DAY 6 9:12 A.M.
At first, it was hard to understand what I was seeing—it looked like an enormous glowing octopus1 rising above me, with glinting, faceted2 arms extending outward in all directions, throwing complex reflections and bands of color onto the outer walls. Except this octopus had multiple layers of arms. One layer was low, just a foot above the floor. A second was at chest-level; the third and fourth layers were higher, above my head. And they all glowed, sparkled brilliantly.
I blinked, dazzled. I began to make out the details. The octopus was contained within an irregular three-story framework built entirely3 of modular glass cubes. Floors, walls, ceilings, staircases—everything was cubes. But the arrangement was haphazard4, as if someone had dumped a mound5 of giant transparent6 sugar cubes in the center of the room. Within this cluster of cubes the arms of the octopus snaked off in all directions. The whole thing was held up by a web of black anodized struts7 and connectors, but they were obscured by the reflections, which is why the octopus seemed to hang in midair.
Ricky grinned. “Convergent assembly. The architecture is fractal. Neat, huh?” I nodded slowly. I was seeing more details. What I had seen as an octopus was actually a branching tree structure. A central square conduit ran vertically8 through the center of the room, with smaller pipes branching off on all sides. From these branches, even smaller pipes branched off in turn, and smaller ones still. The smallest of the pipes were pencil-thin. Everything gleamed as if it were mirrored.
“Why is it so bright?”
“The glass has diamondoid coating,” he said. “At the molecular9 level, glass is like Swiss cheese, full of holes. And of course it’s a liquid, so atoms just pass right through it.”
“So you coat the glass.”
“Right. Have to.”
Within this shining forest of branching glass, David and Rosie moved, making notes, adjusting valves, consulting handheld computers. I understood that I was looking at a massively parallel assembly line. Small fragments of molecules10 were introduced into the smallest pipes, and atoms were added to them. When that was finished, they moved into the next largest pipes, where more atoms were added. In this way, molecules moved progressively toward the center of the structure, until assembly was completed, and they were discharged into the central pipe. “Exactly right,” Ricky said. “This is just the same as an automobile12 assembly line, except that it’s on a molecular scale. Molecules start at the ends, and come down the line to the center. We stick on a protein sequence here, a methyl group there, just the way they stick doors and wheels on a car. At the end of the line, off rolls a new, custom-made molecular structure. Built to our specifications13.”
“And the different arms?”
“Make different molecules. That’s why the arms look different.” In several places, the octopus arm passed through a steel tunnel reinforced with heavy bolts, for vacuum ducting. In other places, a cube was covered with quilted silver insulation14, and I saw liquid nitrogen tanks nearby; extremely low temperatures were generated in that section.
“Those’re our cryogenic rooms,” Ricky said. “We don’t go very low, maybe -70 Centigrade, max. Come on, I’ll show you.” He led me through the complex, following glass walkways that threaded among the arms. In some places, a short staircase enabled us to step over the lowest arms.
Ricky chatted continuously about technical details: vacuum-jacketed hoses, metal phase separators, globe check valves. When we reached the insulated cube, he opened the heavy door to reveal a small room, with a second room adjacent. It looked like a pair of meat lockers16. Small glass windows were set in each door. At the moment, everything was at room temperature. “You can have two different temps here,” he said. “Run one from the other, if you want, but it’s usually automated17.”
Ricky led me back outside, glancing at his watch as he did so. I said, “Are we late for an appointment?”
“What? No, no. Nothing like that.” Nearby two cubes were actually solid metal rooms, with thick electrical cables running inside. I said, “Those your magnet rooms?”
“That’s right,” Ricky said. “We’ve got pulsed field magnets generating 33 Tesla in the core. That’s something like a million times the magnetic field of the earth.” With a grunt18, he pushed open the steel door to the nearest magnet room. I saw a large doughnut-shaped object, about six feet in diameter, with a hole in the center about an inch wide. The doughnut was completely encased in tubing and plastic insulation. Heavy steel bolts running from top to bottom held the jacketing in place.
“Lot of cooling for this puppy, I can tell you. And a lot of power: fifteen kilovolts. Takes a full-minute load time for the capacitors. And of course we can only pulse it. If we turned it on continuously, it’d explode—ripped apart by the field it generates.” He pointed19 to the base of the magnet, where there was a round push button at knee level. “That’s the safety cutoff there,” he said. “Just in case. Hit it with your knee if your hands are full.”
