History and Traditions of the 1^st Nanospace Battalion (“The Atomgrabbers”)

 

In this post, we’ll look at the history and traditions of the most illustrious of all nanotrooper outfits…the 1^st 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 1^st 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.

 

 

From QM 3.0  U.N. Quantum Corps Field Manual (Operations)

1.     The Operational Environment – Physical Characteristics of the Nanoworld

a.     It’s really, really small (NOTE: Think relationship of a nanometer to a football field.  If ANAD were a grain of sand on a football field (about 1mm), a football field at the same scale would be equal to 78%  of the distance of Earth to Moon)  

b.     Brownian motion - or pedesis (from Ancient Greek: πήδησις /pέːdεːsis/ "leaping") is 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.^[1]

(Imagine a large balloon in a football stadium. The balloon is so large that it lies on top of many members of the crowd. Because they are excited, these fans hit the balloon at different times and in different directions with the motions being completely random. Consider now the force exerted at a certain time. We might have 20 supporters pushing right, and 21 other supporters pushing left, where each supporter is exerting equivalent amounts of force. In this case, the forces exerted towards the left and right are imbalanced in favor of the left; the balloon will move slightly to the left. This type of imbalance exists at all times, and it causes random motion of the balloon. If we look at this situation from far above, so that we cannot see the supporters, we see the large balloon as a small object animated by erratic movement.)

 

c.     Van der Waals forces and atomic forces (everything is ‘sticky’)

In physical chemistry, the van der Waals forces (or van der Waals interaction), named after Dutch scientist Johannes Diderik van der Waals, are the residual attractive or repulsive forces between molecules or atomic groups that do not arise from a covalent bond, or ionic bonds.^[1]

The ability of geckos – which can hang on a glass surface using only one toe – to climb on sheer surfaces has been attributed to the van der Waals forces between these surfaces and the spatulae, or microscopic projections, which cover the hair-like setae found on their footpads.

 

 

d.     Navigating and maneuvering through molecules and atoms

It’s like walking across the seabed, or a room full of molasses, crisscrossed by strong currents, or like walking through a sleet storm.

 

2.     Molecular Configurations (Molecular Ops)

a.     Atoms tend to arrange themselves in the most stable patterns possible, which means that they have a tendency to complete or fill their outermost electron orbits. They join with other atoms to do just that. The force that holds atoms together in collections known as molecules is referred to as a chemical bond. There are two main types and some secondary types of chemical bonds

b.     The IONIC bond involves a transfer of an electron, so one atom gains an electron while one atom loses an electron. One of the resulting ions carries a negative charge (anion), and the other ion carries a positive charge (cation). Because opposite charges attract, the atoms bond together to form a molecule.

c.     The most common bond in organic molecules, a COVALENT bond involves the sharing of electrons between two atoms. The pair of shared electrons forms a new orbit that extends around the nuclei of both atoms, producing a molecule. There are two secondary types of covalent bonds that are relevant to biology — polar bonds and hydrogen bonds.

d.     Two atoms connected by a covalent bond may exert different attractions for the electrons in the bond, producing an unevenly distributed charge. The result is known as a POLAR BOND, an intermediate case between ionic and covalent bonding, with one end of the molecule slightly negatively charged and the other end slightly positively charged.

e.     Because they’re polarized, two adjacent H₂O (water) molecules can form a linkage known as a HYDROGEN BOND where the (electronegative) hydrogen atom of one H₂O molecule is electrostatically attracted to the (electropositive) oxygen atom of an adjacent water molecule. 

3.     Managing Energy

a.     ANAD has propulsors.  It has to keep its propulsors turning in the dense, chaotic atomic environment.  Momentum damps quickly.  ANAD must be constantly aware of ‘currents’…Brownian motion, van der Waals forces and local atomic bonds, loose atoms, etc.

