The Dream World Collective

35. Research & Development

"That's not rule two!" cried Alex. "Rule two is appointing a scribe. Seriously, where did you people learn to brainstorm?"

Sushi smirked. Alex was funny when he was being systematic. Especially in this group.

"I'm self-educated," Zen replied.

"I went to the Upstairs Montessori Brainstorm Academy for Gifted Humans-in-Training," said Summer. "We got to make up our own rules."

"That is the stupidest and most hilarious thing I have ever heard," Alex told her with a straight face.

"'Stupidest' isn't a word," Summer shot back. "And the superlative of 'hilarious' is 'hilariest.' Obviously. Learn English."

"Are we done here?" asked Sushi. "Because I could go back to painting any time now."

"No, no, we're doing it," Alex insisted. "This is important."

She decided to give it thirty seconds to become interesting before she went back to her stunning portrayal of the case of Griffin v. Bear.

"Ok. Favorite ideas, everyone. If you could pick one thing for us to do to support the Collective, what would it be?"

"Robot army," said Otto immediately.

"How does that make money?" Sushi asked.

Otto rolled his eyes. "Are we really going to do that conversation again?"

"Sure." Alex gazed at him intently, halfway between a smirk and that ready-to-logically-tear-apart-and-rebuild-your-idea look he got sometimes. "I'm interested."

Otto gave a vexed sigh and began toying with the sugar bowl as he stared at the floor gathering his thoughts, or whatever it was that Otto did in that pudgy skull of his.

"Ok. Well, the way I see it we need three kinds of robots: harvesters, builders, and some other kind that actually does stuff. Generalists, we'll call them. No, wait, mercenaries. That's cooler. Anyway, the builders are robots who can make more robots. They can make all three kinds. We train the harvesters to go out into the world to find and gather the materials we need. We could just calculate the raw materials needed on a grams-per-robot level and calibrate the harvesters to—well, anyway. That's for later. The mercenaries we could discuss as a collective. They could, like, have a bazooka arm or do heavy lifting or childcare or whatever."

"With a bazooka arm?" Summer exclaimed.

"I mean, it could be hyper-pincers or something if you think that's better," Otto stammered. "We can figure that out together. I don't want this to just be my thing. Anyway, we'd probably have to harvest the first few rounds of materials ourselves, but after that it should be pretty much self-sustaining. We might have a couple operational adjustments to make from time to time. Training the harvesters not to extract rebar in the residential districts, just off the top of my head. That could probably be a firmware thing. And then—sorry, keep it simple. That's the concept. I mean, if..." He trailed off, looking at the others with nervous, expectant eyes.

Sushi raised her hand. "Not to play devil's advocate, but I'm pretty sure that kind of technology won't be available for at least—" She counted quickly on the fingers of one hand. "—seven months. Maybe even a little longer."

"Maybe just a bit," agreed Alex, his face radiating skepticism.

Otto nodded. "I was thinking maybe with the new microprocessors—"

"We'll put it on the list for R&D," said Alex. "If you can make it happen, I will be so, so happy. But we do have to pay rent in the meantime still. Anybody else, ideas?"

"Childcare," said Summer. "Without bazooka-robot pincers," she added pointedly. "Just us. You know, old school."

"Pshh. Like that would work," scoffed Otto. "Have you ever tried to deal with a child?"

"I love children!"

"Obviously, but I'm talking about real children."

"Yes, Otto! Real children."

"Really?" Otto seemed intrigued by the idea. "Well, I haven't had much experience, myself. I suppose it could be possible. Takes all kinds to make a world and all that," he murmured thoughtfully.

"Whatever," Summer laughed. "Anyway, childcare. And selling vegetables. But that would take some startup time."

At that, Otto began snickering softly. "Oh, Summer," he chuckled. "You and your, heh, such great little ideas. Vegetables. Like people would actually buy vegetables." He put on a silly British accent. "Four pounds of carrots, my good man. And perhaps one of your fine lettuces." He settled into a good-natured fit of giggles.

Sushi wondered, as she had so many times before, what it was that happened in his head. He was like...well, sort of like pizza. So simple, and yet somehow you just had to keep coming back for more.

"Such a mind," Otto continued with a bemused grin. "I don't know where you—I mean, maybe for pizza, if they were all out of pepperoni or something. But even then, there's always cheese. I'm sorry. I just don't know if there's really a market for that sort of—"

Suddenly he looked up and found that everyone was staring at him. This seemed to sober him a little.

"Well," he said. "I suppose we could put it on the list for R&D."