* * *
That was how I found myself sitting in front of a computer workstation in one of those small rooms. The project engineer, David Brooks, sat beside me. As he talked, David continuously straightened his clothes-he smoothed his tie, shot his cuffs, snugged his collar, pulled up the creases in his trousers from his thighs. Then he'd cross one ankle over his knee, pull up his sock, cross the other ankle. Run his hands over his shoulders, brushing away imaginary dust. And then start over again. It was all unconscious, of course, and with my headache I might have found it irritating. But I didn't focus on it. Because with every piece of new information David gave me, my headache got worse and worse.
Unlike Ricky, David had a very organized mind, and he told me everything, starting from the beginning. Xymos had contracted to make a micro-robotic swarm that would function as an aerial camera. The particles were successfully manufactured, and worked indoors. But when they were tested outside, they lacked mobility in wind. The test swarm was blown away in a strong breeze. That was six weeks ago.
"You tested more swarms after that?" I said.
"Yes, many. Over the next four weeks, or so."
"None worked?"
"Right. None worked."
"So those original swarms are all gone-blown away by the wind?"
"Yes."
"Which means the runaway swarms that we see now have nothing to do with your original test swarms."
"Correct ..."
"They are a result of contamination ..."
David blinked rapidly. "What do you mean, contamination?"
"The twenty-five kilos of material that was blown by the exhaust fan into the environment because of a missing filter ..."
"Who said it was twenty-five kilos?"
"Ricky did."
"Oh, no, Jack," David said. "We vented stuff for days. We must have vented five or six hundred kilos of contaminants-bacteria, molecules, assemblers." So Ricky had been understating the situation again. But I didn't understand why he bothered to lie about this. After all, it was just a mistake. And as Ricky had said, it was the contractor's mistake. "Okay," I said. "And you saw the first of these desert swarms when?"
"Two weeks ago," David said, nodding and smoothing his tie.
He explained that at first, the swarm was so disorganized that when it first appeared, they thought it was a cloud of desert insects, gnats or something. "It showed up for a while, going here and there around the laboratory building, and then it was gone. It seemed like a random event."
Chapter 11
A swarm appeared again a couple of days later, he said, and by then it was much better organized. "It displayed distinctive swarming behavior, that sort of swirling in the cloud that you've seen. So it was clear that it was our stuff."
"And what happened then?"
"The swarm swirled around the desert near the installation, like before. It came and went. For the next few days, we tried to gain control of it by radio, but we never could. And eventually-about a week after that-we found that none of the cars would start." He paused. "I went out there to have a look, and I found that all the onboard computers were dead. These days all automobiles have microprocessors built into them. They control everything from fuel injection to radios and door locks."
"But now the computers were not functioning?"
"Yeah. Actually, the processor chips themselves were fine. But the memory chips had eroded. They'd literally turned to dust."
I thought, Oh shit. I said, "Could you figure out why?"
"Sure. It wasn't any big mystery, Jack. The erosion had the characteristic signature of gamma assemblers. You know about that? No? Well, we have nine different assemblers involved in manufacturing. Each assembler has a different function. The gamma assemblers break down carbon material in silicate layers. They actually cut at the nano level-slicing out chunks of carbon substrate."
"So these assemblers cut the memory chips in the cars."
"Right, right, but ..." David hesitated. He was acting as if I were missing the point. He tugged at his cuffs, fingered his collar. "The thing you have to keep in mind, Jack, is that these assemblers can work at room temperature. If anything, the desert heat's even better for them. Hotter is more efficient."
For a moment I didn't understand what he was talking about. What difference did it make about room temperature or desert heat? What did that have to do with memory chips in cars? And then suddenly, finally, the penny dropped.
"Holy shit," I said.
He nodded. "Yeah."
David was saying that a mixture of components had been vented into the desert, and that these components-which were designed to self-assemble in the fabrication structure-would also self-assemble in the outside world. Assembly could be carried out autonomously in the desert. And obviously, that's exactly what was happening.
I ticked the points off to make sure I had it right. "Basic assembly begins with the bacteria. They've been engineered to eat anything, even garbage, so they can find something in the desert to live off of."
"Right."
"Which means the bacteria multiply, and begin churning out molecules that self-combine, forming larger molecules. Pretty soon you have assemblers, and the assemblers begin to do the final work and turn out new microagents."
"Right, right."
"Which means that the swarms are reproducing."
"Yes. They are."
"And the individual agents have memory."
"Yes. A small amount."
"And they don't need much, that's the whole point of distributed intelligence. It's collective. So they have intelligence, and since they have memory, they can learn from experience."