The NanoTech Network

   Science-Fiction Novel by Alexander Lazarevich

   Copyright (c) by Alexander Lazarevich, 1997, 1998.
   This text is hereby made available for non-commercial use
only. You  may copy  this text  and  freely  distribute  it,
provided that:  1) no  money is  charged or  received in the
process  by   neither  you   nor  any  third  party;  2)  no
alterations are  made to  the text.
   If you  want to  obtain commercial  publishing rights  to
this text,  please send an e-mail to Alexander Lazarevich at
lazarevicha@online.ru

   DISCLAIMER NOTICE

   The intent  of this  notice  is  to  anticipate  possible
accusations  against  me  that  I  am  trying  to  create  a
distorted notion  about historical  characters,  both  still
alive and  dead, by  ascribing to  them the words they never
actually said.  I hereby state that the text following after
this notice  is a  product of  my imagination.  The    words
that   I   put  into  the  mouths  of  historical characters
of the  past or  the present  only represent my idea of what
these characters    might  have    said,  had    they  found
themselves in  the  imaginary  situation  described  in  the
following text.  To the  best of  my  knowledge  they  never
actually said these words.
   As far  as I  know, the events described in this text did
not take  place in  reality. However,  the latter  statement
should not  be construed  to mean  that the events described
hereinafter could  not have  happen in reality, or that they
will never occur in the future.

   The author
   END OF THE NOTICE




   Part One: Cyborg-Bacteria

   1.1. Dissemination. May 15, 1997, 11:35 AM, Moscow subway

   Around noon, as usual, the subway car was full of foreign
tourists. A  group of American high-school students, maps of
Moscow subway  in their hands, were unsuccessfully trying to
pronounce the  Russian names  of the stations written on the
map in English transcription. Closer to the door there stood
an elderly  Japanese couple,  video cameras  and other high-
tech gadgets hanging from their necks.
   A middle-aged man, who looked like a Russian, and who did
not at  all look like he was suffering from a cold, suddenly
sneezed, bespattering the Americans with his saliva. "Excuse
me" said  he in  English with  a strong  Russian accent, and
started getting  through to the door. At the door he sneezed
once again,  this time bespattering the Japanese. Apparently
he did  not know any Japanese, so he just excused himself in
Russian. The  train arrived  at the station, he got off, and
was forever lost in the crowd...

   The next  day,  2:50  PM,  Moscow  International  Airport
"Sheremetievo"

   An elderly  Japanese couple,  who dropped  by a duty-free
souvenir shop  to buy  a Russian  nested doll before leaving
Moscow, approached  the salesgirl  to pay  for the souvenir.
When proffering  his  credit  card  to  the  salesgirl,  the
Japanese man  unexpectedly, even  for himself,  sneezed.  So
unexpectedly, in  fact, that  he did  not even  have time to
cover his  mouth with  his hand.  Extremely embarrassed,  he
started jabbering  rapidly  in  his  own  tongue,  hurriedly
bowing. The  salesgirl impatiently  waved her  hand, meaning
"That's OK"...
   The Japanese couple flew out to their Japan, without even
suspecting what  other souvenir,  besides the  nested  doll,
they were carrying from Moscow...

   Same place, an hour later.

   The salesgirl in the duty-free shop suddenly sneezed. She
had not  felt any  symptoms of an incipient cold, not a hint
of a  headache. She  just had  suddenly  wanted  to  sneeze,
without any apparent reason. "Probably some kind of allergy"
- thought she, while aloud she apologized to an Arab-looking
customer, whom she seemed to had bespattered. After the Arab
came a  Latin-American, then  came an African, and after the
African came  a Chinese. All the world was coming. Everybody
was  going  home,  to  hundreds  of  countries  on  all  the
continents. Each  of them  was to  take along some invisible
souvenirs and  to become  the sources  of  dissemination  in
their own respective countries...

   1.2. Detection  June 25,  1997. Center  for  Communicable
Decease Control, Atlanta, USA

   - "It's  hard to  say now who was the first to spot them.
It might  have been  that schoolgirl  during a biology class
who was  looking through a microscope and suddenly asked her
teacher: what's  this? And  the teacher could not answer. In
appearance they  are not  very different  from  conventional
bacteria,  but  at  high  magnification,  or  rather,  at  a
relatively high  magnification, the  highest magnification a
conventional school  microscope is  capable of,  if you look
very carefully you could see some particles inside that have
regular geometric shapes."
   The  deputy  director  for  science  of  the  center  for
communicable  disease   control  put   the  first   of   the
photographs on  the director's  desk.  At first glance there
was nothing  extraordinary about them.  The usual assortment
of all  kinds of  bacteria that  one can  see  wherever  one
points one's  microscope.   Some of the bacteria were marked
with a  felt pen  circles, and inside those one could indeed
see some  rectangles and  geometrically perfect spheres that
were interconnected by some strings and pipes.
   -"The teacher  contacted us.   At almost the same time we
were also  contacted by  some lab  assistants who  had  been
doing  some   routine  medical  analyses  and  also  noticed
something unusual.   It  is worth  noting here that they all
live in different states, hundreds of miles from each other.
They have mailed us some samples.  But I'm afraid, they were
too late."
   -"How do  you mean,  too  late?"    The  anxiety  in  the
director's voice increased.
   The deputy  director for science took one more photograph
out of  his folder,  and hesitated  for a  moment, as if not
daring to  put it on the director's desk.  After a momentary
pause he said:
   -"This photograph was taken this morning.  It has nothing
to do  with the samples that we received.  We just took some
water out  of tap,  out of  the city water works, and took a
picture through a microscope."
   He went  silent and  put the  picture on  the desk.   The
director gingerly  took the  picture in  his hands.  He  had
braced himself for the worst. But what he saw was a shock to
him. Almost  a third  of all the bacteria in the picture had
been marked  with a  felt pen by somebody's slightly shaking
hand.
   -"Do you  mean to  say "-said  director in  a constrained
voice-"that they are already...  everywhere?"
   -"They are  anywhere you  look.   If you washed your face
and brushed  your  teeth  this  morning,  I  bet  your  have
millions of them in your bloodstream by now.  Just as I have
in mine as well."
   -"Is this dangerous?"
   -"  We   don't  now.    We  have  gone  through  all  the
epidemiology reports  for the  last week  from all  over the
country. There don't seem to be any new unknown diseases, no
unusual symptoms. So if we assume it to be an agent for some
exotic disease,  its incubation  period is apparently longer
than one  week. The  only thing  it seems to be doing now is
just breeding like hell. Although, some data suggest that it
may cause  sudden fits  of sneezing  - that  seems to be its
method of  propagation. But  no other  symptoms.  There  is,
however,  one   strange  fact  that  transpires  from  these
reports..." -  the deputy director for science hesitated for
a moment.
   -"I'm listening. Go ahead." -said the Director.
   - "It's unlikely that it has anything to do with these...
"things". Most likely it's just a coincidence. The mortality
rate throughout  the population  went down.  Earlier in  the
week  it   dropped     just  a  little,  within  the  normal
statistical fluctuation  range, but  by the  end of the week
its value  plunged far  beyond usual  statistical variations
and continues  to go  down. There  are lots of reports about
terminal  cancer   patients  whose   condition  unexpectedly
improved during this week. There was also a steep decline in
the number of deaths related to heart attacks and strokes."
    -"A  bacteria that  does not  cause diseases  but rather
cures them  - that's  something new.  We've got to stop this
epidemic before all of us medical folks are out of our jobs"
- nervously joked the director.
   The deputy  director did not even smile at the joke: "The
most terrible thing is - and I've been saving the worst news
for the end - it is that this "thing" just is not a bacteria
at all. Or, rather, not quite a bacteria. We have managed to
photograph it through an electron microscope. Have a look at
this."

   What was  shown in the picture looked a little bit like a
sparse forest  made up  of industrial  robots  in  place  of
trees,   photographed    from   a   helicopter.   Mechanical
manipulator arms, a little cumbersome in appearance, looking
as if  they were  made of  thick glass,  stuck out  here and
there from the surface of a great pain.
   -"This is  a close-up  of one of the areas on the surface
of this  so-called "bacteria".  Just to  give you an idea of
the scale of this picture, let me point out that the grapple
on this  manipulator arm  is merely several tens of atoms of
carbon thick."
   -"But this  means that...  that..." -  the  director  was
momentarily at  a loss  for words  - "This  means that  this
thing is artificial!"
   - "In  a certain  sense it  is. The  first one was indeed
created by  somebody, but  after  that  they  multiplied  by
themselves, by  making copies  of their own selves. They are
half bacteria, half self-replicating engineering systems. We
nicknamed them  cyborg-bacteria. Look  at the  next picture.
This is what they have inside. This here is an ordinary cell
nucleus,  although  the  number  of  chromosomes  in  it  is
somewhat higher  than one would normally expect to find in a
bacteria. But all around the nucleus..."
   All around  the nucleus,  there were  strange  structures
floating  in  the  cell's  cytoplasm,  that  bore  a  remote
resemblance to some kind of space stations interconnected by
a maze of tubing."
   -"But who created them?" - asked the director.
   -"No idea.  Or, rather,  there are  several options.  The
first thing  that  comes  to  mind  when  looking  at  these
photographs is an extraterrestrial invasion. But this option
seems to  be so  implausible that  one's mind  involuntarily
searches for  a different  explanation.  For  example,  this
could be a new type of weapons - a combination of biological
weapons  with  the  latest  in  nanotechnology,  a  sort  of
microscopic time  bomb that will come into action as soon as
they have sufficiently multiplied. Of course, I use the word
"bomb" figuratively.  For example, they might suddenly start
to produce  a toxin.  It may  well be  that we  are under an
attack launched  by a  hostile nation, or by terrorists. And
there is  also the  most reassuring option - this thing just
inadvertently escaped  from some  secret lab  and it  is not
meant to be activated."
    "In  any case, one thing is clear: we've got to keep all
this in  strictest secrecy."  - said director - "If it turns
out that this thing is indeed of an extraterrestrial origin,
just imagine the panic that will break out when people learn
that they  have millions of alien-made robots circulating in
their blood  streams! But if it's just a leak from some top-
secret lab,  once again,  the government is not going to pat
us on  the back for exposing a closely-kept military secret.
You've got  to think  up some  kind of  official hog-wash to
feed to  that schoolteacher  and all the others. In the mean
time, I'll try to contact the military and the CIA."

   1.3. Investigation.  July 3,  1997. Nanotechnology lab at
MIT, Mass, USA.

   - "You  know, Professor"  - said  the plain-clothes man -
"what baffles  me most  is that  in your lab, where you have
all these microscopes that are, according to my sources, the
best in  the world,  nobody ever noticed the cyborg-bacteria
until you were specially notified of their existence."
    -"Nothing  baffling, really.  If  you  walk  around  our
facility, you'll  see that  we have  quite a system here for
protecting us  against any  extraneous contaminants.  We are
working here on objects that are  millionths of a millimeter
in size,  that is,  nanometers, which  is comparable  to the
size of  individual atoms.  A bacteria,  about ten  thousand
times larger  then this and containing billions of atoms is,
from our standpoint, a whole mountain that can wreck all our
work. It  could never,  in principle, enter our microscopes.
Even the  first, the  coarsest air  filters would  screen it
out. But  when a  week ago you told us about them, and asked
us to  investigate, we  let them under our microscopes. What
we saw there, nearly cost some of our people their sanity.
   We have  been working  in the field of nanotechnology for
the last  fifteen  years,  and  we  have  always  considered
ourselves the  leaders in the field. We did make some things
we thought  we could  be proud of. We were, or we thought we
were, the  first to  produce a  few gears  where each  tooth
consisted of  only 20  atoms. We  have even  built  a  fully
functional electric  motor less than one micron in size. But
what we  saw inside  the cyborg-bacteria was a real shock to
us. This  was an  entirely different  level  of  technology.
Whoever it  was who made them, these guys are ahead of us by
twenty to twenty five years."
   -"Are you  sure that it is only twenty and not a thousand
or a million?" - asked the man in plain clothes.
   Professor gave  him  a  wry  smile:  "If  you  are  still
thinking in  terms of  extra-terrestrials, forget  it.  This
thing is  of an  earthly origin.  A significant  portion  of
genes in  the nucleus  of the  cyborg-bacteria are  borrowed
from common bacteria."
   -"So, you  believe that you yourself could make something
similar in about twenty years time?"
    -"Even  earlier than  that,  if  only  I  had  unlimited
funding. It  is hard  to imagine  the amount of man-hours of
highly-skilled, highly-paid  labor invested in the design of
this cyborg  and the  manufacturing of the first model. This
work must  have involved  the efforts of thousands of first-
class engineers  and scientists. It is incredibly expensive.
The costs  must be  comparable to  the  costs  of  Manhattan
Project or Apollo Project."
    -"I want to make sure that I got you right: you say that
most of  the expenses  in this  business are  caused by  the
labor costs,  not the  cost of  hardware? Are you sure? This
could be  very important for figuring out who did it - there
are some  countries in  the world where the labor of highly-
skilled scientists comes very cheap."
   -"Well, of  course the  equipment is  also expensive. But
you need  it only  in the initial phase, the one that we, by
the way,  are not  through yet. This first phase consists in
the development  of the  first self-replicating  micro-robot
capable of  manipulating individual  atoms. As  soon as  you
have it  built, this  very robot  becomes you  primary tool.
You'll need  virtually no  other equipment  after that.  The
only other  piece of equipment you'll still have to use will
be your  own brains,  because you'll  have to know precisely
what atom  you want  moved and where you want it placed. You
enter into  an entirely  new technological  ballgame. It's a
technological breakthrough  that  is  beyond  comparison  to
anything in the previous history of mankind. The creation of
the first  microrobot is  the barrier  beyond which  lies  a
wonderland. He  who  has  passed  this  barrier  comes  into
possession  of   seemingly  magic   powers  that   defy  all
imagination. For example, he can create absolutely new genes
by directly  manipulating the  sequence  of  amino  acids  -
something which  is still  impossible  for  the  present-day
genetic engineering that has to be content with mere cutting
and pasting  of fragments of the already existing genes, and
what  is   worse,    genes  cut  only  at  certain  specific
locations, rather  than at  locations chosen  at will. Well,
coming back  to where  we started, it looks like somebody on
our planet  Earth has  already passed that barrier, and does
things  which   are  unthinkable   from  the  standpoint  of
conventional technologies.
   You asked  me the question of whether it was twenty years
or one  million. To  give you  a perfectly  correct answer I
should say that time estimates like this are only applicable
to a  steady growth  phase in the evolution of a technology.
They  are  absolutely  irrelevant  in  the  situation  of  a
technological breakthrough  of this  scale. In  a  situation
like we  have here, twenty years are as good as one million.
They are  past the barrier, while we are still not, they are
omnipotent, while  we are  powerless. Do  you know  what the
mechanical structures  inside the  cyborg-bacteria are  made
of? Of diamond! Of course, this could be expected, since the
only construction  material available to them is carbon. But
the very fact that they take carbon dioxide molecules out of
the atmosphere,  extract from them atoms of carbon that they
then  put   together  into  a  diamond  lattice  at  ambient
temperature and  pressure, seems  to be  a miracle  from the
standpoint of  present-day technologies  requiring  crushing
pressures and searing temperatures to create a diamond."
   -"They put diamonds together atom by atom?"
   - "Not  quite so.  Although they do seem to be capable of
doing this as well, this would still be a very slow process,
while they multiply very fast and need a lot of construction
material.  The   solution  their   creators  have  found  is
absolutely amazing  - they put together a gene for producing
an enzyme  that promotes the assembly of carbon atoms into a
diamond lattice.  And I  suspect that  this gene  is not the
only artificial  gene inside  the cellular  nucleus  of  the
cyborg-bacteria. For  all we  know, their  genes may contain
the  complete   information  on   the  design  of  both  the
biological part  and the  "engineering" part  of the cyborg-
bacteria. Although  we cannot be certain about this yet. The
matter is,  the  engineering  part  of  the  cyborg-bacteria
includes not  only purely  mechanical end  effectors. In our
latest scanning  electronic microscope  photographs, one can
see a structure inside the cell which we provisionally named
the "on-board computer". Have a look at this. See this field
in the  picture, dotted  with a  multitude of tiny light and
dark specks, located seemingly at random? Each speck is just
a few  atoms in  size. And here you can see a picture of the
same field  taken just  a few seconds later. As you can see,
the pattern of the specks in the upper right corner remained
the same.  We provisionally  called this  area "ROM",  which
stands for the "Read-Only Memory". But the partern of specks
in  that   other  area   over  there   has  changed   beyond
recognition. That  is why  we provisionally named it "random
access memory".  Although,  for  all  we  know,  this  might
actually be  a microprocessor. Or what I would rather call a
"nanoprocessor".
   -"And what  about these  straight lines going all the way
across the field?"
   -"Our provisional  nomenclature  for  them  is  "wiring".
These seem to be  leads for data input and output."
   -"Wires? Made of metal?"
   -"No metals  here. Everything  made of  carbon. Carbon is
the most  wonderful of  all the  chemical  elements  in  the
periodic table.  Put the  carbon atoms together in one way -
and what  you  get  is  a  graphite,  a  soft,  electrically
conductive material. But re-arrange the atoms in the crystal
lattice just  a little bit - and you end up with the hardest
material in  the world, and the best electrical insulator as
well. And these are just the two extremes of the whole range
of properties.  In between,  you  can  find  materials  with
virtually any desired properties, the only thing you need to
know is  the pattern  of the  carbon atoms.  And here we are
talking about  an element  that can be "mined" directly from
the ambient  air, that is exactly what all the plant life on
Earth does  every day - mining carbon from air. This element
is the  basis for  all the  living things on Earth, and this
explains the  ease with  which the  creators of  the cyborg-
bacteria were able to combine seemingly incompatible things:
live  creatures   with  inanimate   matter,  organisms  with
mechanisms. They  joined them  so seamlessly  that we cannot
even figure  out how  they breed:  whether  they  do  it  by
conventional biological  cell fission  (this would mean that
all the  information about  the cyborg's  mechanical part is
stored in  the genes), or whether the mechanical part of the
daughter cell  still has  to be  completed using  mechanical
manipulator arms  of  the  mother  cell.  We  have  not  yet
observed the latter, while the former is too hard to believe
in."
   The plain-clothes  man looked  at his  watch: "Professor,
what you  are telling  me is  terribly fascinating,  I would
even say,  fascinatingly terrible,  but I've  got to catch a
plane to Washington - tomorrow morning the President calls a
secret meeting  to discuss this issue, and I've still got to
put together  an executive  summary for  that  meeting.  So,
could you  please summarize what you have been able to learn
during the  last two  days. We  have heard  some frightening
rumors about  the cyborg-bacteria's  power source, and about
their ability  to communicate with each other. The latter is
of special  concern to  the President.  The existence  of an
unknown global  communications network, which is independent
of the Internet, and which carries no one knows what kind of
data, is  a serious  potential threat  to the  United States
national security. Do you have anything to say about this?"
   - "First  a few words about their power supply. Initially
we assumed  that they  extract  their  energy  from  organic
substances which  they take  from their  environment. Simply
speaking, we  believed that when they swim in the water they
eat, for example, green algae, and when they enter animal or
human circulatory  system, they  feed on nutrients available
in the blood. However, even the first rough estimates showed
that if  they had  used as  their power  source the  organic
matter from  the environment,  they would not have been able
to breed  as fast  as is  actually the case. We have made an
experiment: we  put one  cyborg-bacteria in a glass of germ-
free chemically pure water, containing no organics, and then
put the  glass into  a hermetically  sealed box  in complete
darkness to  rule out  any possibility of photosynthesis. In
one hour's  time the  water in  the glass  was teeming  with
cyborg-bacteria, while the level of helium in the air inside
the box  had  risen,    by  a  very  small  amount,  at  the
sensitivity threshold  of our  instruments, but it did rise,
all right.  You can tell the President we are almost certain
that the  source of power used by the cyborg-bacteria is the
cold-fusion reaction  of hydrogen  atoms. Since they extract
hydrogen directly  from the  water they swim in, they have a
virtually unlimited power source at their disposal.
   We still  do not know any details of this process, but we
think that  there must  be some "power plant" inside cyborg-
bacteria, which  breaks up  water into  oxygen and hydrogen,
then picks up individual hydrogen atoms and brings them into
a certain  relative position  required to  trigger off their
fusion into  atoms of  helium. The  energy released  in  the
process is  then apparently  used to  build up  the  organic
molecules necessary  for the normal operation of the organic
part of  the  cell,  to  generate  electric  power  for  the
cyborg's  mechanisms,  or  maybe  that  energy  is  directly
transmitted to the mechanisms in the form of mechanical work
without intermediate  conversion to  electrical power  -  we
still don't  know the details. Of the greatest interest here
is the  cold fusion reaction itself. In the cold fusion, the
most important  thing is  the proper relative positioning of
the atoms.  If  we  manage  to  trace  this  process,  we'll
eventually be  able to  reproduce it,  and our country would
get a  new environmentally  clean power  source. But we need
additional funds for this research. I would like you to draw
the President's attention to this."
    -"Sure I will," - nodded the man in plain clothes - "but
at the  moment the  President is  mostly concerned about the
second issue I mentioned."
   -"I was  just getting  to that. We have indeed managed to
establish that  cyborg-bacteria are capable of communicating
with  each   other  by  sending  and  receiving  narrow-beam
infrared pulses."
   -"You mean  they communicate  with each  other using  the
same infrared rays as an ordinary TV remote control?"
   - "Not  quite so.  The frequency  range they  use lies  a
little bit  lower  than  the  one  used  in  the  IR  remote
controls. The cyborg-bacteria's range is closer to microwave
radiation. But  the principal  differences lie,  firstly, in
modulation.  The  data  throughput  of  an  ordinary  remote
control is  negligibly low  because is uses a very primitive
method  of   carrier-wave  modulation.   But  in  fact,  the
electromagnetic waves  of such high frequency are capable of
carrying huge  amounts of  data, and as far as we could see,
the cyborg-bacterias  use this  capability  to  the  fullest
extent  possible.   We  are   talking  here  about  tens  of
megabytes, or  maybe even  gigabytes per  second.  Secondly,
they have  a very  narrow beam  radiation pattern.  Although
individual bacteria  also use  omnidirectional radiation  to
communicate with their closest neighbors at the distances of
up to a few millimeters, the strength of such signal is very
low and it cannot be used for communications at a long range
of, say,  tens of  meters.  For  long-range  communications,
groups of  neighboring bacteria cooperate with each other to
create, for the time of a long-range communications session,
a sort  of phased antenna array with a pencil-beam radiation
pattern. In  other words they radiate in a very narrow beam,
where the  signal strength  decreases with the distance ever
so slightly.  In this  way one  group of cyborg-bacteria may
communicate with  another at  distances of up to hundreds of
feet."
   - "But a hundred feet is not very much."
   - "It is more than enough."
   - "Enough for what?"
   - "Enough for any cyborg-bacteria located at any point on
Earth to  be able  to communicate  with  any  other  cyborg-
bacteria located  at any other point on the globe, even at a
distance of  tens of  thousands  of  miles.  You've  got  to
understand that  by now  the cyborg-bacteria have spread all
over the  Earth. Wherever  you might  happen to  be, with  a
possible exception  of a  desert, you will always be able to
find within a hundred feet range from you either some living
thing, or  a pond,  or at  least a  puddle. If those cyborg-
bacteria that  live inside  you, wanted  for some  reason to
communicate with  their cousins  in Europe,  the only  thing
they would  need to  do would be to call the cyborg-bacteria
that live  inside that water faucet over there in this room.
Those would  pass on  their message to other bacteria living
further down  along the  water-pipe, those  other ones would
pass the message to still other ones, and so on, all the way
to the  Atlantic Ocean.  And the ocean is teeming with these
bacteria, so  from there  on the  message would be traveling
very fast."
   -  "Are   you  certain  that  such  things  are  actually
happening?"
   - "Of  course, this  is just  a speculation,  but a  very
plausible one.  Judge for  yourself: the  capacity of random
access  memory  per  one  cyborg-bacteria  is  estimated  at
hundreds of  megabytes. A  glass of  water contains at least
several hundred  thousand cyborg-bacteria,  which means that
cyborg-bacteria in just one glass of water can hold in their
memories the  whole Library  of Congress. And their memories
do hold  something, and it seems that a considerable portion
of those  memories differ  from one bacteria to another. So,
where do  all these  data in  their memories  come from? The
only possible  answer at  the moment is that all the cyborg-
bacteria are joined together in a single global data network
with a continuous data traffic. To verify this hypothesis we
staged the  following experiment:  a single  cyborg-bacteria
was left  alone to  multiply in  a container  shielded  from
infrared and  microwave radiation.  The container  housed an
electron microscope  that was  taking pictures  of the newly
formed bacteria. In this case, where we cut all the external
data links,  the contents of the random access memory inside
all the  new cyborg-bacteria  turned out  to be the same. At
least the  pattern of  light and dark specks in all of these
pictures is the same."
   The man  in plain  clothes glanced at his notepad: "Well,
to make  sure I  understood everything that you've just told
me, let  me summarize. So. At this very moment, all over the
world there have spread microscopic self-replicating devices
(so-called cyborg-bacterria), capable of living in the water
and in  the human  and animal  blood streams.  They  are  an
advanced product  of nanotechnology and genetic engineering.
Their origin: unknown, presumably - a country with cheap but
highly-skilled workforce.  Their purpose: unknown. Material:
carbon in  all its  forms -diamond, graphite, fullerins. The
source of  material: carbon  dioxide  from  the  atmosphere.
Power source:  cold  nuclear  fusion.  Fuel:  hydrogen  from
water. They  exchange data using narrow-beam electromagnetic
radiation  in   a  range   between  microwave  and  infrared
radiation. The  content of the data being exchanged is..." -
the man  in plain  clothes shot  an inquiring  look  at  the
Professor.
   - "Unknown."  - responded  the latter.  And after a short
silence, added:  "You left out one more item - micro-robotic
arms on  the cyborg-bacteria  outer surface. We have not yet
seen them  in action,  but there  must be a reason for their
existence. And  this may  hold the  key  to  the  secret  of
cyborg-bacteria. For  now  they  are  just  multiplying  and
waiting for  something. But sooner or later a time will come
when a signal passes throughout this whole global network, a
signal for  them to do some job. What kind of job - we don't
know, who  will issue the signal - we don't know either. But
something of  this kind  must eventually  happen, otherwise,
what we see now just doesn't make any sense at all."

