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memory sometimes returns as the swelling goes down. He knew lots
of things, little of it seeming helpful. I know. . .
Samir unclasped his hands and took a pen from his shirt pocket. A
note waiting to be taken? Subtle encouragement or just fidgeting?
What s the matter? What really bothers you?
The words burst out of Brent. Why do I dream sometimes with a
nanobot s point of view?
Click went the pen. You came in saying you needed sleep, or you
would go crazy. That wasn t entirely candid. You worry you re already
there. My guess is you re afraid to sleep, unless it s dreamless.
Yes! I need something to knock me out.
Drugs are the easy answer until you try to get off of them. Let me
ask you something, Brent. Your previous therapist, the one you saw in
Chicago. Dr. Kelso, I believe. What did he say about the dreams?
Those dreams hadn t started yet. Samir just looked until Brent
couldn t take the silence. Well, I had lots of dreams early that were
out-of-body. It was like I experienced the accident from outside, with a
bird s-eye view.
Now you watch from inside, with a bacterium s-eye view.
Right. Somehow that made the new dreams less of a change, and
more like the PTSD relapse Dr. Kelso had all but promised would hap-
pen from time to time.
We re almost out of time this session, so I ll go out on a limb.
Samir closed his pen and clipped it back in his pocket. He never had
taken a note. I ll bet your last therapist told you that displacement
was natural. And that in therapy, when confronting your memories
got rough, he sometimes told you to step back, to view things as an-
other person would.
Uh-huh. Brent shivered.
It s a standard approach, Samir said. I use it all the time, myself.
But whose viewpoint? There were people around you in that catastro-
phe, but guess what? They were all dead. They didn t have a point of
view. Here s something to ponder.
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Maybe your very adaptable mind substituted the bird s-eye view.
That provided a bit of separation but you would still be watching
horror. There s your last doctor telling you to distance yourself. Step
back.
But step back to where? There s no living person to whose per-
spective you can switch. There s no way even to imagine another per-
son there, other than as another charred victim. The bird s-eye view,
all that carnage, is horrific. So whose viewpoint is left? Who else was
there, Brent?
The nanobots, Brent mumbled.
What s that?
The nanobots, Brent said again, this time speaking up. But the
bots point of view is ghastly in another way.
You ll have to help me here, Brent. Do the bots have a point of
view?
Sure! They move among cells, and sense chemically, and
No, Brent, Samir interrupted. Let me be precise. My question
isn t about senses and measurements. I m asking about perspective.
Can a nanobot feel? Is it aware of anything?
N-no.
Then why does the passing of a nanobot, its job complete, disturb
you?
It doesn t . . . well, it does. But I take your point, Samir. It shouldn t.
And anyway, the bots are all gone, eliminated by your immune sys-
tem.
In Brent s mind s eye, the white cells excuse me, Charles, the
leukocytes swarmed anew. The good doctor gave one hell of a demo,
not to mention the testing he had done back in Angleton, while Brent
had still been in surgical recovery. Yes, the bots are gone.
And so, miraculously, was Brent s anxiety.
Well, some of it. Still, he dissembled when Samir followed up
gently with a suggestion for further sessions. That decision could
wait until Brent saw whether catharsis alone brought sleep any more
easily.
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Outside the medical office building, road construction had brought
traffic to a crawl. Brent slipped on his VR glasses, pulled up a local map
and NYSDOT traffic cams, and set off onto a circuitous but probably
best-available route back to the office.
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monday, october 17, 2016
Brent s new gig in the nanosuit design team did not last, but for a good
reason. He had been discovered.
His suggestions for an upgraded nanosuit were the start. The
Brownian bit bumps incident had quickly become legendary. Then
came the third incident. . . .
Another of his learning-by-wandering-around excursions brought him
to the Quality Assurance conference room, packed to overflowing. Al-
though it seemed QA had called the meeting, departments across Engi-
neering were represented. Nanobot hardware designers. Programmers,
both system-software types from Kim s group and medical-application
specialists. Biophysicists. Biochemists. Biologists. No one had a clue why
the latest variety of nanobots weren t performing to expectations. These
were an early-stage model for in-body cellular repair, like correcting DNA
transcription errors.
He slipped into the back of the room and listened. On the main
screen, nanobots swam among or clung to corpuscles going in the de-
sired direction. Every lab test showed them working exactly to spec
until they got injected into an experimental animal. Then performance
went all to hell.
He took it all in for a while, less hearing the increasingly unpro-
ductive bickering than staring at the screen. Nanotube cilia rippled
in rhythmic waves, propelling the bots like tiny Roman war galleys.
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SMALL MI RACLES
Imagining a nanoscale drummer pounding out the cadence, he
chuckled.
So you have a suggestion? Joe Kaminski snapped.
And Brent did. It came out of nowhere, as many of his best ideas did
these days. You re recycling the propulsion software from the first-aid
generation of bots. Correct?
Yes, someone admitted cautiously.
The bigger the blood vessel, the more serious the potential first-aid
issue. Brent pointed at the screen. To do their jobs, these guys may
have to navigate the smallest of capillaries. The diam
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