Work Text:
It was the mushrooms that gave him the idea.
Lawrence had taken his usual seat at the metal table along the edge of the balcony with a tray of mashed potatoes and "salisbury steak" with mushroom gravy. He had been spooning a mouthful of potatoes into his mouth when his mind latched onto the recollection that mushrooms were actually the fruiting bodies of a fungus, and that there was an interesting genus of fungi which infected the nervous system of various insects and piloted them to their death so that the fungi's fruiting bodies could disperse its spores over a wider area. The genus was called Ophiocordyceps and had been the subject of a video series he had been watching recently in the thin slice of free time he enjoyed as an engineer at Biosinthetika.
There was a bounty on new, marketable product ideas, something that Dave the VP of Innovation Alchemy liked to mention at every weekly stand up. "Remember folks, the bigger the idea, the bigger the bonus!" Dave always said, beaming winningly in his jeans and graphic-tee which rotated through a different cringe-inducing slogan about productivity every video call. Lawrence had always rolled his eyes at the performance, but the words stuck in his head on loop as he finished his meal and dropped the tray off on the conveyor belt to the dishwashers.
He thought over the concept as he sat through several meetings on vid call, face carefully calibrated to imply he was paying attention to the meeting to anyone who walked by. Ophiocordyceps-inspired-nanites was not, he didn't think, a novel idea. He hadn't heard about anyone attempting it, but that didn't mean anything. Nanotechnology had only recently started seeing more interest after a twenty year nadir, which was enough for a lot of good ideas to get buried. Biosinthetika had been one of the few startups that had been able to attract enough of the old researchers out of retirement to get off the ground, but a lot of knowledge had still been lost. Even with the internet and its vast records of old papers, there were things the newest generation didn't even think to look up or realize had been tried before.
Lawrence didn't dare to do any detailed research while he was in the office though. The office had an open floor plan to encourage collaboration, but nobody ever talked. There was too much risk that someone would steal something you did and pass it off as their own work. You could never be totally sure who was looking over your shoulder to get an advantage. It was possible that someone else had thought of Ophiocordyceps-inspired-nanites already, but was slow-rolling their progress because they thought nobody else had come up with it. If they saw over his shoulder what he was researching, they would try and get their idea out, and Lawrence would miss his opportunity.
He left work early, declaring that he "didn't feel well" and would finish his work from home. One of the few benefits of working in a corporation like Biosinthetika was that remote work was not just allowed, it was expected. There were no sick days at Biosinthetika, only half-days, and travel time didn't count towards your tally. The company found it was more productive to just pay for remote workers and make sure their internet connection was fast enough not to reduce their productivity.
The subway ride choked him with its oppressive heat. The car rattled and shook as it slid through the darkness, the public wifi slow but serviceable enough that he could get some research in. Lawrence wasn't surprised to find that Ophiocordyceps-inspired-nanites had been the subject of research in the past, but abandoned in favor of more immediate and obviously profitable avenues during the chaotic period of Rebuilding Efficiency. Funding for nanotechnology had been cut completely in favor of using robots to do insane surgical procedures, because cybernetics had been a popular field of research for the leading corporate directors at the time. Just a casual search brought up a long list of brilliant scientists and engineers whose careers had died ignominiously, some never to be revived, others lingering just long enough to join a startup after nanotechnology had come back in fashion.
One of the names in the articles that he scrolled through was the head of his division. Wallace Fitzgerald — PhD in Biotechnology, PhD in Fluid Dynamics, Chair of the Department of Biotechnology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. A titan of his time.
His last act of defiance, as the university police broke down the door to his laboratory, had been to inject himself with nanites, the better to carry his research with him to whatever came after this life. His work had been on adaptive responses to blood abnormalities. Low oxygen saturation, nitrogen bubbles, high cholesterol, all mediated and minimized through nanomachines, a dream he had championed for years only to have it all taken away. None of the research was ready for human testing and it was due to be destroyed to make way for an implant fabrication lab — Dr. Fitzgerald decided the university would simply have to dispose of him along with it. That way, at least he would die along with the thing he cherished the most.
The university had refused to allow him that dignity, and locked him into a medically induced coma for five years before he was released, bald and haggard, organs largely artificial, blood silvery white from the nanites that had replaced his red blood cells. At least one thing had worked, and he was living proof that you could do it. And for someone who could do something like that, waiting twenty, thirty, fifty years for another day in the Sun was immaterial. When nanotechnology was important again, Biosinthetika had come knocking, and Dr. Fitzgerald had been the reason why the company had been the first to market with a real, genuine product that had real, genuine impact across the world.
Lawrence locked his phone and breathed a long sigh. He worried at his lip and wiped sweat from under his nose. He had taken his suit jacket off the moment he had entered the train but that and his rolled up sleeves did nothing in the heat and humidity. His shirt clung to him and dragged at his every movement.
