The Quantum Connection by Travis S Taylor

Author:Travis S Taylor [Taylor, Travis S]
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780743498968
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2005-04-05T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

It took us a good couple of weeks to get the little town on the Moon back in order. Apparently the kids in town were glad that school was canceled while we rebuilt. Thankfully, it was fall break and the kids had not been in school at the time or the incident could have been far more tragic than it was. A few trips to Earth in the little warp ships were made for various materials until I set up a materials generation and replication area with a downloaded version of Mike controlling it. Basically, any computer-drawn model of an object would enable it to be constructed from the rubble and lunar materials available. The nanomachines in the facility Tatiana and I put together would take the material and convert it into whatever piece of equipment, construction material, or whatever else was needed. If precious or exotic elements were required that weren't available, then we sent the warp ships to Earth. The nanomachines could only manipulate atoms, so if you needed a gold atom in something you had to have a pile of gold atoms to begin with.

On the other hand, we increased the budget capability of the little lunar town tremendously because there is plenty of carbon on the Moon. Diamonds are made of carbon and the lunar base became one of the Earth's small suppliers of diamonds—unbeknownst to the general public of course. General Clemons had the CIA acquire a South African diamond company to fence the lunar diamonds through—of course, the CIA got a big cut for its troubles. We allowed just enough of the lunar diamonds to flow into the market as not to cause suspicion or to flood the market and drive down the revenues. The diamond market was about a thirty-billion-dollar business each year and we planned to take in about a third of a percent of that and thus keep a low profile in the business. We also set up similar markets for the billion-dollar-a-year silicon wafer market, the two-billion-dollar-a-year flat glass (mirrors and such) market, the multibillion-dollar fiber optic market. Remember there are a lot of silicates on the lunar surface. The CIA called this contingent the "diamond factory," which was along the same lines as the old "fly by night industries" business they often used. We continued to branch out into as many business areas as we could but never took more than a fraction of a percent of the business so we didn't attract any unwanted attention.

Another aspect of the business was so highly classified that only a few folks on Earth knew the intricacies of it. We set up a manufacturing facility that could rapidly prototype highly technical instrumentation for classified programs.

Say there was a need for a new fourteen-billion-dollar Top Secret communications satellite; our nanomachine system could build it from specs in a hundreth of the time and for practically no cost. It cost more money to set up the cover facilities and for the overhead than for the actual device.

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