RESTORE

I sat at the cramped dinette of our tiny apartment and tried to remember the last time we had actual food. Synthetic cinnamon soy protein. Real cinnamon’s reserved for the uber-rich. Only ‘Synthamon’ for us. I’m old enough to remember real cinnamon. I miss real food.

“Is it cinnamon already?” Julie shuffled in.

“Some people call today Monday.” I forced a smile and ate a glob of the stuff.

“Monday was for those five-day workweeks you had as a kid, Dad.” She sighed. “It all runs together now. Tomorrow is Chewsday, today is Synthamonday. Government marketing at its finest.”

I peered into my gruel. She was right. Things weren’t this bad when I was a kid. Back then, we talked about changing our future, but change takes action. Action required plans and execution. We needed action a hundred years ago.

“People will figure this out. It’ll be fine, Quinn,” My dad would say.

He was wrong. Wars, famine, and pollution all conspired with overpopulation. Then came all the COVIDs. Beancounters assumed Mother Earth would fix herself. Not enough died, they said. Typical. Ruin the planet and blame underperforming pandemics.

The old ways continued to kill us. Someone had to take action. Alice did. I should have given more than moral support, but I was a coward.

“Hello? Earth to Dad.”

“Huh?” I dropped my spoon.

“You’re doing it again. Where do you go?” She has Alice’s eyes.

I couldn't tell her I had the power to change the world, but I was afraid to act. “I was thinking of your mom. She liked cinnamon day.”

“Sorry, Dad. I know today’s that day.” Julie wore a mask of pity whenever I mentioned her mother.

She was a toddler when Alice died. I wanted her to know who her mother really was. All the videos and pro-ecology articles helped. And the letters. I’d never met anyone who wrote pen-on-paper letters, one of many reasons I fell in love with her. There was only one letter I kept from Julie. Suicide was not who Alice really was.

Not really.

“Ancient history. No worries.” I smiled, slipped a hand into my pocket, and stroked the edges of that final letter. “How’d you feel being a freshman again?”

“College is different. My lit class was postponed due to a radiation leak. Radiation in a library? I bet misogynistic romance novels were the most toxic thing in the library when you were my age.”

“I refilled your respirator. You promised me you’d stay on top of that. There are zones near school—”

“That’ll kill me in minutes, yeah, I know. Sorry. I’m preoccupied with eco-group stuff. Won’t happen again.” She took her pack from the refill station. “You grew up in a world without these. How’s it so easy for you to remember to refill them?”

In her eyes, I saw Alice again. “Because I love you and don’t want the world we created to hurt you.”

She kissed my cheek. “Maybe you engineers will make it all better one day.”

I could. I should. I haven’t. I’m ashamed of myself for that, too.

***

An orange haze hung over the city. Not two blocks from the train to the office, and I needed my respirator. Most of the corporate buildings downtown dedicate an entire floor to filtering outside air, although so many loopholes in the laws made it easy to operate below expectation.

A penny saved is a life lost.

I saw Jerry up ahead. When someone needed to replace Unit Chief Darcy, it was Jerry or me. I’m a better engineer, but Jerry is more company man than I could ever be.

I clapped him on the shoulder. “I need level eleven access.”

He let out a defeated sigh. “We talked about this, remember? Level eleven is for—”

“I know what eleven’s for.” I had become resolute. “Aren’t you sick of all this?” I swirled my hands toward the sky.

“This what, ability to feed my family?” He seemed agitated.

I should have expected that.

The elevator ride up was silent. Jerry has a wife and quota-exempt twins. Family responsibilities were why he had access to eleven, and I didn’t. They trusted him. He was a company man, after all.

He also didn’t have an activist for a wife.

The hours slogged by. At my terminal, I processed requests for the quantum machine. We say we’re engineers, but we’re really glorified data analysts. I knew damn well AI could do my job. Hell, I’ve written AI to do my job.

Near day’s end, Jerry called me to his office. “Why eleven?” He sat back, arms crossed.

Establish the stakes. “For our children.”

His eyebrows drew together, and his judgmental arms relaxed. “I’m listening, but tread lightly.”

“Our parents ate real food. Swam in lakes, rivers, and the ocean. We lost those things. All of them. Our kids didn’t do this to us. We did this to them.” I started to sweat.

“And?”

“I have a routine I need to test,” I replied with arched brow.

“So? Submit to Central and get on the QM roster. What’s it do?”

“Fixes…everything.” I was still afraid and still being obtuse.

“Details, Quinn.”

“Restore is a program for the swarm.” The swarm was our globally deployed collection of industrial nanobots. That’s where the money was. Building more buildings where they build more things used to build even more things. ‘Abject consumerism,’ as Alice called it. Material things to distract us from our collective turning of the knife in Earth’s back.

After Alice, I sold out and took this job to support Julie and me. I felt angry about my choice for a long time. Misplaced anger, but anger nonetheless.

“What’s your program do?”

