Sam landed on a vast concrete pad dotted with hundreds of feeding stations, ready to discharge distilled ethanol into tankers.
Greg Matteson, Nazar’s construction manager, sped toward them, across ten football fields of virgin concrete in his jeep. He parked, and ducked low under the twisting rotors. The Australian boarded and crushed a welcome to Nazar with a plate-sized, callused hand. “Mr. Eudon, thank you for coming, sir. It’s an honor to meet you again.” He said, “G’day, Sam,” to the pilot.
The helicopter took off. Greg, headphones over his ears, directed the pilot and pointed out progress to his boss. They swooped low over one of the unfinished structures. A gaping crater lined by rows of scaffolding marking the future location of the walls. Dozens of concrete trucks hovered around the edge, feeding carbon-free slag concrete through long snaking tubes. Ant-like figures in green-and-gold overalls guided the slurry into rebar-strengthened chambers.
Nazar’s voice boomed in the headsets. “What’s on your critical path?”
“We had to divert the service road because of unexpected hard-pad; probably looking at five percent overage, but within our tolerances. Frankly, Mr. Eudon, I’m pleased we brought that road in so close to budget. These Yanks sure know how to build a highway.” Nazar admired the two-mile-long concrete strip that connected the plant to the interstate and from there to the US’s east-west transportation corridor.
“Are we ready?” Nazar asked.
Greg nodded toward a line of trucks. The air shimmered with heat from their idling engines. “Just wave the flag and we’re off to the races.” Your guests will watch from there.” He pointed to a coned-off area near one of the conversion chambers.
“The distillery’s been complete and ready to go for six weeks,” Greg said, indicating a grouping of dozens of tall, silvered tubes clustered at the center of the plant. The conversion chambers connected to the central distillery through a series of underground pipes like spokes of a wheel to the hub. Once the nanobots did their work, the ethanol solution would flow to the distillery to be purified into automobile-ready fuel.
After twenty minutes of narrated flyover, the pilot returned to Greg’s Jeep. They stayed on the ground long enough for the project manager to jump out, duck, and run back to his vehicle. The chopper flew on toward a scaled-down prototype conversion chamber, two miles west of the main plant.
Outside the prototype building, a few people were taking a smoke break near a green-and-gold-striped marquee. When they landed, Martin Spalling drove up in a golf cart.
“Terrific turnout, boss.” Nazar shook hands with his marketing VP. He was a handsome man: coiffed blond hair that didn’t move, even under the downdraft of the helicopter, clear blue eyes, and a baby-faced complexion. Projecting a look of casual confidence in neatly pressed slacks and an open-necked shirt, Martin was the same height as his boss — one of Nazar’s hiring criteria for any employee likely to stand close during photo opportunities. He handed Nazar an agenda.
“Anything changed?” Nazar asked.
“No, just as we agreed.”
Nazar slipped the paper into his inside pocket. He had been anticipating this day for more than two years. He had burned cash until there was hardly any left. Now he would savor one of those special moments of triumph that only come to those who take enormous risk.
Martin ran through the plan as he drove the cart. “We’re set up in the marquee. You’ll give the welcome. Then I’ll give a ten-minute technology overview.”
“Not the professor?” Nazar asked.
“I took him through it three times yesterday. He stutters. He flubs his lines. And he gets hung up in the details. I’ll make him available for questions, but it’s better if I do the pitch. I need it high-level. Most of the journalists are generalists, even the ones who think they aren’t.”
In the marquee, two hundred guests were seated, theater-style. Nazar took his place in the front row next to the senator from Ohio who had been so helpful in the past; making him today’s VIP was something of a payback.
Martin called them to order and introduced Nazar, who received a polite sprinkling of applause from staff and from local politicians who had enjoyed a significant boost to their tax base during the plant’s construction. As he scanned the press corps, Nazar thought of Abdul. He had been invited, but that was before the boy had disappeared.
Nazar welcomed everyone before handing off to Martin. His VP gave a slick summary of the technology and fielded a few questions.
Nazar tingled inside, remembering the first time he observed nanobots eating pizza boxes and car tires. These people were going to be blown away.
The guests filed across a dusty strip of concrete into the prototype building. For two years, this building had headquartered the scientists and engineers who had perfected the nanobot technology. Nazar had always intended the building to double as a demonstration facility where he’d host car companies, electric utilities, garbage suppliers, government officials, and, most importantly, the Wall Street investment houses responsible for the Initial Public Offering that would rocket him to his rightful place at the top of the Forbes World’s Billionaires list.
At the center of the building, a fifty-foot diameter circular conversion chamber was sunk thirty feet into the ground. The spectators shuffled into a viewing gallery separated from the chamber by ten-foot-high windows, cambered in, so the onlookers could stand on the other side of the glass in a comfortable air-conditioned environment and look down on twelve dump-truck loads of rotting garbage. Martin picked up the microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you could be excused for wondering why we’ve asked you here to stare at a pile of trash.” A murmur of chuckles and snide comments rippled around the viewing gallery. “Trust me, if we didn’t care about you, we wouldn’t have sealed you off from the smell.” This raised a laugh.
At Martin’s nodded signal, additional trash tumbled from the loading bay above, past the viewing-windows, into the pit below. A few spectators jumped back in surprise.
“You are looking at seventy tons of household waste, generously donated by the people of Dewsbury, our nearest town. Thank you, Mr. Mayor.”
A gray-haired man in a blue suit waved, enjoying his moment in the limelight.
Martin continued, “Most of this trash was created by energy from the sun. To illustrate, let me tell you the possible story of that plastic milk carton lying near the top of the pile.” All eyes focused on the familiar, yellow container.
“Millions of years ago, a seed fell from a plant onto fertile ground. Watered by rain, the seed germinated, pushed its first leaves through the earth, and photosynthesized the sun’s energy to manufacture cellulosic material. The plant grew tall, flowered, made its own seeds, and then died. Along with billions of similar plants and the insects that fed on them, our plant decomposed. Over millions of years, the organic matter became buried deep below the surface of the Earth. Massive pressures transformed the rotted plants into sticky, black oil.
“Humans drilled through the earth’s crust, tapped the oil, and brought it to the surface. Chemically modified and molded by a plastics manufacturer, it became the yellow milk container below you. Most of what’s in this conversion chamber was created using the sun’s energy, and that energy is still trapped inside.” Martin paused for a few beats to let the concept sink in.