Nano Contestant - Episode 1: Whatever It Takes

by Leif Sterling

  Skylar scanned through her readouts. “Yes! I’m reading all your vital signs now!” She let out a sigh. “I am so glad this is over!”

  Roland gingerly climbed off the table. “Yeah, now the hard part begins.”

  Ivan grabbed the small shot glass that had been waiting for him on his supply table and downed it.

  CHAPTER TWELVE:

  RUN

  ROLAND SLEPT MOST of the next two days, but Skylar barely even closed her eyes. She was too excited. She was testing out the new nanotech implanted in Roland’s body. She was able to pull information from it even while he slept.

  The nanotech was extremely fast. Much faster than any other hardware she had ever used. The nano cells had already begun replicating throughout Roland’s body. They inserted themselves into every type of tissue and would instantly communicate with the rest of the nano cells, and in turn, Roland’s body.

  The results of Skylar’s preliminary tests were promising. She had first run some basic calculations to establish a baseline. The nanotech was producing results that were much faster than any currently available digital tech on the market.

  Skylar also found the plugins system. Matthew had created the system to be a modular framework so that the software could be built up or taken down without stopping the whole system. One of the plugins he had made was for healing. Skylar loaded the plugin into Roland’s system and started running it. She watched as the system began drawing in extra antibodies and repair cells to Roland’s eye and nerves. The next plugin she found hooked into Roland’s vision and created a video stream.

  Roland awoke on the third morning. He felt good. The soreness was gone. He swung out of bed and headed for the kitchen. He reached up and felt the eye patch still in place. He carefully pulled it off and then slowly opened his eye. It took a second to focus, but then everything seemed normal. He moved his eyeball around and opened and closed it a few times. Nothing hurt. His vision seemed fine. It’s better than fine, he thought. Everything seems sharper and clearer. I bet that’s the nano. Roland put some espresso on to brew. “Sky?” There was no answer. He went into the living room and found her asleep on the couch. He went back for the espresso. They both functioned better with caffeine. Roland put his espresso in the freezer. He liked it cold. For Skylar’s, he added sweetener and soy milk. He pulled his from the freezer before it froze solid and took them both into the living room. He wafted the hot beverage in front of Skylar’s nose.

  Her eyes flashed open and were followed with a smile. “Coffee?” She took the cup without waiting for an answer and began to sip it.

  Roland threw his head back and chugged his cold espresso. “Good morning, Sky.”

  Skylar wrinkled her nose as she watched Roland chug the coffee. “The way you drink coffee is such a waste.” She shook her head and sighed.

  Roland smiled and pretended to eye her cup.

  Skylar put a protective hand over her cup. “Nevermind. How do you feel? How’s the eye?”

  Roland looked at Skylar. “I feel really good. My eye is great.” Roland pointed his finger at his head. “I’m ready to see what this thing can do!”

  Skylar waved her hand towards the nearby blank wall. “The nano have already been working hard on you.” The wall jumped to life and showed all the health and healing data Skylar had been working on. “See for yourself.”

  Roland walked over to the wall and began looking over the data. Skylar explained to him about the healing plugin his father had made and what data was being shown.

  Roland stepped back and ran his hands through his hair. “Wow, so the nano speeded up my recovery?”

  “Yes, significantly. Once they have replicated fully throughout you, I expect healing to come very quickly.”

  Roland went back to the health readout screen and pointed at a number in the top right of the screen. “Whoa, this is really amazing. Is this number the amount of the nanotech cells I have in my body? It says twenty million.”

  Skylar sipped her espresso again. “Yep. That’s right. You started with just over a hundred thousand right after the injection. They have replicated to twenty million while you were sleeping. Once the replication is complete, you should have about hundred million nano cells.”

  Roland turned to Skylar. “That means I’m only at twenty percent now?”

  Skylar smiled back. “Yep. You aren’t even close to being at full capacity yet.”

