He pulled open the blast door with a heave. Ultimately despite the reactive nano, it was still a blast door, and still very heavy. He stepped into the anteroom, which was bathed in the red glow of exit signs, maybe a hundred years old. He waited for his eyes to adjust, and fidgeted in the uncomfortable suit. He found his way across the room to the stairway down.

The legitimate fear of self rep nano had always been a concern. Obviously self rep nano was very close to creating life. One needed to take safeguards. The horrific visions of the fear mongers, though, always seemed to take the form of airborne swarms, or virus-like parasites. So in some sense it’s no wonder when Exxon was able to breathe life into dry wells by pumping nano into the ground, they were less than careful.

They had been pushing various versions of replicating bots into wells all over the Gulf for forty years when the Houston break out had occurred. Out of sight out of mind. They hadn’t tracked the genotype. And they paid for that.