Chapter 2: Of Nanites and Grey Goo

Skynet Military Base January 3, 2025 AD

Despite, or maybe because of, the success of his twenty-one and seven man teams in whatever exercises they were assigned to, people seemed unwilling to allow Jeff to work on non-combat research. It had taken a almost two years of pleading to the various simians that were in charge but Jeff's efforts had finally paid off. He wasn't sure who, but someone had finally decided to use their brain and go with Jeff's recommendation and allow a research team to be implanted with the neural transceivers. Then again, the team that had volunteered was a research team that specialized in nanotechnology that hadn't made any progress in three years. They were about to be shut down if they hadn't agreed to this project so there may have been alternate reasons for wanting to get implanted. Either way, Jeff was glad that he could finally move forward with the project.

Implanting the neural transceivers in a group that even the regular morons in the military considered failures might seem like an effort in futility to most people but Jeff thought that was the wrong way to look at the scenario. He knew that the transceivers worked. Jeff was sure that the transceivers would make the researchers successful in their nanobot development. Well, it was possible that nanomachines were as advanced as the could get, nanotech could be the next steam powered technology...but there was a rather small chance of that. Much more likely that, with their minds linked, the scientists would a huge leap forward in the nanotech field. All of these thoughts quickly passed through his consciousness as he stared at the pre-op brain scans of one of the so called "scientists." She had had brain surgery several years ago so Jeff had wanted to take a look to see if he would need to alter the neural transceiver at all. So far, there was some slight scar tissue around the hypothalamus but it wasn't bad enough to affect things negatively. Still, Jeff had to be through and check every scan, every angle. He didn't want her dropping dead because a wire interfered with a healed injury. His musing was interrupted by his office door opening.

Jeff didn't even bother turning around, he knew it could only be one person. "I see you've abandoned the pre-text of knocking and decided to invade my privacy whenever the mood strikes you Sarah."

"Yea, yea. Good morning to you Jeff." Sarah said distractedly. Since Jeff had yet to turn around, he didn't notice Sarah's nervous pacing or body tics. She was clearly upset about something.

"So what prompted today's breach of my voluntarily induced solitary confinement?"

"I wanted to ask why you are so insistent on working on the scientists? Why not stick with working on soldiers? Do you realize how much good you've done already? The seven man squad is a crack commando unit in South America!"

His voice dulled with boredom, clearly not desiring to partake in any kind of conversation, Jeff responded, "I'm actually aware of their actions Sarah. I receive mail from them weekly. They are like little kids that want their parents to watch them jump off the pool's high dive. Every single letter is practically begging for my approval."

That grabbed Sarah's attention. She was usually pretty good at telling if Jeff was being serious or just mocking her and she thought this was the former but she had to double check. "Your joking."

"Here's a little puzzle for your underdeveloped brain to ponder for a little while, but not too long or you might induce an aneurysm: because of the first group's feelings for me, I made it a point to never talk to anyone in the second group. Despite that, they are starting to see me as a father figure as well. I've even started getting letters from them. Apparently, they are about to get deployed in Israel working counter-terrorism. Guess their superiors figured they needed a break from hunting terrorists in the mountains."

"Wait, you actually read the letters? You don't find any of this at all creepy?"

"It is not 'creepy.' I created them, I basically am their father. When they first told me of their feelings, I'll admit, I was a little concerned. Seven grown men telling you they love is not something that usually happens. Though I'm sure you're used to that sort of thing, but I hope you charge them extra for the lovey dovey crap. Anyway, I've since figured out what they meant. They are only doing it because they want to keep me involved in their lives. My high dive analogy is quite accurate, I assure you."

Sarah didn't even bother responding to Jeff's insult, she instead asked, "So you have twenty eight, by now highly trained, killers that worship you like a little kid worships his dad?"

"While none of the words you just used had more than two syllables, that is an accurate summary of the situation. I realize you want to be brief but you're only a few steps above grunts and hand gestures here."

Sarah decided she had had enough of Jeff's mocking and directed the conversation back on track. "Wait, wait, wait. This is not why I came in here. Why have you stopped working on the soldiers? What is with the paperwork I've been getting that says you're doing some experiments on some nanotech researchers! We are at war and your cyber-soliders have saved the lives of numerous men in the field!"

