MIND FIELDS Page 7

  In order to allay the public’s fears, the legislators decided to have a congressional committee rule on these issues rather than leaving them to the discretion of entrepreneurs who stood to benefit from the exploitation of nanotechnology. The Senate Subcommittee on Nanotechnology was formed as a branch of the Senate Health Care Committee, and the job of chairing the committee went to the very well respected and very uncontroversial Senator Cole.

  Russell Stetson had spent his first year in the Senate getting a feel for the political battlefield that was Washington, but he was determined to make his mark as quickly as possible. He lobbied hard to get onto the new committee, realizing that it would enable him to deal with some of the most controversial issues of his day. He spent hours boning up on nanotechnology, including wining and dining one of its foremost proponents, JT Anderson. By his fourth year on the committee, he was the vice-chair, with more power over decisions regarding the authorization of human research than anyone in the country, save for the venerable Stanton Cole.

  Senator Stetson had his own agenda for nanotechnology. In it, he saw the potential for the ultimate political power: control of the human mind. His idea was to develop nanobots that could be placed into a human brain and used to control the thoughts and actions of their host. He knew better than to propose this idea to Senator Cole; a man like Cole would never have the vision to take such a bold step in the name of God and Country. Instead, he enlisted an NSA operative by the name of James O’Grady, who he knew would appreciate the advantages of mind-controlling nanobots. With the support of the NSA, Stetson could insure the security that would be needed to covertly bring his ideas to fruition.

  All the security in the world would be useless, of course, without the capability to develop the mind-controlling nanobots. It was imperative to find a scientist who not only had the skills to develop the nanobots, but who also could be persuaded that Stetson’s ideas were the right ones. This would not be an easy task; scientists are, by nature, an altruistic group. Stetson searched long and hard for the right man to do the research needed to accomplish his goal. He needed someone equally ambitious as he was brilliant, someone with the wealth to sponsor the research without making the government’s support obvious, and someone who could be trusted, or at least intimidated, into absolute secrecy. By the spring of 2042, he had made his choice. JT Anderson was already one of the wealthiest men in the country. His brilliance was incontrovertible, and his willingness to stretch the boundaries of integrity were well known; no one really believed that he had just happened to make the critical breakthroughs in nanotechnology immediately after leaving Hopkins. Even though the courts exonerated him, no one really believed that he hadn’t stolen the work that rightfully belonged to Hopkins. They just gave him credit for being a particularly brilliant thief.

  Anderson was the perfect choice, and when Russell Stetson approached him with the idea of using his expertise in nanotechnology for a very patriotic and even more lucrative cause, he was not hard to persuade. He proved to be very adroit at his task, and within a few years, had developed a synthetic bionic implant the size of a pea that could be surgically inserted into the human brain and could be used to introduce thoughts and actions into its host. It was constructed of thousands of nanobots, which together made up a small machine capable of generating electrical impulses that could be read by the surrounding neurons. By meticulously studying brain wave patterns, he was able to develop a digital language with which he could program his bionic implant. The digital signal would then be converted into electrical impulses that the brain would interpret as original thought. When implanted in the right frontal lobe, the device was capable of making its host perform whatever action the bionic implant was programmed to suggest.

  The first obvious flaw in the work was that cutting the someone’s head open to insert the bionic implant was not the ideal way to covertly gain control of the subject. Cutting a person’s head open would definitely arouse suspicion. Anderson had toyed with the idea of injecting nanobots programmed to assemble themselves into the bionic implant once inside the body, but he had no idea how to insure that it would assemble itself at the proper location in the right frontal lobe.

  The second obvious flaw was that his inorganic nanobots would create a foreign body in the host, one that could cause seizure-inducing irritation, and would be detectable by standard X-ray techniques. Again, this was not ideal for a covert operation.

  Anderson had struggled with these issues until he heard Dr. Sandra Fletcher speak at the Hopkins Symposium introducing organic nanobots. The organic bots would solve the problem of host rejection and detection, and the programming skills of someone like her or Paul Hingston would give him a fighting chance of getting injectable bots to migrate to the right frontal lobe where they could be effective.

  Work had been progressing well since Paul joined BNI, but it was never quite fast enough for Senator Stetson. JT felt a pang of anxiety when he saw Senator Stetson’s name penciled into his schedule unexpectedly that morning. It wasn’t unusual for members of the congressional nanotech committee to meet periodically with leaders in the field of nanotechnology, so an occasional meeting with Stetson in the name of senatorial enlightenment would not arouse suspicion, but JT knew what the meeting was really about. It was always about the same thing.

  Senator Stetson arrived at BNI right on time, as usual, and JT greeted him in the outer office.

  “Good morning, JT.”

  “Good morning, Senator. Right on time, as usual.” JT extended his right hand to greet the senator, and guided him into his office. The door closed behind them.

