Creations (16 page)

“What do you want me to say?” Doug said.

“Can you show us the MAV?”

“Only a very early version, anything else would be classified.”

“That’s good enough for us.”

Doug left the room and came back a couple of minutes later with a plastic box held protectively in both hands. He put it carefully down on the table and lifted off the lid. Then he stepped back and took a small black keypad from his pocket. It had about a dozen controls on it, with a screen set into one end. Once he was ready to start, he switched the unit on, and looked over toward the box. Everyone followed his gaze as he began to work the controls.

Max knew what was coming, so he looked at the others and watched the expectant looks turning to surprise as the box’s occupant revealed itself. Slowly and silently, a large butterfly had risen out of the box, and was now hovering over the table, bobbing up and down with each beat of its wings. But there was no way that nature had designed this insect. No real butterfly would be silver in colour, nor would it obey every command of a radio control unit in the hand of a human master, as it so clearly was doing with Doug. Even less likely would be the video quality images appearing on the screen of the controller as it relayed its view of the world back along its command channel. Safi was the first to realise what she was looking at.

“It’s a micro-UAV, an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle,” she said.

“Well done,” Doug said. “This one’s just a prototype, but it
shows the kind of thing we can do. Here, do you want to try it?”

She took the controller carefully, and soon got the hang of flying it round the room. Then she got it hovering in front of her face, and looked down at the distorted image of herself on the screen. Once she’d finished she passed the controller along so Ross could take over.

“What would you use it for?” Ross said, as he flew a slow circuit of the room.

“It’s mainly a surveillance device,” Doug said. “Though the model that actually gets used is much smaller than this. Like I said, this was an early version. They tend to get used for hostage situations, things like that, but we’ve had a fair few customers lately.”

“And why is it disguised as a butterfly?”

“That’s not a disguise, it has to be that shape. The way air moves round objects at this scale is very different to what you’d get round a full size aircraft. You can’t just shrink a plane down to build a machine like this, you have to copy nature. Insect flight was the only model we had.”

“Very impressive,” Victor said as he took his turn at the controls. As the others had done, he found it easier to control if he used the view from the camera, rather than following it round the room with his eyes. “But how does it help us?”

“It’s the way it’s made that’s important,” Max said.

Victor made a bumpy landing on the tabletop and gave the controller back to Doug. Then Doug picked up the craft itself and let them look at it closely.

“Within the body of this thing there’s over fifteen-hundred electronic components, plus twelve electric actuators for the wings. Add the camera and transmitter gear, and I think you’ll realise the kind of complexity that you’re faced with. Building something like this is a real challenge.

“We initially tried using conventional motors and components, highly miniaturised, and assembled the way any other
machine would be. We even had miniature power cables, thinner than a human hair. But we soon realised the limitations of that approach, so we had to find something else.”

He looked over at Max to see if his explanation was going along the right lines. Max nodded back encouragingly.

“So we developed a new way of making things,” he continued. “Now what’s the best way to explain this? Are you familiar with 3D printing?”

“Yes, for fast prototyping, model making,” Victor said. “We’ve been using it for decades.”

“Not like this you haven’t. Fast prototyping is a good analogy, but it’s crude by comparison. We build an object up in layers, that much is the same, and we do each layer using a printing process, but it’s the way we formulate the layers which is special. We don’t just use structural materials like plastics and resins, we lay down completely different materials, some of them conductive, some of them magnetic, whatever properties you want to give them. Put the right materials in the right places and you can form relays, capacitors, motors, almost everything you’d need to build the kind of machine you’re looking at here.”

Looking at the body of the thing, they could almost see the stepped shape of the layers it was built from. The wings were single layers of resin, inlaid with a fine tracery of aluminium conductors that let them act as aerials. The pattern was so fine that the surface of the wings diffracted any light that fell on them, giving an appearance that varied between rainbow colours at one angle and shiny silver at another.

