Pandora's Ark by Rick Jones

that was carbon
matter was gone.
    And Sakharov smiled. “There
you have it, gentlemen,” he said over the intercom. “The future is finally
here.”
    But the celebration was short
lived. 
    The hum of the nanobots
sounded like a hive gone mad, growing louder, the speakers sounding off as if
the volume was being turned up.
    No! No! No! They’re
replicating too quickly !
    Sakharov’s mind began to go
into panic mode, his two associates looking at him through the glass from the
lab, wondering what was wrong.
    And then the noise ceased, the
waspy hum cut off as if on cue.
    Not a collective breath could
be heard as the two scientists stood as still as Grecian statues.
    And then the glass that
separated the two scientists from the rhesus lab began to crack. At first it
was just one spot, a pinpoint with spider-web cracks that blossomed into full
designs. And then a second and third pinpoint, the cracks trailing across the
pane until they met other cracks, the window becoming compromised, and then it
blew outward with an explosive force, the hum now sounding like a freight train
speeding through a tunnel.
    Sakharov’s associates began to
slap at their coats, at their faces, as if swatting away annoying gnats or
insects. And then the material of their coats began to disappear, and then
strips and slabs of flesh. Their faces simply disappearing: the skin, the
muscle, ultimately revealing the curvature of bone underneath and the empty
sockets where their eyes once were. Their tongues no longer lolled, the meat
stripped away, vanished. And in a last act of self-preservation they clawed at
the window that separated them from their mentor with the bony tines of their
fingers, the digits of bone clearly seen as they ticked against the glass in
macabre measure. 
    What have I done?
    Sakharov watched with
paralytic terror as the men slid down the glass leaving bloody trails against
the pane.
    And then a silence that was
complete and absolute followed.
    Sakharov looked at the
speakers.
    Not a sound.
    And then it came as a single
tick against the glass that separated him from his associates’ lab. The glass
divide between his room and his associates took on a single pinprick hole that
was beginning to web out with a series of meandering cracks.
    Acting quickly, Sakharov
lifted the plastic emergency shield that covered a red button and slammed his
palm down. A titanium wall came down and covered the glass. And then he pressed
the button again. This time initiating a failsafe program that ignited the lab,
burning everything within the room at more than three thousand degrees.
Everything, including the nanobots, was incinerated.
    Nevertheless, Sakharov was hailed
by the Kremlin as a hero, whereas his associates were looked upon as collateral
damage. But he knew differently. He had become drunk to the delight of his own
ego, casting aside all precautions and believing that nothing could have gone
wrong when, in fact, everything had gone horribly wrong. And it wasn’t too long
afterward that he came to the realization that such nanoweaponry was far too
dangerous. According to an article by Eric Drexler, whom he considered to be
his “near” equal, replication was much too fast if not contained. And within a
week the bots could exponentially grow to such numbers that the entire surface
of the Earth would be consumed by matter Drexler termed as “grey goo,” which is
to say everything alive on the planet would be devoured and anything to come
within its gravitational pull would be consumed as well.
    But the Kremlin didn’t want to
hear this side of the scenario. What they wanted were results, so funding was
extended with expectations that Sakharov would be able to program the molecules
to keep from replicating themselves, and to better devise a way to control them
from a computer monitor.
    When Sakharov told them that
such science was decades away, they simply told him that the “first” second of
the first decade just ticked away;