This is the workshop in which frustration finds form. All of the odd jobs, and the odd folk, have been pushed here. The tools and equipment required for those odd jobs are gathering dust here, myself included. After everything had irrevocably settled, the Administration deemed that it was not economical to call in outside specialists in the rare event of an unanticipated concern. The problems here are so deeply rooted in the history of the Facility, the paper trail so immense, that a staff of archeologists would be needed to support the work of any outside help. Our salaries are insurance, grudgingly paid, against the day when our arcane services may be needed. So the listless have been lodged here, and now they languish. All the interesting parts of my work are gone because everything has settled into a worn groove. Since replicators were invented, every single piece always suffers the same failure. So now the maintenance plan has been scheduled to fix those failures just before they occur. [1] Of course, there are those problems, those anomalous failures, which are the synergistic progeny of a myriad of unknown factors. They work on a cycle with a period of decades. Predicting them is like watching a glacier drop its leviathan splinters into the ocean, and attempting to predict the exact size, shape, and location of the next iceberg. We certainly know the mechanisms and the character of the fissures, but to predict them before they manifest themselves as the tiniest cracks would be to know the current state and full history of every ice crystal of the entire frozen landscape. Sometimes I stare at the logs and imagine that I see patterns. I close my eyes, and I see a gate valve close for the last time because the temperature controller for the room that valve is in does not compensate for the grease in the valve. The grease is sensitive to swings in temperature, and every time the ventilation louvers open or close I can just see the hydrocarbons experience the tiniest tug, leading to their downfall in the future. I was thinking about this when the memo concerning exploring unstudied avenues for error was sent. That was of course distributed out about two and a half years ago. I understand that you were hired as part of the project, and it only took them two and fifteen thirthy-seconds years to find someone. I have to say, and I don’t express this often, that I am impressed. You have no idea of the dreadful amount of paperwork that went into bringing you to our happy Facility. Did you know that four of our Employment Resource Generalists died during that span? Don’t look so alarmed, you are only a very small part of their problems. In fact everyone here is someone else’s problem here. That’s why I don’t worry where I go, it is someone else’s problem. Back to your project. I have constructed, during time most emphatically budgeted for the purpose and built from random objects most emphatically not reserved for other utterly insignificant purposes, a device that will test as many of those latent failures as possible. It will reveal weaknesses and chains of failures that will destroy the understanding of those sitting in the upper offices. It is a heartbreakingly rigorous battery of tests that, when executed in sequence, may produce results I am not entirely certain that the system can survive. I originally submitted my proposal as a joke. But here is the punch line: My proposal was approved with the blessing of the Facility Manager, possibly as a clerical error. I was told to execute the plan with all possible speed as soon as the project coordinator arrives, who now stands before me. I must apologize for embedding this technical briefing inside of a frightening soliloquy; it’s a problem I have had since I was a youngster and I really should see a doctor about it. At any rate I hope you are ready to unravel everything you see. Apparently the Facility Manager is, how did the form letter put it, “pleased with your proposal and/or success, and looks forward to seeing your results with the possibility of congratulating you where permitted by law.” He is eager to see us finish this work. So if you could step up to the machine and press this button, we will get the ball rolling in the most literal terms imaginable.
[1] An interesting part of the history of replicators should be noted here. The invention of Supermacro Atomwise Manufacturing processes, popularly and collectively referred to as “Replicators”, brought the capability to reproduce nearly any physical object with atom-for-atom fidelity [2], assuming both that the requisite ablative-scanning technology and a supply of atoms in the appropriate ratios of elements are available. This technique has recently become economic even to small businesses. The opportunities to improve the composition of material and correct defects at the atomic level are surely not lost on the reader. However, it is less known that this error-correction capability is prohibitively expensive, financially and computationally. Especially in the case of metals, it is not beneficial to render a material as a seamless, homogenous chunk of compounds. It is the small structural defects generated by conventional manufacturing processes that provide strength, as well as the origination points for cracks. Simple repeating patterns are also not sufficient. Full Atom Scale Utilization (FASU) results in a network of micro-scale regions within the finished product that provide strength, rigidity, impact absorption, and energy transfer between micro regions, all with respect to the macro-scale object as a whole. The FASU process all but guarantees reliability of the product on the order of centuries, but this kind of assurance is rarely needed in the private sector. In many cases where a cost effective material optimization is desired, scans of application-specific regions on actual, laboratory-tested parts are sold on the open market with prices depending on the proven reliability of the original part. Some firms choose to scan a presently installed part rather than deal with the varying quality of third-party vendors. The vast majority of firms still source conventionally manufactured goods for their needs.
[2] The use of replication on living creatures, including sentient synthetics, (i.e. atomwise “teleportation”) has been banned in most systems on account of the process not reliably reproducing the electric state of parts of living brain tissue, resulting in brain death of the “end product”. And though it has been theorized that ablation-scanning is fast enough to record velocity information of fluids in transport at the time of scanning, such as blood, the reconstruction process does not allow material particles to be set in motion at the time of build. Thus, fluid transport would need to be manually restarted within the product. This is, of course, in addition to the ethically difficult fact that ablation-scanning destroys the original living subject. Educational institutions looking to reproduce tissues or entire living entities by this process must seek a permit.
