Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

I adjust the broad hat that Ibrahim gave me to shield me from the scorching sun. It’s still abysmally hot out here, but at least with this I’m not getting burned. I try to just focus on laying pipe through the desert, but the job is too easy. It gives me too much time to think. It’s letting my mind take me to places that I don’t want to go.

The first three days in Somalia have made the Djibouti solar field installation feel like a day at the beach. Evan and I got put on pipe duty. The first hour or so was fun. I sat in the bed of one of the pickups while Ibrahim drove cross-country away from the ocean. I kept my eyes aimed backwards as we bumped across the rocky landscape. The ground behind us boiled and transformed into the thick pipeline that would carry fresh water into the desert. Evan was on sentry duty, sitting in the cab and making sure we didn’t get ambushed.

Once the novelty wore off, it was pure grind. It doesn’t take many twiggy shrubs and rocks before they all look the same. When Evan and I switched roles, sentry duty wasn’t any better. We’re in the absolute middle of nowhere, so there’s not much to watch for. The sentry overlay makes anything made of metal show up glowing red, even when it’s behind other objects, but the only time that happened was when we came within sight of a town, where we’d see all their knives, tools, and machinery light up. I saw a few small arms, pistols and rifles, but nothing moving like someone was carrying it, and nothing military. Nothing worth reporting over the everpresent link to my family in my ear.

The upside of the earpiece is that we’ve had a decently engaging conversation going on the whole time while we’ve been working. My sibs are pretty funny when you get them out into the real world. Marc has actually been more of a source of enjoyment than annoyance. He tells these long, winding, but surprisingly entertaining stories that do a good job of passing the hours. We’ve developed so many inside jokes that I couldn’t count them. Well, I could, I’d just just have to scan back through my logs.

It feels good to be a part of all of this. Part of this vision to save the world. Part of this family.

Dammit.

I don’t want to be a cog in this murdering bastard’s plans. I want to kill him.

He killed Mom.

But we’re doing so much good. He’s doing so much good. I’ve never seen anyone work as hard as he does. That small mountain of nanobots he has must take monumental concentration to wield, but he’s the first person up in the mornings and the last one down when we finish our days. Never complaining, never showing fatigue. Just smiling, encouraging, and being the kind of dad that I always wished I had growing up.

Half a million people in Djibouti have practically unlimited clean water and power available to them now. I don’t know how many people here in Somalia we’ve helped so far, but by the time we’re through, we’ll have tripled the amount of usable farmland in the country. Maybe Father’s right. With abundant food, water, and power available, maybe the people here and everywhere else will ease off on killing each other. It seems like a good theory anyway.

And this is just the start of it. He’s been talking about other trips for next year. Decontaminating the ground water in Afghanistan, filtering the Mekong river in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, spreading clean water all over Southeast Asia. Fending off the otherwise inevitable famine that the river’s pollution will cause sooner or later. He’s even talking about converting the great Pacific garbage patch into a bunch of floating resort islands.

And this trip is just the tip of the iceberg. The Butler Institute is going to solve resource scarcity with nanomining, create new drugs with nanochemistry that will go beyond the wildest dreams of conventional medicine, build self-maintaining roads to everywhere with solar-powered vehicles that never emit a particle of pollution. A golden age for all of humanity. Climate change will be reversed as forests and grasslands spring up where deserts now dominate. And for those who find the perfected earth too boring, the nanobots will lead us into space with colonies on the moon and Mars.

How can I kill him? How can I punish the world for a crime against just Mom and me?

But how can I not?

So now I’m bumping along in the back of a pickup with too little to keep my mind off of what I don’t want to consider. Why can’t my mind just shut up? Why am I wrestling with a murder that I’m not even sure I can even commit?

Maybe I was wrong anyway. Maybe he just went to Denver to talk to her, and she just happened to get killed in a traffic accident that same day. Maybe he wasn’t even in Denver to see her. There’s other business he could have had there. I could have misunderstood his notes. He never admitted that he killed her.

Right?

No.

Dammit.

Does it even matter?

Of course it does.

I hate this. I hate him.

He’s my father, and not just by blood now.

I might love him.

I’ll let him live.

No.

He needs to die.

No.

“Hey, did you guys hear the one about the programmer that couldn’t leave the shower?” Father’s voice comes in through the earpiece.

A collective groan from my siblings.

“The instructions on the shampoo said lather, rinse, and repeat,” he says. I can almost see his crooked smile. “So he got stuck in an infinite loop.”

A bigger groan. A couple of chuckles.

How can I kill a dad like that?

I could let him live.

Maybe one day, I can even learn to forgive.