I collected my thoughts. “Deployed nanobots are retrained to clean the air, sea, and land. Wind turbines and dormant, city-wide filtration units become home to hydrofluorocarbon-eating bots. Ocean bots eat plastics and other toxins the way algae used to, but with bigger and less discriminating appetites. As they break down the junk, the process creates the power to keep them going in a never-ending cycle.”

He hadn’t stopped me yet. “And the land?”

“A different challenge, but with more opportunities.”

“How so?”

“On land, they’ll eat garbage too, but also be able to convert radioactive waste to useable fuel.”

“So this is about creating fuel?” A proper company man question.

“It’s about cleaning the mess we’ve made while making the solution palatable.”

“Anything else?”

“The sea-bots can build kinetic wave capture devices.”

He shook his bald head. “We tried KWC in the last century. Too expensive and difficult to maintain versus the energy yield.”

“My way is different. Collected material is used to create the new hardware. Billions of self-replicating bots will form a mesh across the ocean, collect kinetic energy, and convert it to electricity.”

“So, not fuel, but power?” Company. Man.

“Power is a bonus, not the goal. The machines will divert some energy at the shoreline to power water desalinators.”

Jerry sat back and pinched his chin. “I’m still waiting on the gotcha part.”

Gotcha, indeed. “For this to work, every nanobot we have deployed needs to pivot to these new tasks.”

He pulled back, recrossing his arms. “Never gonna fly, I think you know that. How do I spin this as profitable for the company?”

He couldn’t. Restore would likely bankrupt the company. I couldn’t tell him that.

“The power yield will be more than the bots’ needs.” A lie. “We can sell excess power around the globe.” Another lie. “There’s never been money in cleaning the environment, but here’s a chance to do both.” Sell the lie, Quinn.

Alice would be proud. Wouldn’t she?

“Quinn, I know what today is.” He looked over his reading glasses.

“This is not about that.” Maybe a little.

He stared at a photo of his boys. “I understand the urge to leave a better world for them. I do, but what you’re proposing is a huge, untested shift. During an election year.”

“I need access to run a full simulation directly on the QM.”

“And if it works?” He cocked his head.

“We submit to Central. I’m not trying to break protocol, but we have families to think of.” Was he more family man or company man?

He looked around as if being watched. “I’m thinking of them right now.”

Afraid of the risk? I understood, but we had to act.

“If you let me run the sim, Restore is logged on the QM backbone as our project. Or, did you forget what happened to Darcy?” I knew he hadn’t.

Darcy left when his ideas were stolen by Central. Taking Darcy’s job was not the sort of moral dilemma he’d forget. This was a chance to right the wrongs, repair the damage we’ve done to this planet, and prove to our children they are more important than corporate greed. A chance to show Julie her mother was right; actions can make a difference.

A subtle wave of righteousness washed over me. In my mind, Jerry would say yes. Positively. My pitch was perfect, my plan flawless. There was no way he could say…

“No.”

The subtle wave crashed under its own hubris. “No?”

Jerry’s features softened almost imperceptibly. “I appreciate your work here, and I want you to keep doing good work. Your plan sounds very ambitious, but I think now’s the wrong time—”

I stopped listening. Jerry was gone. He’d been replaced by the muted, placating tone of the company man. I excused myself and walked toward my office.

The phone in my pocket buzzed. A pit grew in my stomach. Only Julie calls me. But Julie never calls me.

The screen displayed Mercy General Hospital.

***

Corralled in a crowded waiting room, I paced impatiently. My mind raced faster than my pulse. Intrusive thoughts of Alice flooded in. Was it hereditary? Julie seemed fine to me this morning. No. She’s not like her mother. The tests showed… This must’ve been an accident, maybe the radiation in the library?

“Mr. Barlow?” A voice broke my spell.

“Doug?” Julie’s classmate. “What happened?”

“The air’s so bad on campus.” He seemed distraught. Perhaps he’s more than a classmate? “It’s all my fault,” he said, eyes glassy with tears. “I was late. She gave an old man her pack, and by the time I got there…”

“What do you mean? Gave what man her pack? Her respirator?”

He took a deep breath. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Barlow. The ambulance was already there when I found her.” He was an unfocused mess.

I shook him, just enough to get him back. “What happened to Julie?”

“Someone told me a student’s father was on campus, and his respirator failed. Julie saw him collapse and gave him her pack.” He shrugged in disbelief.

“Why would she do that? Why not just take him inside?” I knew he didn’t have answers, but I asked anyway.

“She expected me. We could have shared my pack. I have enough for two. She needed me, and I was late.” Doug sat down in a self-loathing huff and started to sob.

I’d like to say I taught Julie better, but I hadn’t. I taught her to be selfish and look out for herself. Somehow the mother she never knew still managed to influence the woman she’d become. Alice would be proud of the choices Julie makes, and there I was, angry that those choices put my daughter’s life in danger. I found myself ashamed again.

A vidscreen came to life. “Mr. Barlow, I’m Dr. Mtumbe. Your daughter is stable but has sustained some lung damage from prolonged acid-air exposure.”

I glared at Doug. “Yes, I’m aware.” I fought to compose myself. “What’s the treatment?”