I said, “So you use high magnetic fields to do part of your assemb—”
But Ricky had already turned and headed out the door, again glancing at his watch. I hurried after him.
“Ricky ...”
“I have more to show you,” he said. “We’re getting to the end.”
“Ricky, this is all very impressive,” I said, gesturing to the glowing arms. “But most of your assembly line is running at room temperature—no vacuum, no cryo, no mag field.”
“Right. No special conditions.”
“How is that possible?”
He shrugged20. “The assemblers don’t need it.”
“The assemblers?” I said. “Are you telling me you’ve got molecular assemblers on this line?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Assemblers are doing your fabrication for you?”
“Of course. I thought you understood that.”
“No, Ricky,” I said, “I didn’t understand that at all. And I don’t like to be lied to.”
He got a wounded look on his face. “I’m not lying.”
But I was certain that he was.
One of the first things scientists learned about molecular manufacturing was how phenomenally difficult it was to carry out. In 1990, some IBM researchers pushed xenon atoms around on a nickel plate until they formed the letters “IBM” in the shape of the company logo. The entire logo was one ten-billionth of an inch long and could only be seen through an electron microscope. But it made a striking visual and it got a lot of publicity21. IBM allowed people to think it was a proof of concept, the opening of a door to molecular manufacturing. But it was more of a stunt22 than anything else.
Because pushing individual atoms into a specific arrangement was slow, painstaking23, and expensive work. It took the IBM researchers a whole day to move thirty-five atoms. Nobody believed you could create a whole new technology in this way. Instead, most people believed that nanoengineers would eventually find a way to build “assemblers”—miniature molecular machines that could turn out specific molecules the way a ball-bearing machine turned out ball bearings. The new technology would rely on molecular machines to make molecular products. It was a nice concept, but the practical problems were daunting25. Because assemblers were vastly more complicated than the molecules they made, attempts to design and build them had been difficult from the outset. To my knowledge, no laboratory anywhere in the world had actually done it. But now Ricky was telling me, quite casually26, that Xymos could build molecular assemblers that were now turning out molecules for the company. And I didn’t believe him.
I had worked all my life in technology, and I had developed a feel for what was possible. This kind of giant leap forward just didn’t happen. It never did. Technologies were a form of knowledge, and like all knowledge, technologies grew, evolved, matured. To believe otherwise was to believe that the Wright brothers could build a rocket and fly to the moon instead of flying three hundred feet over sand dunes27 at Kitty Hawk28.
Nanotechnology was still at the Kitty Hawk stage.
“Come on, Ricky,” I said. “How are you really doing this?”
“The technical details aren’t that important, Jack15.”
“What fresh bullshit is this? Of course they’re important.”
“Jack,” he said, giving me his most winning smile. “Do you really think I’m lying to you?”
“Yes, Ricky,” I said. “I do.”
I looked up at the octopus arms all around me. Surrounded by glass, I saw my own reflection dozens of times in the surfaces around me. It was confusing, disorienting. Trying to gather my thoughts, I looked down at my feet.
And I noticed that even though we had been walking on glass walkways, some sections of the ground floor were glass, as well. One section was nearby. I walked toward it. Through the glass I could see steel ducting and pipes below ground level. One set of pipes caught my eye, because they ran from the storage room to a nearby glass cube, at which point they emerged from the floor and headed upward, branching into the smaller tubes. That, I assumed, was the feedstock—the slush of raw organic material that would be transformed on the assembly line into finished molecules.
Looking back down at the floor, I followed the pipes backward to the place where they entered from the adjacent room. This junction30 was glass, too. I could see the curved steel underbellies of the big kettles I’d noticed earlier. The tanks that I had thought were a microbrewery. Because that’s certainly what it had looked like, a small brewery31. Machinery32 for controlled fermentation, for controlled microbial growth.
And then I realized what it really was.
I said, “You son of a bitch.”
Ricky smiled again, and shrugged. “Hey,” he said. “It gets the job done.” Those kettles in the next room were indeed tanks for controlled microbial growth. But Ricky wasn’t making beer—he was making microbes, and I had no doubt about the reason why. Unable to construct genuine nanoassemblers, Xymos was using bacteria to crank out their molecules. This was genetic33 engineering, not nanotechnology. “Well, not exactly,” Ricky said, when I told him what I thought. “But I admit we’re using a hybrid34 technology. Not much of a surprise in any case, is it?” That was true. For at least ten years, observers had been predicting that genetic engineering, computer programming, and nanotechnology would eventually merge29. They were all involved with similar—and interconnected—activities. There wasn’t that much difference between using a computer to decode35 part of a bacterial36 genome and using a computer to help you insert new genes37 into the bacteria, to make new proteins. And there wasn’t much difference between creating a new bacteria to spit out, say, insulin molecules, and creating a man-made, micromechanical assembler to spit out new molecules. It was all happening at the molecular level. It was all the same challenge of imposing38 human design on extremely complex systems. And molecular design was nothing if not complicated.
