“I took a spill,” Rachel called, shaking spray off her arm. “A pretty bad one,” she added, pointedly.
“Sorry,” Marguerite called, finally skidded to a stop and jetted over to her friend. “You okay?”
“Fine, I took it on the field,” she replied. “It was a little hairy for a minute though. I’m going to quit for today; I’m tired.”
“Okay,” Marguerite said, waving with one hand as she jetted away. “Call me!”
“Sure,” Rachel replied quietly. She looked around at the blue waves rolling from horizon to horizon. She never, ever, had considered what would happen if a bit of technology failed her. But she had today. If the field failed or the biological controls on a shark weren’t working or even a hurricane was permitted to form, anything could happen out here. It was just such a… big place.
It was silly to worry about though. It was like worrying that a teleport would fail. The Net would never let it happen.
With that thought she waved her hand. “Home, genie.”
She was pretty sure it would work.
Daneh looked at the young man and smiled faintly.
“Herzer, I’ve thought of something that should work,” she said. “I think we can not just improve the symptoms but maybe even cure your problems completely and forever.”
The interview was taking place in a small room. The walls were carefully chosen viewscreens; one wall was a dim forest glade where a shallow brook ran down a moss covered waterfall, another was a gentle seascape, and the last two portrayed mountain tarns, their surfaces rippled by a faint breeze. The ceiling was an undersea view of a coral reef, the walls alight with schools of colorful fish. The combination was both pleasing to the eye and soothing, with the background noise of gentle music adding to the tranquilizing effect.
“Wha’?”
“It’s complicated to explain,” she replied with a frown. “And I have to have your approval beforehand.” She didn’t mention that she had contacted his parents as well and after a tremendous argument they had both agreed that they frankly, didn’t care what she did with him as long as she left them alone.
“A-anything!” the boy stammered. “If you ’ink it will ’ork.”
“I want you to understand it first,” she said sternly. “Especially that it is a distinct risk and… it’s not any sort of normal procedure.” She held up her hand as he started to protest. “Hear me out.
“First I have to explain why it’s not a normal procedure.
“In the dawn of medicine, doctors could only treat one thing at a time. If a person had an ailment, all they could do was treat the ailment. There was once a condition called ‘diabetes.’ Its direct cause was a problem with the pancreas gland. That problem usually stemmed from some other condition. But all that doctors could do was treat the symptom because they didn’t have a way to practice true holistic medicine. Even after they began to understand gland repair, they could only fix the gland, not the underlying causes.
“Back in those days there was something that killed old people all the time called ‘systems failure.’ One part of their body would shut down, then another then another. Sometimes the first one could be repaired, the patient might get a heart or liver transplant or repair. But the very repair would throw extra… weight on other systems. Then they would shut down faster.”
“It was only with advances in nano-medicine that they began to be able to treat the whole body, the whole amazing system that is the living human organism. And since we began to understand how to do that, it became the norm. If you have a problem with your liver, we find all the systems that are linked and either taking damage from or contributing to the problem, or quite often both, and we fix them all at the same time. You with me?”
“Yes, ’octor,” he said. “Sort of.”
“Well I think the only way to fix you is to turn back the clock,” she continued. “We can’t fix you all at once because what is going wrong is all your nerve cells, including your brain. We have to… work on one piece at a time. But in very rapid succession. Shut down one nerve or a series of nerves, cut them out of the system, repair or replace them and then reactivate that section.
“What we have to do is, in essence, kill bits of you and then bring them back to life. Somewhat like a Frankenstein monster.”
“A whuh?”
“Never mind, old, old reference. But you understand the general idea?”
“Yes,” he said. “But ’hat about… you know.” He tapped his head.
“That’s the tricky bit,” she admitted. “I’m going to let the autodoc do the rest of your body more or less by itself. What I’ll do is monitor the brain repair. I think we can work our way through bit by bit. The brain is always active, but bits of it are inactive at times. We’ll work on them bit by bit.”
“Oh.” Herzer blew out a breath. “ ’At’s…”
“Scary,” she admitted. “In addition, beforehand, we’ll take a… picture of you off-line, something like a Transference. Because of your scrambled signals it probably won’t be a good picture. If we have to use it, I’m not sure that you’ll be fully functional. If we fix the body and then re-Transfer I think that you’ll survive. But you might end up with amnesia or even being back to something like a baby, having to relearn everything. Or you might be unrecoverable. You might not be able to learn, and spend the rest of your life as a baby. Or… you could die.”
He thought about that for a bit then shrugged. “I’m ’oing to ’ie anyway. Is there an up side?”
“Oh, yes,” she said with a nod. “I’m fairly confident the procedure will work, otherwise I wouldn’t risk it.”
“ ’en?” he asked. “If you think it ’ill ’ork. I’m… I’m dying by inches doctor.”
“I can do it now if you wish,” she admitted. “To tell you the truth, I’m prepped and feeling very positive. But if you want to think it over…?”
“No,” he said after a moment. “I th-ink that now is as good a time as any. Are ’e going to a repair module?”
“No,” she said, gesturing at his chair. “Nothing will get opened, probably nothing will shut down, and the nannites can handle it if it does. Right here is as good as anywhere.”
“Okay,” he said with a deep breath. “ ’at ’o I ’o?”
“Lean back and close your eyes,” she replied.
When she was sure he was in place, she activated the medical field, started the program and closed her own eyes.
The nannite field locked his body in place, put his brain into a suspended sleep state and began the process of repair.
From her point of view his body changed to a colored representation. The areas that had not been repaired were various shades of yellow, with a blue field sweeping up from his feet. She monitored the body repair process for a moment to ensure it was working well, diving in to molecular level to check on the process.
At that level individual nannites, represented by small ovals, were diving into each cell of his body to replace the affected genes. The actual materials that did the work were not nannites per se but an RNA strand a bit less complicated than a virus. The nannites would handle cell and nucleus entry then drop the packet. It went in, did a fast stitch on the specific genes to be repaired then bonded back onto the nannite, which then proceeded to the next cell.
The process was not perfect on the first flow-through. Genes were not found only in the nucleus and some of the problem codons were free-floaters. These were swept up and modified by specialized nannites represented by diamond figures. These nannites also handled modification of cells that were in the process of mitosis and did other “cleanup” jobs.