Chapter 3: Volume 1. Chapter 3. Celine Delaire

June 3^rd, 2047

     Alicia passed her flick over the meter, paying the taxi's automated processor, and stepped out into a light, spattering rain. She pulled out her umbrella and opened it with a pop. The cab rolled away, the automated command processor directing it toward its next fare. The humidity in LA sapped all her energy, and she rapidly ascended the staircase leading to Qaynan Corp headquarters.

     Inside was a polished marble floor leading up to an elongated marble desk serviced by multiple secretaries. Qaynan's symbol, a shovel held by a robotic claw, was embossed into a marble effigy behind them. Alicia approached the desk and informed a male secretary that she was there for a meeting with CEO Celine Delaire. The secretary confirmed her identity and asked Alicia to follow him. He led her up a marble staircase to an elevator bank. He inserted a key into the locking mechanism, prioritizing the elevator for a journey to the top floor. It arrived a minute later and whisked Alicia upwards. Exiting the elevator, she entered another marble waiting room with a small desk and a beautiful young secretary typing away. The shovel and claw symbol featured prominently behind her.

     The secretary looked up from her computer, smiled, and said, "Dr. Dunn, welcome to Qaynan Corp. Ms. Delaire will be with you shortly. Please sit." She gestured towards a comfortable-looking sofa opposite a TV screen displaying all of Qaynan's finest tunnels. Alicia sat down and practiced activating her new binoc recorders via her flick. She'd had them installed a couple of months ago, and they were a big help for recording details in the lab. However, the memory requirements to store her visual perception for more than a few minutes were high, far beyond the capacity of any civilian memory storage card. She should have enough space to get through the interview. A moment later, the secretary spoke, in a slightly raised voice, to get her attention, "Dr. Dunn, Ms. Delaire will see you now."

     Alicia walked through the double doors. The CEO's office was also marble but with a lighter color scheme, and the formidable oak desk took up a large portion of her field of view from the elevator. The floor-to-ceiling windows provided a panoramic view of the city. Celine was beautiful, with high cheekbones that gave away her heritage. She walked up to Alicia, "Alicia. Is it okay to call you Alicia? It's nice to meet you in person finally. I feel like we've delayed this for too long. Please call me Celine."

     "Yes, Alicia is perfect. It's nice to meet you too." Alicia took Celine's offered hand and shook it. Celine led them to a set of chairs looking out over the city.

     "Coffee or tea?"

     "Coffee, please." Celine flicked a command to the processor on the secretary's desk, who started making coffee. While they waited, they made small talk; Alicia asked about MARS1 while Celine skirted around the tragedy with the biosynthesizers, including the death of Alicia's coworkers. Eventually, the secretary brought in the coffee just as Celine broached the topic.

     "May I ask you about your work with the biosynthesizer? What happened to it?"

     "There was a general agreement to limit the AI's capacity to make harmful materials. All new biosynthesizers connect to a central hub that checks design and intent before synthesizing. If there is no connection – they won't synthesize, and if the disconnection lasts too long, you must reset the machine. That takes keys from three different government agencies. It should prevent the past from being repeated. It's called the BioSafety Protocol." Celine nodded throughout Alicia's explanation.

     "It's surprising they keep them running, given all the trouble," Celine commented.

     "They could be used to do terrible things. They wouldn't be worth it if they weren't such effective tools."

     "Still, that is probably for the best. The world doesn't need another Frances Caldwell." Frances Caldwell was the leader of the Neo-Luddite movement that had radicalized Xander. He had been the one responsible for the biosynths that killed Dr. Musa. Unlike Xander, who had died from an accident, and the perpetrator in the Smith lab, who had committed suicide after being caught, Frances Caldwell was not repentant. He would spend a long time in prison. "How is your postdoc going?"

    "Wonderfully. I decided to take on one of Dr. Udo Musa's old projects and flipped from an environmental to a health application. I'm working on immune modulation. After 31' it's a big field, and biosynths have potential applications there."

    "I can see that. I assume it was easy to get set up as the only person with experience working with a biosynthesizer."

