Von Neumann’s War

by John Ringo

  “This is a sputtering chamber where we grow our synthetic gecko skin.” Forrester pointed at a large enclosed chamber with a computer control panel on the front of it. There were several manipulators, spinning tables, and stylus arms inside the large enclosed device.

  “Why don’t you give me a little background before we get into the show? I’m not certain I understand how this stuff is supposed to work,” Gries requested.

  “Ah, great, great.” Forrester motioned to a workbench stool with a stack of papers on it. “Yes, yes, have a seat.”

  Shane looked at the bench, then around the cluttered laboratory for a place to set the papers. He carefully picked them up and set them on the floor. Forrester had already turned away from him and was erasing a whiteboard across the room. Shane chuckled to himself again and sat down.

  “You see, a few years ago some fellows at Berkeley and at Carnegie Mellon had the idea that being able to emulate a gecko and walk up walls and across ceilings might, and I’m sure you’d agree, be a fun and useful thing.” Forrester stopped long enough to grin from ear to ear at Gries. “Think about it. If we could create a material that enabled us to have the nimble little lizard’s incredible grip, wow, the applications would be endless.

  “The efforts of those fellows made the idea a step closer to reality because they were clever and worked out how to make a material coated with synthetic gecko hairs. Uh, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me see…” Dr. Forrester ran his fingers through his unruly hair.

  “Ah yes, the hairs on gecko feet. Biologists call them ‘setae.’ These little setae are the key to its remarkable grip on just about any surface, rough or smooth, wet or dry, and the things are so sticky that the little lizards can hang from a ceiling with their entire weight held up by a single toe. Isn’t that just marvelous?”

  “Yes, I’ve seen little geckos do that trick before. The ones they call leopard geckos are all over Iraq,” Shane added.

  “Iraq, yes indeed, leopard geckos, hmm, marvelous.” Forrester chuckled and his belly jiggled like Santa Claus’s. “Well, it wasn’t until as recently as last year that we understood how these little guys can do such a nifty thing. In fact, there was some very, shall I dare say, heated, debate about why geckos’ setae were so fantastically sticky.”

  “Really,” Shane asked, trying not to let his eyes glaze over or to check his watch.

  “Oh, indeed. There was one school of thought that there was some gluey chemical interaction taking place between their feet and the surface they walked on. But that didn’t pan out. This really clever fellow, uh, named Ron Fearing, and a few of his colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley finally figured it out. Can you believe that it turns out to be an electromagnetic interaction between a gecko’s feet and the surface molecules, wow!” Forrester said excitedly.

  “Oh, yes, believe it or not, the adhesion is in fact due to very weak intermolecular attractive forces called van der Waals forces. Amazing, isn’t it?” He chuckled again and spent the next few minutes drawing a diagram of the gecko setae and explaining the van der Waals attraction.

  While Forrester’s back was turned, Shane stifled a yawn and did check his watch. He had no more than an hour he could spend here and it was airport food for sure. If he didn’t make it through security, fast, it would be soggy sandwich time.

  “The way it works is that the gecko setae measure tens of microns across and at their tiny ends they split into lots of even more tiny, thinner, extremely flexible hairs, each just hundreds of nanometers in diameter; now, isn’t Mother Nature just incredible?” the scientist added, looking over his shoulder at his audience and apparently failing to notice that Shane’s eyes were creeping closed.

  “These little hairs then broaden out into flat spatulas, just like egg turners, at their tips. The wonderful little buggers can bend and conform to the surface of the wall at the molecular level and believe it or not again, this maximizes the surface area contact between the spatula and the surface, which in turn maximizes the van der Waals attractive force. I just can’t hardly believe it, can you?” Forrester seemed almost giddy.

  “Uh, no?” Shane added uncertain if the question had been rhetorical or not. He restrained the desire to check his watch again. The guy wouldn’t be hurried by it, he was sure.

