Feeln' Good 

Max T. Northammer was feeling good, really good. In fact he felt great. He dropped his robe to the ground, ran along the diving board and duck dived into the cool glittering water. Rising to the surface half way along the pool he knocked off twenty lengths of front crawl. Pulling up breathlessly and resting his arms on the edge of the pool he checked his time on his Rolex Submariner. He'd bettered his personal best by eighteen seconds.

Disturbed by a movement in the sunlight he looked up and took in the pair of shapely tanned legs that had appeared in front of him. 

'Good time Mr Northammer?' 

He ducked down beneath the surface and swam underwater back down the length of the pool. 

Jeannette was waiting for him robe in hand. 

'Best ever.' He laughed as he shrugged on his robe.  

She passed him his morning paper. 'Northammer's stock's up twenty cents this morning. Your omelette and herbal tea is on the table. Oh, and you are on this month's cover of Forbes Magazine. Nice picture.' 

Max walked across to the breakfast table, picked the glossy magazine up and glanced at his picture then dropped it back onto the table. He looked down at his omelette before reflecting. 'I'm looking a bit paunchy in Forbes. Maybe I'll just have some orange juice and a piece of toast. Wholemeal.' 

'You could have the day off and do some more lengths.' Jeannette suggested pleasantly.' You know what they say -'too many hours in the lab can make a billionaire's brain turn to caviar.'' 

'Do they say that? Been doing it for the last twenty years. Too late to change my habits now and probably too late to save the paunch as well.' He patted his stomach and flashed his perfect white teeth.  

'I'll get the toast.' 

He slumped down in his chair, ran the towel over his hair and called after her. 'Could you ring the office and let them know I'm not coming in today. I've just kicked off an experiment in the lab.' 

'I'll cancel your helicopter,' she half turned and called back. 'You can do some more lengths at lunch time then.' 

'Don't temp me.' He flipped open the magazine to read the article while absent-mindedly playing with his omelette with his silver fork. Above him swallows ducked and dived over the tree lined gardens grabbing insects from the warm air. The silence ebbed and flowed with the slow swell of sea brushing up and down the wide arc of beach that curved around the house's grounds. 

Finishing the magazine Max grabbed a piece of wholemeal toast off the table and made his way back up the path to the sprawling neo Georgian mansion beyond the tennis courts. Detouring under the shade of the giant Myrtle trees he stopped to chat to a couple of the gardeners before ducking into the glass houses to check on his orchid collection. Satisfied that the ventilation was set correctly for the day he trotted up the wide steps to the patio doors and headed down into the property's expansive basements. 

Dressed in his pressed lab coat, tea in one hand, dry toast in the other he nudged the airlock release with the edge of his arm, waited for the familiar hiss of gas and stepped through the sliding door into his laboratory.  

In one of the testing bays he checked the reading on the bank of monitors mounted over the test chamber and made some brief notes in his journal. Gently he slipped his hands into the robotic arm sleeves and studying the high power microscope image on the screen above him carefully scored a microscopic line in the graphine surface of the nano-chip held on the delicate assembly in the test chamber. The whine from the electronic monitoring equipment alerted him to the fact that he'd damaged the surface irreparably. Using the robot's fingers he gently lifted a phial from a rack at the back of the chamber and tipped its contents over the chip. Freeing his hands and standing back he carefully adjusted the magnification on the electron microscope. Thrown into view on the surface of the chip he could pick out millions of tiny littlehammers scurrying over the graphine surface. 

He brushed his hands together, set the timer on his watch went to read Forbes Magazine. On its cover a slightly plump face with well-manicured hair and a tailor fitted jacket stared congenially out at him. He held up the picture up and pulled a few experimental faces into the mirrored door of the centrifuge cabinet before dropping his magazine and returning to his journals.  

Throughout the day he shuttled to and fro between his seat and the sealed test chamber, conscientiously checking the readings and updating his journal.  

At 1.17pm a beeping from the monitor indicated the chip was now operational. Max rose from his stool, turned off the alarm and examined the surface of the graphine through the microscope. The graphine had now been repaired by the swarm of microscopic littlehammers that still tumbled this way and that across its surface.  

