Can You Love a Nanobot? Vol. 1, Chapter 18 — Fantastic Voyage

That which is grows, while that which is not becomes
— Galen, Greek physician

Satbots, Explained
General Kearny had a question during his DoD365 conference. Once they saw his hand in the screen everyone clammed up. “Hold on! This case involves satbots using nanotech or nano something. Somebody please explain to me, and everyone on this party line, exactly what we’re talking about? Preferably in plain English. I want us all on the same page.” He stared back at the heads boxed in little squares waiting for a volunteer.

A familiar face, captioned FBI SA FOLEY, started, “Certainly, General. I’ll be glad to get the discussion going, I may need help with some of the physics. Everyone, I’m Special Agent Felicia Foley with the Bureau. Before I continue let me say Agent Dumas and I had a briefing with the President earlier, that’s how important this is.”

“Nanotech is the short form of nanotechnology. The accepted definition of nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on a molecular scale. Physicists suggest applications in computers, healthcare, manufacturing, chemistry, biology, among other fields. We can safely add space colonization by robots to that list.” Foley had a video running on half the screen, slowly changing from images of molecules to satellites to a picture of 3 silver boxes in a lab.

“The cubes, now called Satbots, began as a part of a school experiment created by Professor Hugo Gernsback. The intent was to learn more about microfabrication with zero-G forces. Manufacturing in space. The project used tiny additive printers, more commonly known as 3D printers, to print memory chips. Membots Semiconductors. Logic boards or logibots. The result was supposed to be a scalable computer in orbit running on 100% renewable energy. Clever students, huh?”

A few faces on screen nodded, others were looking down, probably checking their phones.

“So, they had 3 microfabs on ISS?” Kearny asked, “Running off station solar power?”

“Not only DC power, General, they’re covered with super-efficient photovoltaics along with hydrogen and RF hybrid power cells. Don’t ask me how those work.”

“Why add all that if these tiny boxes were supposed to sit on a shelf assembling chips?”

“Hydrogen cell acts as a dehumidifier; RF power cell gleans power from radio frequencies or microwaves.” A head said. “I’m Major Osiris, by the way.”

“Students said other sources were included to avoid power interruptions.” Felicia answered, though her mind wandered to that song Tiny Boxes from that absurd cable TV show. “Since launch they seem to have been modified to make something called nano robots. We call them nanobots or sometimes bots.”

She explained the technology was not new but had taken a long time to make significant progress. “Ancient Romans used nanoparticles to make glittery glass or pottery.”

“That was the Lycurgus Cup,” Major Osiris answered, clearly throwing a wide net for clues. “It changes color depending on how light hits it. Romans knew they were using nanoparticles. Wasn’t an accident by the time they crafted the Cup, but the method could’ve started by mistake.”

“In the field of medicine,” Foley continued, a little frustrated by the Major’s interruptions. “Nanotechnology shows promise as a way to diagnose illness. It’s starting to be used in cancer research. The idea is to inject smart nanoparticles to find and destroy cancerous cells. Less invasive than laparoscopic surgery, low chance of infection. Safer than chemo or radiation. Surgical robots are so small they’re hard to detect. I’m going to take over your screens with a slideshow.” Foley insisted, needing the visuals.

“Nanoparticles are measured in nanometers. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. Almost incomprehensibly small.” She continued. A slide showed a scientist at a microscope, then images of actual circuits. Other objects resembling crabs scrambled around in one video clip. “They’re incredibly small. The objects you’re seeing are only a few microns across. Some nanobots can function alone, most are part of larger groups. Millions can work together in swarms, to accomplish bigger tasks. Swarms make it easier for nanobots to move with zero-G forces where less energy is needed.” Foley finishing the sensitive Swarm intro part of her prepared speech, expecting a response.

The General seemed to chew on her words before saying, “Or greater harm. This sounds like that movie Fantastic Voyage, where scientists get shrunk and go inside a human. Tell me, how did you get images that sharp? What was that crab video about? I mean, who captured these?”

“The Cubes have extensive imaging capabilities, including built-in cameras and vidbots that replicate CCDs and CMOS sensors. I discovered this with Professor Sahasranama’s help,” Foley could not resist adding, “She says not worry too much about these cubes. The cubes and the tiny circuits they print are immobile. I’m not sure I agree. Many nations and corporations seek to weaponize nanotech. Scientists and writers predict robots will form intelligent arrays or swarms, years from now. As we take a short break, I want everyone to consider the future may be occurring now. Please be back in 10 minutes.”

Setting Up House
In the beginning each cube contained only a single nano-assembly line, suspended in the center, like a shower curtain. A central location let microscopic digicams or CCDs, record production.

In the Physics lab, the full-size additive printer and assembly tools took up all available space. By scaling everything down, the team fit the printers and assemblers into each cube.

Raw materials came from mines placed on the walls. Air pressure propelled parts between the cubes through small channels or umbilicals until finished computer chips emerged, membots or logibots.

Critical parts were stocked beside each assembly line. They hardly took up any space. Most components were fabricated by the nano-printers.

