Harvest

by Olga Werby

  “And you said this thing has been under construction since last night?” Sophie asked.

  “Just over nine hours now,” Matteo said.

  “And it’s photovoltaic?”

  “Yes.” Matteo shut off the spotlights. The slight coruscating of the working nanobots stopped. He turned the lights back on, and the structure returned to its seething activity.

  “What spectrum?” Sophie asked. She had apparently gotten over her initial shock. Matteo noted that she was nervously scratching at the D-tats on her arms. His own arms itched, and he didn’t even have any cyberhumatics…just the free-swimming nanobots in his blood.

  “UV works best,” Phoebe said. She had been testing various frequencies of light while Matteo worked to put together Sophie’s workstation. “But all frequencies provide some energy.”

  “But the bots you discovered in our blood, those can’t be using photovoltaics.”

  “No, we assume they derive energy directly from the bioprocesses in our bodies,” Phoebe said. “We don’t know much yet. We look forward to working with you on that.”

  “But so far, you haven’t seen anything destructive, right?” Sophie asked, still rubbing her arms. “These things don’t do anything?”

  “Not yet,” said Matteo. “We don’t know more than what I sent you.”

  Matteo had sent a package of information to Sophie’s Vault. Her Elders’ reply had been to send Sophie. He didn’t know what other measures they were taking to protect themselves, but he was sure that the Australian Vault was working on developing serious precautions against the invasion. The mission of all Vaults was to survive and revive the human population should the unthinkable happen. Methods varied, but the objective was the same.

  “Well then, let’s get to work.” Sophie looked excited to get going, but Matteo heard a note of panic in her voice. He looked over at Phoebe, who gave the slightest of nods—she’d noticed it too. Sophie was good at hiding it, but she was scared.

  In the next few days, Matteo’s lab grew several structures, all following a similar program of building. But they were no closer to figuring out what these structures were for.

  “Are you telling me we’ve been using the same sample all this time?” Sophie yelled in exasperation.

  Her temper was explosive. Matteo didn’t understand how she’d managed to live inside a Seed Vault all her life; she seemed temperamentally unfit for it. But Phoebe pointed out that Sophie’s exuberant emotions might stem from the novelty of the environment she now found herself in. Phoebe, too, found it difficult to cope, although she didn’t go around scaring the other researchers. There were three additional members on their team now, bringing the total in their lab to six.

  “I have samples from all over the world stored in the freezer,” Matteo replied. “It just seemed prudent to figure out what we can get out of one before we moved on.”

  “Keep as many of the variables constant—” Phoebe began, trying to show support, but Sophie cut her off with a wave and stormed off to get another sample from the freezer.

  Phoebe turned to Matteo. “She can’t just run over everyone like this,” she whispered. “We have to be systematic or we’ll never figure out what’s going on.”

  “I know,” Matteo replied. “Perhaps she’ll calm down in a few days.” He scratched his chin. “Do you believe that the nanobots would be different in different parts of the world? Because even under magnification, they look identical to me.” The truth was that he’d been using the same sample, the one from San Diego, not only for the sake of experimental control, but because he didn’t think a different sample would yield different results. They didn’t when he grew out a few samples back in his personal lab in Seattle. Growth times varied a bit, but the structures were surprisingly similar—all followed the same fractal pattern...well, in the short time frames he allowed the nanobot growth to proceed, all grew some version of a 3D box fractal. The results could differ over longer time frames. They just hadn’t gotten around to testing...

  “Computers from the same batch series look the same, but that doesn’t mean they run the same program,” Phoebe said. “Consider genetics. It’s not enough to do a complete genetic profile. Genetic traits can only be understood in relation to a particular environment. The more different environments are tested, the more heritability can be shown.”

  Matteo had considered that. “We’ve already tested the San Diego nanobots under different light waves,” he said. “Differences were slight—mostly just in the speed of construction.”

  “Yes, but there were differences. And Sophie is right—different samples might have evolved differently, depending on the environment they found themselves in.”

  It wasn’t that Phoebe’s or Sophie’s points were invalid; but Matteo still felt like arguing. Sophie was making him edgy. He needed to set a research agenda or they would all just run around doing their own things. “We don’t even understand the dispersion pattern—how did these bots get to be so ubiquitous so quickly?” he said. “Was there one event that introduced a group of nanobots on Earth and then they spread? Or are we being continuously bombarded with these things?”

  “What makes you think the bots dispersed quickly?” Phoebe asked. “What if they’ve been here for eons, hidden like the Mimas artifact, and they only recently came online because of some signal or some environmental trigger?”

  “We don’t know that the artifact has been hidden for eons,” Matteo said.

  “Alice said that the albedo of the substructure around the Mimas artifact looks like clean ice, very different from the surrounding dirty-snowball landscape. All other data seem to point to the alien artifact melting out of the Herschel Crater, too. And that giant impact on the little moon is old.”

