Near Future 1: Awakening (3 page)

He paused a minute, seeming to collect himself before he finally went on, "We hope you will eventually get your memory back, but either way we will take care of you."

The girl just stared at him for a minute. "What am I supposed to do? I feel totally lost," she finally said. "What about my parents? Where are they?"

"Best we can determine, your mother was a single parent. I am so sorry to have to tell you that she was killed in the crash that injured you, and we have been unable to locate your father, who left some years before that." He used his VR Interface to show her the most recent picture they had of her mother and also directed it to a VR compu-pad beside her bed for her to see any time she wanted.

She looked at the picture with tears in her eyes. The woman in the picture was very pretty and looked a little bit like the girl she saw in the mirror, also with hazel green eyes and black hair. Sadly she told him, "I don't even remember my mother. It's like it's just a picture of someone else's mother!"
 

"Unfortunately, we know of no other close family, but your mother had good life insurance and the hospital has been donated money in a special trust fund just for you. I can only tell you that the money was donated by the Randolph Foundation of Space Tech." Doctor Ted flashed a picture of another doctor holding a big copy of a check he was donating to the hospital in her name.

Doctor Ted paused and explained, "You are the first to receive a new treatment. Tiny little programmable machines called nanites have been implanted in your brain to treat your head injury. Some of the equipment here allows me to monitor them."

He continued, "The nanites that are being used to treat you have been developed by Doctor Samuel Randolph from the Randolph Foundation, and have been through exhaustive testing in our hospital with the doctor's assistance. I believe that he donated the money because of the nature of your injuries."

Seeing the questions in her eyes, he explained. "Doctor Randolph's daughter Julie received a head injury similar to yours in a terrorist attack. The treatment we used for you is the result of his quest to find a treatment for her." He displayed pictures of Julie and her family. He said, "I have research about the nanites that he has developed that you can look at when you are able."

Finally the doctor looked at her and gave her a smile. He grasped her hand and squeezed it. "I know that this is a lot, a huge amount, for you to take in. For now, just know that you are in one of the best hospitals in the world, and that we will take good care of you."

Miranda could only stare in shock. Finally, she took a breath. Looking up at him, she asked, "How about the other girl, Julie? Did it help her, is she alright?"

Surprised by her question, Doctor Ted appeared taken aback, but after a slight hesitation said, "I am not at liberty to talk about her. All I can tell you is that the plans are to use a similar treatment to yours. Hopefully, we will gain much knowledge from working with you."

Miranda stared at him for a moment, but she appeared to have gained her equilibrium because she said with a small smile, "Thank you for helping me with all this. Where do I go from here?" She felt totally lost, her tears no longer flowing but not yet dried.

He said, "Due to the nature of your injuries, I will need to monitor your nanites, which my equipment will let me do. We'll take it slow. I need to do a basic neurological exam first." He checked her eyes, ensuring that they followed the movement of his stylus, checked her basic reflexes, and finally tested for feeling in her extremities. Smiling, he said, "Everything looks good."

He entered some information into his VR interface. "Just rest now. That should help with the headaches. We will be watching you closely over the next couple of days, monitoring your brain functions with our equipment, and then we'll go from there. I will talk with you again soon." Patting her gently on her arm, he turned, quietly leaving the room. As he was leaving, Miranda noticed he was sending a VR message to someone.

Miranda lay quietly in her bed, struggling to understand everything she had been told. She was especially confused with the memory loss, and looked at the pictures of her mother and wished that she remembered her. If she had been raising her alone, as they had told her, why couldn't she at least remember her? She didn't feel anything when she looked at the pictures. She wanted to cry about that, but couldn't cry about the stranger she saw when she looked at the picture.

She somehow felt compelled by the story of the other girl, Julie, and her family. When he had shown her the pictures of them something was almost familiar about them. Maybe she knew a family similar to them? And that company, Space Tech, was that it? It seemed to strike a chord within her. She thought she would love to work for them, and then laughed, looking around her hospital room.

Fat chance. Why had she even thought such a thing?
She did decide that she would see if she could find anything about the girl, Julie, and try to go visit her if she could. Apparently they had a lot in common.

#

Doctor Ted had sent a couple of VR messages.
"She's awake!!!"
had been the first one, which he had sent even before he got to her room. He had even then had doubts about their plan for her, but he knew her very life could be at stake. However, as soon as he was sure about her memory loss, he was ready to follow the plan he and his brother had worked out in advance for her. He had all the details ready, so he had gone through everything with her just like they had decided. As he left the room, he sent the second message.
"She's ok. Memory loss as we expected. She asked about Julie, believe it or not! All readings on the nanites look good. Will keep you informed."
He also included several pictures of her for him to see, along with the message.

He was glad he was the one to be here working with her. She was a special young lady, and he was looking forward to taking care of her for a while. Now, she was maybe even more special. Their test animals had exhibited higher intelligence and superb response times in all their tests. He thought the chimp was secretly laughing at him every time he visited it. But this time, the test subject was a human and this particular girl.
She still has the same smile, even if it was only a small one today.

They had really struggled with the decision of who should be first. Ted had argued that they should go slower, choosing a patient with a more minor injury first. But the nanites seemed to be more of an all or nothing cure, and his objections had been overridden. It had come down to who was the best candidate. The whole time they had been waiting for the nanites to work, weeks that had seemed like months, it hadn't really seemed real. He was going to keep a close eye on her, and do everything he could to protect her.

He was pleased with the results of all her tests. And they had expected the headaches, but those were also expected to improve. He would closely monitor the nanites, but they had been reporting "in the green" since they had been applied those six weeks ago. He was anxious to see how she did at all the tests he would be giving her. And they certainly had the best equipment in the world in this hospital. Sam Randolph had made sure of that.

