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The whole National Micro campus was buzzing with activity and had been for weeks. Years of scientific effort and hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants had been expended on "The Device" and now it looked as though all that time and money would actually yield a tangible result. Construction of the top secret device had been conducted under the tightest security since the Manhattan Project. Each subsystem of the apparatus had been engineered by a separate subcontractor.
Subcontractors were chosen for the lucrative contract based not only on their engineering expertise, but on their corporate reputation for discretion as well. Severe financial penalties for loose-lipped indiscretion in the form of complex ironclad legal clauses and sub-clauses were written into each sub-contract. Nobody was talking to anybody else and nobody would.
Everybody was talking to National Micro Research Associates, the mega-corporation and project general contractor. National Micro was responsible for the collection and integration of the various subsystems. Additionally National Micro was tasked with the final assembly of the top secret machine and then the rigorous testing protocols needed to assure that the device actually did what it was designed to do.
Even at NMRA fewer than three dozen people had anything more than a few pieces of the puzzle and less than half of them had access to the actual machine. Only one, Steve Wilkins, knew the project from top to bottom, including the technical specifications for the device's circuitry. As the original founder of National Micro, Steve was not only the top nanotechnologist in the world and majority stockholder in NMRA, but one of the world's richest and most reclusive men as well. His home laboratory was equipped every bit as well as any lab on the planet, including those at National Micro. One could say reasonably that Wilkins' lab was better equipped when he was actually working in it because it was his extraordinary mind that provided the inspiration and insight that guided the precision machinery.
Known simply as "The Device," the project which was the focus of so much effort was a machine which could shrink inanimate objects to a fraction of their former size and mass. Later these "mini-objects" or "MO's" as they were called by the technicians, could be resized to their original size and mass. The first round of testing, completed just a week before, had been an unqualified success. Blocks of different solid elements had gone through several shrink and restore cycles with no detectible ill effects. As far as anybody could tell, there was absolutely no before-after difference. More complex inanimate objects and mixtures would be scheduled for minimization trials later.
Testing on living things would come much, much later ... or so the overseers from the government thought.
Naturally, a project of this magnitude had to be overseen by the federal government. The national security implications alone required that the entrepreneurial creators of The Device be kept on a short leash. The government's intelligence and oversight with respect to the production of "The Device" was very good. In fact it was exactly as good as National Micro wanted it to be. The legal and contractual aspects of the project were open books to the government inspectors and one thing these government overseers had mastered was accounting. Spreadsheets were their specialty.
When it was applied to the actual science employed by The Device governmental oversight became more problematical. Anyone who knew anything at all about minimization was already employed by National Micro or one of its subsidiary companies and currently making very good money in that employment. There were no genuine top level minimization scientists left to serve as government watchdogs. Nobody wanted the job. After all, why would a scientist want to watch, for short money, science being done by others when they could actually be doing that same science themselves and for excellent money?
The government science overseers were second-teamers and all sides knew it.
It was always better to be on the inside than on the outside looking in and so far as The Device was concerned Steve Wilkins was the penultimate insider. It was his vision that committed his company to minimization research in the very beginning, long before his competitors. By the time Precision Analytics and the other engineering companies found out what was happening at National Micro they were maneuvering for second place- a distant second place. In short, Steve Wilkins was the alpha and omega of miniaturization research.
As usual, Wilkins was way ahead of everybody. Before testing on rocks and metals had even begun at NMRA he had independently re-engineered the original device to a hand held version about as big as a "super soaker" squirt gun. The power needed to run the "Mini-gun," as he called it, fit into a standard sized backpack. The only real limitations the mini-gun had were range (about 10 meters) and processing power and both of these limitations were directly related to the portability of its power source. The mini-gun could only handle objects no more massive than 75 kilograms, around 160 lbs.
As astounded as the scientific world would be to learn of the Mini-gun, Wilkins had another, bigger achievement which he also withheld from the government and the rest of the world.
Wilkins had already used the Mini-gun successfully to shrink living things.