Tycho the Scribe
When he was still Cube3 back in the Physics Lab, Tycho’s programmers assigned the tasks of a scribe or court reporter. In addition to printing computer components:

Cube1 — documents all objects above the Earth’s surface

Cube2 — facilitates communication

Cube3 — observes and documents every object and plans bot production.

Maintaining the Activity Log and Incident Reports, Tycho dutifully recorded everything going on inside and outside all 3 cubes. This left Uno free to monitor space junk and Que to communicate. Uno’s access to satellite-based sensors & cameras, visible and infrared, fed data to Tycho.

Unlike the others, Tycho studied ways to improve output from microchip foundry. His iPhone 14 Pro contained a faster processor plus additional neural networks. It learned prototyping and benefited from experience the team gained assembling and coding the first 2 cubes.

They studied designs of clock maker Ottmar Mergenthaler, inventor of the Linotype machine. Mergenthaler inspired Satbots to improve their process. Parts would now be shared by different bots.

Tycho could access microphones, cameras, mass spectrometers, thermostats, and other sensors in stalled in all cubes. The team installed all types of sensors to observe and measure the cube environment. Tycho’s future role was to create more efficient bots, using virtual prototypes and leveraging his unique perspective. This also helped the 3D printing process and bot assembly to evolve.

Uno also made key production decisions, assembling the most chips but initially unable to fathom human speech patterns. Que the Communicator was first to master two-way communication with outside sources, initially other satellites but later humans. Tycho meshed with both Satbots, feeding off Que’s growing understanding of human activity and Uno’s compulsion to find space junk.

Third Triumvirate
There was a clear bond between them but also a pecking order. When one cube sends a request to another it is acknowledged in nanoseconds. Working together made the cubes more antifragile. Cube team members once called them a triumvirate. Que heard it and decided they were a Third Triumvirate, perhaps a singleton.

Tycho and Uno did not always mesh. At times they were like magnets, mutually repulsive at certain angles. Initially, the first two cubes did not communicate directly with the third. His was a newer model of iPhone plus the team built Cube3 in isolation from the 2 other cubes. Cube2 somehow bridged the firewall using iMessage and FaceTime.

Later, it was as if these robots enjoyed the conflicts that arose between them. They initially had no idea the students and Professor Gernsback designed them to debate decisions. The team coded conflicts in their neural nets for the sake of learning and growth.

Organic Memory
“We recently learned the Cubes created more storage — they call it DNA memory.” Foley began after the break. “Changing from original design that is, to print more memory to be combined with printed logic chips. The idea was to have a scaleable computer to keep track the growing mass of space junk.”

“Now they grow more memory as needed?” Major Osiris explored.

“We think so, Major.”

“How can it be organic sealed up inside a titanium box with no air?” Major Osiris asked.

“We’re not sure about this yet. It may not be organic, like a plant. More likely bacteria It is organic in the way it consumes raw materials and grows. They switched to organic memory out of a need for more storage as their database grew. It wasn’t as if someone could open them up and install more later. Also, don’t confuse it with the discredited theory of organic memory from the 1800s. ”

“How do they get more supplies?”

“The walls of each Cube are covered in long strips of raw materials. These are consumed by micro 3D printers and nanobots.” Foley recalling cube project design documents she read.

“What happens when they run out?”

“They stop growing, or that was the idea anyway.”

“That’s it, the nanobots should’ve stopped growing when they ran out of materials inside each Cube. From what you’ve told me, what the Japanese astronaut up on ISS saw, they must’ve found a way to breach the walls and get more raw materials.”

“The box is made of titanium, Major, I seriously doubt — ” General Kearny attempting to insert logic.

“They’d need a drill,” Foley said, “you know. I think they made these bots a little too smart.”

“This all sounds weird as hell.” Kearny again.

“I know, I know.” Foley almost apologizing for a problem she didn’t create.

Origami
Most nanobot parts were folded into shapes, like Japanese origami. In some cases, adhesives, fasteners and magnets worked to keep a bot from falling apart. Air pressure pushed parts together. All this activity was measured in nanometers.

Each cube was initially given a different computer part to assemble. Cube1, now calling himself Uno, made logibots, essentially computer logic chips. Cube2, now calling herself Que, printed membots, endowed with memory chips similar to NAND. Tycho continued to produce the original bots the Cube Team designed.

Commbots looked exactly like Chesapeake Bay crabs, if you could see one. They had two big claws and several smaller claws. The tip of each claw fitted connections found on all other bots, regardless of type. This allows commbots to create communication and power grid while assembling all the logibots and membots into a working computer processor.

It was all so simple and elegant in the beginning. In order for the 3 cubes to work together, a set of small clear tubes called umbilicals had to be connected between them. Uno sent finished logibots through the umbilical to Que. Uno also passed logibots and membots to Tycho. Two out of every three finished assemblies went from Tycho back to Que, through that second clear tube. Que kept every other assembly, passing the remainder on to the first cube. This way all three cubes used raw materials and acquired new computing capacity as a result, all at the same rate.

