History
and Traditions of the 1st Nanospace Battalion (“The Atomgrabbers”)
In this post, we’ll look at the history and
traditions of the most illustrious of all nanotrooper outfits…the 1st
Nanospace Battalion, also known as the Atomgrabbers.
1.
Nogs
Cadets at the Quantum Corps Academy
are traditionally known as nogs. This is short for noggin, which is what get
beats on by upper classmen. In reality,
a nog is a first-year cadet at the
Academy but in practice, the Atomgrabbers have always referred to their entire
Academy experience as that of a nog.
a. Nogs
are lower than dirt at the Academy. One
of the more memorable traditions is called swarming. Any time a nog is going to a meal at the
commissary or to classes, he travels in a small squad of cadets. The squad is called a swarm. And they have to act
like it as well. The swarm-squad must
stay together, in very close proximity, moving and turning, stopping and
starting as one, like they were glued together.
Failure to move about this way can result in severe discipline…extra
laps around the PT fields, extra push-ups, extra kitchen duty, even extra
homework from class. It’s unnatural,
it’s humiliating and it’s something upper classmen love to enforce.
b.
Another tradition nogs endure is called
a Brownian beating…or just a Brownian. Brownian motion is actually a normal process
at the atomic and molecular scale. Wikipedia
defines Brownian motion as the random motion of particles
suspended in a fluid (a liquid
or a gas)
resulting from their collision with the fast-moving atoms
or molecules
in the gas or liquid.
Once a week, often after Sunday services at the cadet
chapel, nogs undergo a Brownian. In this
event, which often comes suddenly or at random times, nogs are surrounded and
beaten, shoved, kicked and harrassed by upper classmen (atomgrabbers) to
simulate life as an atom. One
atomgrabber is always assigned the duty of making sure the thing doesn’t get
out of hand. In truth, a Brownian is
sort of like a flash mob. Atomgrabbers
can call down a Brownian on an unsuspecting nog at any time…and they do.
c.
A
commonly used term of atomgrabbers is “going
small.” In tactical operations, this
means the grabber is changing his visual field from the macro world of people
and buildings and animals to the nano world of atoms and molecules and tiny
bots. The technology of ANAD is such
that acoustic sounding by ANAD can produce a reasonable image of life at
nanoscale. So going small means the
atomgrabber is changing his view to see what ANAD sees.
For
nogs, ‘going small’ has evolved to mean something a little different. Whenever so ordered by an upper classman, a
nog told to ‘go small’ has to drop to the ground and slither around like a
worm, nose to the ground. The experience
has its roots in the desire of one of the Academy’s first professors to help
his students change perspective, to experience life as an atom. It has evolved, or maybe we should say,
devolved, from that.
2.
SODS
Another tradition at Nog School
involves SODS…the Spacial Orientation and Discrimination Simulator. Perhaps an excerpt from my story Johnny Winger and the Serengeti Factor can
best describe this experience….
Major Jurgen
Kraft rubbed his jaw uneasily as the simulation continued. Johnny Winger had been inside the SODS tank
for better than an hour now; that was unheard of and even the sim techs stirred
nervously as the rookie atomgrabber barreled on. The last time a cadet had spent more than
forty minutes navigating the tank and not crawled out a screaming lunatic had
been several years ago and that poor fellow had washed out at the end of Basic.
Putting a nog into the SODS tank at this point in an atomgrabber’s training
was like giving a snorkel and fins to a ten-year old and telling him to swim
the Atlantic.
Endurance and tenacity like this just wasn’t the norm inside the
training battalion.
Kraft studied the monitor image of
Winger’s determined face and wondered. Just what the hell have I got on my hands
here?
The senior sim tech was a corporal
named Givens, short, chunky, with an annoying rapid-fire blink to his
eyes. He looked up at Kraft.
“Major, you want I should pull him
out now…he’s already made it to the other side, beat through every obstacle I
can throw at him. He’s done the standard
course…and then some.”
“Where’s he now?”
Givens checked the grid on his
display. The SODS tank was a sphere
thirty feet in diameter, filled with water, and a host of infinitesimal
predators and bogeymen, enough to get any unsuspecting nog’s attention when he tried to pilot an ANAD through the
medium. An electronic 3-D grid
pinpointed the position of the nanoscale assembler as the pilot steered it
through the obstacle course.
“—I make him about two point one
meters this side of the far wall…he’s slogging through the whirlpool…having
some trouble keeping on course, looks like.
Already transitted the carbene forest.”
“Hmmpphh…” was all Kraft could
say. The carbene forest was a sleet of
reactive radicals and molecule clumps that usually ate up rookie atomgrabbers
for lunch…it took some serious stick work and guts to slip through the torrent
of molecules that were trying to tear off your effectors left and right. “Carbenes usually do a number on most
pilots. What’s his trick?”
“I don’t know, sir…Cadet Winger’s
just got a knack for ANAD driving, I guess.
I’ve never seen anything like it.
Should I let him go on…or pull the plug?”
