Consolidation Earth
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I pulled up the high-res image and sat staring at it for a long moment, my head in my hands. My scientific training told me that I should attempt to reproduce the experiment, although I already suspected I knew the answer to that. I printed out a paper copy - sometimes these things are easier to study in detail on paper - as well as pored over the electronic version at as high a magnification as the number of pixels would allow. The section where the thing's head was 'eating' my device was blurred by movement, where the macromolecules were bending and stretching even as the SEM did its scan. It was time to call upon the antique communication mechanism known as 'electronic mail', a medium which has been around since the dawn of the network age. Despite there being any number of more sophisticated communication capabilities available, it is still the go-to protocol to communicate with almost anybody on the planet, or off it, at least as far out as the asteroids. I started to compose an email to Ted and Ken. Our orbital habitat runs on Hawaiian time, naturally enough, but Ted and Ken's locations are on the far side of the Pacific and three or five time zones behind mine, so it would still be daylight for them. I was not sure what to write at first, but in the end opted for attaching the high-res image I had captured, adding simply 'You're not going to believe what I've just seen'. The responses were not long in coming. Ken's answer was an ironic 'Oh, I think I will', attaching another high-res image. Before I could even open the attachment, a second email arrived from Ted. 'Oh my god!' he wrote, 'What the hell is that thing? And how did it get there?' I shook my head: I wished I could answer those questions. I opened Ken's image attachment. He too had managed to capture a high-res SEM view of some unknown thing again eating a partially complete nano-device, presumably in his own vacuum chamber. It was superficially similar to the one I manged to image, but there were differences: it used toothed sprockets for locomotion, but they were narrower and larger in diameter than the ones I had seen in my own view. The body in Ken's picture was slightly boxier, but it still had the same spherical head at one end as my version. I wrote more email to Ken and Ted. 'I have no idea what they are. Some speculations: they are a sophisticated nanoscale technology specifically aimed, it seems, at preventing the development of any other nanoscale tech. I strongly suspect they are everywhere, in huge numbers, and therefore they must be capable of reproducing, perhaps self-replicating. I have no idea where they came from, or when they appeared.' Ted's return email simply said: 'Okay. What do we do now?' Ken's response was pragmatic: 'We should replicate these results as many times as we can. just in case this is some kind of imaging defect or weird side-effect. Then alter the experimental conditions and see if we can change the behaviour. Oh, and they need a name.' I thought for a moment, then typed rapidly: 'How about Nano-suppressors?' This met with immediate approval from Ken and Ted. The next few weeks were very busy. All three of us were able to reliably reproduce the results many times in our own labs; nothing we tried seemed to prevent the appearance of a Nano-suppressor at the same point in the build process. We even tried shipping partially complete devices from one laboratory to another, in a evacuated flask, and restarting nano-assembly in a different vacuum chamber. There was a certain amount of fiddly complexity in aligning one partially built device with the electron beams in the other chamber, but the nett result was the same: a Nano-suppressor emerged and ate the guts out of the device. We kept our discovery to ourselves for this period but something like this could not be kept secret for very long. We communicated - by email, mostly, variable orbital delays tended to make real-time audio or video teleconferenced jittery - and speculated on the origin of the Nano-suppressors. Were they some naturally evolved life form just waiting for other nanotech to emerge? Or some human agent determined to prevent nanoscale devices from becoming widely available? Are they an attack from those Expansionists - something they have left behind to hinder us? None of us could imagine that any of these proposals could be true. 'There is another possibility,' Ken wrote in one email exchange, 'They could be the work of non-humans, genuine intelligent aliens, who want to hinder our development, to limit the things that we, the human race, could do'. I found this suggestion chilling, but difficult to argue against as a hypothesis. 'It is time,' I sent in email, 'We are going to need to talk to our respective University's ethics committees. We cannot put that off any longer.' The others agreed; we all knew this day was coming. I composed a formal email to the University of Hawaii’s committee, requesting a meeting and 'guidance on the publication of unexpected results'. Then I set about assembling the mandatory lengthy slide deck which such discussions seem to demand. A week or so later, I found myself standing in a boardroom in front of five senior and august personages, all but one of which were physically present. Such persons are supposed to be independent of the University proper, although I am sure that one person was a Professor Emeritus from the Faculty of Science. I started my pitch; there was an audible gasp when I showed the first of several high-res images of a Nano-suppressor at work, followed by grainy images of the things moving about. I finished my slides with a heartfelt but open-ended request for guidance. The panel chairperson looked at me sternly over steel-rimmed glasses. "This is not a joke, a prank, some kind of a hoax?" she demanded. "No Ma'am," I replied promptly, "Quite definitely not." "And you believe this might represent some kind of attack?" she pressed. "Well, 'believe' is too strong a word," I answered carefully, "But I have difficulty in understanding how these Nano-suppressors are anything other than the result of intelligent intent." I did not actually mention aliens - I thought that was a step too far - although I did stress that these results had been reproduced in other labs elsewhere on and around the planet. The chairperson glanced at her colleagues, including the one of the screen in front of her. I could see the faintest of nods in the room; presumably there was one of the screen too. "Doctor Momoa, I need to ask you to step outside for a few minutes," she said firmly. I moved to comply, folding my laptop and stepping back through the door. I was only outside for a minute, then I was summoned within. "Doctor Momoa, thank you for coming to see us today," the chairperson said, with marginally more warmth than before, "I have to tell you that we are recommending the involvement of government agencies, security services, given the potential threat your discovery implies. So, I suggest you gather whatever it is you think you need for an extended trip and be ready to leave within the hour." I was too shocked to say anything other than: "Yes, Ma'am."
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Part 3