For Every Action - The Quantum Mechanic Series Book I

It had been almost two years since Tammy last set foot in lab seven. So when she stepped into one of the observation booths on the day of the procedure she was surprised at how much it had changed. Brightly lit, octagonal in shape and sixty feet across, it had originally featured cutting edge surgical tools and systems ringing a twenty-foot central operating floor. But those features had been replaced by equipment from Eddie’s team that had been strapped to every available surface.

In the past an autopsy table designed to support the weight of the Corsican Assailants had occupied the center of the room, but now a large circular glass tank dominated the space. Easily six feet across, it was thick and nearly waist high, with smooth and rounded edges. There was a spider web of thick communication and power cables lying across the floor interconnected a chaotic riot of electronics.

As Tammy watched, a crew of blue jump suited techs carefully placed a platform of low scaffolding overtop the cabling. When they finished a wagon wheel shaped set of walkways radiated out from the tank to meet up with workstations ringing the tank like numbers on a clock.

Grouped with the workstations were three even taller, darker, and more imposing black glass obelisks that sat at the two, six, and ten o’clock positions. Easily six feet across and ten feet tall they hummed and rumbled with an aura of deep and imposing power. Down their fronts, each one displayed a dazzling and interconnected pattern of cascading lights that gleamedout through a narrow vertical slit. A massively thick rope of black cables connected the towers and made a loop around the outside of the equipment.

Tammy was certain that this had to be the Quantum Solid Light Amplitude Mainframe on loan from DARPA. Dr Liao, who simply referred to the system as the “Q-SLAM”, had apparently helped design it and rumor was it was the fastest and most powerful computer on the planet. It had something to do with light and quantum computing and permutations or something.

But the way Tammy looked at it… if they had the stones to put SLAM in its name they probably weren’t fucking around.

Thirty feet above this jumble of technology were the three large glass observation booths. Each one branched in from an outside wall to sit deep in the room. Luxurious seats inside them sported a variety of snap out desk features and small camera controllers. Each one could operate any of the mechanical camera arms extending down over the central floor.

Tammy had always hated those cameras. To her they looked like long, dangling arms from some monstrous spider.

At the moment she, Jacob, and Janelle occupied observation booth one, which hovered above the foot of the tank. It faced the large glass wall of the central control room behind the tank and the massive bay doors on both sides. Tammy knew from her experience here dissecting the Corsica assailants that a technician in that control room could do anything from dimming the lights, to projecting high definition anatomical holograms. It was wired directly into the central server core and that gave it and the lab a couple of advantages. One was the most extensive collection of standard, experimental, and secretly banned medical data in the world. The other was a catalog of blueprints and instructions for almost every public, private, and top secret biotechnology created in the history of man. All of this would have made the control booth the perfect place from which to monitor and control the process. But for safety reasons, Eddie had rerouted everything to a cluster of terminals in the corner of this observation booth

Tammy took a deep breath and let it out slowly… from what she could see everything seemed to be going well. Once the final shield of germ resistant plastic was in place, the technical half of the preparation process would be complete.

The medical procedures had already gone as far as they could as well. Earlier that day Jessica’s amputations had been carefully re-opened in a difficult, but perfectly executed surgery by Sallinger. He and Eddie had decided to do this to give the micronites better connection points. They had also amputated several more inches from her legs to let the micronites completely replace her knees. Unfortunately, this left her in an extremely delicate state, with vulnerable deep tissues and bones exposed to the dangers of infection or injury. All of the critical arteries had been clamped or cauterized off, but Sallinger had cautioned them all that any serious spike in her blood pressure could be extremely dangerous.

It had been a very stressful morning as they waited through the surgery, but Nurse Rottenburg had assured them that everything had gone like clockwork. An hour earlier they had been allowed to view Jessica through a glass partition and from what they could see she had looked OK. The intubation and feeding tubes taped into her mouth and the gauze over her eyes had made it difficult to see much, but her chest had been rising and falling in a gentle rhythm and she had looked relaxed. This relieved Janelle and Jacob as much as could be expected, but the tension was still high as they waited for her transfer to the tank.

