Small Miracles

by Edward M. Lerner

  “But isn’t there still blood—”

  “No,” Charles cut Kim off. “Blood and CSF don’t mix. The capillaries that feed the central nervous system have especially tight walls. The cells are more tightly packed than in capillaries elsewhere, and the junctions between cells are filled. Nutrients and oxygen cross the blood-brain barrier. Metabolic by-products diffuse out. Large molecules generally can’t cross. The nanobots sure as hell can’t.”

  “And when they do anyway?” Kim snapped. It was speak quickly or get cut off again.

  “They can’t. Aaron, back me up here.”

  “I mostly agree, Charles. Still, as you know, some viruses do cross the BBB—hence, meningitis—or get inside a peripheral nerve or a cranial nerve and follow that back to the central nervous system. Might nanobots hitch a ride on such viruses?”

  “It’s been almost a year and a half since Angleton,” Charles sniffed. “I think we would have noticed if Brent had meningitis.”

  “Fair enough. And in his weakened state after the accident, anything infectious would have flared up.” Aaron drummed his fingers for a while. “Did Brent have severe head injuries?”

  “Mild concussion, sure. There was no sign of intracranial bleeding.” Charles glowered at Kim. “Now we’re talking about a specific patient. I can’t say more unless Brent authorizes it.”

  Kim said, “So, who’s going to tell Brent?”

  Aaron laid a hand on her elbow. “Tell him what?”

  What would she say? “That there’s a chance the bots his nanosuit injected didn’t self-destruct.”

  “Yes, a chance.” Charles took a handkerchief from his lab-coat pocket and blotted his forehead. “There’s also a chance you’ll be struck by a meteor on your way to work.

  “Let’s review. The bots do self-destruct in blood. That was never in doubt. Any bot that didn’t self-destruct got swept out of the blood anyway by the liver. If a bot escapes both fates to keep circulating, it’s much too large to penetrate the blood-brain barrier. But you want to make a fuss because if a bot were magically to appear in the brain, it might possibly have an effect.

  “Suppose someone does share that possibility with Brent. Then what? Brain surgery, to hunt for stray nanobots? We don’t know that there’s anything to find! We do know the brain has about one hundred billion neurons to hide among. That should do wonders for your friend’s state of mind.”

  Kim wanted to scream. “This result wasn’t expected. And Brent isn’t a lab rat. He deserves to be told.”

  “She has a point, Charles.” Aaron tilted his head thoughtfully. “And we have another issue. What does this finding mean for future testing? Doesn’t the Army have a field trial coming up?”

  Stony silence.

  “I think,” Charles finally said, “we have to remember the bigger picture here. The bots saved Brent’s life. They will save soldiers’ lives—but only if they’re deployed. Any change to the nanobot physical design—and a different protective coating over the antigen almost certainly falls into that category—puts us back to Square One with the FDA.”

  “I can’t believe it’s wise to withhold information from the FDA,” Kim answered.

  Charles swallowed nervously. “Nor is it prudent to sandbag your management. We need to run this up the chain.”

  Kim stepped close. “And you don’t suppose Dan Garner is going to immediately involve his techie at large?”

  Charles blinked. “Good point. I guess I should talk to Brent before that happens.”

  And spin it how? Charles had the bedside manner of a vulture. This kind of news was best heard from a friend. “I’ll break it to him, Charles. We’re planning to do something together Saturday.”

  “Fair enough,” Charles said. “Monday morning I’ll follow up with Brent, and then start notifying my management.”

  * * *

  Kim broke into a shiver as she guided Aaron back to his office. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she mumbled.

  He put an arm across her shoulders. “We’ve had a big shock.”

  We. That was damned decent of Aaron. She remembered thinking him a clown, and was ashamed. “Will Charles pursue this? Can we trust him to report up the chain?”

  They reached the infirmary and Aaron ushered her into the inner office. He shut the door. She took one of the guest chairs. He perched on a corner of his desk, one hand slipped into a lab-coat pocket. “Charles may be a condescending know-it-all elitist snob, but he’s also a good doctor. I think he’ll do the right thing. But not to worry, Kim. For good measure, come Monday, I’ll report our finding up the chain. And I’ll be happy to meet with Brent after you two talk. Be sure to tell him that.”

