Near Future 1: Awakening (28 page)

Standing in front of the device, the Weasel took the full extent of the blast and was thrown across the room to strike the wall, collapsing to the floor lifelessly. His device also hit the wall, and Miranda was released from its control. However, she was in a complete daze and still unable to move with Zeke lying across her. She heard the sound of emergency vehicles and felt Zeke being pulled off her; she was put on a gurney and then she passed out as they were both rushed to the hospital.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Safe but at What Price

Space Academy has revealed a minor explosion occurred in one of their labs. It appears that two students were injured in the explosion. Their condition has not been released to the public at this time. Also at the scene, a missing lab assistant from Space Tech was killed, and he is suspected of foul play in the incident. We will provide updates as more information becomes available.

#

Miranda woke up in the hospital again. The same room she thought, and the same nurse came rushing in, just like before, telling her, "Let me get the doctor." Just like before. And then she realized, it's not quite the same. This time she had her memories as Miranda,
although I'm Julie Randolph it appears, not Miranda
, she thought but she didn't have time to think about that. Because, even more than that, something else was not the same. Something was going on; all of her senses were suddenly much stronger. The only explanation was that something had happened to her nanites.

She seemed to have enhanced control over all her body. She only had to think about her hearing, and she could hear the bees outside her window. She thought about her sense of smell, and the rose across the room suddenly smelled like she was holding it under her nose. When she moved her arm, she realized she was going to have to completely relearn how to control her body, because her arm moved in a blur. Wisely, she decided to remain very still.

And she decided,
For now, I am Miranda. Maybe later I can think of myself as Julie but not right now. Really, I've just gotten used to being Miranda.

Uncle Ted came into the room (and, he really is her Uncle Ted, she realized suddenly), and he said quietly, "We have to talk. Wait one minute while I check you. Your nanites, they have me completely puzzled because they are giving off unusual readings. At least your basic scan looks ok."

She answered quietly, "I think I can help with that, but first, how is Zeke? He knocked me to the floor and took most of the blast instead of me."

The doctor nodded and said, "He saved your life, but at a tremendous cost. He's alive, but the doctors have him in an induced coma because of his many injuries. He was very severely injured in the explosion, and I must warn you the prognosis is not very good. We have the very best experts in the hospital working to help him, so don't give up hope just yet."

Miranda didn't like the sound of that, but she had to have some answers. She told him, "That man, he was a very bad person, but he told me some things. It appears that I am not Miranda Summerlin, but actually Julie Randolph. Is that true?" When he reluctantly nodded, she glared at him. "That means, you really are my uncle."

When he nodded again, she continued. "He said that I have what he called the only fully functioning nanites in the world, and that my father, who is the only one who knows what he did to build them, is missing."

Doctor Ted sat beside her bed and looked at her. "All of that is pretty much correct. We did not want to have you use your real name because of exactly what just happened. Although a few of us on the team, including myself obviously, know a tremendous amount about your nanites, it was your father that finalized the design. We really don't have any more. If he has them stored somewhere, we don't know where."

"Ok, what about that device that man used on me? That was absolutely terrifying to be totally unable to move."

"Yes, we definitely need to talk about it later. I have taken it apart and I think I know how it works. And I should be able to program your nanites to protect you from it in the future."

Miranda asked, "Ok, the most important question first. Can you take some of my nanites and give them to Zeke?"

The doctor thought for a minute and looked at her. "Yes, I believe so, but you need to know the potential cost. We don't know a lot, but we think your nanites can only be copied a limited number of times before they become corrupted. Sort of like making a copy of a copy of a copy on an old-time copy machine. And we do not know if we can ever duplicate your father's work. So you need to think about your future. Will this somehow affect what you might decide to do in the future? I can't tell you what to do and I won't; it is entirely your decision. What I can do is to extract some of them and put them in a protected storage device. If you decide to use them for Zeke, you will have them available. If you decide not to, I will store them for your future usage."

Miranda told him, "Yes, please do the extraction. I will think about the rest and let you know. I need to see Zeke and his family too before I make any decisions. Right now I just don't know what to do."

Uncle Ted looked at her for a moment. He seemed to make a decision. "I'm going to tell you a story of something that happened to me. I don't know if it will help you, but I don't want you to have to regret a decision you make now in the future like a decision I made in the past that I very much regret."

"A number of years ago, I was working as a military doctor in a base near some minor conflict at the time. We had a young lady brought in with a rather severe leg injury. I was able to treat her in a way that guaranteed complete use of the limb in the future, but she had a long and difficult recovery in our hospital. But she never complained. Instead, she had one of the most positive attitudes I have ever seen. I believe we both fell in love, but we kept it completely professional, not wanting to violate the doctor-patient relationship rule. After she left, I wrote her a long polite letter asking her if she wanted to see me. I waited a week for a response and in sadness moved on. I always will wonder, if I had put my true feelings into that letter, would she have responded? I never tried to find her again, and I should have. I have always regretted that."

"Thank you for telling me that." Miranda said. "I guess I still have to make the decision, but that helps to put it into perspective."

Doctor Ted nodded. He struggled with what he needed to talk about next. He wished he could avoid it, but he knew he couldn't. "I know this is not a good time, but there are some other things that we need to discuss. You are correct that you are Julie and your father is Sam Randolph. I'm very sorry we didn't tell you to start with. Your father really is missing, and has been for nearly a month. The man that attacked you was your father's lab assistant, and we had hoped he could tell us something about where he is, because they both went missing at the same time. Since he was killed in the explosion, not that I'm sorry about that, that means now we can't question him."