Down below, Sallinger and Eddie were already wearing their clean suits, but had left their hoods back and goggles off as they stood on the wide ring of scaffolding. The techs behind them were swiftly assembling a long ramp that extended in a gentle slope over the plastic sheeted floor until it reached the right side bay doors. Sallinger was uncharacteristically distracted, and kept looking over at the techs as he and Eddie ran through their final pre-transfer checklist. He knew he should relax, but he couldn’t help worrying that any seams in the ramp or the transition from the floor wouldn’t be smooth enough. It was critical that there wasn’t a single bump to the gurney as they rolled Jessica to the tank. Her condition was far more delicate than he had told the others, and for the sake of her safety he intended to cradle her in every way possible. When he considered what the consequences could be for jostling her injuries, he didn’t trust anyone except himself to control the gurney.

“Doc? Hey, earth to Doc! Come in big Doc!”

Sallinger was snapped out of his reverie by Eddie.

“Hmmm? Oh yes. Um.... Oxygenation?“, he asked, hovering his stylus over the item on his list.

“Oxygen is right here.” Eddie reassured him. “It’s hooked into the main, backup, and backup-backup systems… So no worries about running out.”

“Good...“, Sallinger checked his list again, “Catheter drain, IV, feeding tube supply?”

“Here, here and here”, Eddie pointed out the connections. “Oh, and a small change of plans. We got the burn web so I want to use that instead of the manual submersion.”

Sallinger regarded Eddie sternly. “Dr Mathers. We are thirty minutes away from go/no go. Now is not the time to make changes.”

“I know I know, but the burn web means we’ll get a lot smoother submersion and there’s pretty much zero drop risk.”

Sallinger hated last minute changes and it galled him to admit it, but he knew Eddie was right. The webbing had been designed for severe burn victims and was the gentlest thing on skin ever created. Plus, using a pneumatic system to lower Jessica into the gel was a lot more controllable than having the team do it by hand. So with a sigh he looked at Eddie over his glasses. “Alright, but let’s set it up now and test it a few times so I can see it work. I know your famous for thinking on your feet Eddie, but we really can’t afford to be trying to pull something out of our asses if something goes wrong.”

“Got it Doc”, Eddie grinned and carefully picked his way across the cables on the floor until he reached Dr Ginney. Sallinger watched as Ginney pulled out a soft, briefcase sized package of webbing and Eddie began assembling a frame for it.

The process looked like it was going to take a few moments, and so he crossed the scaffolding to a workstation and sat. Placing his slate on the plastic wrapped top he quickly checked Jessica’s vitals and peeked in on her via remote camera. As far as he could tell she seemed to be resting comfortably. So he zoomed in on her face and took a moment to watch her sleep. An unexpected wave of bittersweet nostalgia swept over him as he remembered sneaking into his daughter Amber’s room at night to watch her. Now here he sat, watching another innocent child in his care, sleeping as only they could… while fate crept towards them.

Something about this girl reminded him of his late daughter, but exactly what it was escaped him. All he knew was that from the moment he first saw her he had felt a sweet ache bloom in his heart, and then reach out to touch the memory of his daughter. Despite the pain and heartache this caused him, he found himself drawn back to it over and over. It was as if he could somehow see his little girl, touch her, or maybe even talk to her again through this child.

Sallinger shook his head to clear it. He knew he was being an old fool by letting his emotions cloud his judgment. But no matter how hard he tried to be objective with this girl, some part of him never stopped longing to pick her up in his arms to rock her gently. Even today, after Rottenburg had left to clean up, he had stolen a few minutes to stroke the girl’s honey blonde hair and whisper in her ear that he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her.

When he glanced up, he could see that Eddie and Ginney were still working. So he casually minimized the MedStat environment on his slate and pulled up a private folder. Several quick motions brought up a set of files, and seconds later Amber’s face filled his screen. A faint hint of tears welled up in his eyes as her sunny and infectious grin shone out to him. No matter how many times he looked at this holo… it was still like the light of life to him.

“God she was so beautiful”, he thought, flipping the image away to pull up a video. This showed her turning cartwheels in the back yard, and he knew it had been recorded only weeks before she died. As he watched, her golden hair fanned out in a gauzy halo every time she flipped over. Without even realizing he was doing it, he reached out to gently stroke his fingers over her as she wheeled and giggled. God… she had been so full of life; at times it had seemed as if she was just seconds away from bursting. The timestamp in the corner of the holo made him realize that she would have been nearly twenty-five by now. A grown woman, probably as beautiful and loving as her mother had been.

He had come to terms with her death many years ago, but the thought of all the things she was never going to get to do still haunted him. She would never go to prom, or college. She would never fall in love, and never know the joy of holding her own child in her arms…

Where once in his life there had been a beautiful little blonde angel… now there was just a long list of loss.

