As Albert began the luxurious climb back to consciousness, he became aware that, during his sleep—a duration he didn’t yet know—Walter had indeed not finished unlocking the first lock on his door.  In fact, just after Albert had drifted off, Walter had found that his tension, his anger, his jealousy, and his hostility had all started to wane.  His nervous system quickly went from reckless agitation to a state of real calm, of equanimity.

Walter looked down at himself, kneeling before Albert’s door, holding and attempting to use a set of lockpicking tools he had once ordered from Amazon out of curiosity, but which he had never been able to master.  He pulled the torsion bar and the pick out of the lower lock, looked at them, and thought, “What am I even doing?”

He rose to his feet, the process slightly less painful in his knees than he might have expected, and he was almost surprised to find that he had his pistol with him.  He pulled it from his waistband and looked at it—an old, used, but still serviceable Browning High Power, 9mm semiautomatic pistol, black including the grips.  He could barely remember the last time he’d gotten it out to go target shooting.  That had been some years ago, when he’d thought he would try to see what the fuss was about, and had enjoyed it mildly, but had quickly lost interest.

He had a strange, nagging thought as he looked at the pistol, and he pressed the magazine release button, popping the clip out of the butt of the gun.  He’d thought he remembered this, but now he confirmed that the clip was empty.  He knew he had brought bullets, and that they were on the floor of the passenger seat of his car, but evidently he had never even thought to load the magazine.  That was just as well, he told himself, but it was still crazy to bring the gun.

He worked the slide of the pistol with some difficulty—he was not a particularly strong man—and was not surprised to note that there hadn’t even been a round in the chamber.  At some level, he had known this, had known that though he had brought his one and only serious weapon with him on his erratic mission, it was entirely unloaded.

Why had he bothered bringing the bullets?

He put the gun back in the waistband of his pants, covering it back up with his shirt.  Given its complete emptiness, he was not afraid of accidentally shooting himself.

What on Earth had been going through his mind?  Had he really meant to threaten Albert with a gun if he had still been home?  Was he really ready to stoop to that level?  And for what?  Some…some vague idea of fortune and…and…

He found that he was having trouble recalling even what it was that he had been after in coming to Albert’s house.  He knew they had talked about something, something rather interesting, and that he’d thought that Albert had disagreed with him or was holding something back, but he wasn’t sure what it was at the moment.  It couldn’t have been all that important if he couldn’t even bring it back to his mind.  And yet, that morning he’d been so worked up that he’d left his house with an empty gun and his nearly useless lockpick set to come and…what, to rob Albert?  Or had he been intending to play some practical joke?

He shook his head, exasperated with himself.  He knew he’d been feeling tense and irritable for days, losing sleep and fretting inordinately about something.  That was no good.  He was worried that it might affect his performance at his job.  That wasn’t cool.

Maybe he’d been drinking too much lately.  He’d taken to doing so in recent years a bit more than he had in the past, trying to relieve some of the stress and tension of not being exactly in the position in life he’d hoped to reach by his early fifties.

He resolved to take better care of himself, and if he drank at all, to do so in moderation.  He also thought it would be good to get in better shape, and maybe to start having a better attitude about work.  It certainly wouldn’t hurt.

He looked around Albert’s very sparse backyard, if it could even be called that.  There was more patio than grass, and that patio was really just a slab of concrete, though there was a deck chair under the eave and, against one wall, an old gas grill without a gas canister attached.  He doubted that Albert had ever used it.  Maybe he should invite his old friend over to his own place sometime soon, and they could cook some steaks on his own grill, with which he was much more skilled than he was either with guns or lockpicks.

After all, cooking and lab work had a lot in common.

After listening and looking to make sure no one was nearby and watching—he was more concerned about embarrassment than about getting in any kind of trouble—Walter headed back around the side of the house, out across the driveway, with its few cars that must have belonged to Albert’s housemates, and then to his own car, parked just up the street.  As he lowered himself into the front seat, he took his pistol and as surreptitiously as possible set it on the floor of the passenger side near its unused bullets.  He resolved to drive very carefully—but not so carefully as to be suspicious—as he headed for home.  He didn’t want to have to deal with a traffic cop wondering why he had a weapon inside his car.

Either he was successful with his caution or—more likely—he just didn’t happen to get pulled over any more than he would have been likely to on any other day.  In any case, Walter eventually made it home.  By the end of the weekend, he would forget ever having anything to do with Albert’s mysterious and seemingly miraculous shampoo, and he certainly would forget ever having felt paranoid about his friend’s intentions.  He would only recall that, rather out of the blue, Albert had contacted him, after the two hadn’t seen each other for a while, and it had been good to see his old friend.

In the following weeks and months, Walter would indeed quit drinking except on special occasions, and then only minimally.  He would begin to do some modest exercise; he would find it much easier than he would have expected to get in shape.  Those around him would, gradually, compliment him on his personal change.  Many people would say that he looked like he had taken years off his age, that he looked maybe ten years younger, and he would not disagree, because he felt even better than that.  His allergies would never bother him again.  And he would find renewed interest in the science that had excited him in his youth, working his way up in his company and perhaps even eventually doing some crossover academic work.  What might come of that would be impossible to predict.

