Drive Time

by Matt Wilkinson

  All three of PRE-Innovations founding members knew there was a possibility that the exclusivity of this technology could be short lived. If they had made it work, others would follow. They were fairly sure that they were the only ones currently making use of the science, as the rate of progression in society before they began their work wasn't indicative of time manipulation. At least they had pole position in what they were doing, and they may be able to make changes for the better before others, possibly, began making it worse.

  Right now, she was helping out with the small things, but she wondered how long it would be before something larger came along that she'd find impossible to ignore. Terrorist attacks or tragic accidents that they would be obligated to do something about. Spencer knew she'd have to respond to a call for help, but she didn't know if her colleagues would share her sentiment, that's why she was keeping her night time activities to herself for now.

  Later that day, as they were assembling the small nanobot factory, as far as the materials would allow, she got another message to her phone from the drive.

  25 Royal St, black VW Golf. Sometime tonight, let the tyres down.

  It looked like she was stuck with the small stuff for now.

  Chapter 12

  The remainder of the parts and materials needed to build the nanobot factory arrived within the next couple of days. The team shared the effort of putting the machine together, which was approximately the size of a washing machine. Next generations of the factory would likely be smaller, once the first set of nanobots were online.

  The machine worked similarly to a 3D printer but here, carbon powder was the primary construction material, and the tiny delicate moving parts of the nanobot were built around the power source. The water dew battery at the core of each robot recharged by absorbing vapour from the air and would itself be another source of income for the company. Due to the nanobot's size, it would be easy for them to harvest moisture from the air around them. The nanobots were able to fly via a rotor similar to the drones that the team had been producing but on a much smaller, simpler scale. The front of each unit sported a pair of pincers, which they used for assembly and self-replication. Using the nanobots, the team would be able to build even more advanced technology by piecing the delicate components together much more precisely.

  The small factory would produce the nanobots in vast quantities, which would then self-replicate to build swarms capable of working together towards the same goal, making fabrication much more efficient. Commands could be given to the nanobots from the PRE-Innovations computers, and the mass would share the instructional data between them within their synthetic hive mind.

  The applications of the technology would be endless, especially once their proportions were of a cellular level. They could, for example, be injected into the bloodstream to eradicate viral infection or cancers, or repair organs from the inside.

  Right now, the team were using their first swarm to make sculptures from ice cubes they had in the freezer.

  Simon entered commands into the software at his workstation for the nanobots to execute. Much like a 3D printer, schematics could be loaded into the software for the swarm to recreate in reality. The sensors on each unit sent data back to the software, producing a virtual 3D image of their current surroundings, Simon could then click on any real world object that he wanted them to use as a construction material for their build.

  The team had started off simple; the first miniature sculpture was a pyramid shape. Next came a perfect sphere that had rolled across the desk leaving water droplets in its wake, which the nanobots soaked up and converted to charge. They then moved on to basic figurines, a snowman, cartoon cat, cartoon dog and a tortoise. The swarm of tiny robots resembled a large dense swarm of flies hovering above the table. The present bots were a third the size of an average house fly. Future generations of the nanobots would be smaller than fruit flies, then down to a tenth of that scale. Currently, they were watching the nanobots shave ice away to reveal a tiny transparent replica of the Lincoln Monument.

  “The detail is incredible,” Victor observed. “How long will their pincers allow them to chisel away the ice before they become blunt?”

  "They're so tiny that they last longer than you'd think, especially since they're carbon. The bots can sharpen them if they do blunt, once they're beyond repair, they can dispose of them and attach a new pair. Ice is less of a problem, the sculpting is achieved by the heat of their vibrations, melting as well as physically shaving off parts. Bees can kill intruders to their hives by swamping the invader and vibrating their bodies until lethal heat is produced. The nanobots can do the same thing."

  “They can melt intruders?”

  “No, they can vibrate to generate heat.”

  “Which will help them melt an intruder.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “So we also have a new security system.”

  “If you like.”

  “Simon, I’m fucking with you. I know all this stuff, you keep forgetting I also have a doctorate, I even read the same instructions.”

  “I’m sorry, my IQ is so much higher than yours, I have trouble figuring out what you understand.”

  There was no grandstanding in the confession, Simon was only stating his truth.

  Victor sighed.

  “Well, you can assume I understand until I tell you otherwise,” he said in a hushed submissive tone.

  He moved in close to the micro-sculpture, till his nose was almost touching the ice. The swarm of nanobots drifted to the other side of the table, allowing him room.

  “That’s so cool,” he said. Lincoln was seated in his huge chair just like the Washington DC original, a perfect replica. “Do me next.”

  “Careful,” Spencer said. “The immortalisation might go to his head.” Victor snorted in mock derision.

  “Hold still, I’ll get the bots to scan you,” Simon said.

  The swarm arranged themselves in a vertical strip formation that then wrapped around Victor as a cylinder, he tried his best to remain motionless. There was a beep from the software, and the bots returned to their amorphous swarm.

  “Place three ice cubes in a column,” Simon said.

  Victor picked out a few well-shaped cubes and set them in an even stack on the table.

