“Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct pleasure to be the keynote speaker at this year’s National Symposium for Neuromuscular Studies. What an incredible collection of minds I see before me; what an incredible group of people this NSNS is, united with a single purpose… to cure the most crippling of humankind’s ailments. For those who don’t know me—”
Mild chuckling sounded from the conference hall’s audience.
“—or for those who haven’t turned on a TV in the past three months, listening to the reporters excitedly relaying every successful trial of the KSE—”
At that, another wave of chuckling sounded, and the speaker waited with a patient smile for it to die down before continuing.
“—my name is Dr. Laura Brandie. My team and I devised a brand-new type of treatment for nerve disorders: a full endoskeleton powered by a semi-autonomous network of nanobots, directed by the brain. The KSE itself represents the wedding of several emerging fields of medicine: new bio-neutral, titanium-based alloys for the injected substrate; state-of-the-art swarm controllers for synchronized cooperation among individual Iota, the tiny units that make up our substrate; advances in neural networks and AI-adjacent technologies that enable our Nexus brain-to-computer interface, allowing our system to read a patient’s thoughts and translate intent into action; and lastly, a mastery of immune-attenuating drugs, giving us unprecedented access to the body’s systems.
“I myself had no background in any of those things… Six years ago, I was a humble neuroscientist who struggled to configure an Outlook email inbox—made my lab switch to text messaging, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.”
Even louder laughs sounded this time. If there was one thing she’d learned over the past few months of pressers and interviews, it was how to play an audience, and this one was like putty in her hands. As the laughing died down, Dr. Brandie felt the phone in her bag begin to buzz; she made a mental note to check it when she was finished.
“So how did a tech-illiterate philistine like me end up at the head of technology’s most recent breakthrough? It was a conference like this one, a chance for the brightest and best from every sub-field of medicine to present their discoveries to their peers—a chance for ideas to glom together like atoms to form molecules… for individual projects to form miracles.”
The crowd applauded with renewed enthusiasm, a few even daring to whistle and cheer aloud. Scientists were not known to be a rowdy bunch, but this group impressed Dr. Brandie with its enthusiasm, with its pure admiration that seemed to radiate outwards in waves. Dr. Brandie knew that she was respected in her industry—the campaign to nominate her for the Nobel Prize had truly been more a tidal wave—but still, this audible and visible affirmation warmed her heart.
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“My own mother—”
Again, Dr. Brandie’s phone set to vibrating, derailing her train of thought. She reached into her bag and muted the thing before continuing.
“My own mother was about my age when the first signs of ALS reared their head. Her decline was swift and all-encompassing. From altered gait, to stumbling, to loss of mobility, to loss of speech, to death—all in far too few years.
There was a rising murmur from the crowd as listeners expressed their surprise to hear it; it was a fact that Doctor Brandie rarely shared in her professional life.
“And yes, as some of you may know—as I’m the child of someone with familial ALS, I have a roughly 50% chance of developing the condition myself. As I’m that same age as my mother, I wake some mornings with dread that today will be the day I feel the tingling in the limbs, the loosening of coordination, the beginning of my end. And yet, despite that very real fear, it wasn’t self-preservation that drove me to pilot the KSE. Living with the sword of Damocles over your head, you make your peace with that sort of thing early enough. No, the reason I was most driven to pilot the KSE was so that no little girls need to spend their tenth birthdays at a funeral… the reason I pushed for research grants and expedited approval was so that no families need waste away in hospital waiting rooms, comforting loved ones with no clear path to restored quality of life.”
Dr. Brandie paused, letting the weight of her words settle. The audience’s good moods had largely broken, but she wielded that gloom deftly, like a scalpel in a master surgeon’s hand. Now was the time to transmute that sorrow into pride—to rile the audience up, to inspire:
“By our collective efforts, we’ve helped to give so much back to those who have lost nearly everything… bodily autonomy is one of the most basic precursors to happiness, to independence, to inner peace. This is a work so much larger than any one of us—a work only possible thanks to every one of us. I’m eternally grateful for the research, support, and unending work of the team at my back that all made the KSE possible… and my heart is continually warmed to hear of all the exceptional progress made by my peers in their myriad projects and studies. We’ve accomplished so much, and given our current lofty aims, I have every confidence we’ll soon accomplish even more.”
The crowd broke out into applause and cheering once again; people loved to clap to honor themselves. And as the cheering built to proud crescendo, Dr. Brandie snuck a glance at her phone screen, frowning at the text messages that arrived just a minute earlier.
ALEXANDRA HARMON, 11:06 A.M.
been trying to reach you for the past week but you wont return my calls.
ALEXANDRA HARMON, 11:06 A.M.
SOS, call me ASAP
ALEXANDRA HARMON, 11:06 A.M.
please, or I might have to reach to press instead