Ex Lacrima Remnant

#B-Side XIV – Expansion

“…see, even if we call them nanos, nanomachines or nanoswarm, the units of this… let’s call it ‘anomaly’ are bigger than that. Micrometer, maybe even millimeter.“

“So we should almost be able to see them without any magnifying tools, doctor?”

“Correct. They are small, sure, but not as small as we originally thought. And this is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because we can detect them more effectively; a curse because this also implies a higher level of complexity. Remember, an atom’s size is of the order one tenth of a nanometer - or one ångstrom for short. Nanomachines, even those with a size of hundreds of nanometers, would only be made up by, what, one thousand, ten thousand atoms? Good luck coding a self-replicating, all-eating construct with so few components. There are proteins bigger than that, you see what I mean?”

“I’m… not sure, doctor.”

“Mr. Van Vijrtel, I’ll try to be clearer, explain it in easy terms. In nanotech studies, smaller is harder, bigger is easier. If we had, say, a one hundred micron machine, something that can be seen with the naked eye, we are talking about one hundred thousand atoms – make ten times more in some specific configurations. Now, this is something we can work with for a more complex design.”

“Which means that you – I mean, you scientists – can reverse engineer them, Dr. Van der Meer?”

“I don’t think we can. We should be able to catch one of them, but one alone is enough to start a chain reaction. Suddenly, you don’t have one – you have two of these machines. Then four. Then eight. Sixteen. Thirty-two. And so on. Their replication speed is nothing to sneeze at. They are, pardon the technical lingo, Von Neumann machines in all but name. Before you ask, it’s just a fancy way to say ‘self-propagating, self-replicating machines’. It’s hard to say how they tick, the physics behind the deconstruction process is challenging our currently held beliefs, but this is what we have to deal with.”

“And what about the data collected by Dr. Zonta?”

“The late Dr. Zonta sacrificed his life to send us a message. It was a commendable effort, one that provided several gigabytes of useful information. Some of my peers are already on it, but I don’t have more to share. Only that it’s still unlikely that we find a solution from just ten seconds of footage, no matter how high quality it is.”

“But we have a chance, right?”

“…”

“Right?”

“Mr. Van Vijrtel, I think you are underestimating the threat we are currently facing. These machines are something nobody could have been ready for. Even our most optimistic projections requires days of work, just to formulate suitable hypotheses. As you’ve seen from the Pangean reports, not even wide scale EMPs damaged them, only delayed them by around five seconds.”

“So, how can we stop them, doctor?”

“We don’t.”

“What?”

“Listen, Konstanz. I know you want some hope. I know you want me to tell you and your audience that everything is going to be fine, that we will make a miracle happen, so that you can sleep well tonight… but the answer is that ‘we don’t’. Those ‘things’ are well beyond whatever we can build and they are moving at – what? Four kilometers per hour? That means that this whole complex, the studios we are transmitting from, will be deleted in one day at best. Sooner, if the swarm starts spreading from other, closer epicenters.”

“O… other epicenters?”

“Lagash is building spires, yes? You have seen the pictures from the Pangean report, I take it?”

“Y… yes, but the Niteowls are being deployed as we speak and might…”

“Most of my esteemed colleagues believe that those structures are either antennas to transmit signals to the swarm or vectors meant to spread the plague faster. Imagine – suborbital rockets filled with those machines, hitting places farther and farther away from the seedship. Each rocket has a payload of – let’s still call them nanos for short. Then, you don’t have a single ash field expanding at four kilometers per hour. You have many of them. And each creates more spires, which spread the infection faster. End result: in less than one year, six months at best, this planet is dead. We are dead.”

“…”

“Konstanz, how long have we known each other? Fifteen years? I was there, like, during the second episode of your late show. I don’t have any reasons to lie to you.”

“But then… what can… what should we do, Marn?”

“If you believe in a god, it’s time to recommend your soul to them. If you don’t…”

“Marn! What the… where have you…”

“…well, I think going out with a bang is not a bad deal.”

“Stop the stream! Stop the stream, now! Now!”