It was 2857. Maia had lived five solar cycles. Saymon, six.
"GRANNY!" Maia ran toward me, carrying the wooden doll Saymon had made for her. Her hair, dirty with leaves and earth, bounced as tears ran down her flushed cheeks. "Granny!"
"What happened?" I crouched before her and began brushing dirt from her clothes.
Still breathless, Maia pointed toward the entrance. "No, they hurt Saymon."
He came through the door shortly afterward, furious and bloodied, limping as he held his wounded arm. "I'm the one who hurt them."
I had him sit on a table and went to get the medical kit. "Now, both of you are going to tell me what happened."
Saymon pressed his lips together. "They made fun of Maia," he whispered. "Again." Even injured, he retained that seemingly invincible spirit. "You know her…"
Maia had sat down, holding the doll in her hands, visibly worried about her brother.
She had her own rhythm for connecting with other people. When children invited her to play, she sometimes remained silent. They didn't understand her way and ended up mistreating her.
I had spoken to those children's relatives countless times, but nothing helped. "What did they do to her this time?"
"She was playing with her doll. They made fun of her hair and pushed her. Then a boy threw dirt at her." Anger seemed to escape Saymon with every word.
Maia huffed. "Saymon defended me. Is he okay? Please say yes. I just wanted to play. I don't understand why they did that." Her innocence broke my heart.
"They're jealous of you!" Saymon shouted.
Maia smiled despite her tears. "No. They're jealous of the doll you gave me. They wanted one for their birthdays too."
He suppressed a smile. "You're so silly."
"Enough, you two! Stay still, Saymon. I'm going to dress your wounds."
When I finished treating the injuries, I stroked both their cheeks. "Always look after her and protect her, hear me? And you too, Maia. We always need to take care of our family." I placed them before me and held their shoulders. "Remember: you must always take care of each other."
"I'll always take care of Saymon." Maia hugged her brother.
"I'll always take care of you too. More than you take care of me." Saymon returned the embrace, looking at her with satisfaction.
"I love you more than you love me." Maia stuck out her tongue.
"No, you don't." He pointed at the doll. "I made you a toy. What did you make me?"
Maia shrugged and stomped away. "You'll see."
"Go take a bath, Maia. Your parents will be here soon." I shook my head. "That's how she is. More stubborn than her mother."
Saymon lowered his eyes. "Why are those children so mean?"
I sighed. The weight of everything I had lived through seemed to settle on my back. Answering such a complex question was difficult, especially coming from a child who already showed so much understanding of life's questions.
"Ah, my dear, there are terrible people in the world. You'll cross paths with some of them in your life. But there are wonderful people too, like you and Maia. That's why you need to take care of them." I removed a leaf caught in his hair.
Saymon grimaced unhappily. "I don't want them to hurt her."
I chuckled and stroked his head. "I know. Now go take a bath. Go on. When you're done, you can have the cookies I made."
An ear-to-ear smile lit his face. He ran toward the bathroom. "Granny made cookies!"
I returned to my chores.
Charlotte and Calixte arrived at sunset.
They came through the door desperate and breathless. I had never seen them like that.
Maia ran to greet them, holding a little note. "Mom, look what Saymon and I made. Today we wrote that we're gonna codiscover the world!" She showed her father the paper. "See, Dad?"
But Charlotte and Calixte walked straight past her and came to me.
"Mom…" Charlotte's eyes carried terrible distress. "Where are the qnanoprototypes?"
I frowned. "Downstairs. Why are you suddenly asking? What happened?"
A bad feeling tightened around my heart.
Charlotte nodded and ran to the basement.
I turned to Calixte. "What happened?"
He didn't answer.
The weight in my chest grew.
Charlotte returned carrying the qnanoprototypes. And took Saymon and Maia with her despite my protests. I couldn't stop them. All I could do was wait. An agonizing wait that seemed to suffocate my heart with every moment.
They returned after a seluna.
