Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems
Thu 09/22 06:54:27 EAT

Thu 09/22 06:54:27 EAT

It’s time to get to work. The discussions from last night are still churning in my brain, but today is our first time building in front of an audience of regular people that will be using our creations. I need to focus on the job at hand.

“The trouble here,” Father reminds us as we gather near the shelter door, “is that water is available, but it’s usually in dirty streams that in many cases are a long walk from the village. So the people, especially the women of the villages, end up spending a great deal of their time carrying jugs back and forth hauling water. The situation is worsened because the water is often contaminated. A well in the middle of each village with a solar-powered pump and a water filtration system will make a tremendous difference for them. The scale of these projects may be smaller than the ones we’ve been working on so far, but the impact is no less important.”

We all nod. Andrea and Louise are doing a decent job of keeping their faces normal. I check my own with my floating bot eyes. My expression isn’t giving away anything at all. Of course, I have a little more practice at this than they do. We never decided on what to do about Father, but they at least agreed that we can’t let what he’s done stand. I pray to Mom’s ghost that I can talk them into helping me kill him, but I don’t think they’re ready to jump to that yet. Maybe I can ease them into a murder plot slowly.

“We’ll split into two teams,” Father continues. “Each one will have an assigned village for the morning. Today’s intel report said it’s safe enough in this area that we don’t need to dedicate anyone to sentry duty. Just keep your eyes peeled and you’ll be fine. On each team, two will be on power duty, two on water duty. Chad, Marc, and Andrea, you’ll get the village near our camp with me. The rest of you, take the van with Kofi and go to work at the next village down the road. When you finish, our guides will take you to the next town. Do your best work, these people are counting on you. I’m counting on you.”

Our road turns out to be a dirt track barely wide enough for the truck, but Kofi navigates it well enough. A short ride later, we’re at our build site. The cluster of round huts with conical roofs look like they’re made out of nothing but sticks and mud. A crowd greets our arrival. Based on the number of huts and people, this is probably everyone that lives here, and maybe some visiting onlookers. Kofi talks to one of the men in a language I don’t understand. The man responds in the same tongue in a booming voice, apparently more for his fellow townsfolk than for Kofi.

“You can get started,” Kofi tells us. “They’re excited to see what you can do.”

We thank him and follow his lead into the middle of the village. A circle of stones placed on the ground tells us where to put the well. Evan and I get started on that as Kofi leads Jeff and Louise to where the solar panels will go.

The adult villagers watch us for a couple of minutes, then mostly go back about their business. Some older ones sit down and watch us. The kids are all enthralled by our work, probably because Evan has started showing off and making the dirt from the well hole spray up in a fountain before he makes it settle into a neat pile off to the side. My trains of bots are doing the job the smart but boring way, climbing the sides of the narrow shaft. It’s more efficient since they can carry a lot more when they’re crawling than when they’re flying, but I can’t deny that it’s fun to see the kids’ reactions as the dirt clumps pop up out of the ground. It’s like when the little kids back at the campus would watch us train for this, but better.

Kofi snaps shots of our work with his camera between saying reassuring-sounding words that I can’t understand to the adults. I feel self-conscious the first dozen times he points it at me, but before long I just ignore it and focus on the work. I harden and seal the sides of the well as we go down so that once we hit the water table the shaft will be good to go. About 50 meters down, we hit muddy gravel. Nice, we don’t have to punch through any rock. This one will be easy.

“You want to do the pump or the top side stuff?” I ask Evan.

“I’ll get the pump, you need to show these kids that you’re fun too,” he says, laughing.

“I’ll never be as fun as you, brother,” I assure him. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

BUILD(STORAGE-TANK)

My bots get to work. A wide, shallow hole forms near the well shaft. The surface of it starts lining itself with smooth ceramic. The walls keep coming up above ground level, growing slowly layer by layer until the tank is about ten feet tall. The kids watch with wide eyes. They’re all sitting down in a big circle around us now. They can’t see the underground filtration pipe connecting the well shaft to the tank, but I feel the twinge when the maintenance bots detach from my cloud to take up permanent residence there. Those bots will clean the filters from now until the end of time. As long as there is water in the ground, this village will have plenty of it.