Kraft’s eyes went from the ANAD
image to Winger’s face—a tight mask of concentration…hell, the kid had his eyes closed, for God’s sake…he was driving
ANAD by feel alone, tickling his joysticks and changing config by
instinct. It was uncanny—
“No…let him be, Givens…let’s see
what the kid can do.” A small crowd of
techs and nogs had begun to gather
around the control console outside the tank.
Glances and murmurs were exchanged…and a few ten-notes as well.
SODS stood for Spacial Orientation
and Discrimination Simulator. Cadet
Johnny Winger wasn’t physically inside the sphere at all. Instead, he was in an enclosed booth on the
other side of the tank, plugged into everything the ANAD master was
sensing. A sleet of water molecules
rushed by the assembler as it cruised on picowatt propulsors back across the
water inside the tank. Once in a while,
the sim techs threw a curve at the trainee: dropped a few million bacterial
spores in front of him, stirred the water into a whirlpool, discharged electron
guns, zapped the tank with UV and X-rays…anything their diabolical minds and
the simulation protocols could come up with.
So far, Cadet Johnny Winger had fought off every predator and obstacle,
even a malfunctioning horde of ANAD replicants that had materialized seemingly
out of nowhere right in the middle of the tank.
Winger had fought off banzai charges and flanking maneuvers and double
envelopment tactics like a seasoned veteran, grappling with the herd in close
combat and using his own ANAD’s bond disrupters to break the back of the enemy
formation.
SODS was a prerequisite for any nog to get out of Basic, and stand for
officer status in the newly forming 1st Nanospace Battalion. The whole world of nanoscale combat was so
new that Kraft and the Corps general staff were making up tactics as they went
along. SODS was supposed to measure a
prospective atomgrabber’s ability to discriminate and manipulate objects via
remote control at infinitesimal micron or even smaller scales.
From the beginning, Jurgen Kraft had
to admit, one cadet stood above all the rest…Johnny Winger. He’d shown extraordinary skill at the sim, an
unusually adept talent at visualizing and manipulating micron or nanometer
scale objects in space. Hands down, the
kid was destined to be the top code and stick man in the whole battalion. You couldn’t make raw talent like that.
And
raw is what it is, Kraft kept reminding himself. Even as he and the others watched with
amazement and grudging admiration, ANAD powered its way through the ‘waterfall’
obstacle that Givens had programmed in—dodging loose polypeptides and radicals
with aplomb—and Winger’s eyes were still closed. The kid wasn’t even watching his
readouts. He was letting the stick talk
back to him, somehow feeling ANAD through the haptic feedback and driving
across the course on instinct.
It’d
be easier to navigate Manhattan on a tricycle blindfolded, Kraft told
himself.
“Let him head for the launch point,”
Kraft ordered. “I want to see what this
fellow’s made of.”
“Two big ones say he’ll never make
it,” a voice called from behind.
“Three says he does—“ someone
countered.
“Warm beer for everyone if he splats
at the ‘Wall’,” another one chimed on.
The wall was a solid chunk of metal dividing the tank in two. The trick was to config ANAD for denser
medium, change his form so you could transit a world of crystalline planes and
rigid lattices. All the while fighting
off deranged nanobots programmed to chew up your effectors while you dived
through. Most nogs would have rather run naked through a pack of lions.
But Winger managed to fend off the
attack, whirling ANAD like a mad dervish, ripping the water with jolts of
electron discharges, forming a protective bubble just long enough to fold
himself for the denser wall. He squeezed
the assembler down to barely a core and base, and slid sideways, twisting and
turning, one step ahead of the bots nipping at his heels.
In the end, the race got everybody
in the sim room cheering him on. A few
moments later, ANAD sounded ahead and followed the acoustic returns right to
the vacuum tube at the near wall of the tank, letting the containment chamber
suck him up and put him to bed in his homeworld.
Kraft watched Winger’s eyes pop open
on the monitor…the first time the kid had looked up since the carbene
forest. Not a drop of sweat on him, Kraft observed. The barest hint of a smile crossed his young
face.
“ANAD secured in containment,”
Winger reported. “I’ll be ready for
another run at the course as soon as he’s regenerated and stable—“
Kraft leaned forward to the
mike. “Uh, that won’t be necessary,
Cadet Winger. You’ve made your
point. Secure the sim and extract. See you at the debrief in ten minutes.”
So you can see that
SODS is used to qualify a nog for further development as an atomgrabber. But, as you might expect, for severe
infractions of the rules, SODS can also be used, with official approval, as a
way to put a recalcitrant nog in his place.
In order to keep this
post to a manageable length, we’ll end our study of atomgrabber customs and
traditions here. Before leaving, I would
like to mention one more chamber of horrors that has become a sort of rite of
passage: the Swarm Chamber. I won’t go into detail, but suffice it to say
that nogs go through the Swarm Chamber in order to experience what it feels
like to be fully exposed, without protection, to a slightly denatured ANAD
swarm. I’ll leave it to your imagination
to fill in the details.
The
next post to Quantum Corps Times will
come on March 1, 2017.
See
you then.
Phil
B.
