NanoStrike (18 page)

The rotors began their reluctant rotation. The machine rose laboriously for the first few feet, then, once they had sufficient vertical lift, the pilot tilted the stick forward, and they accelerated toward the
towering South Mountains, framed by a cloudless, blue Arizona sky.

“I flew this way last week, amazing what your people have done.” The pilot flashed brilliant white teeth.

“I’m eager to see the progress,” Nazar said.

“Two years ago, desert, and now . . . wow!”

The pilot’s excitement was infectious. Nazar’s heart skipped when they crested the mountains and sunlight glinted off the domed roofs of the three completed buildings, fifty miles east. Each silver dome crowned a massive conversion chamber, five-hundred feet in diameter, sunk two-hundred feet into the ground. Circled by hundred-foot-wide concrete aprons, from the air the conversion chambers resembled enormous brimmed hats.

Sam landed on a vast concrete pad dotted with hundreds of feeding stations, ready to discharge distilled ethanol into tankers.

Greg Matteson, Nazar’s construction manager, sped toward them, across ten football fields of virgin concrete in his jeep. He parked, and ducked low under the twisting rotors. The Australian boarded and crushed a welcome to Nazar with a plate-sized, callused hand. “Mr. Eudon, thank you for coming, sir. It’s an honor to meet you again.” He said, “G’day, Sam,” to the pilot.

The helicopter took off. Greg, headphones over his ears, directed the pilot and pointed out progress to his boss. They swooped low over one of the unfinished structures. A gaping crater lined by rows of scaffolding marking the future location of the walls. Dozens of concrete trucks hovered around the edge, feeding carbon-free slag concrete through long snaking tubes. Ant-like figures in green-and-gold overalls guided the slurry into rebar-strengthened chambers.

Nazar’s voice boomed in the headsets. “What’s on your critical path?”

“We had to divert the service road because of unexpected hard-pad; probably looking at five percent overage, but within our tolerances. Frankly, Mr. Eudon, I’m pleased we brought that road in so close to budget. These Yanks sure know how to build a highway.” Nazar admired the two-mile-long concrete strip that connected the plant to the interstate and from there to the US’s east-west transportation corridor.

“Are we ready?” Nazar asked.

Greg nodded toward a line of trucks. The air shimmered with heat from their idling engines. “Just wave the flag and we’re off to the races.” Your guests will watch from there.” He pointed to a coned-off area near one of the conversion chambers.

“The distillery’s been complete and ready to go for six weeks,” Greg said, indicating a grouping of dozens of tall, silvered tubes clustered at the center of the plant. The conversion chambers connected to the central distillery through a series of underground pipes like spokes of a wheel to the hub. Once the nanobots did their work, the ethanol solution would flow to the distillery to be purified into automobile-ready fuel.

After twenty minutes of narrated flyover, the pilot returned to Greg’s Jeep. They stayed on the ground long enough for the project manager to jump out, duck, and run back to his vehicle. The chopper flew on toward a scaled-down prototype conversion chamber, two miles west of the main plant.

Outside the prototype building, a few people were taking a smoke break near a green-and-gold-striped marquee. When they landed, Martin Spalling drove up in a golf cart.

“Terrific turnout, boss.” Nazar shook hands with his marketing VP. He was a handsome man: coiffed blond hair that didn’t move, even under the downdraft of the helicopter, clear blue eyes, and a baby-faced complexion. Projecting a look of casual confidence in neatly pressed slacks and an open-necked shirt, Martin was the same height as his boss—one of Nazar’s hiring criteria for any employee likely to stand close during photo opportunities. He handed Nazar an agenda.

“Anything changed?” Nazar asked.

“No, just as we agreed.”

Nazar slipped the paper into his inside pocket. He had been anticipating this day for more than two years. He had burned cash until there was hardly any left. Now he would savor one of those special moments of triumph that only come to those who take enormous risk.

Martin ran through the plan as he drove the cart. “We’re set up in the marquee. You’ll give the welcome. Then I’ll give a ten-minute technology overview.”

“Not the professor?” Nazar asked.

“I took him through it three times yesterday. He stutters. He flubs his lines. And he gets hung up in the details. I’ll make him available for questions, but it’s better if I do the pitch. I need it high-level. Most of the journalists are generalists, even the ones who think they aren’t.”

In the marquee, two hundred guests were seated, theater-style. Nazar took his place in the front row next to the senator from Ohio who had been so helpful in the past; making him today’s VIP was something of a payback.

Martin called them to order and introduced Nazar, who received a polite sprinkling of applause from staff and from local politicians who had enjoyed a significant boost to their tax base during the plant’s construction. As he scanned the press corps, Nazar thought of Abdul. He had been invited, but that was before the boy had disappeared.

Nazar welcomed everyone before handing off to Martin. His VP gave a slick summary of the technology and fielded a few questions.

Nazar tingled inside, remembering the first time he observed nanobots eating pizza boxes and car tires. These people were going to be blown away.

The guests filed across a dusty strip of concrete into the prototype building. For two years, this building had headquartered the scientists and engineers who had perfected the nanobot technology. Nazar had always intended the building to double as a demonstration facility where he’d host car companies, electric utilities, garbage suppliers, government officials, and, most importantly, the Wall Street investment houses responsible for the Initial Public Offering that would rocket him to his rightful place at the top of the
Forbes World’s Billionaires
list.

At the center of the building, a fifty-foot diameter circular conversion chamber was sunk thirty feet into the ground. The spectators shuffled into a viewing gallery separated from the chamber by ten-foot-high windows, cambered in, so the onlookers could stand on the other side of the glass in a comfortable air-conditioned environment and look down on twelve dump-truck loads of rotting garbage. Martin picked up the microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you could be excused for wondering why we’ve asked you here to stare at a pile of trash.” A murmur of chuckles and snide comments rippled around the viewing gallery. “Trust me, if we didn’t care about you, we wouldn’t have sealed you off from the smell.” This raised a laugh.

