Nana didn’t own a phone. She had simply assembled the necessary components within the dome of her skull, after having disassembled several examples. Her spiky metallic hair functioned as an antenna array for it and other gadgets, as the metallic compounds she laced her skeleton with prevented reception.
As she refused to “analog interface” with devices when she could avoid it, she’d used her native nanocloud to whip up a relay that plugged into the phone jack at her desk and routed all her calls to her.
The entire call from Trinity had taken place internally, while she stood fewer than four feet from Dr. Jonathon Day, who had set his extension to forward to hers, knowing that she would receive calls even in the clean room in which they were working.
He’d done this because Trinity had headed east unexpectedly, and he had a somewhat urgent need to get in touch with her.
“Your friend called,” Nana said to him once the call concluded. “Said she’d be out of town a bit longer.”
“My… friend?” Dr. Day repeated, in a somewhat befuddled tone of voice that suggested perhaps he hadn’t realized that he had one.
“I’m sorry, ‘partner’ seems presumptuous,” Nana said. “Ms. Night.”
“Trinity Night is my partner, on several important projects,” Day said. “More to the point, she is a valued member of this institute. What the devil is she doing away at a time like this?”
“What would she be doing here?”
“Nana,” Dr. Day said, removing his glasses as he spoke, “do you know why I put up with your attitude?”
“I have my suspicions, but I’d love to get more data,” Nana said. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious why you put up with Ms. Night.”
“For the same reason I put up with you: because she performs vital services that no one else can do,” Day said. “Among other things, every time she talks to anyone from Washington, our budget goes up… which is why I was really hoping she’d turn up today. I have a three star general wanting a tour this afternoon and I need to pair him with someone who speaks his language. He’s looking for military applications, obviously, which of course everything has… but we don’t want them knowing that. Most of us here would just blurt out something dangerous faster than you can say ‘Cat’s Cradle‘.”
“Cat’s what?”
“Good heavens, haven’t you read your Vonnegut?”
“What’s his power?” Nana asked.
“He didn’t have one.”
“Then I didn’t read him.”
“This is exactly why you’re no use in this case… you’d be into five minutes of the GUG Post-Human Manifesto and he’d be on the phone with the Pentagon trying to get our funds reallocated to giant mutant-hunting robots.”
“Giant robots are out,” Nana said. “Impractical, inefficient. Square-cube law works against them, and they’re a bitch and a half to maintain. Nanotech is where it’s at… distributed computing, emergent intelligence. It would be a way more effective way to wipe out a species. Also, you’d have better plausible deniability.”
“Yes, well, I’m sure someone’s thought of that, too,” Day said.
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