As I stepped off of the industrial estate, through a road bordering a rural grassland, and finally into residential streets, I absorbed everything about my environment, without ever really consciously being aware of it. If I had to explain, it was like any person would; as you might walk down the street, you might notice there were houses, that the street was made of concrete and tarmac, maybe notice a few plants if there were any, and probably notice the fact that most of these houses should have been condemned years ago, if there were still any sort of infrastructure management or government in the area. Many of the properties in the area had collapsed walls, some of them had cracks in the remaining walls that were standing, and the remnants of wooden fencing were rotted almost down to the fence posts in the ground.

But for me, it was different.

I noticed the pores of the brickwork, without ever realising it, I knew the smallest of the pores was micrometre-thick, that the composition of those bricks was a certain percentage of clay and cement, and had been fired to harden at 425 Centigrade. I noted too, that the fence posts were made from a dense-grade oak, that this was unusual for this area of the country (Oak was expensive after all), that many seemingly unmaintained houses were surprisingly intact, their damage superficial, at best, and I also noted the presence of sounds from swallows, sparrows, a couple of owls, a variety of crickets, a few seagulls, some pigeons, a flock of migrating geese further up, and the dew point of the air, all without trying to.

My nanocloud clearly enhanced both my senses and my ability to catalogue everything.

It was so advanced, that I was able to make out the stars in the night sky, and I could clearly define the galactic plane of the Milky Way, and everything was defined in almost full colour. It was almost like my eyesight was an HDR camera with post-processing hardware.

I had a sudden idea.

Can you extrapolate the current time based on the position of the night stars?

Negative.

Wait, really?! That was the only answer my nanocloud was going to give me?

Why not? I demanded.

Astronomy functionality is required before any derivative functions can be added.

I sighed in resignation.

Terrific.

Well, there was nothing for it, I decided. I was going to have to find out some other way what the time and date was. In the meantime, there were these houses to examine. I might get lucky and find something useful inside one of them? On a whim, I immediately chose the one farthest away from me, approaching the door without preamble, no stealth or speed, just a straight walk like I was back in Milton Keynes on a Saturday afternoon, going to my own flat.

Once I was at the door, I knocked.

Then I waited.

Almost a full minute went by, and I knocked again, and waited another minute.

Fuck this, I thought to myself, and was about to walk away, when the door opened, and a man stepped out. He was a few inches shorter than I was, looked like he was about twenty-five or so, had a shaved head and some stubble on his jaw. His muscles, where I could see them, were toned and defined much like mine were, and the way he was stood, it seemed to me that this guy had no cares in the world.

My HUD flashed his outline at me, and an awareness of the fact that this guy also had a nanocloud like I did impinged itself upon my mind.

"Stay still, don't move," the guy told me in a sharp tone, stepping toward me from his doorway. "If you do, I'll rip your spine out of your back!"

Yeah, no fucking shit, I thought, resisting the urge to sarcastically retort that the message was loud and clear. The man stepped around me, looking up and down as he clearly spent time gauging me in some manner. Abruptly, he stopped and stepped back, putting himself between me and his doorway.

"Who are you?" He asked me in a terse bark.

"I'm Rick," I told him. "Rick Reyes."

The man frowned, as if in thought. "Didn't anyone tell you that it's not a good idea to walk around these parts at night?"

"Not really," I told him, unsure if I was in a position to tell him what was really going on with me. After all, I'd just met the man, and he was suspicious of me.

"Wait," he said, his eyes narrowing, his frown easing up a bit. "You're not from around here, are you?"

I shook my head, considering my answer. "I came here from-"

"Hang on," he interrupted, holding out a hand as if intending for me to shake it. "Let's save a bit of time here. I'm Phil."

Without thinking, I took his hand to shake-

My vision flashed white, and for a moment, my mind went blank.

It was a blink and you'd miss it sensation, but a lot of changes occurred at that moment, including changes to my visual overlay, the way I experienced notifications, and the presence of new ways of organising information the nanocloud wished to present me with. One of the most immediately obvious was the fact that I now had a constant awareness of any notifications the nanocloud pushed my way, as well as an intuitive means of dismissing those notifications using only my mind.

"You really are new at all of this," Phil commented, his expression less forbidding, more sympathetic.

"I don't really know what's going on," I replied weakly. This was all a bit weird for me.

Phil's tone pitied me. "No, you'll need to be brought up to speed. I'll want to know a bit more about you first, though."

I was confused by that statement. Wasn't that the whole point of what Phil did to me just then? "Didn't you get any sort of impression from me just now? My vision whited out for a moment."

"I'm not surprised," Phil told me, almost laughing. "You just got a major information dump along with the nanomachines that transferred over to you from me."

My head started to hurt, and I felt my mind come to a screeching halt. Was this guy one of the original volunteers?

"Volunteers for what?" Phil asked me in surprise, when I put the question to him.

This puzzled me even more. If he wasn't a volunteer for the Synergy experiments, then how did he know about the nanocloud? "Never mind," I told him, waving that question aside. "How do you know about the nanocloud?"