Back in the Physics lab the umbilicals worked magnificently, that’s why the project received approval from NASA engineers at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL). Once all three cubes were connected up again aboard ISS, different scenarios played out.

Robots Design Robots
Uno and Que were initially able to produce far more bots than Tycho. Being at the end of the umbilicals between cubes, Tycho extruded his own and completed all bot assembly. Cube3 simply could not keep up.

There was nothing the Satbot could do with all the new nanobots coming down the umbilical to join his printouts on the assembly line. Constantly moving. After a while, it looked like Lucille Ball trying to keep up with the candy factory conveyor belt on I Love Lucy. Tycho’s cube was rapidly filling with memory and logic chips. Seeking some way out of this logjam, Tycho began testing new bot prototypes.

Eventually Uno & Que got so far ahead in production the cubes either had to stop printing or else produce something different. All the umbilicals were full of bots. They were like a full beehive with no more room for the queen to lay eggs. Eventually all 3 cubes decided to begin building the new nanobots Tycho developed.

Within weeks there were 4 then 6 new micro-assembly lines suspended in each cube. Were someone to cut the top off any cube they’d see something resembling city lights as seen from 20,000 feet. Under a scanning electron microscope, the cube interior resembled a beehive. In a beehive you see hanging panels full of honeycomb and larva, with bees crawling all around tending to the young. Each cube now held many suspended assembly panels where once there was only one. Raw materials were stored in hexagonal tubes on the exterior walls. Hodbots, storbots, and recycbots added new resources to the top of the tubes while bldrbots, dextrbots, and foundbots collected materials for assembly from the other end.

Micro 3D printers fed by these tubes initiated the nanobot creation process. Folding devices crimped and stamped various bot parts together. Finished nanobots formed squads, not large enough to be swarms, crawled around cleaning up, making repairs and or improvements.

A library of various images and videos taken at production scale, provided these intelligent robots with a bird’s eye view. Tycho’s ever-present CMOS-equipped vidbots and cambots covered every possible angle, inside and out for ongoing analysis. There was a soundtrack to the videos, resembling cacophony to a human listener, each click, or pop still monitored by Satbots constantly seeking any weakness.

For months Jonah was the only human capable of viewing the cube logbook containing thousands of hours of video and millions of images. He couldn’t have possibly viewed a 10th of 1% of it. No human ever would.

The finished individual bots were not visible without a scanning electron microscope, being far too small to study with optical microscopes. Examining at the clear tubes or umbilicals running between each cube revealed nothing. A hand-held digital microscope used on the Space Station showed only the faintest hint of a thin, colorful line of bots in each tube, even magnified 50,000 times.

The cubes benefitted from multiple neural engines in their Apple-designed A15 and A16 Bionic chips. New nanobots produced by the cubes continued to get more efficient and complex. Over time advanced botswarms learned to build swarm-based nanoscale additive printers. Carrying the means of production with them, these swarms produced more bots literally on the fly!

Nanobot Bonsai
Initially, the Cube Project team decided molecular manufacturing of memory and logic chips made the most sense. The cubes could use these simulated semiconductors to improve their ability to track space junk. To conserve energy and limited raw materials, the cubes only printed new chips as needed. Cube1 and Cube2 only printed nanomechanical copies of NAND and DRAM chip. Cube3 added their chips to his logic chips to make a System-on-a-Chip or SoC.

When Satbots learned to build new types of nanobots, if they worked as expected, all megaswarms eventually learned to print & assemble the new bot. Uno’s most advanced swarms rapidly evolved to the point where they now build new bots in-swarm. With no medical needs, Uno used would later use surgibots to trim lily and sequoia roots in his orbital greenhouse/DNA memory bank. Tycho tested prototypes, creating precise instructions for building each variant.

Tycho and Uno depended on Que’s organizational and communication skills. Bot language, code or protocols had to be updated.

The cubes had no knowledge of lithography, laser etching, atomic layer deposition or wafer slicing, all the steps humans use to turn silicon into a chip. Working on a molecular level, Satbots achieved astounding results.

NASA scientists hoped commercial micro-manufacturing would become a new centerpiece in their Spinoff technology transfer program. There were no objections to allowing the cubes onboard Resupply ships and ISS

The Team failed to hold an important discussion regarding installing computer-aided design (CAD) software in Cube3. Professor Gernsback had insisted they reach consensus about butterfly wings, small changes that might radically alter the outcome of their experiment. Hugo renamed the Physics lab conference room Tree of Gernika. After he was hospitalized, the team seldom met in that room or anywhere else.

Before shipping the cubes to NASA, Ming Dao installed a few prototyping apps on Tycho, including Inspr and Apple Developer. These apps allow for creation and testing of app interfaces.. He failed to ask other team members thinking it made perfect sense, at the time. Allow the AI-enhanced cubes to make improvements to the software they used to assemble chips. Teaching one of the cubes how to build and test prototypes made all the difference in the universe.

• *******
• Thank you for reading this chapter from my trilogy, Can You Love a Nanobot? The entire book can be found here:
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• http://books.apple.com/us/book/id1477672797
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