Elizabeth unclenched her fists as the no-name-airline plane landed with only a few bounces and coughed its way down the runway to the Cedar Rapids terminal. Five hours late, and by the time every completely stationary and thinly cushioned seat had rid itself of its stiff-jointed passenger, it would probably be a good hour before Elizabeth could get her rent-a-car, assuming the counter was still open.

 

But this trip was about business, not pleasure. And the business was important.

 

The seatbelt sign went off and passengers dived into the narrow aisle.

 

At five foot two and less than a hundred pounds, it was unlikely that she would be able to rescue her hefty carry-on from the overhead compartment. The flight attendant who had helped her heave it up there was nowhere to be seen. Looking up at her suitcase and then back down at the stressed faces, she wondered if she could count on the legendary instinct for helpfulness Iowans were famous for.

 

"Can I help you, ma'am?" a lanky, blond teenage boy in front of her in the aisle asked. Elizabeth brushed her short, wavy, graying hair out of her eyes and looked up at his earnest, freckled face.

 

Typical farm boy, at least six feet, four inches tall, skinny, short, straight hair, probably planning to study agriculture or maybe engineering at Iowa State. She wasn't completely sure if his lean muscles were up to dragging down her massive, wheeled carry-on, but she pointed toward the pink, metal suitcase.

 

It turned out that farm boy was stronger than he looked. He set the suitcase down in the aisle almost effortlessly and they waited for the line in the plane to start moving.

 

"Are you transporting a collection of your favorite bricks?" he asked.

 

"No," Elizabeth said and laughed. "Sorry about the weight, but you seemed to have no problem with it. Do you work out?"

 

The young man smiled. "Not officially," he said. "Coach says we shouldn't add too much muscle mass; it would slow us down on the court. But the pros all have muscles. Fortunately I can throw enough hay bales around on the farm whenever I want."

 

"Do you play basketball?" Elizabeth asked.

 

"Yeah, one more year," he answered enthusiastically. "That's our most important team sport. My high school is too small for a football team. But I don't mind. I love basketball. And I'm proud of my school."

 

"I played basketball, too," Elizabeth said. "When I was in high school, we made it to the state finals."

 

"You?" he asked skeptically as he seemed to estimate her petite height. Then his face turned bright red. "I'm sorry, ma'am. I didn't mean to be rude."

 

Elizabeth laughed. "No offense taken," she said. "It was another time and almost another universe. I was on the first team from my sophomore year on. I played forward, but it was with three-on-three, half-court play that was notorious in Iowa, and the guards were generally also no taller than I was. I'm coming back here for my fiftieth high school class reunion, and so you can imagine how long ago that was."

 

"Class reunion in July?" he asked. "I thought they were usually around Memorial Day."

 

"Some are," Elizabeth agreed quickly. "But this was a small class. There were thirty of us in our graduating class, and after fifty years, there are only eighteen of us left. I was willing to organize the reunion, but only if it took place in July when I had time." She hoped that explanation was boring enough for him. This whole encounter was getting too close to making her memorable, which was the last thing she wanted.

 

Farmer boy laughed. "Then have a good time at your reunion, and take good care of the bricks, he said." He pulled down his duffle bag decorated with decals from the Lost Nation high school. Good. That was far enough away from Elizabeth's destination.

 

Elizabeth smiled. Such a nice, articulate and probably intelligent young man. He deserved a school system and a society that valued knowledge and education and that would give him a chance to use his talents.

 

Elizabeth pushed her suitcase through the plane, down the ramps, and into the airport, trying to look inconspicuous, like one more older, expatriate Iowan coming home for a visit. She walked through the crowded airport slowly and deliberately, as one would expect from a youngish senior citizen. She made a point of staring at every bit of advertising on the walls.

 

At the rent-a-car counter, the friendly young woman with corn-colored hair asked her which states she would be driving in. "Just Iowa and Illinois," Elizabeth answered. "I'm here for my fiftieth year high school class reunion in Sabula on this side of the Mississippi, but my hotel is on the other side, in Illinois."

