Nanotech Abuse #1

So after a couple of months I went back to the nanotech theme I'd toyed with earlier, this time it was no grey goo outbreak that can't have a happy ending for anyone.

This time it's the research department at a big corporation, there had been some over-sensationalised incidents at smaller research companies that had cut too many corners in pursuit of return on investment, the research project had been going on a long time but with no appreciable results and the shareholders were nervous.

So the board made the decision to axe the project and reassign personnel & resources to related projects that had been proven safe and could generate a return on investment.

Research manager Natalie Phillips cursed them all as a bunch of short-sighted greedy idiots. From the early days as a lowly research assistant up to her position as project manager she'd pursued this goal, dedicating her career to it, sacrificing two marriages to it. Now these idiots were going to take it away from her and force her to work on making smart clothes or something even more mind dulling.

The worst part was that the project had produced results, but with the military industrial complex sniffing around for anything they could weaponise she had deliberately supressed those results. Now that caution and humanitarianism was going to turn around and bite her in the arse.

Natalie carefully weighed her options, the pre-nuptials for her brace of marriages meant that she still had the modest inheritance from her grandparents, she lived quite frugally so her salary had built up nicely in her bank account, her savings account had also built up to a respectable amount and her pension fund was similarily in nice shape. In short she could retire now and live more than comfortably for the rest of her life.

She made up her mind, she was not going to let decades of her life go to waste just because the board had gotten cold feet.

The first thing to do was hand in her notice, pointing out that she had given two decades of her life and two marriages to this line of research, and that she no longer had the dedication nor energy to start over on something else. As per the terms of her contract of employment she now had one month to achieve her goal.

Methodically she set about salvaging her life's work, seemingly complying with the boards instructions to wind up the project and destroy all samples of the tech, in reality mislabelling several containers of defective deactivated tech as 'live' samples, filling several containers with dust and labelling them as defective then finally ensuring that the real live samples were carefully concealed among the raw materials used to create the nanotech.

Following federally mandated laws on handling of nanotech the containers were thoroughly destroyed in a specially constructed incinerator, using a cocktail of corrosive chemicals followed by 3000 degree heat to ensure nothing could survive.

Sticking exactly to the law, complete with government inspections, dragged the process out to almost a month. Reassigning personnel and equipment to other projects kept anyone from poking around and ensured that stuff was always being moved around, so no one thought anything untoward of Natalie carrying the disguised containers from lab to lab, using the remaining equipment to keep the nanites 'fed' and dormant.

Then it was her last day, all other personnel, her colleagues and friends, were out of the lab. They'd thrown her a party as she'd suspected they would, and she'd cried like she knew she would. The emotion was genuine, she'd worked with some of these people nearly her whole career, they had supported her through her divorces and had been just as keen to create results in their chosen field.

But even bittersweet things come to an end, goodbyes were said and finally Natalie was alone in the lab.

Ostensibly she was to do a final stock take of the lab and hand it in to the security desk in the foyer as she left, but she'd already done it much earlier in the day, now was the time to spring her nefarious plan into action.

She locked the door to the lab and stripped naked. Time and neglect on her part hadn't been too kind, while she wasn't obese she no longer had the killer figure of which she had once been so proud.

But it didn't matter, all that mattered now was her life's work, concealed in the nanite support device on the work bench across the lab, the one no one had noticed was still switched on because she had taped over all the power indicators ....