And my heart shattered into thousands of pieces. It was a pain I wouldn't wish on anyone. "WH-WHAT DID YOU DO?!" I trembled, my eyes flooded with tears, afraid even to touch them.
Wounds covered Maia's and Saymon's pale bodies. Two deep wounds on each of Maia's forearms were protected by bloodstained nanobandages. On Saymon's forehead, other bloodied bandages covered a cut.
Charlotte seemed to have lost all vitality. Her face was gaunt, her body thin and wasted. Calixte looked the same.
What was happening? Why had all four returned like that?
Charlotte cried as she handed me papers, documents, and three passports bearing the Aether Network's seal. "Run. Escape to Brazil. I reserved a plane for the three of you tomorrow morning, straight to Santos. You'll live there." She held my shoulders, trembling. "M-Mom, please, save them. Save Maia and Saymon."
"Ch-Charlotte, what happened? Tell me already!"
She lowered her head. Tears with an ocean's force ran down her cheeks. "I-I'm sorry, please. They'll take them, the mercenaries will… we injected the qnanoprototypes into them."
"YOU DID WHAT?!" I recoiled, unable to support my own weight.
"I-I'm sorry. I wrote everything in a letter." Charlotte and Calixte left quickly, leaving us behind.
The next day, I boarded a plane to Brazil with Maia and Saymon.
That night, the Aether Network surrounded France with nanobarriers and annihilated it with the 3-R.
Greed decimated an entire country.
Moons passed before I found the courage to read Charlotte's letter.
Mom,
I joined Société d'Intelligence under Une Côte's orders.
In 2845, we infiltrated a qnanomalware into the nanosystems of the Aether Network's Parliament. We discovered irrefutable proof of fraud, fabricated records, bribe transfers to officials, manipulated conversations, and false accusations against Nanoverse and the Luminaries, committed since 2795.
A recording from 2849 confirmed our suspicions. A group of ten individuals, scattered across the world's ten principal cities, calls itself the Society. They are architects of the great global tragedies. They use erasure, silencing, machinations, bribes, and quiet destruction. They employ any means they consider necessary to achieve their goals.
We identified one of them: Paulo Lewis, Sessota's Director of Operations, operating in São Paulo. Through him, we confirmed that Sessota, UNITED, and Kokusai financed the weaving of Vaktiria, a disease designed to exterminate more than forty percent of the world's population annually over the coming cycles.
They were also behind the attacks against the Luminaries since 2776, when they decided to bring down Nanoverse for fear of the quantum-nanotechnological innovations cowoven by our grandparents.
Ten cycles ago, they renewed the assault, this time against Société and everyone who resists.
The Luminaries are weakened by the international sanctions crushing our people. Paris burns with hunger and despair. France is on its knees, torn apart by civil war and the relentless pressure of other countries. Entire cities burn beneath the weight of the revolts.
Yet we are heirs to a history of revolutions. Our blood carries insurgency. We have always fought. Maintained our sovereignty.
Now they massacre us because we exist. Because our intelligence, our nanotechnology, and our freedom threaten the foundations of a group that wants absolute control. That is why they decided to exterminate us.
Tonight, the Aether Network and Netheria will bomb our country. Afterward, they'll tell the world we were a den of slavery, a militia refusing to stop violations of existential rights.
They'll promise to welcome the French as refugees. But it's a lie. They manipulated the entire planet to justify our destruction. No one dares oppose the Aether Network because it holds the 3-R. We'll be the martyrs, the example of what happens to those who challenge the system. That is why they won't leave us the possibility of rising again. We'll be their success where they failed in Egypt.
They'll erase us from history. We'll be more than dead. We'll be extinct. Our language, our people, and our culture will become a distorted echo, a convenient lie. We'll be reduced to less than beings because we dared to exist.
We tried to warn them. No one listened.I hope for your understanding, though I feel it will be reluctant to come. But our struggle must continue. Some managed to escape. They'll carry on.
