"That's kind of large to be a nanobot, isn't it?" I said.
"Yes," he said, "Well." He nodded at me. Or to me, rather. He wasn't gesturing at me in any way, he was just nodding. And I was still standing behind the couch.
"So. I guess you'll have to beg my pardon if I don't come over, I've got no shoes on, and, well, the floor's a bit of a mess. What with the shards of nanobot and everything."
"Oh," I said. I remained where I was, and looked at the floor in what I hoped was a thoughtful manner. The sort of way you'd gaze on a floor with a tea tray and what used to be sitting on it scattered around. And, presumably, hundreds of thousands and more particles of a former guy who had lifted you down into the submersible in which you now stood.
"Well, he seemed quite soft, anyway. Person-like soft, anyway, carrying me over to the ship."
"Actually, I was kidding, he's probably reconstructing himself in the drainage room, smelling only slightly more of tea and milk this time round. It's more the shards of tea cup and sugar that I'm worried about. Nano-humour." I'd thought nano-humour would carry considerably more references to A Fantastic Voyage than shard jokes, but then, I wasn't a nanotech scientist. "Come on over here, you've got shoes on, you'll be all right. Welcome aboard the Von Neumann!"
When I arrived by his side, he clapped his hand on my back in a very un-nano manner, and, pushing a book forward in the bookshelf against which he'd been leaning, led me into the room which was revealed behind the bookcase.
And in that room, what wonders!
Well, not terribly exciting, if you'd watched enough films. It was quite clinical and clean, especially compared to the last room, now littered with tea, biscuits, and milk. Metal, shiny pipes ran all around the room, coming at all angles out of all surfaces and disappearing again at some point into another surface. It was the sort of room you might have nightmares about, if you were afraid of pipes. Or tended to have recurring dreams about dropping something down a sink.
"Wow," I said, quite fittingly, I thought.
"Yeah, it's impressive." Dr. Moffet wasn't looking at the pipes, though, he was looking with almost parental pride on his invention, the old man/nanobot, who had just entered the room at the far end. Through a vent, situated above the door.
Of course, it didn't dawn on me that it was the old man he was gazing at, at first, I had just followed his gaze and thought that my eyes were going a little fuzzy, what with all the pipes in the room. When my vision didn't clear after a second or two, I looked away and at one of the less shiny pipes in the corner, where it looked like a bulb had burned out. That didn't quite stop the buzzing in my ears, but it cleared up the fuzziness, so I was prepared to let one of my sense roam a little. I risked a look back, when the buzzing had gone away, but moreso because I could sense the bulk of someone else in the room with us.
I leaned nonchalantly against a pipe to my right as David Moffet walked across a series of suspended metal bridges to his creation.
Somewhat less nonchalantly I leaned away from the pipe as soon as the nerves along my shoulder registered that it wasn't that the pipe was cool to the touch, but very, very hot. "Muy caliente!" I thought, as I'd write if I were talking to someone over IRC to someone. I always liked doing that sort of thing. I swore I could smell marshmallows, which I'd read somewhere you can detect when you're about to die. Or perhaps it's strawberries. I got in that suspended state I got in when I couldn't look it up straight away. I went with marshmallows, and decided to stick with it, and just not tell anyone.
Dr. Moffet was speaking on the other side of the room, and I remembered that I might try and sell this story to Wired or someone, they seem to like this nanotech angle these days.
My feet clanked across the bridges, the way they should in a submarine vessel. The echo of rubber against steel echoed, but it seemed to come back at you a little too quickly, like it didn't like to get too far, lest it get lost, farther out there, where the water got darker, and deeper.
Here's the deal:
The old man is a nanobot. We're talking about nanobots that generate their own electricity and keep water off and more! Not tested on rabbits. Or monkeys. Once, on a marmot, but only because David had had an abiding curiousity about marmots and the only way he could seem to get one was for research. It was nightmare getting it delivered out here, apparently.
David Moffet had been out here for a week. He'd been vacationing in Worcester, Massachusetts the week before, and before that, he'd been three years at sea in the Von Neumann, and four years before that in the Newton. The old man dusted and kept the place tidy while he was on vacation.
Dr. Moffet set up out here because he faced a lot less regulation as to what he could do, largely because no one wanted to cruise by every so often to check on him when it involved waiting for him to surface, pop the hatch, bring them down, have a cup of tea or two, have a quick look around, do all the formalities stuff that takes a lot more time on a submarine. Not when they could radio every once in a while, ask if everything was okay, get an "okay" in response and leave it at that.
Sure, they'd had a few problems, a lab assistant inhaled one of projects they'd been working on, which even turned out for a decent shot at more research, as they were able to conclusively determine that those particular nanoparticles were probably not toxic. The pipes sometimes got a bit hot, and one assistant had to be sent back to the mainland for treatment of burns of his shoulder. But all in all. It was safe.
Even the time they generated the Von Neumann.
He said that with a particular pause and hush that I figured he was about to reveal something earth shattering.
Which is when I remembered the thing we were on was the Von Neumann.
By now, we were sitting in the kitchen, a room behind the pipe room, and the room into which all the drains from the parlour drained.
I'm telling you, the shiver that went down my spine was not because of the biscuits.
Let me draw you a quick sketch of the Von Neumann, as I had it:
There was the
entry hatch--
|
Parlour --- Pipe Room -- Kitchen.
Actually, forget the picture.
It turns out the Von Neumann was assembled by the Newton, from the Newton.
"It's complicated," David Moffet said, "And wet." He leaned back in his chair, having snatched another biscuit from the pile before us. "And that's when I realised maybe I should look into doing something with nanotech other than changing, mid-ocean, from one ship into another."
To be continued...
disclaimer:
So folks, here we go, bravely going where loads of other people seem to be going these days... nanotech!
NB. This is only fiction. Remember that.
Yer Weekly Horoscopes.