CHAPTER 3
Northgate University, Autonomous Systems Laboratory
Pennsylvania, USA
May 15, 2110
1130 hours
The accident had been nobody’s fault but that didn’t make Dr. Ryne Falkland feel any better. Any time you lost a loved one, it hurt like hell. And when the loved one was Mr. Jiggs, twelve-year old hybrid Shih Tzu, lifelong companion, confidant and lab policeman and cleaner-upper of anything that dropped from the table, the loss was even harder to take.
Falkland sighed deeply. Jiggs was just a dog, wheezing, limping, half-blind in one eye with all his cataracts, not long for this world anyway, but still…it was like a hole had opened up in his heart.
Well, at least there was still Simon.
I need someone to talk to. Falkland finished cleaning out the containment chamber and went over to a small capsule on a workbench nearby. Maybe Doc can help me sort things out. He thumbed a control stud on the side of the capsule. Momentarily, a faint vapor began issuing from a port on top. The vapor twinkled and sparkled in the late morning sunlight, thickening as it spread and expanded into a visible mist. Falkland paid no attention to the mist, while it began forming itself into a recognizable, if shadowy outline of a face and shoulders…a reasonable facsimile of Dr. Irwin Frost himself, founder of the Lab. Falkland instead busied himself with prepping the containment chamber for another run, checking the electron guns, the pattern buffer, cycling the interior ports and feedstock reservoirs.
The facial outline of the Doc III swarm beamed down at Falkland with a bemused half-smile, still twinkling in the shafts of sunlight as the bots configured themselves into final patterns, grabbing atoms and slamming molecules to form up the image.
***You are preparing the Lab for another run, I see, Dr. Falkland…you’re always quite thorough in your work***
Falkland looked up briefly, critically appraising the realism of the swarm image. “I’m not sure what happened, Doc. Christ, I hated to lose Jiggs…maybe it was the pattern buffer. Guess I’ve got a little tweaking to do.”