  “So, how do I get the nano cells to replicate?”

  “Just like any other cell, they need fuel to grow. Your dad’s notes say that a nanotech subject would have to double his daily calories. I’m guessing that if you are training hard, it may be a lot more calories than that.

  Roland headed for his room. “I’m going to get my running shoes. We’ve got to try this out.”

  Skylar made some toast for both of them and then went into the data room. “Hey Roland, I also found a plugin to send your vision as a video feed. Roland followed her into the data room to put his shoes on. “So, can you see what I see then?” He took the toast that Skylar offered him and began crunching away on it.

  Skylar also took a bite of her toast and then went and got a strip of black fabric with a communications device sewn into it. “Here put this around your neck. This is a short range comm unit I put together for you. As of right now, the data can only be sent a short distance. I was able to piggyback your nano data over the comm unit’s network. We will find a better solution later.

  Roland held his toast in his mouth while he fastened the one inch strip of fabric around his neck. “Test, test, test.”

  Skylar put on a headset. “Yeah, I got you and your toast.” She waved her hand and a holographic keyboard appeared under her fingers. She began typing commands into a holographic terminal. Then she swiped her hand from the holographic terminal to the data screen wall. Instantly the wall showed Roland’s view.

  Roland finished tying his shoes and then headed for the door. “Here we go!” He took off running out the front door and down the block.

  Skylar watched Roland’s video feed on the wall. “It really is like being in your head.”

  Roland turned onto the next street. “So, you can still see everything even while I’m running?”

  “Yeah, it’s all coming through crystal clear.”

  “Sky, can you pull up my heart rate and stuff?”

  Skylar typed a command on her keyboard. “Yep, you are about a hundred and twenty beats a minute.”

  Roland could feel himself getting into his running rhythm now. It felt good. The last several days had been stressful, and he needed to blow off steam. “Sky, I have an idea. Can you make me see my heart rate too? You know, like the HUD in a video game?”

  “Hold on a sec. I’ll see what I can find.” Skylar checked back over the reference material she had and then looked over the coding. “I think I’ve got an idea that might work.”

  Roland left the neighborhood and headed for the wooded running trails. “Ok, do it.”

  Skylar began typing furiously. She had pulled up three different holographic terminals and was switching between them regularly. She grabbed sections of code from one terminal and swiped her hand through the air to merge it into the next terminal. “Ok, you should see your heart rate now.”

  Roland stopped running. “Sky, I can’t see.”

  “What do you mean you can’t see? You mean, like, at all?”

  “Yep, like pitch black. I can’t see anything. I’m standing outside the wooded jogging trails.”

  “Um, just a sec. I’ll check my code.”

  “Ok. Well, hurry up.”

  Skylar quickly scanned over the terminals she had pulled up. “I think I found it.”

  Roland sat down on the grass. “Still all black over here.”

  Skylar quickly opened another holographic terminal and pulled out the offending code and stuck it in the new terminal. “Sorry, I’m still fixing it.” She typed in a few commands to diagnose the problem. She removed one more s
ection of code and ran her new code through a checker. It came out clean. She launched the new code. “How about now?” Roland’s video feed came back up on the data room’s wall.

  Roland stood up. “It’s working. I can see again. What happened?”

  “I was trying to get the heart rate to overlay your normal vision. It should work just like editing a video feed, except I accidentally blacked everything out.”

  Roland began jogging again. “Ok, well, let’s not do that again.”

  “Yeah, I agree. Ok, stop for a sec. I think I have the overlay setup now.”

  Roland stopped jogging and grabbed onto a nearby tree. “Hit it.”

  Skylar grabbed the new chunk of code she had been working on for the display and moved it to her second holographic terminal. She ran the checker on it, and it came back good.

  Roland’s vision blacked out for a second and then came back. This time his heart rate showed right in the middle of his vision. “Sky, I can see my heart rate, but it’s right in the middle of my view. I can only see stuff on the sides of my vision.”