“So if 3D printing has been around so long, why isn’t everyone using it?” Safi said.

“No one’s cracked the problem of getting the right variety of materials into a single print run,” Doug said. “And even then it’s slow — anything you can make this way can usually be made better another way. But if you need to miniaturise, or if you need the most versatile construction method imaginable, this is it.”

“What does this printer look like, the one that made this?” Victor said.

“Come with me and I’ll show you.”

Doug led them down to the basement of the building, to where one of the machines was kept.

“This one works at a much larger scale than the one we used for the MAV,” he said as they walked. “It’ll make it easier to see. The technique is so flexible we use it whenever we can, even if the size of the product doesn’t make it a necessity.”

The machine looked like a large rectangular tub with a robotic arm poised over it. A cluster of thin, flexible pipes led up the arm, and ended with a nozzle arrangement at the tip. Doug went over to a control panel, and brought up a list of design files on the screen.

“What do you want me to make?” he said. “We can do most types of autonomous robotic devices, walleye projectors, domestic air and water pumps, even a frequency-agile gridcom if you want one.”

Victor looked down the list. “A solar generator,” he said, as if picking one of the items at random.

“You want one of those? No problem.”

Doug selected the required data file, and set the printer running. They all looked over the edge of the tub to see the first layer being laid down. The arm was scanning back and forth, and as it deposited the resins they could see slight variations in the colour and texture as different physical and electrical properties were given to each part of the unit.

While it was running Safi backed away and had another look at the list of items the printer could make. The variety was impressive. Victor saw her, and moved over to join her.

“Is this one of von Neumann’s universal constructors?” he asked her, just within Max’s earshot.

“Not quite,” she said. “But it may be close enough.”

“This’ll take about ten minutes,” Doug said to them all. “I
suggest we go and sit back down, then come back when it’s done.”

They moved back up to the meeting room, and retook their seats.

“Right, does anyone have any questions?” Doug said.

Safi spoke first.

“Is there any limit on the size of machine you can produce like this?”

“No, not at all. Big things take longer than small things of course, but that’s the only rule. And sometimes you have to make things in more than one section, then fit them together. But otherwise there’s no limit.”

“And I guess there’s no limit on the complexity either,” Victor said.

“The only limit is the accuracy and resolution of the printer head itself, the dots-per-inch, if you want to think of it in normal printing terms. One thing you should bear in mind is that the complexity doesn’t affect the time taken. We can make a simple computer the size of a cinder block in two hours using this method, but a solid block of plastic the same size would take just as long.”

“And how would that computer compare to one made the usual way?”

“Not very well, in fact a lot worse, but remember we can make almost anything we want this way. That versatility is our main advantage. In fact nowadays, whenever we need a new 3D printer we use one of the old ones to make it for us. It’s like — what’s the matter? What did I say?”

The other three had exchanged swift glances at that point, as the significance of Doug’s last comment hit them. Max took it as his cue to let Doug listen to them for a change.

“I think at this point it’s our turn to open up and let Doug in on a few secrets,” he said. “We’ve asked enough questions of our own so far. Is everyone happy to do that?”

In the end it was Safi who gave Doug the story, starting with the initial Prospector concept, right up to the replication problems that had marred their recent work. In all it took her around ten minutes. When she’d finished, Doug just leant back in his chair and looked at the ceiling, as if trying to comprehend what he’d heard.

“Let me make sure I’ve got this right,” he said eventually. “You want to take the kind of manufacturing diversity that most small countries would be proud of, and condense it down onto a vehicle the size of a small pleasure boat. Is that right?”

The analogy was hard to fault.

“My God,” Doug said. “No wonder you people need help.”

“But the question is,” Victor said, “are you able to give that help?”

“Your chemical plant will be the biggest problem. You won’t be able to make molecular filters or anything fancy like that using this method. You’ll be looking at electrolysis and chromatography for most materials. And the ones we use are pretty exotic, you’ll need to find your own equivalents, things you can easily pull out of the sea. But assuming you can get a good enough set of raw materials, then, yes, I think this method could help you.”

