The year was 2023, and COVID-19 has ravaged the world. During the three years that it ravaged the world, the United states has stayed in a perpetual state of quarantine. This quarantine started as independent states managing restrictions for travel, work and recreational activities. But, As the horrific losses continued to mount, the federal government took over control of the quarantine restrictions. The first step was to make it a criminal offence to gather in numbers larger than 6. The second step was to require regular testing of citizens every 14 days for Covid. If a citizen was free of Covid, then they would receive travel cards, allowing access to grocery stores, commuting to work and other essential tasks. They enforced these drastic steps a little too late, and COVID reduced the population of the US to 30 million people. This led to the presidential COVID-19 Task Force. The COVID-19 Task Force would later be referred to as The Task Force.
After being formed, The Task Force received full control of all domestic affairs. The amount of power granted to them by the president had no checks or balances to it. This practically unlimited power allowed the organization to take control over key technologies for the country's benefit. First order of business was to take over Elon Musk's Starlink network. The second order of business was to take control of amazons' drone delivery network. With these two businesses, The Task Force created a network to monitor citizens for violations of the COVID-19 regulations.
With such a reduction in population, many families were shadows of their former selves. This could be seen all over the country , the disparity of wealth does effect how uniform the population was effected but only in a minor way. Families that where well off would normally only lose one parent while lower income families tended to lose both parents. One such family was the Tucker house hold. Both parents had passed away during the initial shockwaves of Covid-19.
The Tucker house hold wasn't well off, though money isn't the only thing that could help a family. With both parents gone, the oldest Trace was left to take care of his three younger brothers.
Trace was always helping his father in his lab underneath their house. "I remember when dad first told me about you." said Trace with tears in his eyes, thinking about how his father had protected him and his brothers.
The protection his father left for him was an AI, whose sole purpose was to provide guidance. Trace's father left a recorded message, "trace if you are hearing this then something has happened to me and Kala, the AI system will help you and your brothers stay safe, it will also help you finish my work on nanites. I have stored enough food and water to last three years." The AI system displayed, "Trace what can I do for you today." This startled Trace a little bit. "Maybe with help of the AI, I can finish the project Dad and I started before his death." Shaking his head with how foolish he felt for talking to a computer. The project was to develop nanites which would revolutionize building and manufacturing. Trace and his brother had stayed out of sight during daylight hours so the Task Force did not find them but they also had to be careful of spies that would sell information to the taskforce for extra food and goods.
It was one of these days that Trace was in the lab that his troubles got worse. The COVID-19 task force sent their quarantine enforcers to round up all children who no longer had parents to look after them. The quarantine enforcers take all children to a reeducation camp in the local town. The Enforcers took Trace's brothers but missed him. As soon as he left the lab, he noticed the struggle that had taken place upstairs. The intruders had busted in, The front door, the furniture was overturned, and papers were strewn everywhere.
Trace instantly knew who invaded his home and took his brothers. The only question Trace had was, which of the five camps in the state did they end up at. He crumpled to the ground in despair. He did not know how he would find them. He couldn't fathom how he would save them. The one thing he knew was he was going to.
After setting there for many hours an Idea popped into his head. The thought was about their nanite project. These nanites could build things at a speed that could not be beat. Maybe with the addition of his father's AI, he could do the impossible task of rescuing his brothers..
"I remember my dad telling me how the nanites could win a Nobel prize before COVID hit." He knew deep down that the current government ran by The Task Force would militarize it. It would be just another control mechanism for the citizens. In Trace's hands, the technology would allow him to complete his quest to save his brothers. Though there was much work to complete before he could rescue them.
To take the design from a theory to an actual functioning nanite, it took every engineering feat Trace, and the AI could manage. They developed the first breakthrough for movement from an arachnid's structure with eight legs. Then the addition of a maneuverable head for maneuvering a laser. Then the scale of the project would make battery storage an issue. It took him studying every book on practical and theoretical energy storage and generation. This research would pay off for creating the power storage for the nanites.
"Hey AI, you know the most promising breakthroughs in the last 20 years come from biology," As he was circling an article in Scientific America. This article inspired him to create a compound to absorb both thermal and photon energy. This energy absorption gave the nanites a dark appearance under the microscope. To optimize the nanites, Trace worked out a Nano obstacle course. He then assigned the AI to analyze the movement. The obstacle course proved to be an excellent idea, though the first 300 tries failed, the ultimate design still came faster than the light bulb came to Edison.