 

"Oh," the young woman said. "Then you'll have a chance to drive over the old Savanna-Sabula bridge before they tear it down. I remember they tried to give it away when they decided to build a new one, but there were no takers. Too bad. It's a pretty bridge. But I guess no one wanted to put a narrow, half-mile-long bridge up anywhere. "

 

Elizabeth smiled. "I can't wait to see the Mississippi again. I've been away from Iowa for too long, she said." That was the truth, or at least part of it. The young woman smiled. No doubt, she liked having her own decision to live in Iowa somehow validated.

 

Elizabeth stuffed the papers in her purse and pushed her suitcase out to the airport parking lot. After a few failed attempts, she was able to urge the suitcase into the back of the diminutive, royal blue, Chevy Sonic. The Cedar Rapids airport was still easy to leave from. You just unlocked your rent-a-car and drove off with no further contact with the rent-a-car company or the airport. So no one was there to wonder about her odd suitcase.

 

One right turn, one left turn, and one right turn later Elizabeth was driving east on Highway 30. Through one depressing, run-down, small town after another, each with mostly with old houses, boarded up stores, an almost empty farm machinery dealership, and a combination gas station and stop-and-shop all run by the same chain.

 

This wasn't the Iowa she had known fifty years ago, back when the small towns were vigorous economic and cultural centers supporting successful family farms. How had things deteriorated so fast …

 

Maybe she and others shouldn't have left, but of course, up until now she wouldn't have been able to do anything to help anyway.

 

About ninety minutes of driving east on Highway 30 took her to Clinton where she had to switch over to driving north on a somewhat desolate Highway 67 that became Highway 52 running through Sabula. From there she only had to take the causeway over the Mississippi backwaters to the elderly, blue Savanna-Sabula bridge.

 

But first, she drove around Sabula, the tiny island city with the main channel of the Mississippi on the east side and backwaters and man-made lakes on the other ones. Fifty years ago, it had been a lively little town with factories, stores, taverns, schools, churches, and almost a thousand residents.

 

The community had been tolerant. The town had been generous with property tax so that the school was well equipped and the teachers relatively well paid. Maybe there had been more enthusiasm for sports events than scholastic achievements, but there had been a benevolent appreciation of all the kids.

 

Although, now that she thought about it, there had been that incident her senior year when the school superintendent gave an interview to a major newspaper.

 

He said that if he ever had to choose between eliminating basketball or chemistry because of financial constraints, he wouldn't hesitate to get rid of chemistry, since the whole community enjoyed basketball games while chemistry was only for a few eggheads who would go off to college anyway and never come back.

 

Yeah, maybe the bad times had begun back then.

 

Now Sabula was a dying, bedroom community with barely four hundred people who looked for jobs somewhere else. A few years ago, some unkind University of Iowa professor had listed Sabula as one of scuzziest river towns along the Mississippi River he had ever encountered, an unnecessarily superficial or even harsh judgment. The town deserved better.

 

Elizabeth was certain there was potential here, but there were things she had to do first.

 

Fortunately, a weather-beaten sign claimed that there was still a rowboat rental in Sabula, just like fifty years ago.

 

She found the Bombshell Pizza establishment easily. It was where the old tavern used to be that her grandfather had spent so much time in. When Elizabeth was a little girl, there was still a hitching post in front of the tavern.

 

The pizza place was only open three nights a week, but when she peered through the front window plastered with posters from the 1960's, she could see that there were enough long tables. The restaurant had taken her reservation for a party of eighteen without any objections, so she could assume that the reunion would take place tomorrow night without any problems.

 

She then drove slowly some four miles through the long and winding causeway north of Sabula. The Mississippi backwaters were a little lower than usual and there was no visible current. The water was cloudy and lightly covered with a greenish carpet of moss or algae, and the air was humid but fairly free from insects.

