From Evan: We’re in the lab. Come over when you’re ready.
I don’t need him to tell me where he is, of course. I always know where everyone is on campus. My bot cloud drifts around the whole walled compound and the whole area nearby, giving me a feel for everything everywhere. I have the vaguest recollections that doing that once used to be difficult, back when I was killing myself training on the interface so I could kill Father. It’s all second nature now. I felt Evan, Louise, and Stan go into the lab a little while ago and I was just waiting for Evan to say the word. I wrap up the work I was doing on this quarter’s expenditures, wishing the spreadsheet told a better picture about our financial situation.
I haven’t been this excited about anything for a while. I sprint down the hallway from my office to the lab, almost bumping into one of the new members of my office staff as I turn a corner. I sensed her in the hallway, but in my exuberance to get to the lab I still nearly bowl her over. The facial recognition for my index kicks in and pulls up her entry as I look at her face. Sheryl Wilkinson. The new head of the PR team. The old one retired not long after Father’s death and it took way too long to replace him. She’s been a good hire. I cut a couple of hours off of my daily workload when we brought her on.
“Excuse me, Sheryl.” I call out as I disappear around the corner from her. Using people’s names helps me keep up the appearance of normality.
“No worries!” I hear from her, her cheerful voice disappearing as the lab door closes behind me.
Evan and Louise huddle at the standing desk with the monitoring equipment. The small rectangular device that will provide the processing power for Stan’s implant and cloud rests between a pair of large screens on the desktop. I’m not familiar with a lot of the tools and software they’ll use for this procedure, but the regular-looking waveforms on the displays look good to me. Stan is sedated on the table and strapped in. The breathing tube connecting him to the ventilator makes him look so helpless. A small sealed box holding Father’s special medical nanobots rests beside his head.
“Remind me how this works,” I say, half-joking.
“No. You’ll just forget again,” Louise answers curtly. “You should have it logged from last week, just read it. The bots do most of the hard work, as usual. As far as you’re concerned, we just have to kick off the process and make sure nothing unexpected happens.”
“Great,” I answer. She’s been grumpy lately, and the stress of performing the operation doesn’t seem to be helping any. I wonder if she’s trying to quit her addiction to implant-enabled biochemical mood enhancers. If so, she’s picked a hell of a time to quit. “I’ll just stand here and not get in your way until the hard part is over.”
“That’s the plan,” says Evan, eyes locked on one of the screens. “Louise, you want to do the honors?”
She glances at his screen then fixes her eyes on Stan’s unconscious form.
“Yeah, starting it now.”
Despite her irritability a moment ago, she’s exuding an air of both confidence and competence now. I wish I were as calm and about the procedure as she seems to be. I guess it’s a testament to my Father’s methods. Most of the people our age are worrying about dating or what college they might get into, but we’re here running a multinational humanitarian organization and perfecting some of his world-changing medical experiments.
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“Keep an eye on the blood flow, Evan. Plugging or tearing a capillary is the biggest risk at this stage.”
“On it,” Evan replies, eyes still focused on his screen.
Louise takes her eyes off of Stan long enough to type in a command on the keyboard on the desk. New lights start appearing in several of the images on their screens. She turns her attention back to our younger brother and my overlay lets me see the almost imperceptible lines that indicate a steady flow of specialized medical nanobots flying in through Stan’s nostrils from their sterile box next to him on the operating table.
“Coming past the ethmoid sinus cavity and beginning permeation. All good on my side.” Evan reports.
“Perfect. I’m getting pickups from the temporal lobe, brainstem, and cerebellum. Blood flow still steady?”
“All the sensors are showing normal pulse and pressure,” Evan replies with a nervous smile.
“Keep monitoring the pickups. I’m starting the install for the optic nerve bypass. I need to focus here.”
She closes her eyes as I review the details of the procedure as she explained them to me and I captured them here in my log. I remember now. She has to direct the bots manually to position the monitoring system throughout Stan’s brain. There’s nothing automated about this part of the procedure like there is for a lot of what we can do with the bots. I’ve felt her practicing on dozens of Father’s hyper-detailed anatomy dummies over the last few weeks. Once she has the monitoring framework in place, the software can use that as a bootstrap to place the rest of the bots before they all swap out their firmware loads to transform themselves into Stan’s implant. This is the most delicate part of the whole operation. The bots in the optic nerve need to be set up exactly right or his console won’t work.
Several minutes pass in a silence that lasts for days.
“Got it,” Louise finally declares. “How’s the rest?”
“Looking good so far,” he says. He stands silently for a minute or so, his attention fully occupied by the unintelligible displays on the screen. “Full saturation in 5, 4, 3, 2, and we are done!” Evan finally pulls his eyes from the screen. “That went smoothly. Smooth as Valerie’s perfect skin.”
Valerie. My index triggers at the name, pulling up her entry. That’s right. The nurse from the Residence that Evan has been crazy in love with for over a year. She likes him too, I think, but she’s been very hesitant to move their relationship forward. I understand why. Up until a few months ago, he was still seventeen to her twenty-three. She must have finally come around to his charming personality, because I’ve got a calendar entry for this weekend showing me that he’s got a real, official date with her up to Vegas. Good for him. He’s a better man than I am and he deserves a little happiness in his life.
We watch the monitors for the next half hour as we wait to make sure everything is settled in. Louise did so much to perfect Father’s techniques, everything from the procedure itself to using the bots for auto-dosing the anesthetic. It’s a miracle she’s managed to pull this off without having to call in outside help. That would have complicated our lives considerably. None of this is approved medical care.
“Pull the tubes please, Evan,” Louise says. “The reversal agents for the anesthetic should be kicking in and he should be able to breathe on his own now.”
Evan’s big frame would make you think he couldn’t possibly be as dexterous as he is, but he has the gentlest and steadiest hands of anyone I know. He carefully slides the tube from Stan’s throat. I hold my breath until I see Stan’s chest rise and fall on its own. The monitors show his oxygen levels are staying in the safe range. He should be awake again any minute.
“You still want to help him get set up with the post-op stuff?” Louise asks me.
“Yeah, if that’s still OK with you.”
“You’ve got him. I could use a break anyway.“ She stretches her arms above her head, almost reaching Evan’s shoulder height. “It’s been a long morning.”
“You OK there, Stan?” I ask him as he starts to stir.
“Yeah,” he replies groggily, “I’m OK. But I can’t see.”
“Not a problem at this stage,” I tell him. “That’s perfectly normal. Let me connect up the debug interface and we’ll get you set up.”