You could think of a molecule11 as a series of atoms snapped together like Lego blocks, one after another. But the image was misleading. Because unlike a Lego set, atoms couldn’t be snapped together in any arrangement you liked. An inserted atom was subject to powerful local forces—magnetic and chemical—with frequently undesirable39 results. The atom might be kicked out of its position. It might remain, but at an awkward angle. It might even fold the entire molecule up in knots.
As a result, molecular manufacturing was an exercise in the art of the possible, of substituting atoms and groups of atoms to make equivalent structures that would work in the desired way. In the face of all this difficulty, it was impossible to ignore the fact that there already existed proven molecular factories capable of turning out large numbers of molecules: they were called cells.
“Unfortunately, cellular40 manufacturing can take us only so far,” Ricky said. “We harvest the substrate molecules—the raw materials—and then we build on them with nanoengineering procedures. So we do a little of both.”
I pointed down at the tanks. “What cells are you growing?”
“Theta-d 5972,” he said.
“Which is?”
“A strain of E. coli.”
E. coli was a common bacterium41, found pretty much everywhere in the natural environment, even in the human intestine42. I said, “Did anyone think it might not be a good idea to use cells that can live inside human beings?”
“Not really,” he said. “Frankly that wasn’t a consideration. We just wanted a well-studied cell that was fully43 documented in the literature. We chose an industry standard.”
“Uh-huh ...”
“Anyway,” Ricky continued, “I don’t think it’s a problem, Jack. It won’t thrive in the human gut44. Theta-d is optimized45 for a variety of nutrient46 sources—to make it cheap to grow in the laboratory. In fact, I think it can even grow on garbage.”
“So that’s how you get your molecules. Bacteria make them for you.”
“Yes,” he said, “that’s how we get the primary molecules. We harvest twenty-seven primary molecules. They fit together in relatively47 high-temperature settings where the atoms are more active and mix quickly.”
“That’s why it’s hot in here?”
“Yes. Reaction efficiency has a maxima at one hundred forty-seven degrees Fahrenheit48, so we work there. That’s where we get the fastest combination rate. But these molecules will combine at much lower temperatures. Even around thirty-five, forty degrees Fahrenheit, you’ll get a certain amount of molecular combination.”
“And you don’t need other conditions,” I said. “Vacuum? Pressure? High magnetic fields?” Ricky shook his head. “No, Jack. We maintain those conditions to speed up assembly, but it’s not strictly49 necessary. The design is really elegant. The component50 molecules go together quite easily.”
“And these component molecules combine to form your final assembler?”
“Which then assembles the molecules we want. Yes.”
It was a clever solution, creating his assemblers with bacteria. But Ricky was telling me the components51 assembled themselves almost automatically, with nothing required but high temperature. What, then, was this complex glass building used for? “Efficiency, and process separation,” Ricky said. “We can build as many as nine assemblers simultaneously52, in the different arms.”
“And where do the assemblers make the final molecules?”
“In this same structure. But first, we reapply them.”
I shook my head. I wasn’t familiar with the term. “Reapply?”
“It’s a little refinement53 we developed here. We’re patenting it. You see, our system worked perfectly54 right from the start—but our yields were extremely low. We were harvesting half a gram of finished molecules an hour. At that rate, it would take several days to make a single camera. We couldn’t figure out what the problem was. The late assembly in the arms is done in gas phase. It turned out that the molecular assemblers were heavy, and tended to sink to the bottom. The bacteria settled on a layer above them, releasing component molecules that were lighter55 still, and floated higher. So the assemblers were making very little contact with the molecules they were meant to assemble. We tried mixing technologies but they didn’t help.”
“So you did what?”
“We modified the assembler design to provide a lipotrophic base that would attach to the surface of the bacteria. That brought the assemblers into better contact with the component molecules, and immediately our yields jumped five orders of magnitude.”
“And now your assemblers sit on the bacteria?”
“Correct. They attach to the outer cell membrane56.”