   1.4.  The   President  holds   council.  July   4,  1997.
Electromagnetically shielded room for secret meetings, White
House, Washington D.C.

   The President:  "Gentlemen, I'm  perfectly aware  that on
holiday everybody  would rather  be at  home, but  today the
United States  are facing  a crisis of such proportions that
it dwarfs  into insignificance  even the  Carribean missiles
crisis of  1992.  Over  the  last  few  days  we  have  been
observing an  absolutely incomprehensible  phenomenon, which
potentially  poses  a  tremendous  threat  to  the  national
security of  the United States. My understanding is that CIA
Director has something to say on the subject."

   CIA Director: "Central Intelligence Agency's experts have
done a  study reviewing  all kinds  of hypotheses  about the
cyborg-bacteria's origins  and their  possible impact on the
US national  security. What  I'm going  to give you now is a
summary of their report.
   First, a  few  words  about  the  possible  origins.  Our
experts have  reviewed all  the four  regions in  the world,
that had  sufficient scientific and industrial potential for
developing a  nanotechnological system of this kind: Western
Europe, Japan,  China, and  the former Soviet Union. Western
Europe and  Japan  were  dismissed  by  our  experts  almost
immediately:  the   costs  and  manpower  required  for  the
development of  such system  are so  great,  that  they  are
virtually impossible  to hide  in a  democracy. If  they had
tried to  conduct such work in secret from us, it would have
become known  to our  intelligence  before  long.  Then  our
experts considered China, but in the end they had to dismiss
this  possibility   as  well,   because  under  the  current
conditions it  would be  difficult to  imagine  a  political
rationale for such an action. The current Chinese leadership
builds its  relations with  the West  on a  pragmatic basis.
Provoking the  West by  putting it  under a  threat  is  not
consistent with  the current  Chinese interests.  So we  are
left with the only option: the former Soviet Union."
   - "You  mean, it  was done  by Russia?"  - exclaimed  the
President.
   - "Russia?"  - the  CIA director  made a  wry face - "Who
said  anything  about  Russia?  Russia  is  a  country  with
collapsed  economy,   dying  science,   and   disintegrating
educational system.  Russia is  in  principle  incapable  of
doing anything  in the  field of  high technologies. But the
former Soviet  Union was  something absolutely different. In
that country anything was possible.
     In the  Soviet  Union  of  the  1970-ies,  science  was
officially proclaimed  to be  "a  productive  force  of  the
society". The Kremlin rulers  regarded science as a possible
solution to  all their  problems and  were pouring  into  it
inordinate amounts  of money received from oil sales. During
that period, fundamental research in the USSR enjoyed better
funding than  anywhere else  in the  world at  any  time  in
history.   They    built   up    a   tremendous   scientific
infrastructure, something  beyond any comparison - thousands
of research  institutions, millions  of scientists,  most of
them working under strictest security.
   The Soviet  Union have  never  published  any  scientific
papers on  the subject  of  nanotechnology.  Of  course,  to
explain this  fact one  could assume that they never did any
research on that subject at all. It could be assumed, but it
is very hard to believe. A country that played the role of a
superpower just could not afford to ignore nanotechnological
research,  since   its  military   ramifications   are   too
important. Our  agency has some circumstantial evidence that
in 1983 a western company, that was suspected of acting as a
front for  KGB, smuggled  out  of  Japan  a  consignment  of
equipment banned  from export  to socialist  countries. This
equipment included scanning tunneling microscopes. I think I
should explain  here that a scanning tunneling microscope is
an instrument  which not  only allows  to observe individual
atoms, but  also  allows  to  manipulate  individual  atoms,
putting them together into almost any desired configuration.
This  is   the  principal   tool  used   for   building   up
nanotechnological devices.  So we  are almost  sure that the
Soviets did  work on  nanotechnology, and  that  Russia  has
inherited  from   the  Soviet  Union  some  fairly  advanced
projects."
   - "Is  this supposed to means that we do indeed deal here
with a  hostile act  of the Russian government?" - asked the
President.
   - "Hostile  acts towards  us are just as bad for the best
interests  of   the  Russian  government  as  for  the  best
interests of  any other  country. What we believe we have to
deal with  here is an act committed without the knowledge of
the Russian  government. In  simple terms this means that we
are dealing  with conspirators  or terrorists. With the sort
of chaos  reigning in  today's Russia,  it is  no problem to
sneak materials  out of  a secret lab. That could be done by
anyone. And  this is  especially true of a nanotechnological
lab working  on products  that can  hardly be  seen under  a
microscope.
   After the  dissolution of  USSR in  1991,  the  power  in
Russia was  seized by  a government that absolutely does not
care about  scientific research. The only thing they want is
to sell  raw materials  to the West and live in the same way
as, say,  Arabian sheiks  live  on  their  petrodollars.  We
encourage this,  since we see here a double advantage to us:
on the  one hand, our economy gets access to a new source of
raw materials  and a new market for our products, and on the
other hand,  in a  few year's  time, when  Russia completely
loses its  intellectual potential,  it will  never again  be
able to  regain its  power and  become a  dangerous military
adversary to  us, and  we will  be able  to live free of the
nuclear war  fears.  But  there  is  always  a  fly  in  the
ointment. In  this case  it's the  problem of  what  we  are
supposed  to   do   with   this   huge   Soviet   scientific
infrastructure, with  all those  millions of scientists, for
whom there  is no  use under  the new policy. The money that
used to  be spent  on their  salaries nowadays  is spent  on
buying Mercedes-Benz  cars for  the newly rich New Russians.
The salaries  in the  research institutions  are delayed for
months, but  still these people don't quit their jobs - many
of the  scientists consider it beneath their dignity to hawk
matches in the streets. This is a whole multimillion army of
hungry, angry  and highly  skilled  specialists.  One  could
expect anything from them."
   -  "Like   selling  nuclear   secrets  to  Iraq"  -  said
President.
   - "Or stealing cyborg-bacteria from a secret military lab
and spreading them all over the world" - added CIA Director.
   - "What  kind of  threat could these cyborg-bacteria pose
to us?" - asked the President.
   - "I  was just  getting to the section of the report that
analyzes potential  threats to  our security.  Once, in  the
past,  we   did  a   feasibility  study   on  the   use   of
nanotechnological  systems  for  intelligence  and  sabotage
purposes. First,  a few  words about sabotage. Theoretically
speaking,  the  cyborg-bacteria  that  already  live  inside
everyone of  us, can  kill any  one of us at any moment they
might choose. And they could do it in thousands of ways."
   - "Can they manufacture poisons?" - asked the President.
   - "Sure  they can,  but that's not the best way - poisons
are easily  detectable during  post-mortem. The  perfect way
would be  to induce  a heart or asthma attack - in that case
everything would have appeared as death from natural causes.
To succeed in this, the cyborg-bacteria should be capable of
finding those  nervous fibers  in the  body that control the
heart beat  or the  diaphragm muscles,  hooking up  to these
fibers and  feeding into  these fibers  electrical pulses of
very low  voltage, which  cannot do  any harm by themselves,
but these  would be control pulses that commanding the heart
or the lungs to stop working. And the "on-board computer" of
each of  those bacteria we have to deal with now, appears to
be powerful enough to accomplish such a task.
   Some of  our experts even think it to be too powerful for
such a  task. They suspect that cyborg-bacteria are designed
not for sabotage, but for intelligence-gathering activities.
A tremendous traffic of data is being continuously exchanged
between these bacteria, but we still don't know what kind of
data this  is. We  can only  make guesses.  For example,  we
could assume  that the  cyborg-bacteria that  live (this  is
only an  example) inside  you, Mister President, have tapped
into the  nerve fiber that goes from your ear to your brain.
All the  sounds that you hear are converted by your ear into
a sequence  of nerve  pulses that  are further sent into the
brain. The  bacteria that  have tapped into your nerve fiber
in the  same way as an eavesdropping device might tap into a
phone  line,  intercept  these  pulses,  convert  them  into
infrared radiation  that is  transmitted to another group of
bacteria located  a few  dozen feet  from you,  those  other
bacteria pass  it on to yet another group, and so on. Almost
immediately, the  information about  what is being spoken in
this room arrives in Moscow."
   - "The  chief of  my security service has assured my that
the walls  of this  special conference  room won't  let  any
radiation out." - said the President.
   - "The  total data  storage capacity  of all  the cyborg-
bacteria that  currently live in your body is such that they
could  easily   store  several  hours  of  conversation  and
transmit it  as soon as you leave this room. Or I leave this
room. Or  any of  those present  here.  We  have  very  good
reasons to  believe that  by this  very moment  the  cyborg-
bacteria already inhabit every human being on Earth."
   - "And as soon as these pulses arrive in Moscow they will
be decoded on a computer and the sound will be restored?"
   -   "That wouldn't be the most efficient method. There is
a much  simpler way to do this. Since these bacteria already
live inside everyone on Earth anyway, we could safely assume
that they  also live inside those who might be eavesdropping
on us  in Moscow.  We could  also assume  that  one  of  the
cyborg-bacteria has  hooked up  to his auditory nerve in the
same way  as it did to yours, the only difference being that
your bacteria  is recording  electrical pulses  coming  from
your ear,  while his  bacteria is  reproducing these pulses,
inducing them  in his auditory nerve. From the standpoint of
his brain  these pulses  are indistinguishable from the ones
coming from  his own ear. Thus, however quiet it might be in
his room,  he will  distinctly hear every word we are saying
now in this room.
   But as  I have  already mentioned,  all of these are just
conjectures. For  all we  know, the  purpose of  the cyborg-
bacteria may not be limited to eavesdropping. There is still
one more  possibility, which  at  first  glance  might  seem
absolutely wild.  But if we keep in mind how far ahead of us
are the  developers of  this system,  we should  admit  that
there is  nothing that  is totally  impossible.  This  other
possibility I'm  referring to  is the possibility of gaining
total control  over other  peoples' bodies,  gaining control
not only  of the nerve fibers that go to the heart, lungs or
brain, but of all the nerve fibers in the body and turning a
human being into a remotely controlled puppet.
   Just as  in the  case of  eavesdropping  through  cyborg-
bacteria, where  your ear becomes, in a way, the ear of that
other man, the eavesdropper,  one could also make your arms,
legs, throat, the whole of your body into the arms, legs and
throat of that other man. Let's imagine that his brain sends
a command  to move  his arm.  These commands are issued into
the nerve  fiber that  goes from  his brain to his arm. Half
way to  the arm  these nerve  pulses are   intercepted  by a
cyborg-bacteria, and are eventually transmitted to a cyborg-
bacteria that  lives on  your nerve  fibers going  from your
brain to  your arm  and are  fed into  these fibers. For all
that your  arm knows, these pulses might have come from your
own brain,  and so  your arm  obeys the command. Add to this
the  possibility   that  cyborg-bacteria  may  suppress  the
signals that come from your own brain, and what we have here
is that the control over your body is completely transferred
to somebody  else. You  may well  imagine what vistas of new
opportunities may  open up  for espionage  or sabotage, if a
spy takes control over the President's body."
   Everybody in  the room  fell silent  and  looked  at  the
President. After a short pause, the President said:
   - "Or over the body of the CIA Director."
   -  "Under   the  circumstances,   nobody  can   be  above
suspicion." - replied the CIA Director.
   -  "Do   you  seriously  believe  that  all  you've  just
described is really possible?"
   - "It's our experts who allow for such a possibility, and
I see no reason why I should not trust them. Cyborg-bacteria
in themselves  are so  fantastic, that  we can safely assume
their purpose  to be absolutely fantastic as well. As I have
already mentioned,  we are  most likely  dealing  here  with
terrorists from among  disgruntled former Soviet scientists.
If this  is indeed  the case,    then,  within  the  nearest
future, they  are going  to  put  cyborg-bacteria  to  work,
making them do something  that will be supposed to scare the
whole world. Don't ask me what they are going to do, I don't
know. In  view of  the awesome  capabilities of  the cyborg-
bacteria, they  might do absolutely anything. And after that
demonstration of  their power,  they'll make  their  demands
known to  us. And  if the  public gets scared enough, we may
have to accept their terms."
   - "What  kind of  terms  that  might  be?"  -  asked  the
President.
   - "All depends on what kind of people we are dealing with
here. If  they are  just ordinary  extortionists, they  will
demand money  for themselves   personally. That would be the
least painful option for us, since here we are talking about
no more  that tens  of millions  of  dollars.  However,  I'm
inclined to expect from the Soviet scientists something more
idealistic and  unselfish,  like  a  demand  to  change  our
current policy towards Russia. And that may cost us hundreds
of  billions of dollars."
   One of  the President's  aides, who had been silent up to
that moment, suddenly asked to speak.

   President's aid:  "Mister President! I have already tried
many times  in the  past to  draw your attention to the fact
that our  current policy  towards Russia is potentially very
dangerous for the United States, and today we once again had
an opportunity  to see  this for  ourselves. But I want once
again to draw your attention to the fact that such policy is
not only  dangerous, it  is  also  amoral.  We  have  always
publicly proclaimed  that  our  objective  is  to  create  a
technologically advanced  society, where the advancements of
Science will  eliminate poverty  and disease, and give equal
access to  education to  everyone. But  at the same time, in
Russia, we  support a  political regime  which destroys  the
intellectual potential  of  its  own  country.  Millions  of
scientists, who  could have  greatly benefited  the whole of
mankind , are loosing their jobs and skills.
   Today, in  the era  of global communications, when people
of Earth  are interlinked via satellite TV and Internet, the
policy of  double standards  quickly becomes  evident to the
people and  undermines their  trust in  the government.  The
time is  coming when  we no longer will be able to afford to
form our  policies on  the basis  of   transitory  political
expediencies at the expense of  moral principles."
   - "What is your concrete proposal?" - asked the President
- "Is  it to let Russia build up its intellectual potential?
And what  if tomorrow  the power in Russia will be seized by
fascists, and the Russian scientists will develop for them a
weapon that'll  make the  atom and  hydrogen bombs look like
baby toys in comparison?"
   - "But it is our policies that are pushing Russia towards
fascism!  Having  lost  their  intellectual  and  industrial
potential, the  Russians feel  humiliated,  and  it  is  the
national humiliation that paves the way to fascism."

   President: "We  have been through this many times before,
so let's  please not start this again. The current regime in
Russia! There  is just  nothing to replace it with. You know
as well  as I  do, that  we had  to choose the lesser of the
evils. So  let's get  back down to our today's problem. What
can we do under the circumstances?"

   CIA Director:  "Not very  much. First, we should continue
the study  of cyborg-bacteria, so as to understand what they
are really  capable of  and be prepared to face it. The most
important thing  to do  is to try and decipher the data they
are transmitting.  If our  guess that all these bacteria are
joined into  a global  network is  true, we've got to try to
"crack the  password" and  break into  the network. We might
even be able to try to seize control over the network. If we
succeed in  this, we  will be  able to  turn  this  dreadful
weapon against  its creators.  For these  purpose we are now
putting together a team of programmers and hackers.
   Secondly. We've  got  to  put  pressure  on  our  Russian
counterparts.   To demand  from them  all the information on
classified projects  conducted in  the USSR  in the field of
nanotechnology. To demand from them the names of  scientists
involved in  these projects. In short, it's high time for us
to start looking into this case in earnest. For this purpose
we intend to send to Moscow our liaison officer with special
powers. I  want to  ask you Mr. President, to contact Moscow
on the hot line and demand from the Russians that they grant
him such special powers."

   President: "What do you mean by special powers?"

   CIA Director:  "Free access  to any  classified  archive,
permission to  conduct investigation on the Russian soil and
so on. Ideally, they should allow him to do whatever he asks
and be  very cooperative  in giving  him any  assistance  he
might ask."

   The President:  "This  may  not  be  easy  -  lately  the
Russians have  started playing  independent, but  I'll do my
best.   We still  have the  means to bring pressure to bear.
Anything else?"

   CIA Director:  "For the moment, that seems to be all that
we can  do. In  conclusion I would like to once again stress
the need  to keep  it all  secret from the public. Under the
circumstances, the general panic is the last thing we want."


   1.5. The  autograph July  6, 1997.  Nanotechnology lab at
MIT, Mass, USA.

   Computer monitor  displaying in  real time the image from
electronic  microscope.   Two  researchers  looking  at  the
screen.
   The  first   one:  "And  now  let's  try  having  a  high
resolution scan  of the  back wall  of  this bacteria's 'on-
board computer'."
   The second  one: "It's  a waste  of time.  Low-res images
have clearly  shown that there is absolutely nothing there -
just a blank wall."
   The first one ( holding a picture to the light): "Are you
sure? And  what is this dot here? A photographic artifact? I
still want to see this spot under high magnification. "
   The  second   one:  "Are  you  satisfied  now?  Still  no
features."
   The first  one: "Stop!  Did you  see that?  Move  back  a
little. Here it is! Increase magnification!"
   The second  one  (looking  at  the  screen):  "Wow!  Does
anybody here read Russian?"
   The first  one: "I  don't think  that will  be necessary.
There seems to be an English translation here as well."
   Each character  was composed  of just  several dozens  of
atoms, carefully  arranged on  a smooth  wall  surface.  But
there could  be no mistaking - those were indeed characters.
The writing  on the  wall read:  "Made in the USSR by Alexei
Levshov and a team of his comrades."


   Part Two: "Something wonderful is going to happen..."

   2.1. Gloomy morning. July 6, 1997, Moscow, 7 A.M.

   Alexei Levshov  went out  onto the landing closing behind
him the  door to  his apartment   and started locking it up.
The rundown-looking  door was made of wood  and badly needed
a new  coat of  paint. There was only one lock in it. Almost
immediately Levshov  heard behind  his back a series of loud
clicks as  the many  locks in  the new armored metal door on
the opposite side of the landing started to unlock.
   - "That's  strange" - thought Alexei. It was only on rare
occasions that  his neighbor  got up  so early. His neighbor
who lived  behind the armored door was known to everybody in
neighborhood  from   his  earliest  childhood  as  "Mityai".
Actually his  name was  Dmitrii, but  it is amazing how many
diminutives there  are in the Russian language for any name,
each  diminutive  expressing  a  certain  distinct  attitude
towards the person. If Dimitrii had been a well-behaved boy,
everybody would  have called  him "Dima"  or  "Mitiya",  but
"Mityai" suggested  someone unruly,  and unruly he was. As a
kid he  was considered  a local imbecile. When he was 13  he
landed up  in a  labor camp  for  juvenile  delinquents  for
stabbing somebody  with a  knife, not  to death,  though. He
served his  term of  several years  and came back. Then came
the new policy, the Prestroika. Mityai became one of the so-
called "New Russians" - that is, the newly rich, and started
buying for  himself expensive  foreign-made cars,  one after
another. Nobody  knew exactly  what was  the nature  of  his
business, but  there were  some dark rumors whispered around
the neighborhood  that Mityai  had become  a    hit  man,  a
"killer" -  one of  the many words that Russian language has
borrowed from English during the Perestroika years.
   The armored  door opened. Mityai appeared in the doorway.
He wore  dark glasses and black leather costume adorned with
multiple gold  chains.  He  cast  a  disparaging  glance  at
Levshov's old  suit that  was coming  apart at the seams and
said: "You  are wearing  rags, old man. Our Science has gone
completely to seed!"
   Mityai never  passed up  a chance to pick on Levshov, who
had gotten  used  to  it  long  ago  and  did  not  pay  any
attention. This  time, as  always, he left Mityai to lock up
all his locks and went downstairs. Mityay caught up with him
in the  yard. Twirling the keys of his new Mercedes-Benz car
around his  finger, he  clapped Levshov  on the shoulder and
said: "Listen,  Science, I'll  give you a hundred bucks, buy
yourself some decent trousers, 'cause you look disgusting."
   Levshov froze  in his  tracks. He  felt a  wave of  anger
rising inside  himself, while  Mityai continued  in the same
impertinent tone:  "Let's take  you, Science, as an example.
You studied  all your  life, and  all you've  got for  it is
living like a homeless dog. And as for me, they threw me out
of school  when I  was in  the eighth grade for bad behavior
and all  that, but  I now  live as  a Man. And you know why?
It's because  in the past the Communists were perverting the
economy,  but  now  the  Free  Market  has  come  and  shown
everybody's true  worth.  And  it  turned  out  that  I'm  a
valuable member  of society, 'cause I'm in demand. But there
is no  demand for you, and so it turns out that your science
is shit  and you  are a  piece of  shit yourself.  Take  the
bill."  Mityai   shoved  a  one  hundred  dollar  bill  into
Levshov's fist and started walking towards his Mercedes car.
   Levshov felt a wave of hatred and anger flooding his soul
like water  that burst  a dam.  For a  fraction of a second,
through the mist of choking frenzy, he had in his mind's eye
a fleeting  vision of  all the power of NanoTech coming down
upon Mityai,  exploding this  impudently smirking  nonentity
into a  myriad of  tiny fragments,  smearing his remains all
over the wall, splattering them on the blacktop.
   Stop   this!    Being   the   NanoTech   Network   System
Administrator means  not only  to be in possession of powers
beyond imagination,  it also  means bearing  an unimaginable
responsibility.  The   First  Commandment  of  the  Nanotech
Network System  Administrator reads:  "Thou shalt  not  make
decisions in wrath".
   "NANOTECH" -  mentally  said  Levshov.  And  although  he
pronounced this  command  only  in  his  mind,  without  any
audible sound,  the cyborg-bacteria  that  were  permanently
hooked up  to the nerve fibers going from Levshov's brain to
the muscles  of his  throat, easily  picked up those weakest
action currents  that are  always generated  when we want to
say something,  even when we say it inaudibly, to ourselves.
The cyborg-bacteria  took only one thousandth of a second to
decipher the   action  current patterns  in the nerve fibers
and to understand that what they had received was the system
activation command.  One more  thousandth of a second later,
the cyborg-bacteria  that were  permanently hooked up to the
nerve fibers going from Levshov's ear to his brain sent into
these fibers  a sequence  of pulses,  which, upon arrival to
his brain,  were perceived  by it  as a  sequence of sounds,
namely  as   words  enunciated   by   a   pleasant,   "radio
announcer's" voice:  "SYSTEM READY".  The further  commands-
and-messages  exchange   between  Alexei   Levshov  and  the
NanoTech System was as follows:
   AL:>SUBROUTINE "I AM CALM"
   NT:>PARAMETERS?
   AL:>BRING DOWN:  BLOOD PRESSURE,  RESPIRATION RATE, BRAIN
ACTIVITY; STEP "MEDIUM"; DO UNTIL "ENOUGH".
   NT:>OK
   Millions of  cyborg-bacteria residing  in  Alexei's  body
immediately got  down to  work. In  a second  he felt an icy
calmness come over him.
   AL:>ENOUGH
   NT:>OK
   "So," - said Alexei to himself - "Firstly, disclosing the
existence of  the NanoTech  network now  would mean bringing
the whole  effort to  ruin. Secondly,  Mityai is an imbecile
and a  ruffian, but  it is  not his  fault. He  was made  an
imbecile by  his parents,  who conceived  him when they were
drunk. He  was made  a ruffian  by  the  existing  political
regime. In  the future,  NanoTech might  be able  to correct
both, and  that means  that potentially he is a human being,
and therefore,  he should  be treated  as a human being, and
not as a bug to be smeared all over the wall."
   In the  meanwhile, Mityai  who was  absolutely unaware of
the terrible  fate that he had just escaped so narrowly, sat
into his  Mercedes and  stuck his  head out  of the  window:
"Goodbye, Science.  A client  waits for  me." He took a hand
gun out  of the  glove compartment, released a safety catch,
and tossed  it back. Suddenly, a new idea struck him, and he
once again poked his head out of the window and said:
   - " And you know, Science, what's funny? I have no orders
for finishing  off your  kind, I  mean, scientists.  I  have
orders  for   businessmen,   for   politicians,   even   for
journalists. But no orders for scientists.  You are not even
worth killing.  That's how  the  things  stand.  Supply  and
demand. The invisible hand of the market. Adam Smith. That's
what I call real science!"
   He bared  his teeth,  showing a  gold tooth,  in what was
probably meant  to be  a smile,  stepped on the gas,  made a
complete circuit  around the yard, at full speed ran the car
into a  puddle splashing water all over Levshov, and roaring
with insane laughter rode into the street and was gone.
   Levshov looked  at the  one hundred  dollar bill  in  his
hand, put  it  into  his  pocket,  calmly  shook  the  water
droplets off,  and headed  for the  bus  stop.  One  hundred
dollars almost  amounted to  his two  months' salary  at the
research institute.  But even  this pittance  have not  been
paid him for the last four months.

