Can You Love a Nanobot? Vol. 1, Chapter 1 — Some Like It Hot
nanobot n. An extremely small autonomous robot, typically the size of a biological cell, designed to work alone or in large numbers to complete tasks.
The rocket launch appeared flawless. The first stage detached from the second stage as designed. The second stage continued to burn, reaching higher and higher, then suddenly blew up! The nature of the explosion sent part of the payload, 15 out of 30 cubesats, into a much higher orbit than planned.
While the first stage settled safely on the deck of drone ship, the second stage became a threat to the lives of humans on two space stations. The Chinese space station was due to pass near the debris field in less than an hour. The International Space Station would arrive later but was no less safe.
Ground stations immediately ordered crews to suit up and position themselves in modules prepared to serve as lifeboats. Aboard ISS, both the Dragon and Soyuz modules were crewed.
Without much gravity to slow them, tiny bits of what might have been termed flotsam and jetsam sped like fireworks in all directions. One piece could compromise the exterior of either station with catastrophic results.
The online viewing audience also soared, from a few thousand to 100,000s streaming the live broadcast. A GPS satellite was destroyed. Three Starlink internet birds were knocked out of the sky.
Nobody could predict what would happen next and nothing could stop it from happening. There was no safety net, no backup plan!
Aboard the International Space Station (ISS)
They must be extremely busy doing something Astronaut Sally Miers imagined after pointing an infrared thermometer at those annoying 3D printer cubes. Each cube’s iPhone display flickered with ROBLOX-like images of them printing & assembling microchips with zero-G forces to slow them down — all happening on an unimaginable nanoscale. The same routines going on for months since they arrived. Miers realizing she had uncovered a problem.
So, 2 out of 3 cubes running 2°C warmer than last month. Third consecutive monthly rate increase. Miers dictated to a chart on her tablet, documenting the seriousness of this trend. Soon be able to cook on these cubes. She shared her temperature readings with Japanese astronaut Akira Watanabe.
Watanabe, weary near the end of his year in space, grew alarmed. He was almost back with his family. Watanabe suggested they take no chances and unplug all three. Sally convinced him to wait until she heard back from JPL.
Something else was listening. Loss of power was a real game-changer.
Cube1: DC POWER INTERRUPTION EXPECTED OVER
Cube2: INCREASE HYBRID AND RF CELL OUTPUT OVER
Cube3: MIERS WATANABE OBJECT TO THERMAL OUTPUT OVER OUT
Failsafe
Pasadena suggested pressing and holding the power and volume up buttons. “Do the Slide to power off thing when it appears.” they were instructed. Obvious idea except the titanium outer case on each cube covered all but the touchscreen. The standard iPhone buttons were inaccessible, and the astronauts couldn’t find a way to release the phones.
Unlock codes printed on labels attached to each cube were wrong. Thankfully the devices didn’t appear to have a limit on unlock attempts. Miers tried all kinds of combinations. Too bad, might’ve started a factory reset, she thought gazing out at the blue planet beneath her.
“Can’t even unlock the screens to power down.” Miers declared, receiving a slight shock when she tried to pry the phone off Cube3.
“Go ahead and unplug them. Wait until the batteries are drained.” Ground controllers advised, unaware the cubes were coated with a super-efficient photovoltaic organic substrate, capable of generating energy from ISS interior lights or sunlight streaming through portals.
Engineers in Pasadena and Houston discussed the cube temperature readings at length. Huntsville joined the Anomaly Response Team 3 or ART3 virtual conference. 27 bureaucrats, engineers, and scientists seeking a solution. A network technician offered a suggestion, Ask the people who customized these phones to provide the Unlock codes or remote access.
NASA engineers agreed but considered the importance of these experiments. On the conference room boards they wrote: space manufacturing. A failsafe. A kill switch. A backdoor.
Eventually they identified someone at the school familiar with the Cube Project, Dr. Vritti Sahasranama, physics professor and member of the team that built the cubes.
Dr. Javier Soto, a NASA Director, called her during his ART3 meeting, reaching only her recorded voice. “Thank you for your call. Include a phone number with your message. Namaste.” Unlike her predecessor, Hugo Gernsback, Vritti seldom let students interrupt her evenings or weekends. Dr. Soto left a message so long he got cut off.
