Nano

CHAPTER 5

Pia sat on her couch, going over a copy of the same results Mariel and Berman had just seen while George took a shower. The results were certainly favorable, enough so that she anticipated she’d soon be encouraged if not forced to return to the flagellum conundrum, and her mind wandered to it. Her intuition told her that it was not going to be as easy to solve as the biocompatibility problem. As she had explained to George, the flagellum issue was more of a mechanical problem, and she thought the solution would have to be mechanical, too. Pia had developed a clear picture in her mind of the battle that would take place in the body between the bacteria and her beloved nanorobots.

“What’s the figure again, ten to the minus nine?” George’s question disturbed Pia’s concentration. George might as well have clashed cymbals together, and Pia literally jumped at the intrusion. In the eighteen months she’d been in Boulder, Pia had never had company in her apartment.

Pia shot a quick glance over to see George standing in the doorway, loosely wrapped in her only large bath towel. She’d put out a hand towel, of which she had several, and apparently it wasn’t adequate. Pia had a thing about her space and her stuff. In foster care she’d always had to fight for both.

“A nanometer is what size?” George continued.

“Yes, that’s right, a billionth of a meter,” Pia responded. She closed her eyes and counted to ten. She found the towel issue irritating; she was irritated he was there at all. What the hell was she going to do with him until Tuesday?

“I was really blown away when you described the relationship of a nanometer to a meter being the equivalent of a marble to the size of the earth. And when you said human fingernails grow at a rate of a nanometer a second. I really have an appreciation of how small a nanometer really is.”

“I’m glad,” Pia said with a hint of sarcasm that was lost on George.

“Before today I really didn’t know anything about nanotechnology. And you say in a few years, fifteen percent of everything manufactured will use nanotechnology in some form or fashion?”

“Maybe within three years. In 2011 nanotechnology had already spiked to over fifty billion dollars a year worldwide. Now it is around seventy billion.”

“And who’s regulating it?’

Pia drummed her fingers absently on the arm of the couch. Social and political issues about nanotechnology didn’t interest her. For her it was all science, extraordinarily promising science.

“I don’t know, George. I don’t think there’s any real regulation. I mean, who cares whether tennis racket frames are lighter and stronger. I certainly don’t.”

“I’m thinking more about those nanoparticles you mentioned in the car on the way back from Nano: the buckyballs and nanotubes. As small as they are, I imagine they’d be absorbed through the lungs, maybe even through the skin. Seems to me that health and environmental issues should be considered, especially if they are as stable as you described.”

“You’re probably right,” Pia conceded, but her mind was already back on the flagellum issue. A mechanical solution was beginning to germinate in her mind.

“And the microbivores that you are working with. Are they safe do you think?”

Pia rolled her eyes as her incipient creative thoughts fled from her consciousness under George’s persistent questioning. “Proving microbivores safe is what I’ve been doing for the last eighteen months.”

“Not really. So far you’re just making sure they are immunologically inert. That doesn’t mean they are safe, necessarily. What if they begin doing something you don’t expect, like chewing through capillaries or eating red blood cells? I mean, the way you have described these things, they might turn out to be insatiable, miniature great white sharks.” George chuckled at what he thought was a humorous metaphor. He vigorously dried his hair, pretending to be unaware of his nakedness.

“As I already told you, they will be specifically targeted to bacteria, viruses, fungi, and hopefully bad proteins. They are not going to go wild. Each microbivore has multiple backup systems like a jet plane, and they can be turned on and turned off from outside the body using ultrasound signals. You have an overactive imagination. You’ve seen too many bad disaster movies.”

“What about these buckyballs and nanotubes just wafting out of Nano’s labs and floating off with the wind. Has anybody thought of that?”

“All the labs at Nano involved with medical nanotechnology are the equivalent of level-three biosafety labs, the same as those at Columbia when we were working with the salmonella grown in space. Actually the equipment here is newer than what we had at Columbia. Look, we are at the beginning of safety studies for microbivores, and they are going to be exhaustive. Otherwise, we won’t get FDA approval. Rest assured, when microbivores are made available as a treatment, they will have been proven beyond any doubt to be perfectly safe.”

Pia’s mention of the lab at Columbia did little to reassure George. Pia’s mentor had died as a result of radiation poisoning in his level-three lab. In George’s mind, labs doing cutting-edge research were dangerous. He watched as Pia returned her attention to the papers she was holding. It was amazing to him that she could look so good despite still being dressed in her jogging clothes with her hair having been blown around in the car. For the first time, he noticed that she had cut off a few inches. As he stood there admiring her, he could barely stand being so close and not touching her. Just when he was considering walking over to the couch, Pia’s iPhone buzzed, claiming her attention and yanking George back to reality.

“Why don’t you finish up in the bathroom and get dressed,” said Pia without looking up. It was yet another text message from Zachary Berman. “I want to shower, too, and change out of my running gear.” Berman had already sent three messages in the last twenty minutes, each a permutation of the other, asking her to call ASAP. Pia sighed. George’s presence was not going to deter Berman as she’d hoped but rather inflame him. Each text message was progressively more demanding.

Pia regretted anew having those few dinners with Berman. She should have known better because she had heard rumors about his reputation and that he was married. She thought the rumors were sour grapes on behalf of some women who saw him as a spectacular catch. Dining with him several times, she had enjoyed herself. He had been all business, talking about his wish to succeed with medical nanotechnology and its promise of dealing with cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Although he didn’t elaborate, nor did Pia question, he alluded to the fact that his interests had sprung from personal experience.

During those first casual dinners, Pia thought he seemed different from other men she’d had to deal with. There had been no come-on whatsoever. The closest he’d come to anything personal was to talk about her interest in research and how appreciative he was that she had been willing to put off her residency training and getting her PhD to come to Boulder and help with their microbivores program, which he thought was going to put Nano on the map.

A couple of more friendly dinners followed, but then, out of the blue, the presents started coming. First flowers, then expensive wine, chocolates and jewelry, culminating in the car. Other than the flowers, which couldn’t be returned, the only gift Pia kept was the VW she’d talked herself into accepting, and even that, she recognized, would have to go. The last time they had met privately, Pia had to fend off her boss, who told her how smitten he was with her, after trying to push his way into her apartment. Pia had managed to extricate herself without having to resort to her expertise in martial arts.

She was more than adept at tae kwon do, which she had learned at the Hudson Valley Academy for Girls, a derelict institution where she had been incarcerated in the name of foster care. That last evening with Berman, she was proud of the way she’d handled the situation while leaving her inebriated boss’s dignity intact. That had been a week before he had left on his trip to China, and now he was back, trying to contact her, whether she had a gentleman visitor or not.

“What do you want to do this afternoon?”

“I was going to take a nap,” Pia said. She was suddenly exhausted after her near all-nighter that had only ended that morning. She resolved to ignore Berman’s text, as she had the three previous ones. Pia was sure Berman wanted to quiz her about George. And she knew George was dying to ask her more about Berman. Perhaps it was best to let them both think what they wanted, and allow both of their imaginations to run wild. And a couple of hours’ sleep really would do her a world of good and give her a bit of perspective. Sunday was a day that was meant to be taken a little easy.