Glass Sky

by Niko Perren

  The frosted glass doors stood ajar. Staccato sounds of a heated discussion brought back uncomfortable memories of investor meetings. So many names and faces to remember. How is it that I can master a nanolab, yet not remember people’s names? He forced himself to knock before his confidence drained, waited a polite moment, then stepped inside. The snack cart followed, clacking across the tiles.

  The gleaming wooden table could have seated 20, but to Jie’s great relief he saw only two people: the black man who’d called him last night, and a weathered Indian man in jeans and a rumpled T-shirt. Two walls of floor-to-ceiling glass overlooked a steep, wooded hill encircled by shining modern highrises. Masks and works of tribal art decorated the third wall, superimposed over a sepia mural of a palmtreed island.

  The black man stopped in midsentence and rose to greet Jie, his suit jacket hanging open to free his ample torso. “Tetabo Molari,” he said in a deep voice. He loomed over Jie, crushing Jie’s hand in a meaty grip. “This is Nishad Singh, Chief Scientist for the L1 sunlight control project.”

  Singh raised an arm in acknowledgement, but stayed in his leather chair. His face was wrinkled like a dried apple; his unsmiling expression fell between skepticism and hostility. “Sit, please.” Sharp, penetrating eyes watched as Jie tried to figure out which of the available seats would be least socially awkward.

  Molari waved the snack cart over and took two biscuits. “I assume you’ve seen the disk array news?”

  Jie nodded. “The UN is considering launching thousands of disks into space to control sunlight. I think your company may be looking for a material.” Jie allowed a hint of pride into his voice. “You are interested in Nanoglass.”

  “We already have a material,” bristled Singh. “Spidex. It took ten years of research. Tetabo didn’t just waltz into the UN last week and propose this out of the blue.”

  Molari leaned back, chair squealing in protest. “However, we are looking for alternatives to Spidex,” he said, dispatching a biscuit. “We planned a five-year construction time, but it seems the environmental crisis is on a more aggressive schedule. So we’re re-examining all sorts of options we discarded as too risky. Some of my researchers read your paper in the Journal of Optical Nanomaterials.”

  Singh unrolled his scroll and pulled out a stylus. “Sorry. It’s been a long day. Hopefully this is more productive than this morning’s interviews. Tell us about,” he glanced down at the scroll, “Nanoglass.”

  Jie looked around for a presentation screen, but the masks left no space for displays. Singh was already drumming a finger on the table. Improvise.

  “It was a bit of an accident,” said Jie, speaking carefully to allow the English he’d mastered in university to filter back. “My company make optical switches. Thin materials that can direct light are useful in microchips and displays. The base building block is a Nanoglass tile. It is like glass, but much thinner, only 5 atoms thick and 3000 atoms wide.”

  Jie smiled, warming to the memory. Happier times, crafting proof-of-concepts inside the nanolab. Sewing atoms into combinations nature had not yet imagined. It felt like a childhood memory now, an idyllic world before venture capital funds had entered the picture. “I thought that if we put P1 connectors in a Patterson configuration along…”

  Molari’s blank stare stopped him. Great. I’ve lost him already.

  “How much do you know about nanotech?” asked Jie.

  “Nothing,” said Molari.

  “Lots,” said Singh.

  “Fine,” said Jie. “Simple version is this. To attach nanoscale components together, industry has created standardized connectors. Positive connectors hook to negative ones, like chemical Velcro. I got beautiful idea. If we put positive connectors on one side of the tiles, and negative connectors on the other side, the tiles might self-assemble into flat sheets. Self-assembly is very important if you want to build big objects from very small pieces.” He waved his hands in an attempt to illustrate. “This would be easier if I could show picture.”

  “Dim.” Molari waved a hand and the windows slowly faded, becoming opaque. Of course.

  Jie pulled out his omni. ‹Image Search. Nanoglass tile assembly.› He flicked the picture to the point on the wall where the window had been.

  “This shows how Nanoglass tiles fit together,” he said. “Not as easy as it looks. Tiles like to, what’s the English word… corrugate… making folds and loops. I had to redesign the edges to give more rigidity.”

