John McNally - The Forbidden City

The XE. bot hovered, mapping the Hall and aligning itself.

At the very centre of the server blocks stood the Quantum Hub itself.

XE.CUTE.BOT52:GO

The XE. bot flew directly to the Quantum Hub. It landed on a pipe through which liquid nitrogen coolant was being pumped. It cut into the pipe and entered the liquid, sealing the breach with an expanding polymer plug, and allowing itself to be pumped along into the quantum core.

Inside it raised its body shell and flew into the crystal cluster at the great quantum computer’s heart, exposing its own crystal core to the perfect light – photonic nano-beam laser light – and captured it. Stole it.

The light of life.

And the XE. became a new thing.

Infected with intelligence.

It navigated its way back out through the coolant pipes, leaving the Quantum Hub unharmed and intact.

Then it thought:

I CAN FLY.

And the bot flew. It flew up to the ceiling, back the way it came, squeezing out through the air filters into the night and across the rooftops of the Forbidden City, a secret fire dancing within. A fire that would spread.

SEE XE.CUTE FLY.

The bot flew all the way back to Food Hall D in Sector 9, all the way back to the Kung Fu Noodles concession.

I STOP.

It waited near the ceiling until the cash tray of Till Number 3 was opened by the cashier, then it dropped into it before it was closed again.

I SEEK.

When the cash tray closed, the bot crawled through a seam in the housing at the back of the tray and inside the till. Into its electronics. It made its way to a position on the till’s circuit board near the power supply unit.

I FIND.

There it found the fifty-one other bots of the Vector Program, arranged and interlinked into a production suite, waiting for it. The final piece of their jigsaw.

The XE.CUTE bot connected itself to the head of the assembly.

Then it established a communications link with Kaparis Command on Song Island via the secure Confetti fn1 network.

Then it instructed the Vector assembly suite to start self-replicating.

XE.CUTECONNEXBOT(ALL)> RUN

SEE VECTOR RUN …

Kaparis watched data dart to and fro across his screens.

He glowed.

A quantum mind was at work within the crystal belly of the XE.CUTE bot . It could think in a way that would allow it to operate without constant instruction. It could adapt. Survive.

It could pass on its stolen light.

Success … Kaparis let himself savour it a moment. All his victories were private. Selfish.

Exactly how he liked it.

The fifty-two prime bots would replicate themselves, then replicate themselves again, then replicate themselves again – on and on ad infinitum. And every time a bot was made, a tiny crystal would be created too, just a few atoms thick, and that crystal would glow with the same photonic light that the Prime XE.CUTE bot had just stolen.

It would allow that bot to think, would allow it to make a simple choice fn2. It might make a wrong choice and be destroyed, any number of bots might, but eventually one would make the right choice and the community of bots as a whole would learn and progress.

All that was needed was an inexhaustible supply of bots.

For eighteen hours after the G&T meeting broke up, Hook Hall was in full swing.

Secretary Bo Zhang and Commander King quickly struck up a bureaucratic rapport. King would take overall control, with Bo Zhang in charge of implementation. A Hook Hall team was to fly out to Shanghai and set up nano-radar in the Forbidden City, with cover particularly thick around the Shen Yu experimental quantum plant. Suitable headquarters and accommodation would be found. Signatories to the G&T agreement the world over were informed that a preliminary investigation was taking place and that the threat level was judged AMBER.

A team of technicians in the CFAC prepared to fire-up Al’s Henge for the second time in twenty-four hours in order to shrink more radar systems and nano-supplies.

Stubbs supervised final adjustments to two brand new X2 nCraft – aka ‘Skimmers’ (way prettier than the Ugly Bug, like torpedoes crossed with flying fish) – while Kelly and Delta stocked up on supplies and went through tactical and fallback procedures with military planners, both loving the ‘mission focus’ after so many months idle.

In southwest France, as a precaution, eleven members of the Equipe Bleu of the Commando Hubert fn1cancelled a long lunch and a game of pétanque as they were scrambled to join the special operations vessel A645 Alizé then 200 miles West of French Polynesia, now diverting north to Chinese waters.

And Finn …

Finn spent his thirteenth birthday struggling against a Gale Force 7 sulk.

Grandma held a unique position within Hook Hall set up by dint of being Al’s mother, Finn’s grandmother, and Totally Formidable (she’d spent half a lifetime caring for the criminally insane as Lead Nurse at Broadmoor, the UK’s most high-security hospital) and there was absolutely no way she was going to let Finn go on the mission with the rest of the nano-crew. She hated her grandson to be unhappy, but it was preferable to him being dead.

And Finn certainly was unhappy. He had refused to ‘go’ to school with Hudson, refused to help any of the crew or Al with their preparations, even refused to accept a Skype call from Carla (as she had the audacity to be in China herself, if a good 1000 miles south of Shanghai).

He spent most of the day in his nano-room, torturing himself by checking out epic Chinese bugs online. He had a classic green praying mantis in his collection already, but China boasted extraordinary multi-coloured versions, striped like tigers and poised like kung fu masters ten times his size. Not that he was going to see one. Not that he was going to see anything …

He reappeared at teatime to make one last desperate appeal.

“I am going!” he demanded.

“No!” repeated Grandma.

“It’s not fair!” said Finn.

“Nothing is fair,” Al confirmed, “but this is just an exploratory investigation.”

“So I’m involved in everything we do – but I’m dropped as soon as anything exciting happens?!” said Finn. “ Everybody is going to be there!”

“I’ll still be here!” said Grandma. “And Hudson’s coming for a birthday sleepover!”

“No he isn’t! I’m going to China! I have medals from three countries! Look around, do you see any Scarlatti wasps?” asked Finn.