After Trace had worked out an optimized nanite design, he knew he would need something to control them. Rummaging around his house up top, he found a galaxy smart watch. He knew that the smart watch would not be powerful enough to do everything needed.
Trace went back down to the lab and sat down looking at the smart watch, hoping to come up with an idea to make it powerful enough to control the nanites. As he sat there, he started losing hope. He started falling into despair. Despair turned into anger, and that is when he tossed the smart watch off to the side. He continued to sit there for what seemed like ages until he saw a picture of his brothers beside the keyboard. The desire to rescue his brother outweighed any negative emotions he held.
When Trace went to pick up the smart watch, it was laying amid boxes in the corner. One of these boxes was that off a mesh router. A light bulb lit up inside his head. If we can produce a Wi-Fi signal covering even the largest houses with mesh technology, why not processing? He ran over to the computer and started analyzing the nanites design and the AI logic matrix. With a slight redesign, nanites could gain the ability to communicate with its fellow nanites and the smartwatch. The smart watch would provide extra processing power. Of course, this meant Trace would have to build a lot of nanites to do what he needed to. Though this would not be much of a restriction because they were so small.
With the nanite reaching the count of a million and only taking a one-millimeter cube of space up, Trace started calling these units of nanites a cluster. The first storage container he created for the clusters was the size of a cylinder of mini M&M's from the 90s. This container would hold several clusters in each one.
Trace connected the Galaxy smartwatch to the supercomputer with a Bluetooth connection. He then uploaded the Mesh AI control software to it. With this software upgrade, the smart watch restarted, and the display changed to include only one icon on it and a background showing how many nanite clusters were available. The display said that the AI was level 1 with a ring around the display. The AI had marked the ring at 25 percent full.
One click revealed the name of the Icon. "AI, not sure if your being matter of fact or got a sense of humor with the name Molecular Deconstruction." He made his way outside to test out the molecular deconstruction ability. For his first test, he wanted to break down a couple of rusted nails. He took out one of the storage units and flipped the lid off, dripping a glob of nanites on a nail. He clicked the deconstruction icon and a shape of a nail popped up. This surprised him a little, that the nanites had any way of telling what object they were touching. He twisted the face of the smart watch and saw as the object changed from a nail to a plan with a wood texture. This was the same texture as the railing that the nail was sitting on. One more turn showed an option to cancel the command. With seeing each of the options, he cranked the smart watch face back to the nail and clicked the touch screen. The screen changed to a pop-up asking for confirmation of the irreversible action of deconstruction. Upon clicking on the confirmation, the nanite spread out to engulf the nail. A percentage popped up on the smart watches display. Trace suspected it would take a bit for the nanites to do their thing, so he went back inside.
After an hour he got a notification saying that the nanites were finished with the molecular deconstruction. He arrived back outside and saw the nanites he left earlier sitting in a pool looking like black mercury. To the right of the puddle was a pile of rust-colored dust and a pile of shiny steel dust. This amazed Trace that the nanites could differentiate between different materials when breaking down the objects.
Another icon appeared on the smart watch. This icon appeared to be an object two thirds of the way built on a blueprint. Upon clicking on this new icon, Trace saw the name of the app as Construction. The name disappeared and then an outline of a nail appeared on the smartwatch with two separate options.
The first option was a rusted nail, and the second option was a nail that was brand new. Trace clicked on the steel nail and saw a prompt for nail size. He noticed the Icon of the nail had arrows showing the size could change by turning the face of the watch. This would cause the nail to increase in size. Along with the size of the nail changing, so did the label called bill of material.
The bill of materials showed each type of material needed to create the object and the amount available all in millimeters cubed. The size of the nail produced was not very large because of the volume of the original nail. Trace had let the nail turn to rust by leaving it in the weather. With confirmation on the steel nail, another percentage displayed on the watch. Once again Trace went back inside.
While the nanites were building the nail outside, Trace and the AI were analyzing the data they had from the Molecular deconstruction process. He figured out that with a few more nanite clusters, the Ai could use both the Deconstruction and Construction subroutines to repair objects. He theorized that it could even analyze the original makeup of the material during deconstruction and then Repair the object like it was new again. This would of course require the AI to do a lot of the heavy lifting.
