Chapter 42 – Declan

 

 

I got tired of forming all those nanoscale shapes and designs pretty much in the first fifteen minutes. So I stopped, ignoring Susskins’ protests, and broke out my Crafting supplies. Should have done that from the start.

 

First, I drew a circle around the metal table and all the apparatus that Chet and Susskins had set up. Then I went over the circle with green spray paint to make it less likely to get scuffed. Inside, I began to line the inner arc with runes, writing a program, like I had when we protected the satellites, only in Sharpie, on the floor of the room. When I had that done, I put the laptop that showed all the chip designs for the qubit circuits right next to the plexiglass vacuum box that held the tin and bismuth telluride substrate, the whole thing sprouting wires and tubes going into God knows what kind of machines and sensors. Then I closed the circle, from inside, sitting down on a chair next to the worktable, and wrote more symbols right up the square leg of the table, across its metal top, bringing it almost to the box. Next, I linked the runic spell to the power in the building, energizing the spell by carefully entering the last rune, giefu or gift, which basically is a big X, onto the final space against the plexiglass box.

 

Now, the program spell began to convert the small sheet of tin into a single atom thickness, twisting the designs from the laptop into the new metal. It took a bunch of tweaks and some suggestions from Sorrow, but after about ten more minutes, it started to run on its own, guided by my attention.

 

One of Susskins’ assistants, Samantha, was walking across the floor, eyes on her tablet, headed right for the circle. I intercepted her, holding up one hand. Her eyes were immediately frightened. “I just don’t want you to break the circle. Then I have to start over.”

 

She nodded, shooting a worried glance at Susskins, who had noted the whole thing. Instead of yelling at her, he frowned and then motioned for both her and the other one, Calvin, to attend him. “Let’s string some light wire, about waist high, around this circle to keep any of us from breaking Declan’s line,” was all he said.

 

The two technicians rigged up a makeshift wire fence in minutes, using chairs, an empty server rack, and a length of plastic conduit.

 

“Do you have to stay in there?” Chet asked.

 

“Pretty much. The circle and runes let me automate the process a bit, but I still have to guide it. This is much less tiring, though,” I said.

 

“If these readings are right, you’ve drawn an ion implanter on the floor with markers? And it’s making Stanene,” Susskins said, shaking his head.

 

I wasn’t sure if that’s what I’d done but I nodded sagely like it wasn’t nothing but a thing.

 

“Now, we just have to let it run while I keep an eye on it and move it from one circuit to the next,” I said.

 

“And we’ll have a quantum computer when it’s done… cooking?” Calvin asked.

 

“We… might… if the designs are correct,” I said.

 

“Hmpf. Of course they’re correct,” Susskins said, not even looking up from his monitor. “Lady and gentlemen, sometime in the next hour or so, we will witness a historic moment.”

 

Hmmm, a good historic moment or the end-of-humans historic moment, I wondered.

 

Inside the plastic case in front of me, the answer continued to draw itself, atom by atom.