Chapter 1: How this all started.

KIT; four weeks before Labor day 2006

Hi I'm Kit, actually Jane Katherine Savage. I am the youngest daughter of James and Marsha Savage and the granddaughter of Jane Savage. I am 13. I go to Pacific Christian Academy so I can go to school with my friend, Ally, and come home for lunch. We live √ mile from the academy. The Savage homestead is a small 4000 square foot hovel on 25 acres of Gravenstein apple orchard West of Graton CA. (Pronounced with a long A {not like au-gratin}). All of the Savages live there.

This all started because my Grandmother Jane Savage has cancer, and the doctor has told us she has 4 months to live. We all love my grandmother. I bring her all of her meals as my expression of that love. While she eats I usually sit with her and talk. I sometimes cry. I will miss her very much. Grandma Jane always gives me a hug and kiss and that helps.

It is Tuesday August 2 and dad has called a family meeting for after dinner at 7:00 PM. We are meeting in grandma Jane's room because the topic of discussion is Jane. Dad is some kind of brain at HP Labs. He is a Doctor of Engineering in Nanotechnology and has a masters degree in Bioengineering. He has been working on some method of rapid healing of burn wounds. They are trying to heal burns without scaring in 24 hours. Last week they had a breakthrough. They had success with animal tests. While the process will not be cheap it does work.

Dad's idea is to use that same technology to cure cancer. We don't have much time but with our backyard lab and our family skills we should be able to have animal trials in two weeks. My sister Nancy is the family geek She works part time for a local computer network company. She was really a premier expert on network theory and practice. My mom, Martha is an OBGYN here in the town of Sebastopol. Dad's plan was to develop nanites that would seek cancer cells and remove them individually. Using the burn treatment technology, the same nanites would replace the missing cells the cancer damaged. Nancy's job would be to develop a network that would work with the nanites. This network would also provide communications to Nancy's laptop so we could start, monitor, and stop the processes. Mom's job was to verify the results of the animal tests and with Jane. My brother Tom and I would be responsible for house hold duties such as laundry, shopping, meals, and house cleaning. We would be assisted in the heavy work by our cook Maria.

Dad and Nancy worked for the next week with no progress. Then Tom suggested that we use one of the nanites in each group of 20 to handle only communication duties. One would handle the growth and or replacement of new nanites. The remaining 18 would do the bio work All of the nanites used the blood supply for energy, waste removal and material needs. Dad set up the experiment. It worked. Mom got 15 cancer rats for us to use as live animals to experiment on. Dad had set up the nanites to be either ingested in food or injected in glucose solution. The food/glucose powered the nanites until they got established at their work location.

Nancy had the network humming. Nancy's laptop and any communication nanite could communicate to any other nanite within 1000 feet. Nancy developed a program to start, monitor the nanite progress, and shut down the nanite by command or because of lack of activity. We were ready for our first live test. It was late Thursday night August 13, Dad mixed the nanites in some strawberry jam and placed a teaspoon of the nanite jam on dish in each rat cage. We should see some results in 24 hours. The rats all ate the jam. Nancy started the nanites. We all went to bed. Little did we know that this would change the lives for every man and woman on Earth.