 

The bridge itself didn't look that bad to Elizabeth; it had been painted a bright blue recently. But there were probably defects only engineers could spot. It was narrower than she remembered, making her glad she had taken the compact instead of an SUV. The surface on the deck of the main bridge was different, too, just steel grate with fairly large gaps. It didn't bother her, but possibly not everyone liked to look through the grates down sixty-five feet to the main channel of the Mississippi River.

 

The bridge did seem to lead traffic straight into a cliff, but at the last minute, drivers had the choice of taking an Illinois highway north or south. Elizabeth turned south, drove through the Savanna downtown, where every second store was boarded up, to the intersection with Highway 84. North of the intersection and up a steep hill her cheap motel and a combination gas station/fast-food restaurant waited.

 

Elizabeth dragged her suitcase into her room, fortunately on the ground floor. The room smelled clean, but there were cigarette burns on the desk and on the sheets. She walked over to the fast-food place and brought back a meal-deal. She was exhausted and thought she would just turn on the TV for a little news while she ate and then try to sleep.

 

She had forgotten the abysmal intellectual level of discourse you had to endure on news shows and talk shows these days. It was getting harder and harder to remember, but she was sure that there had once been a time when people made an effort to get their facts straight and to offer knowledge-based explanations of phenomena.

 

Now she felt that no one cared. In her humble opinion, that was what was making the whole world go to hell, this contempt for knowledge. She hated to contemplate a future where a majority no longer cared about the facts.

 

She wondered how the class reunion would go tomorrow. She hadn't had any meaningful contact with her former classmates for fifty years. In high school, she thought most of her classmates hated her. Looking back though, maybe she had just been condescending. Maybe they were more intelligent and thoughtful than a good seventy-five percent of the world's population today.

 

She opened her suitcase, and took some clothes and toiletries out of the top pocket. The rest of the suitcase was filled with metal bottles, all labeled meticulously. But that was a task for the day after tomorrow or later, depending on factors she didn't really control.

 

The reunion started off well the next night. Elizabeth discovered that most of her former classmates were likeable, vulnerable people, much nicer than they had been as teenagers. She genuinely enjoyed hearing about what had happened in their lives in the past fifty years.

 

The Bombshell Pizza in Sabula turned out to be the perfect venue with its quirky ambience, including loud live music from a local, middle-aged semi-talent and 1960's memorabilia that filled up the walls and ceilings. The menus were hand-scribbled on the insides of old LP covers, and the pizzas, all made from locally grown products and baked in a wood-fired oven, were delicious.

 

The eighteen remaining classmates ─ the deceased having succumbed to vehicle accidents, cancer, or drug overdose ─ had for the most part mellowed over the years.

 

Brian, a tall, skinny, and ungainly basketball player fifty years ago, now a heavyset giant who still had a full head of dark, wavy hair, was a retired hospital administrator who dabbled successfully in the stock market. He hoped to become a lay member of the Third Order of Franciscans, living the ideals of the religious order but out in the world.

 

"What did you end up doing?" he asked Elizabeth sincerely.

 

Elizabeth had given this question a lot of thought before she planned this trip and had decided to tell the truth, since that was so much easier and safer than trying to memorize details for a lie. Naturally, it had to be an abbreviated version of the truth. "I'm still a chemical engineer," she said, sipping her soft drink.

 

"Where does a chemical engineer work?" Brian asked, unfortunately probably honestly interested.

 

"Well," Elizabeth said. "We work everywhere, but I have been working in an insect research laboratory for the past few years."

 

"Bugs and chemicals!" George yelled. The bulbous, red nose and bloodshot eyes on his puffy face hadn't changed much. Apparently, he had managed to survive a more than fifty-year addiction to alcohol, only adding multiple inches to his girth and losing most of his hair.

 

"Are you making a new bug spray?" he asked as he slammed his empty beer mug on the table again and waved in the general direction of the lonely waitress.

 

That was getting a little too close for comfort. It was always the completely clueless people who ended up asking the dangerous questions. "Nothing that useful," Elizabeth said, remembering to smile flirtatiously. George had always gotten flustered and lost his train of thought when any woman paid attention to him. "What have you done with your life?"