  Skylar looked over at Roland’s video feed. A big green 90 bpm showed right in the center. “That’s easy to fix. Just a second.” She went back to typing again and swiping code between the holographic monitors. “Ok, one more blackout and that should do it.”

  Roland’s vision blacked out just as she said and when it came back, a small 82 bpm showed in the bottom right of his vision. “Much better. I can see everything now, including my heart rate. I’m jogging again.” Roland took off through the winding dirt path.

  “I can use the heart rate monitor as a template for anything else you’d like on your head’s up display, or HUD as you like to call it. I think I’ve even got a fix for the blackouts.”

  Roland jumped over a fallen tree. “I’d also like speed and distance.”

  Skylar went back to her terminals. She made a few copy and pastes and then tweaked her coding just a little. “Speed and distance, there you go.”

  Roland half smiled as he saw a little 8 mph above his heart rate and a small odometer reading above the speed. “No blackout, Sky, and they both look great.” Roland broke out of the woods and onto a small back country road. He slowed to a walk. “Sky this road is a perfect place for a test run. I’m going to really open it up out here. I want you to capture all the data you can, ok?”

  Skylar used both hands to push all the holographic terminals together into one large terminal. “Just a sec. I’m getting set to capture data from your run.” She put in a command which launched her into Roland’s system command center dashboard. The dashboard showed all current vital signs. She tapped several of the holographic buttons and put the system into record mode. “Ready to record.”

  “Ok, so what do I need to qualify in the Tech Games race?”

  Skylar swiped her hand towards the opposite wall in the data room and then entered a search command. All the race data displayed on the wall. “It’s a double marathon, so 52.4 miles. You’ll have to complete it in at least seven hours to be competitive, so you’ll need an average time of about 7.5 miles per hour over rough terrain.”

  “I have a flat three mile stretch here. The fastest I’ve ever done that in is about eighteen minutes. I’ll try to hit fifteen minutes today. That would be about five minutes a mile.”

  “Yeah, you’d need to hit eighteen minutes at the very least.”

  “Sky, start looking to see what you can do to get me more speed. I’d like to just run my first mile on my own, but then I’d like to see what the nano can do after that, ok?”

  “I’ll see what I can do Roland.”

  Roland got down into his starting position. “On your mark, get set, go!” He took off down the country road. His speed gauge read 11 mph and continued climbing. He knew he needed to conserve some energy in order keep up that pace, but it felt really good to push faster. Speed was up to 14 mph, and he was still feeling good. Roland started taking deeper breaths. His distance showed he had just passed the half mile mark. “How’s it coming, Sky?”

  “I’m still making a few last adjustments. I’ll flip them on when you pass the one mile marker.” Skylar had configured Matthew’s last two plugins. She was madly typing on one terminal and then swiping it over to the next terminal to be checked, while she worked on the next one. Finally they were ready. She transmitted them over to Roland’s system. “They are ready.”

  Roland could feel he was getting winded. His speed was down to 12 mph. “Great. I’m about to hit the one mile mark.”

  Skylar watched Roland’s video feed on the big data room wall. As soon as his distance hit the one mile mark, she hit the command to execute on her terminal. “Ok, they are both on now.”

  Roland continued his pace. “I don’t feel any different. What do they do?”

  “The first one is an oxygen enhancer. It will compress the air in your lungs as you breathe it in, allowing you to breathe in at least double the amount of air you normally do. This will get you more oxygen per breath. So, take a deep breath, and it probably will feel different.”

  Roland took a deep breath, but instead of having to stop when he hit his full lung capacity, he kept inhaling. “Whoa, that was weird. But I like it!” His exhalation also took longer. After a few breaths he could tell that his head was clearer and some of the fatigue had left his arms and legs. “Speeding up.” Roland’s HUD jumped back up to 14 mph.

  “The second one increases the contraction speed of your fast twitch muscle fibers. So, basically that means the faster that you go, the faster you can go. Lengthen your stride. See if you can hit 16 mph.”

