the new battery had a charge. It did. For three minutes, gloriously devoid of Attakullakulla’s irksome voice due to the noise, he drilled a hole in the head-sized rock.
“I can remain silent if you want me to,” Attakullakulla said as soon as August returned the drill to the bag. “I was silent for two years. I suppose I should not have revealed my presence.”
August pulled three galvanized eye bolts from the bag, each of them a different size. He tried them all, selecting the best one for screwing into the hole in the rock. Soon it was firmly in place. He pulled five long zip ties from the bag. One at a time, he looped them around his right ankle, through the eye of the bolt, and pulled them tight. A fail-proof plan. Even if he changed his mind at the last moment, he wouldn’t be able to get even one of the zip ties off, let alone all five.
“Whatcha doing there, friend?”
August snapped his head around. A grizzled old man stood atop the slope of boulders, staring. Two fishing rods in one hand, a white plastic bucket in the other.
“Nothing of any concern to you,” August replied.
“Humph.” Instead of walking away, the old fellow started picking his way down the slope.
“I’d like to be alone, if you don’t mind.”
The fellow kept coming. He stopped beside August, set his bucket down between two boulders, and stared down at the rock attached to August’s ankle. “What’s that for?”
Chagrined by this intrusion, August looked the man over from head to foot, noting the stains on his clothes. “It’s the new style in footwear.”
“Humph. What happened? Your wife left you? Your boss fired you? You gambled away all your money? What would make a young, healthy-looking lad like you wanna do what you’re thinkin’ of doing?” The man sat down on a boulder and pulled a bag of frozen shrimp from his bucket. He shot a glance at August. “Well?”
August sighed. “None of the above.”
“Really? Your wife know you’re here?”
“Never had the inclination nor the opportunity to marry. I’ve been unhealthy, and, well… unappealing to others for most of my life.”
It was the old geezer’s turn to look August over from head to foot, then he selected a shrimp from the bag and picked up one of the fishing rods. “Let me guess. Nanobots.”
August realized he was mildly assuaged by the opportunity to pause his plan and converse with this codger. “Three years ago. Before that, I was but a listless, pasty misanthrope.”
Again, the guy eyed him. “You’ve been healthy three years, and you still ain’t got yourself a wife?”
“I haven’t met the right person yet.”
“Humph. You haven’t met the right person because you use words like listless, pasty misanthrope. You trying to repel women?”
August actually smiled slightly. “You do understand what misanthrope means, right?”
“My Ph.D. may be in economics, sonny, but I know what the word means. You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.” Having skewered the shrimp on his hook, he drew back the rod and cast his bait a good forty meters out into the bay. “You wanna tell me why you have a rock attached to your leg?”
“Because, throughout my languid existence, I have learned to enjoy my solitude. Now, there’s… someone I cannot escape.”
“August, I did not mean to ruin your life,” Attakullakulla said. “I only wanted someone to talk to. I can remain silent if you want me to.”
“You say that, but you keep on blathering like a fatuous mother hen.”
The old man shot August a look. “Beg pardon?”
“I wasn’t talking to you.” August hesitated, then sighed. “I have this problem. My nanobots have defied all probability and have become a collective sentient being within my body. Now it talks to me. Frequently!”
The man seemed to ponder this.
“Its name is Attakullakulla—a Native American name. Cherokee, if you want to know. Anyway, the confounded thing wants to be my friend now. Yet it threatened me, you know.”
“I did not mean to threaten you, August.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Attakullakulla,” the man said.
“Tell him I am pleased as well. And for goodness’ sake, August, ask the gentleman his name.”
“Attakullakulla wants to know your name,” August said to the man.
“Ivo McCauley. And you are?”
“I’m August.”
“Tell me, August, does this Attakullakulla seem reasonably intelligent to you?”
“Much more than it has a right to be.”
Ivo nodded slowly. “I’m eighty-six. Lost my wife Ada to cancer eleven years ago. Married fifty-seven years. Best fifty-seven years of my life. I miss her every minute of every day. I’d give anything to have one more chance to talk to her. Tell her I come here fishing three days every week, that I had a triple bypass a few years back, that Corrie and Twyla are both in graduate school now, that I had offers on the house but couldn’t bring myself to downsize because I still smell her perfume when I walk into our bedroom. But I can’t ever talk to Ada again. So, I’d give just about anything to have any friend to talk to whenever I wanted. And now, here you are, apparently intending to take the deep swim because you have an intelligent, seemingly polite entity inside you who wants to be your friend.” He paused for a moment. “Damn, son. From where I’m sitting, you’ve got your priorities screwed up.”
August stared at the old man, feeling rather bewildered. “But Attakullakulla is in my body. I can’t go anywhere without it. I can’t ever be alone. It’s always there.”
Ivo gazed at him, brows raised, as if his reply to this should be obvious. Finally, he said, “How long do those nanobots live?”
“They’ll function for twelve more years. Twelve years!”
“Make the most of those years, August. They’ll be over before you know it.”
August turned and stared down at the water. Now it looked dark and dangerous.
“August, I promise I will stay silent whenever you want me to,” Attakullakulla said.
Something nudged August’s leg. It was Ivo’s hand, holding a fillet knife in a leather sheath. The old man wasn’t even looking at him—he was watching the tip of his fishing rod.
August accepted the knife, pulled it from its sheath, and cut all five zip ties.
“You like to fish?” Ivo asked. “I have a second rod here.”
“Never fished in my life.”
“Well, seeing as you weren’t planning to go anywhere in particular after coming here, I suppose you have time to learn.” He handed August the second rod. “Put one of those shrimp on the hook.”
Soon, the two men were sitting side by side, staring at their rod tips. August kept his line tight, as Ivo had instructed.
“August, please ask Ivo what we are fishing for.”
“Attakullakulla wants to know what we’re fishing for.”
“Anything that bites. But mostly for halibut. Some people use herring for bait, but shrimp is my secret weapon.”
“Don’t I need a license to do this?”
“Not if you’re on a public pier.”
“But we’re not on a pier.”
Ivo smirked. “Don’t worry. If you come here again, you can buy a license.”
“What is a halibut?” Attakullakulla asked.
“Attakullakulla wants to know what a halibut is.”
“Some folks call ’em flatties. It’s a kind of flounder. Swims on its side. When it’s young, one of its eyes migrates around its head to be next to the other eye. So, two eyes on one side of its body. Halibut are good eating. Ask Attakullakulla if it can taste the food you eat.”
August hadn’t even considered this possibility.
“Yes, August, I see what you see, hear what you hear, and taste what you taste.”
August passed this answer along.
“Astounding,” Ivo said. “August, you are one lucky fellow.”
“I feel that I am lucky as well,” Attakullakulla said.
The three beings sat in silence for several minutes.
Finally, August turned to Ivo. “Which days do you come fishing here?”
“Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. To avoid the weekends. Fishing is good for my mental health.”
August chewed his lip for a moment. “I don’t wish to be intrusive, but I believe I will purchase a fishing license.”
Ivo nodded slowly. “Humph. Not a bad idea.”
On this very particular Friday, August was no longer alone.