"Nano-what, now?" Phil frowned at me.

I should have realised. Nanocloud was the term I had coined. "It's what I call the nanomachine cluster that I possess. It's short-hand."

Phil nodded. "Yeah, I'd say it is," then he switched gears. "But everyone grows up with knowledge of the nanocloud."

Everyone grows up with this knowledge? If that's the case, just what the hell happened? "What year is this?" I asked.

Phil's face fell, and I started to break out in a fucking sweat. "You... What's the last thing you remember?"

I sighed. "They put me in a cryogenic chamber back in twenty twenty-six while they let the nanocloud treat me for medical conditions I had at the time."

"And you woke up, when?" Phil asked me.

I shrugged, not really seeing the point of the question. My timer told me that three hours and sixteen minutes had elapsed since I ordered my nanocloud to keep track of the time. "Maybe a few hours ago?"

I couldn't really understand why Phil was slack-jawed, but then he told me the next moment, and it really fucked me up.

"Rick... You've been in this... Cryogenic suspension of yours, for forty-three years."

Forty-three years? Forty-three fucking years?!

My throat started tightening, and I felt light-headed for the first time since I woke up from the capsule. I needed to get the fuck out of here, NOW! Shit-

WARNING: Extreme panic response detected. Overriding.

Something happened. My fear felt muted, somehow. The intense panic I had been feeling just a second ago was gone, and my thoughts started to clear. My heart rate slowed, my breathing was normal again. It was odd, disconcerting. I was feeling oddly detached from my anxiety a moment ago, as though I hadn't been the one to get it under control. I was beginning to feel disturbed by it, when another notification impinged upon my awareness.

WARNING: Mental health condition trigger has been activated. Pre-generated message now available. Read as soon as practical.

I tried to dismiss the trigger alert that had just figuratively presented itself to my virtual face, only to find it insistently remained right where it was. Exasperated, I decided to ignore it for now. Oddly, when I checked my chronometer, I noticed that all of this shit happened in less than three seconds.

I turned my attention back to Phil. I needed answers, so thinking about the strange condensing of events into so short a time window would have to come later.

"So what, it's twenty sixty-nine now?" I wanted clarification.

"No," Phil told me. "We stopped using the old calendar system a while back. Now we just refer to the calendar as the year since the outbreak."

I suspected he might be talking about the release of the nanomachines that would then apparently infiltrate life across the whole country, possibly even the entire planet. "What outbreak?" I asked anyway, wanting to know for certain.

"Yeah," Phil gave what sounded to me like a long-suffering sigh. "You were out of it all that time, so you won't have known about it. Look..." He took a breath, and I noticed a brief flash behind his eyes. I almost missed it, because of how brief it was. Phil didn't alter his expression, continuing to think, apparently. "Some tech company accidentally released a bunch of drones into the wild. According to- You know what?" Phil seemed to change his mind, though I suspected I knew what he was referring to, as he reached for my temples. "It might be easier if I show you. Do you mind?"

Involuntarily, I stepped back. It was becoming instinctive at this point to avoid touch, lest whoever was trying to reach me had some nasty surprise up their sleeves. "What are you doing?" I demanded, though Phil now had his palms turned outward so I could see they were empty.

"Quick data transfer," he told me quietly. "I used to be a systems engineer in my old life. I had my... Nanocloud work on being able to function as a data unit. You mind?" He gestured again to my head.

I decided to take the risk.

Phil touched his fingers to my head. In an instant, another blinding-white impression assaulted my senses, but the instant was gone. My notification interface transformed, becoming more useful. Instead of a messy dump of all the notifications in one messy stream impinging on my consciousness, there was now a notification zone in a dedicated part of my subconsciousness. A simple notification impinged upon my awareness in a way that didn't distract, advising that there were two system messages, two health indicators, and a data dump containing a system model blueprint and two function payloads.

"Go ahead and look at the system module," Phil told me, and I did it immediately.

Module loaded. 2 Functions retrieved (1 now available).

Info.System Dedicated Information processing, storage, retrieval. Storage capacity dependant on host provisioning. Additional storage blueprint contains more information. Baseline No additional levels. Relies on emergency storage provision. Limited to UTF-8 text-only storage until provisioning of storage is complete.

I noticed that a blueprint reference was attached to this module, so I ordered it opened.

Information Storage Host storage provisioning for nanocloud utilisation. Type of storage not limited except by capacity. Baseline Wetware interface. Storage in silicon as solid-state. Relies on energy provided by local nanocloud units, reducing their effectiveness. Capacity is 1GiB/mm2.

I noticed that alongside this table of information was a request.

Implement changes from this blueprint?

You can do that? I asked my nanocloud.

Affirmative. Retasking of organic and inorganic matter is a function of the nanocloud in service of the primary directive of its' programming.

Then do it.

Confirmed.

Provisioning an initial storage area of 1024 GiB space across the rear central hub intersecting base of skull and spinal column.

Estimated time to completion: seventy-two hours.

I frowned as I considered the delay, and I was a little underwhelmed by the amount of storage that the nanocloud could provision initially, but I was hoping I would be able to upgrade to better storage capability in the future, and three days wasn't the end of the world.

