Willis was tweaking something on the control panel, adjusting the tank parameters. He rolled his fingers, indicating Winger should keep going.
***You and me, Boss…we need to work on this together…I didn’t have any say in it…***
Now, Winger really was annoyed. He imagined what Major Kraft would say to such a reply. “ANAD, listen to me…you’re a vital part of the Battalion. You’re essential to the mission. Don’t be so self-centered. We had a mission to perform…and I’m the commander. When we’re on a mission, we follow orders.”
***Even if it means a quantum collapse…that would be like chopping off your arms and legs…to save your head. What’s the point of that?***
Willis was watching his panel closely. He whispered to Winger: his state generator’s acting up…I’ve got re-boot…you want to end this session?
But Winger shook his head. “ANAD, maybe you don’t know about a little thing called sacrifice. A little thing called duty. We’ve talked of this before—“
***I know, Boss…we’re soldiers…we do as we’re told…my processor calculates an eighty-two point five percent probability, with correlation of point nine two one, that this is why you and your brothers took over the family ranch when you Dad was sick***
Winger smiled sheepishly at Willis, shrugging, as if to say I don’t know what he’s talking about.
“ANAD, that’s not…yeah, well…maybe it is sort of like that.” But this wasn’t the time for his own family history to be mixed up with regenerating a master assembler.
He’d have to be more careful in future. Regulations said you weren’t supposed to let ANAD sniff around inside your brain, outside of containment, building glutamate trails of memories. Obviously, ANAD hadn’t forgotten everything.
***Boss…a quantum collapse…we should have talked about that…made the decision together…maybe I’m a soldier…but don’t I have some say in any of this?***
Winger didn’t know how to answer that. He glared at Willis, who held up his hands helplessly.
“ ANAD…we’ll discuss this later. The technician says there’s a problem with your state generator…you’re not making any sense. He has to re-boot.”
To even a casual observer, the assembler sounded glum. ***I know…I know…every time I want to change things, I get tweaked…it’s not fair--***
Winger made a cutting motion with his hands. Willis chopped the link. Winger clicked out, holding onto the edge of the tank, as the dizziness passed. He’d have to have a talk with Doc Frost about that.
“Sounds like my ten-year old daughter, Captain,” Willis said. His fingers flew over the keyboard, as he began re-booting the state generator. “You want another session…calibrate again?”
Winger shook his head. A ten-year old…that was exactly what ANAD sounded like. Could an autonomous nanoscale assembler have a tantrum?
“No, Corporal…that won’t be necessary. Just prep him for transfer. I’m taking him to Northgate tomorrow. He and I are going to have a little session with Doc Frost and the Lab.”
Johnny Winger kept ANAD in a mobile Tinytown for the trip to the Autonomous Systems Lab. He didn’t want the assembler bugging him on the hop over, tickling the coupler link from inside the capsule like he was prone to do sometimes…not when he wasn’t sure just how well ANAD was regenerating. It was troubling the way ANAD had responded to the news he’d been quantum collapsed at Via Verde.
Doc Frost would have to do a little tweaking to make sure the assembler was still capable of field service with 1st Nano.
Gibbs and D’Nunzio went along with the Captain, just in case.
Frost was delighted to see them. “The Major sent me a report on what happed at Via Verde. It seems ANAD had more than he could handle.”
Winger acknowledged the problem, describing the confrontation. “It was like he was running at half speed the whole time. Amazon bots were faster, with more effectors, more maneuverable. We got our ass kicked good. I’m not sure what’s under the hood of those bots but whatever it was, they ran circles around us. I had to do a quantum collapse to get the master out in one piece. But I did manage to snag some debris from the buggers…a piece of a core, some effector parts, maybe a little data on bonds.”
Frost motioned for Gibbs and D’Nunzio to bring the mobile TinyTown over to the containment tank. “Excellent, excellent. And ANAD’s fully regenerated now? No ill effects?”