"Your lack of volume control is not going to make me explain things quicker you howler monkey. The military doesn't need me to continue that work. I've explained the procedure to several...well I guess they could be called brain surgeons, every single time I implanted the transceivers in someone it was filmed. I'm looking long term here, something I made clear in the reports I send you since you are technically my boss. Though judging from this conversation I'm guess you still don't read them. Do you just use them as napkins or something? I realize its hard for you to resist your evolutionary urges but since you don't defecate in public I would think you can learn to use utensils instead of shoveling the food in your mouth with your hands."

"Don't try to use that excuse on me! I have read the reports you send me, as well as the ones I get sent about you. Every attempt to implant the transceivers as ended badly. You are the only one skilled enough to preform the surgeries correctly and you know it! The lucky ones die on the operating table, the ones that survive end up as vegetables!

"It is hardly my fault that the army has such low qualification standards for its neural surgeons. And if these volunteers were so eager to let a barely educated mouth-breather take a set of hedge clippers to their cerebral cortex than that is natural selection at work."

Sarah was momentarily struck speechless. She had always known Jeff didn't like people he considered less intelligent than himself (which was pretty much everyone) but this was on a whole new level. "How can you be so heartless?"

Jeff didn't even bother disguising his sarcasm. "Oh, I'm sorry. For some reason, I thought I was hired because I posses an intellect to rival that of Aristotle and I've done so much work in the field of robotics that it would make Dr. Wily jealous. Clearly, I was brought on because of my jolly nature and the volunteer work I did at children hospitals. I'm must be having an off day, I promise I'll be back to my Mother Theresa-esk ways tomorrow."

Sarah didn't even bother to come up with an answer, she simply stormed out of the office. Jeff was rather surprised, it was normally a lot harder to annoy Sarah. Must be her time of the month. With that mystery figured out, Jeff resumed studying the brain scans.

Washington DC January 3, 2025 AD

General Valentine was on the subway, deep in thought. He was supposed to be in his office at the Pentagon but found he did his best thinking on trains, probably a product of growing up with a single father that constantly traveled but was too cheap to fly. So here the general sat, riding the Blue Line back and forth, trying to figure what he was going to do about Dr. Borg. The man had developed technology that allowed instant communication between troops, and yet didn't seem to care. Valentine had read the reports of what the seven-man squad had done in the fields, it was astonishing. Valentine had had high hopes after seeing them preform two years ago in the Skynet base in Alabama, and he was not disappointed. Practically regardless of what mission they were sent on, Borg's cyborgs always succeeded, even on missions that had been deemed suicide. Valentine really wanted more soldiers outfitted with Borg's invention. The problem was the delicate nature of the implanting the devices seemed too difficult for anyone but Dr. Borg. Borg had provided diagrams, step-by-step instructions, and video recordings of the implantation operations yet other surgeons kept screwing up the procedure. When Borg had been shown the now lobotomized or deceased subjects, he had been able to almost immediately identify where the other surgeons had screwed up. When the surgeons had tried again on a new group, they had screwed up again in some new way. Valentine did not understand all the biology and technical details, but it basically came down to the fact that only Dr. Borg could successfully implant the neural transceivers. The initial seven hadn't been a fluke either, Borg had done it again with twenty one other subjects and they were just as successful as the first seven.

Initially, Valentine and his fellow generals had denied Borg's request to experiment on a research team. Creating more improvements for the cyber-soldiers was a much better use of his time. Borg had reluctantly agreed to continue working on the soldiers but then things kept popping up that delayed Borg's work. First, he couldn't find the right test subjects so Borg had decided to work on hardware improvements of the transceivers until he found the enough volunteers. Then there were problems getting the correct materials for construction, and once they finally arrived the transceivers were built incorrectly because of some stupid miscommunication. After that Borg discovered a software bug that would make the new transceivers incapable of interfacing due to the hardware upgrade. And there were numerous other little things that further delayed things. Eventually Valentine had realized that Borg was intentionally stalling. Borg knew he was the only one who could implant the transceivers and since he had been told that he had to work on soldiers instead of scientists had adopted the mindset of a kindergartner, namely the take-my-ball-and-go-home-unless-we-play-the-game-I-want mentality. Normally, Valentine wouldn't tolerate this kind of insubordination but Borg wasn't technically part of the military. He was an outside contractor so Valentine was limited in what he could do. Valentine eventually decided on a way to fix two problems with one solution. There had been a nanotech research team in the Sarif Base in Florida that had not made any progress in three years. Here was a group of scientists that knew they were on the verge of getting shut down so they would jump at any chance to keep their jobs. Borg got an opportunity to experiment and Valentine got to shut down a useless project without having to do all the paperwork involved. Transfer forms were so much quicker to fill out than termination reports.

