“That’s right, Ronny. I’ve got my team modifying some broadband wireless routers to transmit the signal. It should work. We have to hope the bots don’t get wise to our plan.”
Roger had finally done something that might help. Oh, he knew he didn’t do it himself. But his project had. He had put the right team together, found the right experts when they needed them, and acquired the right resources. It had worked at least enough to offer some hope. The first hope he had felt in the months since he saw the intel on what was left of Europe and how people were living — no, surviving — there.
“We should use this IBot thing and start a plan of action and go after these things,” General Mitchell suggested.
“Well, we can’t mass produce them fast enough for an all-out invasion. But we believe we can produce enough to set up a perimeter over four or five redoubt areas within the next month,” Roger said.
“A month! Those things will have eaten more than a hundred cities by then!” the secretary of defense shouted. “We found out where the major tube was headed; it dropped square on Oakland. Now they’re spreading on the west coast as well!”
“Actually, a hundred and twenty-five cities at the current rate of growth,” Roger replied. “But I’m sorry, sir, that is best we can do for now. We can choose the redoubts and start evacuating everybody to them now.”
“Then how long will it take to manufacture enough of these, uh, IBots did you call them? How long will it take to make enough of them to go after the invaders?”
“Current rate of growth versus our manufacturing capabilities suggest perhaps a few years, sir,” Roger admitted with a sigh. “We’re behind the eight ball. But it will help with local defense. Just getting the darn things to slow down is a miracle.”
“Don’t forget, Mr. President, that this is a defense mechanism and we just now learned how the bots communicate,” Ronnie added. “We might develop new technologies and strategies sooner. But right now, this is the best chance we’ve got to slow them down.”
“I guess this is something. So, Kevin, you and Jim and Vicki get the rest of the Joint Chiefs together and determine which are the most strategic redoubts and let’s get this move started now.” For so long he had been sitting idle with little hope and no plan of action. At least now they had something. It wasn’t much, but not-zero was entirely different from zero.
“Richard.” Jeff handed him the last of the strapping material. “I can’t tell you how grateful Sara Jo and I are to you and Helena. We… uh… we would…”
“You’d be dead, Jeff,” Richard said emotionlessly. “You’d be dead, your wife would be dead and your kids would be dead. Hand me the RoboGrips… uh, no the big ones.” Jeff handed him the grips, trying not to shake his head over Richard’s entire lack of tact. Richard tightened down the last of the lag bolts through the bot’s midsection to the waterwheel and then he tightened the strapping material down. “There. That should just about do it.” He crawled back down the ladder to the platform below the waterwheel. The cool mist of the waterfall soaked his skin refreshingly.
“Well, we’re running out of baby formula for Precious. I know there is some canned milk here but I don’t know if that’s good enough for a baby.” Jeff backed down the steps off the platform looking at Richard, who was paying him little attention.
“Okay let’s see if this works,” Richard said, ignoring the problem of Jeff’s baby. He tapped a few keys on his laptop and stopped the IBot transmission to the bot. The damaged bot stopped handshaking with the IBot and resumed its functions. Its damaged propulsion drive kicked on.
The waterwheel that Richard and Jeff had strapped the bot to began to whirl forward as the bot propelled itself. Richard watched the torque encoders and rotation speed on his laptop to make sure the bot’s propulsion was not too much for the waterwheel. The wheel kicked up to several hundred revolutions per minute and then its speed topped out against the gear and bearing friction. The generator was now producing power at about an order of magnitude higher level than it did with just the underground river turning the wheel. Richard was pleased.
“That was clever, Richard,” Jeff said watching the man in awe.
“Yes, I know. I am very clever. I am not friendly, I am not a people-person. But I am very clever.”
“So what do you think about Precious?” Jeff asked.
“Precious? Oh, the infant. Yes, yes. I calculated weeks ago that you would be out of formula about a week ago. I’m surprised it lasted this long,” Richard said nonchalantly.
“Uh, we’ve been mixing it weaker than normal.” Jeff said embarrassed and nervous.
“Jesus Christ, you idiot,” Richard snapped. “This is the most important part of an infant’s development and you could be doing major harm by not feeding it properly! It would have made more sense to use it all up at full strength! You’re making the sort of mistake I’d expect out of some third world moron!”
Richard looked at his laptop one last time and checked the parameters of the generator and the waterwheel. He looked up at the wheel that was now just a blur. The water from the fall was spraying forward off the top of it each time the bot or the counterweight on the other side of the wheel splashed through it.
“Good.”
“What?” Jeff could never tell if Richard was talking to himself or addressing him.
“Come on.” He led Jeff back up the mine shaft to the edge of the corridor where most of the long duration dry goods and foodstuffs were stored. “Here, take these. And grow up.”
He handed Jeff a large storage box with a printout taped to the top of it. The printout was a list of the nutritional information from the back of one of the destroyed baby formula canisters with an arrow from each to an ingredient in the box. At the bottom of the page was the recipe and cooking instructions for the homemade baby formula.
Jeff looked in the box, shaking his head at the ingredients. There was a twenty pound bag of long grain dried rice, a quart bottle of sunflower cooking oil, about a hundred single-serving containers of pancake syrup from several different restaurants and hotels, two large Ziploc bags full of sun-dried persimmons, two Ziploc bags of shelled pecans, a restaurant salt shaker full of salt, and a ceramic bowl and stick thing that Jeff assumed must be the mortar and pestle described in the cooking instructions.
“This will work?” Jeff looked from the box back to Richard several times.
“Of course it will. It’s just simple cooking and no chemistry. Even you should be able to understand it. I started to add a yeast culture but you’d screw it up and poison that poor baby.” Richard looked annoyed. “She’ll do fine with what you have there.”
“Amazing,” Jeff whispered to himself and hefted the box with both arms. “Thank you.”
“You should ask for things when you need them or learn to do things for yourself. Now leave me alone I have work to do.”
“Richard, you gonna be up all de goddamn night again?” Helena startled him as she put her hand on his shoulder and looked over it at the computer screen. Since he had gotten the generator going at bot power, the X ray and electron microscope machines were up and running and Richard hadn’t slept much in at least a week. Helena was glad though about the better power situation because it also meant they could turn the electric heaters up. The mine stayed a constant sixty-five degrees, which she thought was way too cold for the babies. But having grown up in St. Petersburg it was short-sleeve weather for her, so she was typically wearing nothing but shorts and a tank top around the mine.