  Roland began minimizing his side of the conversation to save air. “Lengthening stride.” Roland stretched each step as far as he could go. He also changed his position to being less of a jog and more of a sprint. He began hitting the pavement with the balls of his feet. His HUD speed read 16 mph. “Hit 16!”

  Skylar watched as his stride ate up the road. “Good. You just hit the two mile mark. You’ve only got one mile left. Give it all you’ve got!”

  Sweat ran in rivulets down Roland’s face. “17!” He came up on a slight downward slope and pushed to take advantage of it. “18, 19!” Then he found his new running rhythm. He was taking eight steps for each breath. His head still felt clear, so he kept pushing his speed. “20, 21, 22.”

  “You’ve only got a quarter mile to go, Roland. Keep it up!”

  Roland could tell he was topping out on his speed as tunnel vision began to set in. “24.” He took in one more deep breath and then exhaled as he neared the end of his three miles. “26!”

  Skylar smiled. “That’s it! That’s three miles.”

  Roland went to a slow jog. He was breathing too hard to answer back. He turned around and headed for home. “Time?” “What’s my time?”

  Skylar looked over at the timer. “Whoa, Roland, you aren’t going to believe this.”

  “What was it? Did I make fifteen minutes?”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “But, I…”

  “12:42.”

  “Wait? What?”

  “Roland, you just ran three miles in twelve minutes and forty-two seconds!”

  Roland smiled. He could feel goosebumps on his arms. “Twelve minutes. That means I was doing four minute miles!”

  “That’s right. Well, four minutes and change.”

  “Yes, and change. I’ve only ever barely broken six minute miles for this distance in the Marines. I think it was 5:50 or something. This is huge!”

  Skylar finished the last of her espresso. “Roland, you are in a good place for the games. With today’s time and some hard training, you could be competitive.”

  “Thanks, Sky. Great work on the plugins by the way.”

  “You’re welcome. I think we can do a lot more down the road.”

  “Hey Sky, I’m starved. Will you order me two meat lover’s pizzas? And whatever veggie thing you want for lunch?”

  Skylar laughed. “
Yeah, I will.” She pulled up the pizza place’s website and started putting in the order. “After you eat lunch, we need to go down to Pinnacle's headquarters to do the in-person registration.

  “Into the lair of the enemy…”

  “Yep.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN:

  CHOKE

  SKYLAR AND ROLAND arrived at Pinnacle's headquarters. They followed the signs for the contestant registration and got to the end of a very long line. There had to be three hundred people in front of them. Most were groups of five or ten and wore matching team colors.

  Skylar eyed all of the different people. The contestants were the easiest to pick out, because they were the fittest looking of each group. She leaned close to Roland and spoke in a low voice. “Look at that one in red. He’s a digital for sure.”

  Roland followed her gaze to a man who looked to be in incredible shape and very handsome. “Why, because he looks photoshopped?”

  Skylar nodded slightly. “Yeah, the digitals have their DNA designed so they are perfectly symmetrical and have all the most handsome or beautiful features, which they can change by using one of their digital DNA apps.”

  Roland watched as a passing girl made eyes at the digital. “Well, seems to be working for him here. We’ll see how ‘handsome’ is at winning races.”

  Skylar folded her arms. “Right?” Then she looked down the long line in front of her. “I hope this line starts moving faster.”

  Roland turned to watch the people arriving on the right side of the room. He motioned with his eyes to a woman. “Sky, look at that hybrid. Both of her legs are droid tech.”

  Skylar turned to look in Roland’s direction. “Whoa! Usually people cover up their robotic implants out in public.”

  Their line moved and Roland was able to take a step forward. “Yeah, but I bet here it’s like a status symbol or something.”

  Skylar kept watching the woman. The hybrid’s legs gleamed a metallic silver. “Bet you’re right. I also bet she’s fast.”