 

"Nothing worth talking about," George said evasively.

 

"Who has grandchildren?" Kathie asked. She still had the same high-pitched squeaky voice and the same shapely cheerleader's body. Her short hair, though, was a brighter yellow than it had been in high school. "I have eight."

 

Without thinking, Elizabeth answered passionately, "I don't have any, but I hope we can get the world back on track so that all of your grandchildren have a chance for a better life."

 

"I get so tired of politicians yammering about how complicated everything is," George said as he took another drink. "Throw out all the foreigners, don't let any imports in, and go to a flat tax instead of all these complicated forms. And stop telling people what to do. That'll fix everything." He emptied his mug of beer.

 

Although she had promised herself she wouldn't get involved in discussions with idiots, ─ she did have more important things to do ─ Elizabeth couldn't help herself. "You know," she said. "I always think about the saying I have taped above my computer monitor. 'For every problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong.' So I worry about simple solutions and hope for complicated ones."

 

"Typical crap from people who went off to college and thought they were too good to stay here," George said. He was starting to slur his words.

 

Fortunately, Kathie defused the situation by handing George her phone. "Here are my grandchildren," she said. "Why don't we all pass around our phones with pictures of our grandkids?"

 

Elizabeth remembered enough from high school basketball to know when it was time to pass the ball and let Kathie take the lead directing conversation. She noticed that Brian immediately pulled out the newest, obscenely expensive smart phone, no doubt loaded with pictures of successful grandkids. Her vague memories of catechism class told her that members of a Third Order weren't bound by vows of poverty.

 

George didn't pull out any kind of cell phone.

 

As the evening went on, Elizabeth indulged in daydreaming more and more, thinking that these people deserved better lives than what they had. However, the conversations about crops and gardens and renters and nursing homes eventually got a little repetitive. Suddenly though, she heard George yell. "Damned shadflies," he slurred his words.

 

"Has the swarm of shadflies been out this year yet?" Brian asked.

 

"No," Kathie answered. "But they are due any day now."

 

"Got your car in the garage, George?" someone yelled. George's red face turned a pale purple.

 

Elizabeth looked up, puzzled that everyone was chuckling. Brad, bald as George but having maintained his gaunt runner's figure, took pity on her and explained. "The summer after graduation," he began. "After you had already left for summer school at your college, George decided to paint his dented up wreck of a car himself. Unfortunately, he left it outside the evening the shadflies came out. The next day his car was covered with the corpses of shadflies stuck all over his car. And he drove it around like that for years, looking like he had covered his car with flypaper."

 

"I couldn't afford a professional paint job then, and still can't," George muttered as he stood up and headed for the door. "It's not fair."

 

"Life isn't fair, George," Brad yelled. "Stick around and have another beer. You're too sober to go home yet."

 

Elizabeth spoke quietly, hoping George wouldn't hear. "Does he need a ride home?" she asked. "He shouldn't be driving." By this time, however, George was already out the door.

 

"Naw," Brad said. "He'll manage to stumble home. George lives just a couple blocks up on River Street. He has a little rowboat rental place on the river."

 

That wasn't good. Elizabeth really needed to rent a rowboat here in Sabula, and George might not be inclined to help her. She certainly needed to avoid mentioning shadflies.

 

Around midnight, the waitress started to hint that it was time for them to go. George of course hadn't paid for his food or drinks, but the waitress said she would put it on his tab. Tom handed her a handful of bills and said he wanted to take care of it. Then everyone started taking pictures, hugging, and promising to stay in touch better in the future, including Elizabeth.

 

For a number of reasons she genuinely wanted to hear how things would develop for her former classmates and really for everyone in Eastern Iowa.

 

She drove back over the blue, steel, truss bridge to Savanna at a slow pace because the motorcycles ahead of her weren't used to the bridge and had trouble finding the best speed and path to navigate the gaps in the deck. She definitely didn't want to make the local newspapers by being involved in an accident.