Winger hesitated. “He’s regenerated, Doc. I’m not sure about ill effects. That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
Frost said, “Let’s get the little guy out of there and into containment. Then we’ll see.”
For Winger, coming to Northgate was like an old homecoming. Even Frost’s associate, Dr. Mary Duncan, a petite Scotswoman, was on hand.
Gibbs expertly transferred the ANAD master and the debris they had picked up at Via Verde into the tank. Frost couldn’t wait to get the debris from the Amazon bots under the scope, fidgeting anxiously as the quark flux imager sighted in and the view settled down.
“Fabulous—“ he muttered, adjusting the gain. “Just fabulous. You’ve done wonders, Johnny. Grabbed the core of this beast, with its processor dot even, and good bit of structure too. Still got the touch, eh?”
Winger watched Frost manipulate the pieces on his grid, teasing apart carbon chains and phosphor groups with the quantum tweezers like he was preparing a Thanksgiving turkey. “Those scraps nearly cost me an ANAD master, Doc. We got into a swarm fight we couldn’t handle. ANAD had to get small and get the hell out in a hurry. I was lucky to grab that much.”
“Mmmm—“ Frost poked and probed with the sticky end of hydrogen radicals that made up the quantum tweezers, carefully teasing apart the inner lattice of the core segment. It resisted, more than he expected, then gave way with a puff of spinning atoms. The image jolted with liberated energy. “—ouch! That must have hurt—well, well…would you look at that.” In the very center of the lattice piece, now open to view, was a black, formless dot, quivering and beating like a tiny heart. “—main processor, I’d say. Brains of the whole thing, right there.”
“I just want to know what makes the thing so hard to grab,” Winger said. He described the long tentacles that had given ANAD so much trouble. “The damn things seem able to anticipate every move I make and react a hundred times faster.”
“Yeah,” added Gibbs, “and those tentacles gave us hell. The bugs could grow ‘em in a flash and reach out to snag you from behind. No way you could grapple the bastards.”
Frost tried probing the processor dot. “Offhand, I’d say most of the answer’s right here…in the processor. The lattice itself looks familiar. Pretty much an ANAD clone. But this—until I get inside, I can’t be sure—but based on the way the dot’s configured—all these peptide cages around it—ribosomal architecture, by the way—this mech’s got implied capabilities far beyond anything ANAD can do.”
Winger, D’Nunzio and Gibbs peered at the imager screen, studying the quivering mass of the enemy mech’s core.
“Just what the hell are we dealing with here, Doc? Can we defeat it?”
Frost licked his lips. “Extremely competent engineering, from what I can see. Fiendishly clever design…married to a quantum-scale nanoprocessor that’s probably orders of magnitude ahead of ANAD. Simply incredible—“ he pointed out feature after feature of the lattice structure. “Stiffer effectors…a new way of growing diamondoid links. I would never have thought such a design would work…but here it is. Right in front of my eyes. Marry these effectors to such a core and you can assemble or disassemble matter at unprecedented speeds, with near perfect accuracy. That’s how it can react so much faster than ANAD. It can grow any kind of effector you want, quick as lightning, even tentacles as you described.”
“Surely it can be copied,” Deeno said. “If someone else can do this, so can we.”
Frost shrugged. ??
?Maybe. There could be some special chemistry here I don’t know about. I’d have to measure the bond forces, the angles, study the whole thing. It might take days, maybe weeks, even with the data you’ve given me.”
“What makes the damn thing so fast, Doc? The core is just a computer. It only controls and directs things.”
“True enough, if you consider the nano-arrays of DNA molecules just a computer. But look here—“ Frost pointed out cleavage planes among the stacked molecules of the mech’s lattice. “New carbon group fold lines. Basically, a whole new architecture that’s more easily cleaved and collapsed. Makes for faster folding and unfolding. It’s like a tent, quick to set up, quick to tear down. Design’s based on ribosomal proteins…nature’s own assemblers. DNA kernel sending instructions to ribosome-like body parts…what does that sound like to you?”
Deeno shook her head. “The buggers have re-engineered the entire genomic process.”
