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Chapter 94 - Self Configuring Modular Robot[]
"...only way to see, is to try, the...
...best way to try, is to do." Elizabeth Ng stated, "besides, once I realized I was stuck here, I moved some of my experiments to the outer system."
"Some?" First Prince Hanse Davion was still getting used to his family insisting on 'healthier eating habits' and more frequent stress relief-his future daughter-in-law's blunt assertion was NOT good for his stress level. "What kind of 'experiments"?
'IT wasn't anything too big, about two metric tons worth." She said, "On an unused, uninhabited moonlet in the outer system, I think 'tis 'bedevere' moon??"
"What did you do?" he scowled.
She glanced at Arthur.
"We set up a second test of a new industrial type." Arthur said smoothly, "I was originally going to test it at Lackland in the Feltvelt region, but Lizzie's stuck here until we're sure jump travel is safe for her."
"Bedevere...Bedevere?"
"Airless rock orbiting Lancelot-the second gas giant." Elizabeth stated, "it's the sixth moon out. Mostly light metallic, ices, and frozen gas, like the Snark project's site."
"Uh...huh..."
"It's MY inheritance, Dad, you promised?" Arthur pressed, "We just...started working on it a little earlier."
"WHAT did you DO?" Hanse demanded.
"Self replication industrial automation." Elizabeth stated, "First program series was replicating the assemblers, then specializing them, we've moved to final product production. I mean, it's two thousand kilometers across with thirty percent earth gee, so there were bound to be dense materials below the surface and lo-and-behold, there are."
"Elizabeth, Arthur...what kind of atrocity have you two got going on that moon?" Hanse demanded.
"Well...we built a second supercollider-this time a lot faster because Liz learned stuff with her project at Snark, It's producing Exotic matter now, and we're building segments to really test her conjecture about breaking the thirty light year barrier...which we're going to have to assemble somewhere else, because I know we don't leave big open doors into the nation's heartland or Penny's Pretty Explosions where they can do real damage...which is why we're in here, asking you to...help?"
"Segments of what?"
"Everything but the jump core analogues." Liz asserted, "you can't transport tuned core material by jumpship, and I haven't figured out what Alcubierre was talking about regarding space-warping, at least, not yet."
Hanse mused silently for a few minutes, then, "Elizabeth?"
"Excellency?"
"Unless I miss my guess, and you can tell me if I'm off, but your 'segments', they require tuned germanium?"
"With some selenium and Lithium for buffering, and titanium lacing for strength." she said, "Why?"
"How hard would it be to turn those into jump cores? If you made them here...if you had the materials to work with?"
"well, we've got the materials...it wouldn't be hard-why?"
"I think your bar for measuring 'hard' has been somewhat warped." the First Prince told her, adding, "Wait, I know it's warped. Can you turn it into a shipyard?"
"For the Navy?" Liz asked.
"Yeah."
"Uh...yeah. It's the same stuff we fabbed up back home for Pat's Corvette fleet, only I was able to refine-problem is workforce." she half-stumbled over her words. "Need a Workforce who can handle micro-gee and program in Fursnake."
"That's the coding language you invented for the Predators?"
She nodded.
"When you say 'handle' is that like a normal spacer industries handle, or something else?" He asked.
"Do you have any rockjack populations?" she asked.
"Rockjack...you mean spacer-borns, Belters?"
"Yeah. That's my bar for 'handle it'."
The First Prince turned to Ardan Sortek, who shrugged, "Cambiano's got a Belter community, they're somewhat integral to our transport infrastructure...The House is 'Knight-Lenovo', Count Felix..."
"Call him. Having him come here, with a team of...volunteers." Hanse turned to the kids, "You want your science project, build me a shipyard and you'll get it."
"We kinda needed to do that anyway." Arthur observed.
"Then it's a deal...you built a supercollider?"
Elizabeth shrugged, "Compound interest and geometric growth-the first wave of machines builds to a population level, shifts gears to building specialty devices, which build the project, and then shifts to maintaining the physical plant. Yvonne's got some great designs for artificial photosynthesis generators for oxygen designed to run thermal emissions and off-spectral light, even radio-waves to really boost the life support..."
"That sounds more like a Sierra project."
"Yeah, but Yvonne and Penny cracked the chemistry..."