At a nearby workstation, Ricky punched up the assembler design on the flat panel display. The assembler looked like a sort of pinwheel, a series of spiral arms going off in different directions, and a dense57 knot of atoms in the center. “It’s fractal, as I said,” he said. “So it looks sort of the same at smaller orders of magnitude.” He laughed. “Like the old joke, turtles all the way down.” He pressed more keys. “Anyway, here’s the attached configuration58.” The screen now showed the assembler adhering to a much larger pill-shaped object, like a pinwheel attached to a submarine. “That’s the Theta-d bacterium,” Ricky said. “With the assembler on it.”
As I watched, several more pinwheels attached themselves. “And these assemblers make the actual camera units?”
“Correct.” He typed again. I saw a new image. “This is our target micromachine, the final camera. You’ve seen the bloodstream version. This is the Pentagon version, quite a bit larger and designed to be airborne. What you’re looking at is a molecular helicopter.”
“Where’s the propeller59?” I said.
“Hasn’t got one. The machine uses those little round protrusions you see there, stuck in at angles. Those’re motors. The machines actually maneuver60 by climbing the viscosity61 of the air.”
“Climbing the what?”
“Viscosity. Of the air.” He smiled. “Micromachine level, remember? It’s a whole new world, Jack.”
However innovative62 the design, Ricky was still bound by the Pentagon’s engineering specs for the product, and the product wasn’t performing. Yes, they had built a camera that couldn’t be shot down, and it transmitted images very well. Ricky explained it worked perfectly during tests indoors. But outside, even a modest breeze tended to blow it away like the cloud of dust it was. The engineering team at Xymos was attempting to modify the units to increase mobility63, but so far without success. Meanwhile the Department of Defense64 decided65 the design constraints66 were unbeatable, and had backed away from the whole nano concept; the Xymos contract had been canceled; DOD was going to pull funding in another six weeks. I said, “That’s why Julia was so desperate for venture capital, these last few weeks?”
“Right,” Ricky said. “Frankly, this whole company could go belly67 up before Christmas.”
“Unless you fix the units, so they can work in wind.”
“Right, right.”
I said, “Ricky, I’m a programmer. I can’t help you with your agent mobility problems. That’s an issue of molecular design. It’s engineering. It’s not my area.”
“Um, I know that.” He paused, frowned. “But actually, we think the program code may be involved in the solution.”
“The code? Involved in the solution to what?”
“Jack, I have to be frank with you. We’ve made a mistake,” he said. “But it’s not our fault. I swear to you. It wasn’t us. It was the contractors69.” He started down the stairs. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
Walking briskly, he led me to the far side of the facility, where I saw an open yellow elevator cage mounted on the wall. It was a small elevator, and I was uncomfortable because it was open; I averted70 my eyes. Ricky said, “Don’t like heights?”
“Can’t stand them.”
“Well, it’s better than walking.” He pointed off to one side, where an iron ladder ran up the wall to the ceiling. “When the elevator goes out, we have to climb up that.” I shuddered71. “Not me.”
We rode the elevator all the way up to the ceiling, three stories above the ground. Hanging beneath the ceiling was a tangle72 of ducts and conduits, and a network of mesh73 walkways to enable workers to service them. I hated the mesh, because I could see through it to the floor far below. I tried not to look down. We had to duck repeatedly beneath the low-hanging pipes. Ricky shouted over the roar of the equipment.
“Everything’s up here!” he yelled, pointing in various directions. “Air handlers over there! Water tank for the fire sprinkler system there! Electrical junction boxes there! This is really the center of everything!” Ricky continued down the walkway, finally stopping beside a big air vent24, about three feet in diameter, that went into the outer wall.
“This is vent three,” he said, leaning close to my ear. “It’s one of four main vents74 that exhausts air to the outside. Now, you see those slots along the vent, and the square boxes that sit in the slots? Those are filter packs. We have microfilters arranged in successive layers, to prevent any external contamination from the facility.”
“I see them ...”
“You see them now,” Ricky said. “Unfortunately, the contractor68 forgot to install the filters in this particular vent. In fact, they didn’t even cut the slots, so the building inspectors75 never realized anything was missing. They signed off on the building; we started working here. And we vented76 unfiltered air to the outside environment.”
“For how long?”
Ricky bit his lip. “Three weeks.”
“And you were at full production?”
He nodded. “We figure we vented approximately twenty-five kilos of contaminants.”
“And what were the contaminants?”
“A little of everything. We’re not sure of exactly what.”
“So you vented E. coli, assemblers, finished molecules, everything?”