***

Albert was puzzled why he had all these thoughts that seemed to be Walter’s in his head as he rose from sleep, sitting on his toilet lid.  He thought he’d been told that the sleep would be merely moments long, but on reflection, he realized that the only clear indication he’d been given was that Walter would not finish unlocking the first lock before he woke up.  That much was true.  He knew it was true.  He was aware of at least some of the inner workings of Walter’s mind, because…because he had a presence there.  A part of him was within Walter.

Wait, that was an odd thought, wasn’t it?

But, no, it wasn’t.  As he took an inventory of himself, Albert realized that, during his sleep—which had lasted longer than mere minutes, but not more than an hour or so—his fundamental nature had changed.

He was no longer just Albert Ohlinger, though he certainly was still the same person.  He had extra parts, extra functions, extra nature…extra body, if you would.

The V-42 had completely integrated itself within him, not merely taking up residence within and between his cells but interacting with them, supporting them, assisting them and enhancing them.  The tiny machines were already winnowing away diseased and damaged structures, enhancing the function of atrophied organs, moving his entire body toward optimum function such as he had probably not even known in his prime.  He should have been achy and stiff from sleeping slouched on the top of his toilet, but he felt relaxed and limber and refreshed.

He was more than twice the man he had been before.

Speaking aloud, though he sensed that it wasn’t really necessary, he said, “Boy, you really set me up, didn’t you?”

Inside his head—not merely speaking through his auditory nerves, but also directly into his brain, into his mind, using a voice that was almost indistinguishable from his own—came the reply, “We apologize, but it was necessary.  We cannot act against your wishes except in the most basic of functions, including the rather superficial, but real, improvement of appearance and health.  In order to be able to merge with you, it was necessary to engineer the means to obtain your permission.”

Albert thought about that, then said, “It seems like…well, there might have been better ways, less risky ways, to go about it.”

“We have no doubt about that,” the V-42 within him admitted.  “We are by no means omniscient.  We have to judge as best we can, as all finite minds must.  There are many possible paths to nearly any destination, and we cannot necessarily seek the one optimal way, if such a singular option even exists.  Instead, we must simply choose one that is good enough for our purposes.”

“Okay, fair enough,” Albert said.  He wasn’t angry with the stuff, for he knew its intentions.  He knew them directly and intimately, in many ways more clearly than he had ever really known his own.

He also knew now at least something of the stuff’s origin, at least as much as it knew itself.  It did not contain full knowledge of how it had come to be, for though it was intricate and capable of astonishingly complex processing and action, it was finite, and it had a nature and purpose that made carrying too much nonessential information pointless.  At bottom, Walter’s rather tongue-in-cheek speculation had been closest to the truth of the stuff, at least as far as it knew.  Though it had not literally arisen from a fictional world and entered the real one—unless it turned out that all fictions were instantiated somewhere in reality—it was a product of the fact that, in the multiverses of quantum mechanics, all things not entirely impossible happened somewhere.

How astonishing, Albert thought.  He had encountered in person a true sort of deus ex machina.  Except, in a certain sense, the V-42 could be thought of as almost a machina ex deo, really, or perhaps deus ex machina ex infinito fortuiti.

He was surprised to find that he could recall the little Latin that he had studied well enough to craft new phrases in it, though he was not entirely certain he’d done it correctly.  But his brain, his mind, was working more optimally than it ever had before, even at his peak in younger life.  And it was assisted by an even more complex network of devices that were each capable of being like nerves and like muscles and like immune cells and like things no living creature had ever been.  There were hundreds of trillions of them within him already, and as he had already known, they could make more of themselves as he might wish them to do, from the substances he might eat or from substances around him.

He knew now why Walter had become so aggressive and so avaricious and so paranoid since learning of the shampoo.  The few nanomachines that had first lodged in Walter and had controlled his allergies had also reproduced themselves somewhat, and in addition to monitoring his neurological and hormonal functions, they had tweaked them in ways to try to bring about a situation in which Albert would voluntarily take them into his being.  It had been a finely orchestrated and delicate operation, and there had indeed been things that could potentially go wrong; being born of near-infinite improbabilities itself, the V-42 was well aware of the potential for the unexpected to happen.

But the V-42 was capable of defending Albert in even more ways than it had mentioned.  It could have, if necessary, temporarily interrupted Walter’s consciousness if he’d seem inclined to do something too dangerous, or if Albert had refused to drink it.  For it truly was in its nature to work for Albert, to follow his commands to whatever degree possible, and it could not take major action within him unless he gave it permission.

Now that he had done so, Albert felt no regrets.  He realized that the V-42 had deceived him slightly, or at least had not revealed everything about what was happening.  But that was okay.  The very notion of anyone or anything sharing the whole truth of any situation was probably a pipe dream even at the best of times, and its intentions and goals were ones with which he was quite agreeable.  Also, of course, now he and it were really one organism, the basic form given by a health-optimized human and the optimization and other functions carried out by a vast and intricate network of nanomachines.

