Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

Sat 06/11 09:03:10 PDT

The vault door of the lab stands open, with Father already in place next to his standing desk. Everything looks normal except that a portable whiteboard is covering the shelves where he stores the medical gear.

"Ah, Noah!" he says, looking up at me. "I just finished the initial calibration of the software for your cloud to your specific neural signature." He fiddles with a connector on one of the humming boxes on the server rack. "We'll get you updated, then take some additional measurements."

"More measurements?" I ask, glancing at the metal slab with its black straps. "Like the ones we did last time?"

"No, nothing so invasive this time," he chuckles. "Some passive collection as you interact with the nanobots control software. Just like we used the headset and glove simulators to prepare you for the implant's interface, I'm providing you with an emulator to practice using nanobots before we give you the real thing." He pats a black box the size of a toaster resting on his desk. "You'll connect to this little fellow and run emulated bots that it will show on a screen. They should respond in the same way the real ones will. The wireless signals to and from your phone will be identical."

"Sounds good. Do I just come here to your lab to practice?"

He shakes his head. "I have this unit here, but a second one will be available for you in the Learning Center. Just check it in and out from Janet or Roxanne when you need it. You can practice whenever you like."

"OK. Thanks."

"Let's get to work then. Look here, please," Father directs me, disconnecting one of the screens on his desk and plugging its input cable into the emulator box.

The screen lights up with a close-up view of a single nanobot. Roughly spherical with regularly spaced ports, it reminds me of a soccer ball. Father points around the image and describes how each port can be configured with sensors, jets, laser emitters, or appendages.

"These sensors here," Father explains, "can detect heat, light, humidity, or several other things. The jets allow the bots to fly or act as pumps for gasses. In the standard configuration, jets are spaced regularly around the bot and take turns being either the input or the output depending on which direction the bot wants to fly or pump."

He pulls up a data sheet with specifications for the jets. There are so many numbers I don't catch a third of them before he flips the screen to another data sheet.

"You'll have access to this later, so don't feel like you need to memorize it now. But you should be at least somewhat familiar with the capacities of each bot so that you can calculate how many you need to employ to lift or move an object, for example."

I nod, trying to absorb as much as I can. Father waits patiently, his proud father's smile filling his face. I hate that crooked smile so much.

"So does the force for a push scale linearly with the number of bots I have pushing?" I ask, applying terminology I picked up in Mr. Johnson's class over the last month. "Or are there diminishing returns?"

Father's face lights up. I guess that was a good question. He launches into a long answer that goes way over my head, stopping to do some complex math on the whiteboard that I can nearly follow. I nod appreciatively, and he seems to think I got it all.

"Enough of that tangent. Let's talk about the appendages on the bots," he continues, walking back to his desk. "Each port can host a single gripper that can link it to other bots either in a chainlike flexible connection or a rigid one, or to other surfaces in the same way."

He points to some diagrams on his screens, then launches into another whiteboard session diagramming out the different ways that bots can link and connect. The physics involved is fascinating. Despite being a murderous monster, Father is a surprisingly good teacher—almost at Mr. Johnson's level. For a moment, I'm captivated by his explanations and his energy. I even forget for an instant what a monster he is.