Then a clanging noise brought him back to reality and he looked up to see Eddie and Ginney struggling to get the webbed frame onto the tank. So without thinking, he put his slate to sleep and left it where it was while he went to help.

Tammy could tell Janelle was watching closely as the doctors connected a frame of woven mesh across the tank. So she was prepared when the question came. “What is that?“, the older woman asked.

“I think it’s the burn webbing Eddie wanted to use to submerge her.”, Tammy replied, “That’s good because it’s a lot safer, and gentler.”

She saw Janelle relax in response to this, and hoped she would be able to keep her that way as the morning progressed. Things were going to get tense, and the last thing she needed was an old woman in a panic.

Janelle smiled as she glanced over at Tammy. The nurse seemed to genuinely care about Jessica and she knew the younger woman was “handling” her. But that was OK, because she was only person that Janelle actually trusted here. Oh... the others were obviously brilliant and competent, and Dr Eddie had displayed a true concern for Jessica… but how he had done it was suicidally insane. From where she stood, that boy was riding the edge between genius and crazy a little too close. But… she had to admit that if this worked she would probably kiss him.

Fifteen minutes later, the other observation booths were packed with staff from all over the base. Thankfully, Tammy had remembered to post a “Patient Family Only” sign on their door and had locked it ten minutes earlier just to be safe. On the floor below, the techs were swiftly taping a semi-transparent white plastic over the bird’s nest of cables around the tank, and over the ramp. Earlier in the day the ceiling and walls had gotten a similar treatment, as had every surface in the room except for the Q-SLAM. Even the computer workstations had been sealed behind the milky-white barrier, with only their holo emitters exposed.

“Wow”, Janelle remarked, “They’re really making sure no germs get in, huh?”

Tammy regarded her for a moment before replying, “Yes, and making sure no micronites or nanites escape. Even though they aren’t supposed to be able to work if they get outside the controller field it’s a good idea to not take chances.”

“Oh... how big is the field?”

“About eight feet or so.”

“From where?”

Tammy pointed, “See that black box next to the tank? Everything is in there including the transmitter and the system that will reconstruct her limbs.”

“So what keeps those little micro-things from running off?”

“Well, the easiest way to understand it is that the field powers them and they don’t have brains of their own. All the nanite disasters we saw were caused by letting the nanites each have their own power source and a tiny little brain that linked together into a group mind. It was supposed to be so they could all hook up and think together to solve whatever problem they were up against. But every time they hooked together that group mind got a little smarter… and we all saw what happened when those Italian idiots let a blob of those things get too smart. The group mind decided that it would rather eat people than obey them and there was no way to shut it down.”

Janelle nodded, shuddering. If America hadn’t EMP bombed it when they did… that thing in Campobasso could have wiped out every living creature on earth.

Tammy went on, “So to prevent that… What Eddie and his team did was make micronites and nanites without the kind of brains that could think, and instead just gave them a little bit of memory and a set of instructions. The instructions are really primitive too. It’s barely enough to give them something a little bit like instincts. So they can do things like run away from fire without being told what to do. But that’s about it, without the controller they can’t even add one plus one. Plus, they don’t really talk to each other much. Just enough to stay out of each other’s way and work as a team. Everything else comes from the control box.”

Janelle gave her a slightly puzzled look. “But… there’s so many of them. Dr Eddie said it was like... trillions and trillions, or something like that. How can that controller think about so many of them all at once and still keep it all straight?”

Tammy smiled, “Well, the trick is that it doesn’t try to do that. Instead it gives each of the micronites a tiny set of instructions for the nanites they’re carrying. Sort of like supervisors on a construction site. Then they go in and put the nanites to work on something. Every few minutes they check in with the controller to let it how things are going. If something doesn’t look right to the controller, then it sends out a new set of instructions telling the micronites what to change.”

Tammy could tell that Janelle still had her reservations, and so she went on. “But Eddie and his team weren’t satisfied that would be enough, so they built in a whole bunch of fail safes. If a nanite starts acting weird then the closest micronite will just grab it and recycle it for parts. Eddie also decided to take away the little batteries they used to have inside them and now they run off the power they get from the field. So even if they decided to go out for human-flavored ice cream… they wouldn’t get far. The second they stepped out of that field their little brains would just go blank and then their power would run out.”

“Huh”, Janelle responded, “Sort of like brainless radio controlled worker ants.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it exactly”

“So why all the other equipment?”

