Chương 117: Chapter 116 – Devastatingly Friendly

The group looked from one to the other wide eyed, realizing this enemy potentially was worse than Blackwood himself.

"It sounds like he is planning on moving forward with Operation Everybody Needs a Friend 2. 0," Elena said.

"Operation Everybody Needs a Friend 2. 0?" Jasper asked.

"That was one of the things I had wanted to talk to you about," Elena said, "but we didn't get the chance. Now that we have confirmed that he has things starting up in the Elven Realm, we have to go on the assumption that he has already begun the operation in the Fairy." She sighed, looking at Alex.

"Operation Everybody Needs a Friend, for those of you who do not know what it is or what it entails, I will give you an overview. Quite some time ago, when Mordak came to power for the first time, he began this promotion that seemed innocent enough. He had modified stuffed animals that when hugged would inject the hugger with what we had believed to be a virus," she began, before standing up and putting her hands on the back of her chair.

"The modified toys were given to poor or sick children in the more disadvantaged neighborhoods. These children would then get sick and unfortunately die, but not before infecting their families, neighbors and friends. The thing Blackwood had not anticipated was an all out epidemic, which eventually wiped out a large portion of the Goblin population, not just poor or disadvantaged neighborhoods, but more upscale neighborhoods as well.

"Blackwood's organization eventually discovered a so‑called cure and a vaccine, making him look like the ultimate hero. He saved Fallotopia, look at how wonderful I am yada, yada, yada," she said, raising her eyebrows before stepping back from the chair.

"For the rest, I am going to turn it over to Alex."

"After careful examination of this so‑called virus," Alex began, "I determined that its origins were not viral at all. It was actually a carefully crafted nanobot designed to attack and destroy portions of the target's DNA, killing the host in the process. This nanobot is self propagating, so it does not require large scale injections to be effective. One or two strategically located targets could set the whole thing in motion." He headed to the white board and picked up a pen.

"For example, we have infected target one," he said, writing the number one on the board and circling it.

"They are the child of, say, someone working at Fairy Central. Within hours of the nanobot being in their system, it has replicated itself and now infected their parents." He pointed to Jasper.

"We will use you as an example. Your secretary, Suzy Q, is now infected and she comes to work. Within hours her nanobot has replicated itself many times over. How many visitors come to your office on a daily basis, Jasper, not from the outside but on average other employees?"

"Gee I don't know, conservatively, I would say at least twenty or so," Jasper said, watching Alex closely as he wrote on the board.

"So, Suzy Q throughout the day has now infected you, and we'll say at least twenty others at your office alone. That would not include the people she ran into on her way to work, at the Emberbrew shop she stopped at, or the grocery store on her way home. See where this is going? This doesn't include Suzy Q's husband who is now also infected and goes to his office. All day long all these people who have been infected have nanobots in their bodies too, making new nanobots to further perpetuate it.

Now think about it, if he gives out fifty or so of these toys, the numbers would be staggering," he said, sighing. He began doing the math to illustrate, then stopped, not seeing the point of going on.

"Just here, we have Suzy Q's twenty, then those twenty infect twenty and the number jumps to four hundred, then the four hundred becomes eight thousand. I don't think you need to see any more than that. You get the picture. In a very short period of time you will have the entire populace infected." Alex walked back to his chair.

"The thing is, right now it is only designed to target Goblin DNA. Most everyone in the Goblin Realm has been vaccinated against it. As a matter of fact, it is part of the standardized immunizations given to children, which is most likely just an uncoded nanobot," he said, taking in a deep breath. The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"The cure was simply a correct and deactivating code, reprogramming the nanobot to fix the damage it had done then shut itself down. The vaccine was code to make the nanobot lie dormant until it received an activation code. He has either replaced the nanobot tech with one designed to replicate and spread that is missing the DNA targets, or he is using the same one he used in the Goblin Realm which would have no impact on the fairy or elven genome."