Back in his seat Max tapped his Montblanc against his lips and considered his good fortune. His first  had been discovering these enigmatic little particles working at atomic level during his tenure as a physicist at MIT. The second that he had worked out that in the right conditions and at high concentrations they would repair, then radically improve upon any known design for nano-chips. One in ten times the little particles, working in their millions could produce spectacularly complex designs that could significantly outperform all current computing chips. Using this application he was able to radically increase performance of the world finest microchips. His littlehammers, as he called them had given rise to Northammer Dynamics, the world's largest Corporation and a leading edge Nano technology company. 

At 2.12pm the warning signal went again. He checked the readings. The nano-chip was now operating at 200% of its original design specification. Every hour after the performance ramped. At 3.05 pm, 300%, 4.07pm 400%. At 5.05pm Max's watch alarm went off. He checked the performance reading. 473%.  

For the next two hours he stood looking through the screen of the chamber watching the readings, carefully annotating the notes in his journal. Like nature the littlehammers had now reached some self-defined tipping point in their life and like cancerous cells they now began to corrupt the design they had so majestically created. At 6.00pm he checked the chips reading. Performance was down to 300%, at 6.30, 75%. At 6.45pm the chip went offline. The alarm sounded and he clicked it off. 

He hit the halogen gas release button and watched as the swarming littlehammers slowed to a crawl, halted and died. After precisely sixty seconds he pulled up the screen and extracted the chip, a mangled mass of twisted, bent graphine. He shook his head and checked his notes -it was the same every time he'd ever conducted the test, first perfection then this, this thing. Discovering the littlehammers had been his first major success then understanding them and knowing when to kill them had been his next. Northammer chips were in ninety percent of the world computers, no one could make a nano-chip finer than his littlehammers but they all needed to be exterminated during the build process otherwise they'd turn any chip they were transforming into a chunk of charcoal.  

Looking up suddenly he realised the sinking Californian sun had taken on a glassy ruby stillness drenching the sky with blood and flooding his laboratory walls an unearthly clay red. 

He stretched, rose and walked to the window, stood for a few minutes admiring the view then turned and poured himself a small whisky. Making a few last few notes he reached out catching the glass on its edge sending it tumbling to the floor. 

Irritatedly he bent down and began grabbing the broken shards off the floor before catching the edge of his palm on one of the jagged pieces of glass. 

'Jee -sss- uus.' He muttered pulling a handkerchief from his pocket. He stared in disbelief at his hand. The deep wound appeared to cauterize itself, stopping the flow of the blood. Then gradually the two edges of the cut drew themselves together repairing the skin they went.  

He breathed in deeply and checked his hand. There was no sign of the wound. They'd tested for this. So carefully they'd tested for this so they could get the licences. Something must have happened in the lab. A freak of conditions causing a mutation. Had he inhaled them? Had they mutated into something that could work on living tissue? 

He rushed back to his workstation and started pulling out early test journals, frantically racing through their pages reviewing earlier tests. Looking up into the mirror his face was drawn and white. Beads of sweats had appeared on his forehead. He was aware of a small lump forming in the palm of his hand. As a physicist he could not comprehend what had happened. Not after he'd been so careful. And the jump from simple atomic forms to biological structures- surely it was not possible. 

'Mr Northammer are you all right?' 

He swung around. Standing away he whispered hoarsely. 'Jeannette I didn't hear you. You need to go.' 

'Are you OK. Shall I call the Doctor Mr Northammer?' 

'Here, take the Ferrari. Go down the coast. Enjoy yourself. Quick before I change my mind.' He jiggled the keys temptingly in front of her before dropping them into her open hand. 

'Well if you're sure.' 

'Sure I'm sure. Quickly now or you'll miss the sunset,' he ushered her to the airlock. 

Max turned the key in the electronic door lock. He pulled out a bottle of whisky with his shaking hands, tugged the cork out with his teeth and spat it out on the floor, then took a long slug of the fiery liquor. Coughing violently he staggered over to the racks of oxygen bottles and twisted open their valves.

Jeannette raced the Ferrari down the hill, tapping her fingers on the wheel as she went. She turned the radio up and gunned the throttle. With spinning wheels she sped off down the curving coast road toward Turtle Rock letting the warm evening air spill over the top of the windscreen into her hair. She began singing her favourite song at the top of her voice. 

Behind her on the hillside the mansion exploded pushing a pulsating ball of fire high into the evening sky.

Over the sound of the radio Jeanette didn't hear the explosion. She kept on driving and singing. She was feeling good. Really good.