“The workstations around the outside are just life support and monitoring. The big towers are hooked into the black box and they’ll do any big number crunching it might need.”

A moment later Tammy noticed that the last tech had left the lab and sealed the door. Moments later a spinning red light in the ceiling of their booth came on and a warning Klaxon sounded. Then the booth’s protective shutters rolled down over the windows and closed them off from the lab.

“Is this the light you were telling us about?“, Janelle asked, looking over at her nervously.

“Yes, this is perfectly normal. Right now about forty spotlights are in there on at full power. The bulbs give off a frequency of light that kills bacteria, viruses, phages, and even prions just like sunlight does. It only takes a minute or two.”

Jacob drummed his fingers on the glass nervously as he stood waiting for the next ninety seconds.

Tammy noticed that he hadn’t been as stone-still as usual, shifting from one foot to the other several times through the day and even sitting for a few minutes. But he still didn’t jump like she and Janelle did when the shutters suddenly retracted again. Below them, the room looked the same, but she knew it had become a sterile environment. It wouldn’t be long before the team would enter to submerge Jessica in the tank.

Several moments later Janelle let out a small gasp, “They’re coming! There she is!“, and pointed as the massive bay door right of the tank split open. A rolling gurney slowly came through the doors and began making its way up the long ramp. It was surrounded by five figures in white, clean suits and Tammy could easily recognized Eddie, Ginney, Liao, and Sallinger by their builds. But she had no idea who the fifth person was and strained to see anything through their faceplate. But they were too far away and glare on the faceplate made seeing in almost impossible.

Looking over at the other booths she could see that everyone there had fallen silent. They all knew what was happening... Below them was a child who was trusting them in the most profound way imaginable…. to watch over her as she underwent the most radical and profoundly dangerous medical procedure in history.

When Tammy looked back down, she noticed that Jessica was now almost completely obscured from view by the sterile bubble she had been sealed in. Made of clear plastic and filled with a smoky disinfectant vapor, it looked vaguely like a long, light grey cocoon. Occasionally, as the team moved, the light would strike the bubble from behind, and her small form would be hazily silhouetted.

“Is she OK in there?“, Janelle asked in a voice barely above a whisper.

“Absolutely”, Tammy comforted, “It’s just an extra step for her protection. Since her amputations are exposed, Dr Sallinger used it to completely ensure that no infection could get in. The vapor is harmless to her, but it kills bacteria or viruses on contact.”

As they crept forward Sallinger was the only person touching the gurney and he inched it up the ramp at a slow and carefully measured pace. The others walked two to a side to make barrier to prevent the gurney from slipping. Looking at the wall clock, Tammy timed their ascent, and counted off a full minute as they travelled no more than thirty feet. Watching them reminded her of the old films of when men walked on the moon. Every move they made was so slow and calculated that it looked as if the lab’s gravity had been reduced to moon-like levels. The white plastic covering everything contributed to this otherworldly feeling, and as they crept up the ramp she almost expected them to bounce with every step.

It felt like it took an eternity for the team to reach the tank, and once they were there they came to a slow stop. Then in perfect synchronicity, they all turned in to face the gurney and used both hands to grasp the handles that stretched along its sides. Gently, and on a signal that only they could hear, the team then lifted. The webbed frame that Jessica was suspended on detached as they pulled and this allowed Sallinger to smoothly pull the gurney out from under it. Moving quickly, he rolled it down the ramp several feet and locked its brakes. Then he returned to the tank and slowly directed the team as they positioned themselves at its foot. Once they were in place he guided them forward so two of them were on one side of the tank, with the other two opposite them. The frame and girl upon it were suspended between them as Sallinger adjusted their positions slightly and stood back. Then with a patting motion of his hand he cued them to lower the frame. Ever so gently it eased down until the top and bottom snapped into a lip just inside the tank. Sallinger reached in to check each connection before nodding to them and the team stepped back. Then he withdrew a pair of surgical scissors from a pouch on Liao’s back and carefully cut a slit up the entire length of Jessica’s disinfectant bubble. When he approached the top he made a hook shaped motion to create a flap that fell to one side.

Jessica’s delicate face and one slender shoulder were exposed as it folded back and her pale skin glimmered with disinfectant droplets. Tammy could see that a set of round ocular protectors had been taped in place over her eyes and her mouth had been covered by the tape securing her breathing and feeding tubes. An IV line had also been inserted and secured just below the delicate curve of her left collarbone.

