Final Battle (14 page)

CHAPTER 1

Tidal wave!

Not water. But blood. Whooshing down a narrow pipeline.

I knew the rush of blood was out there only because I could hear it surge ahead with each heartbeat—a sound like a distant drum. But I couldn't see anything because I was inside a shiny steel transporter pod, half the size of a pea, carried along by the powerful flow of blood.

Well, actually, it wasn't me inside the pod but the miniature robot I controlled through virtual reality. But it
felt
like I was inside the pod. Since my brain waves were connected to the robot, I saw and heard what the robot saw and heard. In turn, the robot responded to my brain waves and moved the way my own body would move.

The robot itself was an incredible piece of machinery. It was a second-generation ant-bot, about one-tenth the size of the original mini-robots. And those first ones were smaller than an ant!

Yet even being that tiny, there wasn't much room for the robot's arms and legs to move in the absolute darkness of the pod. There certainly was nothing to see inside. All I could do was wait and listen to the blood outside as the transporter pod moved through the major arteries of the president of the United States of America.

Inside the operating room, the president sat calmly in a chair, hooked to heartbeat monitors, waiting for the transporter pod to reach the pacemaker in her heart. Something had caused it to slow down, and the doctors didn't know what. Checking it by robot was much easier on her than having a major operation that would open her chest cavity and keep her in the hospital for weeks.

Just a few minutes earlier, a doctor had injected the tiny pod into an artery in her hip. A beeping locator signal let the doctor know of its progress. As my robot waited, the doctor guided the pod through the president's arteries with a powerful magnet. The inside of the pod was lined with a thin rubber coating so the electrical forces generated by the magnet wouldn't disturb the intricate wiring of the robot. But the X-ray signals could still get through the rubber, and that allowed me to stay in contact with the doctor.

“Tyce,” the doctor said, “you're moving toward the lungs now. I'm sorry it's taking so long, but I made a wrong turn at the kidneys. After all, this is the first time something like this has ever been tried.”

Although I couldn't see anything, I imagined the walls of the arteries stretching and throbbing with each beat of the heart. I imagined glowing red saucer-shaped platelets swarming just outside my pod.

“Tyce,” the doctor continued, “are you ready? I mean, really ready? We're talking about a human life at stake. And this human happens to be the president of the most powerful country in the world. If she dies, a lot of other people will suffer.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I'm ready.”

The doctor had explained it to me earlier. When the pod reached the right place near the president's heart, he would trigger the pod to release some tiny spikes that would secure it to the blood vessel. Then the pod would open, and my robot would seek its target—the president's pacemaker.

I'd spent hours going over the model of a pacemaker, studying computer-generated images to give me an understanding of how it would appear to my little robot.

“I'm ready,” I confirmed. “As soon as the pod opens.”

It took the doctor another 30 seconds. “Get ready,” he warned.

“Ready,” I repeated.

And blood rushed in as the pod cracked open.

Immediately my robot began to sway with the movement of the blood. The president's heartbeat had fallen to 30 beats per minute. One every two seconds. A hard tidal wave rushed over me; then it became relatively calm and I floated in an ebb of blood.

A beat every two seconds. Slower than if she'd been asleep. Her heart wasn't pumping enough blood, and her body desperately needed oxygen. Already some of her major organs had begun to shut down.

My robot was tethered to the inside of the transporter pod by a microscopic strand of titanium. The next heartbeat would pump blood that would shoot me forward until I reached the end of it, like a dog running to the end of its leash.

A light attached to the robot's right arm showed a red glow of blood around it. But if the doctor had placed the pod correctly, the next heartbeat would take me right into the pacemaker and …

The robot shot forward as blood gushed again through the artery. Then it stopped hard. I'd hit the pacemaker!

Now my tiny light bounced off the shininess of the pacemaker's plastic. It would have to be enough.