“Exactly. Taken what nature does and improved on it. Now, this little mech can break and form bonds much more rapidly, under quantum-scale control. And see all the fullerene ‘hooks’ along the edges? He’s covered with them, like a porcupine. More secure grasping and attaching, which makes for better accuracy.”
Johnny Winger was itching to test drive the thing. “Do we even know the full capabilities of this thing? Can you replicate one?”
“Not fully, at least, not without some testing. The Lab’s been experimenting with some of these ideas for ANAD, but nothing like this. It will probably take weeks to puzzle out the details of this little fellow.”
“Doc…we don’t have weeks. We don’t even have hours. Amazon’s not under control yet and it’s spreading fast.”
Frost agreed something had to be done and fast. “Let’s have a look at ANAD…see what we can do to make him more capable against this menace.”
They spent the next few hours probing every part of the ANAD master’s structure, trying out ideas, re-arranging atoms and bond angles, anything that might work. Frost had a few ideas of his own. While he was re-arranging atoms along one effector, he asked Winger a question.
“Johnny, you said something earlier about ill effects. Was there any problem with the regeneration?”
Winger thought about that. What had most troubled him was how ANAD had argued about the need for the quantum collapse. He tried to explain it to Doc Frost.
“It’s hard to put into words, Doc…but ANAD seemed reluctant…like he didn’t understand why I had to do it. Later…when we had him fully regenerated, he wanted to discuss the tactics we used.” Winger shrugged. “He’s never questioned command decisions before…never questioned anything.”
Frost stifled a smile. “ANAD’s growing up…maturing.”
“How do you mean, Doc?”
Frost switched the view of the imager to show ANAD. Looking like a trellis full of vines, the master assembler wavered in the aqueous solution of the containment tank.
“Just that ANAD’s processor has been steadily updated over the years. One of the characteristics of quantum computers with his architecture is that they develop emergent properties, behaviors if you like, that look and sound like attributes of a childlike intelligence. My guess is that, with this version and all the revisions and updates, ANAD’s behavior is something like a ten-year old child.”
Winger smiled ruefully. “You’re more right than you realize, Doc. Sometimes, ANAD acts like a teenager. He even whines, complains, wants his own way. I shouldn’t tell you this but lately, he’s even been asking me to let him out of containment.”
Frost was concerned. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. How often does this happen?”
“Once, back at Table Top after the mission, he asked me that. I let him stay out of containment one evening. It was the oddest thing, now that I think about it. He replicated a few trillion times and formed up in the likeness of an old microflyer I had as a child, a bot named Bailey that I tinkered with as a kid. I’m not sure why. Maybe he’d been sniffing memory traces.”
Frost was even more concerned. “Don’t let ANAD out of containment without a specific config state, Johnny. It’s not a good practice. And you certainly shouldn’t let him sniff around inside your head. Sniffing memory traces should be done only under close supervision.”
“Why, Doc? ANAD and me, we have a pretty good understanding about that.”
Frost tweaked the imager, boosting the gain. He zeroed the instrument in on the quivering dot at the center of the image. “See that? That’s ANAD’s core processor. It’s full of algorithms that make ANAD what he is, make him capable of doing the incredible things he can do. But you should always remember one thing about ANAD, Johnny—“
“What’s that?”
“The roots of ANAD’s programming come from abstracting genetic information from certain viruses and bacteria. That’s how I kick-started certain capabilities—basic replication, basic functionality, maneuverability, those kinds of central capabilities were lifted and adapted from the genomes of ancient viruses. Viruses have been around for a long time. Bacteria too. In many ways, the story of life on earth is the story of bacteria…how they developed, adapted to the environment, how they altered the Earth to suit them. Viruses don’t have the same needs as Humans. Historically, viruses exist to reproduce, even if it kills the host.”
Winger looked uneasily at Deeno D’Nunzio and Gibbs. “Doc, there’s never been a time when I thought ANAD and me weren’t buddies, you know? Nogs in the Corps…the both of us. Sure he’s smaller than the rest of us, but hell, we all bring different strengths to the mission. That’s why we’re a team.”
