Nano Bots Revealed

Tina ran the computer simulation one last time. It was roughly the same as every run for the previous two weeks. Over 90% compatibility with muscle tissue and organs and no dangerous incompatibilities. Dr. Thomas had insisted that they run one hundred simulations before animal testing had begun and this had been number one hundred.

Tina picked up the SYSCO IP phone on her desk and hit the preprogrammed number. In the little video screen, a face appeared, it was Don one of the techs over in the applied science building across campus.

"We are good to go, start testing as soon as you can," she said.

"We have you on the schedule for a full run next week starting Tuesday. But we have a two-hour window of free time tomorrow if you want us to get an early start."

Tina wondered if Don could see her flinch as she leaned forward, "YES, I mean that would be great. Early results will mean I can adjust the full run ahead of time instead of on the fly." The truth was that she just couldn't wait and with Dr. Thomas gone for the week, she could get her hands on data and have a valid reason for leading the team that adjusted the perimeters of the experiment herself.

On Thursday at 3 PM on the dot Tina was at the applied science building to personally watch the test. The tiny lab mouse had been selected because of a birth defect, it had no left paw.

Tina watched as the team in full protective gear opened one of the ten ceramic cylinders filled with the gel that contained the nanobots. The gel was lightly applied to the creature's forearm and at first, nothing happened. But after about ten minutes the forearm slowly began to grow longer and wrist bones and tendons began to form.

After twenty minutes however the process stopped and the mouse was left with just a wrist and a bit of paw. "Apply more of the gel," Tina said into the microphone.

"But we were only supposed to you that much on the first try." The tech said back looking at the camera in the cleanroom.

"I know but this is a preliminary run and we still have ninety minutes of lab time, let's use it." Tina was firm but couldn't be too insistent.

"Alright, that's fair. And I too want to see where this goes." He said as he once again grabbed the ceramic cylinder.

They didn't need the full two hours and only used half of one of the cylinders of gel before the mouse had a complete and perfectly formed new paw.

It was Sunday night and Tina was in the office working out the last decisions before Dr. Thomas returned. Everyone knew that this project was really hers and he was just giving it the gravitas to get university backing, but still, he was technically in charge. Just as Ava and her little team regularly went over results so did Tina. In her case, the project was so big that she just met with the four heads of her sub-teams.

"What does this part of the code do?" Tina asked the head of her programming team.

Al shook his head, "That's more of the gibberish code that the AI keeps dropping in. I have no idea what it is, it is probably meaningless filler, go ask the AI."

Everyone laughed at this, the new proprietary AI that the university had developed was notorious for not being able to explain what it was doing. Technically the people running it could see its logic chain and figure most things out for themselves but the AI also had gibberish code in its programming.

The new AI was based on an old one and the old one had helped write the new one. It had never written its own gibberish code but suddenly started adding it to the new AI. Every time the programmers removed it the AI seemed to get dumber so after a while they decided to just leave it in. Before long they had an AI that was competitive with and in some ways better than anything available on the open market. And so the university had began using it campus-wide for all projects.

"Gibberish is gibberish," Tina said with exasperation. "I can only fit in so many lines of instruction, nanobots just can't afford gibberish code. Is there anything we can do to make the instructions simpler?"

Al shook his head, "We only have one kilobyte, one thousand characters, including spaces. If we made things any simpler the bots would get confused."

"Shit," was all Tina could say.

"Um, ma'am?" Victoria raised her hand sheepishly. She was the liaison from applied sciences and rarely had anything to say since she was effectively just a go-between.

Tina looked her way, eyebrow raised. The girl couldn't be older than twenty-five or twenty-six and had no place being in the position that she was in.

"You see... I sort of have been looking at your code and I could free up about a hundred and seventeen bytes if you let me." Victoria tried to make direct eye contact with Tina as she spoke but flinched.

"What?! How?" Tina and Al said in unison.

"So, I took out all the gibberish and put a bit of shorthand in to save space. The shorthand really only saves twenty-eight bytes because you have to teach it to the bots as part of the code. But still, every byte counts right." Victoria was making eye contact with Al now as she felt more confident.

Al burst out, "It's already written? That means we can put it straight into the new batch and add code as we work this week. That's amazing!"

Now Victoria blushed, "Yes it's all right here, I have a copy in my phone, I can text it to you right now."

Al vigorously shook his head and soon was reading the new code on his phone. "This will definitely work, if we hit the ground running we can program new bots and have enough ready for Tuesday, then we can make new batches with new instructions as we go."

Tina looked at Al a bit concerned. "Can't we just reprogram the old bots? They aren't cheap and we have enough for a full run now."

"No this is too much of a change, we can add new code if there is room or tweak old code. But this..." He just shook his head.

Over the next hour, the group conversed excitedly with Victoria a full participant for the first time ever. As they left for the night the possibilities swam through Tina's head.

The next morning Tina got Dr. Thomas's ok to create a whole new batch of nanobots. He didn't really understand the details so he left everything to Tina.

She looked at the same face on her desk phone as the last time she called the applied science building.

"... so I will be bringing the new bots over with me tomorrow," she said.

"There will be a small delay in handling the materials, they are biohazards after all." The technician replied. Tina wanted to sneer, her bots fixed people and weren't hazardous in any way.

"And we will of course dispose of the old bots for you..."

Tina had a bolt of inspiration hit her as she thought of how her bots could fix people.

"NO! I mean they... they can be reprogrammed and used but it just would have taken too long. That's why we are making new ones. Because there isn't enough time to reuse them. So send them to my office and I will handle things." Tina definitely looked too excited and worried, she hoped that the person on the other end didn't notice, which just made her more nervous.

"Are you sure? That isn't standard procedure and from what I heard you have the budget to mass produce those things if you want."

"Yes, yes... waste not want not right?" she giggled nervously. "Besides we still have to account for everything in the budget and the school frowns on wastefulness."

"Fine, you're the one in charge... I guess." the tech knew about Dr. Thomas and that he was a figurehead.

As Tina hit the end call button she burst out with a, "Yippee!" She knew exactly what she needed to do next.