Short Story: Microbrain (Complete)

"Microbrain" is just a working title. I have only three non-magical ideas for shrinking methods that don't quite involve breaking laws of physics as far as I know. One is an Einstein-Rosen bridge/wormhole which is what I had in my head for the method in Escape Artist after I decided to make it non-magical. The second is doll replacement, where the 'victim' is wired up so that they see the world through a robotic doll and aren't aware that their real body is somewhere else. Lastly there's nanotech, altering the body into a smaller state and replacing organs that can't operate at small size. This is based off the last one, and "Microbrain" is the in-story term for the nano-replacement for the brain.

I'm specifically trying to slow it down. I have a personal preference towards a faster shrink since it lends itself towards more variety, but I appreciate the reactions during the process and got the sense that taking the time to explore all the sizes along the way is whats expected here.


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Staring at her image in the mirror screen, Doctor Tamanna Varanesse saw only the onset of wrinkles, tattered brown hair and a small chest. She could afford better, she knew, but something was just wrong to her about cosmetic surgery and beauticians. Not so much cheating as simply inferior and incomplete, not to mention dangerous. While she was far from ready to settle down, and really had no time to play the field with her work, it bothered her that no one even asked.

With a frustrated sigh, she picked up a brush and began roughly dragging it through her hair. She still had her work, and nothing brought her more joy than to see the progress they were making. As the university budget committee had told her just last month, her wireless neural node model for cooperation among nanobot was nothing less than astonishing in action. While the previous generation had been limited to simply replicating themselves and following basic instructions, her nanobots could create divisions of labor on their own, based on the task at hand. While it was something of a parlor trick, her demonstration of reconstructing a shattered palmtop computer in a matter of only hours had allowed her to not only increase her budget, but gain additional lab space in the process. She didn't feel the need to point out that it was almost a millimeter smaller from the energy needs of the nanobots, since it was so negligibly small.

The accomplishment was nothing compared to their eventual goal - a swarm of nanobots safe enough to enter the human body and finally mechanize a cure for currently untreatable cancers and quite possibly stem the tide of amateur viruses that were cropping up in every country that didn't successfully uphold the ban on so-called "home" gene sequencing technology.

Her hair in some semblance of order, "Tammy" picked out her lab coat from the wardrobe screen on her phone. Finished, she stepped out of her small apartment and into a pod standing by her doorway. A seat formed in the pod - a product of third generation nanotech. Seemingly advanced, it was merely a set of pre-programmed commands that were toggled on and off. It would never create anything but a red simulated leather seat that was invariably uncomfortable. Outside, the maglev engine whisked it from her doorstep past a long chain of dormitories, finally coming to rest in a space no larger than a broom closet under an alcove of the applied sciences building. One of the last vestiges of brick construction on campus, it was her least favorite part of her job. Today was no exception. When the door to the pod whisked open, she found once again that it had malfunctioned, pointing her directly into a solid wall. Reaching out, she pressed hard against the wall, slowly turning the opening towards the outside.

The main door to the building, however, chose to work today. It swung open at her approach, having already confirmed her identity, and sure enough, the lab coat she had selected earlier was disinfected and waiting for her just inside. She slipped it on abscently and headed for her lab.

As usual, Michael was already there working. She had hired him last year the same day she informed him he had passed his capstone project. While the nodes had been her idea, he had done much of the legwork in coding them, and she needed someone competent to assist her if she was going to stay on track to beat MIT to creating the next viable nanogeneration.

"Good morning, Doctor V." He called, not looking up from his screens.

She smiled, seeing him caught up in something already. "You didn't stay here all night again, did you?" She asked.

He flipped a switch on his console and the screens lowered, leaving him blinking to adjust his eyes. "Maybe." He answered tentatively.

"I assume it was worth it." She said glibly.

He scratched behind his ear and looked down at the floor. Dark matted hair at the back of his neck gave away that he had slept there at least some of the evening.

She knew his mannerisms and realized he was frustrated with something. "What's the matter?" She asked. "Maybe a fresh set of eyes can solve it."

"I was working on the neuron recording system. I actually got the microbrain to work, but now the mass loss rate is doubled." He sighed. "Worse yet, it's a constant since it's running the microbrain and it's interfaces with the subject's motor functions. We could hook it up to a lab rat right now and it would work, but the rat would be eaten away down to nothing inside of a week."

