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The Everything Machine
Carrying 800 passengers and their household goods, agricultural animals, and farm-related supplies to Earth’s first interstellar colony, starship Origen’s hyperdrive self-destructs, marooning its passengers near an Earth-twin planet orbiting an unknown solar-twin star. While settling in, the inadvertent colonists name their world Valeron, and discover that Valeron is scattered with hundreds of thousands of alien replicator machines—but there are no aliens nor any other trace of them.
Each replicator is a shallow 8-foot-wide black stone-like bowl half-full of fine silver dust. Beside the bowl are two waist-high pillars about 8 inches in diameter, one pale silver, the other pale gold. Tap on either pillar, and the pillar makes a sound like a drum, one pillar high, the other low. Tap 256 times on the pillars in any sequence, and something surfaces in the bowl of dust. Simple sequences create simple and useful things like shovels, knives, rope, saws, lamps, glue and much else. Complex or random sequences create strangely shaped forms of silver-gray metal with no obvious use. 256 taps on the pillars can create any of 2E256 different things; in scientific notation, 1.16 X 10E77.
That’s just short of one thing for every atom in the observable universe.
The artifacts are dubbed “drumlins,” for the sounds the pillars make, and the replicators called “thingmakers.” Drumlins have strange properties. Although virtually indestructible, drumlins can change shape, especially when doing so will protect a human being from injury. Drumlin knives will not cut living human tissue, but they will cut living animal tissue or human corpses. Press a drumlin knife against your palm, and it will flow and flatten out to a disk. Pull the knife away, and it will slowly return to its form as a knife. Some claim that drumlins read human minds and grant wishes. Others insist they are haunted by invisible and perhaps hostile intelligences.
After 250 years on Valeron, the colony prospers. Starship Origen is still in orbit, and a cult-like research organization called the Bitspace Institute vows to repair Origen’s hyperdrive and return to Earth. With millions of drumlins catalogued using the thingmakers, Valeron’s people live well and begin to lose interest in returning to Earth. This threatens the Institute’s mission, prompting it to launch a covert effort to undermine public faith in drumlins. A low-key war begins between the Institute and those who value drumlins–including farmers, rural folk, an order of mystical women, and several peculiar teen girls who have an unexplained rapport with the thingmakers and their mysterious masters.
Each replicator is a shallow 8-foot-wide black stone-like bowl half-full of fine silver dust. Beside the bowl are two waist-high pillars about 8 inches in diameter, one pale silver, the other pale gold. Tap on either pillar, and the pillar makes a sound like a drum, one pillar high, the other low. Tap 256 times on the pillars in any sequence, and something surfaces in the bowl of dust. Simple sequences create simple and useful things like shovels, knives, rope, saws, lamps, glue and much else. Complex or random sequences create strangely shaped forms of silver-gray metal with no obvious use. 256 taps on the pillars can create any of 2E256 different things; in scientific notation, 1.16 X 10E77.
That’s just short of one thing for every atom in the observable universe.
The artifacts are dubbed “drumlins,” for the sounds the pillars make, and the replicators called “thingmakers.” Drumlins have strange properties. Although virtually indestructible, drumlins can change shape, especially when doing so will protect a human being from injury. Drumlin knives will not cut living human tissue, but they will cut living animal tissue or human corpses. Press a drumlin knife against your palm, and it will flow and flatten out to a disk. Pull the knife away, and it will slowly return to its form as a knife. Some claim that drumlins read human minds and grant wishes. Others insist they are haunted by invisible and perhaps hostile intelligences.
After 250 years on Valeron, the colony prospers. Starship Origen is still in orbit, and a cult-like research organization called the Bitspace Institute vows to repair Origen’s hyperdrive and return to Earth. With millions of drumlins catalogued using the thingmakers, Valeron’s people live well and begin to lose interest in returning to Earth. This threatens the Institute’s mission, prompting it to launch a covert effort to undermine public faith in drumlins. A low-key war begins between the Institute and those who value drumlins–including farmers, rural folk, an order of mystical women, and several peculiar teen girls who have an unexplained rapport with the thingmakers and their mysterious masters.
382 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 6, 2025
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 27, 2025
Are you ready for a world where little is as it initially seems, then pickup this book and prepare for a fast paced ride of discovery.
I believe this is Jeff Duntemann's best story yet. This book is a sequel to Drumlin Circus, but the way he was written this you don't need to know anything from that story to enjoy this one.
Imagine a world on which hundreds of settlers were stranded over two hundred years ago when their faster than light ship had a bad hyperspace jump that also destroyed its ability to do further jumps. Fortunately there was a habitable planet nearby. On the planet they find scattered over the surface strange bowls two pillars projecting out of them filled with dust. When someone taps on the top of the pillars it makes noise, and after a total of two hundred and fifty six taps the dust spins around and like a 3d printer assembles itself into an item. What the item is depends on the pattern of taps between the two pillars.
They find the most basic supplies are easy repeating patterns and soon are able to farm, build houses, etc. using the materials from these machines. But as the book notes, a pattern with two hundred and fifty six taps of two possible pillars means there are enough patterns to match the atoms in the known universe.
I thoroughly liked the main characters in the book, and laughed and cried as they struggled with the different factions that have spun up over two centuries of settlement. Some want to just be farmers, others feel it's their mission to return to earth. Some are fearful, some have a positive perspective. How they all mash together when you have machines that can give you the basic things necessary to make shelter, transportation of goods, and raw materials is a journey well worth reading.
I started it Friday evening and found myself coming back as much as possible over the next two days until it was finished.
I believe this is Jeff Duntemann's best story yet. This book is a sequel to Drumlin Circus, but the way he was written this you don't need to know anything from that story to enjoy this one.
Imagine a world on which hundreds of settlers were stranded over two hundred years ago when their faster than light ship had a bad hyperspace jump that also destroyed its ability to do further jumps. Fortunately there was a habitable planet nearby. On the planet they find scattered over the surface strange bowls two pillars projecting out of them filled with dust. When someone taps on the top of the pillars it makes noise, and after a total of two hundred and fifty six taps the dust spins around and like a 3d printer assembles itself into an item. What the item is depends on the pattern of taps between the two pillars.
They find the most basic supplies are easy repeating patterns and soon are able to farm, build houses, etc. using the materials from these machines. But as the book notes, a pattern with two hundred and fifty six taps of two possible pillars means there are enough patterns to match the atoms in the known universe.
I thoroughly liked the main characters in the book, and laughed and cried as they struggled with the different factions that have spun up over two centuries of settlement. Some want to just be farmers, others feel it's their mission to return to earth. Some are fearful, some have a positive perspective. How they all mash together when you have machines that can give you the basic things necessary to make shelter, transportation of goods, and raw materials is a journey well worth reading.
I started it Friday evening and found myself coming back as much as possible over the next two days until it was finished.
Displaying 1 of 1 review