  “Finally, these other fellows I’ve been talking about figured out how to synthesize the gecko skin. Wonderful ingenuity, wonderful,” Dr. Forrester said enthusiastically. “Modern vacuum deposition, lithography technology, and some other materials technology allowed them to build synthetic gecko setae made from a material called Kapton that you see there in those orange rolls behind you. They made little gecko hairs that measure about two microns in height and about a tenth that in diameter. That is about the same dimensions as gecko hairs are. They made tape that was covered with this gecko hair with a mold created by a lithographic process. And the most wonderful part is that a piece of tape one centimeter square holds around a hunderd million of these little artificial gecko setae and can actually support a weight of one kilogram. Wow! That suggests that a pair of gloves made of this stuff is all it would take to support the weight of a human being!”

  “What’s the catch? That sounds too good to be true.” Shane leaned forward at that statement. Second-floor entry wasn’t required that often, but various forms of climbing did occur in infantry combat. A pair of lightweight “super climber” gloves would be a great addition to the infantryman’s pack. Well, it would add a smidgeon of weight, but… no, they could get rid of most ropes, which would drop weight. Weight had been a bugaboo in the infantry field all the way back to the days of Sargon.

  “Ah, very astute, very astute, Major,” Forrester replied and frowned. “The previous researchers have never been able to produce a synthetic gecko skin that worked more than a few times. The little gecko hairs get crushed or dirty or something and the material stops sticking to things. Very astute.”

  “So, it only works a few times, then you fall off the wall. Hmm, that could be hazardous for Geckoman the superhero, I would think.” Gries smiled and was somewhat disappointed. Even if they could draw it out, they probably wouldn’t be good for more than one use. Start talking about disposable gloves and it would be a pain.

  “Oh, yes, Geckoman, funny.” Forrester chuckled like Santa Claus again. “But you see, we’ve figured it out! I think we can deliver a material that will be completely reusable and work for tens of thousands of uses, maybe even indefinitely if it’s cleaned after every few hundred uses. Here, watch this.” Dr. Forrester rummaged through some equipment on one of the cluttered work benches and found what looked like a typical toy’s remote control box.

  Forrester flipped some switches and Shane nearly jumped out of his seat as a bright blue toy monster truck slammed into his stool. Forrester continued to flip the control levers on the box, then seemed to get control of how to steer the little monster truck. Shane noticed that the wheels of the truck were “oversized” to say the least. In fact, the wheels were so large that they stuck out in front of and above the little vehicle’s frame. The little toy truck must have been modified with a more powerful motor just to turn those big things over.

  “Watch, watch!” Dr. Forrester said as he drove the little monster truck across the room and right up the wall.

  “Holy shit!” Gries grinned. “Can I play with that?”

  “Sure, go over and pull it off the wall, Major.” Dr. Forrester replied.

  Shane crossed the cluttered room, being careful not to trip on some piece of equipment and break it or his neck, then grasped the toy truck. Shane pulled at the truck and it failed to unstick itself from the wall. He got a better grip on the truck and pulled harder — the truck stuck steadfast. He wasn’t sure he could get it off if he planted his feet.

  “I love that bit!” Forrester gave a deep belly laugh. “I’m sorry, Major Gries. I couldn’t resist. You see, we figured out that the gecko is clever indeed. He has to twist his foot in a certain
motion to release himself — we think. So, you have to do the same with the synthetic material. That’s why I drove the truck up the concrete wall instead of the drywall — I take it you noticed all the spackle in the building.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Well, let’s just say we’ve had a lot of fun with that trick, ha ha.” He laughed again. “You know, it took us forever to develop a tire that would spin with just the right motion that would stick when you want it to and not stick when you want it to. Roll the truck forward and pull up and forward at the same time.”

  Gries did and the little truck went schaluurrpp and popped right off the wall.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” He rolled the truck over in his hands. “How do the wheels get unstuck enough to roll?”

  “Like I said Major, that took us a long time to figure out. Geckos do it, so we just studied how they walked on walls and had to mimic that type of action with the wheel rotation. It wasn’t easy.” Forrester chuckled.

