Radical
I Dream of Channon
by Radical
And now, on to the story proper...
------------------------------------------------------------------
The bastard. The mother****er. How dare he do that to her?
That was what Channon Yarrow was thinking as she ran across the street.
Her boyfriend Ziang Huai had broken up with her to become a cloud of dust.
Technically, that was an oversimplification. Ziang had joined the Autumn Rainfall Nanohuman Community and had saved up enough money to have his consciousness downloaded into a pile of nanomachines the size of a virus. This pile was then known as a "foglet" because when the machines were condensed in their electrical field, they looked like fog or smoke. She had seen one foglet, a former human known as Tico Cortez, create a lily for her (which she then fed to Spider) literally out of thin air, simply by altering molecules of oxygen and carbon dioxide and God knew what else was in the air.
She had seen the process of becoming a foglet. A cloud of nanomachines had fallen on Ziang, downloaded his memories and intellect into their supremely microscopic computers, and then..."eaten" his body for the fuel they needed to kick-start.
But that hadn't been the worst part. The worst part came after Ziang was a foglet. He and another foglet, Xiehe Golovko, had merged together into a single, larger cloud with lightning shooting out of it.
Tico's explanation was, "Essentially, without getting into heavy physics or anything...Xiehe and Ziang are having sex."
Ziang had sex.
With another "woman" (if she could be described as such).
Right in front of Channon.
How could he? The stupid bastard...
Channon ran out of the Community building, as if literally trying to escape the reality of what Tico had said. She wasn't paying attention to where she was going, especially not to Spider's voice...
She certainly wasn't paying attention to the car that hit her.
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"CHANNON!" screamed Spider as the car struck her. She went flying fifty feet...slammed into a bus stop...and Spider heard her neck break.
"SHIT!" Spider yelled, as much with anger as horror.
He couldn't ****ing believe this! What a hell of a day!
Here he was, being nice as you please, inviting her to her ex-boyfriend's downloading, even getting a damn tux for the occasion, blowing all his money on expensive shit because he thought she deserved it...and how did she express her gratitude?
By getting ****ing killed, that's how!
He wasn't sure if he loved Channon or not, but one thing was for certain: if his boss Mitchell Royce came in now asking for his "****ing column" as he was always referring to it, and he found out Spider'd gotten an assistant killed, he'd fire Spider's ass!
Spider broke into a run. Now that traffic had stopped, at least he wasn't gonna get slammed by a bus or anything. He raced over to her body and picked it up. Christ, she was heavy! Had she been eating all the caribou eyes?
What the hell to do now? The nearest hospital was too far for their horse-drawn taxi to walk...
Suddenly, Spider saw the Autumn Rainfall Nanohuman Community building. Maybe...
No. No ****ing way. He'd have to be crazy to...
But what other ****ing choice did he have?
Besides, maybe this way she could have her revenge on Ziang for dumping her and causing this in the first place.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Channon was dreaming.
Her childhood. Her maturity. Becoming a stripper. Becoming
Spider's assistant. Ziang...
Channon woke up. She sat up...and realized that she had no legs to sit
up with.
Just a stream of pink smoke.
She was a foglet.
She was a ****ing foglet.
Channon handled this in the calmest, most rational manner she knew how.
"SSSSSSPIIIIIIIIIIDERRRRRRRRR!!!! WHAT IN THE **** DID YOU DO TO ME?!?"
"Nice to see you too, Channon," scowled Spider. "Long story short, you died, I brought you back here, poof, you're a foglet."
"Where's Ziang?" demanded Channon.
"Right here," said her ex-boyfriend's voice. The nanomachines that made up his body coalesced together to form pink smoke, and the smoke sprouted a face.
"Good," said Channon in a tone Spider didn't like. Part of Channon's cloud turned into a hand, drawn back to strike.
"Channon, no!" Tico tried to warn her. Too late.
Channon's "hand" slapped Ziang's "face" hard. The meeting of their two electrical fields created a lightning bolt, complete with accompanying thunder.
"AAAH! ****in' Jesus!" shouted Spider as he closed his eyes and covered his ears. When he opened them, all was dark.
"Hey, who turned off the lights in here?" he demanded to know. Then, "Oh, shit."
