“You guys want something to drink?” Bell asked, and walked off before Rachel or Santino could reply.
“Don’t bring up money,” Rachel whispered to her partner. He nodded, and they followed the girl to the industrial fridge against the far wall.
Bell passed them a couple of cold cans of supermarket-brand soda and flopped on the couch in a tangle of string. A puff of particles rose around her; Rachel quickly adjusted her visual spectrum to compensate for the dust.
“Here, sit down,” the girl said. “Plenty of room!”
“I’m good,” Rachel said. “Thanks.” She took a few casual steps away from the invisible cloud of industrial manufacturing and skin flakes which surrounded Bell, and went to investigate the long sequence of messages scrolling down the front of the fridge. The first two were professionally done in red enameled lettering over black metal, and had been secured to the door with a bolt driver. She flipped frequencies and began reading.
BIO EXPERIMENTS
WARNING: CONTENTS ARE NOT FOR
HUMAN CONSUMPTION
The rest of the messages meandered down the door on various shades of scrap paper and handwriting, and generally served to underscore the significance of the first two signs.
WE FUCKING MEAN IT
JESUS CHRIST PEOPLE STOP STORING FOOD
IN THIS FRIDGE
WE’LL PUT CHEESE IN YOUR FUCKING COMPUTER
WHICH ONE OF YOU ASSHOLES CUT OFF
THE PADLOCK?
FINE. DIE.
And so on. By the time Rachel had reached the messages at the bottom of the door, she was roaring with laughter and had gently placed her unopened can on top of the fridge.
“They don’t really mean it,” said Bell. “So far not a single person has died!” She and Santino were both richly purple.
Santino took down the can and handed it back to Rachel. “The biohackers moved out last month,” he said. “Got themselves a clean lab. We bleached the fridge and left the signs for fun.”
She checked his colors for white lies, and popped the tab when he checked out. “I’m going to be so pissed at you if I start to grow extra arms,” she said after a cautious sip. It tasted like bubbly shoe polish, but this can of soda probably had that problem long before it was stored in a fridge of questionable intent.
“What is it you do here?” Rachel asked Bell.
“Me? I do tech hacks. Additive manufacturing, Arduinos…”
“Edwinos?” Rachel wasn’t sure of the pronunciation; Bell sounded as though she had suddenly turned into a native Bostonian and was busy butchering first names.
“Arduinos. It’s a programmable microcontroller. Like a computer designed to perform specific tasks, you know? You can stack multiple boards to increase functionality, but it’s pretty amazing what a single board can do on its own.”
“And additive manufacturing…” Rachel said, and ran a fast search through Wikipedia. “Oh. 3D printing. Yeah, I’ve heard about this. Somebody used it to print a gun?”
“We don’t talk about the gun,” shouted one of the men from his workbench on the far side of the loft. He was surrounded by pieces of curved plastic, and was trimming the edge of a Plexiglas sheet with a scalpel with an almost-microscopic blade. His surface colors had traces of her southwestern turquoise and Santino’s cobalt core within them; he had been listening to their conversation.
“What?” Rachel asked him. “Why not?”
The man shrugged. “It’s a gun. You’ve got one, Santino’s got one… There’s nothing special about guns.”
“But you can’t make a gun in your home,” Rachel said. “If anybody with a 3D printer can make themselves a cheap plastic gun…”
The man finally looked up at her. “We don’t,” he said, “talk about the gun.” He dropped his attention back to his workbench and his colors washed themselves of her turquoise: she was no longer worth his time.
Santino put a hand on her arm and tugged her aside. “They’ve got policies here,” he said in a low voice. “They make things that help. They never make things that hurt.”
“Uh-huh, sure. And how often does that distinction play out in real life?” Rachel whispered back. “The difference between whether a screwdriver is a tool or a weapon is the dude holding it.”
“This isn’t real life.” Bell had overheard them. “This is a community with rules for participation. If you want to be here, you follow the rules. You have to,” she added, “or the entire system would fall apart.”
She gestured them to follow her, and started walking towards to the computer lab at the end of the loft. Rachel took the opportunity to glare at Santino: Bell’s speech about following the rules was close to one of her own, the one about how OACET was able to impose order and create sense in spite of their poorly-designed hive mind, and Santino had sworn he would never repeat it to another living soul. He stared back, eyebrows raised, then realized what she was implying and his mouth rounded in a silent No! Never!
His surface colors stayed clean; she nodded to apologize.
Bell left her soda on an old TV tray stationed outside of the silver archway. Santino did the same, and Rachel took one last gulp before she dropped her can beside theirs.
She stepped through the arch and entered the lab, and realized the room was singing.
The computers in Jason’s office had felt like him, sleek and antagonistic, always ready for a fight. These machines were light but focused; they wanted to work, to create.
Rachel walked around the room, flipping through scans to take in the details. The computer lab had a glass roof: the glass wasn’t for soundproofing, Rachel realized, but to keep out the airborne debris from the fabrication projects in the main room. The dusting on the roof above them was thick enough to look like a light layer of snow.