“Correct. But we don’t know what proportions.”
“Do the proportions matter?”
“They might. Yes.”
Ricky was increasingly edgy77 as he told me all this, biting his lip, scratching his head, avoiding my eyes. I didn’t get it. In the annals of industrial pollution, fifty pounds of contamination was trivial. Fifty pounds of material would fit comfortably in a gym bag. Unless it was highly toxic78 or radioactive—and it wasn’t—such a small quantity simply didn’t matter. I said, “Ricky, so what? Those particles were scattered79 by the wind across hundreds of miles of desert. They’ll decay from sunlight and cosmic radiation. They’ll break up, decompose80. In a few hours or days, they’re gone. Right?”
Ricky shrugged. “Actually, Jack, that’s not what—”
It was at that moment that the alarm went off.
It was a quiet alarm, just a soft, insistent81 pinging, but it made Ricky jump. He ran down the walkway, feet clanging on the metal, toward a computer workstation mounted on the wall. There was a status window in the corner of the monitor. It was flashing red: PV-90 ENTRY.
I said, “What does that mean?”
“Something set off the perimeter82 alarms.” He unclipped his radio and said, “Vince, lock us down.”
The radio crackled. “We’re locked down, Ricky.”
“Raise positive pressure.”
“It’s up five pounds above baseline. You want more?”
“No. Leave it there. Do we have visualization83?”
“Not yet.”
“Shit.” Ricky stuck the radio back on his belt, began typing quickly. The workstation screen divided into a half-dozen small images from security cameras mounted all around the facility. Some showed the surrounding desert from high views, looking down from rooftops. Others were ground views. The cameras panned slowly.
I saw nothing. Just desert scrub and occasional clumps84 of cactus85.
“False alarm?” I said.
Ricky shook his head. “I wish.”
I said, “I don’t see anything.”
“It’ll take a minute to find it.”
“Find what?”
“That.”
He pointed to the monitor, and bit his lip.
I saw what appeared to be a small, swirling86 cloud of dark particles. It looked like a dust devil, one of those tiny tornado-like clusters that moved over the ground, spun87 by convection currents rising from the hot desert floor. Except that this cloud was black, and it had some definition—it seemed to be pinched in the middle, making it look a bit like an old-fashioned Coke bottle. But it didn’t hold that shape consistently. The appearance kept shifting, transforming. “Ricky,” I said. “What are we looking at?”
“I was hoping you’d tell me.”
“It looks like an agent swarm88. Is that your camera swarm?”
“No. It’s something else.”
“How do you know?”
“Because we can’t control it. It doesn’t respond to our radio signals.”
“You’ve tried?”
“Yes. We’ve tried to make contact with it for almost two weeks,” he said. “It’s generating an electrical field that we can measure, but for some reason we can’t interact with it.”
“So you have a runaway89 swarm.”
“Yes.”
“Acting autonomously90.”
“Yes.”
“And this has been going on for ...”
“Days. About ten days.”
“Ten days?” I frowned. “How is that possible, Ricky? The swarm’s a collection of micro-robotic machines. Why haven’t they decayed, or run out of power? And why exactly can’t you control them? Because if they have the ability to swarm, then there’s some electrically mediated91 interaction among them. So you should be able to take control of the swarm—or at least disrupt it.”
“All true,” Ricky said. “Except we can’t. And we’ve tried everything we can think of.” He was focused on the screen, watching intently. “That cloud is independent of us. Period.”
“And so you brought me out here ...”
“To help us get the fucking thing back,” Ricky said.
