Communications Failure
by Ron L. Figgins
“Hansen, you’d better have some answers!” Brad Mitchell, VP of Operations, bellowed. “Since you introduced Eliminall our stock has plummeted, and it’s still falling!”
David Hansen, Advanced Agricultural Engineering’s Senior Research Director, glanced nervously at the angry faces of the executive committee around the huge, Synthi-Oak table. Clearing his throat, he began, “Uhm… gentlemen, I believe we’ve isolated the problem.
“As you know, Eliminall is the market’s first selective, wide-spectrum, nanoengineered herbicide and bio-nutritional enhancer. The Eliminall solution not only destroys unwanted weeds, but rapidly breaks them down, at a molecular level, into nutrients the target crop can easily use.”
A hand rose in the back of the room. “You mean, Eliminall is a weed and feed.”
Laymen! Hansen thought, cringing. Putting on his best smile, he said, “An excellent analogy! But by using specifically programmed nanoengineered machines, Eliminall is a very intelligent weed and feed.”
“Hansen, we know all that!” Mitchell interrupted. “Why isn’t it working?”
A look of surprise shot across Hansen’s face. “Uh, it’s not that Eliminall isn’t working. The problem is that it works too well!” Dimming the room’s lights, he slipped a Holo-disk from his pocket and inserted it into the table’s projector slot. A surreal figure appeared hovering above them. It resembled a patchwork cross between a bulldozer, vacuum cleaner, and several other machines.
“This is the HP, uhm… Hunter-Processor unit, that makes up the Eliminall. A single ounce of the matrix contains billions of these.” The next slide displayed a split screen image. On one side, line after line of computer code leaped into view, the other showed a complex electrical schematic.
“Here are the culprits,” Hansen declared, pointing to an obscure area in the middle of the code. “The Filter-Discriminator and the Quantum Signal Processor circuit are having an unanticipated fourth level interaction. It’s causing a failure between their communication protocols and so certain materials, which should be ignored by the HP’s, are being targeted and, uh, well… eliminated! Fortunately, the interaction range is very narrow. We were really quite lucky to have discovered it at all.”
“Lucky!” Mitchell screamed. “The media are having a field day! ‘Ninety Minutes’ claims Eliminall is causing major chromosome damage all over the midwest!”
Hansen blinked nervously. “But I’ve gone over the field reports in detail! The flaw only affects cotton.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when Mitchell leaped to his feet, his face as red as the synthetic sugar beets Hansen had developed last year. “Hansen, don’t you realize half our business is with cotton growers all over this country!” Mitchell paused for breath, but before he could continue, Hansen pressed on.
“But it doesn’t attack all cotton. It ignores cotton plants just as it’s programmed to do. It only attacks processed cotton fibers; and then only certain weaves and colors. For some reason, it seems to have a special liking for blue. I’m certain we can correct the problem. In fact, the new HP program will be ready for insertion in a few more days.”
Silence filled the room while the committee considered Hansen’s report. Finally, somewhat mollified, Mitchell sat back in his chair looking puzzled. “From what you’ve just described, I don’t understand why there was such a panic. But the news reports clearly mentioned severe gene damage.”
Hansen had been afraid this would come up. “There was a second communications failure,” he stated quietly. “As I said earlier, the defect gave the Eliminall a special affinity for certain cotton fabrics, blue denim in particular.”
“Hansen,” Mitchell fumed, “get to the point! What was the second failure?”
Hesitantly, he advanced to his final slide. Wearing nothing but a faded leather hat and worn work boots, a hulking male figure, large, somewhat overweight, and embarrassingly bare, leaped into view. Conspicuously absent were his cotton coveralls. Around his feet, a few tattered strips of faded blue cloth were the only evidence that they had ever existed.
“What the reporter meant to say, was jean damage!”