Unlike the ceiling, the interior and exterior of the glass walls appeared to be scrubbed clean on a regular basis. These walls were covered in colorful writing, much of it accessible to her scans because of the dry-erase markers. She flipped to reading mode, and saw how Santino’s handwriting had taken over three panels of the exterior glass. A woman’s handwriting ran parallel to his, sometimes joined in an obvious collaboration; Zia’s penmanship was unmistakably Valley Girl, all loopy circles in unnecessary places. As time and the project went on, the two climbed and twisted together, shared thoughts that had grown into each other like twinned vines from separate plants. It was a passionate love letter between academics, and it told her more about Santino and Zia’s relationship than her partner would ever put into words. She grinned up at him, and he smiled shyly and blushed deep rose.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” she said to Bell.
“Thanks. What does it feel like to you?” Bell asked. “Zia likes my machines. She says they’re friendly.”
Rachel was surprised; Agents typically didn’t describe their experiences with machines to normal human beings. “That’s a good description. This is an amazing system. It must have cost a fortune.”
“I wouldn’t know. Terry Templeton paid for it,” Bell said, her colors picking up a sweet earthy brown, as well as a pink that was close enough to smug to hint at bragging. “He bought most of our equipment. He owns this entire building, actually.”
He was also the owner of a third of all information technology companies on the East Coast. Templeton Industries might not be a household name, but that was due to consumers’ general unawareness of what made their households function. Crack the case on a desktop computer or a television’s DDR, and you’d be staring at a logo for a company owned by Templeton Industries.
“He bought all of this for you?” Rachel asked. She didn’t know the list price for this type of equipment, but no one, no matter how rich, would invest this much in one young woman without getting something in return. A slip of Ray Charles’ velvet voice moved through her thoughts, singing about a woman way over town...
“Not just me,” Bell said quickly, as if reading Rachel’s mind. “I share them wit
h four other hackers.”
“Ah?”
“Doesn’t mean the same thing it used to,” Bell said. “We don’t break into databases. We make some things, customize others… Let me show you what I do.”
The girl opened a locked steel box and took out a delicate white glove attached to a battery pack. “Here,” she said to Rachel. “I used my own hand as the model for this, and your hand is about the same size as mine, so it’ll work for you. Try it on and tell me how it feels.”
“Plastic?” Rachel asked. Her scan showed that what appeared to be handmade lace was a knitted synthetic polymer, with thick boning hidden along the backs of each finger. Stays in a corset, she thought as she tugged the glove on and found that her fingers refused to bend.
Bell nodded. “This is something I’m working on for the V.A. Um… that’s the Department of Veterans Affairs,” she clarified. “So, imagine you’re a soldier in the Middle East.”
“Done,” Rachel said as she glanced at Santino, who was purple and trying not to laugh.
“Say your hand gets injured and you have to go through physical therapy. Well, there are a lot of injured soldiers, and maybe not enough physical therapists, right? This is a therapy augmentation device. It won’t replace therapy, but it’ll supplement it by helping a soldier with mobility exercises when a therapist isn’t available.
“You wanted to know about Arduinos?” Bell rummaged through the box and took out a second item, which she attached to the battery pack. “This is an Arduino with an extensor tendon therapy program.”
The glove hummed to life. It began to warm itself as the miniaturized metal servos on the boning caught power, and then began to move. Her fingers extended and relaxed in slow repetitions, the extensions becoming slightly more pronounced each time.
“This program is adjustable and can be programmed for individual patient needs. It monitors the user’s physical responses, too, so the therapist can chart the patient’s progress. The therapists at the VA think it’ll really help vets with tendon damage. Since the glove’ll do the stretching for them, it’ll probably improve compliance.”
“Nice work,” Rachel said appreciatively.
“So, this is what I make,” Bell said as she detached Rachel from the glove. “I’ve got grants from three different hospitals to develop different assistive devices. If we get the system working the way we want, each hospital will have a 3D printer. They’ll scan a patient’s biometrics to get the right size, print out a device that fits him perfectly, and a therapist’ll design an individualized program for each patient.”
“Just like that?”
“Well, money’s always a problem,” Bell said, relocking the glove in its metal box. “Even in a perfect world, these things’ll still cost money to produce. But if we can show the benefits will offset the initial investment cost, the money will come, and this system will help a lot of people.”
“Better living through technology,” Rachel said, smiling.
“Damn right! I’m a transhumanist,” Bell said, holding up her finger with its concealed magnet. “We’ve got so much potential, and we’re just starting to discover the tools that’ll let us realize it. Anything I can do to push us forward is worth it.”
Transhumanism again. That term, at least, Rachel knew well. Not all of the anonymous letters OACET received were hate mail. Many of them were from self-proclaimed transhumanists, people who saw OACET as the next phase of human evolution. Sometimes these letters were more difficult to read than the hate mail. It was harder to ignore someone who, instead of assuming you were a staggering hellspawn stalking the earth, thought of you as a semi-divine being who needed some gentle prodding to recognize how you should begin using your powers for the greater good.
“So don’t go getting hung up on the gun,” Bell said, settling herself down on a brushed steel bench. “We don’t do weapons here. This is where people like me build beautiful things. And since everybody’s definition of beauty is different, we’ve got hardware, software, art… Me? I think the human body is beautiful. I want to help heal it when it’s broken, or push it forward when it’s not, and I think technology is the best way to achieve this.”