   2.2 The nightmare continues One hour later, Institute for
Molecular Biology Studies, Moscow.

   If a  researcher  on  the  staff  of  the  Institute  for
Molecular Biology  Studies had fallen into a lethargic sleep
ten years ago, to be awaken only today to come and visit his
institute, such  visit would  have left  him in  a state  of
complete shock. His first thought would have been that while
he was  asleep, some  terrible and irredeemable calamity had
happened. What  once had  been a  proud edifice  of  shining
glass and  polished marble,  erected back  in the  days when
science  was   proclaimed  to  be  a  "productive  force  of
society",  was   now  reduced   to  a  state  of  decay  and
desolation, covered  with layers  of dirt,  with many of the
glasses broken  and replaced  with plywood. Inside, he would
have seen  deserted corridors - the staff was reduced to one
tenth of what it had used to be and the people who were left
were mostly those approaching their retirement age. True, he
would have  also seen  some young people, who surely did not
look like  intellectuals and were carrying some boxes to and
from lab  rooms. Upon entering one of such rooms (if only he
had been  allowed to), he would have been shocked to see the
valuable scientific  instruments piled  up into  a heap in a
corner, while  the room  itself had  been converted  into  a
warehouse for a commercial company dealing in ladies' boots,
or  wallpaper,  or  some  such  stuff.  In  the  Institute's
scientific library  he would not have been able to find even
one scientific book published within the last five years. He
would be  astounded to  see that librarians had been allowed
to turn the library into a store selling all kinds of things
that   had absolutely  nothing to do with books. True, among
these sundry  things he  would indeed have been able to find
some newly  published books,  but not scientific, but rather
antiscientific in character: books on astrology, chiromancy,
occultism, black  magic and  witchcraft, and  so  on,  which
would have  led him  to the  conclusion that civilization is
dead, and  the mankind  has been  thrown back  into the Dark
Ages.
   People  can  get  used  to  the  most  horrible  changes,
especially if  these changes don't happen overnight, but are
spread over  several years.  And people got used to them and
resigned themselves to them.
   Alexei Levshov also got used to them. But never resigned.
   That day,  when he  got to  his work,  he stopped  for  a
second before  a notice-board  in  the  corridor.  The  most
recently posted notice began with the words: "In view of the
fact that  the employees  of our research institute have not
been paid  their salaries  for the  last  four  months,  the
collective members of the research staff have petitioned the
city authorities  that they  should  not  impose  fines  for
arrears of  rent and  electricity bills...".  Alexei skipped
reading the  rest, and  stepped into  the room where his lab
was based.  One glance  at the faces of his staff was enough
to tell him that something was wrong.
   - "I  have made  up my  mind" -  said a researcher, young
woman with  her face  turned to  stone -  "I have nothing to
feed my kids with. I have made up my mind."
   Everybody in  the lab  knew  the  story  of  this  single
mother.  One  old  and  loathsome  "New  Russian"  had  been
propositioning her for a long time, offering lots of money.
   Alexei came  up to  her desk,  bent to her  and said in a
low voice: "I can't explain to you everything now, I have no
right to,  but I  want you to know that this nightmare" - he
made a  sweeping gesture - "will soon be over. I implore you
to refrain from making any rash decisions. You are talented,
you must  continue your research. You've got to stick it out
for one  more month.  Take this  for now."  -  he  took  the
crumpled one  hundred dollar bill from his pocket - "I don't
have the  right to  tell you  anything, but  trust me,  very
soon, maybe  even sooner  than  one  month,  something  must
happen  ...   something  tremendous,   something  wonderful,
something that is going to change everything ..."

   2.3 Arrest The same day, July 6, 1997, 6 PM, Moscow.

   They came  up to  him in  the street  when he was walking
back from  work, two  from behind, one in front, all of them
in civilian  clothes. The  one in  front promptly produced a
red KGB  ID card,  momentarily showed  it  to  Levshov,  and
rattled off:  "Alexei Petrovich  Levshov, I  presume? You'll
have to come with us in this car.". Sooner than Alexei could
reply, he  found himself sitting on the back seat of a black
"Volga" car,  caught between the two men in civilian clothes
who had  come up from behind. The one who showed his ID took
the right front seat and the car sped off.
   - "Here  we are!  It has started!" - thought Alexei - "So
they have  finally found my 'autograph'. Now the things will
start moving!"

   2.4 Interrogation. The same day, half an hour later.

   At first the Colonel was very polite and smiling.
   - "Alexei  Petrovich!" - said he, addressing Levshov with
patronymic, which  is the polite form of address in Russia -
"I think  I don't  need to  explain to you the reason why we
have invited you here. But just in case you might presume to
deny everything, I would like to show you this picture right
away."
   The Colonel  passed to  Levshov a picture where one could
distinctly see  the inscription: "Made in the USSR by Alexei
Levshov and a team of his comrades".
   - "A  good picture."  - said Alexei - "A good microscope.
We never had one like this. And I guess you still don't have
one like  this. I  would say  it were Americans who took the
picture."
   The Colonel didn't respond.
   - "So,  it were  Americans. " - said Alexei - "That means
that my  babies are  already over  there, in America. That's
good. And  the inscription did come off well. You know, it's
the first  time that  I actually  see it.  I did  issue  the
command to  make the  inscription, but  I wasn't  completely
sure that  the characters  will come  out well, or  that the
command will  actually reach  as far  as America. That means
that the  system is  fully operational.  That's  good.  You,
Colonel, can't  even imagine  how pleased  I  am  with  this
photograph."
   - "So,  you are  not going  to deny anything, are you?" -
Colonel's voice  betrayed his  slight disappointment  -  "In
that case, I have only two questions: why did you do it, and
who are the members of this 'team of comrades' ?"
   - "I'm  not going  to give  you any  names. The  team  of
comrades, who prefer to remain anonymous, have authorized me
to conduct negotiations with the authorities. This picture,"
- Alexei put the picture to the Colonel's very nose -  "this
picture is  my business card. It means that there is a power
behind me,  a great power, maybe even greater than you could
possibly imagine.  And that's  why it's  me who  is going to
make demands, and you better meet them."
   - "Alexei  Petrovich, I'm  afraid that  you are not fully
aware of  your current  situation. Let  me first read to you
some excerpts  from our  file on  you.  Now  then,  Levshov,
Alexei Petrovich,  born 1946;  in 1969 graduated with honors
from the  prestigious PhysTech  Institute, Moscow, and  went
to work  at a  secret unnamed research institute, known only
as the  post office box number such-and-such; in 1976 became
the head  of the  nanotechnology lab that was founded at the
time at  that research  institute.. But all this is not very
interesting ...  Here we  are. This  is sort  of curious: in
spring 1983 you wrote a letter to Yurii Andropov, soon after
he had  become the  Secretary General of the Communist Party
of the  Soviet Union.  Our man  on the  General  Secretary's
staff managed  to make a copy of this letter. A very curious
letter, and it reads as follows:
   "Dear Yurii Vladimirovich,
   I took the liberty to address you because I would like to
draw your  attention to a very important issue, so important
that the  fate of  the whole of mankind may eventually hinge
on it.  In one  of your  recent speeches  you  exhorted  the
Soviet people  to return  to the  roots of  our ideology, to
return to  Marx. One of  the fundamental ideas of Marxism is
the idea  that new  socioeconomic formations come into being
as a  reaction of society to the emergence of new productive
forces. From  this standpoint,   Communism  as  an  economic
formation  cannot   at  present  exist  in  our  country  in
principle, because  we are  still using  the same productive
forces  as   the  capitalist  countries,  and  the  economic
formation that  currently exists  in the  USSR can  only  be
characterized as  a form  of  state-monopoly  capitalism.  A
social formation  is  a  superstructure  over  a  foundation
consisting  of   productive  forces.   The  breakthrough  to
Communism can only happen as a consequence of emergence of a
radically new technology, the very logic of which shall make
the  social   superstructure  adapt   itself  to   this  new
foundation.   And such  a technology  may emerge  very soon.
However, if  improperly used,  it may  not only fail to free
mankind  from   capitalism,  but   even  might   assist   in
perpetuating it,  and the great historic chance will be lost
forever.
   My field  of work  is nanotechnology.  It is not just one
more technology. Potentially, it is a complete revolution in
the methods  of production,  that is  even greater  than the
Great Industrial  Revolution of  the 18th century, which, in
its time,  caused the  demise of feudalism and ascendancy of
capitalism. If  we take  the right  steps, the  emergence of
nanotechnology should  cause a similar natural extinction of
capitalism.  However,  at  present,  all  the  research  and
development activities in the field of nanotechnology in our
country are  geared exclusively  to military needs,  and are
not aimed  at the  above mentioned  objective.  We  need  to
redirect   the    efforts   of   at   least   one   of   our
nanotechnological   labs    from   military    to   peaceful
applications. I  request that  you grant  me an  audience so
that I  could explain  to you  my ideas and proposals on the
subject."
   The Colonel  stopped reading, gave Levshov a disapproving
look and  said: "One  can clearly  see from this letter that
even as  far back  as 1983  you were  reluctant to  work  on
strengthening the defensive potential of our Motherland."
   - "Is  this the  only thing  that you  can see  from this
letter?" - asked Levshov, mildly amused.
   The Colonel  ignored  the  remark  and  went  on  leafing
through the thick folder containing Levshov's file:
   "... So,  the  all-powerful  General  Secretary  Andropov
makes some inquiries, and soon afterwards grants an audience
to Levshov, a chief of research in an obscure lab, virtually
unknown to  anybody. He  has a  conversation with  him  that
lasts an  hour and  a half,  instead of  the  scheduled  ten
minutes. The  content of  their discussion is unknown to us.
But we  know that   soon  after that  the nanotechnology lab
headed by A.P.Levshov is taken from under the control of the
Ministry of Defense Industry, and moved to
   the Institute for Molecular Biology Studies which belongs
to the  USSR Academy  of Sciences. However, the work in that
lab still continues in strictest secrecy, even stricter than
under the  military. Our  organization gets a directive from
the "very  top" to  obtain for that laboratory some advanced
Japanese equipment  banned  from  export  to  the  socialist
countries...  Well,  all  this,  once  again,  is  not  very
interesting, so  we'll skip  it... And  now, we have reached
the crux  of the matter. In November 1991,  when the country
was in  the  state  of  complete  disarray  and  chaos,  our
organization decided   to  assume the responsibility for the
protection of  the important  state secret,  which the  work
conducted in  the A.P.Levshov's lab clearly was, and to move
that lab from an Academy of Sciences institute to one of our
secret research facilities. Some of the lab staff, including
Levshov, refused  to transfer to our organization and stayed
at the  Institute for  Molecular Biology Studies. During the
relocation to  our secret facility some of the lab materials
were  lost.   In  particular,  a  test  tube  containing  an
experimental hybrid  of a  bacteria with a nanomechanism was
found missing, which, in the opinion of some of our experts,
set back the lab's work by at least fifteen years. Even back
then there  was some  suspicion that  it was A.P.Levshov who
stole the  materials, but  at the  time his  guilt  was  not
proven.
   The same  experts are  of the  opinion that by the end of
1991 the work on the hybrid of bacteria with a nanomechanism
had progressed  to a  phase where the further work would not
require  the   use  of   complex  and  expensive  laboratory
equipment. Some  of them  even go as far as to say that that
the only  thing needed  for the further work on the bacteria
hybrid was  the bacteria  itself, since  it already  had  in
itself all  the tools required for any further modifications
or upgrades, and that means that all the further development
effort could  be conducted  at home... That's how the things
stand, Mr.  Levshov" - the Colonel looked up from the folder
and once  again glanced  at Levshov - "This photograph is an
irrefutable evidence  that it  was you  who, back  in  1991,
stole the  test tube  with the hybrid, which was  government
property, and  by so  doing have  inflicted  a  considerable
damage to  the defense  potential and  state security of our
country. Moreover,  by the  mere fact  of letting the hybrid
loose, you have given all our potential military adversaries
the knowledge  about the  current status  of  nanotechnology
research in our country, which can only be interpreted as an
act of  espionage. All of this is sufficient to put you away
for a very long time. That's why I don't recommend you to be
impertinent and  make demands. It is me who is going to make
demands here."
   Levshov replied  with an inscrutable smile: "Oh, Colonel,
you can't  even realize how ridiculous all your threats seem
to me. If you had only known what is going to happen  within
the next  week. We  are standing  on the threshold  of a new
world, a world where everything will be different, where, in
particular, the mankind will not be divided into nations and
nationalities. The  individuality of  a person  will  become
more important  than his  or her belonging to any particular
ethnic or  social group.  With the disappearance of nations,
their respective nationalisms will also disappear,  and such
notions as  national  defense,  or  espionage,  or  national
security will  just stop  to make  any sense, and will start
looking like atavisms inherited from the Stone Age..."
   - "Don't  you even  try to  push me  all  this  bullshit,
Levshov!" -  barked the Colonel - "What I want from you is a
clear and intelligible answer to the questions that I asked:
who else works with you and why have you done this?"
   - "Done what?" - asked Levshov.
   - "This,  for example."  - the  Colonel  poked  with  his
finger at the picture with the "autograph".
   - "Oh, this! This was done in order to draw the attention
of the authorities, to make them lend an ear to our demands.
By the  way, Colonel,  you still have not heard our demands,
and I  think that  you should  have had. If you had had, you
would have asked a very different kind of questions."
   -  "So  what  are  your  demands?"  -  said  the  Colonel
grudgingly.
   - "Inform  your superiors  that I  need a series of my TV
appearances arranged,  half an  hour, prime  time,  each day
for a week."
   - "Do  you realize  how much  this would  cost?  On  what
grounds do you presume to have it?"
   - "On  the simple grounds that I have something to say to
the mankind, in stark contrast to the ones who use this time
on the air now. I have a message of utmost importance."
   - "Why  do you  need a  whole week?"  - asked  Colonel  -
"Usually, terrorists  take no more than five minutes to make
all their threats and demands."
   - "Now we have really come to the crux of the matter. You
believe that I'm a terrorist. But actually, nothing could be
farther from  the truth.  You are  just too much used to the
idea that  nanotechnological research  and development  were
pursued with  military applications in mind. You just cannot
imagine the  peaceful applications  of  nanotechnology.  You
have absolutely  no idea of what I and my comrades have done
in this  field over  the last  five years,  while working at
home. What we have done can improve the lives of billions of
people on  this planet.  But we've  got to  have  a  way  of
letting people  know about  the possibilities they now have.
Of course,  we could do this using the built-in capabilities
of the  NanoTech System itself, but we are concerned that if
people suddenly  hear a voice in their heads, a voice coming
from nowhere,  or see moving pictures materializing from the
thin air  right before  their eyes,  some of  them might get
panicky. We  don't want  anybody going  crazy with  fear and
jumping out of the window, or anything like that. Television
is something which is familiar to people, that's why we want
to start a series of lectures on the uses of NanoTech on TV,
and only  after that  we'll gradually  switch to  the purely
NanoTech means  of communication.  As a  matter of  fact, we
could have  built our  own TV  transmitter  -  we  have  the
capability -  but we don't want to be pirates on the air. We
decided to  go through  official channels.  It might be hard
for you to believe, but me and my comrades are actually law-
abiding citizens. "
   The Colonel  was silent for half a minute, digesting what
he had  just heard,  and finally  said: "From  what you have
just told  me, I  understood only  two  things.  First:  you
consider me  a complete idiot who is supposed to believe all
that bullshit you gave me. Second: you have finally admitted
that you  have stolen  the test tube with the hybrid. And as
for  your   law-abidance,  when   I  went   to  the   public
procurator's office this morning and showed him this file on
you and  this photograph, he signed a warrant to search your
apartment   without asking any further questions. The search
is being conducted right now as we sit here, and I expect to
have news  from there  any moment now.  I think we are going
to have  lots of  new subjects  for our  conversation pretty
soon."
   This time  Levshov's smile was even more inscrutable than
before. He  said: "Well,  let them  search.  I  wonder  what
they'll be able to find there. And more importantly, whether
they'll be  able to  understand what  they are going to find
there..."

   2.5 The Search. At the same time at Levshov's apartment.

   One of  the two  witnesses summoned  to  the  search  was
Levshov's next-door neighbor, that is, Mityai.
   While they  were opening  the door, the investigator once
again went  in his  mind  over  the  list  of  objects  that
criminals usually  adapt to  serve as  hiding places for all
kinds of   incriminating  things. But  nevertheless, he  was
absolutely unprepared  for what  he saw  as soon as the door
was  opened.   Entering  into   the  apartment  he  stopped,
completely at  a loss.  His carefully  laid-out plan for the
search had collapsed in a wink.
   - "Oh, my!" - muttered Mityai pensively, looking around -
"Our science has completely gone down the drain!"
   There was  absolutely nothing  in the apartment. That is,
not  a   single  thing.  Bare  floors.  Bare  walls  without
wallpaper. In  the hallway,  there were no coats or slickers
hung up  on pegs.  Actually, there  were no pegs, not even a
nail to  hang things  on (if there had been anything to hang
up, but there was not a thing). They went to the kitchen. In
the kitchen,  not only there wasn't a counter, there was not
even a  fridge. Only  a gas  range and a sink. The range was
covered with  a thick  layer of  dust, attesting to the fact
that it  had not  been touched  by a  human  hand  for  many
months.
   - "Poor  devil!" -  exclaimed the second witness, a warm-
hearted old lady who lived one story up -  "I wonder what he
ate. He  lived exclusively  on cold food, I guess. After his
wife  left  him  for  a  New  Russian  four  years  ago,  he
completely went to seed."
   As for  the sink, its hole was plugged, and it was filled
with water  to the  brim. But  only with  water.  There  was
nothing else in the sink. No sign of any dishes.
   In the  bathroom, there  was also not a thing, not even a
mirror.  Not   even  things  for  shaving,  although  Mityai
immediately affirmed that Levshov went to work every morning
smoothly shaven. In the bathroom, there were only a bath and
a sink.  Both were  plugged and  brimming  with  water.  The
biggest surprise  was waiting  for them  in the  living  (?)
room. There  was also  no furniture  and no  things in  that
room, except that more than half of the room was occupied by
something very  similar to  a huge  aquarium tank, but there
were no  fish in  it. There was nothing in it but water. The
walls of  the tank  were made of some strange sort of glass,
very transparent,  and infused with a mysterious luster. The
last ray of the setting sun came through the window, fell on
the tank,  reflected from  its walls,  re-reflected, and the
room  was  suddenly  lit  up  with  a  piercingly  brilliant
iridescent glow.  "It  shines  like  diamond!"  -  exclaimed
Mityai. He  came up to the tank, and before the investigator
could stop  him, he  pressed  a  small  diamond,  which  was
mounted into  a gold  ring that  Mityai always wore, against
the glass,  and ran it across the tank wall. The result left
him absolutely dumbfounded. He could not even say anything -
the words stuck in his throat. The diamond has not left even
a tiniest scratch on the tank wall. A six by nine feet tank,
five feet  tall, standing  in the  room of  an  impoverished
scientist, was,  to all  appearances, cut  out of  a  single
diamond crystal...

   2.6  The  first  demonstration  of  the  NanoTech  system
capabilities.

   The Colonel  replaced the  receiver and  remained sitting
deep in thought.
   - "Well, have they found anything?" - inquired Levshov.
   - "Levshov,  why have  you sold all the furniture and all
the things  from your  apartment? Were you preparing to flee
from the country?"
   - "First  of all,  I have not sold them, I gave them away
for free. But not because I wanted to flee, but because I no
longer needed  them. Being  a System  Administrator  of  the
NanoTech  Network,   I  can   enjoy  all   the  benefits  of
nanotechnology even now."
   - "How  did you come into possession of a water tank made
of diamond?"
   - "I've  grown it. Glass can break, you know, but diamond
is much stronger and from that standpoint is more practical.
You see, I just needed some vessel for all that water."
   - "I  see. You  have grown  it." -  said the Colonel in a
flat voice.
   - "You know, Colonel, I really think I've got to give you
a small  demonstration, otherwise  you just  won't believe a
word of  what I  say. A demo is worth more that thousands of
words... Do you have a sink somewhere around here?"
   - "A sink?"
   - "Yes, a water basin with running water. A bathtub would
be even better, but I don't expect you to have one here."

