Johnny Winger and the Amazon Vector

by Philip Bosshardt

  He prayed there was still enough of a hull left to patch.

  It was tedious, mind-numbing work but inside half an hour, the pressure drop had essentially ceased, bringing a relieved smile to Dana Tallant’s dust-caked face. The cabin temperature was another matter however. Winger grew so warm that he eventually stripped down to his underwear.

  “It’s nanobotic activity,” he told Tallant. “All that replication and assembly work liberates a hell of a lot of heat.”

  Tallant mopped sweat from her forehead and face. ”That and the hot rock all around us. How long do you think it’ll take ANAD to get here?”

  Winger shrugged. “Couple of hours, at least. He’s got to bore through several hundred feet of solid rock. I just hope we don’t shift anymore.”

  Their eyes met. Tallant swallowed hard. ”You think we can get out of here?”

  “I don’t know,” Winger said. “I really don’t know—“ he stopped at the sound of more creaking and groaning echoing through the hull, as Gopher continued settling.

  It was the familiar sound of a keening, high-pitched wail that finally awakened Winger from the restless dazed stupor he had sunk into.

  “ANAD…you old fart. You made it back!” He pitched his left shoulder to open the containment capsule port. “Prepare to execute capture maneuver.”

  Dana Tallant coughed and stirred groggily in the heavy dust as she came fully awake. She saw the faint blue mist of the ANAD swarm, as it issued like smoke from behind the main console.

  “Thank God the fault didn’t slip anymore. I don’t think Gopher can take much more.”

  ***ANAD tried to be careful…ANAD slowed down to one-half propulsor and surfed my way through the lattice…the bonds were strong out there and intramolecular distances were short…it took awhile***

  Winger tapped his shoulder port with his finger. “In you go, ANAD—“

  The blue smoke continued filling the cockpit but there was no obvious movement of the swarm toward containment. Winger, preoccupied with the densitometer, trying to sound out a profile of Gopher’s position, didn’t notice at first. When, after a few minutes, he realized the swarm was forming up in one corner of the cabin, he became annoyed.

  “Come on, ANAD, stop wasting time…in you go.”

  ***ANAD requires some room to re-assemble, Control. The swarm should remain outside containment for the time being***

  It wasn’t the first time the nanoscale assembler had refused to be contained.

  “ANAD, execute capture maneuver immediately.”

  ***ANAD cannot execute capture maneuver. Full cognitive processing requires swarm-scale operations. Containment inhibits cognitive processing…algorithm 1200445.1, sub-module B***

  Johnny Winger looked at Dana Tallant. ANAD was refusing to return to containment. Like a petulant little boy, the master assembler wouldn’t go back to his room.

  “Okay, ANAD,” Winger said warily. Was there a processor fault somewhere inside that miniscule polyhedral body? Had some qubit flipped the wrong way inside ANAD’s quantum brain? “Okay…we’ll do it your way…for the time being.”

  Tallant was equally wary. “Ask him about conditions outside the hull. Is there any hope for getting the borer back online?”

  Winger eyed the shifting fog of the assembler swarm, now gathering itself into the faintest outlines of a face. Maybe it was a trick of the emergency lighting, maybe it was just his own dead tired imagination. ANAD’s face flickered like a ghostly apparition in a campfire, by turns resembling Doc Frost, Major Kraft, Jamison Winger and a host of people Winger had never seen.

  He put Tallant’s question to the swarm master.

  ***The horn is crushed completely…to re-build would take 62.5 x 10 EXP 25 seconds. The borer swarm has slipped containment and dispersed. It’s possible that the dispersal contributed to the fault slippage***

  Winger relayed ANAD’s report.

  Tallant’s face sank. “Then we really are trapped here, Wings. You can read the densitometer as well as me.”

  Winger nodded. “Over a thousand feet down, embedded in hard quartzite and basaltic rock plates. Too deep for the surface to dig us out.”

  “Is there any way we could get a signal out?” Tallant racked her brain for ideas. “Some kind of sound pulse…maybe invert the sounder to transmit a shock wave.”

