Destiny's Choice (The Wandering Engineer) (42 page)

He'd
managed to escape April's clutches only through sheer exhaustion. She'd fallen
asleep some time ago so he'd taken the coward's escape and snuck out, leaving a
note and sending her replicated artificial flowers. Typically the moment he'd
hit the public areas of the ship on his way to get some nourishment he'd been
mobbed and dragged off for a late class.

Apparently
Bailey had gotten the message that he was occupied. His last video call had a
wink and smirk of approval in it. Sprite had sent him a text message stating
that she was helping with the sensor calibration project. That had alleviated
that guilt. Still he wasn't looking forward to being ribbed unmercifully by the
chief when the simian got them together alone. Being ribbed by Sprite on his
HUD in public was bad enough.

He
had about a dozen people there, including the medic. People would come by and
then stop in the doorway. After a minute or two they would either move on or
come in and take a seat. He looked over to Bryan and then nodded. “Does anyone
know how regeneration works?” He looked around the class as they settled down.
Only Bryan nodded, the rest shook their heads.

“Miss,
Chantra right?” he asked the blond with the long braid. She blinked in surprise
at being involved in this discussion, she hadn't been the one to initiate it.
“Have you ever had regeneration?”

She
grimaced and nodded, rubbing the back of her right forearm. “Ah, I see you
have. No scar right? Healed in days?” he asked. She nodded.

“Then
you have nanites to thank for that,” he said firmly but quietly. She blinked at
him, wide eyed.

“But,
but, I thought it was the energy...”

“The
blue or red glow?” the Admiral snorted. “That's to let people know nanites are
at work. Nope, it's all nanites.”

“I
think I'm going to barf,” she said, pale. He shook his head as others looked at
her or away.

“Regeneration
started by taking grafts from people, skin, muscle, or bone from one place,
then transplanting it to the damaged areas, integrating the tissue and then
inducing mitosis. It evolved over time.”

“Connective
tissue,” Bryan said with a nod. The Admiral looked over to him with a nod.

“Doc
is correct,” Irons said. The medic blushed. The young man was still
uncomfortable being called doctor. “They found that when you strip donor
connective tissue...”

“Extracellular
Matrix or ECM,” Sprite said helpfully.

“Right,
ECM of cells then laid it over the damaged area right after an injury you could
induce the body to rebuild that area before it forms scar tissue to cut it
off.” Behind him a holo of ECM appeared. It was a spongy material filled with
voids.

He
turned and pointed to it. “The body gets signals from the ECM to fill the
voids. It sends stem cells to these voids and fills them. Muscle for muscle,
bone for bone, skin for skin.”

“Early
on they discovered that if you spray injured tissue with stem cells of the same
type it would induce mitosis and severely reduce scar tissue. But adding the
layers of ECM to damaged or missing tissue expanded that.”

“A
more natural example is exercise,” Bryan said with a shrug. The class and
Admiral looked at him. “When you exercise to build muscle you do so by
stretching and tearing muscle tissue. When you sleep at night your body
releases stem cells to repair the damage. In doing so it builds up the area to
make it more resistant to injury.”

“I
didn't know that,” Chantra said with a blink. She had paused near the door.

“Why
do you think it aches when you exercise?” the medic asked with a soft smile.

“Oh.”

“So
where do nanites come in to this?” Chantra asked, brows knit.

“I
was getting to that. You see, scientists in the twentieth and twenty first
century discovered that some animals can regrow limbs that were cut off. Most notably
the Terran salamander. When they isolated the genetic sequence of the repair
ability they modified a virus to add it to the human body at the site of a
missing limb.”

“Blastema,”
Sprite said helpfully, prompting him.

“I
was getting to that as well,” the Admiral sighed.

“You're
taking the long route.”

“I
know that. It'll be worth the trip. Just give me a minute here,” he grumbled.
Sprite's holographic avatar crossed her arms, pursed her lips and then rolled
her eyes to the class.

“As
I was saying, it forms a Blastema then the limb is grown. But it takes weeks.”

“Try
months. Or years if it is an entire limb,” Sprite replied.

“Exactly,”
the Admiral nodded. “Which is where nanites come in. nanites come in several
forms. Some are organic. Modified organic structures designed to do specific
tasks. To accelerate the healing process nanites were sent in with donor
tissue. Or they would harvest donor tissue from the body itself.”

A
few of the students shuddered at that. He grimaced. “I know what you're thinking
and trust me, it's not as bad as you think. First, the nanites target excess
fat tissue.” That made a few of the women sit up in appreciation. “Right,”
Irons snorted.

“They
strips the ECM from excess fat tissue, then migrates it to the injured
location. Meanwhile other nanites break down the fat cells and harvest stem
cells of whatever is needed. They stuffs the somatic stem cells with food
materials from the broken down fat, then induce mitosis. They do it over and
over, then pack the ECM with the resulting cells.”

“So
you can grow an arm or a leg in five standard days,” Sprite finished. The class
looked around.

“But
I thought you use cloning boxes for that?” Chantra asked. Irons snorted.

“Same
thing as a regen tank. In fact it is a regen tank, just in miniature.”

“Oh,”
she grimaced looking a bit sheepish.

“If
the person is getting a minor injury repaired, a regen tank or a dermal
regenerator can do it. But if it is cloning, well, the host is sampled for
donor material, then the nanites make whatever they are programmed to make.
Once it is made, the medics use either conventional or nanite surgery to weave
the body parts together. nanites surgery is so seamless it is impossible to see
any breakage.”

“Smacks
of Frankenstein if you ask me,” Chantra muttered then shuddered.