BUILD(PUMP-CONTROLS)

The electronic components take longer, since the bots need to find the right metals, and making anything with transistors always takes them a while. There aren’t a ton of the trace metals that the semiconductors require in the dirt we pulled out from the well shaft, so my bots need to spread out and search for a bit. There. Found some. I feel them hauling it back. The control box forms, growing out of one side of the tank. The children on that side ooh and aah, and the ones sitting on the other side run around to see what’s going on. Wires extend out and down the sides of the well, near where Evan is building the underground pump. I’ll let him connect to those and take it from there.

I look over and see that Jeff and Louise have the flywheel and a good dozen solar panels done. The children follow me like I’m the Pied Piper as I walk to the flywheel box and back, connecting up the twisted pairs of wires in their sturdy casing that grow up from the ground. I check the control box. Power is on and everything looks good. As soon as the pump is finished, we can seal up the shaft. I’ve got a few minutes to burn while Evan finishes working on that.

“Hey kids, watch this,” I say, knowing that they don’t understand a word.

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I wave my hands and a dozen multicolored orbs the size of baseballs appear. I twiddle my fingers, and they spin around my hands. The kids are loving it. I send a few of the balls toward one of the smaller ones with a gesture. As they fly, they widen and change the center of their orbit so they end up spinning around the kid in lazy circles. He gawks in wonder and he’s suddenly the most popular little guy in the village. Another gesture and the lights start changing colors. The braver, older kids reach out their hands to touch them. I time a twitch of my thumb so that when their fingers get near the orbs, they explode out into a thousand tiny specks like bubbles popping. The kids all laugh and squeal with joy.

I need to hear that. I need to remember that there’s happiness in the world and not just bastards who think they can kill anyone they want to and get away with it.

Another wave of my hands sends lights zipping around, just out of reach of the children. I smile as one jumps and catches a light, only to have it evaporate as his fingers close around it.

Of course Father can get away with it. He doesn’t leave any evidence. All the minerals in those soldiers’ bodies are probably part of the maintenance nanobots spread out across a thousand solar panels by now. The unusable compounds from their corpses have probably decomposed already. I’m sure some bugs had a great time in the desert that day, finding a gooey feast just under the sand.

It looks like Evan is done. I wrap up my light show and start walking back to the well’s tank. How many “accidents” has Father caused? How many inconvenient people have had well-timed heart attacks or aneurysms or other things that Father could have caused without raising any suspicions? I’m going to need to do some research when we get back. If he killed Mom, and he slaughtered those soldiers, killing can’t be a new thing for him.

Evan pulls me out of my thoughts.

“Noah, pay attention,” he calls out. “I said, fire it up.”

“Yeah, sorry. On it.”

I open the control panel and point out the big green button for the kids to see. I push it and hear the hum and gurgle as the pump kicks on and water starts filling the tank. I wait a moment to let it fill a bit, then turn the handle on the spigot and put my hands in the cold, clear water that flows from it. I cup my hand and pull some back to my mouth.

It’s good. Better than the stuff they sell in bottles.

The kids rush the tank, laughing and splashing each other. One of the women who’d been watching from outside the ring of children grabs a water jug and calls to the kids to get out of her way. At least I think that’s what she’s saying. It definitely has that effect. She puts her big, yellow jerry can under the gushing stream and smiles as it quickly fills. If our briefings were right, she just doubled her free hours in the day. Kofi almost drops the camera as he gets mobbed by the children while trying to get a good angle to document the moment.

“Good job, brother,” Evan tells me.

I nod. I wish we had time to set up a water tower and indoor plumbing and a proper sewer system. I want to do so much more for these kids who laugh and smile and remind me of all the good in the world. But we’re supposed to get four more villages like this done today, so we can’t. Maybe they can do something like that for themselves with the greater wealth and free time that free access to power and water brings. I guess that’s part of the point of this, bootstrapping prosperity by getting basic needs under control.

We walk to the van, passing around the edge of the new solar field. A bunch of the younger kids follow, waving and moving their hands in circles, making zooming noises. I think we have time for one more quick display before we head out.

LIGHT-SHOW

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