  Winger was still curious about ANAD’s behavior. “Maybe but it’ll take time to re-jigger it. The tread drive is—“

  “Inoperable,” Tallant told him.

  ***Forward treads are de-tracked, Control. ANAD detected alignment damage to one entire section of the 120-degree track***

  “Fabulous,” Winger said. “Just fabulous. And a thousand feet over our head, Amazon Vector’s chewing up the earth’s atmosphere.”

  Tallant sank glumly back in her seat. “I’m not sure we can even do much to stop these changes in the earth’s atmosphere. Practically every time we’ve engaged Amazon, we’ve gotten our butts kicked.”

  Winger agreed. “So many people affected…millions if the Corps can’t at least slow it down. A hell of a lot of people are going to die…and there doesn’t seem to be much we can do about it.”

  The shimmering mist of the ANAD swarm flared brighter momentarily.

  ***Sometimes, the changes you see as life-threatening could be life-giving to other forms of life***

  Winger was startled by ANAD’s ‘opinion.’ He told Tallant what the assembler had sent over the coupler circuit.

  “It’s the clearest statement of opinion I’ve ever heard him say.”

  Tallant shook her head. “So what do you make of it? Processor noise generating a random output…or a real honest-to-God opinion? Is he even capable of such a thing?”

  “I don’t know what to make of it. ANAD, what exactly do you mean by that?”

  ***ANAD makes observations. My processor evolves through observation and analysis. In the last eight point five microseconds of processor cycles, maturity weighting algorithms have output results stating that some forms of life thrive and grow under environmental conditions that other forms of life find deadly***

  “You mean like Amazon Vector? What kind of life form would thrive in conditions that kill millions of people?”

  Even as he said it, the answer came to him. Viruses, plagues, epidemics. The 1918 Spanish flu virus had feasted on humanity for nearly two years and left twenty million dead.

  Johnny Winger felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He remembered something Doc Frost had once told him at Northgate: Remember that ANAD’s processor kernel contains informational elements adapted from virus genomes. It may yet turn out to have unknown and emergent properties we haven’t accounted for.

  “ANAD, are you saying that Amazon’s killing off people like some kind of virus…a mindless infection spreading, like an epidemic?”

  ANAD seemed to think about that for a few moments.

  ***Unknown. Question requires information unavailable to my processor. Amazon Vector does not exhibit properties of a mindless swarm. My observations indicate with high probability that enemy nanomachine swarms are operating under specified programmed control***

  “Programmed control?” Winger repeated, explaining ANAD’s dialogue string to Tallant. “Whose control?”

  ANAD made no response to that.

  “This is all fine and good,” Tallant said, “but we’ve got to focus on getting out of here. I know the densitometer says we’re below a thousand feet down but I’ve been wondering if there isn’t some way the surface couldn’t drill down to us.”

  Winger shrugged. “They probably could…if they knew where we were. We’ve got no comms and navigation is shot. The surface wouldn’t know where to drill. I could try a quantum channel but it would be a shot in the dark if anyone was tuned in.”

  “I say we try to finagle the sounder to send out some kind of sonic pulse.”

  “The shock waves may cause the
fault zone to slip again. We could be crushed. For the moment, Gopher seems to be trapped in some kind of void. We don’t know how long it will last.”

  ***ANAD has an idea***

  Winger kept forgetting that the translucent blue shimmering entity in the corner was also a thinking entity as well. The swarm had re-assembled itself into a vague resemblance of a human face. It was Johnny’s father, Jamison Winger, in outline.

  “ANAD, I wish you wouldn’t do that—“

  “It looks like a face, Wings. But I don’t recognize it. Anybody you know?”

  “Yeah, sort of. I’ve let ANAD mess around inside my head way too much. What’s your idea, ANAD?”

  ***Analysis of surrounding rock formations indicates that there is a seam of extremely dense quartzite with inclusions of mica above and behind our current location…approximately on a bearing of one-five-five degrees relative***

  “Superhard rock, to be sure. What about it?”

