Bot Talk

One of the challenges in writing Nanotroopers and the stories of Tales of the Quantum Corps is how to make the little bots of the ANAD series communicate believably with the troopers who are the essence of the story.

One way I have hit upon to set off ANAD dialogue is to italicize their talk and lead and end each stretch of dialogue with asterisks, like this  ***Hub to Base…ANAD ready in all respects***.

I have designed ANAD to have the processor and smarts to be able to communicate in dialogue with the troopers.  From the beginning, I’ve written these stories so that ANAD starts out with the basic processor ability of an eight-year old kid, but learns and adapts and ‘grows’ in his joint operation with the humans so that he evolves and changes over time.  Indeed, I’ve had my main character Johnny Winger sometimes refer to ANAD as like a little brother.  This gives me the opportunity to explore a strange sort of sibling relationship.

1.     Macro vs micro (nano).  ANAD lives in a different world from the humans.  Humans live in a macro world, where big things are easy to see and move around.  ANAD lives in a nano world, a world of atoms and molecules, where things stick together and you have to be cognizant of things like Brownian motion and van der Waals forces.  To some extent, moving around and maneuvering in such a world is like wading through molasses.  I’ve tried to give ANAD the ability to explain and describe what it’s like down there. 

2.     ANAD v Human conflict.  Some nanobots are Red Hammer bots and are adversaries.  ANAD style bots aren’t programmed with emotions per se but ANAD responses can be interpreted as emotions by emotional beings like humans. This can lead to confusion, as Johnny Winger and his fellow troopers unwittingly ascribe emotions and feelings to objects that really don’t have them.  ANAD is programmed with machine learning algorithms though, so he can adopt and display mannerisms and responses that humans would call emotions.  This makes the control interface easier to work with.  And it can also lead to problems and misunderstandings, since there’s no real way humans can ever really know what it’s like to live in a world of atoms and molecules.

3.     Embedded ANAD and the quantum coupler.  At some point in these stories, Johnny Winger and later other nanotroopers will receive embedded ANAD master bots, surgically implanted capsules in their shoulders.  This blends man and machine into a more formidable warrior system.  With the advent of a communications device called a quantum coupler, the humans can communicate directly to ANAD, brain to bot.  In other words, the coupler is a very advanced brain-machine interface for talking with the bot and giving orders, receiving feedback, etc.  Problems arise however, when Winger finds that ANAD can almost read his mind, i.e. correlate certain neural discharges with mental states and gross thought patterns.  The potential conflicts are almost limitless.  And we’re almost at that point today, so this isn’t too great a stretch.

4.     Could ANAD evolve into a separate lifeform with enough intelligence to challenge the primacy of humans on Earth?  This is a key underlying question that permeates both story series.  ANAD has within its processor some instructional sequences that resemble genetic code from an ancient virus.  We all know how well viruses reproduce and mutate.  Thus ANAD has the ability to evolve rapidly.  And computational power is both increasing in capability and decreasing in physical size in general.  Greater and greater smarts in smaller and smaller packages…that’s the future for ANAD, who is both eminently changeable and modifiable.   Don’t forget also, that ANAD is designed to  be a swarming entity, able to replicate at high rates and aggregate in larger formations, assigning tasks to its individual bot elements as needed.  Both Nanotroopers and Tales of the Quantum Corps will see ANAD, as an individual bot and as a swarm of bots, approach human intelligence and agency…and contend with Man for primacy on this planet. 

5.     The “D” in ANAD.  Could ANAD supplant humans or merge with them?  Because of its replication and swarming abilities, ANAD can approach physical similarity to human beings at an ever-increasing rate.  In my stories, a para-human swarm entity is called an angel.  This technology eventually becomes so widespread and so compelling, that people everywhere want one, as a butler, love slave, long-lost spouse, companion, pet, you name it.  This is part of the explosive growth of nanoscale fabrication technology that sweeps the world in the last half of the 21^st and first half of the 22^nd centuries.  The “D” in ANAD stands for disassembly.  ANAD eventually develops the ability to disassemble normal human beings and re-create near-perfect facsimiles of them, in fact multiple copies.  This ability brings ANAD to the forefront as the most formidable competitor Man has ever faced on this planet.  By marrying the processor capability of nanoscale bots with the evolutionary cunning of viruses, we’ve managed to create the perfect warrior…in effect, programmable viruses with the smarts of a supercomputer.  What could possibly go wrong here?

6.     ANAD came in part from ancient viruses.  In my stories, the original viruses were seeded by an extraterrestrial race we call The Old Ones.  Evolution ran amok according to the Old Ones’ plan.  Viruses were supposed to evolve to become sentient lifeforms but mammals and Man took over.  Maybe in creating ANAD, we have not only created our successor but given the Old Ones a way to fulfill their original evolutionary plan.

 

These are just a few of the ideas I’ll be exploring as Nanotroopers and Tales of the Quantum Corps play out. 

 

In the next post to The Word Shed, we’ll look at how I try to write and describe what it’s like to be sixty nanometers tall…all those writerly tricks that can be used to put the reader there and have him feel and believe he’s living among the atoms and molecules.

 

Look for the next post on March 14.

 

            See you then.

Phil B.