“That’s great. Really commendable.” Rachel put her hand on the backrest of a wheeled desk chair and spun it around so she could sit facing Bell. “But Santino brought me here because he wanted to show me that whoever blew up downtown doesn’t necessarily have to be on our Great and Ever-Growing Checklist of International Enemies.”
“Not me,” Bell said. “I couldn’t have done this. I don’t play with any hardware outside of computers.”
“But the others? Are there other people who share this space who know how to make bombs?”
Bell’s surface colors faded. “A bomb is just a fuel source and a fuse,” she said defensively. “Those are everywhere.”
“Complicated, complex bombs? Ones on timers?”
“Yeah,” Bell grudgingly admitted. “Yeah, we could. And we know we could. But we’ve got a charter! We follow standard safety policies for what we can do, what we can make. If you want to hold a space here, you follow the charter. And anyone who violates it? They’re out on their ass.”
“They’re really strict about it,” Santino said. “All good Fab Labs have charters, and this is one of the best. Safety is a priority.”
Rachel pointed at the industrial refrigerator and its layers of signs.
“That’s a joke!” Bell exclaimed. “We had a mini fridge for food. Sometimes we stuck leftovers in there, but that was just to get the biohackers to move out. Their experiments always stunk up the loft.”
“Bell,” Rachel said, “Nobody knows better than OACET that it’s not what you can do, it’s what you choose to do. I’m not accusing you or anybody who comes here, but you have to understand that if the average person can do the kind of damage that happened on Gayle Street, we’re all pretty much fucked.
“So,” she continued, “what’s your expert opinion? Can the average Joe build a bunch of big old bombs in his basement?”
“No.” Bell was adamant. “There are three things all makers need: a plan, experience, and resources. Plans can be easy to find, but experience has to be earned, and resources are pretty much impossible to acquire.
“We are broke,” Bell added. “I’ve got the experience, and I can make a plan, but I wouldn’t have the resources to pull off something like Gayle Street. I might be able to build something small, like backpack bombs, but nothing big enough to take down an entire street!”
“What if someone rented space here, like Santino? Would they be able to make a bomb without your knowledge or consent?”
Bell pivoted to face the main section of the loft. “Hey, Landley!” she called out. “What do you think?”
“Unlikely,” came the muted voice of the man who had asked Rachel about the video.
Bell glared at Rachel. “No one’s crashing our space to use our tools. There’s no such thing as a secret here.”
“All right,” Rachel said, holding up her hands in surrender. “All right, I’m convinced. Do you have a lawyer?”
The girl stared at her blankly, her colors a confused orange-yellow. “No?”
“Get one. Not for yourself, but to represent your community. And if any new applicants show up to rent space from you, make sure Santino and Zia are there when you interview them.”
“Oh no.” Santino closed his eyes, shifting to purple-gray in a silent sigh. “Bell, she’s right. It’s likely that law enforcement will try to infiltrate us.”
“What… Why?!?”
Rachel shrugged. “Same reason the FBI sticks their people in every organization they can, from anti-war groups to the KKK,” she said. “You never know where the next threat will come from. But with an Agent and a cop sitting in, I don’t think you’ll have anything to worry about.”
Bell’s eyes traveled from Rachel to Santino before she could help herself, a sickly green washing over her.
“Not him,
” Rachel assured her. “He’s not a spy. He’s just a nerd.”
“I really am,” Santino told Bell. “But I’m a nerd who’s a cop, and I’ve got connections to OACET. That’ll be more than enough protection for you guys.”
Bell’s tension eased, the green weakening but not leaving her completely. Instead, a trace of red appeared, weaving itself into the green as she weighed anger against fear. “But we haven’t done anything,” she finally said. “Why would they waste their time on us?”
“Sorry, kid,” Rachel said as she and Santino stood to leave. “It’s just the way things are these days.”
EIGHT
“RACHEL? GOT A MOMENT?”
She didn’t, actually. She was more than a little worried the floor beneath her was about to cave in; whatever Phil wanted would have to wait. She flipped up a privacy message and stretched her toes out as far as her boots would allow.
Fuckin’ leather soles, she thought as she heard the support beam creak beneath her. I’d stab someone for a pair of sneakers.
Rachel had discovered that she and the fire department had very different perspectives on whether a fire-damaged building was safe to enter. The nice young firefighter had told her to keep to the walls where the support beams had sustained the least damage. The floor and subfloor were gone in the center of the room, and Rachel kept an active scan going to make sure she stood squarely on the joists. They sure built them solid back in the day, she thought, poking around the inside of the beams. Hardwood, not pine. Oak or ash? Charred but solid. Very, very solid.
She kept telling herself that as she walked the perimeter, hands clasped behind her so Zockinski wouldn’t see how her nails bit into her own palms. She swept her sixth sense down and out, tracing each utility she could find. Water line, sewer line, gas line, no power. Power must be aboveground in this neighborhood—she glanced around and spotted a utility pole—but they buried the cable? Strange.
Maker Space Page 9