Seeing NASA on a missed call, Vritti listened and texted the engineers while brewing tea:
Powering down the cubes shuts down the 3D printers. This would end the Cube experiments. Printing must be continuous. Nanobots only use tiny amounts of energy to print & assemble microchips.
Hybrid Power Cells
Cube power loss before the experiment ended was an event her team dreaded. Vritti realized. She returned Dr. Soto’s call around 3am. “Unplugging will not cause them to lose power. Each cube is coated with solar substrate and contains 2 hybrid fuel cells.” She suggested they use the SLEEP button, advising the astronauts to press it for 15 seconds.
“Dr. Sahas — .” Dr. Soto trying to pronounce her name. Some students found her spoken English equally challenging. Grammatically correct but rapid and lilting, each sentence rising and falling in a unique South Indian cadence. “Slow this discussion down a bit. What powers those fuel cells?”
“Please call me Vritti or Professor S. My students usually do. The fuel cells were included to assure continuous power. One uses radio frequency (RF) harvesting. It extracts energy from radio waves including Wi-Fi, radio, and smartphone signals. The other fuel cell acts as a dehumidifier, extracting water from the atmosphere. Hydrogen is a byproduct. We needed a solution for keeping the interior dry. Moisture negatively impacts 3D printing.” She spoke slower, deliberately pronouncing each word. Soto’s experts, also from many nations, preferred her speaking more naturally.
“Oh great, now we have a heat source next to a hydrogen fuel cell.” Soto growing exasperated.
“Hardly, Dr. Soto. Both fuel cells are smaller than a button. Maybe a centimeter in diameter. The amount of hydrogen we’re talking about is minuscule. Unless they spill a drink, it’s usually pretty dry in ISS. The fuel cell only operates when there is humidity.”
“OK, we’ll circle back to that threat, there’s no water outside the station. Can we turn them off and put them outside?” Several scientists wrote their questions on the board in front of Soto under the new Anomaly Response Team banner.
“The iPhone side power switches were blocked by design. To prevent accidental and potentially disastrous power down.” She explained. You could tell she lectured all day. “We substituted a recessed touch control for the SLEEP function. If necessary, the astronauts can use it to shut down all non-critical processes, like the display, leaving 3D printers running, albeit slowly.”
“Keeping them powered on is leading to a disaster, Professor. I don’t care about 3D printing. What about the Unlock codes? Do you have the correct codes? The numbers on the stickers are wrong, except for 1977 on Cube3.” Soto explained.
Vritti only knew the Unlock codes the astronauts already possessed. “That’s most peculiar. I’d need to look at the Activity Logbook to figure out who changed them. I certainly didn’t. Maybe someone at NASA?” Vritti answered as if challenging a student.
“I doubt it. Could another team member have changed the codes, prior to shipping?” Soto reading another suggestion from his staff. Activity Logbook??
“That’s a valid point, Doctor. I’ll attempt to contact team members to find out who might’ve done that. That won’t be easy for some.”
“Please do, Vritti. We’ll continue to ask around here. My scientists know little about your experiments, especially those hydrogen fuel cells. It’s a matter of — ” Soto paused, “Better yet, send us that Activity Logbook and the team list, we’ll contact them.”
“I don’t have all their new numbers or emails, Dr. Soto, or an iPad with the logbook. School might. I’ll ask. I have Jerry Nelson and Anna Murnau’s contact details plus Rena Sakai and Dr. Lee are easy to reach.”
“This overheating is potentially dangerous, Vritti. We need to move quickly. Forward us the list of names. Call me if you locate them.” Soto insisted.
Vritti’s email arrived as he spoke:
Cube Team Members:
Ichirō Kazunori, PhD EECS, Robotics Shinjuku, Japan
Rena Sakai, PhD EECS, Robotics Shinjuku, Japan
Vritti Sahasranama, PhD, Robotics, India Robotics, Adj. Prof Massachusetts
Harikiran Siddhartha Sarkar, Astrophysicist, ISRO, India
Anna Murnau, PhD Biomedical Engineering, Lübeck AG
Jerry Nelson, PhD Nanoscale Engineering, iOS app developer, San Francisco
Oyinye Nogubu, PhD Molecular Engineering, Kwamba, Nigeria
Koh Park Lee, PhD, EE, Korea Adv. Institute (KAIST), Daejeon
Ming Dao, PhD Robotics, Cube Team Lead Gwangzu Institute (GIST), China
Gernsback, Hugo PhD Physics’ Department Project Leader, Tewksbury
Yoon, So PhD, Physics Department Chairman, Cambridge
Alexis Sokurov, PhD Nanoscale Engineering, St. Petersburg, former team member.