Knowing how confusing and frightening all of this must look to Janelle and Jacob; Tammy began narrating what was happening below.

“OK, now they’re going hook up her air supply, feeding tube, and catheter. Her IV will also supply some of her nutrients and keep her hydrated. Then they will connect the EEG and ECG pads so they can monitor her heart and brain activity. That should finish it… but Dr Sallinger will probably double check it all just to make sure.”

Below them the plastic had been carefully peeled back, and Ginney, Liao, and Sallinger began connecting everything through the slit Sallinger made. It all went almost exactly as Tammy had said and she could see Janelle relax a little. Down on the lab floor she saw that Eddie had stepped quietly to one side with the unknown assistant and was waiting patiently on Sallinger.

As Tammy had expected, the surgeon carefully checked each line, double checked them, and then after a moment’s pause went back to triple check everything again. A few moments later he seemed satisfied and began sealing them with surgical tape. After making sure that an accidental separation was nearly impossible, he looked over and gave Eddie a thumbs up gesture.

In that moment the fifth figure glanced up and what Tammy saw made her suck in her breath with surprise. It was Director Barnes!

What was he doing here? Why was he taking part in the transfer? Tammy had never seen him do anything other than make decisions, conduct meetings, or hold briefings. The man had been acting completely out of character lately. First he rebelled against Washington over the Brent Spence hero. Then he pushed clearance for this highly experimental procedure all the way to the President. Now, for reasons Tammy could not fathom, he was risking himself in a dangerously micronite laden environment in order to ensure Jessica’s safety!

Tammy quickly glanced over at Janelle and Jacob to see if they had spotted the Director. But if either of them had, they made no indication. Janelle was still as close to the glass as possible with both hands clasped tightly before her. She had relaxed slightly but still appeared pinched and anxious. Surprisingly, she also saw that Jacob wore an expression of distress and concern, albeit one conveyed by barely measurable changes in his face.

When she looked back down to the lab floor she saw that Eddie and Sallinger were now facing each other and appeared to be talking. After a moment Eddie turned and took a workslate from the pouch on Liao’s back. Then he tapped out a series of commands and the webbing that Jessica was laying on began descending into the tank. Once it reached the midpoint it stopped and Ginney, Liao, and Barnes reach in to grasp the frame.

Tammy continued narrating, “OK, now they are going to put in just enough gel to float her so they can take the webbing out. They’ll leave the bubble on her because it will help prevent infection until the micronites take over.”

Gel began to fill the tank until Jessica drifted up slightly from the webbing and the team worked quickly to de-assemble the frame. Then Liao gently pulled the webbing from under the girl and stepped back, placing it and the frame pieces carefully into a clear plastic bag. A moment later the tank continued to fill and the girl was gradually submerged. Then she was gone and only her silhouette could be seen through the soft light that radiated up from under the tank.

Eddie tapped his workslate again, and the workstations on the perimeter of the platform spun to life. Instantly, holographic displays arced up over each one, revealing every conceivable vital statistic that could be gathered on the girl. Heartbeat, respiration, blood pressure, and brain activity were all rendered out in high definition. Each one appeared in almost excruciatingly clear three dimensional details and pulsed in perfect time to the girl’s biorhythms.

As the others headed to the bay door with the rolling gurney, Sallinger and Eddie began validating the output of each workstation and Tammy knew it might be an hour or more before Sallinger was satisfied enough to release the micronites. So when she looked up she wasn’t surprised to see the crowds in the other two observation booths had begun to disperse. A few people lingered behind though, watching the two doctors verifying readouts or just staring in silence at Jessica’s tiny silhouette.

As Tammy turned, she realized that Jacob and Janelle had each taken one of the large seats. Both of them had their heads bowed; one white and one greying, eyes closed and hands clasped in prayer.

She stood for a while and watched them, admiring their courage. In this day and age any open display of faith, specifically Christian, was practically an invitation for confrontation. She didn’t really understand how it had happened, but somewhere over the last few decades the idea of “freedom of religion” had been turned into a dirty word by a small, but very vocal group of people. Every day it felt more and more like their society was being bullied around by professional victim-tyrants, who used guilt and accusations of racism, sexism, or any one of a million other “isms” to silence anyone who spoke up for their basic constitutional rights. It galled her, and for the first time since she had been a child in a massive, mahogany bench at her family’s old Baptist church - she felt the urge to join them.

But knew she couldn’t.