  “The scan’s been converted into a schematic, here goes,” Simon said.

  The swarm moved to the ice pillar, and the bots span so fast around it that they became a haze. Through the mist of the swarm, the column could be seen steadily morphing into the form of a human figure, gradually becoming more defined. The mass moved away, revealing the ice figurine of Victor. It’s subject returned to the table for another up-close inspection of the sculpture.

  “That’s so weird,” he said. “They got the hair exactly right. Not strand for strand obviously, but it’s an excellent LEGO hair representation. It’s like looking in a magic mirror. Do it again with one cube.”

  Victor placed a new cube.

  “Your wish is my command,” Simon said.

  The process repeated, this time on the lone cube. The mist was less transparent since the cloud was denser. Moments later, the swarm again moved aside again, revealing an even smaller replica of Victor on the table. Victor carefully grasped the new statue between his thumb and forefinger and placed it next to the first. If his hands weren't cold from handling the ice cubes, the delicate sculpture might have melted into nothing.

  “Amazing,” he said. “This is going to make buying gifts much easier. Candles shaped like the person you’re buying for, have a tiny replica of a loved on on a keychain, action figures..."

  "3D printing places are already doing action figures from photos,” Spencer said.

  “Oh, yeah, of course. Well, ours will be way better. This is freaky good.”

  “How long until generation two?” Spencer asked.

  “Well, we could start work on that right away. We have plenty of the components left over." Simon said, "We’ll use fifty
percent less of it this time since the second generation will be half the size."

  “Can we go the opposite way and create double sized bots, for bigger jobs,” Victor asked.

  “The design we have right now won’t translate to a larger unit as it affects the aerodynamics. Just double the number of bots.”

  “Ah, yeah. Duh.”

  “We’re not ready for mass production yet, but we’re way off letting the bird out of the nest anyway.”

  Their instructions from the future indicated they should hold off on releasing the technology for the time being, as the bots would assist in the assembly of subsequent time displaced tech, this would help expand their head-start. Once they had a satisfactory buffer in place, they could allow the rest of the world to feel the benefits of the nanobots.

  “I wonder what they’ll have for us next,” Spencer pondered, her choice of words indicative of how it felt to have a future counterpart.

  "Since we have nanobots right now, and they're the coolest thing ever, what's next will most likely blow my mind," Victor answered.

  Chapter 13

  Spencer lay on her bed struggling to relax and drift into slumber. The past couple of nights had been blissfully free of nocturnal tasks, and she had finally managed to enjoy some much-needed sleep. Tonight, however, thoughts of impending insights that might keep her awake were themselves, keeping her awake. She rolled onto her back and puffed out air, exasperated. A sudden realisation dawned, making her feel foolish. She took a note of the time and sure enough, a message from herself appeared on her phone.

  Nothing tonight, get some shut eye.

  Spencer sighed and relaxed, blaming the sleep deprivation for her slow-wittedness. She then decided on a better system, she would set a predetermined time for any messages relating to crises that she considered it her civic duty to correct. If the moment for pre-warnings was set to, say ten in the morning, and no instructions arrived at that time, Spencer would know that her day was free and a good night's sleep was on the cards. If there were tasks to perform in the evening, there would be time to prepare, if they were to take place in the morning, all she had to do was send the warning back an extra day. The urgency that Spencer felt when reading news articles concerning lethal attacks, or accidents would be a difficult instinct to ignore, the mind had a fight or flight response, and hers was triggered when lives were in danger. She knew that the time drive made urgency obsolete, it was just a matter of overriding her natural impulses with substitutes that adhere to her new understanding of reality. Unless her day got so chock-full of time corrections that squeezing more in became impossible, there was no place for the anxiety that she was imposing on herself. Spencer could wait days before sending a warning, however long she delayed, her past self would still receive the message at the appropriate time. Fourth-dimensional thinking was not a concept that would become ingrained overnight, every one of us has spent our entire life believing there were rules to how reality worked. Once Spencer came to this realisation, it wasn't long until she fell into a deep sleep.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  The next morning, Spencer awoke slightly late due to the restless start of her night. It was now nine forty-three, so she had just over a quarter of an hour before she would learn how busy her day was to be. Spencer felt more optimistic now that there was a procedure in place. She poured herself a granola breakfast and brewed a cup of tea. It wasn't long after she finished eating that the message came through, right on time. As usual, it contained a street name and time. No call for the stun gun this time, which might have been a relief, were it not for the subject of the warning. The end of the message read keep the 6-year-old girl off the road. No one would need any extra information from the future to fill in the story there, this one she couldn't miss.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Once Spencer arrived at PRE-Innovations HQ, Victor and Simon were already making use of the second, smaller generation of nanobot. Simon was at his station, controlling the swarm in a manner she hadn't seen before. The swarm were arranged so that, from her perspective, they resembled a human face. Their relative positioning and the way they caught the light worked similarly to pixels on a screen, each nanobot being one pixel. Because they were positioned in 3D space, rather than on a monitor, it gave the image a holographic appearance.

  “Say hello to Spencer, Nanovic,” Victor said.