 

4.     The Nanowarrior’s Code

a.     Nanowarriors don’t leave fellow warriors behind

b.     Nanowarriors fight only the enemy

c.     Nanowarriors don’t harm those who surrender

d.     Nanowarriors destroy only what the mission requires

e.     Nanowarriors treat civilians with respect

f.      Nanowarriors don’t steal

g.     Nanowarriors don’t violate the laws of war

h.     Nanowarriors report violations of the laws of war to their superiors

 

5.     Types of Operations

a.     The Spectrum of Conflict -  anywhere there are atoms or threats emerging from molecular world

b.     Surveillance – look for signatures (EM, thermal, acoustic); decoherence wakes for quantum systems and signature patterns to discern enemy’s intent and direction (surveillance is passive)

c.     Reconnaissance – active methods (probing, scouting, sweeping) to determine enemy signatures and patterns, structure, bond types, enemy capabilities, strategy and tactics (grabbing bits or photons).  “Grabbing structure” is a commonly used technique.

d.     Infiltration/Pre-emptive Actions – masking ANAD as something else (dust particles, rain drops, flies or mosquitos, etc)

e.     Precision Strike – surgical operation to degrade or destroy a target.  Minimize collateral damage or evidence of presence.  There is an attribution problem like cyber attacks.  Sometimes, WorldNet or Solnet may be used as an axis for strike or assault ops (packet mobiles).

f.      Assault –a large scale operation.  Sometimes joint or combined arms (with UN Boundary Patrol or BioShield or World Meteorological Organization for weather control).  Battalion-size formations and up are common.

g.     General War – theater or global conflict scale, using mass formations of ANAD-style units.  Extensive damage.  An example would be the Containment Wars at the end of the 21^st century.

h.     Post-Conflict – Cleanup, remediation, restoration or protective barriers (like before Hicks-Newman asteroid hit the eastern Med).  Some civil fab duties, for food, clothing, shelter.  This is usually turned over to other UN agencies.

 

This has been a partial excerpt from Chapter 3.0 (Operations) of the Quantum Corps Field Manual. Future posts to Quantum Corps Times will provide additional excerpts.

 

The next post to the Times comes on January 2, 2017.

 

See you then and have a great holiday.

 

Phil B.

This post shows ranks and insignia for Quantum Corps enlisted men and woman.  The graphic elements are adapted from chemical diagrams of atoms and molecules.

Enlisted Ranks and Insignia:

There are additional symbols, badges and insignia for various ratings, such as Defense and  Protective Systems specialist (DPS) or Interface and Control specialist (IC).  These will be covered in a later post.

Like any military organization, Quantum Corps lives and breathes chain of command.  Ranks and insignia help distinguish who’s who and help cement this vital aspect of life in the Corps. 

The next post to Quantum Corps Times will come on December 1.  This post will feature excerpts from the UN Quantum Corps Field Manual.

See you then.

Phil B.

This post details the ranks and insignia for officers serving in the Quantum Corps.  This table is for officer ranks only.  A following post will show the table for enlisted ranks. 

A word about insignia: most of the insignia are graphic elements symbolic of the atoms and molecules that all nanotroopers work with, the operating medium of the Corps. 

Officer Ranks and Insignia:

There are additional symbols, badges and insignia for various ratings, such as Defense and  Protective Systems specialist (DPS) or Interface and Control specialist (IC).  These will be covered in a later post.

Like any military organization, Quantum Corps lives and breathes chain of command.  Ranks and insignia help distinguish who’s who and help cement this vital aspect of life in the Corps. 

Remember, the next post will show ranks and insignia for UNQC enlisted men and woman.

 

Phil B.



 

 

 

 

 

This post will deal with the social, cultural, political and scientific aspects of one of the most momentous discoveries in human history: the discovery of micro robotic remains among 3-million year old Homo Erectus fossils at a dig site near Engebbe, Kenya.  These remains and the presence of ancient viruses attached to these remains are fundamental and foundational to the development and operation of Autonomous Nanoscale Assembler/Disassembler mechanisms.  In other words, the discovery of ancient robots led directly to the successful design and construction of the first ANAD bots.

 

It all started in Leipzig, Germany…at a conference of anthropologists…

 

SOLNET Special Report:

 

“Ancient Robots”

 

The Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany is a pretty staid and stuffy lab for studying the beginnings of Man and the fossil and genetic evidence of our beginnings tens of thousands of years ago.  Pretty staid and stuffy….that is, until today.

 The Institute is housed in a complex of modern research facilities set in a wooded estate.  The buildings are concrete and steel, gently curving architecture that could be a corporate campus anywhere in western Europe or North America.  From the outside, there’s nothing about the Institute that would indicate what really goes on inside or what kind of bombshells occasionally erupt from this secluded, almost pastoral setting. 

Today, just such a bombshell landed, right in the laps of the Board of Directors of the Institute’s Department of Human Evolution.  The bomb thrower, Dr. Rudolf Volk, made a presentation at this month’s Board meeting, a presentation about new finds at the Engebbe, Kenya dig site, new finds which, if confirmed, will radically and forever overturn what we know about Man’s ancestors and our origins.