Regulations were clear on keeping the separation of church and state strictly enforced at all military installations now. There were a lot of rules that were being bent here, some to the breaking point and beyond. But that was not one of them.

She also knew she had to report to the ward soon. As much as she wished it wasn’t true she had to respect the fact that Jessica wasn’t her only patient. There were others upstairs in need of her care and staff in need of her leadership. So she left, careful to make sure the door locked behind her. She knew she made the only decision possible if she wanted to keep her job. But for the rest of the night she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had just royally screwed up.

Ninety-seven minutes later, Eddie and Sallinger entered observation booth one, only to find it empty. Somewhat relieved that they wouldn’t have to spend time explaining how everything had gone to Jacob and Janelle, they went directly to the cluster of terminals in the far corner. There they both sat and Eddie began tapping away at the keyboard rapidly. The holographic displays immediately leaped to life, and with one exception they displayed perfect, if somewhat smaller, versions of the displays on the lab floor.

The central one was different though, and featured an incredibly complex interface that appeared to be partially graphical and partially command line. Within this holo, Eddie pointed to a softly pulsing circular green icon in the bottom right and looked over at Sallinger.

“Everything is preloaded exactly as you wanted. I even had Liao use the Q-SLAM to run the most critical scenarios several times in simulation. But we both still have to agree before I push this button. Once I push it there’s no going back. We have to let the assailant system run until it reaches conclusion. If we pull the plug even thirty seconds too soon it could have catastrophic consequences for her… OK?”

Eddie looked up at the elder doctor, but Sallinger didn’t respond. Instead he stood quietly with the underside of his face lit lightly blue from the gel filtered fluorescents below. Then he walked to the observation booth glass and looked down. Below him, the small, and irregular form of Jessica’s body was silhouetted in the azure suspension like an unformed sylph. Occasionally the gel would shift slightly, and the blue glow lighting the room would swirl in psychedelic patterns.

After a moment he turned back… and Eddie was struck by the dramatic change he saw in the elder physician. Gone was the erudite and iron-sided surgeon he had known, and in his place stood a man with the sort of weary and battle fatigued eyes normally reserved for soldiers of war. The eyes of someone who had been fighting for so long that he had forgotten everything except fighting loss, and exhaustion.

It suddenly struck Eddie that the brutal rigidity that Sallinger usually carried himself with was nothing more than a mask and a crutch… the only thing left to hold him upright. Then Sallinger slowly made his way back to the chairs and shocked the younger doctor again by using his first name.

“Eddie... please tell me this is going to work. This last year has been nothing but a living hell for that little girl. Having her body ripped apart. Watching her parents die. Having to crawl through their exploded remains just to survive. Then she died and came back over and over while we worked on her in the hospital. A month after that I cut off the one good leg she had left, and we’ve put her through twelve other incredibly invasive surgeries... not to mention the drugs and months of physical therapy.”

He paused for a moment before continuing; “Now we just reopened her amputations, and undid everything… All of the hard work she put in over the last year - just so we can put her through the most radical experimental procedure I have ever seen.”

There was a longer and very pregnant pause as Sallinger locked eyes with Eddie. The torture in the man’s heart was painfully clear.

" I need to know this is the right thing to do. That it’s going to be worth it for her. Because I’m done after this… and I don’t want to go out feeling like a butcher.”

“Done? What do you mean, done?“, Eddie exclaimed.

“I mean I’m out” Sallinger replied quietly, “I’m retiring. I just can’t do this anymore.”

When Sallinger decided to reveal his impending retirement to Eddie, there were a lot of different responses he had expected, but anger had not been one of them. So naturally, he was taken aback by the power of the indignance in Eddie’s rebuke.

“Can’t do what? Keep kicking death in the teeth? Keep bringing people back to completely normal lives after things that would have killed or crippled them just a few years ago?”

Eddie paused, obviously caught up in a mixture of volatile emotions.

“I mean… Dear God Doc c’mon! Think about it! You’ve got a guy upstairs who came in here with a TWO-INCH WIDE HOLE punched completely through his head. But now he’s eating cafeteria meals by the truckload, arguing with you about anything you want him to do, and hitting on nurse Vallard like a sailor on shore leave! Tammy came in here two years ago a complete cripple, and her last PT report shows her bench pressing FOUR HUNDRED POUNDS!!!... For the first time in recorded history we’re actually WINNING this fight against the most devastating and crippling injuries anyone can imagine - and now you wanna quit? What the fuck?”

