Fine Structure

by qntm

"It doesn't work," she stutters. "No. "Here's what's going to happen. Your hydrogen femtoassemblers are going to run out of control. They're going to build more of themselves, so many more that nobody will even have time to react. They don't know how to build more of themselves yet. But one of the technicians swears he saw an electrical discharge inside the Cage and I've seen that sign before and I know what it means. "Within five minutes the nanometre-thick layer of assemblers will coat every free surface in the laboratory and the surrounding landscape out to a distance of at least a kilometre. It may even occupy some of Arkhangelsk city. It depends how lucky we are. Hydrogen will coat the assemblers to a depth of maybe a few centimetres - all over the walls, the floor, the ceiling, our skin, our eyes, the insides of our mouths, our lungs. And then there'll be a spark. It might be natural or it might be another act of God, I don't know. And the whole lab will go up and there'll be nothing left but shattered burnt bodies and water vapour. Hydrogen and oxygen makes water. The world's cleanest explosion. "And before the dust has settled from the detonation replicator technology will have stopped working, anywhere in this universe, for all of time. And your dream will be dead."