The light showed a small seam. I grabbed it and held on. I needed to be secure before the next heartbeat washed a new wave of blood over me.

The wave came. It tugged at my robot body.

I held.

I climbed farther for another second.

I held. Waited for another rush of blood. Then climbed.

Again and again. Until finally I reached a small opening that led into the pacemaker.

I waited for another heartbeat to pass before moving inside.

Once inside, I needed to find a wire that, although nearly invisible to human eyes, would look like a thick rope to a robot this size. The wire sent an electrical current to the pacemaker controls from its power source. It was insulated, so I didn't have to worry about putting my robot in risk of shock, which could also shock my own brain. It was this wire that doctors suspected was loose or frayed, causing the slower heartbeat.

My robot hand finally found the wire. It was so big in comparison that I could barely wrap the robot fingers around it. I grabbed and held tight.

That was my mistake. I should have been holding something else.

The next wave of blood shifted my robot body.

I forgot to let go of the wire.

It held me briefly, then snapped loose as blood tugged at my robot body. For a moment my robot body swayed. Then it stopped, suspended in blood.

And I realized what had happened. I'd disconnected the wire that, until then, had just been frayed or loose. All heartbeats of the pacemaker stopped.

“Tyce!” the doctor shouted. “What's going on in there? The president is screaming with pain. She has—!” He stopped for a second, then shouted louder, “Tyce! She's collapsed. We can't get a heartbeat on these monitors! Tyce! Tyce Sanders! Do something in there!”

CHAPTER 2

“Can you scratch my back?” I begged Ashley. A cast covered my body from my knees all the way up to just below my armpits. The skin beneath my body cast was so itchy I wouldn't have cared if she used a chain saw to get at it.

I'd just finished my virtual-reality simulation, and my heart was still pounding.

“You just killed the first woman president in the history of the United States, and that's the first thing you're going to say for history to record?” Ashley exclaimed, helping me take off my sensory-deprivation helmet.

I rubbed my face where the helmet had pressed for the last half hour. The helmet was designed to make sure no light or sound reached my own eyes or ears during robot control. Even though it was tight enough to be barely comfortable, it was an improvement on the headset and blindfold I had first used to go into robot control.

Of course, with the total backing of the World United Federation after uncovering the plot to kill the vice governors, all of our stuff had been replaced with the best and newest equipment. This included updated computer programs to simulate situations where robot control could help the rest of humankind. Things like robot submarines. Robot helicopters. Robot firefighters. And robot surgical units, like the ones used in the virtual-reality medical emergency I had just failed.

I knew a little about the history of computers and how this new ant-bot was technologically possible. The first silicon computer chips—way, way back in the late 1900s—were wafers hardly bigger than a pinkie fingernail. Now those wafers looked like baseball stadiums compared to the modern computer chips, which were tinier than a pinhead. Information pathways were etched on these chips less than a molecule in width. My small robot needed only two chips for all its computing work, and the robot's arms and legs were so tiny that only other miniature robots—guided by human brains—could build them.

Ashley floated beside me, holding my helmet by its strap. She had just unhooked me from my robot-control transmitter. “At least I was almost able to fix her pacemaker,” she said, rubbing in her own success. Her dark almond-shaped eyes crinkled as she grinned. “Every time
you
tried, the blood knocked you out of your pod.”

Okay, so she had me there. Ashley was right. She was a good match for me in virtual-reality skills. Although I wouldn't tell her so outright, secretly I was glad. After all, that was what had brought us together as friends when she'd arrived on the planet of Mars almost four years ago.

During the past two and a half years on Earth, as we waited for the orbit rotation of Earth and Mars to line up so that my dad could take us back to Mars, Ashley and I had become even closer. It isn't just any friend who hangs around when you have to spend most of your time visiting doctors and having multiple tests—or when you're up to your eyeballs in a cast. After saving the vice governors' lives, I'd been told it was possible I would be able to walk again. But it could mean losing my ability to control robots through virtual reality.

