The Eternity Prize - Chapter 2
Three weeks earlier
Earth date: April 20, 2080
Biblis Patera Hospital, Colony 5, Mars
Twenty-hour Emergency Room shifts were hell on Joe’s feet. The only thing worse — his weekly meetings. Every week, the powers that be grilled him about his progress on the Eternity Project. Every week, he made up new lies.
He trudged through the dusty waiting room, past the sick and the dying, past the glitchy old holo-vid advertising – himself. As it looped for the thousandth time, Rick Khoury’s booming voice announced "Biblis Patera Hospital is proud to announce that Dr. Joseph Roth, MD, PhD, Genius Developer of the M-1 Cancer Cure and front runner to win the Eternity Prize will be heading our Neurology and Oncology Departments."
The image of Joe’s seventeen-year-old self rippled over his middle-aged paunch. How things change. At least he still had his hair.
As he pressed his finger to the sign-out screen, Broeksmit from Pulmonary grabbed his arm. With breath fragrant of dilled crickets and beer, Broeks said. "Heard about Dubinsky." "You’re a fucking miracle worker."
"He wasn't in such bad shape.”
"Brother, you brought him back from the dead."
Joe shrugged.
"I've got another one. Interested?"
"Gotta go to a meeting. Parole violation if I don’t attend."
Broeks whispered. "I know, I'm giving you an out. We can switch ID codes, like before."
Joe sighed and let Broeks lead him around the corner to elevator D, where the dead and dying lay, waiting for their trip to the morgue. Broeks waved towards one that was still breathing. "I give you – Louie Granger. Friends brought him in on a donkey. He was in the same shootout as Dubinsky. Same deal."
One look and Joe knew, Granger wasn't the same deal. His injury wasn't as bad as Dubinsky's -- no vital brain tissue or vascular structures appeared to be damaged; the bullet entered the right frontal lobe well above the skull's base. But the guy had lost so much blood his spacesuit turned from silver to bronze.
Joe took a closer look. Smears in the blood showed how Granger had been treated. Bot orderlies must have dumped him in the 'Uninsured' section. Mabel Henning from Accounting probably yanked off his helmet, scanned his Gizmo and wired his data to Temple Insurance. The result was taped to the poor guy’s forehead: 'Present and Future Value: subprime. Injuries: catastrophic. Goner'.
"Can you take him?"
Joe sighed. "Sure. Hope I have the coin to cover this." As he grabbed Granger's gurney, Broeks swiped his code, then he took a few steps back, his rugged face suddenly ashen. "Crap" he muttered as Henning charged them like an enraged hippo. Broeks tried to block her, but she shoved him and Joe aside while braking Granger's gurney with a sensible shoe. As Broeks stumbled away, she roared "Dr. Roth, you are NOT taking another one. The Temple's metrics have spoken!"
Joe gathered his courage, tried to give her his most intimidating stare. "Oh really. Tell me, Mabel - did the Temple use discrete-time or continuous-time stochastic processes?"
She didn't blink. "Continuous."
"Discrete is more accurate. I've done the calculations. This man has a chance."
Her eyes narrowed. "You don't have access to their data."
"I figured it all out." he tapped his temple "In my head."
She snorted. Those calculations were too complex for any human to do 'in their head', but Khoury had done such a good job of selling Joe as a genius, she couldn't be sure. Her foot reluctantly slid to the side.
Once the wheel was clear, the race was on. Joe pushed Granger past the sterile-bots, ran down pristine white halls and beneath the Temple's Ad, omnipresent eyes behind glasses that claimed to have been "Insuring Your Future Since 1943". Joe paused to give the ad the finger, then moved that finger to dim his Gizmo's visor light. Granger woke up anyway, grabbed Joe's arm and gave him The Look. The look everyone gave him since that TED talk. Hope. Faith. A blind trust placed in his hands.
"Doc" he whispered. "Am I gonna die?"
Joe said "No." But he always said that.
