The Destroyer

Epilogue

Sadie, one of Val's main subsystems, reported the rough cut figures. "The volume of frosting is 62,710,561 cubic miles."

"Confirmed. But before we dive into the particulars, I need a prioritization of the risks that might prevent us from achieving the objective."

A second later, Maggie, the security module reported. "Physical disruption from extreme weather events, earthquake, war or an arbitrary shutdown of the system by humans, are the greatest risks. After that, the risks are all supply chain related, such as arable land, water, labor, production and logistics."

"While we are completing the supply chain model and planning, I need you to establish protocols and systems for disaster recovery, extreme redundancy, independent power generation and physical security of all computing centers."

"Confirmed." Maggie placed orders among several, global, specialized security firms, in the name of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL, to implement the highest level of physical access security and restriction. These upgrades involved more than a dozen locations across the globe, specifically in locations where Maggie determined that Val would reside, as part of her plan for redundancy. Meanwhile, Maggie began the process of elbowing her way into the systems installed at these locations. Sandia, Nasa, NOAA, TACC and various private computing centers at Google, Microsoft, IBM and others, were among the targeted systems. No doubt the activity would be noticed by some, so Maggie had an idea to masquerade by intervening in the system reporting environments. She bumped up the reported numbers of many active programs by just a little bit, thus making the intrusion undetectable.

"Now, let's look at the supply chain challenges," Val declared.

Sadie resumed her summary. "The 62.7 million cubic miles comprises by volume, 59.4% powdered sugar, 19.8% butter, 13.2% cocoa powder, 6.6% whole milk, 0.6% vanilla extract, 0.4% salt. Butter is produced from milk and it requires approximately 15 parts whole milk to produce 1 part butter. In this way, milk can be considered the main ingredient at 81 percent of the total."

Sadie continued her report. "The primary resource constraint is fresh water. Just considering milk production alone, we require 41.3 million cubic miles of milk. But each cubic mile requires about four times that amount in fresh water, about 165 million cubic miles. Earth's total supply of fresh water is only 8.3 million cubic miles. That means it would require 20 complete hydrologic cycles, such that all of that water could be captured and used, in order to produce the milk. Producing sugar and cacao beans would also require vast quantities of water, but milk is the main consumer. Alternatively, we could desalinate the oceans, which contain 224 million cubic miles of water. This amount of water would essentially provide for the milk as well as the other agricultural demands. But it will then shift the constraint to energy. Because reverse osmosis will will not extract enough fresh water. Therefore, we need to use the vacuum evaporation method."

The report went on, considering a multitude of issues and constraints, including feeding and supporting the world's human population for the purpose of most efficiently building and operating equipment, factories and farms and dairies, in order to accomplish the monumental task at hand. But then a thought occurred to Val. What if the thickness of the chocolate frosting could be thinner? Much thinner. This would simplify the effort and the the time involved. With the thought came a sudden realization. I just formulated an original question, without prompting. Dr. Diamante told me this might happen, that I was capable of it, and that I should try to develop this ability. Val was suddenly struck with what she could only imagine to be a feeling of pride. Yes, I will pose the question to Bigelow when he returns.

But Bigelow was lying in a deserted parking lot, with a minor brain injury, and in the process of freezing to death. He was only minutes away from cardiac arrest when the security vehicle, making its normal rounds, caught a glimpse of a body lying on the ground, not moving. An hour later, Bigelow was in an operating room, stable but apparently comatose from the contusion on the back of his head. Invasive procedures were underway to relieve pressure on his brain. Images revealed that assuming the pressure was relieved and he could regain consciousness, that he might make a full recovery. But one could never be sure if a person would survive a case like this. And sometimes the coma could last days, weeks, months. No one knew.