Wallace Fitzgerald could freely transit to and from the office whenever he wanted, keep whatever hours he wanted, flying about in his personal rotorcraft, with its air conditioning and wifi connection, never setting foot on any platform lower than the fortieth floor. Lawrence had never seen the man in person, nor did he think anyone had. The man was a living legend, had nearly had to die to get to where he was now, and had the privileges to match the sacrifices he had made.
Lawrence tightened his fist around his phone and took another deep breath. The subway announced its arrival at his home station.
His room was as he had left it: dark and muggy. He could not afford air conditioning and rent and still live within reach of the office. He was expected to prototype new nanite swarms regularly, and the office was the only place he could do so without paying extra fees which the company wouldn't cover. In the day he kept the windows shut to deter break-ins, but even at night the breeze hardly cooled. Every hour that he spent at home was spent in a sauna. Work was almost always better.
Today, he needed the secrecy.
Lawrence's goal wasn't to invent a new bioweapon. That was stupid: there were plenty of bioweapons already. The important thing was the part about manipulating neural tissue. The mechanism was well understood: a build up of fungal cells followed by secretion of a variety of metabolites that changed the behavior of the host. It stood to reason that a nanite swarm that crossed the blood-brain barrier, built complex neural-interfacing structures, and produced its own designer metabolites for whatever purpose was desired would be able to achieve far more complex effects on the brain than any traditional drug cocktail. He just needed a proof of concept, a simulation that could demonstrate it could be done, and he could go to Dave.
He was able to finish his first conceptual demonstration that afternoon, damp with sweat and nearly fused to the plastic of his chair. There hadn't even been that much need for help from Biosinthetika's generative AI. The Sun had long set but the heat hadn't made it out of the apartment yet. He ate a packet of instant noodles for dinner as he watched his work unfold on his display.
The nanite sim he put together was only the broad strokes, but it demonstrated the principle well enough: he could cross the blood-brain barrier with nanites and imitate the structure-building behavior of one of the many species of Ophiocordyceps to embed them into the neural tissue, slowly accumulating nanites until they filled the majority of the brain cavity and spinal cord. It took time, several weeks in-simulation, but he could do it, could see the nanites crawling through the brainstem and up into the cerebral cortex.
It just… wasn't hard. The nanomachines were already self-assembling, so that patients wouldn't need to be hooked up to a continuous IV-drip of nanites. One quick injection and the nanites would get to work fixing up whatever ailed you. This was the same thing, just targeted somewhere nobody had ever bothered to target.
There was a good application for this. Autoimmune encephalitis wasn't the most common but neither were any of the major diseases still under research. This could revolutionize medicine. Yet another way nanites were overhauling the entire field. But what if he could go further? What if he could make people smarter? Make neurons fire faster? Could he make athletes with faster reaction times? Soldiers with steadier aim?
He looked around his apartment and wondered about how far he could go. If he took it to Dave right now, incomplete as his work was, Dave would take all the credit. That's what always happened, and everyone knew it. What if he kept it quiet? Instead of relying on Dave's mercurial patronage, what if he showed everyone what Lawrence could do? Maybe instead of just getting a bonus, he could get something more valuable: recognition.
Lawrence wondered what recognition could get him.
He couldn't show this to anyone. It was already risky doing this on a company device. He needed to use the Clean Room and fab a sample on his own. Tough, but doable: the Clean Room was openly available to anyone in the company who got trained on proper procedure to use for personal projects, a perk that was used to lure in new hires. Nobody who used it normally was doing it for a personal project, they all had to do it for work. So many work projects were so secretive, he probably wouldn't be questioned. He just needed an excuse to be there and not just show up out of the blue. If nothing else, his time would be logged and the files pulled, and all his ambitions would go up in smoke.
Patience.
It took three months, but he found the time. It was late on a Saturday, after the heat of the day so that even the worst apartments were comfortable again and the company insisted that everybody who could leave did leave so they could turn the air conditioning off. Lawrence scanned his badge at the Clean Room and checked in with the Lab Manager. It was even better than expected — not only did the Lab Manager not ask any questions, he was flagrantly disinterested in even being there. The pay was, apparently, not nearly enough to put up with staying overnight just because the other guy had seniority and could pull rank to tap out early.
Even managers had problems, apparently.
Lawrence had spent his time trying to get all the details put together. He had decided to try and start with a prototype that would "infect" faster but do nothing except provide a mild stimulant effect. The goal was just to demonstrate that he could cross the blood-brain barrier and have the nanites successfully build their structures and secrete their metabolites. Even then, it had been hard to get everything put together. The devil was always in the details, and Lawrence had ended up leaning heavily on the company's generative AI to generate code blocks based on the behavior of several species of Ophiocordyceps. Getting the behaviors just right to work with human biology was complex and required a lot of deep knowledge about the brain that Lawrence simply didn't have. It was a little sketchy because he hadn't had time to deeply review the code that was generated, but it passed all of the standard testing scripts, automated checks, and human-analog simulations he could come up with.