During the time it took the Clusters to build a new nail, the production line increased the number of nanite clusters to a couple of hundred. This tripling of nanite Cluster count enabled the AI and Trace to implement the new Repair subroutine. It also filled the progress bar enough to give the AI another level of processing power.
Once the Clusters finished constructing a new nail, Trace took the additional clusters to test the Repair subroutine. The biggest thing he had to test the cluster on was an old, rusted fire barrel. He popped the cap off two of his nanite storage units and tossed the nanites on the barrel.
Trace clicked the Repair icon and a synthetic voice spoke from the smart watch. This synthetic voice asked, "What object would you like the Nanite Clusters to Repair?". Traces jaw dropped wide open. He had not expected for the AI to gain the ability of speech it was surprising enough it could create message at all. He closed his mouth and then responded with, "The fire barrel will be a good test!". The synthetic voice once again spoke "Ok the Nanite Clusters will start repairing the barrel. It will take a while to repair it."
Trace returned inside, trying to wrap his mind around the AIs and Nanites growing abilities. All he could think about was the nanites collectively moving towards the barrel. Upon reaching the barrel, the nanites had moved up the side of the barrel, leaving a laser cutout where it had removed rusted material.
After several more hours the synthetic voice spoke saying, " Barrel material exhausted! Please designate an alternative source of material." Trace had produced another 100 clusters of nanites giving a 50 percent increase in processing power for the AI. Trace collected the new clusters and took them outside in a large water jug.
Upon arriving outside, he saw that the barrel was completely gone. The bottom third of the barrel was shiny as the day they had delivered it. Trace looked around until he spotted another few barrels that could be an adequate source for material. He then tossed a couple globs of nanites on the barrels and then said, "Those barrels should do for materials!" The nanites in his jug slithered over the edge and then made their way to the barrels along with the other groups of Nanite Clusters. As each group of nanites reached the barrels, they started deconstructing the barrels. The nanites continued to contribute to the progress bar completion on the Smart Watch.
Once again, Traced moved back inside to wait for the nanites to finish their work on the barrel. He started working on plans for upgrading the smart watch to enhance his ability to control the nanites, a storage unit that would be both mobile and further enhance the nanites capabilities.
The new design for the smart watch, which would add cameras and gesture controls, was complete. Trace uploaded the new design to the smart watch and the Nanite clusters that had been produced jumped into action. The nanites reached his leg and slithered up his pants. It felt like the feeling of kinetic sand sliding across his skin; it was cold, but not slimy. The nanites exited the sleeve of his shirt and looked like a time-lapse of a tattoo moving across his arm. The Clusters engulfed his smartwatch and started upgrading it to the Nanite Cluster Controller Version 1.0.
Once the nanites had finished with the upgrade, they retreated along the same path it had taken to get to the smart watch. A synthetic voice spoke from the Nanite Cluster Controller saying, " Hello Trace, my capabilities have increased sufficiently to provide full voice and gesture commands. What would you like to designate the Nanite Cluster Controller?" Trace thought for another moment before he said, "How does 'Ellie' sound?" Ellie's response was, "You are the creator; I am just the non-sentient AI!". Trace then said, "Well Ellie it is." "I will notify you when there barrel is finished. Please proceed back inside."
Right as Trace was finishing the nanite storage pack prototype, Ellie spoke to him and said, " Barrel Repair has finished." Trace went outside to see the final product of the nanite clusters. Outside stood a fully repaired barrel that looked just like the day they had shipped it. Though it was not an exact replica because the Nanites could not reproduce details that were no longer there. For this the barrel only had one of its initial engraving on it and that was just the initials of the original words. The barrel spelled out GOOP. Trace thought for a second and then gave Ellie a word of praise, "Ellie, you commanded the Clusters well, and those letters you could reproduce gives me an idea. I will call the nanites collectively Black GOOP!"
Ellie asked in a less robotic and more feminine voice, "Where did the Black in Black GOOP come from?" He smirked at how human the question sounded. "The nanites look black because they absorb all of the incoming light for power. So, what happened to your voice sounds very human-like, compared to how metallic and synthetic it sounded earlier?" "As the number of Clusters increased, so does my processing power. If I have enough available, I can sound just like you, but if too many are being used; My abilities will change accordingly." At this point Trace said, " I have prepared enough to go rescue my brothers."