Not sure if he should roll his friend over, Jeff looked distractedly at the screen of his cell phone. How strange. The chaotic explosion must have sent a jet of nanomachines into Carlos’s face, for Jeff could see a ghostly form of his friend’s features on the little screen, a stippling of red dots. Carlos looked all right except for his—eye?

Jeff could hear sirens, still very far. Carlos didn’t seem to be breathing. Jeff went ahead and rolled Carlos over so he could give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Maybe the shock wave had knocked his breath out. Maybe that was all. Maybe everything was still retrievable. But no, the five-inch metal tube that served as launch lug had speared through Carlos’s right eye. Stuff was oozing from the barely protruding tip. Carlos had definitely stopped breathing.

Jeff leaned over his beloved friend, pressing his mouth to Carlos’s blood-foamed lips, trying to breathe in life. He was still at it when his mother and sisters found him. The medics had to sedate him to make him stop.

Chapter 2

Nant Day

Little Chu was Nektar Lundquist’s joy, and her sorrow. The six-year-old boy was winsome, with a chestnut cap of shiny brown hair, long dark eyelashes, and a tidy mouth. Chu allowed Nektar and her husband to cuddle him, he’d smile now and then, and he understood what they said—if it suited his moods. But he wouldn’t talk.

The doctors had pinpointed the problem as an empathy deficit, a type of autism resulting from flawed connections among the so-called mirror neurons in Chu’s cingulate cortex. This wetware flaw prevented Chu from being able to see other people as having minds and emotions separate from his own.

“I wonder if Chu thinks we’re cartoons,” said Nektar’s husband, Ond Lutter, an angular man with thinning blond hair. “Just here to entertain him. Why talk to the screen?” Ond was an engineer working for Nantel, Inc., of San Francisco. Among strangers he could seem kind of autistic himself. But he was warm and friendly within the circle of his friends and immediate family. He and Nektar were walking to the car after another visit to the doctor, big Ond holding little Chu’s hand.

“Maybe Chu feels like we’re all one,” said Nektar. She was a self-possessed woman, tall and erect, glamorous with high cheekbones, full lips, and clear, thoughtful eyes. “Maybe Chu imagines that we automatically know what he’s thinking.” She reached back to adjust her heavy blond ponytail. She’d been dying her hair since she was twelve.

“How about it, Chu?” said Ond, lifting up the boy and giving him a kiss. “Is Mommy the same as you? Or is she a machine?”

“Ma chine ma chine ma chine,” said Chu, probably not meaning anything by it. He often parroted phrases he heard, sometimes chanting a single word for a whole day.