Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

I keep everyone out of the plane’s bedroom to cover for Louise until it’s her turn to get her implant turned back on. When she’s up next, I sneak some paper towels to her from the bathroom so she can clean up. She gives me a grateful smile.

“Might want to take precautions for the trip back,” I whisper to her.

“Yeah, I’ll reduce my dosage and taper off a couple of days before. Should help with the symptoms. Thanks for everything. Still secret keepers?”

“Yeah.”

She heads to the main cabin and keeps it together enough that no one seems to suspect anything. Father gets started on her implant and a few minutes later she’s all smiles.

Junkie.

“Good, good!” Father declares. “Now, does everyone remember our goals?”

“Preserve life—” Chad starts.

“No, sorry,” Father interrupts. “That’s always laudable, but I was referring to our more specific goals here in Djibouti.”

“Right,” Chad says, making sure he answers again before any of the rest of us have a chance. “Power generation and a large desalination plant for the capital city.”

“I still don’t see why we can’t just dig them more wells,” Marc complains. “That’s easier.”

I shake my head. We covered this a hundred times in the training sessions this summer.

“Who wants to remind Marc of the groundwater situation?” Father asks.

“There isn’t any source of new water coming into the groundwater supply for most of the year,” Evan says. “No rivers, hardly any rain outside of the rainy season. If we dig more wells to supply water to the half million people in the capital, we’d empty the wells in all the surrounding areas.”

“Very good, Evan. Now, there have already been some attempts to supply the city with fresh water through desalination. Unfortunately, the existing infrastructure only supplies enough water for about a quarter of the city’s inhabitants that way. Conventional desalination methods are also energy intensive, which is a problem. Tell us why please, Noah.”

“Their power generation is either geothermal, which they can’t scale up, or petroleum based,” I answer.

“Right!” Father declares. “So, to increase their power and water production, they’d have to correspondingly increase both their pollution output and their dependence on their neighbors across the gulf. Investment from further east has been their only other alternative, but that comes with strings that create unsustainable geopolitical situations. But back to our current mission. What’s the other big problem here that we’ll be helping with? Andrea?”

Andrea waves her hands and a stick figure image appears. A man with a pickaxe flashes then reappears with a red circle with a slash through it. Father chuckles.

“Well put. No work. A lack of jobs. Most of the available jobs are service work, many of them involved with running the port. Due to the lack of local industry or agriculture options, unemployment numbers are nearly fifty percent in the city. The desalination plant will provide water that can be used to kickstart agricultural projects and salty sludge byproducts that can be leveraged into commercial salt production as well as the extraction of valuable trace minerals. Our gift of cost-free power production will allow electrification of the entire city. There are still significant parts that have never been wired. With abundant and cheap energy and water, there will be strong incentives for local infrastructure efforts, private investment, and new business development.”

I wish he’d get on with it. We all remember this from the training sessions, except obviously Marc, and explaining it one more time won’t make a difference for him.

“One last reminder,” Father says. “Most of the people here speak some combination of Somali, Afar, Arabic, or French. But when we talk with our guides, and with any other English speakers, what two subjects will we absolutely not discuss?”

“Religion and politics,” all of us except Andrea answer in unison.

“Good. I’d hate to have this trip cut short due to misunderstandings.” He smiles his crooked smile. “Now for today: we have some preparations to see to. I will focus on growing my cloud so that I have enough nanobots to build the desalination plant superstructure tomorrow. You will all bring your clouds to as large a size as you feel you can handle. The construction algorithms scale well with the size of your clouds, so more bots will mean faster work and more time to enjoy the trip and play tourist. We’ll spend the morning at a site that has all the necessary minerals to grow as large as you feel you can. When you’ve hit capacity, you are free to explore the city with your guides. We’ll split into four pairs and each of our guides will have a vehicle, so you can head back to town as soon as you and your buddy are done building up your clouds.”

I lock eyes with Evan, and we both nod. The girls do the same with each other. Jeff sighs and looks at Marc. Marc smiles back, oblivious to his brother’s disdain. Chad’s grin tells me exactly how thrilled he is for more quality suck-up time with Father.

“We have our groupings,” Father says. “Come along now, children. I’ll introduce you to our guides.”