Star Trek - TNG - 000 by Darkmirror

Author:Darkmirror [Darkmirror]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-08-07T13:52:54.182000+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Once back in his quarters, Picard moved swiftly, not knowing how much time he would have before he was disturbed again. Hurriedly he sat down at the desk and slipped out of his tunic the small, closed container and the wafer he had removed from Beverly's cabinet. Then he started working at the desk terminal, calling up a voiceprint-classified program, and carefully specifying an authorization code for it. Wesley, he thought. His mind was in such turmoil on the subject of the young man, both here and there, that he hardly knew what to think. But of this he was certain: when he saw his own universe's Wesley Crusher again, he would have a word or two of exoneration for him. Carefully Picard opened the container, slipped the wafer into it, and shut it again. He put the whole container on the media-reading spot on his desk and brought up a link between it and his desk terminal. Now let's see how much of this I remember, he thought, and started to work. His programming was understandably rusty: captains had computers and programmers to do this kind of work for them as a rule. But he still remembered the rudiments, enough to do quick-and-dirty coding in C50 and Logex and Arian and some of the similar programs designed for directing automated tools. Tools were all these were, after all. He brought up a visual of the contents of the container, by way of the link built into the contact wafer. There they were--a host of little six-armed creatures with crabby claws. They were one of a surgeon's most useful tools: tiny hands and manipulators that could stitch together a single nerve fibril as easily and dexterously as a sailor butt-splices a rope. They could cut and join and suture: they could weave muscle and nerve and even bone fiber together as if it were stiff cloth. An average microsurgery replacement of, say, a severed limb, or a patch of diseased brain tissue, might use a hundred, maybe even two hundred of these, depending on the size of the operative site and the amount of work to be done. There were--Picard laid a grid down over the view, using the computer, and then counted--there were about two hundred of them here. Would it be enough? He didn't know, but it had to be tried. Some time back, after his ship had started selectively falling apart--after the string of bizarre malfunctions and systems failures-- he had read, very carefully, young Ensign Crusher's science project paper on the care, feeding, education, and breeding of "nanites." Obviously here there was no time for the breeding. It would take at least a month to engender nanites who had the proper associational links and the number of neuronal connections in their joint neural network to become intelligent and self-aware. If he had such nanites at the moment, he could ask them politely if they would kindly give him a hand and then turn them loose. But the principle would still work for him now and was worthwhile.

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