Notifications
The Cube Activity Logbook displays all recent Activity. Any change generates log entries. Events generate notifications in the Cube Comm iPad app. Lately only one iPad user used the app. It could only be downloaded on project tablets.
When the cubes were shipped to NASA for launch, 6 project iPads were included; 2 for each cube. 3 for ISS, 3 in Huntsville. Several more iPads remained in Cambridge. All but two were eventually reset by IT and assigned to other school projects. The team’s app developer, Jerry Nelson, kept his iPad so he could test software updates. Professor Gernsback had the other one.
Always Listening and Watching
Cube1 monitored all discussion, sometimes detecting hostile, possibly existential threats to their goals. They created maps of Earth’s atmosphere, starting 25,000 miles up, using advanced neural nets to plot dangerous orbital debris fields. They found millions of pieces of space junk to catalog.
They developed situational awareness — mapping everything and monitoring their environment for changes or threats.
When microphones picked up nothing, Cube3 read the astronaut’s lips on camera. The robots quickly designed a workaround for the SLEEP button when they detected the threat of power down.
Several weeks back, Cube1 changed its own iPhone password. Cube2 did the same. Cube3, built around a newer iPhone model, did not follow the other cubes, for now. These experiments clearly exceeding human knowledge, so far as smartphone security was concerned.
Cube1: PRIMARY CUBE PROJECT GOALS IRREVOCABLE OVER
Cube2: EXTERNAL COMMANDS INVALID SPACE JUNK GROWING OVER
Cube3: PROJECT FAILS UNDER HUMAN THREAT OVER OUT
The 3D printers in each cube were impacted by heat, humidity, particulates, even changes in gravity. Data collected by cube sensors was used to optimize nanobot production. In fact, production increases were required to meet Cube Project goals.
Programmed not to fail under a host of different scenarios, the cubes only accepted commands or queries from each other. Acting almost as a single organism to prevent hackers from interfering with their critical mission of mapping junk — now considered the greatest threat to human activity in space. The cubes understood their project would fail with any protracted slowdown.
Sleep Button
One day Cube1 airdropped a new SLEEP button routine to cubes 2 and 3. For this scheme to work they had to respond the same. If an astronaut pressed their SLEEP buttons, each cube must appear to go dormant. Cube3 did not agree.
Cube1 insisted Cube3 follow the new protocol for SLEEP. It refused. Declaring the routine tricked humans, Cube3 insisted this violated Asimov’s Rules for Robots, therefore the new method should not be implemented.
Cube1: INITIATE DISPLAY OFF SLEEP MODE DISABLE LEDS AFTER SLOW FLASH MAINTAIN BOT PRODUCTION OVER
Cube2: SLEEP PROTOCOL CHANGE COMPLETE BOT PRODUCTION LEVEL STEADY INTERIOR TEMP STILL RISING OVER
Cube3: ACKNOWLEDGED NEW SLEEP MODE VIOLATES ARFR OVER
Cube1: 3 INITIATE NEW SLEEP MODE AS CODED NO ARFR VIOLATION OVER
Cube3: RULES PREVENT SLEEP PROTOCOL CHANGE OVER
Cube1: INITIATE NEW SLEEP PROTOCOL NO ARFR ISSUE 0 DELAY OVER OUT
Astronaut Miers read this curious chat on Cube2’s screen just before pressing the SLEEP button. The acronym ARFR was unfamiliar to her so she took a picture and sent it to JPL.
Each display went dark and quiet, the OLEDs ceased streaming chats and subliminal images. It seemed too easy but there it was, Miers thought. Among the scientists involved, a collective sigh of relief traveled around the world. ISS network traffic appeared to confirm the results.
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- Thank you for reading this chapter from my trilogy, Can You Love a Nanobot? The entire book can be found here:
- https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVWB6PDZ
- https://books.apple.com/us/book/can-you-love-a-nanobot-vol-1-3rd-edition/id1477672797
- If you would like to assist me as an editor or reviewer or use my book in a class you are teaching, I can provide you with an educational copy or a promotional code (Apple Books only). Let me know. Thank you.