 SOLNET reporter Anna Kolchinova was there and files this report:

 “The essence of Dr. Volk’s presentation is that we now have incontrovertible proof, physical evidence, that Man didn’t develop and evolve on this planet alone or unaided.  Recent finds of fossilized micro robotic remains among ancient Homo Erectus bones at the Engebbe dig site have swept the world of archaeology and anthropology like a hurricane.  Volk is a researcher in the Institute’s Department of Human Evolution and was here in Leipzig to present the details of his findings to the Institute’s Board of Directors. 

“According to Dr. Volk, the robotic remains have been conclusively dated to be synchronous in time with the bone remains.  The techniques used were a relatively new, more advanced form of radiocarbon dating, a method called quantum state spectrometry.  According to Dr. Volk, the tests have been performed multiple times, by multiple researchers right here at the Institute and the results are consistent across all experiments and experimenters. 

 “It seems, to quote Dr. Marta Siebeck, an archaeologist on the Board here, that ‘we may be descended from ancient robotic creatures.’”

 (Append Video Post 227):

 “How is this even possible?”  asked Dr. Max Schneer (NOTE: Dr. Schneer is current Chairman of the Board of Directors…AnnaK).  “I’ve seen the dating charts, I’ve seen all the spectrographs…but that’s not my question, Dr. Volk.  I’m asking you to take a larger view here, understand what you are suggesting with all this data: that somehow, flesh and blood creatures like you and me, formed of tissue and bone and blood, are somehow evolved from something that was made, a machine, a robot?  Surely you understand the implications of this, even if it were proven true?”

Dr. Volk shifted uneasily in his seat, focusing on the tablet screen in front of him.  Lines and spectra from the dating tests filled the screen.  “Dr. Schneer, the implications, as you call it, of these spectra, are for other people to decide.  I’m a scientist.  All I can do is perform the science and make sure my methods are repeatable and above reproach and my data is clean.  The test results you see were performed seven times by five different people in three different labs, separated by thousands of kilometers and several weeks in time.  No one seriously questions the data anymore.  What we all make of this data, how we interpret the data…ah, now that is another question altogether.”

 

Dr. Uwe Holweg, a physical anthropologist, glared back at Volk like a disappointed parent at a child.  “Rudy, you have to see what the data are suggesting.  If any of this is true, it means the end of evolution by natural selection.  It means what we are today is not the product of random mutations and selection pressures.  It means you and I are programmed in some fashion.  It means you and I are part robot ourselves, even if we are tissue and blood and bone.  What does that do to Darwin?  The old man must be spinning in his grave today.”

 

“I think that’s a fair statement to make,” Volk agreed.  “It appears that Evolution is not so much by natural selection but by programming.”

 

“Yes, exactly…”Holweg went on, warming to the idea.  “But what is the end state of this program?  We’ve all heard of this ‘Prime Key’.  Is that the guiding principle?”

 

“And can we understand this program, like we understand Evolution,” added Siebeck.  “Can it be altered?  What would it take to do that?”

 

Volk really didn’t want to play speculative games with the Board.  He wanted to present the facts and let the philosophers deal with the fallout.  But the Board was off and running. 

 

“The only way I see to alter this program, as you call it, would be to eliminate once and for all our dependence on ANAD-style nanobotic mechanisms.  Of course, that would be a great technological leap backward—“

 

“And not jolly likely,” said Dr. Schneer.  “But if it’s not feasible to end the program, or alter it, can we re-direct it?  Can we get under the hood, so to speak, and tinker with the program.  That’s the question.”

 

Holweg chewed on that idea, then stabbed the air with a finger.  “The Assimilationists!  That’s the answer.  Some people think the Assimilationists are collaborating with the enemy.  Maybe it’s not so much collaboration but a way inside…send a few saboteurs into the mother swarm and try to change the program from that direction.”

 

Volk just wanted to get back to the facts.  “I have more data on specific fossil pieces from the dig…if you’d like to—“

 

But the Board had dropped Science for the moment and preferred to spin theories. 

 

“Just think what this means for the great Religions,” Holweg said.  He rubbed his hands like a child in a candy store, trying out theories like so many chocolates.  “We’ve all seen the stories…SOLNET, WorldBeat and the others.  Config Zero is some kind of earthly representative of these Old Folks—“

 

“Old Ones,” Siebeck corrected him.