 

The next morning she loaded her suitcase into her car and drove back over the bridge to Sabula, hoping that George would be in good enough shape and in the mood to rent her a rowboat. According to the satellite reports her staff had sent her, the final stage shadflies would emerge from the aquatic nymph stage and fly out of the water as adults tonight or tomorrow night. They would then mate, deposit eggs in the water and die, becoming welcome food for the fish, all within twenty-four hours.

 

So she needed to get to the backwaters of the Mississippi where the shadfly nymphs were still swimming around. She had an accurate map of each body of backwater, whether bog, manmade, or natural lake. She just had to stay away from the main channel of the river with its treacherous undertows and heavy, freight, flatboat traffic.

 

She found George's boat rental shop, a ramshackle, two-story wooden building that needed paint and more than a few repairs. She walked in the open screen door and saw George standing behind a counter, not visibly hung over.

 

"Good morning, George," Elizabeth said, walking over to him. "I'm so glad you came last night. It was good that the remaining members of our graduating class could get together again."

 

"Yeah, well," George grumbled. "Most of us live within ten miles of each other and don't bother to get together at all. But it was nice of you to organize the event. Sorry I had to leave so soon. I was getting a massive headache again."

 

"Sorry to hear that," Elizabeth said. "Do you feel any better today?"

 

"Good enough," George said. "So what brings you to my little shop?"

 

"I was wondering if I could rent a rowboat while I'm here. I'm sort of mixing business with pleasure on this trip. I want to take some samples of the water around here for my staff to analyze. We're trying to set up a database of river water quality for the whole country, and I volunteered to do Eastern Iowa."

 

"Hmm," George said. His tone of voice didn't sound encouraging. Elizabeth tried to come up with some persuasive arguments. "Don't go all insulted on me," George said. "But you don't look like you have the upper body strength to navigate these waters in a rowboat, and I don't want to have to rescue another hopeless tourist who ends up in the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River and starts screaming for help."

 

"Damn," Elizabeth thought. He could, of course, even be right. But she really didn't want any company out on the water, and definitely not George, whose upper-body strength didn't look that impressive.

 

"But maybe Mike can go out with you," George said. "He's my brother's kid and helps me out during the summer. He's down cleaning the boats."

 

Elizabeth quickly decided that she would find some way to bamboozle this kid so that he believed she was just collecting water samples.

 

"Thank you," Elizabeth said. "I obviously didn't give this enough thought. I would be grateful for any help."

 

George went out the door and disappeared from view. Then he came back with what had to be Mike, but who was in fact the polite young man from the airplane who had helped her with her suitcase.

 

"Hello, ma'am," the young man said, obviously surprised. "Weren't you going to go to a class reunion?"

 

"That was last night," Elizabeth answered. "But before I go back to my lab, I want to take some water samples from the Mississippi around Sabula, and your Uncle George isn't sure that I can manage a rowboat on my own."

 

"As long as you aren't bringing that heavy suitcase, it should be no problem," Mike said and smiled.

 

"Funny you should mention that," Elizabeth said. "Actually, I do have the suitcase with me and need it for my boat ride."

 

"That's a completely different situation," Mike admitted. "You would need help with a rowboat transporting that suitcase. I'm willing to give it a try. We'd have to be careful to put the suitcase not quite in the center of the boat, with you sitting at one end and me at the other. It might work."

 

"Great," Elizabeth said and smiled. "I'll go get the suitcase, and you tell me what to do from then on." She went back to the car, wrestled the suitcase out of the back seat, and pushed it back to George's shop. From there Mike took it and shoved it down the ramp to the river and managed to lift it into a dubious-looking gray rowboat that probably had once been painted some color or other. He then stepped carefully into one end of the boat and then extended his hand to help Elizabeth into the other.

 

"If you're going into the main channel, you need to wear life jackets," George yelled.

 

"That's not my plan," Elizabeth said.

 

"Why take unnecessary risks?" Mike asked. "Uncle George, throw me two, please."