   ... Behind  the door  at the back of  the Colonel's desk,
there was a private rest room with a sink.
   - "Well,  just as  I expected,  you don't have a plug for
this sink."  - said  Levshov -  "But we'll  fix this  in  no
time."
   He turned  on the  tap, cupped  his hands and filled them
with water. Turning to the Colonel, he said: "At the moment,
I hold in my hands, together with the water, several million
cyborg-bacteria. They are currently inactive. Now I am going
to give  them a  command to speed up their reproduction. You
won't hear this command - I'll enunciate it inaudibly, in my
mind. Inside me, just as inside you and all the other people
on Earth, there now live the same cyborg-bacteria, and these
particular bacteria  inside your  body provide  an interface
between the  nervous system  of your  body and  the NanoTech
System, that  is,   all the  other cyborg-bacteria that live
throughout the  globe. This  interface  has  two  layers:  a
physical and a logical. Physical interface is implemented by
the bacteria  attached to the nerve fibers in your body, who
tap into  the action  currents in  these fibers  and convert
them into  infrared signals  used for  data exchange between
cyborg-bacteria.  Or   sometimes  they   do   the   reverse,
converting infrared signals into action currents and feeding
them into  nerve fibers.  As for  the logical  layer of  the
interface, it  can be  implemented by both the bacteria that
reside inside  you and  all the  bacteria  of  the  NanoTech
Network operating  as a single global distributed computer -
it all depends on the complexity of the task. At the logical
layer, the commands of a NanoTech System user that are given
in a  high-level, almost  natural, language,  are  converted
into the NanoTech System executable machine codes.  And now,
watch closely."
   AL:> NANOTECH
   NT:> SYSTEM READY
   AL:> OBJECT: IN THE WATER IN MY HAND
   NT:> OBJECT  FOUND AND LOCKED ONTO, OBJECT BOUNDARIES SET
BY DEFAULT
   AL:>  MULTIPLY  OBJECT  ELEMENTS;  RATE:  MAX;  DO  UNTIL
"ENOUGH"
   NT:> OK
   The Colonel suddenly saw the water in the Levshov's hands
start to turn opaque and opalescent.  In a couple of seconds
it definitely  started to  look like  milk, in  a couple  of
seconds more it reached the consistency of sour cream.
   AL:> ENOUGH
   NT:> OK
   Levshov turned  to the  Colonel once  again: "What  I  am
holding in my hands now is just an amorphous mass of cyborg-
bacteria, that  have no mechanical links with each other. To
impart a  structure and  rigidity to  such mass,  we need to
establish mechanical  links between  the bacteria.  For this
purpose I'm going to use the manipulator arms located on the
outer  surfaces   of  each  of  the  bacteria.  Figuratively
speaking, I'll ask them to join their "hands". Watch!"
   AL:> LINKS BETWEEN ELEMENTS: PLASTIC; PLIABILITY:4
   NT:> OK
   "What I  have done  now was  to  activate  the  so-called
"plastic links".  This means  that the  bacteria don't  hold
each other's  "hands" very  firmly -  if a  certain external
force limit  is exceeded, these links will break up, only to
be  immediately   re-established.   Simply   speaking,   the
mechanical properties  of this  mass are similar to those of
modeling clay.  You can probe it with your finger. Go ahead,
Colonel, don't be afraid!"
   The Colonel  poked his  finger at  the  mass  resting  in
Levshov's hand, and the finger left a deep imprint.
   - "Now"  - said  Levshov - "I'm going to model a plug out
of this  "clay". I'll  do this modeling manually, although I
could have  used for this purpose the resources of NanoTech,
such as  the capability  of the  bacteria to move themselves
around, and  the NanoTech  built-in CAD/CAM - Computer Aided
Design and  Manufacturing System  with graphic interface fed
into the  user's optic  nerve, with  the IRV  - Ideal Result
Visualization controlled  by the  user,  and  the  automatic
fitting of  the real  object to  the ideal  one. But in this
particular case,  doing it  by hand  would be  much simpler,
although it  may not  be so  spectacular. But  this  is  not
NanoTech Demo  yet, these  are still  preparations -  I just
need a  plug for  the sink.  Now we've  got something  which
looks like  a plug.  I am putting this plug on the bottom of
the sink,  and now  I see  that the  plug turned out to be a
little bigger than needed and its shape is rather irregular.
That is  why I  issue to  NanoTech a  command to  shrink the
object."
   AL:> SHRINKAGE; RATE:3; DO UNTIL "ENOUGH"
   NT:> OK
   To his  amazement, the Colonel saw that the plug began to
shrink rapidly and finally droped into the sink hole.
   AL:> ENOUGH
   NT:> OK
   - "You  see, Colonel,  the plug  is now in the sink hole,
but it won't stop the water yet, because its irregular shape
doesn't fully conform to the circular shape of the hole, and
there are  gaps between them. That's why I'm going to do two
things now:  I'll switch  from  the  plastic  link  mode  to
elastic link  mode, that  is,  I'll  change  its  mechanical
properties from  "clay" to  "rubber", and  then I'll issue a
command to expand."
   AL:>  LINKS BETWEEN ELEMENTS: ELASTIC; ELASTICITY: 5
   NT:> OK
   AL:> EXPANSION; RATE:3; DO UNTIL "ENOUGH"
   NT:> OK
   The plug began to grow, gradually filling the gaps, until
they were completely closed.
   AL:> ENOUGH
   NT:> OK
   - "Well, Colonel, now we have a plug. Of course one could
have worked  on it  a little  bit more  to give  it  a  more
presentable appearance,  but for our purposes it'll do as it
is. So,  let's proceed  with the  Demo  proper."  -  Levshov
turned on  the tap  and the  sink began filling with water -
"While we  wait for the water to fill the sink, I would like
to briefly  explain what you are going to see. Back in 1993,
when we  began our first experiments in manufacturing things
using NanoTech,  VCRs were  still  considered  a  luxury  in
Russia, and  that was  one of the reasons we decided to take
VCR as  an example. One of our comrades has nobly sacrificed
for science his own video recorder.
   By that  time, we  had already  developed a  program  for
copying any  object atom  by atom.  Physically, the  copying
process went  as  follows:  the  object  to  be  copied  was
submerged into a tank with water containing cyborg-bacteria,
and these  bacteria gradually  disassembled, one  might even
say dissolved,  the object  atom by  atom. That was a fairly
slow process which took, in the case of the VCR, about three
months. But  since, as a result of this process, the cyborg-
bacteria recorded  into their database the information about
where  each   atom  had   been  located,  this  process  was
reversible, that  is, a  command could  be  issued  for  the
cyborg-bacteria to  start  placing  proper  atoms  at  their
appropriate places,  and if  the water  in the  tank had the
atoms of  the necessary  elements dissolved  in  it  in  the
required quantities, that meant that after some time (longer
than three months, because now the bacteria also had to fish
for the required atoms and to transport them to the required
positions) the  object once  again would come into existence
out of   the  seeming nothingness.   Moreover, this process,
besides being  reversible, was  also reproducible - by using
the information  from their  database,  the  cyborg-bacteria
could reproduce  any  number  of  identical  copies  of  the
initial object  as long  as they  had a sufficient supply of
the necessary atoms dissolved in the water. By the way, from
that one  initial VCR  we finally  obtained three absolutely
identical (down  to every  scratch) VCRs, and all three were
working normally.  One must  note  though,  that  the  whole
process took  more than  a year.  In other  words,  we  have
created what  science-fiction writers  call a  "replicator",
but there  was no  practical use  for it,  because it worked
excruciatingly slow.
   So we  began to  look for  ways to  speed up the process.
The first  way was to refrain from the atom-by-atom assembly
in those  cases where  it is not really needed. For example,
the VCR  body -  do we  really need  to assemble  it atom by
atom, when  we could  just issue  a command  for the cyborg-
bacteria to link up, the same way I have just linked them up
into this  plug right  before your very eyes, specifying the
required mechanical  properties of  the  link.  The  surface
color and  reflectivity can  also be varied by arranging the
bacteria into  different configurations, so that light waves
of one  wavelength cancel  each other,  while the  waves  of
another length  reinforce each  other, giving  the object  a
certain color,  making it  light or dark. Another way was to
stop using  atoms of any chemical element other than carbon.
By changing  the atomic  lattice of carbon, one can simulate
the physical properties of  virtually any substance. By 1995
we have  managed to  write for the NanoTech system a program
that converts the data bases obtained in a "replicator" into
the databases  for things  to be  assembled out  of  cyborg-
bacteria and  atoms of  carbon. And  that is  what I want to
demonstrate to  you now  - our  VCR of 1995. And the sink is
already full of water - just in time!."
   Levshov turned  off the  tap. "Now,  Colonel, watch  very
closely."
   AL:> OBJECT: WHAT_I_AM_LOOKING_AT
   Levshov stared  fixedly at  the water  for  a  couple  of
seconds -  he had to allow some time for the cyborg-bacteria
to  measure   the  contraction   of  his   eye  muscles,  to
recalculate these contraction values into the coordinates of
the point  in space  at which  his stare  was fixed,  and to
contact the bacteria located at that point using an infrared
link.
   NT:> OBJECT  FOUND AND LOCKED ONTO, OBJECT BOUNDARIES SET
BY DEFAULT
   AL:> PROGRAM VCR_1995
   NT:> PROGRAM FOUND. PROCEED WITH EXECUTION?
   AL:> YES
   NT:> OK
   Initially, just  as it  had been  the first  time in  the
Levshov's hands,  the water started to cloud.  However, when
in a few seconds time it approached the consistency of milk,
the upper  layer of the water suddenly began to clear, while
at the  bottom of  the  sink  the  density  of  the  whitish
substance started  to grow  even faster,  and  it  gradually
began to  assume a  definite  shape.  It  was  several  more
seconds before  the Colonel  realized that  on the bottom of
the sink,  under a  layer of  slightly  cloudy  water  there
lay... The  Colonel could  have sworn  that it was a printed
circuit board,  were it  not absolutely white and colorless!
In the first second he thought that there were no components
on that  "circuit board", but soon he did notice a few small
parts, although  a second before he was absolutely sure that
there were  none. Then he finally saw white rectangles, that
looked more  like ghosts  of integrated circuits rather then
the  real  things,  to  materialize  on  the  board  out  of
coagulations of  turbid water  that were  running  over  the
circuit board  like ribbons of mist over a morning land. For
a brief  moment the  water in  the  sink  became  completely
transparent, and the Colonel could clearly see on the bottom
a perfectly real circuit board with lots of components, only
unnaturally white,  looking as if it were made of alabaster.
But the  circuit board stayed in this ghostly state for only
a fleeting  moment. What  happened next  was as  if somebody
turned on  a switch  - the  circuit board  suddenly took  on
color -  green substrate,  golden conductors, black cases of
integrated   circuits.    Now   the    circuit   board   was
indistinguishable from a real one.
   - "Well,  we did  it for  purely aesthetic   reasons."  -
Levshov commented  on this sudden transfiguration - "It does
not really affect the operation of the circuit."
   The Colonel did not respond. He stood staring at the sink
with his mouth agape with wonder, while the work in the sink
proceeded at  an astonishing  pace. Over  the circuit board,
the mechanical  part of  the VCR started to grow up. It grew
up like flowers grow in the films shot by the one-frame-per-
hour process,  where weeks  flash by  in mere  seconds.  One
second -  and it  sprouted levers  and  springs,  couple  of
seconds more  - and  a video  head cylinder burgeoned like a
huge flower-bud.  Couple of more seconds - and it all became
enwrapped into  a transparent  filmy case,  which grew  more
solid  and  opaque  with  every  passing  second,  until  it
completely obliterated the view of the components inside it.
One more  instant -  and the case suddenly turned from white
to black  with golden  trimming. Levshov took the VCR out of
water and put it on the table. The VCR was  steaming.
   - "We'll  have to  wait a  few more seconds to let it dry
up, and then you can check its operation - I saw a TV set in
your office." - said Levshov - "By the way, did you time it?
All of  this  should  have  taken    three  minutes  and  20
seconds."
   - "That  fast?" -  asked the  Colonel. He stepped forward
and touched the VCR. It was still warm to touch, although it
had already stopped steaming.
   - "That  slow." -  answered Levshov  - "Too  slow for our
purposes."
   - "What purposes?"
   - "I'll  explain it  later. And  now, let's  go  and  see
whether it works."