"Our only saving grace here is that in order for him to activate the nanobots, he has to first obtain and devise the coding to specifically target fairy and elven DNA, then he needs to develop and produce a delivery system. This will take some time. We are devising a complete shutdown system to render the nanobots completely inert regardless of any coding that may be sent to them in the future," Alex said.

"So basically a nanobot self‑destruct sequence?" Regina stated more than asked.

"Exactly!" Alex said, smiling at her.

"How close are you to developing this self‑destruct code?" Jasper asked, worried about the future of his realm.

"Mikale is working on it, Jasper," Alex said, turning to Mikale.

"I expect to have the full self‑destruct code ready by the end of the week. The biggest obstacle we have on our end is devising an effective delivery system. It's not like we can line people up and hand them a pill or something, and we don't want to wait until people start getting sick before giving it to them," Mikale said. Jasper thought about this.

"I have a question. Do people actually need to have this nanobot thing inside of them before they get the coding, or will it be just as effective if they have the coding and then are exposed to the nanobot?" he asked, curiously.

"No, they can have the coding prior to exposure. Actually that would be the best case scenario. It would cause the nanobot to activate the self‑destruct mode upon exposure before true infection could occur," Mikale said.

"I'm not sure how feasible this is, but is it possible to modify the nanobot technology to maintain the self‑replication code and self‑replicate the self‑destruct sequence?" Jasper asked.

"I just answered my own question. How can you instruct something to create a duplicate of itself and destroy itself all at the same time?" Mikale cast him a thoughtful glance.

"Jasper, you may be onto something there. It would be possible to modify the nanobot technology to simply self‑replicate and we could essentially wipe out all the rest of the original code, then replace it with a coding sequence that, if it is exposed to the weaponized nanobot, will emit the self‑destruct code. At least I think it would be possible. What do you think, Alex? Can we do that?" Alex carefully considered this.

"Okay, the nanobot is a biological organism that acts like a computer. It does nothing without programming. If you are able to devise a code that commands it to replicate itself, then theoretically it should do just that and then stop. The nanobot would then need specific coding to spread from one host to another. I don't see why, if the right coding was in there, it wouldn't take it the next step and transmit the self‑destruct code to the weaponized nanobot.

We would have to test it out, but theoretically it would work."

"Okay, so here is another question. If it is a biological computer, what does it need to survive? Does it need to be in a person to thrive, or can you say put it in the water supply?" Jasper asked. Both Mikale and Alex looked at each other and considered this.

"Considering the biological makeup of the nanobot, I am going to say that it actually needs a living host in order to function. But the principle of the infection rate would be the same as the weaponized nanobots. So a few strategically placed individuals infected with our nanobots would spread just as quickly, thereby inoculating the populace without them even being aware of it," Alex said.

"You know, this is absolutely brilliant, and all we need to do is develop a few of our own nanobots and they will do the rest. If we inject, say, Jasper and Illianna and they get as close as they can to as many as they can, then in a matter of a few days both realms will be protected before Blackwood even devises his weaponized ones. We could do the same thing here and protect Falotopia from him reactivating it as well," Mikale said.

"But what do we do about Jimmick and his band of thugs? We can't send Illianna back knowing that psycho is there," Regina said.

"They didn't see us, Regina, and I think it would raise more suspicion with us being gone than it would if we just continued to play the part of concerned family," Roxie said.

"Not that I relish the thought of going back knowing he's out there, Roxie's right. It's only a matter of time before Figero shows up at the house to give us a status report or someone else goes to the Abernathy's and finds Rosie. For all we know Figero may be there now or worse, walked straight into Jimmick while going to talk to Joe," Illianna said.

"I think we need to give Ill her own panic button. That is really our only defense if they come after us, and if they get either of us alone it will leave the other one stuck with no true defense," Roxie said.

"Mikale, do we have another one?" Elena asked.

"She can take mine. I don't think I will be leaving the lab anytime soon," Mikale