Organo-Topia by Scott Michael Decker

right, Maris on her heels. She barged through the office door. “Doctor Ipolita, bad time, I see.” She shielded her eyes. “Nanoproliferation Agency, surprise inspection. We'll wait in the lobby.” She backed up and closed the door.
    Perfect, Maris thought, watching the Doctor on cam scrambling to dress. Better to have a little leverage.
    Ipolita stepped into the foyer moments later, the picture of propriety, not a thread out of place. “Inspector Krumins, Inspector Ozolin, please, come in.” In her office, she gestured them to sit across from her, a fine flush tinting her cheeks. As she sat, she gave them a glimpse of the fruits she'd had hanging on display moments ago.
    “We're here about Sarfas at Telsai.”
    “Your agency was here three days ago, hours after it happened,” Doctor Ipolita said. “What else can I tell you?”
    “How it might have been done.” Ilsa stared at the woman across from her.
    She's good, Maris thought.
    “We're still investigating, of course,” she said. “You're asking me to speculate.”
    Inspector Krumins gave the Doctor a brief mirthless smile.
    “Provided it's taken as just that, and not as gospel.” Ipolita raised an eyebrow.
    Ilsa gave a small nod.
    “Very well, Inspector. We suspect that the nanochines infected him without setting off nanotectors anywhere in the facility by masking their surfaces with organophosphates. They gave themselves a skin. How, we're not sure yet. The infiltration of Plavinas Incubation was probably similar, but I'm not familiar with the details of that outrage.” She shook her head. “Couples everywhere begging for a child for years, and a quarter-million embryos wiped out in moments.”
    It didn't surprise Maris that people copulated at every opportunity, desperation infectious, species survival paramount. “The Plavinas infiltration had an obvious vector,” he said. “Nanochines were delivered in an ovum deposited just that day. What was the likely vector that infected Sarfas?”
    Doctor Ipolita shrugged. “Any organic material or biologic organism might have brought it in. The nanochines might have come in on a sandwich delivery, in a piece of fruit, on the back of a flea, or in the wax of his ears. Wasn't he eaten from the soles up?”
    Maris nodded. News organizations had somehow pilfered the information or had compromised a source, active investigations kept under strict confidentiality protocols. It wasn't me who blared, Peterson thought.
    “Might have been in the jam between his toes. All speculation, Inspector. Next thing you'll be asking is why they don't proliferate through inorganic vectors.”
    Ilsa frowned. “Don't act stupid, Doctor. We both know inorganic means inanimate.”
    Ipolita glanced between them. “As indicated by our research, yes.” She smiled.

Chapter 10
    “What do you suppose she meant by that?”
    Maris looked over at Ilsa, the double-seater humming beneath them, the cityscape flashing past. He brooded over the question like the clouds that brooded over the city. “Odd, isn't it? Carbon combines with every other element on the periodic table, a chemical whore. Organicity is life.”
    “And she was implying—”
    “Corn, coke, trake, and jack.”
    “What'd you just say?”
    “The only recognizable items left after the nanochines chewed through Eduard Sarfas were his corn, coke, trake, and jack. All his neuratronics. And his dental work, but that's superfluous.”
    Ilsa looked bewildered. “I don't understand.”
    “Inorganic items, all.”
    “You're not implying that the agent is propagated across the neuranet, are you?”
    Maris shook his head at her. “No, I don't see how that's possible.” But the idea bothered him on a level below articulation, a boil growing turgid under the skin of consciousness, its insidious pus swelling beneath the tissues of his mind.
    “What are you after? I worked for them, remember?”
    “Where are the neuratronics installed? At what age?”
    “There's a crèche