The microbrain, as they called it, was a construct the nanobots created when working on the brain to preserve it's functions until new neurons were in place to repair the damage. More space-efficient than a "wet" brain, the microbrain had the fatal flaw of extremely high energy demands. The only way to meet the demands was to break down carbon and iron in the host and expel the waste into the air around them. Over a short period, iron supplements and an increased appetite would be sufficient, but past twelve hours it would begin to scavenge body mass to keep the patient alive, doing so proportionally to avoid noticeable effects. What was most frustrating was that the energy demands outside a host were at sustainable levels. A 200mg iron supplement kept it running for a whole day. Something in their waste management design was flawed.

"So we do it my way and have the microbrain create a surface port. It's not pretty, but it should bypass our problem." She replied, knowing the argument it would start.

He shook his head. "It's not about aesthetics. We'll be called barbaric if we have something protruding from the skin like that. You remember what happened when they tried to bring back hypodermics."

While he was right, she knew that problem could be tackled by whoever picked up their patent and commercialized it, while they'd still bring in the funding and still be first to market. Still, it could backfire if the FDA deemed their tests invalid because of humanitarian concerns. She shrugged and sat down at her workstation opposite his. "Do what you want then." She flipped her own switch, bringing her screens up and making it clear to Michael that she intended to be just as stubborn.

On her console, though, her first task was hardly work related. She pulled up a biorepair schematic she had been playing with. Instead of a disease, this human model was taken from herself. The pattern had been changed through weeks of her tinkering with it, and now it showed red hair that flowed past her shoulders, a tightening of her skin that removed the worry lines from twelve years of stressful teaching and lab work, and most embarrassingly, the model's chest bulged out prominently, at least three cup sizes larger than the original. Other, more subtle changes were present, but what interested her today was the weight. Her bout of vanity this morning had been inspired by an extra three pounds on her scale's readout. Plugging in her change, she loaded the simulation, watching blissfully as her virtual self melted towards her ideal.

Leaving the simulation running, she flipped her switch, lowering the screens. It was her turn to prep the test subject today. A cloned rat by the name of Bess was up for today, scurrying in nervous circles in it's cage. The nanobots had already been introduced through her food, but until the programming was activated, they were inert. The same could not be said for Bess though. When Tammy lifted the metal door to transfer her into a portable plastic cage, she wrenched her head around and bit into the woman's hand. Cursing, Tammy shoved the rodent in and popped the cage closed. "I'm not going to sympathize with you at all if this test fails, Bess." She said bitterly. Dropping the cage into the test slot, she went for the first aid kit, allowing it to spray antibiotic on her hand automatically, and then slip a bandage sheath over it.

Sliding back into her workstation, she found an error on her simulation. Unfortunately, it seemed she had miscalculated something. The failure disappointed her, but she knew it wasn't really important, just a pet project that would never see daylight. She selected an option to reset to previous and reload the simulation. Minimizing it from her screen, she turned her attention to virtual Bess. Making her selection of today's test, she loaded the active framework from the server and told it to upload. Within minutes the program would be passed on to the nanobots inside Bess, and with the small body of the rat, they should see results by the end of the day.

***

That evening Tammy had changed her mind. The grusome way Bess had died, being ripped apart to make parts for something the nanobots had no hope of constructing - that wasn't what she had in mind when she cursed the poor little thing that bit her. Neither she nor Michael could figure out what had happened. It was almost as if it was trying to create a human heart out of the meager mass of the rodent. Rather than retrieve the inexpensive cage, both had opted to incinerate it rather than clean the miniature bloodbath off of it's walls.

Leaving Michael to finish up, she hurried out of the lab before the nausea could return. As she walked down the hall, she puzzled over why it had affected her so much more than usual. It crossed her mind that she might be coming down with something, but with no other symptoms, she dismissed it. The main door greeted her as she left for home, extending an arm for her lab coat. She shrugged it off and tossed it on the machine, and then proceeded to her pod. That was the last thing she remembered before finding herself in the pod slumped out it's opening in front of her apartment.

"How the hell..." She began, looking around. Her vision was a little blurry, and her balance was off, making it difficult as she tried to stand up. Using the pod to steady herself, though, she managed to reach her door and stand there until her vision cleared up a moment later. As it did, she remembered her nausea earlier. "I was right, I am getting sick." She explained to herself.

The balance and vision seemed to have cleared up, though, so she went inside, bolting the door behind her just in case someone had seen and thought to take advantage of her.

Before lying down, though, she made a stop in her bathroom, standing on the scale almost immediately. To her surprise, the three pounds that had worried her so much before were gone. Better yet, they had taken another two with them, meaning a net weight loss. Strangely, her belt also seemed a little loose, as if it had been let out half a notch. Attributing it to whatever illness she had contracted, though, she decided bedrest was the best solution. She would feel better after sleep anyway.