Shouting as loud as he could, he yelled, "Channon, I hope you can hear me, because right now I can't ****ing hear me!
"When you gave Ziang a *****-slapping -- something I would've done if he was still solid -- the meeting of your electrical fields caused thunder and lightning. You wanna know what it's like at a distance of three goddamn feet?!"
"Now, thanks to you, I'm blind, deaf, choking on ozone, and if I had any hair it'd be standing on end! I --
"Oh, Christ, now my eyes are itching! My ears, too! Like there's dust in them or..."
He stopped, realizing something. "That you doing that, Channon? Or is that Tico? Ziang? Xiehe?
"I hope it's one of you ****ers, and that you're fixing the damage, because this itches like hell!"
When his eyes stopped itching, he opened them. He could see again. Channon's pink misty face floated before him, looking contrite. "Channon? Thanks. When you're done, I think you'll want a full explanation for all this."
Channon nodded, then put a finger to her lips as if shushing. Taking the hint, Spider shut up and waited for his ears to be fixed.
------------------------------------------------------------------
"...so they took memories of your DNA coding and sent it to Reclamation,"* Spider explained once they were back in their horse-drawn taxi. "Once they copy your body, you'll be re-downloaded into it. This foglet is just a rental."
Channon stroked her smoky chin thoughtfully with a smoky hand. "Actually," she said, "I think I have my own way around that."
"Huh?" Spider asked, confused. "You do?"
"If they can create flowers from thin air," she reasoned, "then this shouldn't be a problem. Besides, unlike them I don't really care to spend the rest of my life as a cloud of nanites." She closed her eyes and concentrated. The mist drew tighter...tighter...the nanomachines taking air molecules and turning them into...
"My ****ing God," Spider swore.
"See?" smiled Channon. "Nothing to OH MY GOD!"
You see, Channon had perfectly recreated a female human body, aged around thirty...but she'd forgotten clothing.
"Okay, okay!" she breathed. "I can do this!" She closed her eyes, concentrating further, and the air condensed into clothes.
"Do I still have my job?" she asked.
"Depends on what we tell Royce," Jerusalem frowned. "Meantime, you still owe me a column..."
by Radical
And now, on to the story proper...
------------------------------------------------------------------
The bastard. The mother****er. How dare he do that to her?
That was what Channon Yarrow was thinking as she ran across the street.
Her boyfriend Ziang Huai had broken up with her to become a cloud of dust.
Technically, that was an oversimplification. Ziang had joined the Autumn Rainfall Nanohuman Community and had saved up enough money to have his consciousness downloaded into a pile of nanomachines the size of a virus. This pile was then known as a "foglet" because when the machines were condensed in their electrical field, they looked like fog or smoke. She had seen one foglet, a former human known as Tico Cortez, create a lily for her (which she then fed to Spider) literally out of thin air, simply by altering molecules of oxygen and carbon dioxide and God knew what else was in the air.
She had seen the process of becoming a foglet. A cloud of nanomachines had fallen on Ziang, downloaded his memories and intellect into their supremely microscopic computers, and then..."eaten" his body for the fuel they needed to kick-start.
But that hadn't been the worst part. The worst part came after Ziang was a foglet. He and another foglet, Xiehe Golovko, had merged together into a single, larger cloud with lightning shooting out of it.
Tico's explanation was, "Essentially, without getting into heavy physics or anything...Xiehe and Ziang are having sex."
Ziang had sex.
With another "woman" (if she could be described as such).
Right in front of Channon.
How could he? The stupid bastard...
Channon ran out of the Community building, as if literally trying to escape the reality of what Tico had said. She wasn't paying attention to where she was going, especially not to Spider's voice...
She certainly wasn't paying attention to the car that hit her.
------------------------------------------------------------------
"CHANNON!" screamed Spider as the car struck her. She went flying fifty feet...slammed into a bus stop...and Spider heard her neck break.
"SHIT!" Spider yelled, as much with anger as horror.
He couldn't ****ing believe this! What a hell of a day!
Here he was, being nice as you please, inviting her to her ex-boyfriend's downloading, even getting a damn tux for the occasion, blowing all his money on expensive shit because he thought she deserved it...and how did she express her gratitude?
By getting ****ing killed, that's how!