收听单词发音 |
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octopus
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| n.章鱼 | |
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faceted
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| adj. 有小面的，分成块面的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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haphazard
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| adj.无计划的，随意的，杂乱无章的 | |
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mound
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| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
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transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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struts
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| （框架的）支杆( strut的名词复数 )； 支柱； 趾高气扬的步态； （尤指跳舞或表演时）卖弄 | |
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vertically
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| adv.垂直地 | |
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molecular
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| adj.分子的；克分子的 | |
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molecules
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| 分子( molecule的名词复数 ) | |
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molecule
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| n.分子，克分子 | |
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automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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specifications
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| n.规格；载明；详述；（产品等的）说明书；说明书( specification的名词复数 )；详细的计划书；载明；详述 | |
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insulation
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| n.隔离；绝缘；隔热 | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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lockers
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| n.寄物柜( locker的名词复数 ) | |
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automated
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| a.自动化的 | |
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grunt
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| v.嘟哝；作呼噜声；n.呼噜声，嘟哝 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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publicity
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| n.众所周知，闻名；宣传，广告 | |
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stunt
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| n.惊人表演，绝技，特技；vt.阻碍...发育，妨碍...生长 | |
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painstaking
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| adj.苦干的；艰苦的，费力的，刻苦的 | |
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vent
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| n.通风口，排放口；开衩；vt.表达，发泄 | |
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daunting
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| adj.使人畏缩的 | |
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casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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dunes
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| 沙丘( dune的名词复数 ) | |
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hawk
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| n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员 | |
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merge
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| v.(使)结合，(使)合并，(使)合为一体 | |
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junction
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| n.连接，接合；交叉点，接合处，枢纽站 | |
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brewery
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| n.啤酒厂 | |
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machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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genetic
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| adj.遗传的，遗传学的 | |
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hybrid
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decode
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| vt.译（码），解（码） | |
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bacterial
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| a.细菌的 | |
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genes
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| n.基因( gene的名词复数 ) | |
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imposing
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| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
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undesirable
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| adj.不受欢迎的，不良的，不合意的，讨厌的；n.不受欢迎的人，不良分子 | |
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cellular
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| adj.移动的；细胞的，由细胞组成的 | |
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bacterium
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| n.(pl.)bacteria 细菌 | |
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intestine
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| adj.内部的；国内的；n.肠 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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gut
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| n.[pl.]胆量；内脏；adj.本能的；vt.取出内脏 | |
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optimized
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| adj.最佳化的，（使）最优化的v.使最优化，使尽可能有效( optimize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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nutrient
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| adj.营养的，滋养的；n.营养物，营养品 | |
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relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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Fahrenheit
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| n./adj.华氏温度；华氏温度计(的) | |
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strictly
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| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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component
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| n.组成部分，成分，元件；adj.组成的，合成的 | |
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components
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| （机器、设备等的）构成要素，零件，成分； 成分( component的名词复数 )； [物理化学]组分； [数学]分量； （混合物的）组成部分 | |
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simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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membrane
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| n.薄膜，膜皮，羊皮纸 | |
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dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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configuration
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| n.结构，布局，形态，(计算机)配置 | |
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propeller
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| n.螺旋桨，推进器 | |
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maneuver
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| n.策略[pl.]演习；v.(巧妙)控制；用策略 | |
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viscosity
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| n.粘度，粘性 | |
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innovative
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| adj.革新的，新颖的，富有革新精神的 | |
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mobility
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| n.可动性，变动性，情感不定 | |
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defense
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| n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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constraints
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| 强制( constraint的名词复数 )； 限制； 约束 | |
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belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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contractor
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| n.订约人，承包人，收缩肌 | |
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contractors
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| n.（建筑、监造中的）承包人( contractor的名词复数 ) | |
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averted
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| 防止，避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 )； 转移 | |
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shuddered
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| v.战栗( shudder的过去式和过去分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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mesh
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| n.网孔，网丝，陷阱；vt.以网捕捉，啮合，匹配；vi.适合； [计算机]网络 | |
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vents
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| （气体、液体等进出的）孔、口( vent的名词复数 )； （鸟、鱼、爬行动物或小哺乳动物的）肛门； 大衣等的)衩口； 开衩 | |
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inspectors
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| n.检查员( inspector的名词复数 )；（英国公共汽车或火车上的）查票员；（警察）巡官；检阅官 | |
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vented
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| 表达，发泄（感情，尤指愤怒）( vent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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edgy
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| adj.不安的；易怒的 | |
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toxic
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| adj.有毒的，因中毒引起的 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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decompose
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| vi.分解；vt.（使）腐败，（使）腐烂 | |
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insistent
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| adj.迫切的，坚持的 | |
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82
perimeter
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| n.周边，周长，周界 | |
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visualization
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| n.想像，设想 | |
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clumps
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| n.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的名词复数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的第三人称单数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声 | |
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cactus
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| n.仙人掌 | |
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swirling
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| v.旋转，打旋( swirl的现在分词 ) | |
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spun
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| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
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swarm
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| n.(昆虫)等一大群；vi.成群飞舞；蜂拥而入 | |
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runaway
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| n.逃走的人，逃亡，亡命者；adj.逃亡的，逃走的 | |
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autonomously
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| adv. 自律地，自治地 | |
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mediated
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| 调停，调解，斡旋( mediate的过去式和过去分词 )； 居间促成； 影响…的发生； 使…可能发生 | |
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