I spend my free afternoon catching up with Alan on the administrivia back on campus and syncing up with the PR team about the Phnom Penh press event. Sheryl is a good sport about working late, since it's getting near midnight over there by now. There are a couple of tweaks I want to make based on how things went in Ho Chi Minh City, but we got enough done for today. The event will be a lot like the last one: we'll do a show and tell about the filter technology and make sure everyone has a warm fuzzy about our work in Cambodia. We still won't be there for several more days, but it's good to be ready.
I lean back in my chair and glance through the cabin window at the Geologist girls’ boat. Working with them this morning was good. They're all doing well and getting familiar with running their clouds. All of them use the same control system as Steph, which makes me think both that Andrea helped them develop it and that there's a boys-versus-girls thing going on with their cohort. Hopefully, this trip will bring them all together, but I should make sure that we integrate them together on more of the work. Not that it matters for the next few days, since the younger guys are all going with Chad’s group when the river splits.
I feel Chad getting ready for that now, pulling one of the crates of filter control boards over to the deck of his cat. Thao and Mek bring up in one of the speedboats and moor it to the back of Chad’s cat. I guess it worked out well that Chad kept a room empty. Those two will have a proper room instead of sleeping on the deck like we’d originally planned. It looks like they’re nearly ready to split off, so I get up and jet over to Chad’s deck.
“You guys all set?” I ask Chad as I land.
“Just about,” he says, settling a crate against the railing of his deck and binding it there with a glance. He looks over at Phil, Stan, and Erik doing something similar on their deck.
“We’ll see you in Cambodia, then,” I tell him. “Take care of the guys.”
To Chad: And have that talk with Keeya and Lucie, please.
“Yeah, I will,” he answers, and the look he gives me tells me it’s a response to both requests. I want to yell at him for not doing it already, but I know that won’t help.
I take a bot-assisted leap back to my deck. The two cats split off from our small fleet and veer left up the tributary that will take them to the Hau River. Everyone in both groups waves goodbye.
From Louise: Are you sure letting him go off with Keeya and Lucie is a good idea? I think we were making really good progress with them.
To Louise: It was planned like this months ago, and he’s insisting that we stick to it. Says it’s the only way he’ll find a good chance to talk with Keeya and Lucie.
From Louise: I don’t like this at all.
To Louise: Me neither, but it’s not like we can really stop him.
She looks my way and nods. Neither of us is very happy about it. We didn’t expect any of this drama when we set up the plans, and it’s not like we could get him to leave his girlfriends behind.
From Louise: Well, they’re both on their periods right now so it’s not like we’re in imminent danger.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
To Louise: I’m not going to ask how you know that, but I’ll take it.
From Louise: Girls talk.
We’ve got the drop site for our first filter coming up in a bit. Might as well get it built.
“Hey, everyone,” I call out, amplifying my voice with the bots enough that everyone should be able to hear. “These filters are a lot more picky about their materials and an awful lot bigger than the collectors. I’ll do the build, but I’d like everyone else to pull resources, please.”
I turn on my overlay and see swarms of my siblings’ bots spreading out, sinking into the soil of the banks on both sides and venturing into the thick vegetation beyond. Before long, thin streams of minerals come coursing back, piling onto the deck. I kick off the build and layer after microscopic layer of machinery start laying themselves out. Tubes and connectors and tanks slowly materialize. The design for these things is a total masterpiece, and I’m not just saying that because of the role I had in creating them.
A big chunk of the dev team spent most of the year working out the kinks on them, and they filled big parts of my days for months. I’m still amazed we worked out the long-term maintenance issues without needing bots to scrub the filtering pieces, which wouldn’t have worked with them submerged in polluted water full of electrolytes. But we got it eventually. We had to pull in experts from a whole lot of fields, several of whom started with the idea that what we were trying to pull off was impossible. Turns out it wasn’t impossible, just totally cost prohibitive using conventional manufacturing techniques. With our nanotech construction technology, that wasn’t an issue.
Carefully convoluted tangles of tanks and tubes continue to form. The whole thing will weigh close to ten tons when it’s done, and much more than that when its tanks fill up. The stream of materials from my sibs is coming almost as fast as I can assemble it into the machine. When it’s done, it will contain not just the filtering technology, but also the mechanical and chemical apparatuses to separate every significant pollutant that we expect to see in this water and pack them up in safe, sealed casks. The rest of what flows through the system, the non-toxic sediment and the water, will get released back into the river.
I feel the subtle shifting of the cat under my feet as the weight from the construction near the back of the boat tilts the deck in that direction. I hear the pump kick on at the front end of the cat, filling a counterweight over there with water to keep us from capsizing.
The water that the filter produces when activated even in the most disgusting and polluted conditions is safe enough to drink. We tested it in the most vile and toxic filth we could imagine and it worked for a month without any issues, producing a steady flow of clean water and an awful lot of casks. Marcus even drank some of the filtered output, he was that confident. I didn’t do that quality control personally. Sometimes you have to trust your team. And the filter does it all without any significant damage to any of the plants or wildlife. I look over at my younger siblings. I wish they could appreciate what we’ve created here, but they’re just looking bored as they wait for the construction to get done.
The catamaran is nearly a meter lower in the water by the time it’s finished. The dev team did a good job making sure we could handle these massive builds.
“All hands on deck for getting this thing moved,” I call out. “Use the rollers underneath, please. Push, don’t lift. Just like we practiced.”
The giant machine begins to slide towards the ramp. Gently, carefully we move it along and watch it slide into the water. The boat rocks as the controller drains the counterweight. The base of the filter will burrow into the river floor, anchoring itself firmly. A pair of flexible intake tendrils start floating up to the surface, each one with hundreds of pores that can pull water in but can’t suck up anything too big to handle. Underwater, I know dozens more span the depth of the river, letting the filter work on pollutants of all densities from the floaters to the sinkers.
I’m sure it’s probably just because they’re glad the first build is done, but someone starts a round of applause and I join in. I clap not for us and this build today, but for the work of the small army of designers, engineers, and coders over the last year that made this thing possible. I make a note to congratulate them next chance I get.
Good work, team.