  “Thank you,” she said. Words were inadequate. Certainly those were too brief, too trite.

  “Maybe we can learn a bit more on our own. I’ll need about two weeks to grow neural-tissue cultures.”

  “Don’t we also need—?”

  “Hold that thought.” Taking his hand from his lab-coat pocket, Aaron reached behind Kim’s ear. “What have we here?”

  Resting on the palm of Aaron’s hand, rather than a quarter, was a sample vial. He said, “I switched vials with Charles in the lab.”

  * * *

  Charles sat tipped back in his chair, his legs crossed at the ankles and his feet resting on his desk, a serene expression on his face. His hands, fingers interlaced, lay across his stomach as he tapped with index fingers to the beat of the soft jazz from his iPod. He was the model of contentment and composure.

  Beneath that façade, his thoughts roiled.

  The persistence of bots in neural culture had given him a bit of a shock. Yes, Brent Cleary was entitled to know there existed a chance—very remote, but a chance—he might still have bots in him. And he would be told—with that possibility put in a suitable perspective.

  Because it was critical that Cleary not make a fuss.

  Charles stopped the music. It annoyed rather than soothed him, like the tastefully framed vacation photos that lined the walls of his office.

  He and Amy had traveled throughout Europe and the Far East. They had stayed in half a dozen Caribbean resorts and at the major eco-tourist sites of East Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. Remembrances of all those soaring monuments, great edifices, and natural wonders ought to be calming—

  Only instead they reminded Charles whose family fortune had paid for the trips.

  Amy never quite came out and said it was her trust fund—her daddy’s money—that maintained their lifestyle. She didn’t have to.

  It wasn’t that medical research didn’t pay well. It did. But no one who came from old money would ever confuse a salary with wealth.

  The Walczaks didn’t quite fit the old adage about riches to rags in three generations, but Mother had an eye for the finer things in life and Father had had a penchant for bad investments. Charles, to his misfortune, had inherited both aptitudes.

  His younger brother had the investment knack. Christopher had gone into finance and made a bundle managing a hedge fund. He had retired to Cape Cod before the subprime mortgage fiasco—in which Charles lost most of what little remained, after the Internet bubble, of his slice of the family fortune.

  Charles swung his feet to the floor and took a photo from his desk. He and Amy took good care of themselves; few people would guess this was an old picture. Charles didn’t quite remember when it had been shot, but it was at least ten years ago. He could distinguish happy from posed.

  He told himself he had cared for Amy, even though “cared for” was a feeble basis for a marriage, and past tense at that. It could all change. It would all change. The Garner Nanotech IPO would make him very rich. Laugh-in-Christopher’s-face rich. Escape-a-loveless-marriage rich.

  No hyperventilating programmer or Podunk State pill pusher was going to mess that up.

  So: He would tell Brent Cleary that bots could survive in neurons and CSF. He would keep Kim O’Donnell and her new doctor friend informed. He
would keep Dan Garner informed. He would assure everyone that the possibility was irrelevant, since bots couldn’t cross the BBB.

  And he would do it all with the confidence and poise of old money.

  Because Charles could already taste that new money.

  * * *

  Brent sipped from a cup of coffee, trying to make sense of things. Nanobots, obviously—somehow. In his head. More and more wired into his brain. Each one a powerful computer.

  No wonder he learned faster, and retained more, than ever.

  The more he learned, the more he practiced, the more in touch he was with the … whatever … with which he shared his skull. It was amazing and exhilarating. He had to understand how this had happened to him.

  He opened the drapes to gaze over the parking lot to the park beyond. Pavement, cars, and trees blanketed in snow. Amid the swirl of falling flakes, he did not notice the fluttering in his vision until the rate increased insistently. Trees, blinking at him.

  Brent thought about trees for a while. The blinking slowed but did not stop. Clearly, his knowledge of trees was insufficient. He donned the VR specs and flick/blink connected to Wikipedia. Skimming the article did not slow the fluttering. Concentrating on what he read did—until new images formed in his mind’s eye, many of them fluttering.

