They call it an atomizer, but does it properly render things into their individual atoms? Molecules maybe, or big clumps of molecules which fall apart much later by gaseous diffusion, but certainly not breaking any bonds that were there before. I want a real atomizer that will spit out free radicals like one one’s business. No, better yet, I want a sub-atomizer that will take your basic drugstore scent and scrub it down to elementary particles and spew them out in a murderous stream if I want. Because that would be virile and noble and a little bit dangerous as well. Or in an improved version you could point it at something and it would render it down to its constituent nucleons and electrons, stimulating the protons to decay into horrible little positrons maybe so that it would fall apart into radioactive nothingness right then.

It would be a fearsome gadget to possess, but still an elegant one to look at, with its main chamber perhaps made of some semiprecious stone or cut crystal, and the part which does the puffing off to one side of the nozzle in a way that calls to mind some kind of casualness that the trigger of a gun or the fire button of a launch console clearly does not. To do its thing it would have to have some potent power source around, but that would be hidden so that it would keep its neat simple lines and its finesse as well, probably miniaturizing and condensing the thing so that it could be tucked into a corner of the reservoir or more likely embedded in the spray head somehow. It would be shielded, tamed, of alien provenance most probably, and worth more than battleships or research reactors, provided it could be something you actually could buy.

Who would know of the sub-atomizer, though, unless its devious amoral creator releases some information, not too much, about what it can do? But in publicity, as always, the more effective the buzz about the thing is the more perilous it is to have it around where curious types of low morals might try to liberate it for themselves. It would be more effective to broadcast a demonstration of its potential, showing how thoroughly it renders the armament of the superpowers obsolete all except for the think tanks working feverishly to reconstruct it in their own labs, if even in a perverted form.It does its best work in secret, but does not rely on sleight-of-hand or social hacking the way most pieces of malware on the Internet. It needs no master and very little language to accomplish what’s in its nature, though it would be good to place trusted guards on it so that it can be kept from close inspection by the criminal brutes who understand only that it is new and valuable. They are not the kind of people who would want to deal with the non-sold-out mission, little impressed by the graphics that go along with it either.

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