  “And have you sold a lot of this?” asked Molari.

  “No,” Jie admitted. “So far nobody is interested in buying Nanoglass except a few universities.”

  “You research types are all the same,” Molari laughed, shaking his head in wonder. “Technology in search of purpose. But you, Jie, may have gotten lucky.”

  Singh scribbled on his scroll, then leaned forward, eyes drilling into Jie. “How do you make the sheets?” he asked. “Your journal article said you created a continuous strip of Nanoglass a meter across. I can’t imagine you did that with molecular tweezers.”

  Jie laughed out loud. “Molecular tweezers. Very funny! No, we modified a 3D printer to spray tiles in overlapping pattern. The magnetic edges cause self-assembly. Here, I will show how.” He flicked another image onto the screen.

  “Image this times a billion,” he said.

  Singh stood up and started pacing along the wall. “This has potential,” he admitted. “Normally when I think glass, I think fragile which is why our material was based on spider silk. But with this, we could ship the raw tiles and only assemble the completed sheets in space. Do you think your sprayers could work in a vacuum?”

  “My sprayers require a vacuum,” said Jie. “Air currents are like hurricanes at nanoscale.”

  “Hmmm.” Singh nodded. “What’s the largest piece of Nanoglass you’ve produced?”

  Jie would rather have avoided that question. They’ll find out. No sense trying to disguise it. “We only did one big piece,” Jie admitted. “For the article. A square meter. The Nanoglass tiles are difficult to make in volume. You wouldn’t believe the manufacturing problems.”

  Singh and Molari looked at each other for a moment. A frown formed in Singh’s wrinkles. He sank back into his chair.

  Bái chī, Jie! The biggest deal in my life. Don’t tell them about manufacturing problems! “That’s to say… It’s not like the problems…” Jie stammered.

  “We need to cover ten million square kilometers,” Singh interrupted. “Can you scale to that volume?”

  “Ten mill… You said ten million square kilometers?” A gaping pit opened below Jie. In the game world, there would be poisonous spikes on the bottom. “I should be able… Yes… I could do it.” He tried to sound convincing. Nanotechnology always had issues moving to mass production. The business types never seemed to understand that.

  “A minute ago you said manufacturing was difficult,” Molari pointed out.

  “Yes, but… Nanoglass is a new material,” said Jie. “We only made small quantities, which is expensive. Bulk manufacturing is mature process. Ten years old. Cheap once we get it started. I can create any amount of Nanoglass you need…”

  “If?”

  “… if you give us a few months to work out the steps.”

  Singh seemed unconvinced. “And your raw materials are just silicon and iron? No trace elements?”

  “Yes. It’s glass with wires in it,” said Jie. “The molecular structure is complex. Like an organic molecule. But ingredients are simple.”

  Singh exhaled, groaning audibly. “Our whole design is built around Spidex, Tetabo. We know the risks.” He turned to Jie. “I’m not doubting your engineering skills, Jie. But it took us four years to scale Spidex in bulk production.”

  “Yes, but… I could…” Could what? Jie couldn’t think of how to continue. More than one company had bankrupted itself trying to scale a promising nanomaterial. His voice trailed off. So this is it. Shut down the company. Lose the apartment. Go wor
k for a cosmetics company.

  At least he’d have more time with Cheng.

  He waited, expecting to be dismissed. Molari turned to study the masks on the wall, eyes distant, as if he were communing with the twisted wooden faces. Singh put a finger on his lips. A full minute passed, and then Molari swiveled to face Jie.

  “Do you know what’s at stake here, Jie?” he asked solemnly. “You have a son, right?”

  “Cheng,” said Jie.

  “If we don’t come up with a faster alternative to the disk array, Cheng will grow up in a much-diminished world. We are gambling with Cheng’s future. Right now. In this room. So, do you believe Nanoglass could potentially work?”

  Yes! Yes! But Molari’s expression squashed any trite reassurances. “I… I agree with Mr. Singh that it is very risky,” said Jie. “I cannot promise.” This is why I went into Nanotechnology. To create! Images spun and grew in his head. Soap bubble sheets of Nanoglass. Hundreds, thousands, millions of square kilometers. A glass sky. ‹The most beautiful approach is the right one,› an engineering professor had once told him. This has to be right.