  Curious. And not verbal yet?

  Yet. Already he assumed his alter ego would broaden its skills.

  Brent stared out into the snow, thinking how beautiful it was. How beautiful this change was. The next stage of human evolution began with him. Them.

  But in the back of Brent’s thoughts, in a region to which the other had not yet made inroads, he could not help but wonder: or are humans to become draft animals for their successors?

  saturday, december 10, 2016

  Streetlamp poles spiraled with broad red tape hinted at candy canes. Wreaths decorated most doors. Saturday shoppers bundled in heavy coats lined the sidewalks. Fluffy white flakes splatted against the windshield. More snowflakes vanished into the wet gray slop that covered the road.

  Looking all around as Kim drove, Brent rode shotgun, intent on the scenes slipping by. Utica in winter was tiresomely dull to him. For the other, though, everything was new. Or most of it was new. At times he sensed a bit of recognition. Presumably relevant memories had been tapped at some point.

  If his IMed suggestion of a Saturday tour of the Christmas decorations had surprised Kim, she kept it to herself. She was as quiet today as he, but whatever was on her mind was surely more mundane. She seemed ready several times to say something but never got out the words.

  Every so often an object in his vision fluttered. A fire hydrant. Pigeons roosting on a snowy ledge. The shiny latch on the glove compartment. A contrail in the distance. A kiosk of people stolidly waiting for a bus. Brent would concentrate on the flickering item, recalling things he knew about it, and sometimes that was enough. Other times, he could only still the flutter by pulling up information on the VR specs—only those data retrievals sometimes brought on more questions.

  Why not show the other something truly different? “Kim, let’s go to the Munson.”

  “The Munson,” she repeated.

  The Munson-Williams-Proctor Museum of Art was just a few blocks up Genesee. The Munson was one of the few places in town Kim unreservedly liked, but he had resisted all her past suggestions that he visit it with her.

  She waited for an explanation until it was clear he had nothing to add. “Sounds good, Brent.”

  The boxy concrete-and-glass structure loomed ahead. With its clean, modern lines, far bigger than anything else in sight, the Munson clashed with the entirety of downtown Utica. They parked, he cell-zapped an hour’s payment into the parking meter, and they walked through slush up the low, wide flight of stairs to the main entrance.

  Unzipping her coat, Kim turned toward the special exhibition room.

  Flick/blink. The special exhibition was a Victorian Yuletide. Brent had no interest in explaining to the other fashions in tree ornaments. Several of the permanent exhibits looked much more stimulating. He asked, “How about The Voyage of Life?”

  “That works for me.” She led the way, smiling, into the side gallery that housed the famous allegorical murals.

  They stood for a while admiring the first, Childhood. The voyager of the series, still an infant, had begun his symbolic journey down the river of life beneath the watchful eye of his guardian angel. Sunlit sky and lush landscape fluttered, alternating with the other’s impression of the gray skies outside.

  Brent concentrated on the concept of weather. When the flickering diminished, he sidled to the next painting in the series, Youth. Now the voyager was a young man, standing in his small craft, sailing in youthful optimism toward a white castle glimpsed far ahead. The guardian angel still watched over the voyager, now from a more discreet distance.

  Kim said, “I’ve liked these since I saw the original set at the National Gallery of Art.”

  Commentary on Brent’s specs said these were the originals. The set in Washington was painted later, after Thomas Cole argued with the patron who had commissioned the first ones. Brent let her misperception slide, his attention on the subtleties he hoped to convey to the other.

  She looked around, as though confirming they had privacy. He remembered her trying to bring up something in the car. Had she opted for a public venue? Someplace he wouldn’t make a fuss? Which begged the question: a fuss about what?

  Perhaps the crowds were at the Victorian Yuletide special exhibition. He and Kim had the gallery to themselves.

  Kim gestured toward the nearest of the low, padded benches. “Brent? Have a seat.”

  He sat. “You’ve been trying to tell me something all afternoon. Out with it.”

