Read Online The Extinction Switch: Book three of the Kato's War series by Andrew C. Broderick - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Andrew C. Broderick
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fingers through his thinning hair. “Oh, God.”
----
Kato, Korolev, and General Phillips examined the midair projection, which took up almost the entire war room. It showed a machine. Its outside shape was not dissimilar to a car’s engine. However, it was much more complex: pipes, circular openings, flexible hoses, villi, spheres, and blocky, flat surfaces adorned its exterior. It was partly transparent, and different systems within it were shown in red, yellow and blue. The men wandered around and through it, examining every part in utter fascination. “It’s genius,” Kato said. “My nanotech knowledge is very out of date now, but I can tell that whoever designed this thing was brilliant. It’s the most effective killing machine ever invented.” The other men nodded.
“Looks like this part”—Korolev pointed to a part that took up almost a quarter of its volume—“is the factory, where it self-replicates. In fact, if you look right there, it’s got a 3D printing head, and an open space for partly completed copies of itself. Up here is an intake and processing plant that takes nutrients from its environment and converts them into minerals, which get fed to the fabricator. Waste products get ejected from here.” He pointed to a port on the outside.
“So, about three quarters of the internal volume is devoted to replication,” Kato said. “How does it actually attack its victims?”
“That’s the really clever part.” He pointed to a small unit near the top. “This is the radio receiver. Once it gets the encoded signal, the factory is repurposed. It makes a saw blade. It starts out being rolled around that spindle, there”—he indicated an object that looked like a rolling pin, below the receiver—“then when it’s ready, the right hand side splits off. The knife unfurls and begins sawing away at the victim’s insides.” The other men flinched. “With millions of these things working together, complete organ failure ensures, and death comes quickly after that.”
“My God,” Kato said, his face blanching. “It does exactly what Seung Yi said it does, and with ruthless efficiency. It leeches off whatever——or whoever—hosts it, to replicate. They then infect others. Nobody is any the wiser, since there are no symptoms.”
“ That ,” Korolev said, jabbing a finger towards the machine, “is why there was a nanoweapons treaty. Nuclear, biological, or chemical can’t touch it for sheer deadliness.”
“How do you suppose it’s activated, though?” Kato asked.
Korolev’s eyes narrowed. “It gets a radio signal, probably highly encrypted.”
“I get the radio signal part,” Kato said, “but a transmission from Vesta would be very weak when it reached Earth. Too much so to be picked up by something that tiny.”
“There are probably repeaters somewhere near Earth,” Korolev said. “They’ll be small, stealthy, and placed in high orbits. Hence, impossible to find.”
Kato sighed. “So, we’ve figured out how his ‘Extinction Switch’ works. But, what can we do about it?”
“We can’t block transmissions from something whose location we have no clue about, on an unknown frequency,” Korolev said. General Phillips followed the exchange between the two men like a tennis match, his eyes bouncing from one to the other.
“What if it has an ‘off’ switch?” Kato said. “A feature to permanently disable it, on receipt of a different transmission? We could send it that code somehow, and render it harmless.”
“We’d have to figure out the key,” Korolev said. “It’s probably several megabytes long. The mechanism, if it even exists, will be extremely well protected.”
“Well, every possible resource at ISI will be put on it,” Kato said. “I expect the Pentagon has already come to the same conclusions, so we’ll try and work together with them, and see if we can’t figure out how to disable the damn thing before the six months are up. Well, five
----
Kato, Korolev, and General Phillips examined the midair projection, which took up almost the entire war room. It showed a machine. Its outside shape was not dissimilar to a car’s engine. However, it was much more complex: pipes, circular openings, flexible hoses, villi, spheres, and blocky, flat surfaces adorned its exterior. It was partly transparent, and different systems within it were shown in red, yellow and blue. The men wandered around and through it, examining every part in utter fascination. “It’s genius,” Kato said. “My nanotech knowledge is very out of date now, but I can tell that whoever designed this thing was brilliant. It’s the most effective killing machine ever invented.” The other men nodded.
“Looks like this part”—Korolev pointed to a part that took up almost a quarter of its volume—“is the factory, where it self-replicates. In fact, if you look right there, it’s got a 3D printing head, and an open space for partly completed copies of itself. Up here is an intake and processing plant that takes nutrients from its environment and converts them into minerals, which get fed to the fabricator. Waste products get ejected from here.” He pointed to a port on the outside.
“So, about three quarters of the internal volume is devoted to replication,” Kato said. “How does it actually attack its victims?”
“That’s the really clever part.” He pointed to a small unit near the top. “This is the radio receiver. Once it gets the encoded signal, the factory is repurposed. It makes a saw blade. It starts out being rolled around that spindle, there”—he indicated an object that looked like a rolling pin, below the receiver—“then when it’s ready, the right hand side splits off. The knife unfurls and begins sawing away at the victim’s insides.” The other men flinched. “With millions of these things working together, complete organ failure ensures, and death comes quickly after that.”
“My God,” Kato said, his face blanching. “It does exactly what Seung Yi said it does, and with ruthless efficiency. It leeches off whatever——or whoever—hosts it, to replicate. They then infect others. Nobody is any the wiser, since there are no symptoms.”
“ That ,” Korolev said, jabbing a finger towards the machine, “is why there was a nanoweapons treaty. Nuclear, biological, or chemical can’t touch it for sheer deadliness.”
“How do you suppose it’s activated, though?” Kato asked.
Korolev’s eyes narrowed. “It gets a radio signal, probably highly encrypted.”
“I get the radio signal part,” Kato said, “but a transmission from Vesta would be very weak when it reached Earth. Too much so to be picked up by something that tiny.”
“There are probably repeaters somewhere near Earth,” Korolev said. “They’ll be small, stealthy, and placed in high orbits. Hence, impossible to find.”
Kato sighed. “So, we’ve figured out how his ‘Extinction Switch’ works. But, what can we do about it?”
“We can’t block transmissions from something whose location we have no clue about, on an unknown frequency,” Korolev said. General Phillips followed the exchange between the two men like a tennis match, his eyes bouncing from one to the other.
“What if it has an ‘off’ switch?” Kato said. “A feature to permanently disable it, on receipt of a different transmission? We could send it that code somehow, and render it harmless.”
“We’d have to figure out the key,” Korolev said. “It’s probably several megabytes long. The mechanism, if it even exists, will be extremely well protected.”
“Well, every possible resource at ISI will be put on it,” Kato said. “I expect the Pentagon has already come to the same conclusions, so we’ll try and work together with them, and see if we can’t figure out how to disable the damn thing before the six months are up. Well, five
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