  “I need an update, JT. I’ve introduced a bill that will appropriate five-hundred million dollars over the next decade for nanotech research, and I’ve been building a fragile coalition. It’ll crumble like a house of cards if I don’t have some solid sign of success for the project. Cole is dead set against the idea. He doesn’t want to give that much money or that much latitude to any independent enterprise. That old coot is gonna play by the book on this one. Even the mention of using nanobots for any covert operations will blow the deal. We have to convince him that it’s in the public interest to give that grant to BNI or it’ll never fly. He’s a tough nut to crack, but if you can give me something tangible, I think my friends at the agency can put enough pressure on the rest of the committee members that we may be able to swing the vote.”

  Anderson sat quietly behind his desk. He liked having the NSA on his side, but it was also somewhat unnerving knowing that he was under their thumb. He did not want to screw this one up. It had become much more than the money now.

  “Let me show you where were at, Russ. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

  Chapter nine

  December 1, 2050

  Harborview Hospital sat on the waterfront in downtown Baltimore, not far from Federal Hill. The resurgence of the downtown waterfront area in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century was the model for the redevelopment of inner city areas all over the United States. The rundown industrial and storage facilities had been replaced with modern financial and business towers, and the yuppies that staffed those businesses moved into the city in droves. Broken down row-homes were supplanted by luxury condominiums, and the growing numbers of prosperous residents were accommodated by new fashion boutiques, upscale malls and a plethora of exclusive restaurants, always filled with young urban professionals who were too busy and too tired to prepare a meal at the end of a long work day. Unfortunately, accidents happen even in the finest neighborhoods, and even the most privileged amongst us fall ill. Harborview Hospital was the Rolls Royce of hospitals, built to fill that niche.

  Harborview was the kind of hospital that not only provided good care, but it did so in an environment that would do justice to a five star hotel. Rooms appointed with designer furniture and marble bathrooms had small balconies that looked out over
the Baltimore skyline, where those patients who were able could sit and enjoy a gourmet meal with their loved ones. It was not the hospital of choice for those who were found unconscious on the streets in the gentlemen’s club district, but the ID card in Rocky Stankowski’s wallet made it clear that he was not the normal bucolic drunk who stumbled into the wrong alley in downtown Baltimore. The officers who found him contacted their chief as soon as they saw the card that identified him as a White House employee. The chief contacted the mayor, who placed a few calls that eventually wound up at the ear of the White House Chief of Staff, Harold Bradley, at Camp David.

  When the President of the United States calls and says to give a patient top priority, hospital administrators do not stop to ask who is paying the bill, at least not right away. Rocky was admitted to a private suite on the neurosurgery floor of Harborview Hospital. An MRI showed the results of blunt trauma to the right side of the head — a skull fracture and a severe right frontal lobe contusion.

  Mr. Bradley knew that Rocky had no family, and made it a point to be by his side within hours. A few calls were made, and he learned that the only real hope for a complete recovery from the injury was a new experimental treatment called two-phase neuronanobot therapy, or TPNT. He conferred with the Surgeon General, and signed the papers the next morning.

  Rocky Stankowski was not the first patient treated with the TPNT for a brain injury under the Hopkins protocol, but he was the most prominent thus far. Fortunately for Rocky, as well as for the nanobot researchers, he made a complete recovery, like each of the twenty-three patients treated before him, within fifteen days. On the sixteenth day, he was back home.

  Rocky was itching to get back to work, but protocol demanded that the patient not be allowed to operate a motor vehicle for at least six months. He was monitored regularly for any sign of seizures, and underwent a thorough battery of neurological and psychological tests during that period of time. The results were astonishing, with no trace of injury detectable on any of the tests within three months’ time. Anatomically, the signs of injury could be seen: the scar on the scalp, the subtle defect in the shape of the skull where it had been bashed in, and minor abnormalities discernable on the MRI. From a practical standpoint, however, Rocky was as good as new. His doctors promised him that if no complications occurred, he would be back to work in six months. Rocky didn’t like being idle; he would hold them to their word.

  Chapter ten

  Much to the delight of Dr. Sandra Fletcher and the neurological team that worked with her on the neuronanobot trials, every single patient had shown the same remarkable results that Rocky Stankowski displayed. By mid February, 2051, ten months after the human trials had started, thirty patients had been treated and thirty patients had been cured. The FDA felt compelled to abort the trial, and set guidelines recommending TPNT as the treatment of choice for traumatic brain injury.

  ___

  Sandi had been so wrapped up in the details and analysis of the TPNT trials that it never occurred to her that someone else could have independently devised the techniques for producing the nanobots. The idea that someone outside of her lab would have the information necessary to apply for and receive patents for neuronanobot fabrication never crossed her mind, at least not until she attempted to file the applications herself, only to discover that they already belonged to BNI.

