Maple just shook his head and started back into the building at a hurried walk. “They’re fine. The first samples you gave me are unique.”
The ribs in Smith’s back felt like they were grinding a bit as he caught up, but not anywhere near as badly as they had been. “What the hell’s going on, then? What am I doing here at five thirty in the morning?”
“They’re from a nuclear plant, aren’t they?” Maple said, pushing through the door to his lab.
He’d been bound to figure it out. Frankly, if he hadn’t, Smith would have started to wonder if he’d come to the right man.
“Yes.”
“Japanese?”
“Fukushima Reactor Four.”
Maple gave a short nod and sat in front of a computer screen that contained the same hazy, pockmarked image that had been on it when Smith left four days ago. This time, though, Maple seemed to know what he was looking at. He tapped the screen with his finger, and Smith couldn’t help noticing the smear of sweat it left.
“This is nanotechnology, Jon. It’s goddamn molecular manufacturing.”
As a biologist, Smith had a better-than-average grasp on nanotech. The problem was that it was an ever-shifting category that had come to include basically everything human made and small. He’d never heard the term “molecular manufacturing.”
“Explain.”
Maple let out a frustrated rush of air. “It’s the holy grail, Jon. But even if the government decided to throw truckloads of money at it, we’re twenty, maybe twenty-five years away from coming up with anything that would work. Jesus, man, it—”
“Greg! Calm down and start from the beginning. What am I looking at on the screen?”
The scientist paused for a moment to get control of himself. “Okay…listen…nanotech has all kinds of applications. The most basic is creating next-generation materials, right? If you can put the individual molecules—even atoms—in a certain structure, you get a material that does what you want on a very fundamental level.”
“I’m familiar with that kind of research. Basically making stuff harder than diamond, improving heat dissipation, electrical conductivity. That kind of thing.”
“Exactly. The next step would be making very tiny, very simple machines.”
“I’m with you,” Smith said. “I’ve worked with some experimental nanoscale machines that can close battlefield wounds. Amazing stuff with a lot of potential.”
“Yes. Right. The holy grail, though, is machines that can replicate themselves. The best analogy is a 3-D printer that can print out a working copy of itself.”
Maple tapped the screen again, and again left a sweaty fingerprint. “See the pockmarks? The tiny voids? They’re not really voids. They’re microscopic, self-replicating machines.”
“You’re losing me again.”
The nuclear engineer brought up a complex diagram that didn’t really clarify anything.
“There’s a lot of damage to the machines themselves, but after examining a few hundred, I was able to come up with this rough sketch of what we’re looking at.”
“Which is?”
“A microscopic machine that was built up atom by atom.”
“For what purpose?”
“It uses the material it’s in—either concrete, plastic, or steel—as fuel to make copies of itself.”
“Okay. But what’s it do once it’s made enough copies? What’s its purpose?”
“As near as I can tell, that is its purpose. There are structures on it that seem to have other functions, but I can’t say yet what they are. Probably some kind of command and control system.”
Smith let that process for a moment. “Okay, let me get this straight. If I set a bunch of these loose on a piece of concrete, they’ll eat the concrete and spit out replicas of themselves. One will become two. Two will become four. Four will become eight. And so on until they run out of concrete.”
“Unless some of those command and control structures are designed to shut it off, yes.”
“So the weakness in the material is caused by these little robots eating holes in it for fuel.”
“Exactly. The structural problems are just a by-product. The machines aren’t as strong as the surrounding material. It’s like drilling holes in a piece of steel and filling them with Styrofoam. Eventually you’d be able to just break it apart with your fingers.”
“But if these things can eat concrete, plastic, and steel, why not rock? Why not people?”
“There are actually three distinct versions here, each designed to use one—and only one—of those fuels. So if you put them on rock or a person they’d just lie dormant. Like a car with no gas.”
Smith nodded silently. The potential for this as a weapon was obvious. Toss a handful on a tank and eventually it would fall apart as the steel and plastic degraded. Like biological weapons, though, they would create logistical problems. What would happen if a stiff wind blew them back onto your own tank?
“Jon,” Maple started again, reaching out and gripping Smith’s forearm. “I can’t stress enough how dangerous these machines are. I’m not exaggerating when I say they make nukes look like wooden clubs. Remember what I was saying about how these can’t use dirt as fuel? Well, what if I changed the design to make them do just that? They’d start making copies of themselves and their numbers would climb at a geometric rate. Depending on how fast they work, in a few months—maybe even a few weeks—the only thing left of the planet would be endless trillions of microscopic robots fighting over the last bit of fuel to make another copy.”
31
Above the Senkaku Islands
East China Sea
General Masao Takahashi peered out the window of the air defense transport plane, following the sun as it began to rise from the horizon. He squinted into the glare, searching the sea below for the US carrier group holding to the northeast. It was the fourth such armada to steam into Asian waters—a display of power and resolve meant to counterbalance the growing threat to what the Americans assumed was still the helpless country they had created so many decades ago.