   2.7 All the things in the world.

   On returning  to the  office, Levshov hooked up the newly
made VCR to the TV set.
   - "Why  doesn't it  have  a  power  cord?"  -  asked  the
Colonel.
   - "We have introduced some changes into its design. It is
now powered  from a  built-in power  source. Have  you  ever
heard about cold nuclear fusion?"
   - "That's one of the questions I was supposed to ask you:
how did  you do it? Physicists throughout the world has been
puzzling over the cold fusion problem for years."
   - "We  don't know  it ourselves. I guess one might say we
did it  empirically. The  first versions  of cyborg-bacteria
operated on organic power sources, the way ordinary bacteria
do. One  of our  comrades was  experimenting  with  what  he
called  "nanotechnogonics"   -  in   simple  terms,  it  was
artificial selection  of  cyborg-bacteria.  He  artificially
increased the rate of mutations in some of the bacteria, and
was placing  them in  various strange  environments  to  see
which way the evolution would take in those environments. In
particular,   he was trying to make one of the strains adapt
to low levels of lighting, and he was putting them in darker
and darker  rooms. Most of those bacteria just died out, but
there was one strain that turned out to be capable of living
in complete  darkness. Thanks  to cold  fusion, as  we found
later. Subsequently,  we built  this function  into standard
cyborg-bacteria, but  we still  don't know  how and  why  it
works - I think we should let physicists figure it all out."
   - "But isn't the work with mutants hazardous?"
   - "Very  much so. We had one accident... Very gruesome...
I just  don't want to recall it. But those bacteria which we
have released now are perfectly safe. We have disabled their
mutations, but  if by  any chance a mutant were to come into
existence, it  would be immediately destroyed but its normal
fellow bacteria  before it  had time  to do any real damage.
Modifications in  the design of cyborg-bacteria of this kind
can only  occur on  purpose, by  commands received  from the
NanoTech Network...  However, let's  get back  to  the  VCR.
Please insert a cassette and press "play" button."
   The VCR worked perfectly.
   - "Had  I not  seen this  with my  very eyes"  - said the
Colonel -  "I would  have never  believed that  a VCR can be
sent over a water supply line. "
   - "Water  supply has  nothing to  do with  this.  I  only
needed water as an environment which makes it easier for the
cyborg-bacteria to  move around. In principle, we could have
used the cyborg-bacteria who live inside you or me, and take
the hydrogen  for nuclear  fusion from water vapors that are
always present in the atmosphere, but in that case the whole
process  would  have  taken  much  more  time.  And  as  for
"sending", I  hope you  realize that this particular VRC was
not sent  from anywhere.  It just  exists  in  the  NanoTech
Network as  a purely informational entity, as a data set and
a program,  which can  always be  "executed", and  it can be
executed any  number of  times, and  each time the result of
executing this  immaterial program  will be  a material VCR.
One could  say that  the NanoTech  Network is  the place  of
potential existence  of an  innumerable number  of VCRs,  as
well as lots of other things."
   - "What things?"
   - "In  principle, all kinds of things.  You just place an
already existing thing into a replicator, dissolve it there,
obtaining an  atom-by-atom database,  convert  this  initial
atom-by-atom database into a database for manufacturing that
thing out  of   cyborg-bacteria and  carbon atoms, and store
this final database in the NanoTech Network memory, which is
virtually  infinite,   since  it   grows  along   with   the
multiplication of   cybor-bacteria. And please note that the
whole process does not involve any resources beyond those of
the  NanoTech   System  itself,  since  the  system  already
includes a  program for  creating a replicator, and the data
processing and  storage are  performed  by  cyborg-bacteria.
After the  information about any particular thing is entered
into the  system, any  NanoTech System  user can  access the
program for  bringing a  copy of  that particular thing into
material  existence,   execute  the   program  and  use  the
resulting thing."
   - "What  other people  are NanoTech System users, besides
you?"
   - "There  are not  very many  active users at the moment,
but as soon as I issue the command to activate the system to
its full potential, each human being living on Earth will be
able to  use NanoTech.  I believe  that by  now the  cyborg-
bacteria have  already infiltrated  the bodies  of  all  the
people on our planet. These bacteria are so designed that as
soon as  they find themselves inside a living organism, they
automatically determine  whether this  organism is an animal
or a  human being,  and if  human,  they  establish  a  data
interface   between this  person's nervous  system  and  the
NanoTech Network,  and automatically assign to this person a
NanoTech Network User's ID number."
   - "And  how are  you planning to collect payments for the
use of  this network?  And,  especially,  who  is  going  to
benefit from  these payments?  I hope you have not forgotten
that these  bacteria were  stolen,  and  they  are  actually
Government's property?" - asked the Colonel.
   - "There'll  be no  payments.  I  mean,  no  payments  in
money."
   - "But  you've been  working on these bacteria for a long
time, and  probably expected  to somehow  benefit from  your
efforts?"
   - "But I'll benefit. And you'll benefit. And the whole of
the society  shall benefit.  Imagine that  somebody  invents
something new  -  and  somebody  will  always  be  inventing
something, a thinking human being just cannot stop inventing
- and  thanks  to  NanoTech  this  person's  invention  will
immediately  become  accessible  to  all  people  on  Earth.
Including me. And this will recompense my efforts."
   - "I  think I'm  missing something." - said the Colonel -
"Well, suppose  NanoTech will  give you things for free. All
kinds of things. Can it create clothes?"
   - "Easily."
   - "And an automobile?"
   - "No sweat."
   - "And a house?"
   - "As easy as anything else."
   - "OK,  I can  see that you won't have to pay electricity
bills...' -  the Colonel  nodded  towards  the  VCR  running
without a power cord.
   - "Neither  shall I  have to  pay for  gasoline." - added
Levshov -  "The automobile  will draw  its power  from  cold
fusion."
   - "Let's  assume that  it is  indeed so."  - conceded the
Colonel -  "But you  will still  need something to eat! That
means that  you still  need money!  For  food,  if  not  for
anything else!"
   Levshov gave one more of his inscrutable smiles: "And how
do you  know that one really needs to eat? Have you recently
tried not to eat?"
   - "What  do you  mean  by  that?"  -  asked  the  Colonel
suspiciously. The  world he  knew and  understood started to
develop a  flaw in  its structure. A feeling started to well
up from the depth of his soul, a feeling as if he were being
dragged to the brink of an abyss he dared not to look into.
   - "The  fact is that cyborg-bacteria are so designed that
whenever they  find themselves  inside a  human  body,  they
automatically start  to monitor  the levels  of nutrients in
the blood,  and as  soon as  these become  dangerously  low,
bacteria automatically activate the genes that produce these
nutrients, and  immediately discharge the produced nutrients
into the bloodstream."
   For a  few seconds  the Colonel  sat stunned  and silent.
Finally, he  said in  very low voice: "So, you mean that ...
Do you  want to  say that  no  one  needs  to  eat  anything
anymore?"
   - "Actualy,  I would  not recommend this.  We still don't
know the  long-term effects of such fasting on the digestive
tract. But  there might  be some  difficult situations where
such direct  replenishment of  nutrients in  the bloodstream
could actually  mean the  difference between life and death.
Try to  look up  the latest  statistics on  the  third-world
countries. I'm sure that over the last month or so they have
not reported a single death caused by starvation."
   - "So,  one still needs to buy food for oneself?" - asked
the Colonel, his spirits revived.
   - "As  a matter  of fact,  one needs  not. The nucleus of
each cyborg-bacteria  cell contains  a library of genes each
of which  can be selectively activated by a command from the
NanoTech Network.  Instead of  that mass  of white  material
that you  just saw during the demo, I could easily produce a
piece of  meat or  yolk. The  standard gene library includes
the most  popular staple foods, but if you would like to eat
something special  and are  willing to  wait a  little,  the
cyborg-bacteria have  the capability  to assemble  new genes
from individual  nucleotides using  "blueprints" -  that is,
the  information   obtained  from   the   NanoTech   Network
databases. By  the way,  Colonel, it's  high time  to have a
supper. How  about some  caviar? If you allow me to use your
sink once again..."
   - "That's  it! The  sink! The  waterworks!" - the Colonel
once again regained his spirits, which had begun to flag for
a moment  - "I  should have  remembered about  it all along!
You'll still have to pay for water supply! That clinches it!
You'll never  be able  to  do  without  money!  Money  is  a
material manifestation  of   the relationships  that  cement
society, and  you cannot  live in a society and be free from
it!"
   - "Oh,  Colonel, what  a muddle of ideas you have in your
head! Capitalism  jumbled together  with communism... As for
the waterworks, let me explain it to you once again. Massive
amounts of water are only used to facilitate the movement of
cyborg-bacteria, but,  in principle, they are not absolutely
necessary  for   manufacturing  things  using  the  NanoTech
Network. Water  is needed  for sustaining  the life  of  the
human being  though, but there is always a sufficient amount
of water  vapor in  the air.  Even now, in the memory of the
Nanotech Network  are stored a number of simple devices that
allow to  condense   a glass  of water  out of  the air in a
matter of  a few minutes. And don't forget about clouds that
are almost always present in the sky. They consist of minute
water droplets,  that also contain cyborg-bacteria. You only
need to  give them  a command  to merge,  and the cloud will
produce rain."
   - "You want to say that you can even control weather?"
   - "To  a certain extent, yes. At least, I can always pour
a glass of water out of a cloud."
   - "OK, let's assume that you can always get yourself some
water for  free. But  your house - even if we assume that it
will be  completely built  by NanoTech  and won't cost you a
penny -  it will  still be  standing on  land, and a plot of
land costs  money, and  that means  that you  still won't be
able to build it, if you don't have any money!"
   - "Tell me Colonel, have you ever camped out? Ever put up
a tent in a forest?"
   - "Suppose I did."
   - "You  didn't pay any money for the land you put up your
tent on, did you?"
   - "But  I put  up the  tent for  one night  only, while a
house will stand there permanently!"
   - "Who  said  that  a  house  must  stand  in  one  place
permanently?"
   - "What  on earth  do you  mean by  that?"  -  asked  the
Colonel. The  feeling that  he had  been dragged to the very
brink of  an abyss  and was being forced to look down there,
at another,  frighteningly alien  world, that feeling became
almost unbearable.
   - "Our  team of  comrades have  formulated for  ourselves
three rules  of   'good'  design  practices  that  are  most
consistent with the NanoTech System capabilities. The first,
and the  most important  rule is that things must be what we
call 'living'."
   The Colonel  opened  his  mouth  to  ask  something,  but
Levshov had anticipated his question: "Let me explain what I
mean. Take for example that very first VCR that we produced,
the one that we assembled in the replicator. That one was an
absolutely 'dead'  thing. 'Dead'  not in  the sense  that it
didn't work  - it  actually worked perfectly - but it didn't
hold a single living cyborg-bacteria, and that meant that it
could not  rebuild itself,  couldn't change  its own design,
couldn't repair  itself and so forth. It was a very ordinary
thing, one  of those  things that we usually find all around
us, the  only difference  being that  it had  not been built
with machine  tools  at  a  factory,  but  rather  had  been
assembled by  cyborg-bacteria in  a replicator. That was the
only difference,  and the  difference   lay not in the thing
itself, but  in its  earlier history,  which was  absolutely
immaterial from the standpoint of its consumer qualities.
   Now, let's  have a  look at  the VCR  which I  have  just
produced before  your very eyes, the 1995 model. This one is
already what  we call  a  'semi-live'  product.  It  already
incorporates quite  a lot  of living  cyborg-bacteria.  They
provide power to this thing, they can even re-grow the video
heads, if  they get  worn-out. However,  this  product  also
contains a  lot of  'dead' parts, that, built by the cyborg-
bacteria though  they were,  don't  contain  cyborg-bacteria
themselves. And  this means  that this  thing will  never be
able to  instantaneously disappear, to decompose itself into
individual cyborg-bacteria that could once again  disperse."
   - "Why  would they need to do this?" - asked the Colonel,
baffled.
   - "Don't  you see it? As things stand now,  you'll finish
watching your  video cassette, switch off the VCR, and it'll
just be  left standing  in the  corner  gathering  dust  and
occupying space  to absolutely  no purpose,  until you  once
again decide to watch something. How much more convenient it
would have  been if,  for the  time between  the two viewing
sessions, it  had just disappeared, with the cyborg-bacteria
that had  been its  building blocks  re-assembling into some
other thing,  the one  that you need at that specific moment
in time.  They could have become a part of a plate, a spoon,
a toothbrush,  a razor,  a coat,  a shoe, a chair for you to
sit on,  anything that  you actually  need  at  the  current
moment in  time. And they would have left that thing as soon
as the need for that thing is no longer felt, and they would
have gone into a new thing, the one you are going to need at
the next moment in time.
   Look at  this empty  chair near  me. Why  does it have to
stand here,  while nobody is sitting on it? And nevertheless
it does  stand here  and occupies space. In a perfect world,
it should  have only  appeared here  if a  third person came
into this  room. And  this applies to the majority of things
around us  - we  only use  them one  percent of the time, at
best. But  they occupy  space in  our houses  the whole  one
hundred percent  of the  time. Dead things demand that their
owner dust  them, maintain  them in  proper  condition,  and
always take  them with  him every  time he  moves house. Oh,
those moves! There seems to be nothing so terrible as moving
house, and this terror can chain a man to one and only place
of living  forever. Dead things turn their owners into their
slaves!
   And now  imagine a  house built  in the  true  spirit  of
NanoTech. At  any given  moment in  time, only  a few things
exist in it physically. Actually, only those things that you
need at  that particular moment. And at the same time, there
exist in it an infinite number of things - all the things in
the world  that have  been entered into the NanoTech Network
database are potentially present in that house, since any of
them at  any moment  can be brought out of non-existence and
be given a material form. And the NanoTech-type house itself
, if you live in it alone, contains only one room, since you
cannot simultaneously  be in  more than one room. And at the
same time,  potentially, it  contains an  infinite number of
rooms, since  that one and only room can indefinitely change
its appearance  and size,  filling itself  with all kinds of
things, effectively  transforming itself  into  a  different
room, into  an infinite  number of rooms. And as soon as you
leave your  house, it disappears or transforms, for example,
into your  car, or  into a  house for  another man  who  was
passing by  and decided that it would be a good idea to live
in that  place for  a day.  And if  you, during  your outing
suddenly have  a wish  to find  yourself back  at home, your
house will  immediately reappear  in front  of you  wherever
you are."
   - "Immediately?  I find that hard to believe." - said the
Colonel -  "It took you almost four minutes to grow only one
VCR."
   - "Let  me repeat it once again - this VCR is a semi-live
thing. It grows so slowly only because in this case we force
NanoTech into  reproducing a  thing which was designed to be
manufactured  using   an  absolutely   different  method  of
production,  that   is,  the   serial   industrial   machine
production method characteristic of capitalism. In this case
we abuse  NanoTech by making it operate in a manner which is
completely inconsistent with its character. I have done this
demonstration  on  purpose,  so  as  to  show  you  that  in
principle NanoTech can even cope with such difficult task as
an almost perfect reproduction of things characteristic of a
historically antecedent  method of  production. It  is worth
noting here  that machine production cannot always cope with
the task  of reproducing,  by its own means, things that are
characteristic of  an antecedent  era -  the era  of  master
craftsmen working manually, the era of feudalism.
   And now  I'm going to give you a demonstration of a video
system designed  in the  true style of NanoTech. Please note
the difference  in the  time required  for its  manufacture.
This time  I won't  need much material, so I'll just use the
bacteria that live inside my body."
   Levshov put  his  hands  on  the  table,  palms  up,  and
suddenly  the   palms  started  to  cover  with  a  sort  of
perspiration, to  glisten with  little beads  that began  to
quickly grow  and turn  whitish. The beads began to roll off
onto the  table, and  in a  second they merged into a single
thin white  sheet. Half  a second  later the  sheet suddenly
changed its color to deep black.
   - "So  it's ready  now. Two  and a  half seconds." - said
Levshov.
   - "What's ready?" - asked the Colonel.
   - "The video system is ready. Please, order the movie you
want to watch."
   Only then the Colonel noticed that the sheet lying on the
table was  no longer  black, but was glowing as if it were a
computer screen,  and on  that screen a list of movie titles
was slowly scrolling.
   -  "We   don't  have   a  very  wide  selection  yet."  -
apologized Levshov  - "as  of now,  only a  few hundreds  of
movies have  been stored in the NanoTech Network memory, but
we believe that as soon as the Network becomes accessible to
the  general   public,  the  users    will  transfer  to  it
everything that is now available on video cassettes... Don't
be shy,  Colonel, choose a film title and touch it with your
finger!"
   The Colonel  warily poked  at the  title of  his favorite
movie, the  list  of  titles  immediately  cleared  off  the
screen, and  instead the  Colonel  saw  the  familiar  movie
characters, in full color and motion.
   - "I  just can't  understand where  the sound  is  coming
from." - said the Colonel after a few seconds of viewing.
   - "The  film soundtrack  is fed directly to your auditory
nerve, by-passing   the  phase of  its  transformation  into
sound waves,  which makes for the high quality of the sound,
because there  are no  intermediaries, no loudspeakers which
usually introduce  sound distortion. Generally speaking, the
picture could  also be  fed directly to the optic nerve, and
this would  be more  consistent with  the Third Principle of
good  design  in  the  style  of  the  NanoTech.  The  Third
Principle says: always use only direct interface between the
human nerve  system and  the NanoTech  Network, without  any
intermediaries like human body's sense organs or muscles. In
practical terms this means that if, for example, we design a
automobile for  the NanoTech, it should not have a dashboard
- all  the necessary information about the status of the car
systems should  be fed  into the driver's optic nerve, to be
superimposed on his actual field of vision. Also, such a car
should not have a steering wheel or pedals - mental commands
from the driver should be routed directly to the car's final
controls, without  any mechanical  intermediaries. All  this
allows to  radically simplify  the design, and consequently,
to considerably reduce the time needed to "grow" a car.
   - "You  said it  was the Third Principle. And what is the
Second one?" - asked the Colonel.
   - "The  Second Principle  of good  NanoTech-style  design
says: for  a power  source of  the device  you are designing
always use  the internal  power of  the cyborg-bacteria, and
the power  should always  be generated  at the same location
where it is to be consumed. This allows to eliminate all the
contraptions for  transferring power  within the device. For
example,  our   semi-live  VCR   complies  with  the  Second
Principle only in part: the power is indeed generated inside
it  by   cyborg-bacteria,  but  after  that  it  has  to  be
transferred to  'non-live' components,  such  as  electrical
motors, integrated circuits, and so on. That's why it has so
many extra wires, levers and shafts serving the only purpose
of transferring  electrical and  mechanical energy  from one
location to  another. From  the  standpoint  of  the  Second
Principle, a much better design is the video system that you
can now  see on  the table."  - Levshov  nodded towards  the
glowing sheet,  where the scenes from the Colonel's favorite
movie still  continued to  unfold. -  "Each luminous  dot on
this surface  is a cyborg-bacteria that itself generates the
power for  its own  glow.  That  means  that  the  power  is
consumed at  the same  spot where  it is  generated. This is
only possible in a completely 'live' product."
   - "So, if I understand you correctly," - said the Colonel
musingly -  "an automobile  built  in  compliance  with  the
NanoTech principles  doesn't  have any transmission, and the
function  of   the  engine   is  performed   by  the  wheels
themselves?"
   - "You  got the  idea absolutely right. And to completely
visualize a  NanoTech-style car,  please  remember  that  it
always has  just as  many seats as it has passengers and its
trunk is  never larger  than the  luggage it carries. And if
you take into account the fact that it just doesn't make any
sense to  transport things  that can always be grown at your
destination, it means that usually such car doesn't have any
trunk at all."
   - "And  all of  this, all  this things, cars, houses, all
this will  immediately become available to every human being
on Earth  as soon  as you  give a  command to  activate  the
system?" - asked the Colonel in a slightly trembling voice.
   - "In principle, yes, although it will take some time for
the people  to learn  to use  the system.  But it's not very
difficult, anyway. We have recently developed a graphic user
interface, where  the signals are fed directly to the user's
optic nerve which results in the user seeing an illusory, or
a "virtual", to use the current buzzword, space, or rather a
"virtual store"  filled with  all kinds  of things, where he
can walk  around and  choose whatever he or she needs. After
that it's  just a matter of the user reaching for the chosen
thing and  grabbing it  in virtual  space.  The  thing  will
immediately materialize..."
   - "That's not what I was asking about." - interrupted the
Colonel, impatience  showing in  his voice. He felt that the
abyss   had already  opened up  under his  feet, and  he was
falling, falling,  falling... -  "It's money.  The money  in
your virtual  shop - is it also virtual or is it real, after
all?"
   - "You  know Colonel,  I just  can't imagine  what  other
explanations do  you need. I've been speaking about this for
an hour  now, and  you still  don't seem  to understand that
there'll be no money at all. Think for yourself: who and for
what purpose may need any money at all, when any one can get
out of NanoTech any thing he or she may need, absolutely for
free? Money  will take  its rightful  place in museums as an
evidence of a past-and-gone era in the history of mankind."
   In despair,  the Colonel  squeezed his  head between  his
hands and fell silent. The world around him was coming down.
The Colonel  had spent  all his  life to  make a  career for
himself, to  reach the  position which  allowed him, back in
the days  of the total chaos of late 1991, to grab hold of a
certain amount  of the  Party's money, to transfer it abroad
and stash  it away  in a Swiss bank account.  This money was
supposed to  provide for  a comfortable existence in his old
age and  a secure  future for  his heirs.  All the terror he
had to  go through  to do  that, all  the nerves  and energy
spent! And,  as it  turns out,  everything was in vain?! The
monstrous unfairness  of this  all was searing the Colonel's
soul. His brain was in hectic search for a rebuttal.
   - "There  can be  no market without money, and the market
is the  only force that can fine-tune the required amount of
production!"  -   spluttered  the  Colonel  and  immediately
realized the stupidity of his remark.
   - "Why  would you  need  to  additionally  fine-tune  the
production when everybody produces exactly what he needs, at
the exact  moment  when  he  needs  it,  and  in  the  exact
quantities he  needs?" -  Levshov seemed  surprised  -  "The
market forces  are only  needed  to  adjust  the  amount  of
production at  that phase  in the development of  productive
forces where  things have  to be  produced before  they  are
actually needed."
   - "Without  money there'll be no incentive for increasing
the efficiency of labor!" - persisted the Colonel.
   - "Whose  labor?" - asked Levshov, surprised - "The labor
of cyborg-bacteria?  Since it's them who'll be doing all the
work."
   - "What  I mean  is creative work. There'll still have to
be   somebody who'll  be inventing  new things for NanoTech,
otherwise the progress will stop. Does it make any sense for
an inventor  to work, if his invention won't in the end give
him any advantage over the rest of the people?"
   - "You  know, Colonel, I think you are seriously mistaken
about the  motives behind  creative work of an inventor. The
desire to  create is  a need  deeply rooted  in every  human
being. This  need exists  not only  because in satisfying it
one may  gain some  advantages for oneself, but also because
of the  very fact that a human being has a brain which needs
a workout  from time  to time,  just as  muscles do. Just as
you'll never  be able  to sit  in an  unchanging posture for
hours - you'll finally need to stretch your legs - your mind
also needs  stretching from time to time. The brain wants to
work just  because it  exists, however,  under the  existing
method of  production, only  a chosen  few  can  afford  the
luxury of  brain-streching, while  most of  the other people
have to  earn their  living by doing purely mechanical mind-
numbing jobs.  Under capitalism  only a  few lucky  ones can
afford to do some creative work, but even they are forced to
sell their  creative products  in order  to be  able to  buy
their freedom  from mechanical  work. In  contrast to  this,
NanoTech opens  up the possibility of doing creative work to
every person  on  Earth,  and  also  allows  any  person  to
immediately use the creative products of any other person. I
think that  as a  result of  this we  are  going  to  see  a
creative  progress   like  we   could  never  imagine  under
capitalism."
   The Colonel  would not  give up:  "I just  don't want  to
listen to  all this  babble about  mind-stretching, need for
creativity,  and   the  like   bullshit.  The  people  won't
understand your  system and  won't accept  it,  because  the
motive force  behind the  progress of  the  human  race  has
always  been   and  forever  will  be  the  desire  of  each
individual to  get ahead  of his  neighbor, to become richer
then his  neighbor, more  powerful  than  his  neighbor,  to
become famous  and make his neighbor green with envy, to buy
things which  only you  can buy and never your neighbor. You
want to  destroy all this, to let everybody have anything he
wants, but  the people  will never  accept such  a state  of
affairs where  nobody can  envy  anyone.  If  this  happens,
nobody would  want to  live at  all, because  there would be
nothing to  live for!  Imagine a typical everyday situation:
one guy,  let's call  him Kolya, strolls down the street and
meets his  friend, let's  call him  Vasya, and  says to him:
'Come and visit my place, I want to show you something. Show
what? Just come and you'll see.' And it turns out that Kolya
has, for  example, a  luxury model  VCR, a genuine Panasonic
from Japan,  and Vasya does not have anything like that! And
Kolya also  has video  cassettes, direct  from US,  with the
latest Hollywood   blockbusters, and Vasya still has none of
these! And  that's what makes Kolya happy! And that's why he
needs a  VCR and  cassettes! He  doesn't really  need  these
idiotic blockbusters!  He needs  the satisfaction of knowing
that he  is superior to Vasya! But if Vasya were to have the
same VCR, and the same movies, why would Kolya need a VCR at
all, if  this VCR  doesn't help  him to  become superior  to
Vasya? Why  would he  torture himself watching these idiotic
movies?   And, on  the other  hand, why  would Vasya want to
have a  VCR, when  Kolya, Petya,  whoever, can at any moment
obtain the  same VCR  for themselves?  You have  invented an
absolutely useless  thing, Mister  Levshov. The people won't
understand you."
   - "People? What do you know about people, Colonel? Do you
know  how   many  people   on  planet  Earth  are  starving?
Physically starving,  and can  actually die  of  starvation.
NanoTech can feed them and save them from death. Do you know
how many  illiterate  people  are  there  on  Earth?  Really
illiterate people,  people who  cannot read,  people who are
denied all  the wonderful treasures of knowledge accumulated
by our  civilization? NanoTech  can open  up to  them  these
treasures. And  a VCR,  as a  means of  obtaining knowledge,
could be  very helpful  in doing  this. But  when the age of
NanoTech arrives,  neither a  VCR, nor  any other thing will
ever be  the means of  establishing Kolya's superiority over
Vasya, or  Vasya's over  Kolya. The  time of  apish games is
over. And, I hope, forever."
   - "What  do you mean by apish games? Explain yourself!" -
said the Colonel through clenched teeth.
   - "You  see, Colonel, human beings did descend from apes.
This is  a  firmly  established  scientific  fact,  whatever
various naysayers  may say.  Therefore,  every  human  being
carries in  his genes a burden inherited from the past - the
instincts  of  his  wild  ancestors.  The  apes  are  tribal
animals, and  each tribe  has its  own hierarchy: it has its
chief and  its outcasts,  and it  has all  the rungs  of the
hierarchical ladder  between them, and each ape craves for a
higher rung  on  that  ladder.  That's  the  source  of  the
people's craving for  power, glory, recognition, money, in a
word, for  getting ahead  of one's  neighbor. All the social
systems of the past used this craving as a driving force for
their own development. The capitalistic system is especially
outstanding in  this respect  - it's not just an apish game,
it's a whole apish Olympics, which very efficiently exploits
all the  instincts that  humans inherited from beasts of the
wild. But human nature is not confined to bestial instincts,
human beings  have one  thing which  beast lack. Humans have
reason. Reason  can overcome  instincts. Reason  is the only
chance of  freeing man  from the  tyranny of  instincts. But
this chance  cannot  materialize  while  the  social  system
itself makes  people  to  take  part  in  the  apish  games.
NanoTech gives  us a  chance to  stop this  protracted apish
Olympics, to  stop living  as apes  live, and  at long  last
start living  as human  beings should live, that is, live by
reason, not by instinct."
   - "I can't understand you, Mr. Levshov. You seem to be an
intelligent man, an outstanding inventor, but your reasoning
is ridiculously  naïve. Do you really believe you can go and
change all  the social structure just like this? You want to
carry out a world revolution which will make everybody equal
overnight.   To make  the powers  that be  as  powerless  as
anyone. How can you seriously hope that those who have power
and  money,   and  high  social  status,  let  go  of  their
privileged positions?  What a  political naiveness!  And you
still hope  that we  shall help  you to  get time  on TV? Of
course I'll  report your  request to the higher authorities,
but it's a foregone conclusion that nobody will give you any
time on  the air.  Moreover, you'll  go to jail for stealing
governmental property,  disclosure of military secrets, and,
as it  has just turned out, also for an attempt to overthrow
the existing  social, political  and economic  system of the
Russian Federation!"
   - "First of all, Colonel, it's very difficult to imprison
me. Physically impossible..."
   - "Why so?" - asked the Colonel.
   Without saying  a word,  Levshov picked up from the table
the "video  system" which  was still  working. He held it at
the edge  and it hung down like a piece of soft cloth. For a
fraction of  a second,  a moving picture could still be seen
on  its   rumpled  surface,   but  suddenly   that   picture
disappeared to be replaced with a checked pattern... like on
a handkerchief.  It took  the Colonel  one  more  second  to
realize that what Levshov was holding in his hand was indeed
a handkerchief. Levshov used the handkerchief to loudly blow
his nose and then threw the handkerchief on the floor, where
it sort  of dissolved  into nothingness before the Colonel's
very eyes,  and then  said: "Well,  just try to imprison me,
and then you'll understand why it's impossible. That was the
first thing  I wanted  to say.  Now, the  second:  nobody is
going to  take away  from the  ruling circles of the Russian
Federation their  villas,  Mercedes-Benz  cars,  Swiss  bank
accounts, portfolios  - all their playthings and baubles. If
they still  want to  play their  apish games - let them play
themselves crazy.  The only  thing that NanoTech is going to
take  away   from  them   are  the  people  of  the  Russian
Federation. But  from  the  very  moment  when  the  Russian
Federation came  into existence  as an  independent state in
1991, the  people were  only a  burden to  them.  They  have
brought the industry and agriculture in this country to ruin
- and  thus deprived  the people  of any  means to  fend for
themselves, so  now the  people have to be fed "from above".
That means  the new  rulers have to share their petrodollars
with the  people, but  they don't  want  to,  they  are  too
greedy. And  although they  starve the  pensioners to  death
with low  pensions, and  although they  have  destroyed  the
public health system, and reduced the standards of living to
such a  low level  that the birth rate has dropped almost to
zero, and  although they  are waging   senseless  wars where
they kill off young men, the surplus population has not been
sufficiently reduced  (from their standpoint), and there are
still more  people around  than they  know what  to do with.
NanoTech is  going to  rid the  government of this burden by
taking upon  itself the  responsibility for  maintaining the
people, so  the government should actually be thankful to us
for this.  And the  only thing  we want  in return  for this
service, is  that government  forever forget that the people
exist,  and  never  again  bother  the  people  with  taxes,
elections and army drafts."
   - "So,  Mr.Levshov, you  are going  to  let  people  live
without a government. Then will you be so kind as to explain
how are  you going  to maintain  law  and  order  among  the
people? By  the way,  could one use NanoTech to produce arms
and drugs?"
   - "Theoretically,  it is  possible. But  we are  going to
close access  to programs for manufacturing dangerous things
like that  to ordinary  users of  the NanoTech Network. Only
the System Administrators of the Network will have access to
arms, just  in case  somebody does  make an  attempt to  use
NanoTech to  harm people  and  we  have  to  fight  such  an
offender."
   - "Well.  That's great.  That's terrific. That means that
in your  brave new reasonable world everybody will be equal,
but some  will be more equal than others. Marvelous." - said
the  Colonel.   The  world  which  had  all  but  completely
collapsed around  him, began  to gradually  restore  itself.
There was  not going  to be  a uniform  mass of  people with
equal rights after all. Everybody would once again stratify.
There might not be money any more, but there would certainly
be levels  of access  to information.  The higher you are in
the social  hierarchy, the  wider the access. And of course,
they would  need a  police. Everybody  needs a  police.  But
still it was sad that there would be no money  - he spent so
much nerves  on it. The Colonel's spirits slightly uplifted.
The system  based on the apish striving of everyone to stand
above everybody else was unshakable and eternal and it would
live as  long as  human beings  live. And  that was the only
system that  the Colonel  believed in.  Intellectuals  might
invent capitalism,  communism and all kinds of other "isms",
but in  reality what  had always existed and would exist was
only one  system, The  System, and  it was  only this System
that the  Colonel had  served and  would ever serve, because
only within  this System  the Colonel was worth something in
his own  eyes. The  idea behind  The System  was  primevally
simple,  and   it  was  exactly  from  this  simplicity  and
primitivity that  it drew its unshakable and eternal nature.
The idea  behind The System was the struggle for power. This
struggle  could   be  waged   by  all  kinds  of  means:  by
accumulation of  money, by  political games  and  by passing
laws, by  palace intrigues,  or, as a last resort, simply by
bludgeoning   the competitor.  It was  not  the  means  that
mattered. What  mattered was  the final  objective, and  the
final objective  was power.  This  was  part  of  the  human
nature, and therefore, it could not be uprooted...
   The Colonel's reverie was interrupted by Levshov's voice:
"I know  what you  are  thinking  about,  Colonel.  You  are
thinking about  The System."  The Colonel started and wanted
to say  something, but  Levshov  anticipated  his  question:
"Don't  worry,  I'm  not  eavesdropping  on  your  thoughts,
although,  in   principle,  NanoTech   does  have   such   a
capability.  Your  thoughts  are  easy  to  guess.  You  are
thinking that  the new  world opened up by the NanoTech will
be the  same as  the old  one, that  the  apish  games  will
continue, that  nobody as  yet has managed to suppress apish
instincts in humans, neither the church in a thousand years,
nor the  communists in  the seventy years of their rule. But
you've got  to keep  in mind  one thing: up till now a human
being who  might have wanted to leave The System didn't have
a chance  to survive  outside it - he would have simply died
of cold and starvation. For the first time in the history of
mankind, NanoTech  gives us  this chance. For the first time
in history,  one won't  need to  snap the  food out  of  the
hands of  one's neighbor  so as not to be hungry. Will we be
able to use this chance to get from under The System, and to
conquer at  last our  animal instincts?  If we  don't, we'll
turn the new world into a semblance of the old one, but even
more terrible,  where the  power of one group of people over
the  others   will  be  infinitely  amplified  by  the  new,
previously unheard  of means  of  NanoTech. The loss of this
historic chance  will result  in an unimaginable tragedy for
the mankind."
   - "But  if you  are not  certain that you'll succeed, why
did you have to start all this in the first place?"
   - "I  just had no choice. I know what is happening now in
nanotechnological  labs   all  around  the  world.  Tens  of
thousands of  scientists  are  working  on  creating  a  new
terrible weapon of enslaving man by man, a weapon which will
give the  rulers a  complete and  absolute control  not only
over the  actions, but  also  over  the  very  thoughts  and
feelings of  people, a  control none  of the  tyrants of the
past could  even dream  of. The  last  chance  to  stop  the
impending catastrophe  is to  put NanoTech into the hands of
the people,  and hope  that in  the long run the reason will
prevail over  the dark instincts. There is no other way out.
Whatever happens,  it won't  be worse than what is now being
prepared in  secret labs.  And there  still is  a chance  of
creating a  society ruled  by Reason,  Freedom and Equality.
It's a small chance, but it does exist."

   2.8. An hour later, in an office one story up.

   The video  recording of  the interrogation  ended and the
Colonel switched  the VCR  off. The  General was  silent for
half a  minute and  finally said:  "Yea, this son-of-a-bitch
has us  up against the wall... We know next to nothing about
his real capabilities, and he uses this to put pressure upon
us. And  what's most  frustrating,  we  just  can't  quietly
finish him  off, because  we don't  know how  his  "Team  of
Comrades" will  react in  that case.  They are all at large,
and probably all of them have access to NanoTech."
   - "Do we know who they are?" - asked the Colonel.
   - "The  members of   his  laboratory staff  who, together
with Levshov,  refused  to  be  transferred  to  our  secret
facility. We  have complete  files on  them -  their  names,
pictures, home  addresses. The  only thing  we don't have is
their present  location. Half  a year  ago these people, all
twelve of them, disappeared without a trace. Nobody saw them
afterwards. But  he must  be  keeping  in  touch  with  them
through this network of his. And they must have instructions
telling them what they are supposed to do if he gets killed.
We need  him alive. We've got to get out of him the password
for the  NanoTech System Administrator. The future of Russia
as a great power hinges on this now."
   - "What  about   giving him  a shot  of truth  serum?"  -
suggested the Colonel.
   - "Won't  work. I talked with our experts. Everybody says
that whatever we inject him with, the cyborg-bacteria in his
blood stream  can decompose the substance and  get it out of
his system  in a fraction of a second, before it has time to
produce any  effect. And if they can, they sure as hell will
do it.  I assume  he had done his homework before he came to
us. This  option is  out of question. In this case we've got
to find a more subtle approach. Could you run once again the
end of the interrogation?"
   The screen once again showed Levshov and the Colonel.
   The Colonel:  "Levshov, I  hope you  realize that we just
can't let  you walk  away now,  and you'll have to spend the
night here, in the lockup ward."
   Levshov: "Colonel,  I agree  to spend  the night  in  the
lockup, but  I want  you to  clearly  understand  that  it's
purely a goodwill gesture on my part. I reserve the right to
leave the  lockup at  any moment. This is to give you notice
that I  have the  capability to  do so, and that you are not
going to have any chance to stop me."
   "What a  rascal!" -  said General,  his eyes glued to the
screen.
   "Comrade General, what about a copy of this cassette? Are
we still  going to  hand it over to that American or not?" -
asked the Colonel.
   - "We  have to. If today we try to withhold  the cassette
from their  liaison officer  with special  powers,  tomorrow
they'll know  about this  at CIA  - I am pretty sure that we
have  a  CIA  mole  in  our  directorate.  Then  we'll  have
diplomatic notes - you know, unwillingness to cooperate, and
all that. And of course, we will be the guilty party. Better
turn the  cassette in.  But there is one thing I want you to
do..." -  the General  suddenly lowered his voice - "Arrange
for me  a visit  to Levshov's  cell tonight.  But do  it  in
secret. Nobody  else should  know about  this. I'm  going to
have a man-to-man talk with him..."

