The Whale
"But sir, the Resort doesn't have room for a whale."
The high-roller, Mr. Mansini, had martini breath; he'd arrived this morning just as Alan's shift in the casino's quarantine VIP facility began. "You called me a 'whale' though, and that's what I wanna be."
Alan wore a tie and lab coat. "Sir, it's a figure of speech. It means a distinguished guest such as yourself." One who would throw hundred-dollar black chips around like shuriken and gamble millions in a week in Las Vegas. Alan hated how the VIP "handler" dialect of yes sir, no sir, had started to roll off his tongue. In college he'd wanted to do real nanotech research, but the only place with both the will and the money to use Pixie-class transformative nanobots was Las Vegas, city of light and darkness. "May I suggest our dolphin program? We even have a pod of natural Atlantic bottlenoses to swim with."
"No way," the high-roller said, swaying on his feet. "I want the full baylen -- balloon --"
"Baleen, sir?"
"Blue whale experience. So arrange it, kid." He staggered off to the elevators and his room, casino-provided blonde in tow.
Alan counted silently to ten, then built up a grin and hurried towards a billionaire from India. "Good morning, sir! How was your flight? May I get you a drink while you look at the transformation menu?"
"I see," Alan's boss said in the smoky office, tenting his fingers. "You told Mr. Mansini you wouldn't be able to help him?"
Alan sweated. "The nano facility has barns, a track, a pool, but nothing big enough for a whale."
"You could have arranged to take over the main Resort pool. Cleared out all the guests."
Yeah, Alan thought, and gotten fired for upsetting several hundred ordinary swimmers. "The Pixie-class nanos aren't licensed for use in anything but a quarantined environment. The latest papers say --"
"That's egghead stuff. Make Mr. Mansini happy. He gambled eight million last year and lost three, and that was before our nanotech entertainment came online. Now get busy."
The Indian tycoon had Alan on edge. Alan still hadn't eaten today, and the man kept quizzing him about the Resort and the etiquette for blackjack played without hands. The high-roller's growing fox paws had less and less dexterity as he paced the quarantine VIP lounge, and he kept pausing to check on his tail. He found Alan staring out the window into the main casino floor and in a growling voice said, "Black chip for your thoughts."
"Sir? Oh, I was just thinking of another guest and what I can do to make his stay more pleasant --"
The VIP laughed. "Don't I get sincerity for my money? Tell the truth."
Alan felt the air conditioning for the first time today. "Another guest demands a transformation we're not equipped to handle, but I have to arrange it." Thinking out loud he said, "Maybe we'd have room for a beluga. He probably wouldn't know the difference between that and a blue whale."
"A big blue!" the guest barked, through increasingly sharp teeth. "Why, you'd never be able to scrub out all the nanobots afterward, from him or the Resort. Even our next generation TSA-class bots aren't self-cleaning."
Ours? thought Alan. "Wait, are you --"
The Indian was a man Alan should have recognized, given that he'd invented Pixie-class nanotech. Alan's eyes widened and he began talking shop, asking for details on how they'd solved the waste-heat problem and swung the deal with the Endangered Species Agency.
The Indian dropped onto four fox paws and grinned up at him, tail swishing. "I'm here to forget work. But between you and me, the whale program might work if you used ten whole cans of the nanos. Not that it'd be safe, what with all the --" His voice cut off in a vulpine bark, and he gave an apologetic shrug. Then he turned and dashed through the inner quarantine doors, deeper into the facility, to play and gamble. Alan trashed the syringes from the procedure, washed his hands, then threw his gloves in the burner just to watch them melt.
"So if you'll just sign this --"
A hung-over Mr. Mansini peered at the clipboard, which had pages of disclaimers and a photo of what he would become for the next week. Alan had a beluga transformation program set up, and had crossed his fingers. Mansini finally jabbed his cigar -- which really didn't belong in quarantine unless a VIP requested one -- at the photo. He said, "That's not a blue whale! It's not even blue!"
Should have tinted the photo, thought Alan. He sighed and took out the backup plan, a second clipboard. "In that case, sir, what about this one?"
"Right, right, that's what I want." Mansini scrawled his way through the disclaimers and shoved back the clipboard. He clapped and said, "Okay."
Alan went to another room and murmured into a microphone that the Resort's main pool should be cleared after all, and that the VIP department would be needing it indefinitely. The guys on the other end said, "Make 'im the fattest whale you can find, kid." Alan returned with a needlessly large syringe, smiled, and said, "All right, Mr. Mansini. We'll do your first shot right away, and get you out to the pool."
Alan led his feverish guest out of the quarantine room, into the glitter of the main casino floor where green felt tables and shining slot machines formed a money-catching net. Discreetly he met up with two bellhops pushing a set of nanobot containers and the first of many loads of IV fluid. Together they all went out to the blazing sunshine of the vast pool and its many waterfalls and palm trees. It seemed a shame that one man like Mansini could drive so many ordinary people away on such a sunny day.
Days later, Mansini was ready to change back. Five specially constructed underwater gaming tables were ruined along with Alan's scuba gear, and Alan had needed to be in the pool overseeing Mansini's transformation and health half the time. Everything had been worth it from the Resort's profit perspective, and from Alan's. He'd gotten to watch the man lose ten million dollars.
He and the casino's trained underwater poker dealers finally climbed out of the pool for the last time. Alan told maintenance to drain the pool, then scrub and bleach everything thoroughly to kill the last of the nanobots.
The Indian billionaire had changed most of the way back from foxhood when Alan got back to the quarantine lounge. "The whale program, did you get it to work?"
"Yes, sir. Perfectly."
The phone in the back room rang. "Excuse me," said Alan.
"Bit of a problem, Alan," said his boss. The wallscreen lit up with a shot of the pool, where people were already swimming. Wait -- the guests seemed unusually excited. And covered in the beginnings of fur, feathers, and scales.
Alan began to stammer an incoherent apology. "I told them to bleach everything! And only one of the transformation programs was supposed to be loaded! It shouldn't have -- I didn't --"
The boss sounded unusually calm for the circumstances. "It's just they're expecting free access to the VIP barns and racetrack and so on, and free antidote when they're done. But they're not whales, just ordinary guests."
Alan said, "We've got to get everyone out! Into quarantine, shot full of antidote!"
"You don't see the big picture, kid. Seems like you found a cheap way to do transformations by the mass baptism method, except it's random. We can attract the lower end tourists this way. Good work."
Alan clutched the microphone stalk, saying, "But you can't leave nanobots active in there! A strain that's still running might survive indefinitely, might have other effects on everyone."
"Egghead stuff, kid. You've gotta learn we're about entertainment here." Alan's boss ended the call saying, "Anyway, we need a mass run on antidote and IV and everything, pronto. Get moving."
Alan put on a brave face and went back to the Indian nanotechnologist, who had become human again. He showed no sign of having heard about the pool fiasco, unless that trace of a fox-grin on his face meant something.
"I've been thinking," the guest said. "You seem talented. Would you like a job with my company in Mumbai? We speak English."
Alan glanced out the window, towards the doors to the pool. More and more people were heading there for the free access to a technology only "whales" had had. An untested and very illegal form of access. He gulped. "That's very generous, sir. I'd been thinking of spending some time out of the country."
In fact, judging from the strange itch under his lab coat, now would be a good time for an antidote injection and a long plane flight away from Las Vegas.