  “Can you make me a bunch of this stuff, I mean tires for little recon trucks, boots, gloves, sticky-balls, bags, rolls of the material, you name it?”

  “Well, Major, you see we’re but a small group. To mass produce this would probably take start-up costs of a few million dollars or more. That little truck alone cost us about four-hundred-thousand dollars, and that’s not counting the development cost for the synthetic gecko skin.”

  “That seems to be the way life goes, doesn’t it?” Gries said with a sigh.

  “Indeed, Major. Indeed.”

  Shane looked at the truck, turning it over and over in his hands. They were starting to use trucks like this for recon, especially urban recon. He thought about the ambush he’d been in and running a couple of these, suitably loaded with explosives, up the walls and into the rooms the rifs had been using. If the stuff was really durable, it would be useful for way more than just climbing. Hell, it was a replacement for Velcro. Zippers even. Natick was the Army’s clothing and gear development center and Natick would go nuts playing with this stuff. Furthermore, they didn’t always have to jump through all the acquisition hoops for experimental stuff. This would require a start-up investment, though, and Natick couldn’t swing that. DARPA, maybe. What Gecko-Man really needed was a venture capitalist to jump-start the company. And somebody to actually run it, for that matter. Keep the spackling on the walls, make sure people made appointments.

  “I’m just one step in the process,” Shane said, slowly, still turning the truck over and over as he thought, “but you have my support. I’m going to recommend this for an acquisition investment, but you’ll probably get more money, faster, if you could get a private investor.” He looked up at the man’s suddenly fallen face and grinned. Even frowning Forrester looked funny, like a clown wearing a frowny face.

  “Hey, it’s never easy,” Shane said, still grinning. “But, yeah, this stuff is major interesting and I’m going to push for a fast track. But fast-track is usually for acquisition of stuff that’s off-the-shelf. I know a guy on the DARPA side, though, the Tactical Technologies Office or TTO. They might be able to fund you, I dunno. I’ll talk to my boss and DARPA when I get back; that’s all I can promise.”

  “I appreciate that,” Forrester said, almost seriously. “I’ve been trying and trying to find an investor for this, but nobody can see the possibilities.”

  “Then they’re blind,” Shane said, still turning the truck over and over.

  * * *

  The telescope sensors came online and began to slew the telescope’s axis. Location information from the star trackers fed into the pointing software and realized that the planet was outside the slewing capability of the telescope mount, so a subroutine triggered the attitude control system of Percival to fire the ACS thrusters and spin the reaction control wheels to align the spacecraft axis with a Mars line of sight. Then the software guided the telescope to bring Mars into the field of view.

  The shiny gray planet was centered on the telescope guidance sensor array and the software then activated the ACS and RCS systems to maintain center field of view lock on the little planet. The locations of Phobos and Deimos were mapped to the pixel location on the wide field focal plane camera and the software subroutine began a continuous track on the small moons.

  A similar acquisition and tracking routine was completed with the high gain antenna and Earth line of sight. Feedback between Earth and Percival was fed through the omnidirectional low gain antenna until signal lock was obtained with the HGA. Testing of the HGA and the telescope sensors was conducted by ordering the spacecraft to capture images and spectral data of the distant planet and download the data through the HGA-to-Earth link.

  After an exhaustive checkout procedure it was determined that all of Percival’s systems functioned properly. Neighborhood Watch was operational.

  * * *

  “So, what is it you think we should be doing, Ronny?” Roger looked out Dr. Guerrero’s second floor window at the front entrance to NRO that they always showed on the news when referring to the nation’s space reconnaissance office. He’d been in the building before but never in so rareified an environment.

  “I don’t know, Roger. But we should be doing something.” Ronny’s Cuban accent was still obvious after a life of living in the United States. Sometimes that caused people to automatically assume he was a bit dim, a mistake they rarely made twice.

