Linda Chamberlain

In the dark, red glow of the dying fireplace Bill's lean, high cheek bones appeared to have been chiseled from stone.  His dark eyes weremoist as he looked at the barely visible picture of his daughter, Bo, riding her rocking horse.

Soft, sobbing sounds came from Carolanne, who laid beside him, her head resting on his shoulder.  Bill stroked Carolanne's hair, dark brown curls which were almost invisible in the shadowy darkness of the room.

"She's only two years old," Carolanne whispered hoarsely.

"She's so playful.  So beautiful."  Her voice choked and she buried her face in Bill's shoulder again.

Bill turned and kissed his wife's tear streaked face as he pulled her even closer.  His own eyes began to flood. "Jesus, how could Bo have cancer?" said Bill as he grabbed several tissues from the box on the table beside their bed.  He cleared his nose and took another large gulp from his wine glass.

"Bill?"  Carolanne grabbed at the tissues and cleared her own nose.  "Bill, I want to talk some more about having Bo frozen."

"Carolanne."  Bill's voice asked her to stop.

"Bill, please!  It doesn't do any good to keep going over this."

 "I know it's still experimental, but what do we have to lose, Bill?"  Carolanne sat up on the bed and looked into Bill's face as she placed her soft fingertips against his cheek.

"What do we have to gain?"  Bill brushed away her hand and sat up on the edge of the bed with his back to Carolanne. "Hope?" Bill let out a long sigh as he smoothed his hair back from his face. "It's Bo's only chance."

"Carolanne, most hospitals still won't get involved in freezing people.  That must mean something."

"Some do.  Jane and Terrence had her father frozen last year.  We could take Bo to that hospital."  Bill stood and turned to look down at his wife, her tear  stained face almost lost in the shadows of the room.  "We've gone over this a hundred times.  Even a piece of steak doesn't last more than a month or so in the freezer.  Christ, it's bad enough having to face the death of our only daughter without you torturing yourself, and me too, with these unrealistic dreams."

Bill turned, left the bedroom, and walked heavily toward the stairway.  The sound of Bill falling down the stairs was like the sound of a boulder tumbling down a hillside.  Terrified, Carolanne bolted straight up in the bed.  Stumbling in the darkness of the room, she made it to the doorway and switched on the lights.

"Bill!" she screamed as she flew down the stairs and crouched over her husband. "Bill, are you all right?"

 Bill opened his eyes and a wry smile formed at the corners of his mouth.   Seeing the terrified look in her eyes, he reached up and pulled her down onto his chest.  "Looks like I had too much wine." "Are you all right?"  Carolanne pulled back to look at him. "Did you hurt yourself?"

"My leg." "Don't move."  She kissed him lightly on the nose and ran for the phone.  "I'll get an ambulance."

***

Bill looked down at his broken leg in disgust.  Carolanne, standing beside his hospital bed, picked up his hand and smiled softly down at him.  "After climbing on all those roofs, it's kind of silly to have broken your leg falling down your own stairs."  The grin on her face was full of love. "It was stupid," said Bill, disgust still on his face.

The door opened and a tall, large boned nurse walked into the room, carrying a chart in her hands.  "Good morning," she said with a cheery brightness on her broad, boxy face.  "I'm Mrs. Collins.  How's the leg this morning?"

"How long will I be laid up?"  Bill asked.  "I have an important job to finish.  I can't stay in the hospital."

"Broken legs don't take as long to heal as they used to, Mr. Cross.  Since about the 30's we've been using molecular repair machines to assist healing.  Are you familiar with the medical uses of nanotechnology?"

"Vaguely," Bill answered.  "Not too much." "You're in construction work, aren't you?" asked the nurse. "I build houses."

"Great," said Mrs. Collins with a smile breaking from her full lips.  "You'll enjoy this."  The nurse handed her charts to Carolanne and pulled a wheel chair out of the closet.

"Enjoy what?"  asked Bill, looking at Carolanne, who responded with a question mark on her face and a shrug of her shoulders.

"We have a viewing room just down the hall, Mr. Cross, where you can watch some construction that's going on here at the hospital.  Dr. Van Deusen, who set your leg last night and started your treatment, would like your opinion.  Being in construction yourself, I think you'll enjoy seeing this."

"But what about my leg?  How long before I can leave?"

The nurse had pulled the chair over to Bill's bed.  "Let's go see the construction, first, okay?  Trust me," she said with a wry smile and a little jerk of her head.  He did not notice the nurse reach down to his removable cast and switch on a small device.  The other nurses had been switching it on and off so much he'd ceased being aware of it.

Bill looked at Carolanne again only to get that question mark look as she threw her hands in the air.

 Bill's hands, gripping the arms of the wheelchair as he leaned toward the viewing screen, were large and callused from his work.  His dark, full beard did not hide the high cheek bones or the excitement in his chocolate eyes.  Carolanne watched Bill as much as she watched the viewing screen.

Unlike mining and construction on the surface of the earth, there was no gravity here to retard and complicate this work. All this activity was in free fall.  These machines didn't lumber about like hulking giants on rough, crude roads freshly excavated for the job.  They looked more like weightless Olympic gymnasts whose special training and skills had been borrowed and redirected for this special task.  They floated.

The irregularly shaped work area was about the size of a small bedroom.  A similar work area, which had been on the screen earlier, was filled with hundreds of machines, each relatively no larger than the size of Bill's fist, each laboring at its individual task.  In addition to the machinery, the interiors of the work areas were also full of floating objects of varying sizes and shapes, some of which were much larger than the machines that were working there.  Inside this particular work area, though, there were no machines.  Not yet.

 The walls were made up of hundreds of tiny bead-like, interlocking spheres.  Bill's attention was drawn to a small, expanding opening on the side wall.  It appeared to be under disassembly from the outside.  One by one, the beads were being removed. Bill watched as two, then three, and finally six to eight arm-like projections began poking through the hole.

Dragging it's power and communications cable behind it, a spherical automaton floated slowly into the work area through the porthole in the wall-beads it had just created.  Once inside, it repaired the hole in the wall and then pitched and rolled while searching for the correct orientation to assume in this free fall work situation.

Numerous anchor arms began emerging from the sphere on the side next to the wall, searching and examining the wall's surface.  After the sphere had securely attached itself to the wall, a computer inside the sphere began directing the sphere in the task of building and deploying the robotic appendages which would do the work under its pre-programmed control.

Small arm-like projections telescoped from the surface of the computer-sphere into the center of the work area.  These robot arms began disassembling components from the objects around it, gathering these disassembled parts into clusters of like kind.

 Bill sensed that the projections and arms kept precise geometrical maps of their movements about the workspace.  It was like the highly automated modular housing factories Bill had visited on tours, but much more complex.