  “I read her report too, but perhaps not as carefully as I should have,” Matteo admitted. Alice had sent a detailed analysis to the Elders before the Mimas mission departed. Matteo had spent days familiarizing himself with Alice’s thoughts about the project, but it was a lot of material, and he had also been busy setting up this lab. There was just so much to do, and no time to get it all done. There was no excuse, but he felt stretched to the limit. He knew Phoebe wasn’t blaming him, yet Matteo still felt defensive for some reason. And he was worried about Vars having to deal with these bots out in space, where help wasn’t just a few minutes away. Where I can’t help her, he thought. That’s really my problem. My baby is in trouble and I’m not there for her.

  “We’ll figure it out.” Phoebe gave him a quick hug. She could always tell when he needed a bit of emotional support.

  “Are you quite done over there?” Sophie called from the other side of the room. “Come check this out.”

  Matteo and Phoebe walked over. Two more test stations had been set up in addition to the isolation chamber holding the San Diego sample nanobots.

  “This one is from the east coast of Africa, from the Tanzania Radiation Flats,” Sophie said, pointing. Matteo remembered spending weeks in a decontamination facility after gathering those samples. Vars was so angry he had put himself at such risk. “And this one is from the northwestern coast of Australia.” Sophie’s Vault wasn’t far from where Matteo had collected that particular sample.

  “I gathered that one up right among the dying stromatolite mounds,” he said. “But barely a year before, I was at the same location, just around the corner from the Hamelin Pool on Australia’s Coral Coast, and that sample had nothing. No nanobots and even a limited microplastics count.”

  “Well, the bots are there now, and they’re building,” Sophie said.

  They leaned in to watch. The Tanzania sample appeared to be set on overdrive—assembling at least ten times faster than the bots from the San Diego sample. Structures practically exploded into existence. And these were different structures, nothing like the perforated cubes. These resembled twisting snakes. So much for Matteo’s assumpti
on that identical nanobots built similar structures. And these nanobot creations moved, not just changing shape, but actually roaming around the enclosure, seeming to probe the walls.

  “These containers are bot-proof, right?” Phoebe asked.

  “In theory,” said Matteo. “We do have a freeze switch if things feel out of control.”

  “Good.”

  Sophie was bending over the containment cube for the Australian sample, peering through a magnifying loop. “There are no structures here.”

  “Not yet,” Phoebe said. “But we now know that the rates of construction between the sample vary widely, even under the same wavelength setting.”

  “And we also just learned that the structures are different,” Matteo said. “Sophie was right: we should have been looking at various samples all along,” he added. The Australian Seed didn’t react to his apology. She was hyper focused on the experiments.

  The snake-like assemblies of Tanzania nanobots fused and started to resemble mycelia, the slender root-like structures that formed the underground portion of mushrooms. Mushrooms were a staple food in the subterranean human Seed Vaults, so every young Seed recognized these structures. In fact, many of the Vault walls were covered with a bioluminescent version of mycelia, developed especially for the underground cities, flooding the deep passages with a dim green glow.

  The nanobot-assembled mycelia soon covered the entire walls of the isolation chamber. Suddenly the whole thing shuddered and moved slightly on the table.

  “Shut it down!” Phoebe screamed.

  Matteo pulled the switch.

  The walls of the chamber became etched with ice. The nanobot structures pulled away from the outside surfaces and shriveled.

  “I want these things under constant surveillance,” Sophie said. She was clearly shaken. They all were.

  Chapter Eight

  Saturn was between eight and a half and ten and a half times farther away from the sun than Earth, depending on their orbital positions. At the moment, Earth and Saturn were just over one billion kilometers distant—meaning it would take four months for the Mimas EPSA group to get there.

  The entire team Vars met at EPSA was on the flight: Alice, Greg, Bob, “Evi,” Izzy, Trish, Ron, and Ben Kouta. And, of course, Ian and the twins were there. Major Terry Liut led the military personnel onboard their little spaceship. There were eleven of them in addition to the major. Some were pilots, technicians, engineers, and other people who kept the ship going, but Vars suspected a few were soldiers.

  The ship was shaped like a cigar with lots of extra bits tacked on. The living quarters were in the top half and engines and fuel in the bottom. The first two weeks were devoted to gaining the acceleration needed to get to Saturn, and the ship maintained its basic shape. It was difficult to get anything done while still under acceleration. The scientists stayed in their cabins and worked strapped into their sleeping pods, trying to find accommodation with their stomachs in freefall. Vars found the practical realities of weightlessness a lot more discomforting than the theories she learned in her space prep classes. These first weeks off Earth made Vars reconsider her decision to come along on this expedition many times.

  But once the engines cut off, the ship broke up into two cylinders that pulled apart and started to rotate around their center of mass, creating simulated gravity. It was weak, but it made a huge difference to the lives of scientists with little experience in space flight. Personal grooming and other body-function necessities were all more familiar and the slew of continuous embarrassments were behind them...literally in most cases. Vars felt like she could finally focus on the mission...in between smashing her body against every doorframe and corner of the ship. The force of impact in space was still mass times acceleration. Vars found acceleration very easy, pushing her body along the walls and floor of their little ship with muscles used to Earth’s gravity. Unfortunately, low gravity didn’t mean low mass.