     "Yes. I finished my degree in the UK and took a postdoc there. I was back in North America after a conference and visited family. LA is just a quick flight, so I thought I'd try for the interview again."

     "It was good timing. I just got back from abroad. Do you want to get into it?"

     "Yes. Let me start the recording?"

     "No equipment?" asked Celine.

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     "Binocs," said Alicia as she tapped the edge of her glasses.

     "Fancy. Do you want me to start with the Earth test base?"

     "Yes, please."

 

May 5^th, 2039

     Celine Delaire brushed soil off her forehead. The diggers had scuttled back and forth with loose soil for the past three hours, and the tunnel was coming along nicely. Soil might not be the correct description; synthetic lunar regolith was more accurate, and the builders were using it to install the tunnel siding and the airlocks in a few days. Celine watched the crablike diggers go outside to the PSU and siphon off electricity like small gazelle around a watering hole. It would be just as simple on Luna once they got the solar farms running. The smelters took the compacted pseudo-regolith and heated it to squeeze out small iron pellets. Another advantage to Luna, no oxygen meant no rusting, which was already happening to some of the nuggets smelted earliest.

            Celine followed a digger back into the fresh air just as a technician, Trevor, went inside to check on the diggers in deeper tunnels. He gave her a slight nod as he went by, saying, "M'am." Celine returned the greeting and continued out of the tunnel to watch the builders from the command hut. The builders reforged the iron pellets into sheets and formed a long chain, the feet of one clamping into fittings on the head of another. The chain of builders looked like a metallic tentacle that hefted the iron sheeting and carried it further into the tunnel. The entire process was fully automated and coordinated by the brains. The brains were little crablike robots that were essentially just processors on legs. They were loaded with an AI that coordinated the diggers, smelters, and builders while sucking up even more electricity than their minions combined.  

     "They're getting it done," said Frank Arnold. He was standing beside her watching a builder work. "Who would have thought they could go from boring out tunnels for energy storage to a fake moon base."

     "It's not that different. A tunnel is a tunnel, and an airlock is an airlock." That had been Qaynan's original application for the bots. They could bore out tunnels and spaces without human aid, which cut down on hazards for people. Those tunnels were necessary for the energy storage required for global power grids. Compressed air pumps, powered by intermittent renewables, compressed air into the tunnels and released the air slowly when grids needed power. That was another advantage for Qaynan's bots. They could operate under high pressure.

     "Those smelters and builders are unique looking."

     "Yeah, those are new, custom builds. The ISC paid for them, and this is the test run. They operate better on lunar regolith." The International Space Commission was a new joint commission spearheaded by the US meant to foster positive relations between nations in space. The objective was to ensure that the nearly unlimited resources available up there benefitted everyone on Earth. The ISC wanted a permanent base on Luna by the decade's end. Automated robots did not require oxygen or food, only electricity, which made shipping them up to and keeping them working in space better for long-term missions like LUNA1.

     "So, when do I get one to do the laundry and cut the grass?" asked Frank

     "When they don't need to refill their battery every fifteen minutes. Running high-powered charging lines across an empty field of regolith on Luna is different than the backyard. Imagine hitting that with the lawnmower."

     "Code for never?" asked Frank as he chuckled and took a sip of coffee. He always found it ironic that the Qaynan bots, or Qbots as he called them, needed better batteries to be improved because better batteries would render them useless. The grids relied on renewable power, which needed Qaynan's compressed air energy storage facilities. If grid-scale batteries came out, the tunnels and Qbots that built them were pointless. That presumed all the groups working on fusion never made a breakthrough. He supposed that reapplying the Qbots to space exploration was a decent alternative revenue stream.

     "I make robots, and I store energy. I don't make energy," replied Celine. Frank sat back and contemplated his future mission. He was Qaynan's ISC rep and the company man flying up with the ISC mission to settle the robots and get them to building LUNA1. His team had been drilling for six months, with a launch date only three months away.

     A deep rumble came out of the tunnel complex, followed by a giant exhalation of air and dust from the tunnel entrance. The same came from the other two openings spaced equidistantly around the circular mound. "Shit, shit, shit!" shouted Celine. "Trevor just went in there. Call the emergency team."

 

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