   2.9 At the same time in the lockup ward.

   Levshov could  not get to sleep. Or rather he could have,
if he had chosen to use the services of the NanoTech. But he
did not  want to.  His thoughts  were focused  on that  gray
March day of 1983...

   2.10 March  1983, Kremlin,  Moscow.  The  office  of  the
General Secretary  of the  Communist  Party  of  the  Soviet
Union.

   "...Thus,  Karl  Marx  was  absolutely  correct  when  he
predicted that  capitalism would be superseded by communism.
He was also absolutely correct in believing that this change
would  come   about  as  a  result  of  the  development  of
productive forces.  He was  in error  only about  one thing,
that is,  at what level of the productive forces development
this change was to occur. Back in the nineteenth  century he
believed that  the mankind  had already  reached  the  level
where the capitalism could be superseded  by communism. This
error in  judgment was caused by a very human weakness - the
author of  the theory  was too  eager to  see  it  put  into
practice. But  this error resulted in his violating history,
in his  trying to  force upon  the mankind  a kind of social
system for which it was not yet mature enough."
   - "Well,  well, young  man..." -  said General  Secretary
Andropov  and   smiled  slyly,  smiled  to  the  extent  the
continuous ache in his kidneys allowed him to - "So, in your
opinion, Marx was not right, after all?"
   Levshov stopped short and fell into a frightened silence.
Finding fault  with Marx's  opinions in the Soviet Union was
fraught with a lot of trouble.
   - "That's  OK." -  said  the  General  Secretary,  giving
Levshov a  wink - "you can discuss things like that with me,
but I don't recommend that you do it with the others."
   Levshov recognized  the quotation - a line from a popular
Soviet spy TV series - and smiled back.
   - "So  you say  that it  was a  violation of  history?" -
asked the  General Secretary.  His face  grew  serious  once
again and  turned into  a mask of stone - "But imagine for a
moment that  the Great  October Revolution  of 1917    never
happened and all of the world now belongs to capitalism. Who
would you  have come to with your invention in that case? To
monopolies? But  they are  interested only in one thing - in
power, in  an absolute  power over everything and everybody.
They would  have used your invention to augment their power,
to perpetuate  the capitalism.  The possibility of communism
emerging on  the basis  of these new productive forces would
have forever  remained an unfulfilled possibility. If we had
not 'violated'  the history,  it would  have been  them  who
would have  violated it.  Do you  think it  would have  been
better if they did it instead of us?"
   Levshov wanted  to say  that it  was exactly  what he had
written in  his letter, but thought better of it. He decided
that the  General Secretary  just wanted  to give him a hint
about  the  ideologically  correct  way  of  presenting  his
invention: Marx  is right,  Marx is  always right, Marx just
cannot be  wrong. However,  from the  further words  of  the
GenSec (Soviet  vernacular acronym  standing for the General
Secretary) it  became clear  that what he meant was far more
serious than simple observance of ideological decorum.
   - "I'm reading a book now" - said the GenSec - "A curious
book. Some  dissidents who  have defected  to United  States
wrote a  book about  my ascent  to power  from a petty party
official to  the Chief  of  KGB,  and,  eventually,  to  the
position of  the General  Secretary. They  presented me as a
sort of a Machiavellian ruler who will stop at nothing. Most
of the facts seem to be true, but there is one thing missing
in that  book. There  is no  answer to  a  seemingly  simple
question: what  did I  do all  that for?. The authors of the
book seem  to believe  that the  answer is self-evident, and
isn't even worth righting about: they think I did it all for
power. But they apply their own yardstick.
   I'm an  old and  very sick  man. Too  old and too sick to
enjoy those  pleasures of  life that  the  position  of  the
General Secretary   potentially places within a man's reach.
They can  kill me  at any  time -  there are too many people
around me  who don't like to see me in this position. So why
did I take up the burdens of this office, while I could have
retired and  been sitting   now  peacefully  at  my  country
house? And  the answer  is simple:  because there  is nobody
else to do the job properly. If I had not taken this office,
it would  have been  taken by somebody for whom the position
of GenSec does indeed mean only one thing - unlimited power,
somebody who  does not  care about  the ideals of socialism,
about our  painful and  bloody history,  who does  not  care
about the  things for  the sake  of    which  we  have  been
enduring all  that pain  and spilling all that blood for the
last sixty  years. When I'm looking around me I can see that
the pinnacle  of power is surrounded by exactly such people,
and when  I am  no more,  this  chair  will  immediately  be
occupied by one of them...
   You probably  wonder why am I telling you about all this?
I just want you to clearly understand: you have no more than
ten years to finish the work on your invention."
   - "Why?"
   - "Because  we are  going to  loose the  cold war  to the
West."
   - "But comrade General Secretary, I don't think that..."
   - "Young  man, I know the true condition of  this country
much better  than you  do. We  just don't have any resources
left  to   continue  confronting  the  West.    And  please,
remember, that  after me  this chair  will be  taken by  the
people who  don't care about our ideals. They will surrender
the country  to the West at the West's first beckoning. That
means you don't have more than ten years. Can you make it?"
   - "I'll try."
   - "Please,  try hard.  And remember that you are going to
assume an  awesome responsibility. If you don't make it, all
those millions of sacrifices our people made in the cause of
socialism will  turn out  to be  meaningless. But  if you do
make it,  the Soviet Union, even if it falls at the hands of
traitors, will  nevertheless  have  fulfilled  its  historic
mission of  opening for  the mankind  the road to communism.
You are our last hope. Always remember it.
   And now,  back to business.  I hope you realize that this
work should  be done  in strictest  secrecy. And  keeping it
secret from Americans is the easier part. Although even this
is fairly difficult, in view of the fact that KGB is already
heavily infiltrated  with CIA  agents. But  we'll be able to
solve this problem - security in your lab will be maintained
by my  own tried  people. The  most difficult  part will  be
keeping it  secret from  our own bureaucracy. Your invention
is going to encroach upon what's holy for them - the pyramid
of power,  the very  principle of power. If they learn about
this before  time, they'll  reduce you  to dust.  That's  no
joke. Yes,  to dust.  By the time you are ready  to announce
your   invention to the world, you must be fully armed. Yes,
fully armed..."

   2.11 The night of July 6, 1997, lockup ward.

   ... Levshov's  reminiscences were  interrupted by a groan
of the  metal door  being opened. In the doorway stood a man
in a uniform with general's shoulder boards.
   - "Here  we go  again. This  time it's a general." - said
Levshov, and  sat up  in his  bunk, putting  his feet on the
floor, trying  to find  a  comfortable  sitting  position  -
"Well, general,  since you  are here,  sit down. I'll try to
arrange a chair for you."
   Only now  the General noticed a strange device of unknown
purpose standing  in the  corner, a  device, which, strictly
speaking, was  not supposed  to be  there.   Levshov noticed
General staring  at it:  "Oh, this.  This is  a  device  for
condensing water  out of  the air.  Here you can see a small
thermoelectric refrigerator, which cools this plate.  As you
can see, water from the air condenses on this plate and runs
off it  into this  receiver. I  had  to  grow  this  machine
because your  colonel had  had the  water line  to  my  ward
disconnected. Although  I had  warned him  that  I  had  the
capability to  build the machine for extracting water out of
the air,  he did  not seem  to believe  me... Ah,  here is a
chair for you."
   A white  mass that  had just  crawled out of the device's
receiver, quickly  took the  shape of a chair, then suddenly
changed its  coloring, and  began to  look like  a piece  of
furniture made  of  real  wood.    The  General  tentatively
touched the newly grown chair with the tip of his finger.
   - "Don't  worry, general,  the chair is strong enough for
you to  sit on  it. But if you don't trust me and are afraid
that one of the legs of this chair may suddenly disappear, I
can sit on the chair and you can sit on the bunk."
   - "I'll  sit on  the chair."  - said  General -  "I don't
think that you are going to play practical jokes on me."
   - "That's  correct, general.  It's no  joking matter that
brought me here."
   The General  sat down  on the chair, paused for a second,
gathering his thoughts, and finally said:
   "I came  to you  not as  a law  enforcement officer  to a
detained, but  rather as  one Russian  to another Russian. I
want you  to clearly understand all the consequences of your
actions for  our Motherland.  In my  opinion, you  have your
head in  the clouds,  and I want to bring you down to earth.
In theory,  all the  things that  you preach are very nice -
you know,  all this  talk about  instituting  the  Reign  of
Reason, Universal  Equality, Brotherhood  of  Man,  and  all
that. But  let me  tell you  what  is  going  to  happen  in
reality. The  Americans have  now put together a big team of
outstanding scientists,  gave them  the best  equipment  and
offered them lots of money, and all this to achieve one task
- to  crack the  password of  the  NanoTech  Network  System
Administrator. And  nobody doubts  that eventually  they are
going to  achieve this.  This can happen any moment now. And
as soon  as they  achieve their  goal, they  will disconnect
from the Network its creator, that's you, and all your noble
intentions  will  forever  remain  just  that  -  intentions
without any  power to carry them out. The Americans will use
the power  of NanoTech to reign supreme over the rest of the
world for  ever. If this happens, Russia will never be given
a chance  to rise from her knees. If you still have at least
a vestige  of patriotism  left in  you, you must immediately
surrender the control over the NanoTech Network to us."
   - "Who is 'us'?"
   - "We  are a  group of  true Russian patriots, who, for a
long time,  have been  preparing the  overthrow of  the pro-
western puppet government. Up till now we didn't have enough
power to  carry out our plans. But with the help of NanoTech
we'll finally be able to take the offensive. This Network is
ideally suited  for  performing  acts  of  sabotage  on  the
enemy's   territory   without   physically   entering   that
territory.  We   are  going   to  carry  our  a  pre-emptive
nanotechnological strike  at the  West,  to  throw  it  into
chaos, the  chaos they  won't be  able to sort out in years.
They'll have  too many problems on their hands to care about
supporting their  puppets here,  in Russia.  And it  is then
that we'll  be able  to get  our country out of this current
mess and  establish here  the true  Russian Order.  Russians
will once again become the masters of their own country."
   - "And  what about  all the other nationalities living in
Russia. Will they become sort of your guests?"
    The  General screwed  up  his  face,  as  if  he  had  a
toothache: "Listen,  Levshov, are you really concerned about
what'll happen to all those black-asses?" - the General used
the vulgar  derogatory expression  applied in  Russia to all
those nationalities whose complexions are not as fair as the
Russians' -  "It were  the communists who were forcing us to
be  internationalists.  But  now,  thanks  to  the  fall  of
communism, one  no longer  needs to  be afraid  of  being  a
nationalist."
   - "You  see, General, because of the event which you call
"the fall of communism", it is now possible not to be afraid
of being  any kind  of scoundrel,  but I  prefer not to take
advantage of  this possibility.  I'm  perfectly  aware  that
being nationalist  or racist is a part of human nature - the
people of  your own  tribe are  closer, easier to understand
and sympathize  with than some aliens. A strange complexion,
or an  unfamiliar shape  of  somebody's  nose  may  even  be
repulsive at  a purely  biological level.  But all these are
purely emotional, biological reactions. Beside pure biology,
a human  being is  also endowed with reason, and at least at
the level  of our  reason we  must try  to see ourselves not
just as members of our own tribe, but also as members of the
united mankind.  Otherwise, the  only prospect we have is an
interminable war, unending retaliatory strikes at the "other
tribe",  a   vendetta  handed   down  from   generation   to
generation, without  anybody remembering  the cause  of  the
initial conflict.  And the  weapons grow  more dangerous and
destructive with  each passing  year. This  is the  road  to
complete self-destruction. Do you have any idea how the West
might  respond   to  your   "pre-emptive   nanotechnological
strike"?
   Somebody must  break this  vicious circle,  and stop  the
madness of  the war of peoples that has been dragging on for
thousands of  years now. NanoTech  gives peoples a chance to
escape from  under the  authority  of their governments, and
thus end  the division  of the single mankind into different
nations. Such  division only  serves the  interests  of  the
governments and   national  elites, but not the interests of
the peoples themselves who have  to spill their own blood in
the wars  protecting the  interests  of  these  elites.  So,
excuse me  General, but I absolutely don't like your idea of
using NanoTech as a weapon.
   And as  for the  attempts to  crack the  password of  the
Network Administrator,  please tell  those hackers  who  are
making such  attempts - I believe you have the capability to
contact them  - that cracking a conventional computer system
is very  different from  cracking NanoTech.  Please,  remind
them that  conventional computer  systems are always located
outside the  hacker, while in the case of NanoTech a part of
the system is actually located inside the hacker himself and
is capable  of controlling some vital functions of his body.
Please tell them that if during an attempt to break into the
system they  set off  alarms built into the NanoTech system,
this might  have a  very deleterious effect on their health.
Will you?"
   The only response from the General was an annoyed nod.
   - "Very  nice of  you." -  said Levshov - "I've given the
warning, so  if anything  happens to them now, my conscience
will be  clear. And  now, to  the most  important  question,
General. What about my televised address?"
   - "I  think you'll  have to  make a pre-recording of your
address. The  proper authorities  will have  to view  it and
make a decision. I hope you realize that we can't put on the
air something that has not received the proper clearance."
   - "When can I make this recording?"
   - "Anytime you wish.  As soon as tomorrow, actually."
   - "And when can I expect the decision?"
   - "That's  something I  don't know. You must realize that
the issue will be decided at the highest level."

   2.12 Ten minutes later at the General's office.

   - "Any results?" - asked the Colonel.
   - "All  to no  avail." - answered the General - "Stubborn
bastard. He  knows he  has the game in his hands and behaves
accordingly."
   - "So, what do we do now?"
   - "There  are only  two things  we can  do now - play for
time and  pray that  the specialists in our secret lab crack
the password before the Americans do. Although we don't have
the kind  of equipment  the Americans  do, but  some of  our
specialists used  to work  with Levshov, they understand his
psychology and  this gives them a certain advantage. Levshov
mentioned something about an alarm system that might go off,
though. It  sounded like  a threat.  Let's hope  he was just
bluffing. We'll have to take this risk."

