During the latter part of the Cold War, Leonid Sakharov was a pioneering savant in the field of nanotechnology — leap years ahead of Russia’s most brilliant scientists. In the mid-eighties when nanotechnology was in its genesis stage, the Russian and American tactical war departments realized that the use of nanobots, or nanoweapons, was the future of the arms race with far more devastating repercussions than nuclear devices. Billions of programmed molecules, unseen and indefensible, and with no need of special equipment to produce, could serve the military’s needs in several ways.
Sakharov’s duties were to conceive nanoweaponry such as nano-scouts, bots so small yet capable of transmitting data from foreign sources that went undetected and unseen. Other military applications were nanobots that acted as poisons or a force field. More measures taken into consideration by the Kremlin were the use of nanoweaponry such as mind erasers, whereas nanobots would settle in an insurgent’s brain as micro fields, then fire off as small brain bursts that would wipe away sections of memory, and then reprogram it with new commands, new memories, and new ideologies suited for communist rule.
Additional applications such as nano-needles and water bullets were scrapped because of their non-lethal relevance that would ultimately achieve the Russian means to rule by military dominance, which was to kill from a distance with something one-billionth of the size of a man. But more importantly, to do so with something that was highly programmable.
It was just another matter of the race game between Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. But Russia had Leonid Sakharov, a brilliant physicist who realized that molecular nanoweapons were the next great superweapons. In order to get funding in a Russian economy that was slowly being whittled away by the war in Afghanistan, he explained in detail that the weapons were simple molecules converted by their own atoms, and then those atoms would insert themselves into atomic systems which would transform molecules into tiny computers that raced through space like submicroscopic viruses capable of finding the enemy, and then destroy them. After lobbying effortlessly for the sake, safety and cause of Mother Russia, he got the funding.
However, his research did not come without tribulation.
Progress was slow at first — baby steps, really — a stagger here and a stagger there, the frustration worming its way into his core until he took to the bottle to take off the edge. And then gains became strides, strides became leaps, and Sakharov was elated at the advancement made toward the evolution of the atom.
He would spend nights on end with little or no sleep — his only true companions beside his underling associates were his own colossal ego, and a bottle of the finest vodka rubles could buy.
But one night, in one of his celebratory moods after making a breakthrough, Old Man Sakharov took to lack of caution and, against the advice of associates, initiated a start-up program after he was warned about the consequences, since no pre-tests were conducted to determine the hazardous effect of the nanobots under controlled conditions. But the old man gestured with a dismissive wave of his hand, his ego and the influence of liquor now the driving forces behind his decisions, and engaged the program with the push of a button.
As he sat at a monitor behind a bomb-proof resistant glass wall, he watched his associates as they examined a monkey that was isolated in a separate room behind another glass wall. At first there was nothing, the old man becoming flustered, angry, not understanding what went wrong. And then a waspy hum sounded over the mike as the monkey became agitated. Within moments the hum grew in intensity, the nanobots replicating faster than anticipated. And then the monkey began to scream at a pitch that none of the scientists had ever heard from any animal.
Quickly, the rhesus’s fur began to slough off by the handfuls, the monkey waving and swinging its hands wildly at something unseen. And then its flesh began to disappear as if eaten away by patches, revealing the muscle and gristle underneath, then bone. The rhesus raised its head in agony, its eyes dissolving within their orbital sockets, and then it shuddered one last time before falling. Within moments, like a time-lapse reel of a movie running in fast forward, the monkey dissolved into skeletal matter. But it didn’t end there. The bone quickly became polished, and then cracked, revealing the marrow that soon disappeared. And then there was nothing, not even the outline of dust. Everything that was carbon matter was gone.
And Sakharov smiled. “There you have it, gentlemen,” he said over the intercom. “The future is finally here.”
But the celebration was short lived.
The hum of the nanobots sounded like a hive gone mad, growing louder, the speakers sounding off as if the volume was being turned up.
No! No! No! They’re replicating too quickly!
Sakharov’s mind began to go into panic mode, his two associates looking at him through the glass from the lab, wondering what was wrong.
And then the noise ceased, the waspy hum cut off as if on cue.
Not a collective breath could be heard as the two scientists stood as still as Grecian statues.
And then the glass that separated the two scientists from the rhesus lab began to crack. At first it was just one spot, a pinpoint with spider-web cracks that blossomed into full designs. And then a second and third pinpoint, the cracks trailing across the pane until they met other cracks, the window becoming compromised, and then it blew outward with an explosive force, the hum now sounding like a freight train speeding through a tunnel.
Sakharov’s associates began to slap at their coats, at their faces, as if swatting away annoying gnats or insects. And then the material of their coats began to disappear, and then strips and slabs of flesh. Their faces simply disappearing: the skin, the muscle, ultimately revealing the curvature of bone underneath and the empty sockets where their eyes once were. Their tongues no longer lolled, the meat stripped away, vanished. And in a last act of self-preservation they clawed at the window that separated them from their mentor with the bony tines of their fingers, the digits of bone clearly seen as they ticked against the glass in macabre measure.
What have I done?
Sakharov watched with paralytic terror as the men slid down the glass leaving bloody trails against the pane.
And then a silence that was complete and absolute followed.
Sakharov looked at the speakers.
Not a sound.
And then it came as a single tick against the glass that separated him from his associates’ lab. The glass divide between his room and his associates took on a single pinprick hole that was beginning to web out with a series of meandering cracks.
Acting quickly, Sakharov lifted the plastic emergency shield that covered a red button and slammed his palm down. A titanium wall came down and covered the glass. And then he pressed the button again. This time initiating a failsafe program that ignited the lab, burning everything within the room at more than three thousand degrees. Everything, including the nanobots, was incinerated.
Nevertheless, Sakharov was hailed by the Kremlin as a hero, whereas his associates were looked upon as collateral damage. But he knew differently. He had become drunk to the delight of his own ego, casting aside all precautions and believing that nothing could have gone wrong when, in fact, everything had gone horribly wrong. And it wasn’t too long afterward that he came to the realization that such nanoweaponry was far too dangerous. According to an article by Eric Drexler, whom he considered to be his “near” equal, replication was much too fast if not contained. And within a week the bots could exponentially grow to such numbers that the entire surface of the Earth would be consumed by matter Drexler termed as “grey goo,” which is to say everything alive on the planet would be devoured and anything to come within its gravitational pull would be consumed as well.