Chapter 4

After cleaning his leg, Phil put a three-foot-by-three-foot box that stood about one foot tall down in front of Darek. “Little heavy?” Darek asked as Phil came around next to him, grunting slightly at the effort of placing it on the table. “No, I’m just used to doing it with full use of my leg.” Phil stopped with both hands on the front of the box, searching for something. With a few quick taps on his wrist device, chill electronic music started playing from a speaker. “There it is, that’s better.”

The box was matte-black and smooth except for a hint of seams and surface scratches from use “Are you ready to see this?” Phil asked. Darek’s eyes lit up, and he clapped and rubbed his hands together “Of course… What do we got??”

Phil smiled and rubbed his touch-unlock pattern along the front edge of the box, and the lid popped apart to reveal a seam down the middle. He pulled both sides open, split at the center, and folded them outward fully to be level with the bottom. Inside, centered along the front edge, was a beautifully ornate metal tube of gold, silver, and bronze set in a box of black foam.

The rest of the box was full of small glass tubing laid out, tightly packed and touching, in a single layer of vertical columns. Each tube was interrupted every inch by a metal ring that formed perfect lines across the box full of what had to be hundreds of them. Green glowed from beneath, shining through their liquid contents.

“What. Is. That?” Darek said, eyes aglow as he soaked in the view before him.

“That’s a light saber. From Star Wars.” Phil said, as if speaking to a small child.

“A real light saber?!” Darek looked like he really needed to know. “Yeah, a real-life self-contained crystal powered plasma torch saber, in front of you… right now… in a galaxy you currently occupy… On a moon base... where that technology has never been developed. Come on, man, you’re killing me.”

Darek’s expression didn’t change much, except that now his eyebrows pinched in slight confusion. “I know what that is,” he pointed to the tubes when realization hit him.

“That is my extra special light saber diffuser.” Phil cut him off before he had a chance to say it.

Darek looked in awe at Phil’s diffuser. Phil lifted it out of the case ceremoniously with two hands. When he transferred it to one hand, a clear glass window could be seen towards the top end of the handle. He passed it to Darek.

“Phil, how long have you had this here?” Darek asked as he handled the device.

“Since we came down to the surface base.”

“And you never shared?!”

“You want to load it?” Phil asked as he grabbed one of the small one-inch sections of tube.

Darek shrugged and shook a ‘yes’ “Okay.”

“Okay, open that glass door by rubbing your thumb up its left side, then over the top edge, twice.” As soon as he did, the door slid down into the housing soundlessly and the chamber was easy to see. “Drop your tank in and rub the same pattern with your thumb again,” Phil said as he handed Darek one of the small glass tubes. Darek dropped it in and rubbed the pattern again. The door closed silently and when it was completely shut, the chamber began to glow green, spreading light through all parts of the saber handle in impressively artistic intricate designs.

“Darek, meet Kyber. Just put your mouth to where the blade would come out and pull.” Phil said.

As he followed instructions, he noticed the blade outlet at the top looked like a mouthpiece. When he put his mouth to it and pulled, the handle designs surged brighter and flowed through a rainbow of colors like a cuttlefish, then faded quickly back to green as he stopped his inhale.. “HHHOOOOOOOOOO!! YES!” Darek spoke out through a cloud of vapor and handled Kyber in admiration. “This piece is spectacular, Phil! I can see why you keep it hidden. I don’t really have words, it’s just beautiful. You’d never know this is what it’s for just looking at it.”

“Darek, while it is quite dear to me, that’s just my handle. That’s not what I brought you here to see. But I thought if I’m going to trust you with what you’re about to see, then I could trust you with this and we could liven the experience,” he said and started his own pull on Kyber.

“You’re kidding… what could possibly top this?” Darek said dryly, feeling the effects of the oils relaxing him.

“Uhh, nope.” Phil spoke with a single big sweeping nod of ‘no’ and then removed the cartridge from the glass door and put Kyber back in the case.

He positioned his pointers outside of the box at the center of its front edge. He glided the two fingers outward towards opposite ends and then into a three-loop spiral before sliding back half the distance to the center and heading all the way to the outside again. Inches from the outer edges, he pushed in with his middle three fingers, and a small panel sunk in beneath them on each side. As soon as he pressed, the whole interior case surface lifted upward and slid back out of the way to reveal what Darek immediately recognized as portable nano-construction and programming equipment.