“Trust
me, Mary Shelly only wished she'd dreamed of something this good. The nanites
do only what they are programmed to do. Nothing more, nothing less. A robot
isn't inherently evil, just the person who uses it for evil ends is.”

“But
accidents do happen,” Sprite said with a grimace. “Which is why the tech curve
has been practically stagnant for the past millennia.”

“Don't
get started on that tangent, we'll be here all night,” Irons grumbled, shaking
his head.

“Replicators
also use nanites,” Bryan said looking up, then resting an arm on the back of
his chair to look at the class. “I know for a fact you don't have a problem
with them.”

“Sure
they are in a box,” a student said with a shrug.

“And
so are the regen nanites. Before the second AI war nanites were not as
constrained. We used them for practically everything. Clothing, in bodies, in
ships... Imagine if you will a living ship. A symbiosis of organic and
inorganic,” Sprite said looking wistful.

“Wow,”
the kid grimaced. “Why did it end?”

“The
second AI war. When the AI went on a rampage they reprogrammed nanites. So it
got messy.”

“A
couple of hundred million dead you call messy?” Bryan asked dryly.

“If
you consider the way it happened dispassionately, yes,” Sprite answered with a
grimace. “But the nanites weren't at fault. They were reprogrammed.”

“Which
is why we... we meaning civilization; had a moratorium on nanites and their
development. That extended to a lot of tech. Which is why it has, as Sprite
said, been glacial. Stagnant.”

“Only
a handful of major breakthroughs in five hundred years? Yeah I'd say stagnant.
Since we were doing major breakthroughs at about ten or twenty every decade
before both AI wars,” Sprite said.

“Who's
we? You weren't around then remember?”

“We
in the metaphoric sense.”

“Whatever.”

“Do
any of these ships still exist?” Chantra asked.

“I
have no idea. A few fled the AI war. One or two were around when the Xeno war
began. I don't know if they survived or if they fled,” Sprite shrugged.

“But
we are off track again. Lets break for the evening, we've got a ship to run.
Good night folks,” Irons nodded as the class broke up and filed out.

“They've
got a lot on their minds now.”

“Yup.”

“Want
to talk about it some more?” Sprite asked.

“Nope.”

“So
where are we going with this?” Irons asked. She smirked and tugged on his
beard. They were in her quarters again this time. She'd insisted. He was pretty
sure it was the whole woman's thing. Terran women preferred their own love
nests to someone else's. He had to admit her bed was the same size as his but
it was infinitely more comfortable. Especially when she was in it with him.

She
had almost identical quarters to what he had. Or currently had at any rate.
Basic quarters, bed, drawers built under the bed and into one wall, door to a
refresher, and a built in food replicator. Which he had recently fixed and fine
tuned for her amusement.

She
had a fold out table and a single folding chair. His chair tucked into a recess
in the wall, hers was obviously a temporary affair someone had added because
the original was missing.

What
she didn't know, what he wasn't going to tell her was that Defender now had
access to her security system. The Admiral hadn't been amused when he had found
out the Trinity had conspired to add additional video cameras to the room using
his nanites. Fortunately these cameras were not in the net and would report
only to them.

“Owe!”

“I
always wondered about this. Why you have it,” she said, setting her cup of
coffee down and then sitting on his lap. Her rich, full lips parted as she
smiled and kissed him.

“Changing
the subject?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“Woman's
prerogative,” she said smugly.

“Typical,”
he mock growled. “As to the question of this,” he touched his beard. “The
answer is simple. Rank has it's privileges.”

“Oh?
I thought there was a thing about facial hair?”

“With
so many alien species in the Navy?” he snorted. “No, as long as it's kept neat
and doesn't pose a hazard you can have one. It is discouraged for early grades,
it's well...”

“Something
earned?”

“Something
like that. It's one of my vices.”

“Oh?
Like coffee?” she asked amused, picking up her cup and taking a sip.

“That's
a navy wide preoccupation actually. Tradition,” he snorted. She smiled
slightly. “No, as you advance in rank some try to differentiate themselves from
the crowd. Some get carried away too,” he grimaced.

“Oh?”

“Like
peacocks.”

When
her face went blank he shook his head. “Old earth bird. Fancy bird with bright
plumage to attract attention.”

“Oh.”

“For
some it was a deliberate thing. They wanted to attract attention to advance
their careers.”

“But
that's not how you operate,” she said wisely. He nodded. She was obviously
getting to know him, getting under his skin and public persona.

“I'm
not a dress up kind of guy. I prefer to roll up my sleeves and get dirty.”

“Speaking
of which are you going to be in engineering today?” she asked. He shook his
head.

“I've
got a class in...” he grimaced at the chrono... “Ah, about ten minutes ago.” he
snatched up a breakfast bar as she got up.

“Hey!”
she said as he made his way to the door with the cup in one hand and bar in the
other. He paused.

“What?”

“Aren't
you forgetting something?” she asked. He looked confused. She puckered her
lips. He laughed softly as he came over and came over and kissed her. When they
broke the kiss she pushed him gently away. “There, now you can go.”

“Yes
ma'am.”

“I'll
be along in a minute or two. I've got to do my hair.” he hid his face so she
couldn't see his amusement as he made his way out.

“Well,
scuttlebutt is up to it's usual speed.” Sprite said, sounding amused.

“Oh?”
Irons asked, fork half way to his lips. He finished the motion and chewed the
bit of chicken. After a moment he swallowed. “What now?”

“Oh,
just your relationship has hit the grapevine. It's made for interesting talk
throughout the ship,” Sprite said smugly. He winced. “I think about a quarter
of the die hard conspiracy nuts have been knocked on their heels. Others are
um, affronted by the transparent attempt to deflect and change the subject.”