“Hey, are you okay?” Nami nervously asked.
There was a long pause of unbearable stillness. His eyes were open, but unfocused. “Search within. Search within. Search within. How does that person know anything about me? What did Knight-1 mean? My psyche? My Heart? Heart? Couldn’t be that! A blood test maybe? MRI? A biometric scan… Wait! That’s it!” Caiden knew what he had to do.
“Whoa what just happened?” Hitomi asked.
“I’m gonna take a standard biometric scanner from the lab and upgrade it somehow. Maybe I’ll be able to get some answers from the readings from the enhanced scanner!” Caiden exclaimed.
“Well, a standard biometric scanner can only be used for retinal scanning, fingerprints, voice recognition and other stuff like that But you’re saying you can repurpose one to do even more than that? Like to scan at a molecular level?” Nami asked.
“Precisely. If I can repurpose well enough so that it will scan beyond even the cellular level, I’ll definitely find something. It’s a start,” Caiden said excitedly.
“Sounds fun to me! What do you need us to do?” Hitomi said.
“Just sit back and watch the readings on the screen. I’ll only need about ten minutes to tinker with this scanner,” Caiden replied.
He made his way over to the lab area where the utility closets were. After sifting through a lot of equipment, he located an outdated biometric scanner he had acquired some years ago during a project for class. The scanner was rectangular, approximately five inches in length. It had an LED touch screen panel, with a special projector lens that emitted the scanning lights.
He brought with him an elaborate tool case full of gadgets, including an automated mechanical arm that he attached to the lab table. Caiden opened the panel up on the mechanical arm and input a complex sequence of commands while he latched it to the edge of the table. He then refurbished the old bio-scanner with new updated circuitry and a brand-new screen for command inputs. He went to the control desk in his computer hub area and pulled out some connecter cables, along with a couple of plug adapters and routed them to the ports in back of the scanner under the LED screen.
The final, and arguably most important, part of the process included assembling a new mini-motherboard for the device. This new motherboard would allow the scanner to perform enhanced, more detailed scans of a person when prompted. It would also allow the scanner to properly communicate with his computer and provide more detailed readings of the results from the scan on the large screen. With the materials ready, he initiated a holographic display of the updated motherboard design and hit enter. In a matter of minutes, the mechanical arm meticulously and precisely pieced every socket, memory chip, graphics card, CPU unit, and circuit together. The newly designed motherboard from the scanner was as small as a Cred codec.
Caiden picked up the newly constructed piece and held it up to his eyes, inspecting its elements, ensuring its completion. The twins were intrigued. Once he felt confident with its design, he then installed it into the refurbished scanner while connecting the other wires he pulled from the control desk. After taking deep a breath, he flicked the power switch for the bio-scanner. The large computer screen synced its feed with the home screen on the bio-scanner without any issues.
“Perfect!” Caiden exclaimed, while rubbing his hands together.
“Jeez, he’s like a happy little fat kid in a candy shop right now!” Nami whispered to her sister.
“I know; look at him go. It’s no wonder he built this place up the way it is,” Hitomi replied.
“Hey guys, I’m about to ready the upgraded bio-scan. Once I input the command all you need to do is hit enter on the control desk,” Caiden walked in front of the scanner. He stood approximately ten feet away from the scanner’s projector lens.
“Okay, ready when you are,” Nami stated.
“Okay. Hit it!” Caiden replied with conviction. The newly upgraded device shot out a thin pink horizontal ray of light. The scanning light started at the top of Caiden’s head and slowly went downward toward his feet, intaking a vast amount of data along the way. Upon the completion of the scan, everyone congregated around large computer monitor.
“Um, what are we looking at?” Hitomi asked.
“I don’t even know just yet,” Caiden replied as he examined the data.
The scan appeared to have magnified close to a quadrillion times! The scan had exceeded his expectations. But the immeasurable detail provided by the scan revealed something even smaller than anything at the cellular level. There were very small, strange objects, and lots of them. These nano sized objects, appeared octagonal in shape, were significantly smaller than a standard cell, and were more machine like in appearance. Each one even gave off a strange pulsating turquoise glow. There were quadrillions of them. They appeared around every single regular cell. But instead of attacking the regular cells, they somehow coexisted with them, even strengthened them. The data from the scan showed that these nano-machine structures were actually improving individual cellular function well beyond normal standards.
“What is this?” Caiden asked rhetorically.
He continued to swipe through pages upon pages of detailed charts from the results of the quick scan. Using comparative data, a standard human would have approximately thirty-seven trillion cells combined in their body. Caiden’s reading showed the same number of standard cells, but the nano-machine like cells doubled that number. The scan was even able to determine the bone structure density, in addition to viewings of what was going on beneath the skull. The results of these were fascinating. Caiden’s bones showed that they were denser, but somehow lighter than the average human bones in weight. His entire bone structure also showed an incredibly thin protective membrane made from the strange nano-machine cells.
The most amazing part of all the test results came from the