It sounds crazy, I know, but the choice had been tough. I'd never been able to walk my whole life—but my world, and all my training since I was a kid, had been in virtual reality. It was hard to think about giving that up.

But after a lot of discussions with my dad, my mom, and Rawling, I'd decided to go for it. And Ashley had been my biggest supporter, keeping my mind busy—especially over the two months I'd spent in the body cast on Earth and now these almost six months on the spaceship back to Mars.

It was Ashley who had insisted that I try connecting with a robot soon into my recovery after surgery. I'd been too scared to try it by myself. And I'd been surprised—and greatly relieved—when my spinal plug still worked to connect my brain waves to a robot. So at least I knew that part of my life would still work.

But could I walk? Actually be able to take steps on my own, outside of virtual reality with a robot? It had been eight months since my surgery, and I still had to wait and see.

I was glad Ashley was still by my side … and that she still had her sense of humor. As annoying as it could be sometimes.

I wrinkled my nose at her, knowing that my small action would speak louder than words.

“There's always tomorrow,” Ashley teased, attempting to tuck a strand of her straight, shoulder-length black hair behind her ear. “Give me one more try and—”

I sucked in a breath at the itchiness of my ribs. If only there were room to squeeze my hands inside the cast and scratch, scratch, scratch with my fingernails. Until I'd been put in this body cast, I'd spent my life in a wheelchair. But I'd never once dreamed there would come a day when I'd think a wheelchair was freedom. Yet compared to the prison of this cast, I wondered… . Tubes seemed to stick out of me everywhere. The ones I hated the most were those that fed my body wastes into a pouch hidden by my jumpsuit pants.

“This close to Mars,” I answered, “we should probably spend more time on the carbon-dioxide generators.”

I didn't mean that she or I should hook up to a carbon-dioxide machine, of course. After all, we humans breathe oxygen. But the atmosphere on Mars needed more carbon dioxide, and that's why we were on our way.

We
meaning 50 kids like Ashley and me who had robot-control capability. After hearing about the need for human life to expand to new planets like Mars and the capabilities of the new carbon-dioxide generators to provide an atmosphere in which life could thrive, 50 of the kids had also decided to come—on their own. They were excited about being part of “saving the Earth” in a unique way—by controlling the robots that worked the carbon-dioxide generators.

And now within two days we'd land on the red planet. After a trip of 50 million miles.

But before we did, we all needed as much virtual-reality practice as possible assembling the parts to the carbon-dioxide generators. On Mars we would be building the real giant gas generators on the surface of the planet.

“I can't give up on this pacemaker thing,” Ashley said. “One of us has got to be able to save her life one of these times. Poor woman must be tired of dying.”

The poor woman wasn't real—just a computer model. And one of the many different programs the World United Federation had created for the Mars journey. I couldn't imagine how many millions and millions of dollars had been spent to generate the programs since the technology first became public. But with 50 of us spending six months in space traveling from Earth to Mars, we needed something to do that could be of good use down the road.

Although the stuff we did to pass time was practical, it didn't feel like work. The virtual-reality simulation programs were fun and good training, and we had plenty of time to read books. Ashley liked fiction; I was really getting into science. Learning about …

Ashley poked me. I was spacing out again, mentally writing in my journal. I'd first hated it—when my mom had made me start it as homework almost four years ago on Mars. But now I used it to track my thoughts and think through problems.

“She might be tired of dying in virtual reality,” I said, “but here in real life I'm dying to get scratched. Can't you find anything to help?”

Ashley raised an eyebrow and put her hand on her hip in her trademark gesture. “Just another powder injection.”

“A wire,” I begged. “A stick with sandpaper on the end. Something to rub my skin.”

“Powder,” she insisted. “I'm your friend and you have strict doctors' orders not to use anything but powder. Scratching skin beneath a cast can lead to sores and infections and scars.”