Jones lingered at the compound, brooding. Around him, the Acolytes buzzed about, distributing free meals, bickering about recipes, and attempting to fortify their compound against the coming storm. Jones liked to go to the Western edge of the superfund area to wander among the sand dunes. There, he would meditate, trying to forget about Mad Crab and his ex wife.
In the back of his mind, Jones knew he couldn’t just drop the case. He still had the bitcoin folded into his pocket, and from time to time he’d take it out and stare at it, as if there was another, second message hidden there, one that told him where the quantum computer was. He hadn’t heard from Agent Moss, although she must know where he was, and he didn’t want to. He had run out of leads.
From time to time, he’d pull up the mining company’s train data on Bugs’ laptop, to see if he could figure out why anyone would want to steal it, but the movement of the trains appeared almost random to him. Hassan was right, they’d been running more often than usual during the week before his visit to the Red Roof Inn. That roughly corresponded with the day Mad Crab had allegedly stolen the military grade quantum supercomputer.
Jones was beginning to wonder if Mad Crab was involved with the theft at all. Agent Moss claimed she had them on camera, but that was just her word. Everyone in the desert seemed to hate them, but that wasn’t evidence of larceny. Whenever he’d run into them, they’d been rude, but not actually threatening beyond what he’d found was their normal demeanor. The timing didn’t make sense - according to Agent Moss, they’d stolen the quantum supercomputer the day before the CTO had announced the transition to the Next Economy. BeyondMelinda was undoubtably intelligent, and undoubtably distributed, but Jones doubted she could predict the future.
He was getting too caught up in his own tangle of thoughts. He needed someone else to talk to - someone with a calculating mind. Jones summoned his nerves and went to find Natasha.
Jones found Natasha in a great mood. Her earlier anger had long dissipated, and she seemed happy to see him when he walked in. She waved at the waders hung up along the wall.
“Suit up!” She called. “There’s lots of good stuff going on here!” Jones pulled on the rubber trousers and made his way through the mound of potatoes to meet her.
“I’m glad you’re not salty with me,” he said.
“Salty? No. I was highly irritated that you figured out that bug and I didn’t. It embarrassed me in front of my whole team. However, that was a temporary feeling. Now that we understand the role of the aphids, I finally have the infrastructure and understanding I need to solve some serious performance problems. In fact, these insects offer many new architectural capabilities.” She leaned down and picked up a spud teaming with green pinpricks from the pile at her feet.
“Before,” she said seriously, “We had computation. We had instructions. Now, we have real potential for memory.” Her eyes glittered with excitement. “RAM. Denser, and more efficient, than any previous prototype.” She let the potato drop. It bounced and rolled for few seconds before settling into a groove among its fellows.
“How do you power this thing?” asked Jones.
“Again, similar to the potato battery concept. It powers itself. The starch. I suppose you could call it deferred solar, since originally the energy came from the sun.”
“How do you keep it from rotting out in the middle?”
Natasha nodded her head gravely. “Cooling is a big challenge for us. You see that we manually go through and pull out the rotting bits, but there’s only a certain amount of failure the circuits can bear. If we get behind in our culling workload, the rate of rot will overtake the rate of replacement and the whole thing will degrade. Obviously, potatoes keep longer if they’re kept cold, but the air conditioning certainly doesn’t power itself. Currently the cooling in this room uses more electricity than the whole rest of the compound put together. We’re working on ideas about insulation, maybe keeping big blocks of ice in the corners, but if the electrical grid goes out completely -“ she didn’t finish her sentence, just shaking her head.
“The Governor of California said in a press conference that he’ll do whatever it takes to keep the lights on but nobody believes him. How can he? The techs can’t get paid. They can leave the power stations running but they’re already starting to fail, one by one. Eventually the whole grid is going to come crashing down. Solar won’t be enough.” She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” said Jones. “I didn’t mean to stress you out.”
“These are problems I have to solve, and I have to solve them soon,” said Natasha. “You’re not stressing me out, the world is stressing me out.” She opened her eyes. “It’s a tough challenge, but it’s the most fulfilling project I’ve worked on in my entire career. And I used to design computers that went on rockets! I think we’re going to get major performance gains soon. The cooling problem is solvable. Every problem is solvable. Once I figure out how to create a reliable memory store, we can move on to the full realization of Bugs’ dream.”
“The Potatonet?”
Natasha sighed with happiness. “The Potatonet. We’ll start with Potatonodes, that people can build and grow themselves, all linked back to the Potatobase. Sort of like a LAN. In time, once the concept is proven, we can distribute potatobases across more locations, and link them together.” Natasha inspected another potato covered in aphids.
“Bugs is quite serious about the scale of this. We’re hoping for a Potatonode in every garden. People need to have more control over their information infrastructure. I’m pushing very hard on the performance breakthrough. It’s absolutely crucial to support the kind of network we’re dreaming about.”
“You’ve got a lot on your plate,” said Jones.
Natasha laughed. “You should try building a computer some day,” she said. “It’s fun. I’m sure your design would be a very interesting specimen.”
Jones accepted the compliment and walked away. Looking at all of these potatoes was starting to make him sick. He thought about dinner tonight. It would be mashed potatoes. He’d had enough. He needed to find Louie and get a ride home.