Despite a load of caffeine from a splendidly rich Colombian blend, Gabe could feel the hour and lack of sleep beginning to overtake him. Still, he was fascinated by the material and reluctant to call it quits for the night. Carefully avoiding the bed, and keeping the lights on full, he rotated from the desk, to a not-too-comfortable easy chair, to the kitchen table, and then back to the desk again. As he read, taking notes on a yellow legal pad, he felt an increasing connection to Dr. Jim Ferendelli.

What had drawn the man to be interested in this still-arcane field? What was his connection to Lily Sexton? Gabe remembered the spark of interest he himself had felt at first meeting her. But the images and the scent and gentle touch of Alison Cromartie were fresh and powerful enough to keep any fantasies involving Lily at bay.

Ferendelli and Sexton.

Possible, he mused. Very possible.

He had heard the term nanotechnology before and knew that it had something to do with constructing various materials beginning with very small particles. But until tonight that was about as far as his knowledge went. Well, he realized as he continued to read, not totally. He had come across someplace—an article or novel or possibly something on public radio—the phantasmagorical possibility of nanotechnology eventually creating a new life-form: submicroscopic nanorobots, capable of reproducing themselves again and again until the resultant "gray goo" began to smother all living matter on Earth.

Gray goo and nanobots.

Gabe washed the grit from his eyes, returned to the Internet, and did a more detailed reading on the subject. The terms gray goo and nanobots, possibly first coined by K. Eric Drexler, often referred to as the father of nanotechnology, were pure science fiction—speculation depicting the ultimate end of the evolution of the science, of all science for that matter, decades or even centuries in the future. Interesting to think about and to debate over coffee, but hardly an impending threat.

According to Drexler's theory, a self-replicating nanobot, one of hundreds of billions created to help society in any of hundreds or even thousands of ways, could undergo a change similar to a biological mutation. That one mutant particle then would create another; then the two of them would each reproduce again. Two would become four, then four eight, then eight sixteen—two to the eventual power of infinity, so long as the raw materials, the substrate, necessary to feed and sustain the process remained available. Because of the mutation, like microbes suddenly impervious to antibiotics, the technology to stop the unbridled growth of the new nanobots would no longer be effective.

Gray goo.

"The president feels that the federal government needs to take a more proactive position regarding control of scientific research and development—stem cells, cloning, nanotechnology . . ."

They were Lily Sexton's words.