At Martin’s nodded signal, additional trash tumbled from the loading bay above, past the viewing-windows, into the pit below. A few spectators jumped back in surprise.

“You are looking at seventy tons of household waste, generously donated by the people of Dewsbury, our nearest town. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.”

A gray-haired man in a blue suit waved, enjoying his moment in the limelight.

Martin continued, “Most of this trash was created by energy from the sun. To illustrate, let me tell you the possible story of that plastic milk carton lying near the top of the pile.” All eyes focused on the familiar, yellow container.

“Millions of years ago, a seed fell from a plant onto fertile ground. Watered by rain, the seed germinated, pushed its first leaves through the earth, and photosynthesized the sun’s energy to manufacture cellulosic material. The plant grew tall, flowered, made its own seeds, and then died. Along with billions of similar plants and the insects that fed on them, our plant decomposed. Over millions of years, the organic matter became buried deep below the surface of the Earth. Massive pressures transformed the rotted plants into sticky, black oil.

“Humans drilled through the earth’s crust, tapped the oil, and brought it to the surface. Chemically modified and molded by a plastics manufacturer, it became the yellow milk container below you. Most of what’s in this conversion chamber was created using the sun’s energy, and that energy is still trapped inside.” Martin paused for a few beats to let the concept sink in.

“But trash can’t fill a gas tank. We need the energy in a more convenient form. Technology developed by Eudon Alternative Energy will take this pile of garbage and transform it into ethanol, ready for use in vehicles and power stations. Today you will witness that transformation. Ladies and gentlemen, the demonstration takes twenty minutes. Please hold your questions until the end. Thank you.” Martin gave another signal.

A metal cherry picker pivoted from the wall and dropped a white canister the size of an oil drum into the center of the tank. On landing, the canister split apart and spilled white powder onto the top of the trash.

The spectators’ focus was drawn upward as screens rolled back and uncovered the building’s dome, focusing a shaft of sunlight on the trash below.

By the time the guests looked down again, the white canister had melted and sunk into the pile. Vibrations were felt underfoot as the garbage shifted and bumped. The gallery of watchers was strangely silent, captivated by the sight of seventy tons of garbage moving and settling in a huge cauldron. People pointed out specific pieces of debris, following a tire or a sofa as they were consumed. Orange liquid seeped into spaces in the lowering pile. After fifteen minutes, except for a few floating Styrofoam boxes, most solids had disappeared. Finally, even the white foam melted.

As the activity subsided and the liquid cleared, Martin spoke. “Ladies and gentlemen, before today, fewer than two hundred people had seen what you just witnessed. The liquid in the tank below you is a thirty-percent solution of ethanol, ready to be fed into a fractionating vessel and distilled into fuel suitable for use in automobiles, or power plants: a clean-burning alternative to oil.”

Martin fed them the tag line, the sound bite for the news agencies as they led with the story of the miracle in the desert. “We’re making gas from garbage, ladies and gentlemen, gas from garbage.”

Martin stopped the questions after twenty minutes. He didn’t give a damn whether they understood the process as long as they understood the importance of what they had seen. Over lunch, the crowd was animated. Journalists crammed food into their mouths while working their smart phones. Martin had recorded the demonstration and packaged it on DVDs to slip into the care package each guest would take home.

After lunch, four sleek buses pulled up outside the building. Nazar and the guests piled in. They drove down a dirt road to the Interstate, turned east, and in two miles took the turnoff to the main facility. Martin wanted them to grasp the scale of what Nazar had created. The first step came on the newly-built highway.

Martin’s audio broadcasted to all four buses. “We anticipate two thousand truck trips each day on this road once the plant is fully operational.” He paused to let the number sink in.

“The garbage trucks ahead are loaded with the detritus of home and industry: rotting food, animal waste, plastic and paper. All built with energy from the sun.” He tapped his driver on the shoulder and made a
slowdown
signal with his hand. They reduced speed to twenty miles an hour. When they had passed thirty of the idling trucks, Martin spoke again.

“The trucks in this line constitute less than
one
full payload of feedstock for just
one
of the industrial-scale conversion chambers. Three chambers are complete and ready to begin ethanol production today. Construction will continue for another twelve months. Once finished, there will be six conversion chambers, capable of producing sixty-thousand barrels of ethanol every day. Gas from garbage, ladies and gentlemen. Gas from garbage.”

The buses pulled into a coned-off area. The luminaries and press corps followed a path painted on the concrete to where a green-and-gold ribbon was strung between two four-foot poles.

Martin spoke through a bullhorn. “It is deemed unsafe for you to approach the conversion chamber. Beyond the feed station is a two-hundred-foot dead drop to the bottom of the tank. However, the package you will receive before leaving will contain video footage of the interior, identical to the prototype, except one thousand times larger. It is now my pleasure to invite Senator Isley, of Ohio’s second district, to carry out the ribbon cutting.”

The gray-haired politician wobbled forward. One hundred pounds overweight, even in dry desert heat sweat beaded his brow. Nazar walked alongside, and Martin ushered the press photographers to their places. The senator held the ceremonial ribbon, scissors poised over the tape. Nazar Eudon held the ribbon to the senator’s right.

The senator said, “I now pronounce Eudon Alternative Energy’s ethanol conversion facility open for business.” The tape parted and fluttered to the ground to a weak ripple of applause. Nazar shook hands with the senator, and both men grinned for the cameras.