The Quantum Connection

CHAPTER 31

Next year we plan to spread the technology of longevity to the species. We have already improved medical technology eons ahead of anything the quacks would have ever come up with. There are no longer any deadly diseases since a dumbed-down version of the nanomachines has been released to the public domain. Nanomachines for specific tasks were introduced into the public as inventions by the brilliant scientist husband-and-wife team Dr. Steven and Dr. Tatiana Montana.

The doctorates weren't honorary. We were able to take courses from Anson and Jim and 'Becca and a few others at the satellite location for the University of America that was located on the Moon and we also had taken many classes at the new University of California at Bakersfield. We both wrote dissertations on nanomachine construction and manipulation.

Of course, now we could build machines nearly twenty orders of magnitude smaller. We were also fairly certain that the Grays couldn't do this. We weren't so sure about the limits of the Lumpeyins. At any rate, the current status of medical technology was such that most people could now expect to live a healthy, happy life to at least a hundred and eighty years.

Next year we plan to introduce to the world that the only reason not to live to be thousands of years old would be if you were hit by a truck—a big and very fast-moving truck that stopped and backed up over you several times—or were squished in an alien collapsing singularity. And it wasn't physicians that developed the cure for old age. Tatiana says I've been hanging around Anson and Jim too much and have adopted their distaste for medical quacks, but Anson and Jim are right and I like them—I can't recall a quack that I ever did. After all, the headshrinkers would've never found that Gray implant in my brain, but they would've sold me all the drugs I could afford until my insurance ran out.

We knew that the ability to live forever would really shock the world and excite it and force it to start thinking about colonizing other worlds or we would run out of room on Earth. We had that part of it covered. There were thousands of outpost worlds in need of settlers. The human race was really growing up and we were also becoming a dominant force to be reckoned with in our part of the galaxy. I hoped we weren't getting too big for our britches.

And were we getting too big for our britches? Because a war between alien species forced one of those races to infect us with the desire to build a war machine, our evolutionary path skewed from what we might have been. The alien that infected us had hopes that our acquired propensity for warfare would one day enable us to develop a means of destroying his enemies. Well, the red bastard got more than he bargained for, didn't he?

Opolawn hadn't counted on some brilliant redneck scientists and astronauts, a Russian bureaucrat's daughter, and a video game repairman from Bakersfield. He hadn't expected that we would develop a means not only of destroying his enemies, but him as well.

As far as my part in this war was concerned, I started out completely alone in the universe after The Rain—which Opolawn had caused in a way. But the W-squared core, Tatiana, and an alien SuperAgent showed me that nobody is really alone and that somehow we are all physically connected to each other.

I'm not real sure about the philosophical ramifications of our connectedness with the universe, but practically it means that the human race is now a formidable species and that if any of you aliens out there think you want to come and mess with us then you had better think twice. We might just make a quick quantum connection to you and lower one hell of a boom on your ass!