 

George went back to the shop and returned with two grimy life jackets. He threw them to Mike, untied the rope securing the rowboat to the post, and threw it down. Mike managed to catch it, and George stumbled back up the riverbank to his shop.

 

"OK," Mike said. "Where do you want to row to and why do we have to take the suitcase?"

Elizabeth pulled out her folder of maps and showed Mike the first location, the northernmost manmade lake. "I need to head north," she said."And we have to open the suitcase. There are bottles in it that I want to dip into the water."

 

"Ok," Mike said and started rowing. "But we have to be careful opening the suitcase. Where you want to go the water isn't that deep, but I still don't want to take an unscheduled bath."

 

Elizabeth started thinking about what to tell Mike once she started opening the bottles, which, of course, were not empty. They contained intricately programmed, almost invisible, little nano-machines hidden in soil that she planned to dump into the water at numerous locations. It had been hard enough for her partners in crime to come up with an explanation for Homeland Security so that she could get the bottles on the plane with her.

 

Elizabeth took her oars in hand and tried to row, but Mike quickly said that he would be faster without her help. "Ma'am," he said. "I think we're at your first location. I'll stop rowing and we should try to open your suitcase carefully, without rocking the boat."

 

They got the suitcase open, and Mike stared at the collection of metal bottles inside. "That's going to make the boat a whole lot heavier when they're full of water," he said. He picked one up. "This is already a little heavy."

 

Elizabeth quickly made up her mind and reached for the bottle. "Mike," she said. "Have you ever noticed that people aren't interested in learning stuff anymore, that they are content to believe any nonsense someone yells out on TV or online?"

 

"Huh?" Mike said.

 

"Or," she continued. "Have you noticed that people latch on to wrong-headed theories that any ten-year-old would recognize as stupid, like the Earth being flat?"

 

"Yeah," Mike said. "A bunch of kids in my class started saying that, but our geography teacher showed us that the Earth has to be round."

 

"And did all the kids accept that?" Elizabeth asked.

 

"Nope," Mike said. "Several kids still say it's all a conspiracy, that Australia doesn't exist. I told them I'd been there with my parents, but they said that proved I was part of the conspiracy."

 

"And more and more people ignore the advice of qualified experts and listen to bubble-headed celebrities instead," Elizabeth continued. "The idiots who don't get their children vaccinated endanger everyone."

 

"That's what my mom says," Mike agreed. "My great-grandmother got polio before there was a vaccine and spent most of her life in a wheelchair. Mom saw to it that all of us kids got our shots."

 

"Anyway," Elizabeth said. "I, along with a lot of other people, started wondering why this is, why some people are so willing to believe nonsense."

 

"And did you find an answer?" Mike asked.

 

"Well," Elizabeth went on. "We studied why some people are curious about everything and want to know how stuff really works and why others just want the simplest explanation, even if it's wrong. We found an area of the brain that makes people curious and skeptical and really hungry for genuine knowledge. In some people it is very active and in others it is almost atrophied down to nothing."

 

"Wow," Mike said.

 

"Well, it took us a long time," Elizabeth said. "But once we were sure, we wondered if there was anything we could do. In my lab we found a way to make tiny little nano-machines that, when people breathe them in, go straight to the brain and activate this area that makes people want to learn stuff. Sometimes they even work when people swallow them or have skin contact with them, but that isn't as certain."

 

"You mean, if people breathe in your machines, they get smarter?" Mike asked.

 

"Well," Elizabeth admitted. "Maybe they don't get smarter, but they want to learn stuff. And when lots of people want to learn stuff, that's a good thing for everybody. Then people don't elect dumb politicians and they start to look for real solutions for problems instead of just yelling slogans."

 

"But what if people don't want to get smarter?" Mike asked. "What if they are happy the way they are?"

 

"Ignorant people are often happy but they make life worse for everyone on the planet with their wrongheaded decisions," Elizabeth said. "That's why we looked for a way to get everyone to absorb these nanobots without knowing what's happening."

 

"Shouldn't you ask people first before you change their brains?" Mike asked.

