Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

BUILD(SOLAR)

Building solar panels is so boring.

BUILD(SOLAR)

Super boring.

BUILD(SOLAR)

Just one panel after another. No shade, since I need to keep moving around to get line of sight on each new panel. Nothing interesting going on. Forty-seven more to go in my section before I get to where Jeff’s panels start. Forty-five. I should have worn a hat. I put sunblock on this morning, but I’m sure my neck is burned. Forty more. I free up a few bots from the construction routine, enough to form an eye to look at myself. Is my face getting red? Thirty now. If I get burned I’m going to be pissed. Twenty. Andrea finishes one row and starts another. Ten more. Five. One.

Done.

I look at the neat rows and can’t see where my section ends and Jeff’s begins. Perfect. It’s satisfying to get a job this big done, even if the grunt work sucks.

Jeff is done too and trying to glide back to the road, but the ground is too rough and he keeps taking stumbling steps. He looks like he’s about to collapse. I walk over to give him a hand, but he waves me off. I walk next to him, ready to reach out if he falls. The rest of the sibs look tired too, except Andrea. She’s as bright and cheerful as ever. All that yoga and dance, this must seem like nothing to her. Chad’s weight training gives him muscles, but no stamina. He’s as dogged out as the rest of us.

Father walks out into the middle of the field, distributing a generous load of maintainer bots for all the panels. Another big chunk of his massive stash of bots disappear as he rotates in place, directing his gaze across the rocky plain. A truck drives by, kicking up dust everywhere, but not a speck of it settles onto any of the solar collectors. Fascinating. I should look at the code for those maintenance algorithms some time.

“I’m heading over to build the primary pipe and transmission lines,” Father announces as he comes back toward us. “Chad has the procedures to start the full production test here. Please assist him as needed. I want to have this all wrapped up by the end of the day.”

He and one of the guides—Ahmed, I think?—climb into the dump truck without waiting for a reply. They roll slowly down the road toward the city. As they move, a massive six-foot pipe begins to materialize from nothing alongside the road. Foot by foot it grows as it follows them, connecting the desalination plant to wherever they’re driving. We all watch them until they’re lost in the dust.

Ibrahim, Kofi, and Bashir start unloading lunch from the back of the van, another round of the little fried meat and veggie pies. They’re still good the second day in a row. Maybe we can get food like this in the cafeteria, now that my family knows it exists.

Getting the production test ready takes all afternoon. Check and double-check everything. Verify each pod works. Make sure there are no leaks. We have to rewire a few solar panels because Marc laid down the wrong gauge of wire in one section, but other than that it goes pretty smoothly. It’s almost sundown now, just waiting for the go-ahead from Father to kick off the whole operation.

Chad talks into the radio earbud he’s been using all afternoon to report our progress. “Are you ready, Father?”

Most of my sibs are already wearing their earpieces, but I’ve been procrastinating. I get enough Marc chatter without him having a direct line to my ear. But I do want to know how this test goes, so I pop mine in.

“Nearly there,” Father’s voice says. “Just another minute or two.”

We all wait impatiently. It’s a very long two minutes. Then a longer three more.

“Ready,” Father finally says. “Fire it up.” You are reading on novelceo dot com, the official source.

Chad reaches out to the control panel and pushes the main power lever forward. The pipes running across the floors and along the walls gurgle and moan as they fill and merge and push water into the massive main pipe. We all look anxiously at the large gauges installed on the wall. The needles move up through the white range, then into the green section where they stop just before they hit the yellow zone.

“We got it,” Chad announces. “Thirty-eight thousand gallons per minute, throughput at eighty percent of maximum.”

“Excellent,” Father’s voice says. “Right where it should be. Wait a bit and let me see what it looks like when it arrives on my end.”

I do some math in my head. That’s just over a hundred and ten gallons a day for everyone in the city. Plenty for everyone. Plenty for farming, too. Not bad for a couple of days’ work.