"He said," Miranda told him, "That he had nothing to do with my father's disappearance, and that he and his friends were looking for him. I believe that he was telling the truth, because he had no reason to lie. He thought that he had everything under control, and he would have, if not for Zeke hiding in the control room." She broke down into sobs with that last statement.

"Ok", the doctor gently replied. "As you know, we
--
we being your father and I, and our company
--
have been battling a big organization that is opposed to us. We know now that this man was helping them. We now think that he was the source of information that led to the attack on you and your mother."

Miranda interrupted, "Yes, I now seem to be able to at least remember my mother. My mother is holding me close and saying, 'I love you my darling daughter.' When I look at her picture, it brings tears to my eyes. Now I know I have a father that is alive, and yet can't be found. I intend to find him if at all possible! And you are telling me this man was partly to blame? I'm not sorry about what happened to him either." She stopped to collect her thoughts a minute.

Finally she went on, "So the next question, why Miranda and not Julie all along? Why did you have me thinking I was someone else?"

"We knew something was going on with the Organization. We knew we had a leak, just not where, and we never expected it was that idiot assistant. If you had been Julie, you would have been fair game, but as Miranda we could hide you away in plain sight, so to speak."

"Ok, I sort of get that. But you could have told me the truth, and trusted me to do the right thing. I haven't completely forgiven you guys for that."

Uncle Ted looked a little sad at that. "Yes, I see that now, but we had no idea how stable you were going to be. In hindsight, we obviously made the wrong decision."

Miranda mused, "And even knowing it is true, I still don't see how I can be Julie. She has gorgeous blonde hair, and I have black hair that certainly was not colored to be black. My skin tone is completely different. Even my face looks a little different." And then she laughed and said, "Never mind, I see. Nanites."

Doctor Ted nodded. "Yes, and you can change it all back with a command available to your nanites."

"And the girl Miranda? Does she really exist?"

"Not really. Your identity was obtained from witness protection. The lady killed in the car crash was a Jane Doe never identified, so she was given the background identity to match Miranda's mother."

"That's so sad. That poor woman died without anyone being there."

"Yes, unfortunately those kinds of things still happen, even in our day of facial recognition and DNA records."

Doctor Ted came around to stand in front of her. "Now that the cat is out of the bag, when you are ready, we are going to make an official announcement, probably in the next day or so, and you will have to do things as Julie. I have been and will continue to run the day-to-day work of the company. But with your father's disappearance, you have additional responsibilities whereby you are going to have to step in at times as required. I had kept putting it all off, because your identity as Miranda was to protect you. But you are now the sole heir to your father's part of the company. I, like you, think your father is still alive, but the stockholders are beginning to get nervous. They will be expecting to see one or the other of you at the annual stockholders meeting, which is in a few weeks. Unless your father is found by then, of course. I will try to brief you on the company, and everything we know about your father in the next day or so."

"Ok, one last question." Miranda said with another sad smile. "The librarian, was he my father in disguise?"

"Yes, he couldn't resist seeing you. He was always very careful to make sure his disguise was good, and that no one had followed him, before coming to see you."

Doctor Ted had moved over to look at the monitoring equipment. Looking back up at her, he said, "I know you have a tremendous amount to think about, and based on your nanites readings, I know you need to rest."

"Yeah, bad headache." She didn't tell him the rest of it, because she had suddenly realized she couldn't. Not yet.

Doctor Ted nodded, "Emily has been in and out of this room and Zeke's since you were both brought here. I know she will want to see you, and I have told her to come back in a little while so you can talk."

He turned, slipping out the door and closing it gently behind him. Miranda lay there quietly with her eyes closed, thinking about all she had learned, and working to get better control of her nanites.

#

Miranda knew Emily was coming before she got there. She heard her and smelled the slight fragrance that she was wearing. When she came into the room, Emily sobbed, "Oh, Miranda I'm so glad you're ok, but it really looks bad for Zeke."

"I know," said Miranda, also breaking down into sobs. "He saved my life, but at such a great cost."

They both cried together for a few moments. Finally Miranda dried her eyes. "We need to talk. I think I can possibly help Zeke, but it's not quite that simple. Sit down, it's going to take a while."

Emily pulled the chair closer to the bed, sitting down beside Miranda. Then she turned and looked at her expectantly.

"I've told you in the past about the nanites that they treated me with to bring me out of my coma. What I have been discussing with Doctor Ted is whether or not my nanites can be used to help Zeke. His answer was typical of a doctor. Maybe."

"Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that. In fact, I have another secret that I just now found out myself. I still don't have most of my memories back, but I know some things now that I didn't know before. It appears my name is not Miranda Summerlin. That is the name they got for me from witness protection, and that is what they told me was my name. I believed them since I had no memory. In fact, I am Julie Randolph."

Seeing Emily's shocked look, she went on. "And before you ask, I'm sure of it. Believe me, I was totally shocked when that man told me, too. But it's true, and it makes sense when you think about it. The timing of the supposed accident was really close to the timing of the attack on my family, and the doctors involved were my father and uncle. Just a little trickery with the nanites to make me look almost the opposite to the other me. Most of the time I think I am going to be Miranda to the world. Plus, I am still the same girl you know and I'm not going to start treating you differently."

Emily's shock level had gone from high to off the charts. At first she was almost speechless, just staring at her. Finally she managed, "If you are Julie, then you are rich."

"I guess, but I don't care about money right now. I need you and I need Zeke. Please don't let this change things between us." The last was almost a plea.

Emily quickly assured her. "Oh, sis, I love you. I love you like the sister I never had. That will never change." She reached over and carefully gave her friend a hug, not wanting to hurt her, but knowing they needed the contact.