China would take a half step back, Japan would continue to grovel over its past, and Western economic interests—the only interests that mattered to the United States—would be preserved.
Takahashi could still remember the day he’d seen the great man. The day that Douglas MacArthur’s motorcade had roared through the irrelevant little village his family had been left to rot in. The American commander had been exactly as the news reels depicted: a uniformed statue sitting in the back of a jeep, hidden by his hat, pipe, and sunglasses. He hadn’t even bothered to look at the poverty-stricken farmers lined up alongside the muddy road, showing complete indifference to the people whose pride and dignity he’d stolen.
Ironically, the people there that day saw him as a god. A supernatural entity who would restore Japan and teach it the arcane secrets of Western democracy. The savior of a backward race that could not be trusted to create its own future.
Takahashi’s mother hadn’t come to see the spectacle. A woman of wealth and grace before the war, she had been in the middle of a fourteen-hour day working the fields. It had been hot, backbreaking labor that she wasn’t suited for, but she never complained. She’d died just as his father was beginning to lay the foundations for the revival of the empire the Americans had stripped from him. And even with that last breath, she had spoken only of her concern for her sons.
Takahashi had been just a boy at the time with no concept of what was happening. No understanding that the treats she had given him and his brothers were from her own rations and that she hadn’t left herself enough to survive. Or maybe he had understood. Maybe he had just been unwilling to look beyond his own empty belly.
His headphones crackled to life with the voice of the pilot, pulling him back into the present. “General, we have a visual on our target.”
Takahashi went forward, stopping in the doorway to the cockpit. Through the windscreen he could see the va
gue shape of no fewer than five ships. The JDS Isi helicopter carrier and two Takanami-class destroyers were the only ones identifiable at this distance. The Izumo, though, was gone. She had dropped beneath the waves for the last time hours ago with forty-three men still aboard.
China’s ships had immediately retreated from the Senkakus at the orders of their confused government. Denials had been quickly and emphatically delivered, but the world was skeptical. The Chinese people, weaned on a diet of violent anti-Japanese rhetoric, had once again taken to the streets, this time with a fervor that the Communist Party was proving unable to control.
Despite their despotic tendencies, the truth was that the members of the politburo ruled their country at the pleasure of the billion people surrounding them. And those people’s pleasure was blood.
The pilot arced the plane to the west and Takahashi braced himself as they closed in on the massive rescue effort. After a few moments he could see individual divers working from rafts and the men standing at attention on the deck of the Isi, watching over the rows of flag-draped bodies.
He had spent most of his adult life studying Japan and the complex nature of its people. How could a small island in the Pacific have taken on the world? Why were Japanese children consistently slotted at the very top of academic achievement? How had his people acquired their unparalleled levels of courage and discipline?
At first he had focused on history and culture, but it hadn’t taken him long to realize that there were no satisfying answers there. Japan had been a relatively primitive and inward-looking feudal state, and in some ways that philosophy had persisted well into the nineteenth century. When his country finally decided to modernize, though, it had done so at a pace that the rest of the world could only marvel at. It was solely the failure of Japan’s nuclear weapons program that had kept the tiny island from taking control of Asia.
Even after its defeat at the hands of America, Japan had quickly risen to become the leader of technological innovation and the second-largest economy in the world—relegated to that subordinate position only by their relatively small population and lack of natural resources.
How had all this been possible?
The answer was finally revealed by the fledgling science of genetics. Isolated from their neighbors, the Japanese had not only changed in physical appearance, but had evolved the superior intelligence, discipline, and loyalty that elevated them above the other races. In a very real sense, they were born to rule.
“General,” the pilot said, twisting in his seat and pulling one of his earphones off. “You have a call from the prime minister.”
Takahashi nodded and pointed through the windscreen at the bodies on the Isi’s flight deck. “Get a picture of that.”
It would be a powerful image for his people to rally around. Of course, it wouldn’t be difficult to determine who had leaked the photo to the press, but what could the government do? Every day he got stronger and the Japanese people came to see their politicians for the useless theater troupe they were.
He took a seat in the back and plugged his headset into the plane’s communications system. “This is Takahashi.”
“What’s your assessment, General?”
Sanetomi tried to make his voice sound commanding but he couldn’t obscure his apprehension. There was nothing in his life that could have prepared him for what he now found himself faced with. He had been a simple schoolteacher before he’d gone to law school and discovered his gift for public speaking and making powerful friends. This was a situation that demanded leadership, and in the end Sanetomi was just a man who looked good on television.
“The Chinese sank the Izumo in waters the entire international community agrees are ours,” Takahashi said.
The prime minister tried to respond, but Takahashi talked over him. “According to the Americans it’s also likely that they attempted to sabotage the Fukushima nuclear plant. And according to our own intelligence people, they almost certainly tried to assassinate me.”
