There we go. On the last cat of the fleet, I find a third non-transmitting stamp-sized device hidden. That’s four total now. I have to admit, they did a decent job sneaking these things on. This one was fused to the hull right at the water level. I’m betting they lost a fair number of bots to signal loss from submersion to get it there. I’m guessing that the three that weren’t transmitting were backups that would have kicked on after a while to make sure that Dorothy had our fleet location at all times and collect who knows what other info. Maybe they were planning to pirate our stations and keep them for their own, or maybe they thought they could just claim that they had built them since with their handy camera crews they’re probably kicking out regular press releases. If they declared them all theirs first, we’d have a tough time regaining the PR high ground.
Am I getting paranoid?
I’ll get with Evan and Andrea tonight and figure out a new travel path. They’ll check me if I’m pushing the boundaries of crazy. But it feels like a reasonable suspicion. If Dorothy and company knew where the first one was going to be built, there’s no reason to think they don’t have inside info on all the rest. There are plenty of good alternative build locations, so I’m thinking we should scrap all the ones we had planned in favor of others where we’re less likely to risk interference or theft.
I put the last tattletale stamp into the shielded package with the others. The SynTech kids can figure out what all those things actually do later. I open my eyes. The sun is low on the horizon. I’m hungry. I forgot to eat again today. Still sitting on the deck, I reach into the food box in the cabin. I find a can of soup and warm it by discharging some battery from the bots lifting it to me. It’s just about right by the time it reaches my hands. I pull the tab, open the top, and have my bots reforge the lid into a spoon.
Evan follows the can out onto the deck, and Andrea follows not far behind him.
“All done with the sweep?” he asks.
My mouth is full and I’m ravenous, so I resort to telepathy so I can talk and eat at the same time.
To Evan, Andrea: Yeah, done. I found some more. I wish I could figure out what these things were for. I think they’re more than just trackers. Anyway, I think we’re clean now. Are we almost there?
“Yeah, we’re in the area,” Evan answers. “We can probably start whenever.”
“Come on then, let’s get to work,” I say once I drink down the last of the soup. “I’m a little worried that they know where we’re building this one. Given Dorothy’s known inclination toward corporate piracy, I’d like to make sure that this is very distinctly a Butler Institute build so she can’t try to take credit for it. Andrea, do you think you can make it stand out as ours enough so there’s no question about who built it?”
She gives me a nonchalant nod with a look that tells me she was going to do that anyway. It’ll have to be enough, I don’t want to put off starting the project for another day just to head off piracy that I don’t know is really coming.
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I reach out around us. Lots of junk here, mostly plastic. I start harvesting, forming chains and scoops, careful not to let my bots get separated and disconnected under the water. It doesn’t take much distance in salt water to block the electromagnetic connection that keeps the parts of my cloud coordinated. I don’t want any of them to lose signal and add them to the junk we’re trying to clean up. I pull two of the spare cats up near us for materials and start disassembling them. I convert about one of them straight into bots, luxuriating in the additional senses as my cloud grows. I slag the other into a neat stack of metal ingots on the deck next to me for use in building the station.
As I finish that, Evan gets started on the collector, unboxing the control hardware and doing the careful work of building the complex parts that attach to the smarts of the thing. Andrea and I work on the simpler but bigger task of building the main body. I love losing myself in the work. Nothing exists but the growing platform and the materials I pull from the water to build it. A blissful hour goes by before it’s done.
Andrea finishes the job with etchings on the protruding hub in the center of the station’s surface, the part that houses the working guts of the thing and won’t be changed as the platform grows and expands. It’s very much in her distinct artistic style, and it has Created by the Butler Institute in big unmistakable letters. The rest of the etching is a swirling pattern that seems to trick the eye like the M. C. Escher print that Mom had hanging in her bedroom. I’d forgotten about that until now. I file the memory in my index. The thought of Mom threatens to pull away my focus and take me back to the dark place where I normally live.
DOPE_ME
Better. Now for the worst part.
MAINTAIN(98%)
I feel a couple hundred trillion pinpricks, a couple hundred trillion fingers cut off as ninety-eight percent of my sensory input disconnects itself from me and reprograms itself to only do a single job for the rest of its existence. I add a directive to preserve the artwork, and with it our claim to have built this thing. They should be enough that this platform can continue operating for the next century or so without any human intervention, growing by harvesting whatever garbage the current brings by. I’ve still got several billion bots left, and I know I’ll be able to build new ones when we cannibalize the next set of catamarans, but the loss leaves me feeling empty despite the lingering boost from my dopamine shot. It’s worth it though. These platforms will save countless marine animals’ lives, solve the plague of microplastics destroying ocean ecosystems, and reverse the accumulation of junk that’s slowly making the oceans unusable for us humans too.
The last of the day’s sun reflects off the platform and it is beautiful. I snap images from a hundred angles with my bots, including a whole bunch with various combinations of the three of us smiling and waving and making it obvious that we built the thing. I stash the pics away for the PR team to use in our post-trip publicity blitz. Once those make it to Sheryl, she can push them out as soon as she can and make sure Dorothy can’t swipe credit. I look out over the horizon and don’t see any sign of the Esperança. At the rate they were going, they’re probably still slowly grinding away at their first build now. I really might be getting paranoid.
“Ten hours to the next site,” Evan calls out from the bridge deck. “Course is set and we’re good to go.”