Evan and I follow the Geologists along the narrow trail from the dirt road toward the opening halfway up the test mountain. The path is steep and the loose, dusty soil makes our footing require attention with every trudging step. The younger crew doesn’t seem to have any trouble with it, probably because they’ve been hiking out in these mountains west of the campus every day for the last couple of months as they’ve worked on perfecting their techniques. It doesn’t take them long to put a long gap between them and us on the trail, even with the heavy protective clothing and large packs they’re all carrying. I could probably keep up with them with some effort, but after Evan spent all morning helping me out, it feels especially wrong to leave him straggling by himself. The summer sun beats down, drying the sweat off my forehead as soon as it can leave my pores.

Behind me, Evan breathes heavily. “We’ve got to be there by now, right? Tell me we’re almost there.”

“Three more switchbacks,” I tell him. “About another mile.”

He groans. “Just let me fly the rest of the way.”

“Can’t do it. If they can’t fly, we can’t fly either. It’s only fair.”

“We should have upgraded them months ago.”

“I agree. Marc too. But we’ve been just a little preoccupied lately. Maybe now that we’re mostly grounded by the Feds we can make it a priority for a while.”

“Hopefully Louise finishes with her secret project soon so I can get her to help me with it. No way I’m getting it done on my own.”

“That too.”

We turn the corner of the next switchback. Evan grumbles some mostly incomprehensible curses about dry dust.

“Come on, brother. This is what you get for skipping morning exercises so often.”

“If man was meant to climb mountains with his feet, the great Tom Butler wouldn’t have given him nanobots.”

“Waxing philosophical today, are we? Or are we just back in the cult of the pater familias?”

“Mostly we’re just ready to be done hiking for today.”

We walk the last couple of switchbacks and approach the five meter tall hole in the side of the mountain where Stan, Phil, Lisa, Jen, Becky, Erik, and Steph are congregated.

“Are the tunnels inside all ready?” Stan asks.

“Done.” Phil answers him. “Becky and I finished them this morning. Laid out just like the mine we’re doing in the Maricopa Mountain range.”

“What do you need tunnels for?” Evan asks, collapsing his massive frame onto a large rock near the trail. “I thought the idea was to empty the whole thing out?”

“It is, but we need to practice not making the top of the mountain collapse, and the tunnels are a complication that will be there in all the project sites that we didn’t have in our previous tests.”

I look around at the terrain nearby. One of the nearby mountains looks particularly flat on top and devoid of vegetation. I’m guessing not all of the test runs managed to avoid the collapse problem.

“Don’t worry about that,” Steph tells me, following my gaze. “We haven’t caved in a mountain for like a month.”

“How many of these have you done?”

“This will be our seventh.”

“Find anything good in any of them?” Evan asks.

“These mountains are mostly junk,” Steph says. “That’s why no one cared when Father got the mineral rights for them forever ago. Way off in the middle of nowhere and almost pure granite. I mean, there are traces of lots of things, but not enough to be worth much, and without our tech it would cost ten times what they’re worth to get them.”

“But with our tech?”

“Maybe a couple of million bucks market value for precious metals, probably ten times that for the copper and lithium. We’ll eventually do granite slabs for like construction and kitchens and whatever when we do some of the real mines, but we’re not bothering with those now. Not profitable enough from here that they’re worth doing. The silica sand will net us like twenty bucks a ton after transportation costs, but we’re producing more of that than any of the local buyers need, so that’s bottlenecked for now. Most folks can’t make chip grade sand from granite, at least not in a way that would be commercially viable, but the bots can.”

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He raises an eyebrow and looks at me. “All of that helps with the money situation, right?”

“Already accounted for and we’re still going broke fast.”

“But not for long,” Stan says, coming up behind Steph. “As soon as we scale this stuff up, we’re never going to have to worry about money again.”

“That’s the plan, anyway. Are you guys ready to go? I’m excited to see your techniques in action.”

“We’re all set. You might want to put these on.” He hands me a pair of goggles and what looks like a gas mask with a small oxygen tank attached to it. “The dust gets a little heavy. And step over this way or you’ll get your skin sandblasted off.”

I take the offered gear and put it on as I move off to the side of the hole in the rock. Evan does the same. Our clouds could just form breathing systems and eye protection for us, but I haven’t taken any time to compress any air and just like with the flight suits we didn’t use earlier, we don’t want to rub their noses in the fact that they still haven’t gotten the upgrade to the full capabilities of the Butler clouds.