   Part three: on the brink of a revolution

   3.1 July 7, 1997. Recording of A.Levshov's address to the
people.

   "Comrades, ladies  and gentlemen,  and just  people!  The
things that  I'm going  to tell  you now  may seem to you so
improbable, that  it's possible you may not want to continue
listening to  me and will want to switch to another channel.
Please don't  do it,  because at  the end  of my  speech I'm
going to  give you such proofs of the truth of my words that
can convince  even a most hardened skeptic. I cannot present
these proofs  immediately, because,  without my  preliminary
explanations, the  things you  are going to see and hear may
frighten some  of you. So please be patient and listen to me
for a  quarter of  an hour.  Even if  the first  part of  my
speech may  seem boring, or obscure, or unbelievably  absurd
to you, I can promise that by the end of my speech you won't
be disappointed.
   You  all  know  that  the  current  social  order  called
capitalism didn't  always exist.  Way back  at the  dawn  of
history, at  the time  when there  was still  no technology,
whenever a  man needed  food, or  an  animal  skin  for  his
clothing, or firewood for his bonfire, that man just went to
a nearest  forest and  took whatever  he need  directly from
Mother Nature.  It goes  without saying  that there  was  no
money back  then. It  was a  sort of  prehistoric communism.
This state of affairs lasted for tens of thousands of years,
which is  much longer than the time that has passed from the
moment when  money was  invented a  mere few  thousand years
ago. In  other words,  one may  say that a moneyless society
is, in a certain sense, more 'natural', more in harmony with
the human nature.
   It may  well be  that many  of you  won't agree with such
statement. The official propaganda is now trying to convince
everybody  that   capitalism  is   the  society  most  fully
consistent  with   the  human   nature,  and,  consequently,
capitalism is  eternal. I  think that   falseness  of    the
latter statement  is obvious to any thoughtful mind: nothing
in this  world is  forever, everything  that has a beginning
has an  end.  The only question is: What is going to replace
capitalism?
   To answer  this question,  we've got  first to understand
what made  capitalism possible  in the  first place, that is
how did it happen that almost every thing in the world (with
a few  exceptions, like  air, which  one can  still get  for
free) could be assigned a certain numerical value called the
cost of  that thing.  The fact is that the cost of any thing
consists of  four components.   The  first component  is the
rarity of  the material of which this or that thing is made:
the shorter  the supply of the material, the higher the cost
of the  product. The second component is the mechanical work
required to  manufacture the thing: the more physical energy
went into  building a  thing, the  costlier it is. The third
and the  fourth components  are related  to the  information
imparted to  the thing  during its  manufacture. Every thing
differs from  an amorphous mass of raw materials of which it
is made  in that  it has  a certain  structure, in  that the
initial raw  materials in  it are  arranged and  ordered  in
accordance with  drawings, or  with  programs  loaded  in  a
numerically controlled  machine tool,  or  simply  with  the
ideas in the head of a craftsman. In other words, whenever a
thing is  manufactured, an information contained in drawings
or in  some other  source is  copied onto  the  initial  raw
materials. And this information also contributes to the cost
of the final product. When we consider this phenomenon we've
got to  distinguish  between  two  aspects  -  the  cost  of
creating the  information itself,  and the  cost of  copying
this information  during manufacturing  of a  product.   The
cost of  creating information  is the  cost of  the creative
labor of  inventors and  designers who  create drawings of a
future, still non-existent product, the cost of the labor of
a writer who is writing a book which is still to be printed,
that is,  converted into  a final product, a thing. The cost
of copying  the information  is the  cost of  the  labor  of
workers cutting  the metal  according to  the drawings,  the
cost of  the labor  of typographical  workers  printing  the
book. The  more difficult  it is  to perform this process of
copying, the more expensive the final product will be. Thus,
the rarity  of the  material, the amount of expended energy,
the effort  required to  create information,  and the effort
required to  copy it  are the four components of the cost of
any product.
   Capitalism can  successfully evolve  and progress only if
there  are   proper  conditions   for   providing   adequate
remuneration for  the creative  effort  of  the  information
makers,  that   is,  only   if  the  cost  of  creating  the
information can  be included  in  the  price  of  the  final
product, thus  providing an  incentive for  the inventor  to
further improve  his product.  In  the  nineteenth  century,
which was  the age  of rapid growth for capitalism, this was
not a  problem because of a peculiarity of the then level of
technology. The  peculiarity consisted   in the fact that in
order to  manufacture almost  any thing,  you need  a fairly
large factory  with a  large number  of  machine  tools  and
workers. Back  in those times, if somebody would have wanted
to copy,  for example,  a book  without paying  fees to  the
author, he  would have  had to  find a printing house, which
employed at least several people, potential witnesses to his
act of  piracy.   In other words, in the nineteenth century,
due to a low level of technology, the process of copying was
very complicated,  which made infringements of  copyright or
patent law almost impossible. The inventors and authors were
receiving proper  rewards for  their inventions  and  works,
which resulted in a rapid progress of technology.
   As technological  progress went on, in all the industries
the process  of copying  was  growing  increasingly  simple,
requiring less  and less  labor, while the copying equipment
was growing  smaller and  less expensive. And so now, by the
end of  the twentieth  century, the situation in some of the
industries is  such that  a man  sitting at home can single-
handedly  and  fairly  quickly  copy  any  product  of  that
industry. And  that's why  the end  of the twentieth century
became the  era of  mass  piracy, which cannot be stopped in
principle. When  I say  "mass piracy' I don't mean factories
somewhere in  China that  churn out  unlicensed   products -
these are  actually the ones that can be easily detected and
closed down, if only there is a political will to do so. No,
what I  really mean  is individual piracy that we indulge in
at our own home when we tape a movie aired on TV on our VCR,
take a  computer game  from a  friend and  copy  it  on  our
diskette, or  scan and  print out on our home printer a book
written by  somebody else.  And the  home printer  is just a
beginning. If  we extend  this technological  trend into the
future, we'll see that in a few decades we are going to have
an all-purpose  home robot  that will be able to copycat and
manufacture any  product, not  only a  book .  And then  the
individual piracy will make inroads into all the industries,
not only  video, audio,  software and  publishing industries
that are the hardest-hit today.
   And you  also have to keep in mind that the accessibility
of information  will also  be continuously growing. Probably
all of  you have  heard about Internet, and many of you have
actually used  it. Today,  the home  printer is probably the
only "machine  tool" that  can be hooked up to the Internet.
But as  soon  as  the  all-purpose  home  robot  comes  into
existence, there  will be  programs posted  on the  Internet
that will  allow to  manufacture all  kinds of  things using
that robot. You'll need only one hacker in the world to make
any licensed  product freely  available to  all the mankind.
Sure enough, the makers of information will do their best to
protect their  copy rights  and patents. Tougher and tougher
laws will  be passed  against piracy.   But  the only way to
enforce such  laws would  be to  create a totalitarian state
that  watches  over  every  little  step  of  its  citizens,
monitors  their  every  phone  call,  and  conducts  regular
searches in  every household  to check  for the existence of
unlicensed things  in that  household. As  a result  of  the
development of  information technologies,  from a society of
economic freedom capitalism will turn into a society of non-
economic coercion.   The  Internet, originally  hyped as the
triumph of  capitalism, will  actually turn  out to  be  its
gravedigger.
   The only  way to  avoid the  rise of  the global state of
total surveillance  is to  legalize free use of information,
to recognize  that any information is the common property of
all the  mankind and  can be copied by any citizen of planet
Earth free of charge and without any restrictions. You might
ask what  the inventors  will have  to live  upon,  if  they
cannot sell  their inventions,  because they won't even have
money to  buy themselves  food?  The  only  answer  to  this
question is  to abolish  money. Using  today's  science  and
technology one  can transform  the Nature in such a way that
man will  once again  be able to freely take from Nature all
that he  needs, just  as he did throughout the major part of
the mankind's history, up till the moment when society based
on money came into being.
   The evolution  of society  moves along  a spiral  path  -
after completing  a full  circle society  returns almost  to
where it had been before, but on a higher plane.
   And now  we have  reached the  most important  part of my
today's speech.  Comrades, ladies  and gentlemen, and simply
people! I  am proud to have been entrusted with the honor of
announcing to  you the most important news in the history of
mankind.  The  spiral  has  completed  a  full  circle  -  a
technological system  capable of  supporting all  your needs
has already  been developed,  tested and  deployed,  and  is
ready for operation from today on. The only thing left to do
is to issue a command to completely activate the system, and
I'm going  to do  this in  a few minutes' time. But before I
inaugurate this  system, I  would like to briefly explain to
you how  it works.  As you probably know, inside each person
there have  always lived  billions of bacteria, some of them
absolutely innocuous,  some less so. Not long ago, a team of
scientists which  I represent  here,  took  the  liberty  of
spreading a  strain of  bacteria which was engineered in our
lab and  which is  absolutely harmless  to human  beings.  I
want to  emphasize this  last fact  - these bacteria are not
only absolutely  harmless, they  are actually  good for your
health, and  can help  your body  fight off  many  kinds  of
diseases. These  are no  ordinary bacteria,  these are self-
replicating engineering systems, which took us fifteen years
of hard  work to  develop. These bacteria, which have by now
spread all  over the  world,  are  capable  of  storing  and
exchanging data  in the  same way  as computers hooked up to
the Internet.  We have  called this data network of bacteria
the NanoTech  Network, since  its  physical  basis  are  the
nanotechnological devices  built into  these bacteria.  This
network can  do absolutely every thing that the Internet can
do. Actually,  we even  have a  gateway to  Internet, we can
retrieve data from it. So, in a certain sense, NanoTech is a
subnetwork of  the global network Internet. But on the other
hand, NanoTech  is capable of doing many things of which the
Internet is  still incapable,  and in  that  sense  NanoTech
represents the  next evolutionary  step after  the Internet,
its logical extension.
   As I  have already  said, the only "machine tool" that at
present can  be hooked up to the Internet is a printer. In a
few years,  a home  robot may  be added to that list. But in
any case,  the  robot  will  need  a  source  of  power  and
materials for  manufacturing new things, and that means that
even if  the information  is free,  the final product itself
isn't, because the other two components of price - power and
materials -  still remain.  Add to  this the amortization of
equipment -  the robot  and computer eventually are going to
wear out - plus the phone bills, and you'll realize that one
cannot  change   over  to  a  moneyless  society  using  the
classical Internet concept.
   On the  other hand,  NanoTech takes  all  the  power  and
materials it  needs quite  literally out  of  the  air,  and
that's why one can safely say that it's as gratuitous as the
air itself. For the raw materials, NanoTech  extracts carbon
atoms from  its environment,  arranges them  into a thing in
accordance with  the data stored in the network, and as soon
as the  need for  that particular  thing ceases to exist, it
just releases  these atoms  back into  the environment. This
kind of technology is environmentally safe from all aspects.
It doesn't  produce wastes. It mimics nature in its workings
- one  may even  say that it just adds one more cycle to the
natural recycling  of atoms. This new cycle is man-made, but
it is made in similitude to the Nature's own cycles.
   Conventional technologies pull atoms out of their natural
cycles for  prolonged periods  of time, and bind them inside
dead things that are very rarely used, if ever. Conventional
things exist  regardless of the fact whether we need them in
this particular  moment  or  not.  That's  why  conventional
technologies  need  so  much  raw  material  -  because  the
efficiency of  their use  of that material is extremely low.
And that's  why conventional  technologies are such a burden
on the environment.
   In  contrast  to  this,  NanoTech  requires  very  little
amounts of  raw materials,  because it doesn't bind atoms in
dead things,  because at  any given  moment in  time most of
its things  exist only  as virtual  things, as  data in  the
network, and  they materialize  only when  they are actually
needed. It's  exactly because  of this  that NannoTech  puts
very little  load  on  the  environment,  and  it's  exactly
because of  this that  NanoTech can satisfy all the needs of
all the  people on  Earth, and  not only  of the chosen ones
living in  the rich  countries,  and  do  all  this  without
causing an ecological disaster.
   And when  I say  'all the needs' I do mean all the things
that have  been invented  by Man,  and all  the things he is
still to  invent  in  the  future.  Currently  the  NanoTech
Network doesn't  contain too  much data, and there are still
not very  many things  that it  knows how to build (although
the things  which it  already knows  how to  build are quite
sufficient to  allow any  person to lead an independent life
with a living standard adequate for preserving one's dignity
and self-respect).  But you will be able to fill it with new
data and teach it to build many new things.  The NanoTech is
an all-purpose  machine that  can  be  infinitely  upgraded,
improved and enhanced. The most important thing is to use it
in Reason,  and not to teach it evil. Governments originally
developed this  system as  a means of sabotage against other
countries. Eventually,  this system could be used as a means
of total  surveillance over  every citizen,  if  the  above-
mentioned regime  of strict  enforcement  of  copyright  and
patent law were to be instituted. I saw what the things were
coming to, so I stole this system from the rulers to give it
to you  people.  That  was  the  only  chance  to  stop  the
impending disaster.  But to make this chance into a reality,
you've got  to use this system right. This system must serve
only Reason,  and it  must never  be used  for  seeking  and
gaining advantages  over other people, otherwise the history
will repeat itself - once again there will emerge the Rulers
and the  Ruled, the  Rich and  the Poor,  the Elite  and the
Outcasts -  and then  the Disaster  will become  inevitable.
Then, wars, fights and killings will continue, but this time
with an  assured total  mutual destruction at the end of the
road, since  this time  the  weapons  will  be  one  hundred
percent accurate, efficient and deadly.
   But we  do have  a chance to avoid this, because now, for
the first  time in  the history  of mankind,  you, each  and
everyone of  you, are  absolutely free  and independent.  As
recently as this morning each of you had the Damocles' sword
of fear  hanging above  your heads,  fear that your neighbor
will get  ahead of  you and will snatch your bread from your
mouth. This  fear was suspended over every person throughout
the entire  history of  mankind, and  it was  this fear that
made people  trample their  neighbors, elbow aside the weak,
trying to  snatch a  bigger piece of pie, to carve out their
place in the sun.
   In a  few seconds  I'm going  to  activate  the  NanoTech
Network, and  each of you will get access to the means for a
dignified life.  But before I do this, I want you to clearly
understand one  thing: nobody will ever be able to take away
from you  what you  are going to receive now. You will never
again have  to be fearful of your neighbor. Whatever happens
to you  from now  on, you'll  always have food and lodgings.
You'll  have   to  learn   to  treat  other  people  not  as
competitors, but  as friends  to whom  you'll be  giving the
fruits of  your creative  labor and receiving  the fruits of
their creativity  from them.The  NanoTech belongs to all the
mankind, and  at the  same time  it belongs  to each of you.
These are  not just empty words or slogans. This is reality,
because the  NanoTech is  first and foremost the information
it contains,  and the  information, by  virtue of  its  very
nature, can  simultaneously belong  to an infinite number of
people. Bernard Shaw once said: "If you have an apple, and I
have an  apple, and we exchange these apples, both you and I
will still  have one  apple. But  if you have an idea, and I
have an  idea, and we exchange ideas, you'll have two ideas,
and I'll  have two  ideas." And  since NanoTech contains not
things themselves,  but rather the ideas of things, the only
way to  get rich in the NanoTech System will be to give your
ideas to  all the  mankind, in  order to  augment the common
bank of ideas. To give, rather then to take away, as it used
to be  throughout all  the previous history of mankind, when
people had  to live  not among  ideas,  but  among  material
things that  indeed could  only be  acquired by  taking them
away from other people.
   But  now  all  this  is  over.  I  want  you  to  clearly
understand that  from now  on there  is no objective need to
behave in  this way.  From now on you are free. You are free
to be  humans, not  beasts that  snatch  gobbets  from  each
other's maw.  And the  only things  that may prevent us from
living  happily   are  bad  habits  and  customs  that  have
accumulated over  the previous  history of  mankind, and the
instincts that we have inherited from our bestial ansestors.
Only our  reason can  overcome these  last barriers.  And  I
believe that  the Reason  will at last prevail, because now,
for the  first time  in the history of mankind, the material
circumstances of peoples' lives will be on its side.
   I intend  to demand from all the governments in the world
that they  immediately let  anyone, who  will express such a
wish, give  up his  or her  citizenship in  their respective
countries, and become simply citizens of planet Earth. In so
doing, the  governments will  be obligated  to  destroy  all
their records, files and any other documents related to such
persons, and begin to consider such persons as non-existent,
that is,  the governments will no longer be supposed to levy
taxes on  such persons,  to  conscript  them  into  military
service, and  so on.  All the  care  about  the  well-being,
health, education  and security  of  such  persons  will  be
assumed by  the NanoTech  Network and voluntary societies of
the citizens of NanoTech."
   Levshov fell  silent for  a couple  of seconds  and  then
said:
   "I have  just issued  the command  to  enable  access  to
NanoTech Network  for all the people on Earth. We'll have to
wait for  a couple of seconds until this command reaches the
farthest corners  of our  planet. This command gives you all
access to  the network  resources  at  the  ordinary  user's
level. This  level of access allows you to get from NanoTech
any kind  of foodstuffs and medicines, except narcotics, and
any kind  of things,  except weapons.  This level  of access
also provides a wide variety of information services. You'll
be able  to talk  to any  person located at any point on the
globe, you'll  even be  able to  hear what his ears hear and
see what his eyes see - but only with that person's consent,
of course.  The capability  to eavesdrop,  spy  and  control
other person's actions is disabled at this level of access.
   And now  a briefing  on how to log on to the network. All
you'll have  to do is to say in your mind one word. Don't be
frightened when  in response  you'll  hear  a  voice  coming
seemingly from  nowhere, sort  of from  your own head - it's
just the  system sending its reply directly to your auditory
nerve bypassing  your ear.  So, try now to say in your mind,
but as  clearly as  possible, just  one word: "NanoTech". If
you don't  hear the  reply: "System  ready", try to say this
password once  again. It's even possible that you'll have to
say this word aloud once or twice - the system must learn to
recognize your  manner of  speech. It  learns very  quickly,
because it  recognizes not the sounds which always have lots
of acoustic noise in them, but rather the action currents in
the muscles  of your  throat. And  this means that even when
your voice  gets hoarse,  the system  still understands  you
perfectly, because  what it recognizes is what you wanted to
say, rather than what you have actually enunciated.
   A small  digression for  our viewers  from abroad. I hope
that my  speech, or at least excerpts from it, will be shown
by TV companies from abroad. If you don't understand Russian
you can  switch the  NanoTech user interface from Russian to
English. (Unfortunately,  at the  moment the system does not
support any other languages besides Russian and English, but
we expect  that with your help we'll be able to rectify this
omission in no time). In order to switch to English, all you
have to  do after  you log  on is to say two words: "English
interface".  After   that  your  user's  interface  will  be
permanently set  up to  work in  English until you choose to
change the interface language once again.
   Well, I  think that by now most of you have already heard
the "system  ready" reply  and we  can proceed  to the  next
step. Now, just as clearly as the first time, you'll have to
say in  your mind  (or maybe aloud, if speaking in your mind
doesn't work  yet) two  words. But  before I  give you these
words, I  once again  want to  warn you  that you needn't be
afraid when in the air right in front of you you'll suddenly
see a  sort of  a "window"  in space through which you'll be
able to  look into  some other world. In reality, physically
speaking, there will be no "window" in the air. This will be
the same  kind of  illusion as  the voice  that said  to you
"system ready".  What will  actually happen  is that cyborg-
bacteria that  are attached  to your optic nerve will make a
virtual inset  into the picture that your eyes actually see.
So, say  now, as  clearly as  possible, two  words: "Graphic
Interface".
   And  so,  if  the  system  has  been  able  to  correctly
recognize your  command, you  must now see right in front of
you a  "window" that  takes up about a quarter of your field
of view.  Inside the  "window" you  must see  what we call a
"virtual mall"  - a  long street with lots of small shops on
each side.  Each shop  has a sign with the names of supplies
it provides.
   Now you'll  have to  learn to move in the virtual "space"
without moving  in the real space in the process. Since this
might take  some skill,  at the  initial phase  of  learning
small movements  of arms and legs in real space are allowed.
However, you  must try  to  get  rid  of  them  as  soon  as
possible, just  as  you  must  try  to  desist  from  saying
commands aloud and start issuing them mentally.
   So now, imagine that you want to look down. I say imagine
that you  look down,  but  don't  actually  look  down.  The
cyborg-bacteria attached  to the  nerve fibers  going to the
muscles in  your eyes  and neck are sensitive enough to pick
up those  weak action  currents  that  the  brain  sends  to
muscles even  when the  movement is  not actually performed,
but is only imagined. And now, if you clearly visualize that
you are turning your eyes downwards, you'll see the image in
the "window"  moving in accordance with this visualization -
in the  virtual space  you'll be  looking down at your feet,
while  according  to  the  image  of  the  real  space  that
surrounds the  "window", you'll  still be  looking  straight
ahead. Or,  rather, you'll be looking straight ahead only if
you have  performed this  action correctly, that is, only in
your imagination,  and not  in  the  real  world.  Otherwise
you'll be  looking downwards  in the  real  space  as  well.
Actually, we  decided to  leave a border of real-world image
around the  virtual "window"  on purpose,  so that you could
monitor your  actions both  in the  virtual and  in the real
world simultaneously.  I don't  want any  one of you to fall
off a  balcony in  the real world, while making a step ahead
in the virtual space. As soon as you learn to move around in
the virtual  world without moving in the real one, you'll be
able to  switch to  the graphic  interface  that  completely
fills your  field of view, but for now please train a little
bit with the one-quarter field.
   So, what you see now in the virtual window are your feet.
Of course,  these are  not your  real feet.  These are  your
"virtual" feet.  You can  control them by imagining that you
move your  feet. Now we'll try to make a step forward in the
virtual space.  For the  purposes of monitoring, please turn
your eyes  downward in  the real world and look at your real
feet. They  are  not  supposed  to  move.  And  now  clearly
visualize  that   you  take  a  step  forward.  If  you  did
everything correctly,  the feet  in the  virtual window must
take a  step forward,  while your  actual feet  in the  real
space must  not budge. You don't always succeed at the first
try. If you fail, try once again.
   So, now  you have  taken your  first step  in the virtual
space. Now go forward and look  around you. In so doing, try
not to turn your head in the real world, just imagining that
you turn your head is quite enough. Now your hands. The same
thing -  your virtual  hands must act, while your real hands
must quietly  lie in  your lap, or just hang relaxed by your
sides, as  you like.  Try  to  visualize  each  movement  as
clearly as  possible, while  your  real  muscles  should  be
relaxed -  and you'll  succeed. Walk  around in  the virtual
space a  bit, flail your virtual arm a little. If you can do
this right  away, that's  excellent, but if you can't, don't
despair, all it takes is a few more minutes of practice, and
you'll succeed.
   The next  step. NanoTech  draws  its  power  from  water.
Those  of   your  who'll  venture  to  live  exclusively  on
NanoTech, won't  always have  tap water  readily  available,
that's why  the first  thing that you've got to learn is how
to extract  water from the air. If you have wandered off far
along  the   virtual  street,   please  return  now  to  its
beginning. The  very first  shop in  that street is the shop
for water-extraction  devices. Enter the shop. Inside you'll
see lots  of water  extracting machines  of all  sizes. Take
with your virtual hands the smallest machine, size number 1.
What's coming  next is  a little bit irregular for NanoTech,
and it  has to  do with the fact that today you are visiting
NanoTech for  the first  time, and  you still  have not been
assigned a  "default object", that is, the raw material from
which, by  default, all  the  things  of  NanoTech  will  be
manufactured for  you. What  I'm going to ask you to do now,
you'll have  to do maybe only once in your life in NanoTech.
While you  continue holding  in your virtual hands the water
extraction device  Size 1, please cup your real hands in the
real world.  (Those of  you who  don't have  hands, or whose
hands are  for some  reason disabled, will find instructions
about what  they should  do in this case in the virtual book
shop, which I'll describe later). Now, in the virtual space,
press with  your right thumb the big red button on the right
side of  the device.  A light must come on inside the button
signaling that  you did  everything correctly.  And now just
wait a little. Droplets of whitish liquid will transpire now
from the pores on your real palms. Some people may find this
unpleasant, but  please be  patient  -  as  I  have  already
mentioned, you'll  have to  do this  only  once.  In  a  few
seconds you'll  have in  your real  palms a white mass which
will quickly  assume the  same shape as the water-extraction
device that you hold in the virtual space.
   Now your  first water  extraction device is ready. You no
longer need  to hold  it in your real hands, you  can put it
wherever you  like, but not far away, because all the things
that you'll  be taking from the virtual space, in real space
you'll be  taking out of this device. True, size number 1 is
too small,  and for  most of the things you'll hear an error
message: "Object  Resources Inadequate".  That's why, before
you leave  the water extracting machine shop,  it would make
sense to  acquire a  water extracting machine size number 2.
Since you  already have your default object, all you need to
do is just grab a Size 2 machine and put it in your shopping
basket. On the handle of the basket a yellow light will come
on, which  is the system confirmation that you have acquired
the thing  that you  put in.  After some  time a green light
should come  on to notify you that the manufacturing of this
thing in  the real world is now complete. After that, in the
virtual world,  the virtual  image of  this thing  will just
disappear from  the basket leaving free space for new things
on your  shopping list.  If the  green light  is not on yet,
that probably  means that  the Size  1 machine  has not  yet
extracted enough  water from the air to manufacture a Size 2
machine. Maybe  you'll have  to wait  half a minute more. An
extraction machine  of any  size fully filled with water has
enough resources  to manufacture  a machine that is one size
bigger. Have  a look  in the  real  world  at  your  Size  1
machine. I think that by now it should have grown to Size 2.
   Now, let's  leave the water-extracting machines shop, and
stroll around  other shops.  Let's stop by the baker's shop.
Choose your  favorite sort  of bread  and  put  it  in  your
shopping basket.  Once again, first a yellow light, and then
a green  one should  come on. After that, in the real world,
you can take your favorite bread out of the water extracting
machine.
   I'm not  going to  accompany your  on a tour of the other
shops, I think that you already understand how it all works.
If you  suddenly get  a message  that object  resources  are
inadequate, go  back to  the water-extracting  machines shop
and select  a machine  one size bigger. But if you decide to
travel (I  mean, in the real world, not in the virtual one),
choose once  again water-extracting  machine Size  1, it  is
very compact  and suitable  for travel.  This time you won't
need to  press the  red button and extract the material from
your own  palms, just  put it  into  your  virtual  shopping
basket, and in the real world your machine of, say, Size 40,
will quickly shrink to Size 1.
   Before we  conclude this  first tour  around the  virtual
space of  the NanoTech  Network, I  would like  to draw your
attention to  one of  the shops  in this  virtual mall - the
book shop.  Enter it.  Inside, you  see lots of shelves with
books. You  can take  any of  these virtual  books from  the
shelf, open  it and read it as if it were a real-world book.
Please note  that  books  are  grouped  according  to  their
subjects. The subjects are written on the labels attached to
the shelves.  The very  first shelf  has a  label: "NanoTech
System User's  Help". If  you have  any questions  about the
NanoTech Network,  you may  find the answers in the books on
that shelf.  Any time  you have problems come here. Besides,
you probably  noticed that in a corner of this shop there is
a desk with a computer on it. This virtual computer operates
like a real one. It has an on-line NanoTech help, as well as
a browser for Internet surfing (as I have already mentioned,
NanoTech has a gateway to Internet).
   Now it's  up to  you to learn to walk around this virtual
world and to get acquainted with it. When you want to return
to the  real world,  all  you'll  need  to  say  is:  "Close
NanoTech Session". Got it?
   During the  next talks  that I'm  going to  give you I'll
tell you  how you can transfer your favorite things into the
virtual  world   of  NanoTech,  if  they  haven't  yet  been
transferred to  it, and how new things can be designed using
the NanoTech  System. Then  I'll tell  you how  you can  use
NanoTech to communicate with the people that are as far from
you as  the other side of the globe. NanoTech is a wonderful
communications tool,  which will allow billions of people to
think together, to make decisions together. The mankind will
become a  single intelligent  being. Nay,  not only mankind,
all the  biosphere, all  the hydrosphere of the planet Earth
are replete  with cyborg-bacteria, and that's why if we wish
we can  always learn  how the  soil under our feet or clouds
over our heads are doing. The dark depths of the oceans will
no longer  be a  mystery to  us and  will become  a part  of
ourselves. The weather will no longer be an incomprehensible
external force  of elements, for we will be able to feel the
movements of air masses as if they were blood streams in our
own body.  We will  be able  to see what birds' eyes can see
from the  height of  their flight,  or fishes'  eyes from an
ocean depth. We'll be able to see the world with the eyes of
an ant, a bee, or an octopus. We'll be able to see the world
with each  other's eyes.  The term noosphere, which up until
now has  been just  a beautiful  figure of speech,  a poetic
metaphor, will turn into a physical reality.
   And when we have learned to think together, we'll have to
address  the   most  difficult  issue.  As  I  have  already
mentioned, there is no access to weapons, or to the tools of
control over other people at the user's level. However, such
functionality does  exist in  the NanoTech  System,  and  it
would  be  unreasonable  to  completely  destroy  it,  since
NanoTech will  still have  to  protect  itself  against  the
people whose  intellect  cannot  prevail  over  their  apish
instincts. We'll  have to define who and how is going to use
these functions, who and how is going to license the  access
to  them.   These  capabilities   may  give  their  users  a
tremendous power over the lives of other people, and we must
see to  it that  this power  be used  for the  good  of  the
people, and  not against  them. Power  always  corrupts.  It
awakens in  men their  animal instincts, the striving for an
even greater  power, power  for power's  sake. We'll have to
work out a system that will allow NanoTech users to exercise
control over  those who  will be given this power. We've got
to come  up with  such a  mechanism of  control, which would
allow to  use  these  functions  only  for  maintaining  the
freedom and  safety of  the citizens  of NanoTech,  only for
fighting the  criminals who would dare to encroach upon such
freedom and  safety, and would never allow the criminals  to
take possession of  these weapons.
   This ends  my today's talk. I congratulate everybody with
the first day of the World Communist Revolution."
   The light  on TV  camera went  off, the recording session
was over.
   - "But  you have  not  actually  enabled  the  access  to
NanoTech Network  for the  general public  yet." -  said the
Colonel.
   - "I'll  do this  as soon  as this  speech will be on the
air." -  said Levshov  - "I  don't want  somebody to stumble
upon NanoTech  before time  by chance,  just by  saying some
word which  sounds like "nanotech". I don't want somebody to
be scared to death by this."
   - "  And you  still hope that this will be allowed on the
air?" - chuckled the Colonel.

   3.2 July  8, 1998.  An entry in the personal diary of the
CIA liaison officer with special powers in Moscow.

   "Strictly speaking, I'm not supposed to keep a diary. And
I never  did before.  I always believed that keeping a diary
was something  that only acned teenagers do, being unable to
understand themselves  and the  world around  them. But now,
this is exactly the case with me. Recently I found than I no
longer understand myself.
   I've just sent to the Center the latest information about
Levshov, along  with a  video recording  of his  TV address,
which, I'm  sure, will  never be  allowed on  the air.  This
address contains some new technical details,  which might be
of help to our experts trying to crack the NanoTech network.
They had  been saying  that any casual word said by Levshov,
any minute  detail might  turn out  to be the clue. This may
well be true.
   In this  case I  just don't  understand why I'm doing all
this. The  more I  read Levshov's interrogation transcripts,
the less  I understand  why I should fight against him. Sure
enough, he  is a  communist and  an atheist,  and I was told
ever since  I was  a kid   that godless communists wanted to
destroy our country, our freedom and our democracy, and that
it was  the duty  of   any true  American patriot... and all
that.  Maybe   that  was  exactly  how  it  was,  and  those
communists did indeed want to destroy America.
   But now  I'm sitting  here in Moscow trying to understand
what this  communist and atheist Levshov really says, trying
to translate  all that  he says  into terms that are readily
understandable to  a Christian,  and to my dismay I discover
that when  he talks  about the  Reason, he refers to what is
good and  divine in  man, while  when he  speaks about apish
instincts he means the Evil and the devil's temptations.
   The horror  of it  is that  this man came out against all
the evil  in the  world virtually  alone. And  I'm forced to
fight him.  It follows  from this  that I, who always prided
himself on  being a  true Christian  and Patriot, a straight
arrow and a champion of Freedom and Democracy, suddenly find
myself fighting in the cause of the Evil.
   For the  first two  or three days I did not admit this to
myself. I  took refuge  in patriotism, I told myself that if
we don't  take over  the power of NanoTech, it will be taken
over by  the Russian  nationalists,  which  will  have  dire
consequences for  the freedom  and democracy  all  over  the
world.
   But today  I was  struck with  a disgusting  thought: all
these  justifications  are  based  on  the  assumption  that
Levshov can  never win, that this game has only two possible
outcomes: either  we win,  or the  Russian nationalists win.
But why  can't he  win? He can't, because the forces of Evil
are too  strong, and  even when Levshov has all the power of
NanoTech behind him, he still cannot win, because the forces
of Evil draw their strength from the apish instinct, ages of
tradition deeply  rooted in  the very  cultures of  peoples,
and, what  is most  important, organizations  based  on  the
apish instinct.  Organizations are  not just a simple sum of
their members.  Any organization has a will and interests of
its own  that are  different from the wills and interests of
the people  it consists of. Just as me, each of these people
may be  against evil,  but all  of  them  together  will  be
working to strengthen and expand their organization, because
the number  one interest  of any  organization is to protect
its own  existence through  its  growth  and  strengthening.
Levshov trespasses  against the  very foundation  upon which
any organization  is based  - the  apish instinct.  And this
means that all the organizations all over the globe, warring
against each  other although  they may  be,  will join their
forces to  fight him.  This man  does not  have a chance. He
will be crushed.
   The most  disgusting thing  following from  the above  is
that I'm  on the  side of  the Evil only because the Evil is
strong and  therefore will  prevail. So much so for the True
Christian,  Patriot   and  the   Champion  of   Freedom  and
Democracy. And  now I'll go and get myself drunk. Thank God,
vodka is cheap in Russia...