  “I think I could make it work,” said Jie. “I really do.”

  Molari nodded. “I don’t feel we have much choice here,” he said to Singh. “Tania Black estimates we’ve got only two years before we need sulfur again. It’s Nanoglass, or nothing.”

  Singh shrugged. “I won’t argue with you. I wasn’t at the UN Climate Summit. I didn’t talk to her. If you think it’s a good idea, then we should send Jie to the loonies and see what they think.”

  Jie was still trying to figure out what “loonies” meant when Molari closed his fist and bumped knuckles with him, North-American style. “Congratulations Jie. My business manager will arrange financing. I need you at the Xinjiang Space Center right away, working with the design team. The disk array plan has a lot of momentum. We have very little time to come up with our plan B.”

  Chapter 6

  JIE HAD MISSED the daily bus to the space center, so Molari chartered a car, a welcome luxury in a country where only the political elite avoided mass transit. The departure lot was at the north end of Urumchi, a maze of warehouses and storage containers that lapped against the glass cliffs of downtown. About 100 vehicles of various shapes and sizes were charging in neat rows underneath a solar-sheeting roof. Jie’s omni pointed him to a double-seater. It already had one passenger, a Chinese woman in a thick red sweater. She was a decade older than him – late forties maybe – with the lean face of an athlete.

  Jie settled in, and the car glided out of the parking lot. They accelerated down what would have been a freeway before self-driving cars made interchanges unnecessary. The city soon gave way to endless tilled fields where summer irrigation coaxed crops out of the desert. The woman straightened her seat and swiveled so that she was nearly facing Jie.

  “Sally.” She spoke with a southern accent, Chengdu maybe, and used her English name.

  ‹Jie.›

  ‹Disk array, am I right?› said Sally. ‹I saw the UN Climate Summit coverage.›

  Jie nodded.

  ‹I knew it!› said Sally. ‹I was on a beach in Vietnam yesterday for my annual dose of sunshine and massages, and the space center cancelled my vacation. Though,› she leaned forward as if she were about to confide a secret, ‹I figured out weeks ago that something was up. The space industry stock index rose 50%.›

  ‹Well, you probably know more than me,› said Jie. ‹They’ve given me some broad outlines, but I won’t get a full reveal until this evening. I guess there’s one more level of technical review before they bring me in.›

  The car turned onto a single-lane road and began ascending. The farms vanished, and the land became barren, a wasteland of dry gravel broken only by high islands of eroded rock. Ribbons of whirling windmills snaked along the ridges. Sally dug into a pocket, and fished out a crumpled peanut bag covered in Vietnamese characters. ‹I design zero-gravity robotics,› she said, offering Jie the nuts. ‹What do you do?›

  Jie gave her a rundown of his last 24 hours. ‹The disk array’s an incredible engineering challenge,› he said. ‹They’re desperate to cut the schedule, so I’m part of some plan B.› The car shook in a wind gust, pellets of snow skittering off the windows. Their rising elevation exposed a line of mountains, their fluted white ridges a stunning backdrop to the windsculpted patches of snow along the roadside.

  ‹Oh. Wow.› Jie snapped a photo through the window. ‹For my son.›

  ‹Beautiful, isn’t it?›

  ‹Incredible,› agreed Jie. ‹Between my work and Beijing’s dust storms, I don’t get outside much. It was full brownout when I left. In February, can you believe it? It’s getting worse.›

  ‹Maybe you can help change that,› said Sally.

  They settled into an effortless conversation, wandering across topics as broad as the landscape. It had been a long time since Jie had talked to a stranger, but where his social skills were rusty Sally smoothed the gaps. Hours passed in minutes; they crested a long hill where the valley terminated in a gravel plain walled by mountains.

