Kurt stared at Marchetti. “You can call it the planet Mars, for all I care. I’m not with the IRS or anyone else who wants to tax you or question your sovereignty—or your sanity, for that matter. But I am a man with a problem and good reason to believe you’re the cause.”
Marchetti looked stunned. “Me? Problem? Those two words don’t often go together.”
Kurt stared until Marchetti stopped fidgeting.
“What kind of problem?” the billionaire asked.
Kurt pulled a capped vial from his breast pocket. It contained the slushy mix of soot, water and microbots that Gamay had given him.
“Tiny little machines,” he said. “Designed by you, meant to do God knows what, and found on a burned-up boat that’s missing three crew members.”
Marchetti took the vial and lowered the rose-colored glasses. “Machines?”
“Microbots,” Kurt replied.
“In this vial?”
Kurt nodded. “Your design. Unless someone’s been filing patents in your name.”
“But it can’t be.”
Marchetti seemed positively baffled. Kurt could see he would have to prove it.
“You have equipment on board that can look at this?”
Marchetti nodded.
“Then let’s go for a reality check and remove any doubt.”
Five minutes later Kurt, Joe and Leilani had taken an elevator down to the main deck, which Marchetti called the zero deck because the decks beneath it had negative numbers and those above it had positive ones. They walked to a line of parked golf carts, climbed into an extended six-seater and drove off toward the front tip of the island. Matson was left behind, and Nigel remained on the helipad, pretending to work on the helicopter.
Their travels took them across the island, an island that seemed almost deserted.
“What’s your compliment?” Kurt asked.
“Usually fifty, but this month we have only ten on board.”
“Fifty?” Kurt had expected him to say a thousand. He looked around. The sounds of construction reached them from various spots, but Kurt did not see a single worker or even hear voices.
“Who’s doing all the work?”
“Total automation,” Marchetti said.
He pulled to a stop beside a recessed section. He pointed.
Kurt saw sparks jump where things were being welded, heard the sound of rivets being hammered and high-powered screwdrivers turning, but he saw no one. After a few more welding sparks, something moved. An object the size of a vacuum cleaner, with three arms and an arc welder on a fourth appendage, scurried to a ladder.
The machine made the same sudden awkward movements as the robots on an assembly line, jerky but exacting. Robots might be precise, Kurt thought, but they still had no sense of style.
As the machine finished the welds, it retracted two arms and attached itself to one post of the ladder. Gripping on with a motorized clamp, it began to rise. When it reached the deck a few feet from Kurt, it released itself and scurried on down the road.
A smaller machine followed it.
“My workers,” Marchetti said. “I have seventeen hundred robots of different sizes and designs doing most of the construction.”
“Free-range robots,” Kurt noted.
“Oh yes, they can go anywhere on the island,” Marchetti boasted.
Halfway down the path, the robots were joined by several others, forming a little convoy heading somewhere.
“Must be break time,” Joe said, chuckling.
“Actually, it is,” Marchetti said. “Not like a person’s break, but they’re programmed to watch their own power levels. When they run low, they return to the power nodes and plug themselves in. Once they’re charged up, they go back to work. It’s pretty much a twenty-four/seven operation.”
“What if they have an accident?” Joe asked.
“If they break down, they send out a distress signal, and other robots come and get them. They take them to the repair shop, where they get fixed and sent back on the line.”
“Who tells them what to do?” Kurt asked.
“A master program runs them all. They get instructions downloaded through Wi-Fi. They report progress to the central computer, which holds all of Aqua-Terra’s specs and drawings. It also tracks progress and makes adjustments. A second set of smaller robots check on the quality level.”
“Supervisor robots,” Kurt said, almost unable to contain a chuckle.
“Yeah,” Marchetti said, “in a way, but without all that labor/management strife.”
Marchetti restarted the golf cart, and moments later they were back on foot, three decks down, and entering his lab. The sprawling space was a mixture of plush couches covered in brightly colored patent leather, steel walls showing a bit of condensation, and blinking computers and screens. Everywhere screens.
Soft blue light bathed the room, filtering in from a huge circular window, front and center. On the other side of that window, fish swam and the light danced.
“We’re below the waterline,” Kurt noted, gazing at the huge aquarium-like view port.
“Twenty feet,” Marchetti said. “I find the light soothing and very conducive to the thinking process.”
“Apparently not conducive to neatness,” Kurt noted, seeing how the place was a mess.
Junk lay piled everywhere, along with clothes and food trays. A couple dozen books were spread about a table, some opened, some closed and stacked precariously like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. In a far corner a trio of the welding robots sat dormant.
“A clean desk signals an unhealthy mind,” Marchetti said as he carefully extracted a drop of water from the vial, placed it on a slide and took the slide over to a large square machine that sucked the slide in and began to hum.
“That would make you one of the healthiest people around,” Kurt mumbled, moving a stack of papers from a chair and sitting down.
Marchetti ignored him and turned back to the machine. Seconds later a representation of the water drop appeared on a flat screen above Marchetti’s desk.
“Increase magnification,” Marchetti said, apparently talking to the machine.
The image changed repeatedly until it looked like a satellite view of an island chain.
“Again,” Marchetti told the computer. “Focus on section 142. Magnification eleven hundred.”
The machine hummed, and a new picture appeared, this time it showed four of the little spiderlike things clustered around something.
Marchetti’s mouth gaped.
“Go in closer,” Kurt said.
Looking concerned, Marchetti took a seat at the terminal. Using the mouse and the keyboard, he zoomed in. One of the spiders appeared to be moving.
“This just can’t be,” Marchetti mumbled.
“Look familiar?”
“Like long-lost children,” Marchetti said. “Identical to my design, except …”
“Except what?”
“Except they can’t be mine.”
“Here we go,” Kurt said, waiting for all the denials and talk of preventative measures that should have worked. “Why not?” he asked. “Why can’t they be yours?”
“Because I never made any.”
Kurt hadn’t expected that.
“They’re moving,” Leilani noted, pointing to the screen.
Marchetti turned and magnified the screen again. “They’re feeding.”
“What do you mean they’re feeding? Feeding on what?”
Marchetti scratched his head, then zoomed in again. “Small organic proteins,” he said.
“Why would a tiny robot want to eat an organic molecule?”
“Because it’s hungry,” Marchetti said. He turned from the machine.
“Forgive me for asking, but why would a robot be hungry?” Kurt added.
“Here, on my island,” Marchetti explained, “the larger robots get to plug in. But if you’re going to make bots that are independent, they have to be able to power up one way or another. These little guys have several options. Those lines on their backs that look like microchips are actually tiny solar collectors. But because the independent bot has other needs, they have to be able to get sustenance from the surrounding environment. If these microbots follow my design, they should be able to absorb organic nutrients from the seawater and break them down. They should also be able to process dissolved metals and plastics and other things found in the sea, both to sustain themselves and reproduce.”