Plants and small animals had already been miniaturized successfully but to date he had been unable to re-enlarge living tissue. For living things, miniaturization was a one-way journey. Once he had come up with the subroutines and tested the mini-gun on pieces of fruit he quickly moved on to insects and small mammals. He already had a vast collection of "minimals," as he called them in his own private miniaturized game preserve which he maintained in a large outbuilding on his estate. It was the most closely guarded building on the enormous gated and guarded property. Nobody was allowed in the windowless building: not security, not maintenance, nobody. He was the only one with access, period.
Climate controlled and as big as a collegiate field house, Wilkins had spared no expense stocking his private world of miniatures with exotic vegetation, including healthy samples of insectivorous plants, another of his many hobbies and one he had fostered since childhood. Small animals, fish, and, of course, insects populated the gigantic terrarium. Snakes and other reptiles completed his man-made ecosystem. If it was exotic, then Wilkins had to have it. Steve Wilkins had the money to acquire whatever he wanted through whatever back channels it might take.
Silent pumps kept the streams running and the pools filled. A sky blue ceiling and soft lighting accurately simulated day and night. From the inside of Steve Wilkins' miniature world it must have looked very much like the real thing.
Ever since early childhood, the nano-engineer had been different than the rest of his peers and he was certainly smart enough to know how different he was. In every grade since he first stepped into the schoolhouse, Steve Wilkins had been exceptional. He was always the youngest in class by as many as six years right on up through his post-graduate work. He was the smartest guy in every room he had ever entered since he was in elementary school. The only exception to this was the bathroom and even there he was in a dead heat tie with the man in the mirror.
Although Steve's I.Q. made learning very difficult things easier, it did not make learning the mathematics, engineering, and physics necessary to create an entirely new "science of the very small" called "nanotechnology" easy, just easier. Steve's attraction to the most complex and esoteric ideas had dominated his life since childhood, through puberty, and on into young adulthood. Nevertheless, with the exception of his colossal intellect, he'd always been more or less a typical guy. As a kid he was attracted to things like comic books and carnivorous plants. He suffered from acne and rejection throughout middle and high school. By the time he had received his doctorate degree Steve was still a virgin. Now that he was the CEO of his own company women were becoming more available to him, in fact, he was doing OK. Things were looking up.
Elizabeth Sullivan was the self-proclaimed Queen of the Corporate Spies. For fifteen years she had made a very good living plundering the safes and computer records of every corporation from American Airlines to Zebco Industries. Tonight she was aiming to steal from the great Steve Wilkins himself. Rather than dressing like a ninja, scaling the wall and bypassing security systems Mission Impossible style, Liz preferred to enter her target's premises legally. Tonight she would be in black, all right, but her outfit had no hood; tonight she wore evening wear. She was Steve's date.
The two had met at a cocktail party two months before and, despite the fact that Steve Wilkins was in his late 30s and possessing looks which could fairly be called "unremarkable," the beautiful Liz had chatted him up at the party until he asked her for her number. After feigning reluctance she had given it to him written it in deep red lipstick on a cocktail napkin. Now, she was walking up the driveway to Steve's home for what she hoped would be an impromptu overnight. While he slept she would find and crack his safe and steal its secrets. That was the plan.
As her stiletto heels clicked and clattered against the granite cobblestones on the front steps of the estate Elizabeth mulled over the fact that each stride of her long and very shapely legs brought her closer to her goal. If things went according to plan, and they always did, by this time tomorrow night she would be on a private jet to the West Indies in possession of her greatest prize. In another week she would be retired and set for life, all at the age of thirty-five.
Before knocking she took a moment to inspect her reflection in the antique glass window panes next to the massive oak main door. As she twisted from side to side to examine each beautiful profile she liked what she saw and more importantly, she knew that Wilkins was going to like what he saw. What wasn't to like? Liz had cared for her physical health all her life. Her skin was flawless. She exercised and trained every day because being in shape paid off twice. First, if she ever encountered trouble and had to defend herself or run away from danger, she could. Second, her trim athletic figure coupled with her magnificent long red hair and stunning facial beauty meant that she rarely ever had to run. Nine times out of ten she was just invited into the building that held her prize.