Sallinger sputtered… “Eddie, it’s not that simple.”

“The fuck it’s not!”, Eddie interrupted, waggled the fingers from his rebuilt hand at Sallinger, “Look at me! I’ve got a synthetic hand!... A SYNTHETIC FUCKING HAND!”

Sallinger put his hands up in surrender, “Eddie, seriously… calm down. Believe me, I’m happier about all of this than you could ever know. But it’s just not about that anymore.”

Eddie scowled, “It’s NOT? What else could it possibly fucking be about?”

Salinger sighed… “Eddie look – I should have retired YEARS ago and now I’m pushing seventy for God’s sake. I know that at your age you can’t possibly understand, but I’m just getting… tired and it’s getting to be too much for me to keep up. I just can’t be ‘The Great Dr Sallinger’ for much longer.”

He paused for a moment and regarded Eddie with a stern, but paternal look.

“Trust me… With what you’re doing here it won’t take long before you go from ‘Eddie Mathers, Boy Genius’ to having to get up every day and be ‘The Great Dr Mathers.’ People are going to start treating you like you’re Steve Jobs, and Jonas Salk, and Einstein all rolled into one. I’ve been there and it’s not a fun place to be because the farther you go the higher the stakes get. Every success just makes things worse. You fix Jessica today and tomorrow they want you to cure every disease ever known. Before you realize what’s happening, it’s not about fixing anymore - it’s about improving on what’s already there.”

Sallinger stopped and his gaze changed from sternly paternal to gravely serious, “Think about it Eddie. There’s no way in hell they are going to let you keep your little toy down there if Jessica comes out even halfway close to normal. People who see the world very differently than we do are going to start thinking about what else they could do with it - and if you won’t play ball, well - they’ll find someone who will. Someone that you can bet your ass will be a lot less altruistic.”

Eddie blanched… “Shit. Like Vucovich?”

“Among others”, Sallinger replied, “I wouldn’t put it past a few of the doctors I’ve met in my time to fool around with human modification. It’s just too damn tempting with a push button toy like this thing. After today they won’t have to pick up a scalpel and look down at a person lying on a table before they start cutting. Hell, they won’t even have to be in the same room. Just type in some commands and come back in the morning.”

Eddie paused, looking at the console as the older man’s words sank in. “Jesus doc… I hadn’t really thought about that. I can’t let that happen. But I can’t back out on Jessica now. I mean… we had to move heaven and earth to get permission to try and fix her and now she’s already down there… in the gel. Just… just taking her back out could kill her. Why did you wait until now to tell me?”

“You already know why son”, Sallinger answered softly; “You answered that question when you came to me and asked me to cut off your hand and foot. It’s about risk and trust. There’s no way for humanity to move forward if we aren’t willing to take risks, and I’m trusting you to keep this thing out of the hands of evil people.”

A long moment passed between them as Eddie regarded him with a mixture of shock, awe, and fear. But then he slowly nodded that he understood and Sallinger relaxed a little. Then he extended his right hand out towards the younger man, palm down, and finished, “Who knows? If you can keep this thing under control you might even fix me one day.”

Eddie watched the hand for a moment, confused by Sallinger’s last statement.

Then he saw it.

Sallinger’s pinky twitched, paused with a tiny tremor, and then twitched again.

Slowly Eddie looked up at him, “Holy fuck.... Parkinson’s?”

Sallinger shook his head, “Close. Lou Gehrig’s”

Eddie swallowed, “Jesus Doc, why didn’t you say something?”

“What would that have accomplished?”, Sallinger sighed, “All it would do is put all of this at risk. Besides, I’ve still got years before it would become bad enough that anyone would notice. With any luck I can retire and be remembered for being a part of what you did here Eddie. I’ve had a good run, but you’re going to change the world in ways I could never have even dreamed of.”

Eddie blushed, “Doc, it wasn’t just me. I mean, Liao and Ginney and Michaels...”

Sallinger cut him off with a curt wave, “They’re morons... morons compared to you, and you know it. If you hadn’t been here almost every single patient would have died, and the ones that survived would wish they had died too - including that little girl.” Sallinger pointed down at the softly glowing blue tank.