The reason Valentine was riding the subway, deep in thought, was because he was concerned about what would happen next. There was no way Borg would actually succeed in making the scientists smarter, they would get implanted and there would be no real improvement in their work performance. Being able to see and hear what other people can is a huge boon for soldiers, but scientists? Not so much. Valentine didn't understand why Borg was so eager to implant them anyway. When he had met Borg in the Skynet base, the man had been an arrogant, self-centered, egg head completely lacking in anything resembling humility. Therefore, Valentine had a pretty good idea what motivated Borg: his ego. Borg thought he was the smartest person in the room and wanted everyone to know it. So long as things went Borg's way, he was pretty easy to predict, but things wouldn't go his way. The scientists wouldn't be any smarter, and Valentine would be able to order Borg back to working on soldiers. When Valentine told Borg the project was shut down because it produced no new results, what would Borg do? Would he want to try again with a different research group? Would he be willing to go back to working on soldiers? Would he quit in shame? After an hour of thinking on the subway, Valentine still had no idea.

Sarif Base July 13, 2027 AD

Jeff was not normally the kind of person to use hyperbole, but he could not be happier than he was at this instance. The nanotech team had all been safely implanted and had immediately started showing concern for the future of the group rather than their individual job futures. Prior to getting the transceivers implanted, every member of the team made it quite clear to Jeff that it was every other team member's fault except for theirs for the group's failures so he found it interestingly that they had homogenized quicker than either of the previous two groups. After only two days with the transceivers, the researchers had set aside all their squabbles about the lack of results and had been quite eager to get back to work.

Getting back to Florida had taken a full week longer than expected. Apparently, the monkeys in charge wanted extra assurances that there were no negative side effects. Jeff took that to mean that even failed scientists were more valuable than soldiers. If he actually cared about people that could barely walk upright he would probably have been indignant over the whole thing. Equal society where everyone is treated the same, riiiiight. Regardless, once the doctors (Jeff still couldn't call that them to their faces without bursting into laughter) declared everyone perfectly fine, the team was sent back to Florida to work on their nanotech research. Unfortunately, in order to properly observe his subjects Jeff had to go with them. It wasn't that he loved the Skynet Base, but it was certainly the least bad place he had ever worked. The Sarif Base wasn't even a base, it was a nondescript office building right off the beach in Miami. That meant Jeff would have to deal with reckless drivers, retirees, idiot tourists, loud college students, and...ugh Cubans. Jeff wasn't racist, skin coloration had nothing to do with intelligence after all, it was a natural evolutionary step when living in warm climates to cut down on skin damage from the Sun. He just could not stand people that didn't speak basic English. The American economy is the only thing keeping half the nations on the planet afloat. If you're from a country the US annexed into the 78th state five years ago you should be able to speak English by now.

Still, living in Miami, and all the crap he had to put up with, was all worth it for this moment. After a year and half, the research team had made a giant breakthrough. They had developed nanobots that could be programed to build and fix machines on an incredibly tiny scale. Jeff was partially responsible for the success. Shortly after coming to Florida, he had been talking with one of the team members about the difficulty of doing hardware upgrades to their neural transceivers. These nanobots were developed with that particular problem in mind. Rather than attempting a dangerous operation, the nanobots could be injected into the subject's bloodstream and they work their way through the body to the brain and make the changes to the transceiver.

The team had just finished successfully upgrading one of their neural transceivers with the nanobots. A month prior they had used the nanobots to repair a broken leg, but that wasn't considered a full test. All they had to do was inject the nanobots and sufficient calcium and the machines were able to put the bone back together. Altering a piece of technology, without causing any damage to the surrounding brain tissue, was the ultimate challenge, a challenge they had beaten.

Jeff could not wait to call Sarah up so that he could rub this in her face. This had most definitely not been a waste of time. So he hadn't found new ways for soldiers to kill other soldiers, big whoop. Instead, his work had allowed for the development of the world's first multi-functional, cost effective nanobot. Once the military decided to release these things to the public so many aspects of society would change. Medical technology would be so much quicker. And it was all because of his neural transceivers, hail to the king baby.

The only thing that might screw all this up was the fact that someone needed to come up with a reason for why the military should care about this. Considering all the nonsensical reasons he used to justify projects back at Skynet Base, he wasn't too worried, but it was still something he had to plan for.

