One of the staff intercepts Evan and me in the hallway almost as soon as we leave my room and escorts us to where the other guests are mingling. He indicates the spread of steamed buns and beverages along one wall, then leaves us. The labels on the food are in a dozen languages, thankfully including English. I grab one of the custard-filled buns and Evan gets one that smells like some kind of sausage. Across the room, Max is already introducing Louise around to a bunch of the academics. He seems to know all of them. General Liu spots Evan and I and comes over to greet us warmly, then leads us to the nearest other guest. Mr. Wu is nowhere to be seen, but the General seems to have recovered his composure from his dressing-down earlier.
“Noah, Evan, this is Dr. Morozov,” the General says, indicating a solidly built older man with a dark beard. “Dr. Morozov, two of the Butler children, Noah and Evan.”
“Ah, so good to make your acquaintance,” Morozov says, his thick Russian accent putting him right on the border of incomprehensible. My index kicks in and the work Alan and I have been doing starts to pay off.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I tell him. “Congratulations on your Russian Federation State Prize last year. Your work with silicon nanofibers was fascinating.” He seems surprised that I recognized him, and a smile cracks what looks like a very serious face.
He starts to reply but the General is already whisking us away to meet more guests. We meet a couple of Americans next: Harold Skinner, a West coast tech guy and Xavier Black, an East coast heavy industry guy who’s mostly done weapons manufacturing lately. Then Heinrich Bekker from South Africa, and an Iranian woman that I didn’t have indexed, Yasmin Darvish. I guess I can’t complain that we didn’t get all the attendees, given how well Alan did in figuring out who might be here. The rest of them seem just as impressed as Dr. Morozov that I know about them. I hope Yasmin doesn’t feel slighted.
General Liu pulls us to a larger cluster of Asian men and women. I think they’re speaking in Chinese, but I’m not great at telling languages I don’t know apart from each other. Index entries almost overcrowd my vision and my eyes flicker frantically for a second to get all of their entries arranged. Three of them are from China, one from Singapore, and two from South Korea. There’s also a Japanese guy that introduces himself as Tanaka Isamu who I don’t have in my index. None of them seems to need an interpreter when I say something nice about their recent papers or awards. I apologize to Tanaka Isamu for not being familiar with his work. He takes it in good humor and praises our work in Hawaii and on the river in flawless English.
Glancing at his very expensive-looking watch, the General raises his voice and formally welcomes everyone, first in Chinese then again in English. I think it was Chinese, anyway. The chatter in the room dies down and he leads the way down a hall and through a massive set of double doors into a room equipped with rows of chairs, a podium, and a large projector screen. My siblings and I get seated up on the front row. I guess we’re the guests of honor. Max takes the extra chair on our row next to Louise.
“And now,” declared the General, “our keynote speakers. The heirs of Tom Butler!”
We’re on the hook for three presentations, and Louise is up first. Ignoring the projector, she steps up to the podium and creates a slowly rotating three-dimensional model of a brain in the air above the center aisle between the chairs. The projection sprouts a glowing squid-like tangle of highlighted tumors. It only takes me a moment to realize that this is Lin’s brain scan. Louise discusses the application of nanobots to remove inoperable tumors. It seems like it should be old news, since Father did this kind of procedure regularly for almost two decades, but I guess he never published his work, because the presentation gets thunderous applause.
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Evan gets up next and talks about the staple of our world-saving effort, using our nanobots as massive, scalable three-dimensional printers. He puts up a screen and shows images of Father’s solar fields and our trips to Africa, talking through the water and power solutions we’ve done so far. Then he talks through the more recent images from Hawaii and the Mekong, describing the way that building on site using locally sourced materials made it possible for such a small group of people to make such a huge difference. Finally, he does some quick demonstration builds, putting together a solar panel and a battery on the floor of the conference room using the materials in a few of the flooring tiles.
I wonder for a moment if we’ll get in trouble for breaking the floor, but then I see Mr. Wu. He’s standing way in the back corner, clapping and smiling like Evan just gave him the best birthday present ever.
I take the podium next and talk about the next steps that the Butler Institute is planning to take. I explain the potential for the bots to solve resource scarcity. Drawing on the Geologists’ work, I describe how we plan to mine raw materials without the expense and risk of underground mining or the environmental devastation of open pit mining. I lay out the agricultural applications to drastically expand arable land through desalination and water distribution systems that deliver exactly the required amount of water to each plant. I close my talk with the potential to revolutionize pharmaceutical development and production with nanotech-driven dispensaries that can produce a whole slew of drugs on demand with only some basic chemical supplies as ingredients.
While we’ve done proof-of-concepts for all these things, my talk is more speculative than either of my sibs’ talks, since we haven’t done much of it on a large scale yet. I think it went pretty well as I step back to my seat. The other guests seem impressed anyway. I only wish Lin had been here to see it. Where is she, anyway? I still haven’t felt her anywhere yet today.
Oh well. At least that makes it easier to pay attention to the conference for now.
The next speaker gets up and starts talking. He’s the Singaporean I met earlier, Xin Tan. He talks about the potential for nanobots to augment infantry soldiers, giving them tremendous situational awareness on the battlefield and using them to manufacture super high-strength body armor. Yasmin Darvish, the Iranian I hadn’t recognized, has diagrams for how you could assassinate someone using a single nanobot, with techniques from puncturing heart valves to scrambling brains. She’s got algorithms with diagrams for each technique. I just about fall out of my chair when Isamu describes what he calls a Gray Goo Bomb, allowing unrestrained bot self-replication with either a time limit or some geographical constraints, letting them consume literally everything in the target range.
To Evan: This isn’t a tech conference. This is a weapons show. We brought the bots to a weapons show!
From Evan: Yeah, I know! What do we do?
I see my siblings cringing in their seats. The rest of the guests seem perfectly at ease, many even register excitement as they watch Isamu present charts comparing the destructive potential of conventional, nuclear, and nano attacks. The only exception seems to be Max, who looks just as appalled as we are.
To Evan: I don’t know. This is awful. At least we know now what these people want to do if they get their hands on tech like ours. We need to make sure they never do.
I nod to him. Chad leans forward and looks over at me, his face not hiding his rage at all.
From Chad: This can’t stand. We need to shut this down hard.
To Chad: I agree, but don’t jump on anything yet. We need to listen first and see how far along any of these programs are.
He pulls himself together and slowly nods at me.
To All: Sit tight. We’re going to find out everything we can, then we’re going to make sure that none of this ever becomes real.