Hope resists. Maia and Saymon are the future. They carry the possibility of overcoming our limits. We injected the QN-Tecs into them. They need to survive. They need to win.
When they reach seven cycles, the mercenaries from Nobody's Land, a subgroup linked to Netheria, will come for them. Let them go. They need to be strong. We wrote each of them a letter. Please deliver them on the moon of their departures.
Mom, forgive us. Saymon and Maia, forgive us.
We'll die fighting.
We love you.
With love, Charlotte & Calixte
I read the letter to the end, soaking it with tears. My body trembled so much I could barely remain standing. What had Charlotte and Calixte done?
Maia and Saymon slept an angelic sleep. Gaia could shake with earthquakes, and they would probably keep sleeping.
I lacked the courage to tell them what had happened to their parents, our country, and themselves. My grandchildren had been transformed into qnanoweapons. Charlotte and Calixte's decision had torn away their freedom, imposing the structure of their destinies.
My daughter had said she hoped for understanding. She was right to doubt it would come. To this day, I struggle to understand. How could they do that to their own children? And worse, I had done nothing to stop them.
The bruises left by the injections still marked them both. Charlotte and Calixte had injected them with NB-Mend, a QN-Tec codeveloped by Nanoverse. Its q-nanites acted within the bone structure as though they were metals, strengthening and regenerating bones.
But into Maia, Charlotte had also injected the supremacy. The reason behind everything that had happened. The QN-Tec that threatened all others.
Regnante. To rule, in Latin. The technology had been cowoven to bring the organic and inorganic into flow, though its channels still encountered limitations in human systems.
But its power went far beyond that.
Regnante could alter the nature of other nanites, temporarily or permanently. It could also move, destroy, and reconstruct them. A QN-Tec capable of ruling over all others, regardless of their essence. Even other QN-Tecs.
Charlotte had left records of the connection in Maia. The data showed living q-nanites in her bloodstream, regenerating and duplicating at her will. They were commanded by the girl's own nervous system.
To understand the scale of that, imagine a nanite performing a particular function in the heart.
Maia could connect to it through Regnante and reprogram it to act in the brain. She could even force someone to act against their own will, dominating the q-nanites in their nervous system.
She could also multiply them and project them beyond her own body. At maximum power, Regnante reached a radius of up to one kilometer. Applied to objects, that capacity could extend across continents.
However, Maia and Regnante had cotranscended the technohuman essence, becoming coweavers of the fabric of reality itself.
I see it in your eyes. You understand the scale of this, don't you? With that capacity, we could deactivate or destroy the 3-R.
Nanoverse would surpass the Aether Network's might, and Paris could become the First City, the world's most powerful.
But my parents and I had made another decision. So much power and control demanded too high a price. We had watched our nation crumble because of that struggle. We only wanted to live in serenity. We preserved the technologies out of pride in our coweaving.
Charlotte and Calixte, however, transformed their own children into weapons, instruments of their ideals.
Into Saymon, they connected the second QN-Tec cowoven by Nanoverse, kept under absolute secrecy.
Gagner. To conquer, in French. Originally, it was a quantum-nanochip implanted in the head, developed to allow a temporary connection with a second android if the primary machine was damaged. The nanochip duplicated the being's DNA, making that new bond possible.
But when Charlotte and Calixte injected the complete qnanoprototype into Saymon's brain, the replicating q-nanites took half his DNA and settled into each of the nearly seven octillion atoms composing him.
That made something unprecedented possible. Saymon could conquer and control an equivalent number of androids.
How? By replicating his DNA in a conquering nanite. A single contact with an android's nanocore was enough. Within hours, Saymon could subjugate it completely, disconnecting it from the Motherboard.
In current nanotechnology, androids and humans connect atomically, sharing half the DNA. That limits the bond to a single android.
But Saymon and Gagner cotranscended that limitation.
A new humatech entity, with an interfractal-technoneural network, emerged in the Corchesweave.