Wounds - Book 2 by Ilsa J. Bick Read Free Book Online Page A

donor.”
    She gave him a strange look. “Well, I tried something different. There were a few records left from before the Cataclysm. I stumbled on some literature about certain species of sea life that regenerated neural tissue.”
    “I see,” said Bashir. Yes, she was on the right track; many Earth species of starfish and amphibians, not to mention Ludian halofish on Lentrex VII, could regenerate entire nerves and whole limbs. “What did you try next?”
    In reply, Kahayn switched out slides, peered through the eyepieces, adjusted the focus, then straightened. “Have a look.”
    Another brain section, but now something in the center…When he changed magnifications, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Entire neuronal tracks had been reconstructed; the membranes bracketed with an overlay of…“That microglia’s much too dense, and those axons…my God, is that metal?”
    “A combination of silica and copper. You’re looking at what happens to a primate’s brain when it’s exposed to MEMs. Microelectromechanical machines, a variant of nanotechnology developed for computer systems. You’re familiar with their function?”
    “Not really,” Bashir lied. Thinking: Ancient history; computers and hard drives, copper and silica chips and tungsten for an interconnect.
    “MEMs can rewrite and repair information on nanodrives. So my thought… our thought, was to replicate this function within a brain. It’s one thing to hook up an artificial eye or ear.” She touched the corner of her left eye. “Everything works just fine because it’s a discrete system, a totally dedicated subunit, you might say. But it’s quite another to jury-rig whole tracts of interconnecting neural tissue, or an entire lobe. So my initial idea was to use DNA chips as the programming matrix in a MEM. But in order to facilitate axonal repair, I inserted DNA from a species of diatom. Plankton, actually. Very hardy. Their cell walls are made of silica.”
    His mind bounced around the problem. Simple biology: there was usually only five to ten grams of silica in the body, either ingested or absorbed from the environment. Silicic acid dissolved in water; silicates in dust. So long as the silicon remained bound as siloxanes, not much of a problem, health-wise. Why, look at any fracture site in bone and the ratio of silica to calcium was nearly double.
    On the other hand, these people lived in a kind of pollutant stew: silicates, chromated copper arsenate, copper oxides in the air. So Kahayn looked to rebuild brain by armoring it with a substance that could not be rejected. Ingenious.
    “So this would be like encasing your regenerated neurons in an exoskeleton of silica and copper that was antigenically neutral,” said Bashir. “Quite elegant, Doctor.”
    She bobbed her head at the compliment, but her expression was still grim. “Everything went fine. We induced disease in the primates, put in the MEMs, and the primates regained function. It was like a miracle and…”
    He read the struggle in her face. “And? But?”
    “Things we… I couldn’t explain, didn’t see coming.” She put her hands into the pockets of her white lab coat and shrugged as if suddenly cold. “What is it that a complicated computer does?”
    “Information processing. Data storage. Problem solving.”
    “Plus, the capacity to relay or manufacture commands, tell different parts of a program to run at a certain time or in a certain way, right? But what if a machine wants to share information with another machine?”
    “Oh, that’s easy enough. Primi—” He caught himself before he could say primitive. “Microwave, for example. Beaming messages back and forth; I mean, really, all communications technology relies upon transmission of encoded energy. But a machine can’t decide things like that. The capability has to be put there.”
    “Yah, you’d think. But that’s not the way these implants worked. The MEMs decided…they began to rewrite portions of healthy