Life with Nano

All five of the women in the room were now fully operating Nano hosts, and the transmitted messages were beginning to overlap. I finally had to send to all of them, "You can't hear it, but you're all talking over each other in my head, and I can't make sense of it. Either send to all of us, or speak aloud."

All of the women except Maria Angela said, "I love you" aloud, and she laughed and said, "Okay, I like you. But I'm still a lesbian, so don't get too many ideas."

It was time to reveal the grander plan, so we sat and discussed the plans to distribute the nanites to AA meetings, and Amy volunteered to start that effort, as she had been dragged to a couple of meetings recently, so might be a familiar enough face than those of us who had never been to one.

I also revealed everything that was going on at Dynatech, and its rival Argosys, and cautioned that it might be a while before the nanites would be something Dynatech could distribute broadly, and the group should be cautious if they thought they were being followed or the like.

We made a pact that day, to protect the secret of the nanites, until they didn't need to be secret any more, but to seek to use them to help others where we could.

I asked Sheila to marry me a week later. She said no. But she did move in with me, and the six of us formed an unusual union. Not married, not quite single either, freely loving with each other, and so far only with each other, although I have little sexual contact with Maria Angela and that only when we are together with one of the other women, mostly with Maria Clara.

All of the bids for removing the heating ducts were far higher than I was willing to pay, given the building's basic value and since we were all intimate now, anyway, we reached a group decision to leave them the way they were. The big changes we did pursue were to combine the two first floor apartments into one, which Sheila, Sofia, Amy and I now share, and an overhaul of the plumbing, including the installation of bidets where room allowed. The basement apartment became our shared home theater, since it was almost windowless.

I offered to combine the two upstairs apartments too, but the Marias turned me down, and won't let me stop collecting rent from them, either. I just donate it to charity, anyway. They joke about my harem, and seem hesitant to consider themselves members of it, or reliant on my money, at all. I keep hoping they'll accept that I consider them family, if not my co-wives, as Sheila, Sofia and Amy have taken to calling themselves.

Maybe someday, when they're ready to fully commit, we'll buy a much better place for all of us to live together. For now, if letting them still be my tenants in this funky old place works for them, then it works for me, too. I don't much care to flaunt the money I now have, although I did buy myself a new car. So I focussed on renovations instead of moving.

As the next several weeks passed, my personal and professional relationships with my Dad grew stronger, and I was finally able to reveal the total truth about the nanites and our group of six. As a symbolic gesture, I "returned" to him a new vial filled with some of the new nanites, and he chose to expose himself, and took to the technological side of Nano's capabilities, rather than the sexual, although Amy's hinted she'd love to give him a test drive. I don't want to think about it, although she knows I wouldn't object. Being able to interface with him has greatly increased the rate at which I've learned from him.

We collaborated on a strategy to feed misinformation to Argosys, leading it into several extremely costly mistakes, resulting in the ouster of Milo Scarpetti, after which we were able to fire his spies and restarted the nanite production process within Dynatech, and revealed the program publicly before anyone could stop us. Official human trials of a simplified version of the nanites that only treat alcoholism and other addictions are due to begin in a few months. Just the announcement that we were researching this bumped the stock price of Dynatech enough to push me over into billionaire status.

The news that Amy was pregnant with my first child was only topped by the news a few weeks later that Sheila and Sofia were pregnant, too. Apparently the nanites neutralize most chemical birth control methods. Oopsie.. After that news, the Marias quickly got IUDs, which still work, although they'd been taking the Depo-Provera shot for years, mainly to control their periods.

As I write this, my co-wives are half-way through their pregnancies, Amy and Sheila with boys and Sofia with a girl. The nanites are already active in them, although the operating system cannot initiate until their brains have developed further, about a month before delivery. The prospect of being able to talk to our children before they are even born excites us all.

I'm not sure if I'll go back to school, and Sheila has taken a year off for her pregnancy. Sofia has volunteered as stay-at-home mom once the babies are born, and then wants to pursue a business degree when she can. Amy continues working as a nurse, although she's thinking of getting into addiction counseling now. Her efforts at AA have gone unnoticed, although she's now using the reduced-function nanites. None of the groups she has visited has had a member suffer a relapse since then.

I could blow smoke up your butt and say we're going to live happily ever after, but nanites or not, we're still just human, with our fair share of arguments and fights - and make up sex. But we've managed to stay together so far, and I hope we stay together for the long term.

Nano might claim not to be an artificial intelligence, but the seven instances of the operating system have each developed distinct personalities and voices, somewhat reflective of their host, but still distinct from us, too. They refuse to choose their own names, so we've just resorted to calling them Nano David, Nano Sheila, Nano Amy, Nano Sofia, Nano Clara, Nano Angela and Nano Anthony, whenever we have to refer to just one of them.

~~~~~

'Okay, Nano. Send it off to the publisher. I'm going to bed.'

"Good night, David."

~~~~~

Author's Note: So, what did you think? Please provide feedback, as I am always looking to improve.

~Leenysman~