 

Elizabeth looked him in the eye. "Yes," she admitted. "I know it sounds arrogant, but I'm convinced that the world would be a better place if people wanted to learn stuff, if people didn't believe in silly conspiracies. Sometimes you have to force people to do what's good for them, even if they think they don't want to, like using seatbelts or getting vaccinations."

 

"But are your little machines safe?" Mike asked. "I mean, if they get into your brain, couldn't they do bad stuff to you, too?"

 

"We've tested them on all kinds of volunteers under all kinds of conditions, and the only thing the machines did was make people truly want to learn. It didn't change how well they learned things, just made them want to try."

 

"Ok, but what does that have to do with your bottles?"

 

"They aren't empty," Elizabeth explained. They are full of these little nano-machines. I want to dump them in the water so that they stick to the larvae of the shadflies. Then when the shadflies come out of the water tonight or tomorrow, these little machines will be in the eggs that the shadflies lay in the water and they will be in the shadflies that fill up the streets and most surface areas around the water."

 

"When the shadflies die," she continued. "Some of the machines will be released into the air and people will breathe them in. These nano-machines are so light that the wind will carry them all over the place. Any nano-machines that stay in dead shadflies will end up being eaten by fish. When people eat the fish, the nano-machines will make their way up to their brains, just more slowly than if they got inhaled. Gradually, everyone will have these little machines in their brains and will want to learn stuff."

 

"That much I understand," Mike said. "But why start in Sabula? Not that many people even live here."

 

"I think it's best to start slowly and inconspicuously, and it's not just me here in Sabula," Elizabeth said. "We have volunteers going to all the rivers that have shadflies in their backwaters. We're hoping that eventually the whole world will be populated by people who want to learn and who value genuine knowledge. That can only improve the chances of solving the world's problems."

 

"I'm not completely sure that you are right," Mike said. "But you do make some sense. If these nano-machines are being set out everywhere, it might as well be here, too. So I guess I want to help you."

 

"I could use your help," Elizabeth admitted. "But I have to ask you to keep the whole thing secret. Otherwise there will be nothing but trouble for everyone."

 

"Then I'll keep my mouth shut," Mike said. "It sounds like you're doing something good. If you were trying to poison everyone, there would be faster ways to do it. And, besides, no one would believe me if I told them what you were doing anyway."

 

And so they emptied bottles of nano-machines in various areas all around the island city of Sabula and rowed back to George's shop with a suitcase full of now empty bottles. Mike lifted the suitcase out of the boat and pushed it up the ramp. Elizabeth took it to her car and returned to pay George and Mike.

 

George charged her more per hour than was listed on the sign outside. "You needed assistance and overloaded the boat," he said. Elizabeth was in no mood to argue. When she tried to give Mike some money as his "tip", he refused.

 

"It was my pleasure," he said. "Good luck to you, ma'am."

 

"Come and help me, Mike," George yelled. "You were gone all day. I've got all kinds of work for you to do."

 

It was in fact almost evening. On a whim Elizabeth drove over to Bombshell Pizza, and it was open. So she went in, texted some innocuous messages that her team would understand, and enjoyed another magnificent pizza. The local guitar talent was excellent this time, and so she stayed until closing time. When she walked out the door, the air was full of shadflies, and her car was covered with them. The timing had been perfect.

 

She drove toward the causeway to the Savanna-Sabula bridge, but there was a barricade blocking the way. A highway patrolman came to her car. "You can't use the bridge for a while, ma'am," he said. "It's full of shadflies and vehicles are sliding into each other like crazy. We are waiting for a snowplow to come and push the shadflies off into the river."

 

Elizabeth turned off her motor. "Thank you, officer," she said. "I really don't mind waiting."

 

Her nano-machines were designed to change people. The shadflies would stay the way they were, but now they would be spreading a hunger for knowledge. Her machines wouldn't wear out any time soon, and they were capable of reproduction if necessary.

 

She hoped she lived long enough to see if this experiment changed the world for the better.

​