  Spencer now recognised the face as Victor's, the demonstration must have been based on another nanobot sensor scan.

  "Hello, Spencer." the floating visage said, with corresponding facial movements. The face smiled at her.

  "Oh, that's freaky," Spencer said. "The voice came directly from the swarm. Their vibrations can produce sound waves?"

  "Yep," Simon confirmed.

  “Nice.”

  Drones are divided into groups, each group vibrating at different frequencies — when they oscillate together as a whole — they generate the overall sound. The vast number of drones in the swarm amplify the sound.

  The face broke up and reformed as a star-like spiked ball, then into a sphere. It continued to reshape itself into a variety of configurations, morphing from one to another smoothly.

  “What’s this?” Spencer asked.

  "Oh, that's kind of like a screensaver," Victor replied. "It just looks better than an amorphous blob."

  Simon clicked his mouse, and the nanobots returned to their box, a plastic cube with narrowly spaced fabric shelves. The nanobots landed in evenly spread layers across each shelf.

  "We received new plans to the drive this morning," Victor told Spencer.

  “Oh yeah? What do we have in store this time?”

  "We don't know yet. They were delivered to the time sensitive folder, we can open the first next week."

  “The first?”

  "Yeah, there's a whole series of them, five in total. They're staggered through the next couple of months. Each must be reliant on the last." Simon said.

  “Why didn’t they just send them one at a time like they’ve been doing so far?”

  "Well, my theory is that if each device needs to be actualised in a specific order, and if they were sent individually, once we engineer the first, it will change the future. We would then exist in a new reality where we already have that device, our future selves no longer need to send it back, which would mean each device sent would create a new reality. Forwarding them together is more efficient and will minimise chances of unintended effects."

  “That makes sense.”

  "I ordered more materials for generation three, we're going to need to produce drones in a greater volume if we want to take full advantage of this new trick we've learnt. They should be with us in a couple of days, we haven't got much else going on today."

  “OK, I’ll just check my emails then, see if we have anything from the selfie drone factory.”

  "Then we can play with our toys a bit more, read a bit more of the manual, see what else they can do," Victor said with a smile.

  ∆ ∆ ∆

  Spencer left HQ at two thirty, allowing herself more than enough time to reach the address in the message. The wait might be a little long, but as luck would have it, the street had a seated bus shelter for her to wait beneath. From her seat, she scanned the street in both directions, concluding that it might be too lengthy for her to reach either of its extremes in time. The news item where she found the information would not have been accurate enough for her to supply a more precise location. If events turned out to be beyond her control and played out as before, she wasn't sure how she would handle being a witness to the incident, even if it were possible to make a second attempt. She crossed her fingers and hoped things would go right the first time.

  She waited in the shelter for five minutes before she saw the family at the south end of the street, making their way towards her. A father and mother, and their daughter leading the way. She didn't know how to approach them. If she walked or jogged to where they were, then had to turn around and follow them, the p
arents might have found her actions a bit odd. Oh well, she thought, I don't mind looking like a weirdo when a child's life hangs in the balance. She walked towards them, keeping an eye out for cars turning onto the currently deserted road. The street still remained car free when she passed the family, so she patted her pockets, said "Damn, forgot my keys" loudly and doubled back. The family didn't care, or even notice. A car turned onto the road at the end of the street that lay in front of her. This is the one, she thought. This is it. Spencer began to panic as she ran through scenarios on how this was about to go down. She could grab the girl right now, keeping the family occupied while the car passed, but what then? The child would be safe, but she could end up with legal problems if the parents thought she might be some kind of child abductor. There was also the possibility that this was not the car. If she made an attempt at taking hold of the girl before she could get hurt, the father would definitely overpower her, leaving the child unprotected when the real vehicle passed. She could engage the family in conversation, but would that stop the child stepping out onto the road at the worst moment? It only took a moment for all of these thoughts to pass through her mind, the car was still at a safe distance. Spencer decided to follow the family closely, the girl was in the lead, which wasn't ideal as her parents could harm Spencer's chances of reaching the six-year-old in time. Her heart raced as the possible moment for action came closer. The car was merely a few seconds from their position when it happened; the girl tripped and stumbled at the curb.

  Time slowed in a way she hadn't experienced before, even with her current mastery of the space/time continuum. The trajectory of the girl's fall would leave her directly in the car's path. She couldn't let this happen, even if she could reset it. Spencer barged past the mother of the child, knocking her away from the road, placing herself in the approaching vehicle's trajectory. She simultaneously grabbed hold of the still airborne child and dove out of the car's way. For a split second, as Spencer and the youngster cleared the bumper of the car by inches, she felt relieved that they had been fortunate enough to get away unscathed. Then the car's headlight hit Spencer on her feet, sending her into a slight spin, turning her by several degrees. She hit the road on her back, with the little girl lying on top of her, the shock of the landing causing her head to impact on the cement with a dizzying force. The car came to a halt a few metres away, and the driver got out to check on the pair lying on the ground. At first, Spencer didn't feel any pain, but after a few seconds, her feet began to scream with it — probably broken in more than one place each — and her head pounded.