It would have to be good enough. The longer he put this off, the more likely it was for someone else to get the same idea, or steal the idea out of his work data, and he didn't know when the next time he'd be able to find a non-suspicious time slot to work in the Clean Room.
There were complications, of course. The fab station kept throwing errors about inadequate checks even though Lawrence had already scrubbed his code. He rubbed his eyes in exhaustion. The last three weeks had been hell, but he had pushed through knowing that he was on the cusp of something great. He stopped trying to correct the errors and just told the fab station to ignore them. This happened all the time but didn't mean much — designs would usually work well enough despite the fab station's dire warnings. It was more important to get a result than get perfect nanite designs. He kept pushing, kept working.
Hours passed. The lab manager left at some point to get food.
The fab station dinged.
A single vial was lifted slowly out of the fab station by a robotic tray table which deposited itself onto a conveyor belt. The clear plastic of the vial showed a thin liquid, dyed green for safety, and shimmering silver from the nanite swarm inside. Lawrence watched it rattle gently up the conveyor belt, then followed it out to the test lab next door.
Testing and fabrication were kept in separate rooms for hypothetical safety reasons. How the separation made anything safer, Lawrence had no idea. The test lab had a communal blast freezer on one wall for sample storage and several test benches with hookups for animal testing and sample collection. Each bench was supposed to be stocked with lab consumables, but as always they had not been restocked recently.
Lawrence sat down at one of them, mind whirling. The vial of nanites was delivered to him with a rattle of plastic on hardtop. He watched the silver shimmer swirl inside of the vial.
Now what?
He still had to convince Dave. Dave controlled all the funding and was one of the only sure-fire ways to get promoted. Lawrence couldn't make his own start-up either, he'd just get sued into the ground in Intellectual Property court. He had all of his simulations so far, but would that be enough? Was his success undeniable? Or had he just done enough work to make it even easier for Dave to steal the idea?
Lawrence looked up at the syringes racked up on the shelf over his test bench. He should have had a rat to test on, but he had forgotten. Stupid. But even if he had remembered, would the request have triggered someone to look into his hard drive? Would he have lost his idea? No, better that he hadn't, but that meant he had nothing but his simulations to prove that his idea was viable. A live test would be bulletproof, and he could do a live test, right now…
He looked down at the vial. That was stupid, right? You were never supposed to go straight to human testing with a new set of nanites. It just wasn't safe.
Lawrence picked up an automatic syringe and pressed one end against the top of the vial. The syringe body latched onto the lid of the vial with a click and extended the needle through the septum. It whirred mechanically to draw in the sample, loading up the entire vial into the body of the syringe. The syringe disengaged from the vial and drew the needle back in.
Lawrence looked down at the syringe in his hand. The green inside the syringe seemed to glow in the overhead lamps. Last chance. He could still put the sample back into the vial and put it all in the blast freezer.
He put the syringe down and stood up to walk to the windows. The test lab had long windows that went from floor to ceiling. Lawrence raised his voice to ask the room to turn the lights off so he could see outside. Up on the thirty-third floor, he had a commanding view of the city. Lights glowed out far into the distance, or flew by on the occasional rotorcraft as it buzzed past. Even further down, he could see the lights of the cars on the motorways. Below even that, the subway system, running twenty four hours a day and never getting cooler. If anything they got hotter in the evening. Maybe he would stay overnight in the test lab, where it was at least air conditioned.
A loud buzzing started to cut through the window panes. Lawrence craned his head and looked up as a dark shape flew past overhead, the lights on its tail highlighting the logo of Biosinthetika. They said that Wallace Fitzgerald kept odd hours, maybe that was his rotorcraft, leaving again to take him home. Lawrence watched it go and realized it wasn't even flying very far, and he could track it from the tail light alone. Just four towers over, it landed again on a platform outside of a gilt archway with plants that waved in the wind from the rotors.
Lawrence pulled his phone out and zoomed in with the camera to see what was happening. The image quality was bad, but he could still make some things out. The lights were bright enough to see a man get out of the back. His back was bent and his head was bald. He wore a dark tuxedo. Another man with a napkin over one arm bowed and held out a glass.
Lawrence turned away from the window. Did Wallace Fitzgerald have an entire apartment up there? That was what getting the biggest, most important product to get the company going netted you, was it? And meanwhile, for Lawrence…
Lawrence walked back to his lab bench. He shrugged out of his lapcoat, then unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it back from his shoulder. He picked up the loaded syringe, then pressed it against his arm.