Deeno echoed Winger’s sentiments. “Captain’s right, Doc. We think of ANAD as just like one us, another nanotrooper.”
“As you should,” Frost went on. “That’s the premise of this experiment with encapsulating ANAD in individual troopers. That’s what the Symbiosis project is all about. But understand this—“ Frost was plainly struggling to find the right words—“—all I’m saying is that, even after studying viruses and bacteria and their genomes for decades, there are still capabilities and features we don’t understand. I have a suspicion that somewhere deep inside the kernel of ANAD’s processor ticks a time bomb of an algorithm, something that emanates from the distant evolutionary past of all viruses…something unsuspected and undetectable.”
“Like what?” Gibbs asked. “We know every line and element of his code backwards and forwards.”
“Yes, but do we know all the interactions? Of course not,” Frost answered his own question. “The combinations are astronomical. There’s not enough time left in the universe to investigate every interaction. I can’t be sure about any of this…but it’s best to be cautious.” What Frost didn’t tell the Quantum Corps troopers was that this was the very reason he had always maintained a ‘trapdoor’ into the very core of ANAD’s most fundamental processor routines, maintaining the ability to delete everything and bring ANAD to an end.
Irwin Frost, playing God to the end, wanted to maintain the ultimate power of life and death over his creation.
The father of nanoscale assemblers could see perfectly well that Johnny Winger had become very protective and solicitous of ANAD’s needs. Such camaraderie could be useful, Frost had written to the Corps in his prospectus a year ago, in forging a tighter link between the assembler and the soldier, in making the new symbiote-soldier a complete combat system. Such camaraderie should be encouraged.
But Frost, perhaps more than anyone else, knew that ANAD had duties to the Corps…duties that could never be forgotten. And needs too. What did ANAD need? Nutrient solution for his shell and effectors to grow and repair themselves. Power for his processor. A stable environment for containment.
And a purpose…
Johnny Winger had told Frost that, in ‘conversations’ with ANAD over the quantum coupler link, that the assembler seemed to hav
e desires of a sort, as if the bot were a living person: most particularly, ANAD wanted more and more to be allowed to exist all the time outside of containment, as a small-scale swarm with a brood of replicants and other master assemblers, in a sort of hive or loose swarm.
Winger knew that the Corps was unlikely to permit this anytime soon, yet he was sympathetic. It was hard not to see in ANAD the same sort of raw nog he had been at the Academy…or as Doc Frost would say: “an emergent being not fully understood or appreciated by those around it.” Just like he had been. “That’s what they do to you in nog camp—“ Johnny often told him…”tear you down completely into constituent parts and rebuild you a different way.”
Frost and Winger had had numerous conversations about emergent properties of nanoscale quantum-coupled assembler swarms. Frost didn’t always believe what Winger reported. Sometimes, he knew the attributes he claimed for ANAD weren’t possible…”--it’s just transference, Mary—“ he would say to Dr. Duncan, over tea in the faculty lounge late at night. “Simple transference. Johnny sees aspects of himself in ANAD.”
But he listened nonetheless…and remembered his own concerns as he created the original ANAD 1.0, now more than thirty years ago. Frost had always maintained a back-channel means of overriding any function or command ANAD received or processed. Mary Duncan accused him of playing God.
Frost didn’t disagree with that, but sometimes he thought: If I am God to ANAD…then Johnny Winger is my Moses.
“Come on, Johnny—“ Frost was saying as he scanned ANAD carefully through the imager. “Let’s see what we can do to spruce ANAD up…armor him better for dealing with these blasted Amazon bots.”
Winger, D’Nunzio and Gibbs huddled around the imager while Frost and Duncan commanded new configs for ANAD—trying on different effectors here, adding to his polyhedral base there, altering algorithms, cleaning up routines—most of the afternoon was spent optimizing the nanoscale assembler for future combat with Amazon Vector.