Two Years Past: Nano Return

Dr. Harris held the door open, but instead of the hulking figure of Jordan, a small, slender man of much lighter coloring stepped through the door.

He had large, brown eyes behind wire-rimmed spectacles, and his dark hair was parted at the side, cut conservatively. The hospital ID on his white coat’s left breast pocket read “Dr. Praveen Singh, Nanorobotics”

He brought a chair up to the side of Kailey’s bed, and sat.

“Good morning, Kailey,” he said, with a thick British accent, extending his hand to hers. She took it, and his handshake was warm, firm, despite his long, thin-fingered hand. “I am very pleased to finally meet you. I have been reading of your progress, in the project reports, as well as from the logs of Dr. Diggs —”

 “Dr. who?” Kailey asked.

Dr. Singh blinked. “Dr. Oscar Diggs. Oh, perhaps you know him as the Wizard,” he chortled. “He has taken great pains to make sure not many people know his name, though I can’t imagine why.

“And I am Dr. Praveen Singh. I work in Nanorobotics. While the Wizard writes the coding and programs for this project,” he said, digging into a pocket of his lab coat, “I provide a good portion of the hardware.” He set an IV drip bag on the table that sat over Kailey’s lap.

She stared at it. “It… looks like a saline drip,” she said.

“Most of it is,” the doctor said, with a smile. “But also, suspended in that saline solution are millions upon millions of tiny computers, nearly molecular in size.”

Kailey squinted at the bag.

“They will form a body-wide network, streaming through your blood, transmitting and relaying commands from the superconducting filaments woven through your musculature, providing the fine-tuning necessary for such things as picking up a penny, playing piano. They will also be providing computing power and feedback for much of your body’s involuntary muscle control.”

“Like… the way your body keeps itself upright, or balanced on one foot?”

“Yes! Exactly right,” he said with a smile. “With just the filament system, you could walk, but it would be… robotlike, like you may have seen in movies. But with these,” he tapped the saline bag, “your motor control will improve a thousandfold.”

Kailey smiled, and felt her heartbeat pick up a bit.

“Another benefit, they will provide the computing and feedback to enable you to regain nearly full feeling back in your lower body. You should be able to feel sensation down to the sand-grain level.”

Kailey felt her eyes widen. Her smile broadened.

Dr. Singh held up a hand.

“Before you get too excited, there are some drawbacks.” He waited, but Kailey didn’t ask any questions, so he continued. “Firstly, once this system is.. Ah.. Installed, it has to be maintained. It cannot be ‘turned off’ like the filaments. So, once they are active, they must stay active for the duration of this project. Once you gain feeling, we cannot just turn it completely off. This is for your own safety — you will be able to feel pain again, everything from a bumps to cuts, sprains and strains. This is so you do not — ironic as it sounds — hurt yourself. The pain response is there for a reason, and we have mimicked it as best we could.”

“So if I stub my toe, it will hurt, and keep hurting so I don’t keep walking on it?”

“That is correct.”

“Okay. Sounds fair,” she said.

“Secondly, and more importantly, your body will have to make certain adjustments.”

He paused, and Kailey thought for a few moments about it.

“If those are going to be in my blood,” she said, thinking aloud, “then… Won’t my body think it’s sick?”

Dr. Singh nodded, smiling. “Yes, very good. Your body will react as though it has an infection, yes. In other tests, this has manifested as a low-grade fever. While there is not much we can do about that, it is not in and of itself a danger. You will need to drink plenty of fluids, since dehydration is the primary danger. You will be required to take some drugs to counteract the other responses.”

“The… cells that gobble up invaders?”

Again, the doctor smiled. “Yes, that is another reason why there are so many tiny machines. Some will get ‘gobbled up’ as you say. Others may cease functioning earlier than others. We have a certain level of redundancy built into each dosage. The immunosuppressants will lessen the amount of ‘gobbling’ done, but that also means that you will be at higher risk for infection if exposed to legitimate viruses and bacteria.

“Finally, and this is very important. These machines cannot repair themselves. They have a limited lifespan before their power supply gives out. They are not self-replicating.”

“Batteries not included,” Kailey said. “So… they have to be replaced?”

He nodded. “They should break up once their power runs out, and pass harmlessly through your system. But periodically, we will have to do a total cleansing. You will be required to undergo a special type of dialysis, once every few months, and then receive an entirely new doseage.

“I must warn you, they are very, very trying on your kidneys, and if some of the machines do not break up entirely, they could clog up the filtering. This is another reason we do the periodic full cleansing. You will be at very high risk for symptoms not unlike kidney stones and at long-term risk of renal failure. Do you understand this?”

Kailey’s mouth had gone dry, and she sipped at the cup of water that was always close by. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

“I will leave the full documentation on your terminal, and you can contact me, or any of the staff here if you have any questions. Your Dr. Carter and I have had many long conversations about this step in the process, and I urge you to talk it over with her before you make a decision one way or another.”

He stood up, and took the IV bag, slipping it back into his pocket, then held out his hand again.

“Thank you for your time, Kailey.”

She shook his hand somewhat distractedly.

The doctors, when they showed up, never failed to drop something huge and heavy in her lap.

“You look as if I have just hit you with a bus,” he said. “But.. When you are ready, please let me know your questions and concerns.” He patted her hand, then turned and left.