  A thin corridor connected the two halves, making the ship look like a spiky dumbbell; the transit between was not for the faint of heart. The closer one got to the center of mass, the less “gravity” one felt. Fortunately, those who were not directly involved in running the ship didn’t have to make the passage...not on a regular basis anyway. Even thinking about that transit made Vars break out in cold sweat. She would bet she was not the only one. So while the rotating dumbbell configuration was great for bodily comfort, it resulted in a unfortunate separation of scientists from the military crew that ran their spaceship, all of whom were veteran space travelers and far better trained for a space voyage of this length and difficulty.

  Everything served at least double duty on the ship. The cafeteria had a giant screen embedded into one of the walls, making it an ideal place for “gazing at the universe” as well as projecting data, research notes, and graphs during meetings. And this room could also easily transform into additional exercise space just by folding away tables and chairs. The biolab was also a medlab and came equipped with multiple “showers”—personal steam pods, really. Most people shared cabins, but Vars was fortunate to have her own personal quarters and even got a chair and a small desk—she was expected to host subgroup meetings in her room. Alice was assigned a sleeping bunk in the medlab as the most qualified medical technician onboard; at least she got shower priority. Some of Liut’s people slept four per room, but they slept in shifts. Liut also had the advantage of military discipline; scientists tended to be an unruly, individualistic bunch.

  It was not until their third week in space that most of Ian’s people settled into routine life and work on board. That left eleven uninterrupted weeks to think and work through what they would need to do once they faced the alien artifact and two more weeks of freefall under maneuvers to decelerate, get into orbit around Saturn, and then land down onto the surface of its little moon. Considering how widely Vars’s and the twins’ views on how to approach the Mims diverged, Vars felt overwhelmed with the amount of education she had to impart in so little time. Not just to those two, but to the whole group. All were opinionated, all were doctors of their respective disciplines, except for Trish Cars, who was announced on day one as the smartest among Ian’s group of brainiacs. And all of them have been working the problem back on Earth while Vars crammed the basics of spaceflight survival. Now they needed to form a team, become of one mind on how to approach these Mims.

  And there was also the major. Liut had been a constant feature at all of the science team’s meetings even before they left for Mimas. He never missed a meeting in space. There was just no getting rid of the man. Vars was not a fan, but it wasn’t her job to like people. Her job was to make sure that this mission of first contact didn’t turn into a prelude to war...a war that she didn’t believe humans had a chance of winning.

  Vars had a feeling that, in a crunch, Ian’s scientists would be no match for those under Major Liut’s command. And she wasn’t even sure that the scientists would oppose the military, if it came to that. Alice, of course, would be on her side. And Ben, probably. Because of his constant references to Star Trek, Vars assumed his point of view on aliens was strongly informed by that old series’ optimistic outlook on relationships between star-fairing cultures. Ian, too, might be on her side. And perhaps Trish. But if Vars was dividing the crew of the ship into “us and them,” it didn’t bode well for the rest.

  Vars felt her blood itch and rubbed her arms. Finding a way to force everyone to cutout their D-tats and scrub their blood to remove all of the alien nanobots was high on her agenda, too. But Alice was the lead on that. Eleven weeks was a very short time to get it all done. And she needed to do it without alienating anyone...

  Ian’s team gathered in the largest space on the ship—the cafeteria. When everyone finally managed to get comfortable, Vars started on her first prepared lecture.

  “Tasmanians were isolated from all other human societies by ten millennia and a hundred miles of
water,” she said in her teacher’s voice.

  “Vars? Maybe you could pick a topic a bit more relevant to our work here?” Ian said. Others also grumbled. Even back on Earth, everyone hated when Vars started out by making a point with ancient history. But she needed to give these people exemplars that were relatable and yet not too familiar—it was a very fine path to thread.

  “Just cut to the chase, Vars,” Trish said. “We’ll catch up. Really.”

  “I find that giving concrete examples helps distill ideas and makes them more memorable,” Vars said. “So please indulge me. You might even learn something interesting.”

  “I’d settle for useful,” she heard someone whisper loudly from the corner. Vars turned to look, but her movement was too forceful, and she hit her knee on the side of the table...again. She was learning to be more graceful, but everything took time to learn. Everything.

  Vars saw that the twins were already on their D-tats, probably looking up all the relevant information on the ancient Tasmanians so they could sneer at her in disdain and correct her on any detail she might get wrong. But she didn’t care—if that’s what it took for Ebi and Ibe to learn the material, she was happy. She had a feeling that they were the key. If she could get them on her side, then she would have won the battle for the heart and soul of this expedition.

  “Go on, Vars,” Ben said, giving her a very obvious wink. “We all want to hear about the clash between the hunter-gatherers and the British Empire, which obviously didn’t abide by the Prime Directive.”

  Ron and Trish groaned. Ben’s Star Trek references got old quick.

  “It’s true that the British Empire had no qualms about exploiting native populations,” Vars said. “Neither did the Spanish, or the Portuguese, or the French.”

  “Or the Dutch,” Ben added.

  “Let’s not forget the Germans, the Italians, and the Belgians,” said Alice.