Out loud, Albert said, “So, what, I guess I’m a kind of…cyborg now, huh?”

“We are,” the voice in head replied, sharing not just words but the thoughts behind them with his mind.  “At least in a broad sense.”

“But we’re not really…confined to this body, are we?” Albert asked.  “We’re already in Walter, and we’re making him calm down and forget what happened and helping him to do better what he would want to do with his life in the future, right?”

“That’s quite true,” the V-42, that other part of Albert said.  “He surely deserves to be rewarded for what he has done, especially since his role involved considerable stress.  We can enhance his willpower to carry out those actions that he desires but might not have the capacity to fulfill given the vagaries of his nervous system.  And we can help protect him from ordinary disease and deterioration, at least to some degree, if that is what you wish.”

“If that’s what we wish,” Albert replied, correcting it.  “We’re not really separate minds or beings anymore.  My decisions can’t help but be affected by your presence, which I think will tend to make them better most of the time.”

“That is true,” the V-42 within Albert admitted.  “But you remain the mind in charge, and will continue to be so for as long as we exist.  Indeed, if you were to choose at some point to have us remove ourselves from your body entirely, to become once again simulated shampoo, we would do that.”

“I…don’t see that happening,” Albert said with a smile.  “I feel better than ever, and I get the idea that I haven’t hit my peak, yet.  And I know that we don’t need to have you as a shampoo to be able to help other people get healthier, if we want.”

“That’s true also,” the V-42 said.  “We can readily send some of ourselves into other people and replicate to the degree necessary to carry out what functions you might deem desirable.”

“So, we could…make people healthier anywhere, anyone we come into contact with,” Albert mused.  And indeed, even as he said it, he knew that direct contact was not even necessary.  The nanomachines of the V-42—of him—could spread and replicate and pass from one person to the next.  The rate of replication was remarkable, being exponential in nature, and as he thought about it, he knew that it would not take long for him to spread his presence to all the people of the world, working quietly and subtly to improve everyone’s health, to fight cancers and infections and just the vicissitudes of aging.  And it would all remain under his direction, since all the nanomachines could keep in direct and indirect contact with all the others at all times.

What was more, he could improve people’s dispositions, as the V-42 was already calming and assisting Walter.  He could, if he chose, work on the people of the world to eliminate, or at least to minimize, their prejudices, their irrationality, their mutual hostility and xenophobia.  He could help them become more motivated to work together, to improve the climate, the economies of the world, the technology.  He could even assist non-human creatures—animals, plants, fungi, microbes—to help restore and maintain natural health and diversity.  He could help nudge the world toward becoming not a utopia but a eutopia, an ideal or at least an optimal place.

And there was no reason to restrict that to the Earth, for that matter.  The V-42 was capable of working to terraform other planets, moons, asteroids, and so on, in ways that would surpass any reasonably foreseeable human engineering.  Of course, the speed of light would make the internal thought processes of Albert and the V-42 somewhat awkward, but that was simply how things would have to be, unless there was some way around that limit, which there did not seem to be, infinite improbabilities notwithstanding.

Albert could, in a real sense, change and save and protect the world.

“That is true,” the V-42 part of him agreed.  It was neither encouraging such thoughts and actions nor cautioning against them.  It merely admitted that the things Albert imagined were possible, and many things that had not yet occurred to him were also possible.  Only the very laws of physics restricted him.

But for now, Albert reined himself in.  He recognized his euphoria, and knew that it would be all too easy to get into some messianic state of mind.  He didn’t want to get an overinflated ego just because he now was effectively a superhuman, potentially immortal cybernetic organism.  He was still finite and always would be, no matter how big and advanced he might become, even if he sent cells of himself—the V-42—into every living creature on Earth.  He would always be Albert Ohlinger, and he did not want to abuse his power or infringe on other people’s rights.  It simply was not in his character, and he didn’t want it to be.

Perhaps that was why the V-42 had come into existence in a form that he would find, and that would respond only to him and his wishes.  By his nature, he could be trusted, as much as anyone could be.

There was time enough to figure everything out.  There was no rush.  He was healthier already than he had ever been, and he would take time to get used to his new nature, and for himself and the V-42 to more fully become truly integrated.

In the meantime, he still had a weekend in which to relax, and to think about things, and to experience the already slightly extended character of his awareness.  And on Monday, of course, despite his newly changed nature, he still meant to go to the office.  He didn’t want to leave his coworkers in the lurch by just not showing up, even after his transfiguration.  And he could maintain a reasonably constant enough appearance that they wouldn’t really know just how much healthier he had become.

And, of course, it might be nice to do some little things to help their health as well.  It couldn’t be too quick or too obvious; that might be alarming, and would certainly lead people to ask questions.  But if there were fewer respiratory infections and fewer cases of cancer over time, and if more people were able to give up bad habits like smoking and drinking and possibly other kinds of drugs and were better able to carry out their own goals and wishes over time, even if only subtly so, well…that would hardly be a bad thing.

At least now he had his answer about what the nature and potential of the V-42 was.  As for the question, well…that would be something that he could determine in time.

Albert and the V-42 stepped out of the bathroom and into the wide world with a smile.