*
The meetings meant going all the way out to the reactor lab. It floated above the Old Rig. That was part of what made it such an ideal location, Joel explained as they made their way across the waves. There were already multiple concrete slugs that could contain a leak. If the reactor overloaded, the town would still need to evacuate, but there would be time. This way, they could sink the tritium into the reactor and draw seawater in directly from below, all in a contained space purpose-built by machines. It was because of the Old Rig that they had purchased New Arcadia. If it had not blown, they would never have come.
“I’m sorry,” Joel said, when Hwa said nothing. “I forgot.”
“It was three years ago,” Hwa said. “It’s okay.”
“I saw some of his matches, when I looked you up. He was really great.”
Hwa smiled. “Thanks.”
The first interview was with Smith, the man with the redacted profile who’d worked on all the projects. He was big, and bald, and he seemed genuinely interested in helping Joel with his project. He offered them coffee, then took them on a tour of the lab. It was what one might expect: basically a lot of displays for watching the Old Rig and the progress of the machines, and a lab for repairing the larger robots tasked with doing excavation and major building.
“But the really interesting part is the control room,” Smith said. “It’s going to completely change how we do energy security. Every time I walk in there, it just blows my mind.”
Joel gave his best I’m thrilled to discuss my company’s many assets face. “Can we see?”
Smith led them past several cubicles to a special room unlocked by a hand wave. The door was marked EMERGENCY CONTROL PROTOTYPE, and past it was nothing but white.
“I’ve been here, before,” Hwa said. “This is like the NAPS holding cells.”
Smith and Joel both laughed. The laughter trailed off when Hwa gave them a look that said she wasn’t joking. Smith cleared his throat and summoned three chairs out of the matter in the floor.
“It’s completely customizable, as long as you have the right implants, and the implants have high-enough authorization,” he said. “Even down to the interfaces. I imagine an interface, and boom—there it is.” He closed his eyes, and a slender wooden table spiralled up out of the floor. It trembled, and out of its surface bloomed an old-fashioned rotary telephone. “It requires an implant, of course, but … it’s all ready to go.”
“And there’s one of these down in the reactor?” Joel asked.
“There will be. Once the Krebs dig out enough space, we’ll pressurize this room and move it down there. The straw’s big enough to handle the transport—this room isn’t actually that big. It just looks that way.”
“So…” Hwa frowned. “So how is this a security measure?”
“It’s highly personalized,” Smith said. “There’s no system to learn but your system. So if, say, I’m down there watching the reactor, and some guys burst in and put a gun to my head, they won’t know how to work the system. The room locks in on the design from the highest clearance in the room, and it bakes in for the length of that day’s shift.”
“Doesn’t that mean that if somebody passes out at the switch, their system is still live?”
“Nope. The room also watches for change in the beta/theta ratio. It sees you when you’re sleeping. It knows when you’re awake.”
“Could you fake up one of the implants?” Hwa asked, thinking of Sandro. “You know, implant a knock-off, or something?”
Smith shook his head. “The system relies on self-replicating implants. They’re not even implants, really. Implantation is really invasive. These are more like the Krebs devices: living machines that go where they’re needed and talk to the ambient technology. But they can only live in a really specific growth medium. If you wanted to steal mine, you’d have to steal my blood.”
He smiled. “Speaking of which, you wanted to talk about the Krebs machines?”
“Yes,” Joel said. “I know that the Krebs are used for primarily industrial work, but have you ever considered biological or medical applications?”
Smith grinned. “Sure! But that’s not my division. I’m an engineer. I’m a doctor, but not that kind of doctor.”
Hwa leaned forward in her seat. The seat shifted subtly underneath her to bring her that much closer to Smith. “But it is possible?”
“In theory, yes. They can work at the nano-scale doing just about anything. Ours are down there sealing pipes and helping the bots, but we’ve had them do things that are like working in biological systems.”
“Such as?”