Dream Thing

Once, a lifetime ago, he produced the machines from a nanotechnological experiment that he never thought would succeed—but it did. He created functioning devices the size of gnats, and he programmed them to perform a few simple functions. He encapsulated the tiny machines in a tiny vial of silver and had the vial placed on his person, where it would always be with him. The dentist had balked at taking out a perfectly healthy molar to replace it with the silver vial, but a brick of twenty-dollar bills convinced him to do the deed.

The vial was intended to remain with him even after an intense search by law enforcement, and the nanotech machines were intended to be used to free him from a prison cell. Now his prison cell was the earth itself, and the nanotech machines had been put to work to perform a function for which they were not designed.

They chewed away the blockage in fragments smaller than the footprint of an ant, whether the blockage was steel security plates, reinforced concrete walls or solid limestone. Each machine transported its tiny fragment of material to the farthest possible point away from the excavation, and then traveled to the front of the excavation to chew off another fragment. For energy, they fermented small grains of whatever organic matter was provided for them to serve and, when they had energy enough, they provided a phosphorescent output. This was the sum total of their functionality.

The young man could control the direction and size of their excavation by manipulating the pool of excavating machines—this boiled down to smearing the creatures on the rocks that they should excavate. The smaller the cavity they formed, the faster they worked. In the interest of speed, he kept the cavity narrow. It was just six feet long, a foot high and not two feet in diameter. A coffin provided more elbow room. It was made even tighter by the extra equipment: the air tanks, the small compressor and the canteen.

He had been in this enclosed space for at least forty days. No wonder he was starting to lose his marbles.

He pulled out his pocket notebook and squinted as he read. Depending on how many days he had lost to madness, he ought to be nearing another air chamber. His oxygen tanks were almost depleted.

Still, he was more afraid of what would be waiting for him in the cavern than of suffocation.

He must have slept, because he regained consciousness with cold, fresh air filling his lungs painfully. The nanotech machines had chewed through the wall of the air chamber. The young man scooted forward and pushed his eyes close to the tiny opening.

His angle of ascent had been precise. He was just outside the cavern at exactly the right place—within a few feet of the trickle of the water.

Fifteen minutes later, the opening was large enough for him to wiggle through, but first he scooped up the goo that contained the nanotech machines and applied it to the walls in a new place, redirecting the angle of ascent. A mile above them at an eighty-one-degree angle was another cavern and their next scheduled pit stop.

The young man stifled the pain. Touching the goo provided the machines with organic matter, which they chewed right off of his fingers. Leave them on too long and the machines would remove his skin as effectively as dipping them in a caustic acid.

He listened, but not for long. He was so used to the silence of the earth that the trickle of the water was loud to him. Every once in a while he heard a spatter, which startled him until he was sure it was just the stream.

When he emerged from the rock, his legs wouldn’t hold him upright, so he crawled to the trickle and filled his canteens. He groped in the pool and found his emergency pack, stowed there many months ago.

Water splashed on his neck and he almost cried out. What was dripping on him?

Then he heard the sound of water splashing against stone far above, and he remembered the layout of the cavern. Some sort of intersecting vein of hard stone formed a wall alongside the tall shaft where the trickle had eaten away the limestone. It was like a bent and arthritic finger the way it distended up into the earth. He was scheduled to intersect the apex of the shaft again in thirty-six hours.

Only after crawling back into his rock cell, and only after the detritus of the excavation began to rebury the opening into the cavern did he dare to turn on the tiny compressor.

The sound was like the muted whir of a table saw, but it filled the tiny cell in the rock and sang through the earth.

Maybe he was too far away for them to hear it this time. Maybe they never came this close to the surface …