“Geologists, ready!” Stan calls out. “You know the drill!”

The seven of them step toward the opening with practiced unison, their heads all hidden with their helmets and their thick brown coveralls protecting the rest of their bodies.

“Becky, sector one! Jen, you’re on two. Phil, three. Steph, four. Erik, five. Lisa, sector six! I’m on seven!”

The whole group of them disappears as a rush of sand suddenly erupts from the hole in the mountain, flowing down and covering the trail we came up on. The air around us darkens with dust and I’m glad for the headgear Stan provided.

“Slow it down, Lisa.” Stan shouts it to be heard over the crash of rocks and sand. “Your section has more tunnels and you’re getting ahead. Phil, you need to step it up.”

“Hold on. Something’s wrong here.”

“Everyone else slow down by twenty percent. Phil, what’s going on?”

“I think I hit a big quartz deposit. Looks like it goes all the way down. It’s harder than the rest of the rock, taking me longer to dig through.”

“No way. These things are nothing but granite.”

“I’m telling you, it’s quartz. Feel it.”

To Evan: Can they tell what they’re digging up just by the feel of the bots on it?

From Evan: I guess so. That’s impressive, especially without the extra feedback from the upgrade.

“You’re right,” Stan yells. “That is quartz.”

“That’s not just quartz,” Steph’s voice rings out. “That’s auriferous quartz!”

“No way!”

“Impossible!”

“Not here!”

“Phil, stop digging down, just focus on building up your section of the dome. We’ve got enough redundancy that the rest of the support columns will pick up the slack. Jen, Steph, expand your sectors by five degrees each in Phil’s direction.”

From Evan: They’re building a dome?

To Evan: Yeah, that’s how they keep the top of the mountain from collapsing. They dig out a series of curved tubes that meet in the center, then fill them up by building support pillars strong enough to hold the weight of everything above. Then as they dig the rest, they use those pillars to put a reinforced dome up on the inside so they can hollow the whole thing out without disturbing anything on the surface. It lets them basically create an open pit mine without ruining the environment all around.

He nods and we watch our younger siblings work. Mostly we watch the river of gray and white sand gush around them and flow down behind us.

From Evan: So what’s so cool about auriferous quartz? They seemed excited about that.

To Evan: No idea. We’ll have to ask when they take a break.

“Nearing the top now. Keep the supports even!”

“Sector one, done!”

“Two, done!”

“Four, done”

“Six.”

“Five”

“Seven!” Stan says. “Phil?”

“Almost there, hold on.”

If they’re following the plans that I indexed Stan explaining to me, they’re probably joining the seven curved support beams built out of reinforced versions of the materials they’ve been pulling out of the mountain. Once they meet up at the top of what will become the dome, the stress of the weight of everything above stops threatening to cave the whole mountain into itself. That’s the trickiest part of the whole operation. Once the pillars are in place, the rest of the job of reinforcing the dome and extending it down as far as they want to dig is easy. Well, not easy. It’s lots of work still, but it’s not likely to bring the mountain down. After that, they can just strip the whole inside for materials one layer at a time.

“Done!” Phil finally yells.

“Testing now,” Stan says. “Everyone stop everything.”

The deluge of sand flowing from the mountain slows and then stops, and I can finally see the seven of them again. For the next four minutes and thirty nine seconds, no one says a word.

“And we’re stable! We did it!”

The whole Geologist class explodes with joy. They’re hugging each other, knocking helmets into each other playfully, and giving high fives and pats on the backs. Sometimes I wish my class had anything like that degree of camaraderie.

The air very slowly starts to clear up, and I help it along with my bots. A few minutes later I strip off my mask and approach the Geologists.

“So, what was that find that you were all excited about?” Evan asks. “The auri-whatsit quartz?”

Stan lifts his helmet. His usually serious face has a big grin plastered across it. “Well, you guys know how I said we weren’t going to have to worry about money soon?”

“Yeah,” I answer.

“Well, soon is now.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Gold, big brothers,” Steph jumps in. “That vein of quartz Phil found is rich with it, and like he said, it looks like it goes way, way down. We’ll need to do more work to find out exactly how much it’s worth, but my rough estimate right now is approximately a shit-ton.”