Von Neumann’s War

The waterwheel that Richard and Jeff had strapped the bot to began to whirl forward as the bot propelled itself. Richard watched the torque encoders and rotation speed on his laptop to make sure the bot’s propulsion was not too much for the waterwheel. The wheel kicked up to several hundred revolutions per minute and then its speed topped out against the gear and bearing friction. The generator was now producing power at about an order of magnitude higher level than it did with just the underground river turning the wheel. Richard was pleased.

“That was clever, Richard,” Jeff said watching the man in awe.

“Yes, I know. I am very clever. I am not friendly, I am not a people-person. But I am very clever.”

“So what do you think about Precious?” Jeff asked.

“Precious? Oh, the infant. Yes, yes. I calculated weeks ago that you would be out of formula about a week ago. I’m surprised it lasted this long,” Richard said nonchalantly.

“Uh, we’ve been mixing it weaker than normal.” Jeff said embarrassed and nervous.

“Jesus Christ, you idiot,” Richard snapped. “This is the most important part of an infant’s development and you could be doing major harm by not feeding it properly! It would have made more sense to use it all up at full strength! You’re making the sort of mistake I’d expect out of some third world moron!”

Richard looked at his laptop one last time and checked the parameters of the generator and the waterwheel. He looked up at the wheel that was now just a blur. The water from the fall was spraying forward off the top of it each time the bot or the counterweight on the other side of the wheel splashed through it.

“Good.”

“What?” Jeff could never tell if Richard was talking to himself or addressing him.

“Come on.” He led Jeff back up the mine shaft to the edge of the corridor where most of the long duration dry goods and foodstuffs were stored. “Here, take these. And grow up.”

He handed Jeff a large storage box with a printout taped to the top of it. The printout was a list of the nutritional information from the back of one of the destroyed baby formula canisters with an arrow from each to an ingredient in the box. At the bottom of the page was the recipe and cooking instructions for the homemade baby formula.

Jeff looked in the box, shaking his head at the ingredients. There was a twenty pound bag of long grain dried rice, a quart bottle of sunflower cooking oil, about a hundred single-serving containers of pancake syrup from several different restaurants and hotels, two large Ziploc bags full of sun-dried persimmons, two Ziploc bags of shelled pecans, a restaurant salt shaker full of salt, and a ceramic bowl and stick thing that Jeff assumed must be the mortar and pestle described in the cooking instructions.

“This will work?” Jeff looked from the box back to Richard several times.

“Of course it will. It’s just simple cooking and no chemistry. Even you should be able to understand it. I started to add a yeast culture but you’d screw it up and poison that poor baby.” Richard looked annoyed. “She’ll do fine with what you have there.”

“Amazing,” Jeff whispered to himself and hefted the box with both arms. “Thank you.”

“You should ask for things when you need them or learn to do things for yourself. Now leave me alone I have work to do.”

* * *

“Richard, you gonna be up all de goddamn night again?” Helena startled him as she put her hand on his shoulder and looked over it at the computer screen. Since he had gotten the generator going at bot power, the X ray and electron microscope machines were up and running and Richard hadn’t slept much in at least a week. Helena was glad though about the better power situation because it also meant they could turn the electric heaters up. The mine stayed a constant sixty-five degrees, which she thought was way too cold for the babies. But having grown up in St. Petersburg it was short-sleeve weather for her, so she was typically wearing nothing but shorts and a tank top around the mine.

“Probably. I think I’m on to something here,” he said, continuing to stare at the X-ray image on the monitor. He had been saying that for the last five days.

“What is dat?”

“I think it’s the replication code of the alien bot.” He stroked his beard and yawned.

“Here, drink dis.” Helena handed him a cup of hot coffee.

“Thanks, dear.” Richard paused and sipped the coffee.

“You did a good ting with de baby’s milk, you know,” she said, sitting down beside him. “Little Precious, she took right to it.”

“Uh,” Richard just grunted.

“You tink you gonna save de world with dis? What are you gonna do with dis replication code thing?” She watched him for a moment silently.

“I dunno,” he said. “But it looks like these things can build almost anything. They can manipulate this invisible force field of theirs down to a molecular level and build, well, anything from the molecule up.”

“What, you mean if dey had a bunch of wood dey could build a goddamn house or something?” Helena asked. “Dat’d be nice.”