Noah was standing stock still, his head cocked to one side as he kept his eyes on the car. “It did,” he said. “One second it was silver and the next it was green.”
Wally laughed and did a little dance. “Isn’t that awesome? It’s called electroluminescence; it uses varying amperage of electrical current to cause prismatic crystals within the paint to slightly alter their shape and size, which results in reflecting a different color for the eye to see. Try another button, I never get tired of watching this stuff work.”
Sarah pushed another button and the car suddenly became bright yellow. Another button turned it to a deep blue, and yet another made it red. “Okay, this is just absolutely incredible. How do I get a paint job like this on my car?”
“Oh, you can get it, but it won’t be quite as good as this. We just happened to have the resources to take the technology to a whole new level. The stuff that’s available commercially isn’t quite as good as this, but it does work.”
Two men came out a moment later and applied a genuine-looking florist’s logo to the van. Noah and Sarah drove both of the vehicles around to the front of the building, where a man met them with a handcart carrying the printer and several other boxes. He loaded everything into the back of the van, and Noah followed Sarah back to his house. The Corvette would be safe in Wally's care until they returned.
The next stop was the Armory. Sarah followed Noah inside and waited while he selected a couple of assault rifles and a pair of Interdynamic MP9 machine pistols, then loaded several cases of ammunition with them into the van.
Moose's car was parked by Neil's trailer, which sat on Noah's land. Moose and Neil were sitting at a table on his deck, with an umbrella over them to block the sun's bright rays. They waved as Sarah and Noah pulled in, then got up and began walking over toward the bigger house.
“Hey, Boss,” Moose called out as he pointed at the van. “We going into the flower business?”
“Yep,” Noah said. “Neil, you know how to use CAD software?”
Neil sneered at him. “I knew how to use that when I was in kindergarten,” he said. “Why?”
“Wait just a minute,” Sarah said, “you guys have got to see this!” She spent the next five minutes showing off the Chrysler’s special abilities, and both Moose and Neil were fascinated.
Finally, Noah called a halt to the show. He opened the back of the van and told Moose to grab the big suitcase, bring it inside and set it on the table, and a few moments later Neil's eyes grew wide as the 3-D printer rose from within the concealing suitcase. He did a double take when the computer slid out of the base.
“Holy crap,” he said. “Is that what it looks like?”
“Yes and no,” Noah said. “It's a 3-D printer, and very fast, but you don't want to be making toys with it.” He pointed at the big tank. “It turns that liquid into solid objects which just happen to be extremely explosive. The stuff is very stable, and can't go off without a special detonator. See that little arm off to the side? That thing puts the detonator inside whatever you're making, and there's a way to program it so that we can make it go off when we want it to.”
Noah and Sarah spent the next half hour explaining it all to Neil, while he played with the CAD and 3-Sweep programs on the computer and made himself familiar with them. To the surprise of no one, both he and Moose wanted to see the explosive in action, so Noah gave the okay. There were thousands of 3-D images already available in the software, so Neil chose a mouse figurine that was about three inches tall. It would print out the figurine, leaving it hollow.
Noah picked up one of the detonators and plugged it into the remote, then programmed it to channel 1. He set the detonator in the arm's grip, and then nodded at Neil.
The printer began working and the mouse was finished in about three minutes. Noah reached in and picked it up, flipping it casually in the air as he walked out his front door. Sarah followed right behind him, but Moose and Neil were watching closely as he tossed it from hand to hand.
“Hey, Boss, don't you want to be a little more careful with that?” Moose asked.
“Relax, Moose,” Sarah said. “Like he told you, it's very stable. It won't go off until he tells it to.”
Noah led the way out into the yard and walked directly to a dead tree. The tree was hollow, and he put the little mouse inside a hole near its roots. “I've been meaning to take this tree out, anyway,” he said. “Let's see how well this stuff really works.”
They backed off about a hundred feet and then Noah turned on the remote. He pressed 1, then immediately put his thumb on the red button and pushed.