Von Neumann’s War

“No, no. If we continue to use biological analogies I would say it’s more like cell division than anything. Somehow this thing here…” Alice highlighted a region of the electron microscope image on her computer screen. “Well, this is the region where I think the biological analog of the nucleus is and where it starts to fission.”

“Fission — you mean it’s radioactive?” Alan asked.

“Alan my boy, I think she means biological fission.” Tom grinned at his colleague.

“Right, I would have never figured this out without examining the twinning bot that we have in the holding area downstairs. We were lucky Shane’s group got that one.” Alice continued to flip through images on her computer screen.

“When the bot was first picked apart that small portion near its center was detected but its purpose was unclear to us,” Roger said.

“Yeah, we saw that. It’s just a solid chunk of material as far as we could tell, ” Alan added, waving his arms around.

“Well, it’s a solid chunk of material, but with some apparently random microscopic hollow ‘tubes’ running through it. I think this is the central location for their reproduction system.”

“We had no clue what it was for. You mean you think you know what it is now… that’s a big improvement.” Roger was excited to have made some progress.

“A big improvement indeed!” Tom agreed. “Do you know what the material is?”

“Well, I’m not completely certain, but at the atomic level it’s common Earthly materials. The material was identified by the folks at NC State.” Alice explained. She pointed at a window on the computer screen, a graph from a vaporization mass spectral analysis. “They took a sample I sent them and put it through spectral analysis. It turned out to be common stuff: carbon, iron, aluminum, titanium, nickel, silicon, trace amounts of cesium, strontium, sodium, lead, and uranium, but mostly aluminum. But, from X rays and electron microscopy of the solid piece, it appears to be some very complex heterogonous material with a structure similar to how a crystal grows but much more compacted and complex. And there are regions within the crystalline structure that are filled with pure elements — heavy elements.”

“By heavy, you mean like uranium, cesium, etc.? Unstable elements?” Tom asked as he peered at the computer monitor.

“Right, most of them appear to be radioactive types, but none of them are decaying as far as I can tell. This is wild and amazingly detailed stuff.” Alice scratched her head.

“So what do you think is going on, Alice?” Roger asked.

“Well, I think that this is the machine’s processor. What we’re calling the brain tube is, I think, mislabeled. This is the core of the machine. The brain tube thing, I think is more like a command and data handling tube or a subprocessor. Somehow I think the brain tube is where external commands are received and stored. But this region here in the center of the bot, this is the real brain. This is what the bot uses to make decisions absent external commands and it’s here where they split.” Alice leaned back in her chair. “But…”

“But what?” Roger didn’t like the uncertain tone of her voice.

“It’s too much for me. I have no idea how the commands are implemented. This is more like DNA than logic gates. Only person I know that ever worked on anything even similar was Dr. Horton at Princeton back before they ran him off.” Alice shook her head. “I’m pushing the limits of what I can do. We could use more help.”

“Well, then why don’t we find this Dr. Horton and bring him in?” Alan asked.

“Why not?” Tom agreed.

“Well, there is your problem,” Alice said with a grimace. “After Richard left Princeton, oh, that was seven or eight years ago, he dropped off the face of the Earth. The only place anybody ever hears from him is on his favorite late night talk radio show.”

“Yeah, okay, what radio show? Maybe we can have them put out a call for him if they’re still broadcasting on the Internet.” Roger didn’t believe that finding somebody would be difficult with the resources available to them. If they had to, the entire FBI could be brought to the task.

“Well, he calls in to that Ret Ball show, the Truth Nationwide, all the time as Megiddo,” Alice said, smiling slightly. “He never realized that his students knew that was him, but it was always obvious to us.”

“Oh my God. You mean that whacko is a real scientist?” Alan asked.

“You’ve heard of him.”

* * *

“Mr. President, the Internet traffic across the country being monitored by the NSA project is turning up some interesting information.” General Mitchell sat down at the conference table in the War Room. He put a jumpdrive into the laptop connected to the flat screen monitors and brought up a map of the country.

“The Internet is just fascinating isn’t it?” the President said.

“What do you mean, sir?” Mitchell asked.