The Enigma Ignite

The Colonel wrinkled his brow and asked “You mean they grow the chips like those grow colored crystal sets or grow your own monkey crystals advertised in the backs of comic books?”

It occurred to Keith that he was probably in the wrong job vocation while he listened to the Colonel’s remarkably shallow grasp of nano-chip production. After a brief struggle within himself to curb his sarcasm, he offered, “Your powers of assimilating complex wafer chip design do you credit. So, yes, this is exactly like growing colored monkey crystals at home from a kit ordered from the ads on the back of a comic book. It simply takes the right environment, the right chemical combination, and the right planned growth patterns. Like many new technologies, the end products that might leverage this are in the process of being imagined or developed.”

The Colonel nodded as he agreed. It seemed like the bulb had a glimmer of light illuminating it as he responded, “Your thinking makes sense now. What did your field trip to the nano-chip manufacturer tell you about what is being built with the nano-chip technology? Does anyone have what we need already built? Tell me this is not another dead end, or worse, long lonely road?”

“I asked who their customers were specifically. They were deliberately vague as to who was buying as well as how many were sold or ordered. I was able to deduce that their biggest customers included a very large research facility in Research Triangle Park, one in Palo Alto that has a relationship with Cal-Tech, and one, curiously enough, in College Station. I suspect the users on each coast are trying to figure out how to use these chemically grown chips in their electronic products in hopes of making the next insanely wonderful fruit phones or otherwise named mobile communications devices.