The Big Blue Sky: Sixty-nine

“What are we doing here?” Molly asked. She held the pistol at her leg. Her heart thundered madly. Every errant sound in the big empty hallways made her jumpy and anxious.

“Looking for someone.”

“Care to share a little?” Molly complained.

Doug stopped before a large directory. White plastic letters were pressed into a black board set into the wall and covered by glass. Doug touched the glass, running his finger down until he came to a name.

“Louis Purvich, Professor.” He said.

“Who?”

“When I called my old editor he said we should talk to his son-in-law.”

“And this is important at this moment?”

“I need some information or I’ll look like a fool at that Press conference. I have one shot. I have to put all the pieces in place.”

Molly nodded. “We better hurry then.”

They ran down the hall and up two flights of stairs, finding a small office at the back of lab. They lab itself was like something from a tinkerers dream. The machines seemed haphazard and strange. Doug was by no means an uneducated man, but he could not make sense of any of them.

“Looks like a hi-tech junk shop,” Molly remarked for the both of them.

There was a small wood-cut sign on the door. It was simple, like a child had created it. A crudely etched tin-can robot frowned while sniffing a daisy. There was a question mark over the robot's square head. The sign read:

DEPARTMENT OF CYBER-ETHICS AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY

Doug didn’t bother knocking. There was no time. He reached for the doorknob. It turned easily. He pushed it open, startling the professor inside. Molly pushed past Doug and went to the phone on the Professor’s desk, lifted the receiver and dialed the emergency operator.

“This is Agent Karaman again. I phoned in the emergency. I am located on the third floor of the Technological Institute, North End in one of the labs. I have a Federal witness with me and will need security immediately to protect him.” She hung up the phone, took the badge from her pocket and hung it around her neck where it would be seen plainly. “No need to get shot by friendlies.”

Doug looked to the astonished young man. He couldn’t have been older that thirty, though a deeply receding hairline made him look a bit older at a glance. It was offset by long straight blond hair. He was skinny and t all, and a awkward, with bright blue eyes and a two day growth of beard. The office was a mess, dominated by a chaotic bookshelf filled with reports, hastily stuffed files and an eclectic mix of philosophy and computer books.

“Professor Purvich?” asked Doug.

“Doug Springer? Arnie said…”

“Is there another way out of here?” asked Molly, returning to the door, now holding the pistol in both hands.

“If you can fly or bounce!” the Professor replied, sarcastically, but quickly thinking better of it when she glared at him. “What’s going on?”

“We don’t have much time,” Doug began. Molly moved across the lab to the door. “I’m trying to put together the pieces of a weird puzzle…”

“Nano-weapons.” Purvich said abruptly, taking Doug a little aback.

Doug looked curiously at the sign on the door. “Cyber-ethics?’

“The digital revolution is overwhelming us,” said Purvich. “It’s evolving faster than humanity’s ability to understand it. Some would call it a new life form, maybe the replacement form for humanity. Twenty years from now machines will be autonomous, self replicating and doing things we cannot even conceive of. Question is, will they perceive us as their Adam and Eve, as nuisances or enemies? Will we perceive them as enemies, God’s or both? The ethics of all this is that we need to find a way to program basic ethics and morality into our machines, or they will fashion their own, and we must come to some understanding and perspective in machines of our creation which, one day, will likely not need us to exist.”

“How does that work for nano-weapons?”

“It doesn’t,” Purvich said simple.

“I don’t get it.”

“You’re not asking the right question,” said Purvich. “What happened in Iran two days ago has all the hallmarks of a Nanobot attack. No ethics, just machines programmed to function on its designer’s shifting sense of ethics. Nanobots are simple, dumb things.”

“Nano-what? You have to forgive my ignorance.”

“Not your fault,” he said. “Nobody knows about this stuff. Nobody in the government and nobody in military, that for sure. Nano-technology is not on anyone’s radar yet, but it is definitely the future. If we’re smart it will change humanity forever. If we ain’t it’ll hit us like a bullet between the eyes.”

“Fallahi said it was like the discovery of fire; a Frankenstein monster.”

“Purvich nodded. “Not far off the mark. What we’re talking here is infinitesimally small, on the scale of millionths of an inch. By contrast, the diameter of a human hair is colossal by comparison. But the applications are infinite; phenomenally better processors, incredibly efficient fuel cells, revolutionary medical applications, like little robots that would hunt down and eradicate tumors before you knew you had them, un-dreamed of textiles and fabrics and warfare.”

“And how would those applications work for weaponry?”

Purvich chuckled. “How good is your imagination? Right now we’re sort of theoretical with carbon silicon Nano-tubes a thousandth the width of a human hair, with a sort of tube and soccer ball configuration, but from that we can build and program and amazing array of nano-machines.”

“How difficult are these to produce?’ asked Doug. Molly was listening from the door, while keeping a wary eye on the hall. Outside the sirens had risen to a racket. There was gunfire in the distance. Purvich led Doug across the room to an odd looking machine. It was hardly bigger that a small chest of drawers.

“A couple of geeks, a million and a half dollars and an internet account to buy a thimble full nano-tubes and you, my friend, could bring the world to its knees.”

“And where does one logon to but nano-tubes?”

Purvich went to a blackboard and quickly scribbled out a formula:

It’s simple, anyone can create so-called forests on nano-tubes in a substrate growth rate in a really simple formula, H(t)=βTo(1-e-t/To), where β is the initial growth rate and T sub zero is the catalyst’s lifetime.” He could see that he was losing Doug a bit in the techno stuff. “It’s simple. Very simple.”

“Anyway to detect one of these nano-weapons?”

“Honestly? Depends on the technical expertise of the designer. They could disappear, breakdown on command, dissolve, or burn up.”

Molly looked away from the door. “Burn up?”

“Sure,” said Purvich. “You could actually generate a substantial amount of heat.”

“Enough to say, burn through human tissue?” Molly pressed.

“Absolutely,” he replied.

“And how would you deliver these?” asked Doug, with a knowing look to Molly.

“God, the possibilities boggle the mind.”

“In a glass of water?” asked Molly.

“I suppose,” the Professor replied.

There was a sound at the door. Molly wheeled around, bringing the pistol up as Waverly and the other man stormed inside, unleashing a hail of bullets. Molly returned fire, dropping Waverly’s partner. Doug fell on Purvich, shoving him back into the office just as two bullets slammed into Molly. She grunted and tumbled to the floor, her pistol skidding away across the floor.

“Molly!” Doug cried, scrambling over to her. Dark red blood spread beneath her body. Molly’s head was turned to the side, and covered by her long dark hair. Just as he reached for her Doug felt the press of a cold hard gun barrel at the back of his head.