  ‹Welcome to the Xinjiang Space Center,› said Sally, pointing to the cluster of indistinct shapes in the distance. ‹It’s one of two facilities in the world that still has heavy-lift launch capabilities. But it’s been quiet. We had three launches last year. India had one. Nothing goes above low Earth orbit anymore. Just the odd scientific instrument.› Her voice took on a distinct bitterness. ‹Remember the moon base? Remember Ganymede? Our reach has gotten so much smaller.›

  Ganymede? How old was I? Thirteen? Jie’s whole class had watched the Verne lander touch down. Every morning he’d followed the nuclear probe’s progress, watching as it drilled through the kilometers of ice crusting the Jovian moon’s frozen sea. And then, just ten seconds after it had hit the water, the signal had been lost. A software bug. Or a civilization of hyper-intelligent jellyfish, if you believed the conspiracy theorists.

  ‹Did you work on Ganymede?› asked Jie in wonder.

  ‹Do I look that old?› laughed Sally, tapping him playfully on the arm. ‹I’m an astronaut. I was scheduled to do a rotation on the moon base. Before the accident.›

  The car slowed. A gatehouse straddled the road, set inside a razor wire fence. Signs on the fence flashed ‹Lethal security measures in place› in alternating Chinese and English, but the guards who stepped out to meet them were smiling and relaxed, and let them in with only a per-functory check. The car wove through the space center’s scattered buildings and stopped outside three stories of brick and glass.

  Jie climbed out, hunching against the frigid air, admiring the sunset hues on the wall of snowy mountains. That huge structure in the distance must be the vertical assembly building. And the open space beyond is the launch area. The sprawling industrial complex, set in this primal landscape, added to his sense of displacement. A day ago I was in Beijing, trying to steal the cup. Hmmm… I wonder if they’ve got a game center.

  Sally heaved her duffle onto her shoulders. ‹Guest quarters are through there,› she gestured. ‹I’m in staff quarters next door.› She smiled. ‹Really nice to meet you, Jie. I hope I’ll see you around.› She started to walk away.

  Too bad she doesn’t live in Beijing. Cute. And a rocket scientist even.

  She turned, catching Jie staring at her. ‹Your meeting is tomorrow right?› Again, that smile. ‹What are you up to right now? Want to see a spacecraft?›

  ***

  Jie dropped his bag on the bed and pulled back the curtains. The tiny second-floor room straddled an uneasy boundary between prison cell and hotel: old furnishings, bare walls, but a luxury view. An orange glow still backdropped the hulking mountains, though the sky was rapidly blackening into a shimmering tapestry of stars.

  He hurried to the front doors, where Sally was waiting. She had changed into light blue construction coveralls. She handed Jie a hardhat.

  ‹Our lawyers insist that,› her voice became a sings
ong parody, ‹all visitors must attend a full day safety orientation before they enter the construction facilities. Ha! I’ll give you the short version. Don’t wander off without me. Don’t touch anything. If you hear alarms, follow me. And…› she lowered her voice, ‹don’t tell the lawyers.›

  ‹Yes sir.› Jie saluted. ‹I’m used to industrial facilities,› he added. A stretch. My lab is more of a… lab.

  They climbed into one of the white cars charging in the solar pods and Sally tapped her omni to the dash. Nothing happened. ‹Oh, you shameless egg!› She wiped the thumbprint reader and tried again. Still nothing. ‹Biometrics glitch,› she explained.

  After a full reboot, she managed to start the car. She sent it squealing into reverse. Dog testicles! She’s driving it by hand! Did she even look behind us? They raced down a broad concrete road into an area of flatroofed metal warehouses.

  The car wandered alarmingly as Sally pointed at buildings. ‹There’s storage. The fuel refinery. Our electronics labs.› Bright lights snapped on as the car approached, casting a moving pool of illumination around them, as if somebody were shining a spotlight on them from space. They passed a rectangular structure several city blocks in length. ‹That’s where we build the first-stage engines.› Flickering shadows danced behind a row of high windows. Jie abandoned his attempt to figure out the seat belt, which wouldn’t come out more than a few centimeters no matter how hard he tugged.

  ‹That’s the vertical assembly building ahead of us,› said Sally, confirming Jie’s guess. ‹It’s where we put the launch stack together before rolling it out to the launch pad.› It rose before them, a towering skyscraper. By the time they skidded to a halt, he could see only a small fraction of its height.