“Chinese involvement in the problems at Fukushima is little more than conjecture, General.”
And of course that’s all it ever would be.
“My apologies, Mr. Prime Minister. Of course you’re right.”
“We must step back,” Sanetomi said. “This can’t go any further.”
“And how would you have us do that, sir? Should I tell our captains to scuttle our ships? Would that satisfy the Chinese? Or perhaps we could just reward them for their unprovoked attacks by giving them—”
“I won’t be spoken to in that tone, General! Do you want to fight a war? Do you think it would be glorious? Even with the Americans’ help and the paltry toys you’ve developed, the destruction would be beyond anything we experienced during World War Two. Is that your goal? To die with your family’s sword in your hand while our country burns? Is that your idea of honor?”
Takahashi didn’t immediately respond, instead looking out the window at the rescue efforts that were quickly becoming futile. No survivors had been found for more than six hours.
“Sometimes destruction is needed before creation is possible.”
Sanetomi’s stunned silence wasn’t entirely unexpected. “You’ve been out there long enough, General. Return. Now.”
“As you wish,” Takahashi said, cutting off the link.
He leaned back in his chair and listened to the drone of the aircraft’s engines. They were on the inevitable path to the world’s first—and perhaps last—postmodern war. Technology would eventually progress to the point where battles between advanced nations would be unthinkable. At that point, the world order would likely be fixed for generations. It was his duty to make sure Japan led that world order.
Takahashi felt the plane level out and he assumed that they were on their way back to Japan at Prime Minister Sanetomi’s hysterical bidding.
It was impossible to know how long it would take for the Americans to understand the meaning of the Reactor Four samples. Perhaps they already did.
And if that was the case, they would do anything in their power to stop him from using Ito’s weapon. They might even go so far as to warn the Chinese or even join them in a preemptive attack on Japan. He needed just a little longer to prepare. To ensure that his plan would succeed. Soon there would be no one who could stop what was to come.
32
Alexandria, Virginia
USA
Jon Smith wandered around the lab looking at the stainless steel tables, computers, and other machinery, but not really seeing any of it. Maple watched him with a confused, helpless expression that was more than a little worrying. When a guy who made his living marrying advanced weaponry with nuclear power got scared, the shit had officially hit the fan.
“How would you develop something like this?” Smith said, finally coming to a stop in the middle of the floor.
“With a lot of dedication, brains, and funding.”
“So, in your opinion, this is not the work of a terrorist group.”
“No way in hell, Jon. This is government money. And a lot more than we were willing to throw at it.”
Smith nodded. The field of nanotechnology was fairly theoretical and while it would get some nominal funding from the Pentagon, it was the kind of long-term, pie-in-the-sky project that didn’t tend to be a priority for the United States. He’d run into the same problem himself over the years. The Department of Defense tended to be most interested in developing ways to make existing technology tougher, faster, and more accurate. Politicians tended to be most interested in large, expensive systems that could be developed and manufactured in their districts. Nanotech fit neither bill.
“Okay, Greg. But specifically, who could have pulled this off? Who are the thinkers in the field?”
“Well, there’s Gunter Heizenburg in Germany. He’s doing interesting stuff at the University of Munich. And then you’ve got Sean Baxter at MIT. He’s focused on creating new materials with nanotubes, though. I guarantee you that neither one
of those guys is anywhere near doing something like this. You know how it is, Jon. They’ve got a bunch of grad students working for them and they fight tooth and nail for every research dollar.”
“Then think harder!” Smith said, letting his frustration get the better of him. Asia was about to explode into a war that would drag in the entire world and now it seemed that someone had gotten hold of a goddamn doomsday weapon. “Sorry, Greg. It’s been a long couple of weeks.”
“Don’t worry about it. I understand exactly what you’re feeling. I can’t even believe I’m looking at this. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and find out it was just a nightmare. I mean, even if you could build something like this, you’d have to think long and hard about whether you should. You’re messing with the forces of nature here. This is why guys like you spend your time figuring out how to cure diseases—not cause them. Once something like this gets out of control, you don’t get that control back.”
“Okay, Greg, let’s take a step back for a second. This didn’t just come out of thin air. Unless we want to start considering aliens, we can be confident that right now there are people working on this in a very well-equipped, well-funded, and well-secured lab. Who are they?”
“We should talk to Gunter and Sean. They—”
“No. No one else hears about this.”
“Come on, Jon. I know a fair amount about nanotech, but it’s not my field. I know both those guys and I can vouch for them.”
“It’s not just a matter of secrecy, Greg. Whoever did this knows I have those samples and they sure as hell have the resources to watch the obvious people in the field.”
Maple sagged a bit and stared blankly at the diagram he’d created. “I keep coming back to the same answer.”
“What’s that?”
“Think about it. Who has the money, will, and access to talent that you’d need to get this done?”