He wasn't sure if he loved Channon or not, but one thing was for certain: if his boss Mitchell Royce came in now asking for his "****ing column" as he was always referring to it, and he found out Spider'd gotten an assistant killed, he'd fire Spider's ass!
Spider broke into a run. Now that traffic had stopped, at least he wasn't gonna get slammed by a bus or anything. He raced over to her body and picked it up. Christ, she was heavy! Had she been eating all the caribou eyes?
What the hell to do now? The nearest hospital was too far for their horse-drawn taxi to walk...
Suddenly, Spider saw the Autumn Rainfall Nanohuman Community building. Maybe...
No. No ****ing way. He'd have to be crazy to...
But what other ****ing choice did he have?
Besides, maybe this way she could have her revenge on Ziang for dumping her and causing this in the first place.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Channon was dreaming.
Her childhood. Her maturity. Becoming a stripper. Becoming
Spider's assistant. Ziang...
Channon woke up. She sat up...and realized that she had no legs to sit
up with.
Just a stream of pink smoke.
She was a foglet.
She was a ****ing foglet.
Channon handled this in the calmest, most rational manner she knew how.
"SSSSSSPIIIIIIIIIIDERRRRRRRRR!!!! WHAT IN THE **** DID YOU DO TO ME?!?"
"Nice to see you too, Channon," scowled Spider. "Long story short, you died, I brought you back here, poof, you're a foglet."
"Where's Ziang?" demanded Channon.
"Right here," said her ex-boyfriend's voice. The nanomachines that made up his body coalesced together to form pink smoke, and the smoke sprouted a face.
"Good," said Channon in a tone Spider didn't like. Part of Channon's cloud turned into a hand, drawn back to strike.
"Channon, no!" Tico tried to warn her. Too late.
Channon's "hand" slapped Ziang's "face" hard. The meeting of their two electrical fields created a lightning bolt, complete with accompanying thunder.
"AAAH! ****in' Jesus!" shouted Spider as he closed his eyes and covered his ears. When he opened them, all was dark.
"Hey, who turned off the lights in here?" he demanded to know. Then, "Oh, shit."
Shouting as loud as he could, he yelled, "Channon, I hope you can hear me, because right now I can't ****ing hear me!
"When you gave Ziang a *****-slapping -- something I would've done if he was still solid -- the meeting of your electrical fields caused thunder and lightning. You wanna know what it's like at a distance of three goddamn feet?!"
"Now, thanks to you, I'm blind, deaf, choking on ozone, and if I had any hair it'd be standing on end! I --
"Oh, Christ, now my eyes are itching! My ears, too! Like there's dust in them or..."
He stopped, realizing something. "That you doing that, Channon? Or is that Tico? Ziang? Xiehe?
"I hope it's one of you ****ers, and that you're fixing the damage, because this itches like hell!"
When his eyes stopped itching, he opened them. He could see again. Channon's pink misty face floated before him, looking contrite. "Channon? Thanks. When you're done, I think you'll want a full explanation for all this."
Channon nodded, then put a finger to her lips as if shushing. Taking the hint, Spider shut up and waited for his ears to be fixed.
------------------------------------------------------------------
"...so they took memories of your DNA coding and sent it to Reclamation,"* Spider explained once they were back in their horse-drawn taxi. "Once they copy your body, you'll be re-downloaded into it. This foglet is just a rental."
Channon stroked her smoky chin thoughtfully with a smoky hand. "Actually," she said, "I think I have my own way around that."
"Huh?" Spider asked, confused. "You do?"
"If they can create flowers from thin air," she reasoned, "then this shouldn't be a problem. Besides, unlike them I don't really care to spend the rest of my life as a cloud of nanites." She closed her eyes and concentrated. The mist drew tighter...tighter...the nanomachines taking air molecules and turning them into...
"My ****ing God," Spider swore.
"See?" smiled Channon. "Nothing to OH MY GOD!"
You see, Channon had perfectly recreated a female human body, aged around thirty...but she'd forgotten clothing.
"Okay, okay!" she breathed. "I can do this!" She closed her eyes, concentrating further, and the air condensed into clothes.
"Do I still have my job?" she asked.
"Depends on what we tell Royce," Jerusalem frowned. "Meantime, you still owe me a column..."