SiSU: - Homeland - Cory Doctorow

Epilogue
Homeland
I'd had eight months to debug Secret Project X-1. I even made a special midsummer trip
to the Mojave, where the gypsum dust was nearly identical to the stuff you got out on the
playa. I'd watched with glee and pride as X-1 sucked up the sun's rays, turned them into
a laser beam, and used that to sinter fine white powder into 3D shapes. First a little skull
ring. Then a toy car. Then some chain mail, the links already formed and joined, one of
the coolest tricks 3D printing had to offer. I gave a presentation on my progress one night
at Noisebridge and the resulting praise had given me a glow you could have seen with a
spy drone.
But now, here, on the actual playa, the goddamned machine wouldn't work. Lemmy sat
in his lounger nearby, sipping electrolyte drink from a camelbak and making helpful suggestions,
as well as several unhelpful ones. Burners passing by stopped and asked what
I was doing, and I let Lemmy explain it to them so that I could concentrate on the infernal
and stubborn machine.
I only stopped when I found that even the light from my headlamp wasn't sufficient for
seeing what I was doing, and then I stretched all the aches and pains out of my body,
swilled a pint of cold-brew, and proceeded to dance my skinny ass off for forty-five minutes
straight, chasing after a giant art car blasting ferocious dubstep as it crawled across the
open playa. I stopped as a thunderstrike of inspiration struck me, and I ran straight back
to camp, unlocked Lemmy's car, and used its dome light to confirm that yes, I had in fact
inserted a critical part of the power assembly backwards. I turned it around, slotted it in,
and heard the familiar boot sequence kick in as the stored power from the solar panels
kicked the 3D printer to life.
I wasn't a total moron after all.
-..-
It didn't matter how much dancing I'd done the night before, I was for goddamned sure
getting up at first light to crank up X-1. I had a lot of printing to do. I puttered around it
as the blue arc of laser light shone out of its guts, making it glow like a lantern in the pink
dawn.
People stopped and asked me what it was doing. I gave them trinkets: bone-white skull
rings; renderings of perfect knots and other mathematical solids; strange, ghostly figurines.
I had a whole library of 3D shapes I'd plundered from Thingiverse when I realized that I
was going to have a real, functional 3D printer on the playa this year. Word got around,
and by the time Lemmy got out of bed, a huge crowd had gathered around our camp,
dancers who'd been up all night, their pupils the size of saucers; early risers with yoga
mats; college kids who'd somehow found themselves at the burn; and a familiar jawa with
crossed bandoliers over her chest, emphasizing her breasts.
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