Nanotroopers Episode 21: Paryang Monastery
Philip Bosshardt
Nanotroopers
Episode 21: Paryang Monastery
Copyright 2017 Philip Bosshardt
A few words about this series….
*** Nanotroopers is a series of 15,000- 20,000 word episodes detailing the adventures of Johnny Winger and his experiences as a nanotrooper with the United Nations Quantum Corps.
*** Each episode will be about 40-50 pages, approximately 20,000 words in length.
*** A new episode will be available and uploaded every 3 weeks.
*** There will be 22 episodes. The story will be completely serialized in about 14 months.
*** Each episode is a stand-alone story but will advance the greater theme and plot of the story arc.
*** The main plotline: U.N. Quantum Corps must defeat the criminal cartel Red Hammer’s efforts to steal or disable their new nanorobotic ANAD systems.
Episode #TitleApproximate Upload Date
1‘Atomgrabbers’1-14-16
2‘Nog School’2-8-16
3‘Deeno and Mighty Mite’2-29-16
4‘ANAD’3-21-16
5‘Table Top Mountain’4-11-16
6‘I, Lieutenant John Winger…’5-2-16
7‘Hong Chui’5-23-16
8‘Doc Barnes’6-13-16
9‘Demonios of Via Verde’7-5-16
10‘The Big Bang’7-25-16
11‘Engebbe’8-15-16
12‘The Symbiosis Project’9-5-16
13‘Small is All!’9-26-16
14‘’The HNRIV Factor’10-17-16
15‘A Black Hole’11-7-16
16‘ANAD on Ice’11-29-16
17‘Lions Rock’12-19-16
18‘Geoplanes’1-9-17
19‘Mount Kipwezi’1-30-17
20‘Doc II’2-20-17
21‘Paryang Monastery’3-13-17
22‘Epilogue’4-3-17
Chapter 1
“State of Being”
“It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.”
Buddha
Place: Unknown
Time: Unknown
As a young child, Johnny Winger had always loved taking a bath. Lots of words could describe the feeling: security, serenity, safety, warmth, cocoon. Not words a three-year old would use, but you get the idea.
Thoughts like these and others came to Johnny Winger. He was a little disoriented.
Where am I? What is this?
He remembered being disassembled by Doc II…Config Zero was there…the cave…the brilliant light….
He decided to open a coupler link to Doc II.
***We were inside Config Zero, Johnny…you have been de-constructed…I stored your identity and memory patterns in a small file called ‘Configuration Buffer Status Check.’ Just a few extra bytes***
Doc, is that really you? Is this really me?
***It is…the capture process was successful, although there may have been data dropouts…too early to tell. Johnny…we must keep this link closed…I don’t know if Config Zero can detect us, but it is best to be cautious***
Okay, Doc…just trying to make some sense of all this. Flashes of memory came trickling back…Mighty Mite Barnes…the cave…the flames….
Now the coupler link was dead and Doc II was probably right. Somebody else might be listening.
Maybe taking a warm bath as a three-year old wasn’t the best way to describe being a few atoms in a larger swarm. Try this: buried under the covers on a cold winter morning. No? How about stumbling about in a darkened bedroom trying to find your slippers? Or: getting separated from your Mom and Dad on the boardwalk at Daytona Beach for three hours, with all the panic and frantic worry. Or: locked in a closet by your big sister, fumbling around with jackets and coat hangers.
Johnny Winger decided to try a more logical approach to figuring this out.
I think, therefore I am. At least, he thought he was thinking. I have a mind. I have thoughts. But there was more. Something more than his thoughts. Was somebody else in here? That was ridiculous.
I have sensations. Hot, cold, hard, soft. Try to analyze this.
A snatch of memory came to him: Personal identity is the unique identity of a person existing through time. That is to say, the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a person at one time and a person at another time can be said to be the same person, persisting through time. In the modern philosophy of mind, this concept of personal identity is referred to as the diachronic problem of personal identity. The synchronic problem is grounded in the question of what features or traits characterize a given person at one time.
Where the hell did that come from? I must have read that.
Now, he was sure of it. There was someone else in here. Just a snatch of voice, a snippet—
***Do you recognize me?***
Recognize you? I can barely hear you. Yet, there was something—
An image came to mind. It was fuzzy at first, but with effort, it sharpened. It was a man, an elderly man with a fritz of white hair on the back of his head, rumpled and patched corduroy jacket, hardly-ever-washed jeans.
Doc Frost.