As Jeff stood there, debating on whether or not he felt like going through the three different security checkpoints in order to get to the smoke lounge to enjoy a celebratory cigarette he noticed one of the scientists approach him. He didn't remember any of their original names but that was fine with them. Not only had they adjusted to being linked quicker than the previous two groups, they enjoyed it to such an extent they all preferred being called by the same name (Jeff still had trouble remembering, Decker? Damion?) since they seemed to consider themselves one mind.

"Hello...Dilbert."

"Denton."

"Right, right, Denton. I must say, I'm impressed that you all managed to get the nanobots working correctly so quickly. Working on the neural transceivers took me about two years. You all managed it in about the same amount of time."

"Dr. Borg, you can not compare our results with yours. You are a genius of incomparable intellect. You took an idea from scratch, thought up theories, built prototypes, and then upgraded them based on data. We had been working on the nanobots for three years previous to your intervention. And it was only your intervention that allowed us to succeed, we would never have been able to create these nanobots without your neural transceivers linking our minds."

"Oh, I know." Jeff wasn't about to turn down credit on one of humanity's most important discoveries. "That doesn't mean I don't find your progress impressive though.

"Thank you, Dr. Borg. We are glad you appreciate our work. If you do not mind us asking, you looked somewhat pensive just now rather than happy. We were worried."

"Oh, its nothing major. I was just thinking about what excuses we will have to use to convince the military to allow us to continue the project."

"The original mission statement of the project was to create functional nanobots. It was intentionally vague because we did not know what possibilities existed for us to discover. We were successful in the project, should that not be enough?"

"I know what you're doing...Denton?" When Denton nodded his head in agreement Jeff continued. "You know damn well that General Valentine never expected any of this to succeed, he wants me back at Skynet figuring out new ways for to improve the transceivers for soldiers. Since you were successful he will think that you clearly don't need me anymore so I will get sent back unless I can come up with some reason why your research will help deployed soldiers, in which case he will let me implant more scientists. You only asked me because you know I like to explain things, don't do that. If I'm going to patronize someone I would prefer it be towards someone who actually deserves it."

"Of course, Dr. Borg. We will not do it again." Though Jeff could tell by the smile on Denton's face that this would, in fact, happen again. As much as he tried to put his foot down about it, Jeff had to admit he did like lecturing and he did feel better. He felt like a parent, trying to discipline a child even though you were secretly pleased with them. "So, what justifications shall we use to continue with our research?"

Jeff contemplated the question for a moment. "Well, we could point out how the nanobots could be used to filtrate harmful chemicals and bacteria out of water. Or, we could explain that nanobots can be used to do rapid field repairs of vehicles and weapons. There is also the possibility of eventually creating a quantum computer. Like I said, nothing to worry about."

Washington DC July 19, 2027 AD

General Valentine was a big enough man to admit when he had been wrong. The neural transceivers did, in fact, work on the science team as Borg had predicted. When Borg had first started asking to be allowed to work on scientists instead of soldiers, Valentine hadn't seen the point. How would sharing audio and visual data help scientists? It wasn't until about a five months ago, when talking with his aide, Nikki Slawson, about the transceivers, that Valentine understood his mistake. Valentine had asked her to take a closer look at the entire neural transceiver project reports and figure out why Borg had wanted to implant scientists and how the group seemed to be making progress in their nanobot research. Slawson had explained to him that the transceivers shared more than just basic data, they apparently also shared knowledge and memories. That's what Valentine got for just skimming the reports. Still, you would think that would have come up at some point when Valentine and the other generals had visited the Skynet Base four years ago.

A few days ago, Valentine had received a report from Borg's team in Florida. Seems they had been successful in their research and had developed nanobots that could be programmed to build, move, and repair practically anything. After almost screwing up the entire project by not reading Borg's initial reports about his transceivers possibilities, Valentine made sure he read the entire report about the nanobots. Any of the parts he hadn't understood he had told Slawson to research and explain to him...which considering Borg's vocabulary and propensity to ramble was pretty much the entire report. So Valentine sat in his office, eating the lunch his wife packed (damn woman and her damn health kick), while Slawson checked the notes she had written down as she got ready to explain everything about the nanobots. Valentine wished he could be riding the subway for this, but Slawson had a lot of work to do so they had arranged to do this during lunchtime.

