Page 42 of How to Steal a Galaxy

“Well, obviously, they can’t work forever but—”

“Planned,” I repeat more emphatically. “Planned. Theywill, without a doubt, stop working the way you want them to, and they’ll start working the way Strom Fetor wants them to. See, it’s like this.” I don’t have fancy holographics to illustrate my point, so I use my hands. “The nanobots are designed to go into Earth’s water system, strip out the pollutants. It’s actually a really clever design.”

Rian nods; he knows all this. The microscopic bots are developed like a virus, attaching themselves to H2O and attacking microplastics, carbon, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and anything else that’s negatively impacting the water cycle. It compartmentalizes the microscopic pollutant agents and eventually coalesces them into a slime-like matter that can easily be picked up by cleaner drones and then separated in recycling units. Like a virus, the nanobots will continue with a single-minded goal. And like a virus, it replicates itself.

Once released, it will never be able to be contained again.

Except, within a few years, they’ll start hurting the environment rather than helping. It took some digging, but I found the code systemically embedded into the program, designed to be countered by more nanobots. Code that would require physical updates, a second program, just like this one.

The fact thatthisprogram happened in the first place is a marvel. A testament to people like Rian, people dedicated to fighting the good fight, getting bills passed, and scrounging up the funding needed for them to happen.

It’s rare that sort of thing happens.

“Did you see the protest?” I ask him. Rian’s still processing the information I gave him, the code I showed him on my data pad.

It takes him a moment to connect the thought. “The protestors outside the gala? They were paid by Strom, for the story.”

“But the sentiment is real,” I say. “Didn’t you hear all the people who agreed with it? You’re from Rigel-Earth; what do your parents think of the aid tax?”

His lips go hard, a thin white line around the pink.

“Everyone’s fine with saving Earth as a concept, but when it comes to taxes, to action, to money?” I shake my head.

“We can reprogram the bots,” Rian says darkly. “We can hire new outside sources to analyze the code and ensure they’re not designed to fail.”

“In a week?” Because that was the point of Strom Fetor’s speech tonight, the grand closing ceremony of the gala. To announce to the galaxy that this was in motion, that it would not be stopped.

Pausing now would show the entire galaxy that Earth can’t be saved. It jeopardizes the whole program; it gives protestors the footing they need to challenge it. It’s not out of the question that they simply shut it down, but it’s also not guaranteed that climate cleaners will recover if there’s a public mark of shame on them.

Rian looks up at me, and I see panic in his eyes for a second time. First, it was because he thought he’d slept with me while blackout drunk. He thought he’d made a mistake. Now?

Now he knows he made a mistake with the nanobots, and he knows there’s no time to fix it.

“Fortunately,” I say, beaming at him, “I have a plan.”

18

You?” Rian asks, incredulous. “Or the people you work for?”

I shrug. Same difference. “The people who hired me suspected Fetor wasn’t exactly an angel benefactor. So, they wrote some code that can correct the mistakes he purposefully made. Crypto-locked, of course, so it can’t be overwritten.”

Rian doesn’t like this plan, I can tell. It’s butting up against his own ignorances, his own blind spots.

I talk fast. “All it requires is an upload; think of it like a technical patch. It doesn’t alter the nanobots in any way, but it does force them to continue the good programming without reverting to the bad. I could get technical, but—”

“But I wouldn’t understand it.”

I nod slowly, watching Rian’s face. He can’t know everything, and that grieves him.

He meets my eyes. “But you’ve looked at the code?”

I nod again.

“And youknowit’s good?” he asks.

“Yes.” Quiet. Certain.

He’s nodding now, mostly to himself, and I can see that he’s willing to believe me.

---