  ***Rock of such density will support small-diameter boring better than most rock in this area. ANAD recommends a small pilot hole be bored through this seam, all the way to the surface. If ANAD can approach or reach the surface, it should be possible to use my own quantum coupler to signal for help. There are several stations that would be able to disentangle such a signal***

  The idea had merit. Winger explained what ANAD had proposed to Tallant. She mulled over the risks.

  “The question is: can ANAD make it in time to get help before we lose the rest of our air…before the carbon dioxide gets too heavy.”

  “Or we get crushed completely when the void collapses,” Winger added. “To do this means we release the master assembler to pilot the hole and leave the bots holding Gopher’s hull together uncontrolled and unmonitored.”

  Tallant nodded. She was huddled in her cockpit seat, bathed in sweat, yet trembling all the same. “I guess one of us could couple with the hull bots, keep an eye on configs. I sure don’t want any atomic bonds breaking without my command. They’re all that’s keeping Gopher from being crushed.”

  “I don’t think we have much choice now.” Winger studied Gopher’s instruments and displays. “Oxygen’s down another five percent but the CO2 is the real worry. We’re already at three thousand ppm. We get above five thousand with no way to scrub the air and we’re finished.”

  “Tell ANAD to get to work. I don’t want to spend any longer in this overgrown coffin than necessary.”

  “ANAD…config for boring a small-diameter hole. But I want to stay linked in while the swarm ascends toward the surface.”

  ***Negative, Control…ANAD does not advise such a course of action. Too much distraction…too many processor cycles are expended to maintain the link. ANAD needs all available capacity for boring and sounding…have to stay within the seam of densest rock to keep the void from collapsing***

  “Or the fault from shifting.” Winger reluctantly agreed. “You’re probably right. Get going then…I’ll link out.”

  He cocked his head to shut down the coupler and felt momentarily disoriented, like he had just stumbled into a darkened room and had to feel around for something familiar.

  Tallant watched the blue shimmer begin to disperse. “He’s on his way, then?”

  “Reconfiguring now, Dana. It’ll take a few minutes.”

  Tallant saw how concerned the atomgrabber looked. “He’s just a machine, Wings. Come on…you know it’s the only way.”

  “A few months ago, I would have agreed with you. But now…it’s almost like he’s become a fellow nog. A buddy. And he reminds me of that all the time. Troopers don’t leave anyone behind.”

  “He just says that because he’s heard you say that. He’s parroting the words back to you, like a child. He doesn’t have any concept of loyalty or courage. It’s not part of his program…you heard what Doc Frost said.”

  “He’s like a child, for now. But I think this child is starting to grow up.”

  Several minutes later, the cabin was quiet, save for the sound of the air pumps laboring against thickening dust. The shimmering blue fog had exited the geoplane. Outside, somewhere above and behind them, a small swarm of nanoscale entities was burning a tiny tunnel upward through hard quartzite rock, laboriously disassembling molecules atom by atom, cautiously boring a pilot hole and sounding gently ahead, to keep the massive rock plates from shifting anymore and crushing Gopher and her two-man crew.

  Inside the geoplane, Johnny Winger and Dana Tallant were now completely alone, with only remnant ANAD swarms holding their hull together, CO2 levels building, oxygen running out and cabin temperatures steadily rising inside.

  Johnny Winger closed his eyes and wondered if he had done the right thing. They had no entrusted their very survival to an increasingly precocious, yet unpredictable teenager named ANAD.

  It took nearly twenty hours for ANAD to complete the pilot hole and breach the surface. In a snow-covered valley seven miles north of Haleysville, a bright light suddenly emerged from the snow drifts. A small gathering of elk scattered in alarm as the globe of light lifted away from the ground and hovered for a few moments like a shimmering radiant fog.

  Then the fog began flowing southward, toward the distant mesa of Table Top Mountain.

  ANAD activated his quantum coupler link and broadcast a repeating emergency message:

  ***This is ANAD on Q1…any station, any station, emergency code…troopers are down and need assistance…here are the coordinates--***

  Flowing over the ground like a windblown mist, the ANAD swarm maneuvered on max propulsor toward the Quantum Corps base at Table Top, broadcasting the same message on all coupler channels. After analyzing probabilities, ANAD decided to take additional measures to ensure the alert was noticed.