“You don’t play around with your lock patterns, huh?” Darek said, again, admiring Phil’s equipment. “Okay, well, I know what nano-equipment looks like, duh” he said as he pointed to himself, “I am a nano-technician. So, what am I supposed to be looking at?”

“Yeah, duh, so obviously there’s something else that’s significant about this. This is my project. I made it.”

He picked up a small disc from the corner of the box and held it in his hand like a perfectly round skipping stone about two inches in diameter. “This is the controller. I made it simple, so you only have to worry about pressing one button. On and off.” He handed it to Darek.

Darek examined both sides of the small, dark metallic-gray disc that had a central dome slightly separated like it was a button. “That’s nice man, it’s dense, feels solid. Is this supposed to be a UFO?”

“Technically no, I modeled after Hando’s ship.”

“Who?” Darek asked.

“Hando, the space pirate? from Star Wars?” Darek stared at Phil, frowned, and shook his head.

“This effort, is no longer profitable!” Phil said in his best Hando voice and thrust a finger upward as Darek shook his head. “Ah man, dude, I thought you liked Star Wars, you don’t know Hando?? Giant flying saucer? Space pirate?” “Kenobiii.” He did another impression that Darek scrunched his mouth and shook his head ‘no’ to. “Ugh. Well, now I don’t know if I can trust you.”

“Come on man, you can trust me, you know that. How does it work, what’s going on here?” He quickly pushed off Phil’s joke, intrigued by what he was looking at.

“Simple as it looks.” Phil held up a small glass tube with four gray capsules in it. “We pop some bots in a nano-pill, give them a few minutes to circulate and get to the brain receptor region, get comfy, and press the switch. Like I said, super simple on/off.”

“And then what happens? I don’t get it.”

“Well, then the fun starts.”

“Wait, where did you get ingestible nanos? They’re med-tech and really hard to come by.”

“I programmed my nanos to build them. They’re specifically designed for one task.” Phil had grabbed the remote as he explained and slid his finger in a full clockwise circle around its top side. The dome came to life and lit up red. Small blue dots of light flashed around the outside edge of the top of the saucer.

“Now it really looks like a flying saucer.” Darek commented.

“This means waiting to be in position. The dome light indicates position, and the dot lights indicate communication. When the bots are set, the dome goes blue. If anything is wrong after they’re set, the dots turn red, otherwise they’re usually blue to signal ready.” Phil said.

“So red dome, blue dots means you’re communicating and ready, but they’re not in your brain yet?”

“Exactly.” Phil gulped water before he continued. “UGHHHHHH water. Yes. Once it all goes blue - press the dome on, press the dome off.” As Phil clicked the dome, five white bars of light illuminated from the dome's edge and radiated out to the saucer's edge. “White bars mean active, no bars means not active.”

“Sounds simple enough. Are we testing it now?”

“I want to test it right. I think if it works the way I plan, it’s going to be the biggest thing since the Drop base. So, no… not yet. Also, no one knows about this and we’re going to need to use one of the labs so we can use monitoring equipment. I need readouts on our physical response and I want a video monitor.”

“Video monitor and read outs!? What the hell is this thing going to do, man?” Darek said incredulously.

“I don’t know, but if I have all the answers ready for all the questions, I won’t have to waste my time doing it all again. I’ve been working on this for years; a couple days doesn’t make a big difference.”

“I get it, but I’ve known about it for minutes... so a few days seems like an eternity to me. When are you thinking?”

“Let’s set the plan and go for it as soon as possible. I already ran simulated tests and they work fine, but I don’t know how it’s going to work on us. I was thinking we wait until after the council presentation, just in case… shouldn’t be any hang-ups but imagine they get stuck on, we could be high for days.”

Darek stared into space for a while, fully realizing what Phil had built. “Okay, I’m cool with that. High for days sounds nice.”

“Yeah, it does, but not during a council meeting. Remember, all staff report. I don’t want to be stoned and explaining my nano-tech to a bunch of people who don’t understand more than ‘tiny magic robots’.”

“So, to be clear, Phil, you made nanobots to get us high?” Phil’s grin was the only response needed.

“So then let’s do Thursday night, while we’re still dark-side.” Phil looked over his equipment then shook his head a little “… don’t know Hando and call yourself a Star Wars fan… I guess I have to trust you now Darek.”

Darek hissed a smile in response.

“Darek….you wanna get high and watch cartoons with me?”

“YES.”

“Cannnn you help me test my invention?”

“Yis.”

Chapter 3

Chapter 5

Order

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