CHAPTER 11
“Fuck!”
For the third time in the last fifteen minutes, Konami bumped his head on some overhanging object. Mattoso didn’t remember him being clumsy at the scene of Muahe’s death — in fact, he had been rather adroit in navigating through the passageways. Maybe he’s distracted? Or maybe he just wasn’t used to this part of the ship. Mattoso could count on one hand the number of trips she’d made to the Fabrication shops, deep as they were beneath Aotea’s living spaces. The curses were a little much, though. Did aggression count if it was against inanimate objects? She didn’t recall anything specific on the subject from various SNH tomes. But his scowl certainly seemed un-Aotean.
She tried to focus her mind on the task at hand. She’d had a little blow up with Pat that morning and her mind always seemed to go into overdrive after their rare fights – what if they leave me? What if they’ve had enough? She knew it wasn’t logical. They’d had these little fights before, usually about something trivial like conflicts on their calendars, and it always blew over. Usually in less than a day. Another bump and a curse from Konami brought her attention back, and she suggested they slow down, but he waved dismissively and blamed himself.
They passed a shop and stopped to watch. A narrow hatch opened up into a very crowded workshop. Along a short conveyor belt, robotic arms moved so quickly as to blur together, building up what looked to be the main casing for one of the ubiquitous DustBots, molecule by molecule.
Mattoso asked if he’d been in these spaces before.
He turned and furrowed his brow. “Of course. Ship’s quals. Gotta tour every space on this tub.”
“And since then?”
Konami scratched his temple. “Maybe once or twice. I’m not sure, though — why would anyone need to come down here? Anything I need, I just make an order.”
“Sometimes folks just don’t want to wait.” They both turned toward a little passageway to their left — the speaker was a little bald man, almost as small as a child.
“Chief Inspector, I presume?” said the man. He was accompanied by a round-domed TaskBot, child-sized and vaguely human shaped, which the little man occasionally patted on its “head.” Probably the most common type of robot onboard aside from the cleaning Bots, TaskBots were utilized for assistance and general manual labor throughout the ship.
“Yes,” answered Konami. “And you must be Fabrication Engineer Zubiri.”
The engineer came forward and stuck his hand out. “A pleasure,” he said as he shook Konami’s hand.
He looked at Mattoso and smiled, and she introduced herself. His hand was dry and papery.
“Enjoying our handiwork?” he asked, idly scratching the TaskBot where its ears would be, if it had any.
“Yes, very impressive,” replied Mattoso. “Is it all automated?”
“Come, I’ll show you.” Zubiri led them past a few more shops of varying sizes and functionality. They seemed to differ based on the material and size of the objects produced — one small shop was making household sundries out of polymers, while the largest shop was putting together an enormous alloy object that could be destined for a fusion reactor.
They arrived at the fabrication control room, manned by a single fabrication tech presiding over a jumble of monitors and touchscreens. Two additional stations were unmanned.
“I remember, from my quals,” said Mattoso. “Only one fab tech on duty at a time.”
“Normally, that’s correct,” replied Zubiri. “For unusual orders, or particularly high-volume times, we might assign a second tech on watch.”
“And these extra stations…” started Konami.
“…Are for special orders, usually,” Zubiri finished for him. “Not everything is in the main catalogue. And some Aoteans enjoy designing their own products, even down to the molecule.” He laughed. “A few weeks ago, a youngster came in for a new set of polymer dishes. He demanded a strict molecular count — powers of the number two!”
“We had fun with that one,” the fab tech added.
“Fascinating,” said Mattoso, though it wasn’t. But maybe she could come back later and finally get a blanket that wasn’t too warm and wasn’t too cold.
“So what is it I can help you with?” inquired the fabrication engineer.
“You’ve heard about the incident with DT1 Muahe?” Zubiri answered affirmatively, and Konami summarized their findings so far with regards to the mask and filter. “We’d like to see one produced, soup to nuts.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.” Konami gave him the fab number and the fab tech entered a string of commands.
Zubiri ordered his tech to wait, and led them to one of the smaller fabrication shops. “Go ahead,” he said into his wearable, and the automated shop sprang into action. “As you can see,” narrated the fabrication engineer. “The first step is for the printer to build the ‘draft,’ as we call it.” Mattoso watched closely as a small, oblong machine glided back and forth over the beginning of the conveyor belt, accelerating to a blur. It was finished in less than a minute, a soft polymer object in the rough shape of a breather mask filter. The engineer’s pride in his work was evident on the man’s face. “The draft advances forward to the shapers.” Insectile arms skimmed over the surface of the draft, cutting and trimming the details of the filter into the draft. “Then, the cladders.” Another set of little automated arms, this time attaching generic tags and clips used for countless applications. “And finally, the scan.” The filter slid into a transparent box and was lifted and spun. “The green light tells us the scan was satisfactory, so it’s packaged and sorted.”
So they’re scanned… Mattoso thought back to the lab analysis. “Would the scoring on Muahe’s filter be picked up by the scanner?”
“May I see it?” asked Zubiri.
Mattoso projected on a bulkhead and showed the engineer close-up images of the defective filter.
Zubiri sent his TaskBot to pick up the just-produced filter, removed the packaging, and they compared it to the images on her projection.
“Absolutely. The scanners would pick this up in seconds. Their resolution goes down to the nanometer scale, and this would be well out of tolerance. My friends, this was no fabrication error.”
Konami crossed his arms. “So the scanner never makes mistakes?”
The engineer’s brow furrowed. “Impossible. Each box has three scanners, and they all have to agree to go green.”
“Can the scanner be disabled?” asked Mattoso. She noted that the chief inspector did not look satisfied.
Zubiri scratched the top of his head. “I suppose, but only from the control station. And it’s not a standard procedure — I don’t think anyone but one of my Techs could do it.”
A shadow of a grin crept into the corner of Konami’s mouth. “How good are your logs?”
The engineer tilted his head. “As good as any, I suppose. All fabs are logged automatically, by date, fab number, and quantity.”
“And originator?” Mattoso chimed in.
“Yes, originator too. At least for outside orders. Manual on-site orders, like this filter, wouldn’t record an originator.”
“Thank you, Engineer.” Konami had apparently heard enough. “We’ll need to see all logs for these filter fabs, going back six months.”
“Six months?”
Konami did the math in his head. Not everyone’s from Earth. “One hundred eighty days. To start with. And I want your watch logs too, cross referenced with the filter fab times.”
“That might take a while. We’re just about to start a refurb of—”
“I’d be very grateful if you could have them to me by tomorrow morning.”
“Tomor…” Zubiri met Konami’s eyes and his expression hardened. “Yes, tomorrow. Understood, Chief Inspector.”