"Looks like I got Information Systems capabilities from you," I told Phil.

"Good," he told me, and I felt an impingement on my senses as data appeared to transfer into my nanocloud. "Should take a moment for you to absorb the content of that stream," he added, releasing the pressure he had applied at my temples with his fingers.

UTF-8 text stream received and processed.

Examine the contents now?

Why not? I thought to myself, expressing my desire with a simple yes to the nanocloud. A lengthy message then appeared to stream into my consciousness.

Rick, I can only give you the basics via text. That Infosys module I gave you won't be online properly until your nanocloud has caught up with the changes, and your data storage level needs to be upgraded (which I gave you the function modules for). Even with the basic audio-visual upgrade I gave, your upgrade time will take longer than this simple text document, so here we are.

The calendar we are working on now is called the Post-Outbreak Era. We are in Thirty-Eight. It took a good five years before nanocloud technology had proliferated enough that it had become universal, but make no mistake, the nanocloud is here to stay, although everyone has varying results.

I noticed your nanocloud specialised in aggressive genetic correction capability and carcinogenic cell destruction (yes, I can gather all of that from the nanocloud units that entered my bloodstream when we shook hands). There's a lot to learn about the nanocloud and its ability to upgrade as you interact with people, creatures and objects, but one thing I will tell you is this:

You have an extremely valuable functionality built-in within your nanocloud, and it's one you can use for trade in multiple places. When you transfer a nanocloud function to another person, you do not lose it. It is merely copied from you to them. That's the beauty of information technology, of course, and you'll find that very useful in your travels. It is also potentially dangerous. As an intrinsic autonomous function, it can be applied to anyone that possesses it. You don't need to have any particular skills to use it, and you can simply allow it to do its' work. It allows you to heal quickly, I suspect, but it also allows you to survive all kinds of other medical and environmental factors that might otherwise kill you.

You also provided me with a copy of it while we shook hands. That's because you've left your nanocloud wide open to external communications. Now I have it as well, but it will take time for me to make use of it (my own nanocloud has to upgrade its own internal programming on a unit-by-unit basis).

I'm not going to reveal it to anyone else. However, you need to take care who you interact with, until your nanocloud is capable of securing itself against having its data queried and copied against your explicit instructions. If the wrong people get a hold of this information, and find out you possess something so ground-breaking, you will be hunted down and killed so your nanocloud can be harvested. It's one way of quickly gaining abilities, whereas simple interaction with others takes far longer because proliferation of the new nanocloud into your own takes far longer that way, and while you can lock down your nanocloud to prevent unauthorised theft of data and functionality, harvesting your nanocloud exposes all of it to whoever did the harvesting.

I've rarely seen it happen, but it's more than possible.

What I suggest you do now, is seek out a trading hub (check for one at the following location*) so that you can try and get useful supplies. You might get lucky and obtain other useful nanocloud functions, blueprints and nanocloud upgrades (but I doubt you'll be that lucky just yet). At some point, you'll need to learn some basic combat techniques (I only know the basics but your information storage is incapable of processing the ability to transfer muscle-memory and other skill-set information right now), but for now, grab some clothes, maybe some sort of backpack, and if you can, a weapon of some kind. You'll need all of that stuff.

Once you finish the upgrade to your nanocloud with that information storage upgrade blueprint I gave you, come back here, and I'll give you the full story of what happened.

Phil.

"So," I asked Phil once I had processed the message into my short term memory. "Go find this trading hub of yours, see if I can get anything useful?"

"That's about the size of it," Phil told me. "Hold on there a sec," he added, stepping back into his front door and pulling something out from a hidden alcove beyond my sight. When his hands re-appeared, he had a pair of thick rubber gloves. "Here. These don't serve much in the way of protection, but they do allow you to touch objects without your nanocloud coming into contact with them. Will come in useful when you're talking to others and when you are trying to trade without giving everything your nanocloud possesses away."

"What if I need to offer up some functions as barter?" There was a possibility that I might have nothing else to trade, so I needed to consider all angles.

"That'll come later. You'll need to acquire or develop some ability to withhold your nanocloud units from transferring themselves through skin to skin contact. It's extremely rare, and almost no-one in this area possesses that ability. Most people wear gloves instead. These are thick enough to stop your nanocloud from dispersing through the material, but thin enough they can still wirelessly transmit data through them. It's the data transfer part that you will find useful for trade, anyway."

It made a lot of sense to me. I had one question. "Why are you helping me?"

Phil gave me a level look. "Because someone needs to, and because you look like you could use a friend in this strange new world of ours."

I offered my hand again, and Phil shook it. This time, there was no strange effect and no sensation other than the feel of the man's skin in my palm. With one last nod, I turned from Phil's home, and started off down the path to the road. As I walked away, I called up the bookmarked location map. It was in text format, all blocky and difficult to read, but I managed to make out enough features of the coarse map to know where I was in relation to it, and where I needed to go.

And so, with more optimism than I felt a moment ago, I set off toward this trading hub, to see if I could find out more.