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Quotes / Grey Goo

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"Already we have turned all of our critical industries, all of our material resources, over to these... things... these lumps of silver and paste we call nanorobots. And now we propose to teach them intelligence? What, pray tell, will we do when these little homunculi awaken one day and announce that they have no further need of us?"
Sister Miriam Godwinson, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Doctor Bunnigus: I don't think we're headed for a grey-goo scenario here, but we'd all feel really bad if the local biosphere got consumed by nanobots after we left.
Captain Tagon: We'd still get paid, right?
Doctor Bunnigus: I'm going to treat that as a humorous stab at your own exaggerated amorality, and then move on if you don't mind.

Apparently, the cause is nanomachines: microscopic robots that take molecules apart and use them to make more of the little bastards. What the hell were they thinking when they built those things? What possible purpose could they have had that justifies this destruction? The nanomachines will take apart almost anything: wood, grass, building materials, animals, people, even dirt! They aren’t everywhere — yet. They started in a single town, but every day they spread farther. People know they’re coming, and they’re scared. It’s all the news is talking about; it’s all anyone is talking about. Nothing seems to stop them or even slow them down. Not walls, not rivers, not even bombs. I don’t know what’s worse: when you can’t see them, or when all you can see is a wave of grey.
It seems like they won’t stop until they run out of things to eat. Oh, well. We had a good run.
—"Nanopocalypse — Apocalypse," The End of the World: Revolt of the Machines

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