“Eddie, I don’t think there’s another doctor, scientist, or researcher in the country - hell, probably the world, who has the balls to cut off his own hand and leg just to prove he can give a child a chance at a normal life. I know I couldn’t have done it. You’ve got something the rest of the medical community seems to have lost touch with - real commitment and a willingness to put yourself at risk to move things forward. Think about it! That’s how great medicine has always been made; Salk, Pasteur, Forssmann. Everyone told them that they were crazy, and they went on to break the barrier the same way you did. Hell, Forssmann tied his own assistant to an exam table so she couldn’t stop him from catheterizing his own heart!”

Eddie shook his head, “Doc stop. Seriously, it’s not like that. I’m no martyr for some great cause or something. So please stop making me out like I’m some boy scout or something. I just… I just couldn’t live with what I was doing here anymore. I mean... I didn’t go into medicine to help the military figure out better ways to kill people. So call it anything you want, but don’t make me out like I’m some kind of hero.”

Sallinger frowned, “Eddie look... I was so obsessed with a new procedure I was developing twenty years ago that I shut out everything else. I even ignored the people who mattered the most to me - my wife and daughter. Then one Sunday night they asked me to go get some ice cream with them. But I was working, and I got so mad that I said some things I shouldn’t have. I was so fucking self-absorbed that those became the last words I ever said to them. A drunk driver killed them on their way home and I can’t ever take it back.”

Eddie stared at him in stunned silence, obviously trying to process what he had just heard. So Sallinger decided to unload the last of it before he lost his nerve.

“But this is what you have to understand and remember Eddie, no matter how heartless it might sound right now... Losing them didn’t change the fact that my work saved thousands of lives. Believe me, I never wanted to even think about that procedure after their funeral. As far as I was concerned it symbolized everything about me that ended up killing my wife and daughter. I put it all away and thought about suicide for a very, very long time. But in the end I got it back out and decided to keep going to perfect the procedure... Because I realized that if I killed myself, I’d also be killing every single person that the procedure might save. You and I have taken the Hippocratic Oath, and that meant that our patients have to come first, even the potential ones. If there’s even a one in a million chance that you can use that machine to heal one little girl, and prevent it from being turned into a weapon… then you have to do it.”

There was a long silence before Eddie spoke again. “I don’t know Doc. I don’t know if this is going to work or not. All I can say is that it worked every time we did it before. But she has a whole bunch of systemic damage that none of the other test subjects had. So much that I honestly can’t explain how she lived. I killed six monkeys trying to simulate less than half of the other traumas she went through. I finally gave up with Eduardo and just did the amputations. Her body has been through a lot more than the system has ever dealt with and I don’t really know how it will react to that.”

Sallinger nodded knowingly before carefully asking, “But your gut says yes?”

“Yeah, I guess it does”, Eddie replied after running his fingers through his already unruly hair.

“Well that’s good enough for me”, Sallinger replied, “But there’s one more thing. You said you gave this thing access to the medical and research databases, right?”

“Yep.”

Some of Sallinger’s normal discipline returned to his demeanor at this point and Eddie uncharacteristically grew cautious… Whatever was on Sallinger’s mind had to be serious.

The older doctor looked over at the terminals, “Are you sure that’s safe? I mean... I don’t know a lot about computers, but you told me how hard that thing was trying to phone home before you ripped out its radio. What’s to stop it from just going through our network instead?”

With a wry smile, Eddie visibly relaxed, “Oh, pretty simple fix actually. I just cloned everything onto the biggest holo drive we had and plugged it directly into the controller. Nothing in the lab is connected to the network anymore; I unplugged all of the wires down in the server room and took the wireless chips out of all of the workstations. But all of that was overkill really. Even if I’d left the wireless stuff in there’s no way to get a signal out. They built lab seven specifically to make sure none of the Corsican assailants ever got out or got a signal out if they resurrected during autopsy. The floors, walls, and ceiling down there are made of about thirty feet of solid concrete and steel-titanium mesh. It’s Fort Knox with multiple Faraday cages built in.”

Upon hearing this, Sallinger took a deep breath and sat back, fixing Eddie with a serious look.

Eddie waited respectfully, and after several seconds Sallinger took another deep breath and let it out before saying, “OK then, let’s make history”, and reached over Eddie’s shoulder to thumb the gently pulsing green icon.

In response, the interface on Eddie’s monitor collapsed down to a single console and data flooded by before a gridded readout appeared. Inside of it, numbers and progress indicators began to change as the system assessed its newest patient.

A few seconds later a reverberating hum began to emanate from the lab floor. It began to climb and they watched spirographic lights swirl and swarm across the Q-SLAM towers as they powered up.

Then the numbers on the console began to climb.