  “What!” she screeched into the phone. “What do you mean? That’s impossible. Nobody could possibly have the data needed to …”

  Sam Collier looked over his shoulder. He had never seen Sandi so unrestrained at work. Sandi was usually as demure as her five-foot tall, one hundred pound frame would suggest. To those who knew her at all, her appearance was truly deceiving; she was one hundred pounds of boundless energy, always on the go, always striving to make herself and all those around her a little better. Sam liked to joke that he usually needed a nap after watching her work, but he also admired her composure. Somehow, she kept all that vim and vigor under control, and though she was never afraid to say what was on her mind, she always did so with restraint and respect for those around her. It was a rare thing indeed to see Dr. Fletcher lose her temper.

  He cringed as she slammed down the phone. “What was that all about?” he asked sheepishly. He wasn’t so sure he really wanted to unleash her on this one.

  “Unbelievable,” she screamed at no one in particular.

  “Uh, sorry,” Sam mumbled. “Never mind.”

  “Huh?” She glanced over at Sam. “Did you say something?”

  “Oh, no. Just minding my own business over here.”

  Sandi smiled.

  “Guess that must’ve sounded pretty bad, huh?”

  That’s the kind of question that doesn’t really have a right answer, Sam thought to himself. “Well …,” he said, searching for the right thing to say.

  “You won’t believe what that was about. That was Parsons from the legal office. It seems that someone else applied for our neuronanobot patents before we did; BNI already has the patent. How in the hell could they have gotten hold of the data for the fabrication process? You and I are the only ones that have access to … “

  Sam’s eyes widened. “Whoa, wait a minute. You’re not really suggesting that I would have sold our data to those scum bags, are you?”

  “What?” said Sandi, deep in thought. “Oh … no. No, of course not.” She looked up at him. “You didn’t, did you?”

  “Sandi!”

  “Sorry, Sam.”

  “No problem, Doc.” He understood the implications. He and Sandi might still be able to lay claim to having discovered the process first, maybe even have the procedure named after them, but with BNI holding the patents, the income and, more importantly, future control of the procedure would be in the hands of JT Anderson. He and Sandi would have little say in how the procedure would be adapted for clinical use now. “But hey, look at the bright side,” the thought of naming the procedure after Sandi stuck in his head, “you’ll still be famous. Just think, one day, millions of people will have Fletcherbots in their heads.”

  It was so ridiculous sounding that, as miffed as she was, even Sandi had to laugh. “You rat, I’m trying to be pissed off here.”

  “Yeah, I knew you couldn’t do it for too long.”

  “Don’t be so sure. There’s only one person I know of who could have pulled this off. I’m going to have a look at those patent applications from BNI, and then I’m going to pay a little visit to Dr. Paul Hingston. I just can’t seem to get that bastard out of my life.” She looked more upset than angry, like a wave of bad memories had just washed over her. Now it was personal.

  “Want me to come along?” Sam asked.

  “Nah,” she smiled and took his hand. “Thanks, Sam, but I’ve got to do this alone.”

  He nodded. “Well, I’m just a phone call away if you change your mind.”

  She nodded back, and then grabbed her coat and left the room.

  Sam watched her go, and wondered what twist of fate might befall her next. He hated to see the pain that oozed from the wound left by her breakup with Paul seeping back into her life. He wished there was something more that he could do, but this was not the time.

  ___

  Sandi left the lab with more than the usual determined strut in her step. The legal office was in the process of receiving faxed copies of the neuronanobot patents that had been awarded to BNI, as well as copies of the original patent applications. By the time Sandi arrived, the copies were waiting for her.

  “Thanks, Ms. Prescott,” she said to the secretary who handed the thick folder to her. “Do you mind if I take this with me? I’d rather have a chance to digest it in more comfortable surroundings.” She realized how foolish that sounded as she looked around the posh offices of the legal department, but as beautiful as they were, they were not her id
ea of comfort.

  “No problem. Mr. Talbot said they were yours to do with as you please.”

  “Good,” Sandi replied as she looked out the window. “It looks like a good day for a fire.”

  Ms. Prescott looked horrified. She had worked very hard compiling the faxes into a nice, neat portfolio for Dr. Fletcher. This was a woman who took great pride in her compulsive nature.

  Sandi noticed the look of horror on her face. “Just kidding, Ms. Prescott. Just kidding.” She tried to bite back the laughter, but was only partially successful.

  The secretary, looking offended, breathed a sigh of relief and patted her hair to make sure each strand was in its proper place.

  “Thanks again,” Sandi said, lifting the portfolio. “I really do appreciate it.”

  Ms. Prescott’s tension noticeably eased, and Sandi felt a little better. She didn’t mean to make the poor lady self-conscious, but the pomposity of the office was rather comical. Sandi felt a giggle coming on again, and turned to walk out the door before it escaped. Well, at least I can still laugh, she thought to herself as she zipped her coat and headed for the parking lot.