“And what do you think?” Victor asked Safi and Ross.

“It looks promising,” Safi said. “One manufacturing method that makes virtually everything we’ll need on board — I’m for trying it.”

“But you’re right about the chemical plant,” Ross said. “It would need to be looked at.”

“So is that a yes or a no?” Victor said.

Ross nodded. “Let’s try it.”

* * *

Later that evening they sat round a low table in the lounge area
of Victor’s hotel suite. Victor was sitting in an antique leather armchair, turning his new toy over and over in his hands. The panel was fifteen centimetres square and about two centimetres thick, with no visible openings or fastenings. The upper surface was translucent and featureless, but the layer below contained a network of tiny tracks and channels forming an intricate pattern repeated again and again over the face of the unit. The next layer was laced with carbon powder, the matt black material positioned to capture the heat of the sun and transfer it to the water in the channels. A series of minuscule turbines took up the next few layers, and finally came the generators themselves, set into the back plate. Three systems, fluidic, mechanical and electrical, all buried in one solid-state block, all built in a single operation.

“It’s not just the range of products you can make that’s important,” Max was telling him. “It’s the efficiency of design that it lets you use. All the electronics that control that generator are built into the structure of the thing, set into the material itself. You can see some of the conductor tracks running down the side there. If we do the same thing for the Prospector control systems it means we can distribute them through the material of the hull. Then it doesn’t matter that the electronics are all low grade because we can make it as complex as we want and never have to search around looking for space. It’s a good solution.”

Victor nodded. “You can put in all the safeguards you want, and all without using a chip builder. Would that make you happier?”

“Of course it would.”

“So how did you know about this process?”

“Doug came to us about five years ago. They’d already developed the production technique by then, but they needed a way of designing their products to make the best use of it. The MAV was the one I ended up working on. It took over forty thousand generations, but eventually we found the best way to
integrate all of its systems into one block of material. It’s breathtakingly complex when you see how it’s laid out in there, don’t be fooled by the size. But really it was the same problem that’s facing us: a single manufacturing process that can pack the widest possible range of intricate robotic systems into the smallest possible space.”

“I wasn’t fooled by the size at all,” Victor said. “Though I’d worry about getting ahead of ourselves with this. We still don’t know if we can make it work with marine materials.”

“Well, that’s in Ross’s hands now.”

“It’s going to take some work,” Ross said. “I think almost every material they’re using back there will have to be changed. But the extraction techniques themselves will be pretty much the same as what we’ve used up until now, so I’m hopeful. Give me a week or so and I’ll tell you for sure.”

“Aren’t we going to have to pay Doug to let us use this technique?” Safi said.

“There will be contractual issues,” Victor said. “But I’ll get our people talking to his people. We should be able to sort something out.”

“And Doug owes me a few favours,” Max said. “We’re going to need his help and advice pretty much all the way through if this is the method we use, but I think he’ll be willing to help us. I suggest we stay up here until the design is pretty much finalised. We can set up secure lines to the island and work with our teams that way, and still test out our ideas using Doug’s facilities. Does everyone agree with that?”

“That sounds sensible,” Victor said. “And I’m glad to see you’re getting into the spirit of this at last, Max,” he added with a grin.

“I never said I thought this was a good idea,” Max said. “That’s not why I’m helping you. Bringing Doug’s techniques into this is damage limitation as far as I’m concerned. Don’t forget that.”

The next day they moved out of their rooms and into one of the hotel’s business suites: four bedrooms, two offices and a meeting room, with independent communication links and full encryption capabilities. Ross would be going back to the island to test any changes to the extraction methods, but the others would stay, testing component designs in Doug’s printers even as they were formulated. Gillian would be staying too, taking advantage of another, as yet untapped, source of subjects for her artwork.