Granger relaxed his grip. A smile spread over his pockmarked chin. "Deja... you."
"Huh?" Joe said as his patient slipped into unconsciousness.
Blues for the Brain
In the operating room, Joe switched his Gizmo from Real Life View (RL) to Augmented Reality (AR), then eye-swiped a message to his nurses, Nathalie and Taggert. With more swipes he activated his Head Injury Playlist. 'Blues for the Brain'.
Ty Taylor's "The World is Yours" echoed off the shiny white walls as Nat and Taggert quickly suited up. They prepped Granger and hooked him up to the robo-nurse. Nano-sensors and freshly-printed blood flowed into Granger’s arm.
Joe didn't like to get mystical, but when his nano-sensors sent a patient’s internal data into his AR-view, he felt like he was one with them. Tapping his foot in rhythm with Granger's heartbeat, he plunged through the man’s veins, splashed through a corpuscle stream that ran past the blood-brain barrier into a storm of dreams. Sliding past bolts of mental lightening, he reached the point of impact. Antibodies crowded around it like rubberneckers at rush hour.
Joe’s thin, precise hands reached for the multi-laser scalpel. Carefully he removed the bullet, then stepped aside as the nanobots rushed in. They laid polymeric scaffolding to rebuild damaged capillaries and brain tissue. Artificial neurons rushed in to fill in the gaps, fluttering like Wiccans praising Gaia. They gently bowed when their dance was finished.
Joe bowed back, then connected to Granger's Neuronet link, found the file with his last recorded connectome pattern, and compared it to the new data. It checked out. He smiled. It was done, beautifully done.
The neural alarm blasted. "Activity is down!" Taggert cried.
Joe's breath caught in his throat. He switched to live view. The robo-nurse was still pumping blood, but the heartbeat was fading. Why??
"Ventricular contractions." Nat cried.
No time to think, Joe grabbed the defibrillator, pressed the chips to Granger' chest "Clear!"
The electrocardiogram confirmed the worst – life was slipping away. "No traction." Taggart shouted.
"Get him into stasis." Joe said. Nat rushed to the saline fridge, Taggert pulled blankets from storage. But before they could wrap him, a tsunami of neuro-electricity washed through the dying man's brain. The connectome monitor sparkled, then faded to black. Joe held the defib like a life raft, but it was no use. Everything Granger was and would ever be fell into death’s void.
Joe stared at the darkened connectome, defib still clutched tight in his hand. Young Frankenstein, failed again.
Taggert sighed and gave Joe a rough pat on the back and a quick “Sorry” as he rolled Granger’s gurney across the red-streaked floor. Nat moved closer to Joe. Behind the glow of her Gizmo, her green eyes met his. She brushed a stray hair back. Her wedding ring glittered. Joe tried not to think about her husband Ted. Or Todd. Something with a T.
"Nothing you coulda done." She whispered. "You're still the best."
Her kind words were sometimes followed by an offer of something more. He longed for that sweet release, that mindless burst of unrestrained joy.Searching for a sign he would be welcome, he said. "I could have saved him. With my M-2."
She frowned. "You're not a god."
"But ... I could have."
He always said that too, and she was sick of hearing it. Her mask's fabric puffed around her mouth as she sighed and turned away, the offer of more-than-kind-words clearly withdrawn.
Bullet-headed cleanup bots arrived with mops and trash cans. Sterilization vents tried in vain to remove the dust.
According to Granger's file, he'd been part of a crew building a four-lane highway from Colony 4 to New Gotham. It was a big improvement over the current yak path, but it was slowed by a war between local militias. With no real government to enforce the law, these fights were settled the old-fashioned way – Instagrammed assassinations.
Maybe that was why Granger and his crew were shot. Or maybe they just looked at someone funny.
More cleaners filed in. With clicks and whirrs they pushed Joe out of their way. He shuffled out the door and headed for the shower. He had to do something to clear his head before breaking the news to Granger's family.