Nano Contestant - Episode 1: Whatever It Takes (6 page)

Skylar took a step forward and held out her hand. “Wait, what? You haven’t used one before?”

Ivan winked at her. “Nope. First time, da?” Then without waiting for any further responses he put both of his thumbs on the paddle’s triggers. “Clear!”
 

There was a little electronic whining noise and then Roland’s eyes went wide open. His back arched and then he fell back to the table. It felt like he had just been kicked in the chest by a huge clydesdale horse and then everything went dark and his eyes closed.

Ivan looked over at Skylar. “You get signal?”

Skylar’s eyes were glued to her hologram. “No!” She hit the button to search again. “Nothing!” She looked over at the wall screen that showed Roland’s vitals. His heart was beating irregularly and slowly. And then the heartbeat stopped. “Ivan! His heart has stopped!”

“Ivan never lose customer!” Ivan hit the buttons on the paddles again as he yelled, “Clear!”

Roland’s eyes stayed closed. His back arched again and then smacked down hard on the table.

Ivan and Skylar looked at the heart rate monitor again. Nothing.

“Ivan, do something! Don’t let him die! We never should have done this!”

“Roland, you wake up!” Ivan hit the buttons for a third time. “Clear!”

The heart rate monitor began to beep again.

Skylar ran over to Roland. “Roland!

Roland’s chest began moving again. His eyes opened. He gave a slight nod. “Did it work?”

There was a strange two toned beep from Skylar’s computer. She ran back to it. She stared in disbelief at the hologram. The prompt said, “Signal acquired. Running Diagnostics…” The lines below showed all of the different data that was being gathered from Roland’s body. “It’s working!” She ran back to Roland.

Ivan put the defibrillator away. “Ivan did good job, da? Now time for vodka!”

Roland was sitting up putting his shirt back on. “Really? It worked?!”

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.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE
:

R
UN

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 section 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?”