  “The President and his advisors agree that we shouldn’t just sit on our… butts for the next four months,” Dr. Fines, added, frowning and looking at the wall rather than at the engineer. “We’ve assembled a team of the nation’s most brilliant DOD and NASA engineers, so the President wants them to continue preparing for… whatever is to come.”

  Fines had been in multiple meetings with the President, the national security advisor, the secretary of defense, and the Joint Chiefs since the launch of Neighborhood Watch and everyone had been in agreement with that basic statement. The President had been particularly… blunt.

  “George,” Ronny Guerrero said leaning back in his leather executive chair and placing his hands behind his head. “I think we should take the core group and let them have free rein to brainstorm. Perhaps they might identify more key players that should be involved in the future. But their mission should be to just brainstorm. When we get more data from the probe we can down select to more likely scenarios.”

  “That almost sounds like a pork barrel, Ronny.” Fines shook his head.

  “Well, that’s what I think needs to be done.” Ronny leaned forward, reaching for his coffee cup. It had the NRO symbol on one side and “Boss Mon” imprinted on the other. There were some who wondered about having a former Cuban national in charge of the nation’s surveillance satellites. But, on the other hand, he had quite a few people in the building who had been rooting for him for years. The mug had mysteriously appeared on his desk the day after he took over. Given the security on the room, that had taken some doing. He was still considering the security implications.

  “Okay then,” Fines said with a sigh. “I’ll tell the President that we’re working on possible scenarios. We’ll get the funding, somewhere, to maintain the team with a small material, research and support budget.”

  “Good. Roger, why don’t you get the right group of guys together and start thinking about our situation,” Ronny said, nodding at the engineer.

  “I’ll get right on it,” Roger replied. “I’m going to need to get a security waiver, though,” he added, trying not to smile.

  “What’s that?” Dr. Fines asked, seriously.

  “We’re going to have to get the Huntsville Hooters restaurant designated as a secure facility.”

  * * *

  “So Rog, you ever heard of CASTFOREM?” Alan Davis refilled his coffee cup and sat down in the break room of the Neighborhood Watch office suite in one of the commandeered buildings of the Redstone Arsenal in north Alabama. Ronny had missed the humor in Roger’s request and had meanly refused to give a waiver
for Hooters. It was a joke after all. Besides, Hooters wasn’t open twenty-four hours and that was, just about, the schedule they’d been running. The team had been brainstorming, researching or cautiously picking the brains of scientists and “futurists” just about 24/7 for the last couple of weeks. And Roger had thought they’d have some downtime!

  “CASTFOREM? Cast-forum, Castfor-em… Don’t reckon I have, Alan.” Roger took the empty pot that his friend had just set back down, frowned, then refilled the coffee maker with water, a new coffee filter, and more coffee. He added twice the amount of coffee grounds suggested on the Folgers’ bag — he needed the caffeine.

  “Well, it turns out that there is this software code that was developed for war gaming and simulating new technologies and how they impact possible battle scenario outcomes,” Alan said, yawning and taking a sip of coffee. He frowned at the burnt taste. “Stands for Combined Arms and Support Task Force Evaluation Model. It’s the approved code for the Army. Here, look at this.” Alan handed his friend and boss a printout of some PowerPoint slides.

  “Hmm, ‘CASTFOREM is a brigade force-on-force, closed-loop stochastic combat model comprised of and captures output data for: Command and Control, Communications, Combat Service Support, Engineering, Surveillance, Engagements, Maneuvers, System/Environment.’ ” Roger read out loud, then muttered to himself as he scanned the bottom of the page. “Gotta love that bureaucratese. ‘CASTFOREM is a highly robust simulation tool that can model individual entities at resolutions required to address the study issues.’ In other words, you plug in the parameters and it tells you if you win or lose.”

  “I’ve been talking to a small alphabet soup company here in town that’s been modeling the Future Combat Systems with this code.” Alan pointed out the three letter company logo on the printout. “He thinks that he could modify the code, relatively soon, so that we can simulate damned near any type of magic weapon or concept. And, in turn, the simulation will tell us how it impacts the battle scenario.”