   Part Four: The Crisis

   4.1. The  General decides to play an All-or-Nothing game.
July 10, 1997, Moscow, the General's office.

   There were two men sitting opposite the General: the Head
of the  special research  lab set  up to  crack the NanoTech
System, and the Colonel.
   - "The  reason that I summoned you here, gentlemen, is to
break to  you a  very bad news: Americans have demanded that
we extradite Levshov to them. They have sent us a diplomatic
paper to  the effect  that Levshov  had committed a crime on
the US  territory by  illegally infecting  the population of
that country  with cyborg-bacteria,  and therefore  he falls
under the  jurisdiction of  the US  law. The  paper contains
lots of  legal gobbledygook,  but it  won't hold  water as a
legal document:  all their arguments in support of Levshov's
extradition to  the US  are actually much more applicable to
Russia than  to the  USA. But  one can  easily see that they
didn't even  try to  make their paper legally valid, because
they knew  that our  government would  surrender Levshov  to
them anyway,  just because  they are  stronger and they have
the  levers   to  bring   pressure  to  bear.  Although  our
government is  still in session on that issue, the result is
easy to  guess: Levshov will be taken away from us tomorrow,
or the  day after  tomorrow at the latest, if we use the red
tape and  delay the  processing of all the papers related to
his official hand-over.
   I would  like to  hear you  opinion why did the Americans
suddenly decide  to get  Levshov into  their  hands?  I  now
recall that  a couple  of days  ago you mentioned in passing
that the  Americans might soon demand Levsov's extradition."
- the General turned towards the Head of the lab - "But back
then I  didn't pay  much attention  to your words. Could you
please explain what you meant?"
   - "That  remark was  based on one of our hypotheses about
the  system  that  protects  the  NanoTech  Network  against
unauthorized access.  What I  mean here is the access at the
level of the Network Administrator - at the user's level, as
we now  understand it,  there is  virtually no protection at
all. But we, just as the Americans, are mostly interested in
the access  to the  Administrator's resources, which include
weapons, means  of intelligence-gathering,  sabotage, remote
control over  other people's  behavior, in  a word,  all the
things we  originally developed  the NanoTech for, and which
Levshov decided  to put out of reach of an ordinary NanoTech
Network user.  To come  back to  your question,   one of our
hypotheses is  that the Network Administrator doesn't really
have any password to access the Administrator's resources."
   - "I  don't understand."  - said the General, surprised -
"Then how on earth..."
   - "If  an ordinary user attempts to request the access to
the Administrator's  resources, the  system  will  start  to
check the physical characteristics of the body of the person
who makes the request. I don't know which ones in particular
- may  be the cyborg-bacteria that live inside his eyes will
check his  iris pattern against iris patterns of the network
administrators that  are stored  in the network. Or they may
check some internal characteristics of the body - there must
be some  other spots inside the body that are just as unique
as fingerprints  or iris  patterns.  These  unique  physical
characteristics of  a body  are a  person's biological ID, a
proof of  identity that  can't be  counterfeited. And if the
physical characteristics of the person who makes the request
don't match  those stored  in the  NanoTech memory, not only
will  the   system  deny   access  to   the  Administrator's
resources, it  may even  set off  an  alarm,  with  all  the
unpleasant consequences that Levshov warned us about.
   That was  our hypothesis.  But it's  something more  than
just a  hypothesis now.  The fact  that  the  Americans  did
indeed request  Levshov's extradition, confirms that we were
right. They realized that the only way to gain access to the
Administrator's resources  is through  Levshov himself,  and
they need him there, in their lab."
   - "But  will he  be of  any use  to them,  if he  is most
likely to  refuse to  cooperate  with  them?"  -  asked  the
General.
   - "Theoretically  speaking, there  is  one  way  to  gain
access to  the Network Administrator's resources without his
cooperation. Let's assume that we found a way to put Levshov
to sleep..."
   - "But  you yourself told me that the cyborg-bacteria can
destroy any  soporific in  his body  within a  fraction of a
second!" - exclaimed the General.
   -  "But   what  I'm   saying   now   is   let's   assume,
theoretically, that there is a way. Let me first finish what
I wanted  to say,  and you'll  see what  I'm driving at. So,
let's just  imagine that  Levshov is,  some  way  or  other,
knocked out cold, and while he doesn't feel anything we do a
little surgery  on him:  we implant microelectrodes into the
nerve fibers  that go from Levshov's brain to the muscles of
his throat,  as well  as into his auditory nerve. Let's also
imagine that  by that  moment we  have already  performed  a
similar surgery  on one  of our  men, but  our  man  doesn't
sleep, and  is fully alert. We use ordinary wires to hook up
his electrodes  to the corresponding electrodes in Levshov's
body: throat to throat, auditory nerve to auditory nerve. It
may well  be that there will be some intermediate amplifiers
and signal  correction circuits,  but  I'm  not  going  into
technical details here.
   And now  imagine that  our man  gives to  the NanoTech  a
voice command  to open  access to  the Network Administrator
resources. The  action currents from the nerve fibers in his
throat are  fed through  the wires to the nerve fibers going
to Levshov's  throat inside  Levshov's body,  and there they
are picked  up by  the cyborg-bacteria  living on  his nerve
fibers. These  cyborg-bacteria have  no way  of knowing that
these action  currents are  not coming from Levshov's brain,
and therefore  they process it as a command given by Levshov
himself. From  the standpoint  of NanoTech, the request will
be made  by Levshov  himself, and  that  means  that  before
NanoTech  grants   the  access,  it'll  check  the  physical
characteristics of  Levshov's body.  These, of course,  will
match  the   physical   characteristics   of   the   Network
Administrator, and  the access  will be  granted. A  message
about this  will be  sent to  Levshov's auditory nerve, from
where it  will be  sent by wire to the auditory nerve of our
man. As  soon as  our man gets access to the Administrator's
resources, the first thing he'll have to do is to assign the
Network Administrator  rights to  himself or  to some of our
people.  Then this newly assigned Network Administrator gets
access to  the Administrator  resources in  his own name and
divests Levshov of his Network Administrator rights. Levshov
awakes a  virtual nobody,  and the  Network is completely in
our hands. Just as simple as that."
   - "That's  all very  fine in theory" - said the General -
"but how  do we  knock him out cold? May be, bludgeon him on
the head?"
   The Chief of the lab shook his head: "The cyborg-bacteria
would immediately  repair any  damage caused by the blow and
he'll recover  his consciousness very quickly. We won't have
enough time to perform the surgery.
   - "Then I just don't understand you." - said the General.
   - "Well,  I believe  that what  they have  chosen as  the
standard body characteristics for NanoTech to check prior to
granting access"  - said  the head  of the  lab -  "are some
relatively stable  bodily features  that don't change as the
function of  the body's  physiological condition. Even if we
assume  that   the  body   is  dead,   such  features  won't
significantly change  for, let's say, half an hour after the
death occurred. If the surgery had been well rehearsed, such
time period might prove to be adequate."
   - "Well, let me make sure I understand you: what you need
is Levshov's dead body?" - asked the General.
   - "Only a very fresh one." - said the head of the lab.
   - "And  is this  operation of  yours well  rehearsed?"  -
asked the General.
   - "I  foresaw that  the things  might eventually  come to
this, and so for the last two days we have been continuously
training for  such an operation. Just in case. But I want to
warn you  right away that I'm not giving you any guarantees.
We are  taking a very long shot. It may turn out that at the
moment  of  death  a  System  Administrator  is  immediately
automatically deleted  by NanoTech  from the list of persons
authorized to access the Administrator resources. Although I
doubt that the creators of NanoTech have programed this into
the system.  I still  think it unlikely that the programmers
could foresee the current situation. But it's also possible,
that NanoTech  will be  able to detect the commands not only
in the  nerve fibers  of Levshov's throat, but also the same
commands in  the nerve  fibers of our man, and we don't know
what the system's reaction might be in that case. Of course,
we are  going to  take all the precautions - we are going to
put our man in a box shielded against infrared radiation and
we'll only  have the  wires running out of that box, but one
cannot  foresee   everything,  so  there  is  no  guarantee.
However, there  is a  chance. But  if they take Levshov away
from us, we won't even have that chance to get access to the
Administrator's resources."
   - "The  Americans will  have  it  instead."  -  said  the
General somberly  - "How  many minutes  do you  give  us  to
deliver the  corpse, form the moment of death to the arrival
at your lab?"
   - "Zero minutes."
   - "You  mean we'll  have to  finish him off right in your
lab?"
   - "You may do that in the hallway right outside the door,
but no farther then that."
   The  General  turned  to  the  Colonel:  "What  are  your
proposals?"
   The Colonel  scratched his  head: "Well,  I can  see  the
following scenario.  Tomorrow morning  I'll pick  up Levshov
for an  interrogation and  take him  on  a  different  route
that'll take  us past  the lab's door. As we will be passing
the lab's  door, a  stranger  that  will  have  entered  our
building using  a  false  ID  card  will  suddenly  approach
Levshov and shoot him with a hand gun. The guard who will be
escorting Levshov  will return  fire and  kill the stranger.
The stranger  will turn  out to be a man that has for a long
time been  suspected of  being a  hired killer involved in a
number of  assassinations. So it will be a clear-cut case of
a hired  killing, and  there'll be  no clues  as to  who was
behind the killing."
   - "No  clues? And  what about the faked ID card?" - asked
the General  and the  Colonel's spirits immediately flagged.
"Well" - continued the General - "under normal circumstances
I would have never OK'd such a messy act. But in view of the
fact that  we are  hard pressed  for  time,  and  absolutely
everything is  at stake...  If everything comes out well, we
won't have  to justify  our actions to anyone, including the
Americans. If we get hold of  NanoTech, the balance of power
in the  world will  immediately  change.  Success  is  never
blamed. But  even if we fail to access the Network, at least
the Americans  won't be able to do this either - there'll be
no Levshov anymore. Colonel, get down to work!"
   - "Just  a moment,"  - said the head of the lab - "I want
to emphasize one thing: shoot him only in the head. NanoTech
will be  able to repair any wounds in the heart or any other
organs. The bullet must hit him exactly in the middle of his
forehead,  an  inch  above  the  eyebrows,  and  the  bullet
trajectory must be strictly horizontal. If you make holes in
other parts  of the  head, I  can't guarantee the success of
our operation to implant the electrodes."
   - "We'll keep that in mind." - said the Colonel.

   4.2 Assassination  attempt.  July  10,  morning,  Moscow,
Levshov's place of detention

   The heavy  metal door  screechingly opened.  The  Colonel
stood on  the doorstep:  "Come out,  Levshov. Today  we  are
going to another room - I want to show you something."
   In  the  corridor  the  Colonel  lead  the  way,  Levshov
followed him  with an  armed  guard  behind  him.  When  the
Colonel and Levshov turned round the corner, the armed guard
momentarily fell  behind. Suddely  Levshov heard  a familiar
voice behind  his back:  "Rejoice, Science!  At  long  last,
there is a customer who wants you killed too!"
   Levshov turned  around. He  didn't immediately  recognize
Mityai. Instead  of his  usual black leather with chains, he
was wearing  a dark  suit with  a  tie  -  a  uniform  of  a
civilian-clothes man  - which  was so  much more  in harmony
with the spirit of the building they were in.
   - "And  what a  customer! You know, Science, I even began
to respect  you!" -  said Mityai  slowly drawing  out of his
pocket his favorite black hand gun.
   Levshov was  silent. At  least  he  didn't  say  anything
aloud.
   AL:> NANOTECH
   NT:> SYSTEM READY
   AL:> ADMINISTRATOR RESOURSES ACCESS REQUEST
   NT:> REQUESTER BEING IDENTIFIED. WAIT...
   - "Don't  be afraid, Science! You are in a professional's
hands. You  won't even  feel that  you are  dead!" -  Mityai
couldn't resist  the urge  to pick  on Levshov  for the last
time.
   NT:> REQUESTER  IDENTIFICATION  COMPLETE.  ACCESS  RIGHTS
CONFIRMED. ADMINISTRATOR RESOURSES ACCESS OPEN.
   AL:>  PROGRAM:   REMOTE  CONTROL  OF  MUSCULAR  ACTIVITY.
OBJECT: WHO I AM LOOKING AT.
   Levshov was  silently and  steadily  looking  at  Mityai.
Mityai deliberately  gripped the  hand gun  with both of his
hands,  extended  his  arms,  and  carefully  aimed  at  the
Levshov's forehead  - on  the centerline, one inch above the
eyebrows, as per the customer's specifications.
   - "I'm  sorry, Science.  Nothing personal. I'm just doing
my job."
   - "Stop blabbering! No time!" - snapped the Colonel.
   Mityai pressed  the  trigger,  thinking  about  all  that
square footage he would enjoy after cutting through the wall
of his apartment to the now unoccupied Levshov's appartment.
"I'll remove the range from Lewvshov's kitchen. I don't need
two kitchens.  I'll make  it a  living room. It's strange, I
didn't hear  the report  of the  gun. But  I did  press  the
trigger. Or did I?"
   Mityai pressed  the  trigger  once  again.  Only  now  he
realized that  he doesn't  feel his finger, doesn't feel the
pressure of  the trigger on the finger. Mityai looked at his
finger and  tried to move it. The finger didn't move. Mityai
felt panic  starting to overwhelm him. He tried to bring his
hands closer  to his eyes. The arms did not obey. They froze
in the  extended position  with the  gun between  the hands.
Startled, Mityai  began to  whirl around. The arms, with the
hands holding the gun, were stiff as sticks.
   - "Stop  this circus!" - snapped the Colonel, starting to
move towards  Levshov and  Mityai.  Levshov  looked  at  the
Colonel.
   It took  the Colonel  some time to realize that he didn't
feel his  legs. They  became sort  of petrified. The Colonel
lost his  balance and  came  down.  Fortunately,  his  hands
worked and he managed to land on them.
   "I think  that after  what has  just happened, my further
stay here  becomes pointless.  Excuse me,  gentlemen, but  I
have to  leave you."  - said  Levshov and disappeared  round
the corner.

   When Levshov, running along the corridor, reached a rest-
room, an alarm siren went off somewhere inside the building.
Fortunately, the  restroom was  empty.  Levshov  stopped  in
front of  the sink  and opened   the faucet. The first thing
was to do something about the clothes...
   ... A guard's uniform turned out to be fairly convincing.
Now, the face. Two lumps of cyborg-bacteria formed under the
skin on  the left  and on the right made the cheekbones look
much wider.  Levshov looked  in the  mirror and decided that
his jaw  also needed some padding out. Then he broadened his
nose a  little bit. And finally, as an afterthought, he grew
under the faucet a little false mustache and stuck it to his
upper lip.
   When Levshov  reappeared in  the corridor,  the siren was
still  sounding,   and  everybody   was  running  along  the
corridor, strangely  enough, in  both directions.  When  the
Colonel, who  had finally  regained control  of his legs ran
past, Levshov  stood  at  attention  and  saluted  him.  The
Colonel distractedly  glanced at  a  new  guard  with  broad
cheekbones and  rakish little  mustache, whom  he had  never
seen before, curtly nodded and ran along.
   Levshov really  had nothing  more to  do here. But before
leaving the building he had to examine the adjacent streets.
He asked  NanoTech to  hook him up to a bird flying over the
building. A  second later  he was  looking at the world with
the eyes  of a  pigeon soaring  above.  Levshov  was  mostly
interested in  the street  where the  main entrance  to  the
building was  situated. It  was long  since  the  last  time
Levshov had  flown as  a pigeon, so the first couple of wing
beats were  not very  successful, the  pigeon lost altitude,
and for  a moment  it seemed   that  he was  going to crash.
However, the  flying skill  quickly returned  -  after  all,
flying a  pigeon is  like riding a bicycle, you only need to
learn it  once and the skill remains for a lifetime. Levshov
quickly pulled  the pigeon  out of a dive, and landed in the
street in  front of  the main  entrance. The pigeon walked a
few meters  along the  sidewalk, until  he found  a suitably
large puddle,  right opposite the entrance. The water in the
puddle suddenly began to grow murky and whitish.
   Levshov disconnected  from the pigeon and started walking
towards the exit. The guard at the exit had only enough time
to say  "Your ID..."  and turned to stone, as Levshov walked
past him.
   In the  street, a  few amazed  passers-by could see how a
big white  bubble  started  to  grow  from  a  puddle  right
opposite the  main entrance  to a  gloomy imposing  building
without any signs. In a few seconds the bubble turned into a
very strange-looking,  compact single-seater  car. One could
see only  one seat  under its  transparent upper body. There
was no  driving wheel  in front  of the  seat, no pedals, no
control panel.  The strangest  thing of all was that the car
didn't have  any doors.  In a  few more  seconds a mustached
guard with  high cheekbones  came out  of the  building  and
approached  the  strange  car.  A  big  oval  hole  suddenly
appeared in  the  car's  upper  body.  The  passers-by  were
staring with  their mouths  wide open. "Good morning" - said
the polite  guard, eased  himself into  the hole, and sat in
the only seat there was. The hole immediately healed over as
if it  had never  existed, and  the car  pulled out  without
producing any sound or exhaust gases.
   In  fifteen  minutes'  time,  when  Levshov  was  already
driving along  an out-of-town  highway he  saw his pursuers.
The car  increased its  speed. And  then it  sprouted wings,
like aircraft  wings. In  one more  minute it  got  off  the
ground, and  its wheels dissolved - not retracted or folded,
but dissolved,  while at  the same  time the  wings became a
little longer.  In a  few more  seconds the  plane left  his
pursuers beyond the horizon.
   The plane  was flying  eastwards, towards the rising sun,
climbing higher  and higher.  For the first time in the last
few days  Levshov had  a chance to sit back and consider the
situation.   He was  to  account  to  the  NanoTech  Network
Administrators' Board  for  his  use  of  the  Administrator
Resources, but he was not much concerned about this - he had
used  the  Administrator  Resources  exclusively  for  self-
defense, this would be corroborated with the records of what
his eyes  had seen, and he was absolutely confident that the
Administrators' Board  will vindicate  him. His real concern
was that  the initial  plan of  an  instant  revolution  had
failed. Of  course, he  had foreseen  the resistance  of the
System, but  he had never expected it to be so vehement - as
any inventor  he was prone to see only the advantages of his
invention, and he had believed that he would be able to make
these  advantages   obvious  to  anyone.  Only  now  he  was
beginning to  see that  the struggle  between Communism  and
Capitalism would  continue as  long as  the struggle between
Reason  and   Instinct  inside  the  human  soul.  That  is,
probably, forever.  The Administrators' Board had to come up
with a new plan of action.
   The plane  momentarily entered a cloud to take additional
"raw material".  The  engines  grew  in  size,  became  more
powerful. The  wings swept back readying to pass through the
sound barrier.  The plane continued climbing. It became cold
in the  cockpit. Levshov's clothes started to transform from
a guard's  uniform into  something thick  and warm,  with  a
built-in thermal  control system.  Levshov got warm and fell
asleep. He  wasn't worried  about ground  radars - the plane
containing  no  metal  was  absolutely  invisible  to  them.
NanoTech was  piloting the  plane further and further to the
east. Soon,  a green  carpet of  impenetrable Siberian taiga
forest was  stretching  under  the  plane  from  horizon  to
horizon...

   Epilogue.

   In a  couple of  months after the above events, a retired
secret service general started haunting the corridors of the
Russian parliament.  He was  said to had been forced into an
early retirement  for disgracefully  failing a  very  secret
operation. What  kind of  operation, nobody knew, because it
was too  secret. It  was also  rumored that  the general had
been so  much upset  by his  failure that  his  mind  became
slightly deranged. The General would offer to the members of
parliament a  leaflet written by himself and reproduced on a
copier. The  title of  the leaflet  was "Nanotechnology as a
Flunky of  the  International  Communo-Masonic  Conspiracy".
The leaflet  stated that the villainous "masonic communists"
and "rootless internationalists" contaminated the population
and the  water with  "germs remotely  controlled by  radio",
with the  aim of subverting the last vestiges of the Russian
economy and  nationhood by  gratuitously providing  VCRs and
other consumer  goods via water taps, as well as by inciting
people  to   stop  paying   taxes  and   to  dodge  military
conscription. Further  in his  leaflet the General mentioned
that he  had personally  arrested the ringleader of the gang
that had been carrying out the evil plans of the cosmopolite
conspirators, but he soon managed to escape.
   "Nowadays  'comrade'  Levshov  changed  his  tactics."  -
wrote the General at the end of his leaflet - "If you take a
sample from  your water  tap today  and look at it through a
microscope, you  won't be  able to  find in  it the remotely
controlled germs  anymore. Most  of them have self-destroyed
after  Levshov's  escape.  However,  I  have  evidence  that
Levshov has not recanted his evil designs.
   Lately, in Siberian taiga, in the area around Malyi Ulyui
mountain range,  whole villages  started to disappear. To be
more exact,  the houses  remain, all  the things  inside the
houses, even  IDs and money remain, but the people are gone.
I am  absolutely certain  that the vicious communist Levshov
takes the  people away  into taiga  where he  has set up his
commune, and  feeds people  with  the  water  directly  form
Ulyuika river.  The last  time he went as far as to brazenly
take away  a whole  district. We  have got to put a resolute
end to this outrage, before the communist plague in the form
of remotely  controlled germs has spread all over Russia and
ruined it, this time irrevocably.
   I propose  to drop  a nuclear  bomb on  the  Malyi  Ulyui
mountain range. This is the only way to completely sterilize
this focal  point  of  infection  with  remotely  controlled
germs. I am perfectly aware that this is a very cruel way of
dealing with  the situation,  and a  lot of people will die,
but when  a limb  is infected with gangrene, the only way to
save the rest of the body is to amputate it."

   The members of parliament usually listened to the retired
general for  a few  minutes, then  smiled and    called  the
policeman to  take the  General out  of the parliament house
because he was not supposed to be there. But on the next day
the General  would once  again find  a way  to get  into the
corridors of  power and  once again  tried to  hand out  his
leaflets.

   The ideas of the retired general didn't find an echo even
in the  hearts of  the most  ardent supporters  of the World
Conspiracy Theory.  "Generally speaking,  the General  is  a
well-intentioned old  geezer" -  they would  say -  "But  he
certainly overdid  it with that story about VCRs distributed
out of  the water  tap. His ravings discredit our cause, and
it would  be  a  good  idea  if  he  received  some  medical
treatment".

   Then the  General suddenly ceased to appear. According to
some rumors  he now  lives in an institution where there are
ward attendants  with a straitjacket always at hand, just in
case the  General might  want to continue his writings about
"masonic communists" and "remotely controlled germs".

   The current  exact whereabouts of Levshov are unknown. It
may well  indeed be the case that he has retired to Siberian
taiga. He  might have  realized that  one should  not let us
into the Communism just as we are - jealous, greedy and at a
loss about what we are supposed to do with our own lives. We
would have  fought each  other, maimed  each other, lost any
sense of  purpose with  all that wealth of gratuitous things
around us,  and ruined our bodies and souls with free supply
of vodka. We need somebody to teach us to live a new kind of
life, to  guide us. We need some rule, some sort of a state.
But not  the kind  we have  seen up  till now  - all of them
based on the same model, the model of a pack of wild animals
where the top-dog always receives the best piece of meat and
the best  female just  because he  is a  top-dog.  The  main
objective of  a state  based on such a model has always been
and will always be to dominate the people, rather than serve
and help them.
   How to  build a  state based on the Reason instead of the
apish instinct?  Nobody knows  the answer  to this question.
And it  may well  be that  Levshov, being  a true scientist,
tries to  find an  answer in  his Siberian  experiment on  a
relatively small group of people, before presenting NanoTech
to the whole of the world.
   But this  doesn't mean  that we,  each of  us,  can  stop
looking for  an answer  - may  be some of us will be able to
find it.  Just confining ourselves to saying that capitalism
and democracy  may be  bad, but  that's the best the mankind
has managed  to come  up with,  won't do.  There  is  always
something better  than the  best, but we just have not found
it yet.

   The only thing that is now definitely known about Levshov
is that he also has written a book about the World Communist
Revolution that all but happened in the summer of 1997. That
book presents the events in an entirely different light from
the General's writings. A very curious book it is. The title
is "The NanoTech Network"...

   AL:> DICTATION OVER. CONVERT INTO A TEXT FILE AND POST IT
ON THE INTERNET.
   NT:> OK

   Korolyov, Moscow Region, former USSR

   Original Russian version - 1997
   English version - 1998

The above  is a  preliminary text of the English translation
of a  novel that  was originally  written in Russian. If you
are a native English speaker and you have any suggestions as
to how  this translation  could be  improved,  please  don't
hesitate to e-mail your comments to lazarevicha@online.ru
   The current plans are to publish the final English
version of this text before the end of 1998 on the
Alexander  Lazarevich's  home page  at
http://webcenter.ru/~lazarevicha.