any.
“Very funny.” Amara returned to her work. “Next time, Dr. Calvin, you get a mug of gasoline. We’ll see if you can tell the difference.”
John Calvin pointed to one of the doors. “The other offices are through there, including mine. I’ll take you there if we run out of places before Lawrence calls me back.” He opened one of the other doors and ushered them into a laboratory.
Compared to Lawrence’s office, the room looked positively germfree. The white walls gleamed, without a trace of stain or dirt. Long lab benches held racks of empty test tubes, and the sinks appeared brand-new. Small refrigeration units with old-fashioned key locks perched on each end of every bench. Each one also held a high- powered microscopic chamber. Hovering over the benches, clear Plexiglas shields could be lowered to create a soundproof or sterile environment. Only the chairs lay in disarray, apparently left where the workers had abandoned them.
“This is what you wanted to see, Remy.” John Calvin waved a hand to encompass the entire room. “The skeletal forms of the nanorobots are produced in the microchambers.” He led them to one of the boxes on the table. “You put your hands in here.” He indicated cut-out areas on the sides, now locked down tight. “And the view screen magnifies the project and tools so our roboticists don’t go blind.”
Remington lowered his head until he looked directly into the screen. “How much magnification is there?”
“I can look up an exact figure, if you want to know.” John Calvin hit a switch button on the back. Instantly, a brilliant light came on, demonstrating the contents: strange-looking pliers, guide wires, lasers, blades, screwdrivers, and even a tiny hammer. A sleek, pill-shaped body lay on a piece of cloth that looked like a chamois.
“Is that a nanorobot?” Remington asked, clearly awed.
“That’s the shell of one, yes. And those are the tools we use.”
Susan leaned in closer. “It looks so big.”
“Magnification,” John Calvin explained. “Put your hands in.”
“May I?” Remington said breathlessly.
“Be my guest.”
Remington looked at Susan, a stripe of red across his cheeks. “I’m sorry. Did you want to go first?”
Susan felt no particular need to have her own hands in the contraption. “Be my guest.” She looked at her father. “Just promise me this isn’t some sick practical joke that’s going to mangle his surgeon hands.”
John Calvin leaned in and unlocked the ports. He stepped back, gesturing at Remington.
Susan rolled over a chair so Remington did not have to crouch.
Without taking his attention from the magnification box, Remington settled his bottom on the chair and gently glided each hand into a side of the box.
They appeared instantly, wrapped in an opaque film. They looked enormous, as if he could grip the entire room.
“Whoa,” Susan said.
“Whoa,” Remington and John agreed.
Remington tentatively touched one of the tools with his finger. “That’s amazing. I didn’t think glass this big could be ground that finely.”
“It can’t.” John wore the expression of one accustomed to the impossible. “The glass is maximally magnified. Then we use an active system to multiply it another thousandfold.”
Remington removed his hands and sat back. “I’m impressed.” He rose and stepped aside. “Want to try it, Susan?”
Susan suspected, after a day of work, the nanorobot scientists walked around holding their arms spread far apart, afraid to knock over everything in their path with their gigantic hands. “No, thanks. I got the idea, and I’d just as soon not know if I have hair on my knuckles.”
Remington reflexively examined his own hands. “What’s the greenish fluid in the nanorobot concoction?”
“Normal saline.” It was an extremely familiar product, one Remington ran through IV lines daily and Susan had used in her medical rotations as well. It consisted of a sterile 0.91 percent solution of sodium chloride in water, essentially the same composition as that of most bodily fluids. It was the safest solution known to man, one that could be injected or rinsed over any organ, vessel, or tissue in the body, even in relatively large amounts.
Susan asked the obvious follow-up question. “So, what makes it green?”
John relocked the magnification box and flipped off the switch. “As I understand it, it bleeds off the nanorobots’ shell. Some kind of anti-infective, antirejection slime.”
“Slime, huh? That must be the medicotechnical terminology,” Susan said helpfully as her father reflexively restored every flap and detail of the magnifier box.
Remington seemed fascinated with the tiniest detail of the operation. He glanced around the room with slow thoroughness, then focused on the refrigeration units on the ends of the lab benches. “Is that where you store the vials?”
John Calvin followed Remington’s gaze. “Yup. They’re pretty basic units. You didn’t want to see the inside of the fridges, too?”
“Please?”
“Seriously?”
“If you don’t mind.”
With a shrug and a glance that suggested he thought the neurosurgery resident had gone insane, John unlocked one of the refrigeration units. He opened the door to reveal thick walls and insulation. A test-tube stand held five of the familiar green vials with reddish seals. They seemed out of place to Susan, like running into an old friend from home while on vacation.
Remington leaned in so closely he blocked Susan’s view. He studied the vials for several moments, while Susan and her father exchanged looks that expressed confusion, surprise, and, perhaps, a hint of suspicion. Susan had to ask. “What are you doing, Remy?”
Remington stiffened, as if awakening from a trance. “Sorry. It’s just all so amazing.”
At that moment, an alarm blared through the room, so sudden and loud that Susan let out an involuntary squeak. She turned to John Calvin for explanation, but he seemed as uncomfortable as she did. Remington stood up straight.
“Lock up, Susan,” John Calvin said, heading for the door.
Susan reached to shut the refrigeration unit, but Remington caught her hand. “Wait,” he whispered, pausing until John Calvin had fully exited. Only then, he whipped something from his pocket and held it up against the test tubes. Susan recognized it as one of the empty vials from when he had helped her inject her last few patients, along with the torn-off seal.
The alarm continued to shrill through the building, almost unbearable. She wanted to clap her hands over her ears and curl into a ball. Ventilator alarms made a similar noise, absolutely impossible to ignore, cuing medical staff to a life-threatening emergency requiring immediate attention.
“See?” Remington said.
“See what?” The words emerged more gruffly than Susan intended. Driven to find the source of the alarm, and fix it, she found concentration on anything else almost impossible.
“Look closely. At the seals.”
Susan forced herself to study the removed seal, comparing it to the ones on the fresh vials. Now that Remington had pointed it out, she could see the previous seal had more of an orange hue, while the ones in the fridge were definitively red. “Do you think it faded a bit?”
Remington grimaced, then shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous. It came off yesterday, and it’s been in my pocket since. Besides, you’ve seen the seals on the vials we’re using.”
The alarm seemed to explode in Susan’s head, making original thought nearly impossible. “So . . . someone
The alarm stopped abruptly, and realization smacked Susan so hard she nearly fell.
Remington closed and locked the refrigerator unit. “Exactly. And it’s happening sometime after this step in the process.”
The silence became nearly as overbearing as the alarm itself. Susan felt a shiver traverse her entire spine.