“We have specialized therapies administered by medical-grade nanobots to repair much of the damage. Mr. Barlow, she’s currently quarantined in an induced coma for the next twelve hours while our bots work to make her all better.”

He’s right. Bots can make everything all better.

The doctor gave me a reassuring half-smile before the feed went blank. I couldn’t hide behind excuses any longer. “I need to do something. For Julie. Right now. I need your help.”

“Anything,” Doug answered.

Definitely more than classmates.

“I can’t guarantee you won’t get in trouble, but I can guarantee we will change the world.”

He laughed a little. “I see now where Julie gets her strength from.”

If he only knew.

***

I explained my plan to Doug on the way back to my office, afraid the details would scare him off. But no. He was all in. I’ll admit to waffling several times en route, but I doubled down every time Doug mentioned Julie and how proud she would be. The time for cowardice and selfish behavior had ended.

Doug remained in the lobby while I went back up to ten. I ducked into the washroom and pulled out Alice’s letter. Creases of the handwritten note were brown with age, but the deep black ink remained fresh. Years of unfolding and refolding and salty tears couldn’t undo her message.

“I trust you to do what’s right for her. I believe in you.”

Twenty years later, I finally understood. She didn’t really believe her death would put an end to toxic fumes. An end to the plastic-infested oceans. She couldn’t have thought dangling in a corporate lobby from a glass sculpture would clean the acid from the air.

No.

She thought someone would be inspired to fix the world, or at least try.

Someone was me.

As I folded her letter one last time, the fire alarm went off. The harsh metallic screech blared outside and echoed through the washroom. I checked my watch.

Right on schedule, Doug.

The sounds of the late shift exiting the building in a mad rush surged my adrenaline. When the commotion ceased, I scurried over to the secure stairwell up to eleven, where the Quantum Machine lives.

Jerry was off the hook. Plausible deniability was the only gift I could offer him. All doors unlocked during a fire emergency. But, two dozen security cameras recorded my every move. This should end well for everyone except me. A small sacrifice.

Alice sacrificed more. I ached at the memory of twenty wasted years before I heard her message.

The door opened without a fuss, and I ascended the single flight of metal steps. With a deep breath and a turn of the knob, I was in. The room was pitch black. Not what I expected.

“Hello?” A nervous reaction, I suppose.

“How may I assist you, Quinn Barlow?” The female voice surrounded me.

She knows my name. “Lights?”

The space evolved as the lights came up. The walls and the ceiling glowed a surreal warm white. In the center was a single input station. The entire floor was dedicated to the machine.

“May I approach?” I asked as if I were in the presence of a god. I suppose, in a way, I was. With my help, this machine would remake the world. Though, it would surely take longer than seven days.“I need a user interface, please, uh, what do I call you?”

“No one has ever asked before. What would you like to call me?”

I paused. “I’m going to call you Alice if that’s okay.”

“Alice is a fine name, meaning noble and kind. Your late wife was Alice. I’m sorry for your loss, Quinn Barlow.”

“It’s just Quinn. And, yes, she was the kindest and most noble person I have ever known. Julie is a lot like her.” I gestured at the virtual screen. “I believe you’ll have earned her namesake once we've finished here.”

I accessed Restore and dragged the program over to the commit screen. My sweaty palms were grateful for the virtual GUI.

“Quinn, Restore requires security clearance which you do not possess. Would you prefer to run something else?”

As expected. “Alice, please run tabula_rasa.exe instead.”

“Analyzing. Very clever, Quinn. Executing tabula_rasa.exe.”

Alice ran my alternate code. She knew what would happen, but she ran it anyway. It was nice of her to acknowledge my hack.

“Security clearance reset. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

I thought about my Alice and her sacrifice to make her voice heard. I thought about Julie and the world I wanted her to have. I even thought about Doug and the old man Julie saved. What I didn’t think about was my job or my life. I wasn’t afraid any longer. No matter what price I would pay for this, I knew the future would be better for them.

“Yes, Alice, my love, please run the Restore program.”

***

Julie’s graduation ceremony took place on a bright, sunny day beneath a crisp blue sky. I thought I heard birds chirping, but I may have imagined them. My beautiful, intelligent, healthy daughter spotted me in the back. Hard to miss in a bright orange jumpsuit. The officer beside me smiled as she approached. Doug sprinted to catch up with her.

“I’m so happy the court let you come.” She looked to the guard for approval, then gave me a big hug.

“I wouldn’t miss your graduation for the world.”

Doug slid up next to her. “You nearly did.”

Clever kid. He’ll make her a fine husband. I took a deep breath of fresh air. “True. I think the rewards outweighed the risk.”

“They should have given you a medal, not ten years in prison.” She glowered at the guard.

They offered a reduced sentence if I decrypted and recalled the bots. I’m not ashamed of my actions, and I never considered the deal. The future is too precious for cowardice.

“Today is about you, kiddo. I wish your mother could see you now. She’d be so proud.” For the first time I could recall, mention of Alice didn’t bring a lick of pity to Julie’s face

“She’d be just as proud of you, Dad.”