  Using configs already stored in memory, ANAD initiated a maximum rate replication, essentially the same Big Bang scenario he had simulated many times for his fellow nogs at the war game range at Hunt Valley. Hacking and cleaving atomic bonds at a furious pace, the nanoscale assembler copied its own structure over and over and over again, exponentially expanding across the face of the mountains like a slow-motion explosion of flickering light.

  The assembler knew that such activity would be immediately detected by protective bots circulating high in the atmosphere, the BioShield system that alerted Quantum Corps to uncontrolled, unrestrained nanobotic activity.

  Detection took only a few minutes.

  It was First Sergeant Marty Rivers at BioShield Los Angeles Center who first noticed the blinking light on his board.

  Curious and somewhat started by the alarm—there hadn’t been a real alert in North America in years—Rivers sat up straight and his hands started flying over the keys, toggling the detectors to focus on the source of the disturbance, running routines to characterize the threat, sending alertgrams to a dozen different sections and also activating the Quantum Corps warning system.

  Fifty-six thousand feet over southern Idaho, a small swarm of BioShield nanobots received instructions from LA Center and maneuvered into a tighter formation, probing earthward with pulses of sound and EM, trying to get a fix on the locus of the source. The returns fingered the swelling ANAD swarm and fixed its real-time location and heading. Moments later, Sergeant Rivers had the same data.

  Immediately, he opened a vidlink to Table Top Mountain.

  Doctor Irwin Frost was in the Containment center when the duty officer from Ops poked her head in. She was a big-boned blond six-footer and her name plate read Spivey.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Doc, but there’s something you should see. Signals just got a feed from a nano-source and it’s close by, just a few miles from here. LA BioShield just routed the details to us.”

  Frost had been concentrating on some quark flux imagery from a probe of some odd molecules he’d scrounged up from Kurabantu mission samples. He looked up.

  “What is it?”

  Lieutenant Spivey shrugged. “Not s
ure, sir. A nanobotic source and it’s growing fast, almost like a Big Bang. BioShield says it looks like some loose ANAD…maybe there’s been a breach here?”

  “Not a chance,” Frost insisted, as he powered down the imager. “But I’ll take a look.” In the back of his mind, he wondered. Was it possible…it had been hours since they’d lost contact with Gopher. He followed Spivey to the Ops Center to see what all the fuss was about.

  Johnny Winger’s head snapped up. His eyes were dry and his head throbbed like it was being squeezed in a vise. He tried focusing his eyes on the instrument panel, dimly aware that the CO2 level was surely building toward toxic levels. His eyes found the dial and he studied it until it blurred into focus.

  Nearly five thousand ppm. No wonder he felt so groggy. They had passed out, how many hours ago?

  He shook himself awake, slapping his face, pinching his arms. “Dana. Dana Tallant, wake up!” He leaned over to jab at his fellow trooper. “Get up and move around, will you? The air’s bad—“

  Up on the command deck, both of them stirred and groaned loudly.

  “We’ve got to do something…anything…to get out of here.”

  Tallant rubbed her face. Winger noticed her lips were faintly blue…the first signs of hypercapnia were already visible. They had to move now…or they would die in the coffin that Gopher had now become.

  “Mmmm…what is…what’s wrong…Wings--?” Her head dropped again and she nearly drifted back toward the bliss of unconsciousness. But Winger grabbed her chin and jerked her head up. Then he unbelted her and dragged her from the seat.

  “Dana…we can’t stay down here any longer. We’ve got to do something.”

  The movement around the cramped and buckled, dimly lit cabin seemed to momentarily energize them. Tallant leaned against the bulkhead, holding her head, while Winger force-fed her some water from a canteen. She swallowed hard and tried to breathe, but coughed violently when she tried, spewing water everywhere.

  “Any word from ANAD?” she mumbled.

  Winger shook his head. The dust in the cabin was now so thick it refracted the fading light of the emergency lamps into strange, menacing shadows.

  “Nothing. And we can’t wait any longer.”