#

The next day, Miranda was subjected to many tests, and was continuing to suffer from major headaches at times. They were like a migraine on steroids. At times they were so bad, she could barely move. However, they were getting better, and she was finally able to sit up without getting dizzy as long as she didn't try to do too much. When the doctor came to visit, he told her, "Well I have mostly good news. All of your neurological tests look really good. Your brain scan exceeds our expectations. Your headaches should be decreasing as well as long as you don't push yourself too hard."

Miranda nodded at that. She had noticed the correlation to the amount she attempted to do to the headaches. He flashed up on the VR system a picture of her brain scans, and when she looked at the before and after scans, she didn't know how to read them, but the second seemed highly active compared to the first. She only knew that her mind seemed to be running wide open, and she had only been able to sleep a few hours that night.

"However, your motor functions look erratic and you will need rehab to relearn how to do basic things, including walking. We had really expected that because of the length and nature of your coma. Although we have had electrical stimuli attached to your limbs to keep the muscles exercised, your body is extremely weak physically. I'm setting you up to begin your physical therapy next week. Until then I want you to work on your diet and building up your strength. Also, over the next couple of weeks, I will be giving you basic IQ tests and similar tests to determine your mental and psychological progress."

Miranda could tell all of that would likely take a long time, and she was already going crazy not being able to do anything. So she asked the doctor, "I know that you have basic VR capabilities in this room. Is it possible for me to gain access to the hospital network and use the VR to read and look up information? I really need something to do to help pass the time!"

"Absolutely!" He punched a button on his wrist link and said in a command voice, "Grant All Access to patient." and then he said to her, "You have full access. I expect you will be amazed at everything that we have available in our hospital data systems. Because Space Tech is our biggest sponsor, we also have a lot of links into their systems."

Miranda's eyes had widened a little when he gave the command for her access. She wondered if he had really meant to give her "All Access". She suspected that most people received "Guest Access" or something similar, but she didn't ask him, because he might change his mind. She intended to take advantage of it.

As the doctor left, Miranda excitingly began opening VR screens, and with a mind to his command to build her strength, she munched on a protein bar. She immediately was able to find a gold mine of information, jumping from one thing to another rapidly. In her excitement, she never paused to realize that she was reading that information much faster than she should have been able to read it.

The first thing Miranda wanted to know was what had happened while she was in her coma. She skimmed the news, but she was pretty fuzzy on what she could remember. She decided to focus on world events, trying to get a feel for what was happening. Much of the world's politics revolved around fossil fuels and global warming. Electric cars had taken over a significant portion of the world's automobile usage, but too many ran on gasoline. The batteries themselves were the primary drawback to the electrics, and despite extensive research, they just hadn't found a solution to that problem.

Solar was continuing to grow, but it was not possible for it to supply enough of the world's energy, especially in those areas where the sun was not available all the time. Space Tech's fusion reactor was an amazing development, but they couldn't seem to get it to work within the earth's gravitational field. There was talk of beaming power from space, but no one had figured out how to safely make it work.

Due to their use in space technology, certain rare minerals were now in high demand. Because of that, the politics of the countries that produced the minerals were greatly affected, especially those that were third world countries which were areas of conflict. For most of the world, those conflict minerals were a major issue. Wars and coups were sometimes the result. Space Tech had a rule about not using minerals from conflicted areas if at all possible. Of course, now Space Tech was producing 90 percent of their own materials anyway. However, the information Miranda found indicated that even Space Tech had a major need for zechronium, which was produced almost entirely in the mines of the tiny third world country Kinza. While not currently considered a conflict area, Kinza had a long history of conflict and had been recently formed from the combination of several provinces in a war-torn region of North Africa. Because zechronium was used to produce an essential material for all current space technology, everyone tried to ignore the politics surrounding it.

Miranda was especially interested in everything that appeared to be happening in technology. The internet was now based on worldwide broadband using inexpensive satellites that covered the entire earth. Cell phones were almost non-existent since everyone tapped into the earth net to communicate with a wearable device. Compu-pads were faster and more powerful, yet thinner and lighter than ever before. They had figured out a way to use strong carbon based materials to replace the metal and plastic used in electronics in the past.

Virtual Reality (VR) technology was the default interface to most computers. Heads-up-displays (HUD's) had been the craze for a number of years and where still in use, but other VR technologies were becoming more and more advanced. The system Miranda was using in the hospital was one of those, displaying the information in front of her in a 3D image, using her eye movements and gestures to provide the interface. Artificial Intelligences (AI's) had become a standard tool, but were still limited in their use due to their size, expense and inflexibility. An AI was not able to make the kind of day-to-day decisions that their human counterparts could make easily. No one had found a way to build an AI that could do that.

When Miranda researched the news stories regarding her car crash, she couldn't find very much. Her mother had been traveling from out of town, and it was just an unfortunate turn of events that a truck had lost its brakes, catching her and her mother's vehicle in its path. Among the papers in the car they had found a will, and per her request, her body had been shipped back to be buried in a local town in Nebraska. She couldn't even go visit her mother's grave. Tears welled in her eyes at that. The accident had happened about a month after the attack on Julie and her mother, so maybe that was why they were so familiar. The story had to have been in the news.

Miranda tried to find out more about her father, but it looked like her mother had been trying to hide from him and there was no information on him. About that time, Doctor Ted came into her room and when he saw her line of research, he tried to convince her it was time to move on. "We spent months trying to find him," he told her with sympathy written all over his face. "Please, don't keep looking. It will only bring you more heartache. You have us and we will take care of you, I promise."