 

“Exactly.  It’s Config Zero we have to deal with.  I’d like to ask about five thousand questions if I could get an audience with the…the…whatever he or it is.”

 

“It’s clear,” intoned Schneer, facing the SOLNET cameras, his voice deepening into authoritative mode, “that the whole story of human origins has been upended.  What Dr. Volk has given us is physical evidence that our understanding of our origins and how we came to be is a mistake.  Indeed, if the Assimilationists are to be believed, Man himself is a mistake.”

 “Imagine it,” said Holweg, “Evolution is nothing but a program glitch.  An error.  Some kind of software bug.”

 
“Precisely,” Schneer agreed.  “And as this fellow Symborg says, the programmers are coming back to fix their mistake.”

 Volk tried to interject some facts.  “The fossils from Engebbe have been categorized into three main classes, as you can see…we have pieces that seem to be some kind of effector, perhaps with graspers….”  He pressed buttons on his display controls and a 3-D image of the find danced in the air before the Board.  “The second category we’ve called Sensor Devices—“

 

But Schneer wasn’t listening.  “Maybe we anthropologists should be talking with the cosmologists.  Surely the study of Life’s origins should include a study of these Old Folks and how they may have come to Earth and seeded the environment.”

 

“Of course, that’s all speculation at this point,” Siebeck noted.  “Dr. Volk, when can you go back to Engebbe?  We need more evidence…this really is extraordinary…fossil evidence, geological evidence, even genetic evidence…you have some chemical and materials properties results for us?”

 

Volk took a breath, tried to collect his wits.  The whole meeting was spinning out of control and Schneer, who was supposed to be in charge, was leading the revolt. “I do, Dr. Siebeck.  We’ve done recent assays on some of the pieces.  We’re finding octahedral and dodecahedral lattices of iron, silicon, germanium and some unusual elements that don’t even appear on our periodic table…we don’t know what to make of them.”

 Volk manipulated the 3-D images and atomic structures rotated in space in front of the Board. 

 “We’ve got to have more evidence,” Schneer decided.  “The Board will authorize funds for more trips to Engebbe.  Dr. Volk, you mentioned some kind of crystal—“

 
“Ah, yes—“ Volk changed the display to show a new set of images.  The lattices flickered out and were replaced by new structures, crystalline shards magnified millions of times.  “We think these crystals may have been part of the processor core…this is controversial, but there are holes and pits suggesting some kind of electron transport mechanism.  We need more evidence—“

 Anna Kolchinova’s face popped into a small window on the side of the broadcast.  “The Board met for most of two days at the Institute.  It was one of the more chaotic and tumultuous briefings this reporter has ever covered.  And in hours, most of the science world was in an uproar over the news.  Headlines rocketed around the world—“  Here Kolchinova appended spinning, flashing images of headlines and captions—ANCIENT ROBOTS FROM AFRICAN DIG…BOTS DISPLACE APES AS MANKIND’S FORFATHERS…PREHISTORIC BOTS MAY HAVE CREATED MAN…

 

Kolchinova went on, summing up the report from Leipzig.  “It’s hard to tell where this story will go now.  There are so many substories here…the science itself and the still unknown physical nature of the find and its relationship to Man today…the Assimilationists and how they will use the story…our increasing dependence on ANAD nanobotic technology and the speed at which this technology evolves and takes over more and more of our lives…. 

 “The Board has determined that more evidence is needed to support and extend Dr. Volk’s findings.  More expeditions to Engebbe are planned but it should be noted that the dig site is on the boundary of the east African Sanctuary and some ticklish and sensitive diplomatic negotiations with Config Zero and the swarms may be needed.” 

 Kolchinova’s face hardened.  “There are some who view Config Zero and the swarms as an enemy.  There are others who view Config Zero as an ally, even something of a Messiah, or perhaps it’s more accurate to refer to Symborg in those terms.  Whatever your point of view, it can’t be denied that Man is no longer alone, here on Earth and elsewhere.  Indeed, if Dr. Volk’s evidence can be corroborated, it’s clear that Man was never alone and that there is a direct connection between life on this planet and life elsewhere. 

 
“That discovery, if it turns out to be true, can’t help but have the most profound effects on every aspect of what Man is about, even his own conception of himself and his place in the Universe.  This is Anna Kolchinova, reporting for SOLNET, from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, saying good-bye…until next time—“

             The next post will examine the ranks and insignia for officers and enlisted men serving in Quantum Corps.  This post will be uploaded on November 1, 2016.

 

See you in November.

 

Phil B.