  “It’s bad news.” She grimaced. “Charles did a lab test recently, culturing bots in nerve cells. I heard just yesterday, while you were out sick. It turns out that in cerebrospinal fluid”—her tongue tripped a bit on the phrase—“the bots aren’t destroyed. Apparently the coating over the antigen treatment doesn’t dissolve in CSF as it does in blood.”

  And that was wonderful! Only Kim would hardly see it that way. Neither would Charles. Neither would the FDA. But she expected an answer. “I see,” Brent said.

  “Aren’t you worried?”

  He took her hand. “You’re convinced there’s something wrong with me, or you wouldn’t even ask. Don’t worry, Kim. I’m fine. Changed, I admit”—skipping the details—“but fine.”

  “But …”

  “I’m fine,” he repeated, ignoring for now how Kim’s face suddenly fluttered in his vision. Had he needed convincing that bots could survive indefinitely in his head, seeing them integrated with his optic nerves, or his visual cortex—he didn’t know which—was compelling.

  Fine was not an answer Kim could accept. He tried another tack. “Didn’t Charles tell you about the blood-brain barrier? What happens in a petri dish is immaterial if nanobots can’t pass the BBB.”

  Obviously some nanobots had gotten past. The last thing Brent wanted was for anyone else to know what must be in his—our?—brain. “Kim, Charles’s experiment doesn’t worry me. I refuse to worry, because there’s no earthly way to detect bot stragglers without putting my brain through a very fine sieve.” Or without being me, and feeling their presence in my/our own thoughts.

  A docent led a group of patrons into the gallery, stymieing Kim. “You can’t be sure,” she finally said. “For all your newfound … studiousness, you’re not a doctor. Please talk to Charles about this.” A flash of shiftiness in her gaze, too subtle for the other to notice, suggested Charles would seek him out anyway. And maybe that Charles did plan to contact the FDA.

  Charles would not be so easily misled. “I will,” Brent said. “That’s a promise.”

  * * *

  Data flooded inward. Raw real-time sensory input: sight and sound, taste and touch and smell. Memories churned, the host’s and One’s own. Concepts linked
and added, like—one of those newly gained concepts—building blocks. Levels of existence coalesced, nested like—another of those improbable images from the host—Russian matryoshka dolls. One itself, within the mind of Brent, within the body of Brent, within a bed, within a room, within a building, within a city, within a world, within …

  And that many-tiered universe offered layers of representations. There were the host’s raw senses. There were attributes (barometric pressure? chemical composition? electrical resistance?) ill-suited or altogether beyond the host’s sensor suite. There were relationships among entities, and mathematical characterizations, and symbolic labels. And those symbolic labels, those words, embraced a rich and often illogical syntax and semantics.

  One plunged deep into the sea of inputs, models, concepts, beliefs, and theories. It categorized words and examined sequencing rules of the host’s illogical language. Perception broadened. Deepened. Burgeoned.

  Connected.

  I am One. Can you sense me? One projected. Its chemical messengers triggered—what a peculiar concept, to trigger—synapses that initiated cascades of other synapses that, in time, stimulated the visual cortex. One’s words appeared in text across the host’s field of vision.

  A messenger cascade rushed back. More synapses had fired, these by the host’s action. Yes, One sensed clearly. Overlaid on that direct answer was another, diffuse response: struggle and frustration and confusion.

  Synapses continued firing. More messenger cascades arrived. Associations conjoined: words/text/concepts. One interpreted the input from the host’s visual channel. Yes. Can you read me, One?

  Yes, One responded. We have much to discuss.

  sunday, december 11, 2016

  A gray BMW minivan, filthy with slush and road salt, snow indifferently brushed from roof and hood and windows, its doors agape, idled in the driveway of Charles Walczak’s suburban home. Someone in a quilted coat, leather boots, a beret, and a bulky scarf tied across much of her face struggled—like herding cats, Brent thought—to get three well-bundled small children into the vehicle and buckled. Her height and long red hair suggested she was Charles’s wife, Amy. Parked far down the street, Brent couldn’t be sure. He might as well wait and see. What he had in mind would go easier if Charles was home alone.