"Alright sir, you already know that nanomachines are basically tiny robots. Putting aside the difficulty of creating such tiny machines, they are also quite hard to program to do anything useful. The nanotech team has somehow figured out a way to build these machines in such a way that they are stable and advanced enough to contain several terabytes of data each. Before you ask, that is a lot of data for such a small device, sir."

"Ah, thank you Slawson."

"Your welcome, sir. Now, the primary purpose that the nanomachines were being tested on is their ability to alter and repair other machines. For example, they could be programmed to recognize a machine form, such as a working Jeep, and if they were unleashed on a Jeep with a broken axle, they would know to repair the axle molecule by molecule. Or, if a gun jammed and the nanites were put in the gun, they would remove the blockage and fix any parts that might have broken."

"This almost sounds too good to be true Slawson. What's the catch?"

"Well, for starters, there is the length of time involved. The nanobots can't be used for rapid field repairs, they simply take too long. There is also a danger of the nanites becoming von Neumann machines."

"What? The nanites could transform into some other machine?"

"Oh no no no, sir. Not like that. The term "von Neumann machine" refers to nanomachines that continue to build or repair, whatever their programming dictates, and never stop."

"How is that a bad thing? So the nanites keep repairing the Jeep so that it works, whats the big deal?"

"Well, so long as they are only on the Jeep, nothing is wrong. What happens when the nanobots are off the Jeep and land on a cactus or a camel?"

"Uh...well...I have no idea."

"Well sir, science fiction says that it would eventually lead to the end of the world as the nanobots use up all available resources on the planet, but there are apparently safeguards built in. The biggest one being that the nanobots are not capable of repairing or building more of themselves so they will eventually all break down and become inert dust. Also, the nanites can receive software updates through wireless transmission so the machines can be shut down if they stop working correctly Furthermore, the nanobots were programmed so that they only work on machines that are similar to the original shape. That way the Jeep-fixing nanites won't try to fix a broken bone."

"Sounds like the team has taken numerous precautions to make sure they don't accidentally end the world then." Valentine tried, he did, to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. The idea that some tiny robots could bring about the apocalypse was something he expected out of a poorly written science-fiction movie. Why would intelligent scientists actually take time to build on safeguards for something like that? Then again, he hadn't listened to Borg beforehand and had been proven wrong so Valentine supposed the scientists knew what they were talking about. If they felt the nanobots were dangerous, he might as well believe them. "So, what you're telling me is that, thanks to the neural transceivers, the team made a huge scientific breakthrough and that the military can make ample use of these nanobots."

"Yes sir, in fact they have already put forward a report saying what their next project will be. They want to see if the nanobots can be programmed to safely construct the neural transceivers inside a person's brain. If they are successful, then we won't be exclusively reliant on Dr. Borg to preform the implantation surgeries."

"Wait, you mean to tell me we still haven't had a transceiver successfully implanted by a surgeon other than Borg?"

"There has been some success sir. We had a group of four implanted, and none of them suffered any psychological damage. They all suffer from various physical problems due to the brain surgery, but they are able to communicate through the transceivers."

Valentine set his fork down next to his salad (he wanted a turkey sandwich but noooo, his cholesterol was too high for him to be eating meat) and rubbed his temples with a groan. With a deep sigh he asked, "Alright, is there anything else about the nanobots I need to know?"

"Not particularly sir."

"OK, seeing as how the neural transceivers are pretty much solely responsible for the success of the nanite research, we need to get more science teams implanted with the devices. If we don't get enough volunteers, start "requesting" that teams get implanted. We could jump our technology forward by decades if enough researchers are using the transceivers, and with the war in Africa taking a nose dive because of the damn rebel's guerrilla tactics, we need that technological advantage."

"Yes, sir. One more thing, sir. Your wife called, she wanted to let you know she's making tofu for dinner and that if you don't clean your plate she'll know you cheated on your diet."

With a groan, Valentine let his head drop to his desk with a loud thud. After banging his head against the desk several times, he took a breath and said, "Thank you Slawson, you're dismissed."

As Slawson left Valentine's office, she had to shake her head in amazement. Valentine was a good man but he was just so lazy. Slawson knew he wasn't stupid, Valentine just didn't want to put in the effort to learn everything required for this job (which made Slawson wonder how he got this position). Some day's Slawson felt like she spent more time explaining things than doing her job as his secretary. When she first got this job, Slawson was a fresh college graduate; now she had managerial skills that put most CEO's to shame and knew far more about secret military research projects than conspiracy theorists because Valentine didn't want to put in the effort to do it himself.