Chapter 4

Kyle was struck speechless, of all the possible surprises; this was the furthest one from his mind. His mouth was hanging open from the shock until Maggie reached over the table and pushed it close. The action nudged Kyle out of his shock and immediately he protested,

"I can't possibly accept this, its way too much for such a little thing."

"No, that's where you're wrong." Maggie replies, "It's not too much, it is the perfect gift. When our son died, we thought that our heritage will end with us. Instead, you've brought us our grandson and that is worth much more than a mere ship."

"B ... b ... but," Kyle stammered before Paoli elbowed him in the ribs and whispers in his ear,

"Just accept the gift already. I know you're drooling at the idea of designing your own ship."

Kyle glared at Paoli and reluctantly admitted,

"Ok, I guess I am drooling, but from Earth's point of view, a space ship like this one would cost millions if not a billion dollars."

"Ahh, but we don't use money here." John interrupted, "We have no need for it."

"How is that possible?"

"We have replicators, why would we need to buy it if we could just create it ourselves."

"Replicators!" Kyle exclaimed, "You have replicators?"

"Yes but it's not the same as Star Trek." John explained, "In the Star Trek universe, the replication occur instantaneous, however, our replications depends on three things, the amount of power available, amount of computation needed, and amount of fuel available. The replication time depends on all three, if you have plenty; the replication will occur in short time but if you are low on some or all three, it will take longer. The complexities of the objects being replicated also play a part."

"Oh." Kyle paused then asked, "So you use replicator for everything?"

"Yes, we use them in everything including ship building." John asked, "I'm assuming you are accepting the gift?"

"Yes of course."

"Excellent," John thumped the table and stood, "Now that you've agreed to take the gift, we should get you to the medical bay and have the doc give you a full check up."

"I was wondering why you didn't have me check out by the doc as soon as I arrived."

"Oh, we've already done a bio-scan on you, you're not infectious, this trip to the med bay's for another reason."

"When did you do the bio-scan?"

John chuckled, "Do you remember the four large light posts at the end of the hallway coming from the main bay?"

"That was the bio-scan?"

"Yes, if you had tripped them, the alarm would've gone off and the quarantine field would have been activated."
"Oh, then why are we going to the med bay?"

"Two reasons, one is to do more detailed scan on you and another is to figure out what method of education will help you learn all the necessary information before you get the chance to design your ship."

"Ah, Paoli did mention a new education method but he refused to say anymore."

"That's because most of the education systems that were developed here were developed by the Tchaas." John explained, "They insist that information regarding the education methods be kept within this base."

"I understand, let's go then."

"Ok." John, Maggie, Paoli and Kyle got up from the table and as they made their way to the elevator, Kyle asked John about designing a ship. John laughed and said,

"Before Paoli came along, I would've said it was a challenge, but a couple of years ago, Paoli designed a complex program that actually takes the difficulty out of designing a ship. Thanks to him, all you need is some basic information regarding the dimensions of your ship and the equipment you would like to have onboard. Tomorrow, before you start designing, Paoli will give you all the details."

"So," Kyle asked Paoli, "You're helping me designing the ship?"

"That's right, I am the head of the design department. It's part of my job to help people design their ship."

They arrived at the elevator and rode it down three floors to the med bay. Along the way, the elevator slowed down and then all of suddenly shuddered and started to moving sideway. The sudden change startled Kyle and he exclaimed,

"What the hell was that!?"

Three puzzled expression turned to Kyle and Paoli asked, "What do you mean?"

"That shudder and the sudden change in direction. One minute the elevator was going down, now it's going sideway."

"Oh yeah, I forgot. The elevators here are slightly different in that they can travel in six different directions. Up, down, forward, backward, and sideways."

"Well, it would've been nice to have a little bit of warning beforehand, I nearly pissed my pants when the elevator shifted."

Everybody chuckled and Kyle couldn't help but join in. They were still chuckling when the elevator came to a stop. Maggie went first and led them down the hall and around the corner through a double door into Medical. For a moment, Kyle thought the room was completely empty then he spotted somebody in a small office across the room. Before Kyle could say anything, Paoli called out,

"Hey Doc, we have a new patient for you."

The person in the office replied in a vey obvious fake accent, "Excellent, I'm just about out of fresh corpses to practice my surgery techniques on."

Kyle smiled as a tall and slender man came out of the office, wearing a regular white lab coat. He walked up to Kyle and asked,

"So, what's our patient name?"

"My name's Kyle. What's your."

"Steven, which limb do you want me to amputate?"

"Does your head count as a limb?"

Steven laughed, "I like you already, so what are you here for?"

"Kyle just arrived today," Maggie answered and Steven turned to her, "Apart from the bio-scan, he needs a medical checkup."

"Ah, so you want the full workout?"

"Yes and the neurological scans as well."

"The downloader?"

"Yes, among other."

"All right," Steven turned to Kyle "Come on, lets get you on my autopsy table."

He went over to one side of the room and just before Kyle was about to comment on the lack of beds, Steven pressed a blinking dot on the wall and the floor rose to form a bed.

"Lay down on the bed please."

Kyle hopped onto the bed and lay down with his head to the wall. He watched as Steven typed something on the wall and a long cylindrical object extended out of the wall just above Kyle head.

"Just stay still," Steven reassured Kyle, "it's a souped up version of a MRI without the magnetic field. The only difference between this one and the one back on earth is that this one can scan as deep as your DNA."

"So you're saying that you can find out what genetic defects I may have?"

"No, we will have to take little bit of your blood to do that. This can tell us if your DNA is being damaged by something."

The cylinder emitted a horizontal light that moved slowly from Kyle's head to his toes then back up. The wall beeped and Steven looked up, he gave Kyle a quick glance and said,
"You can get up now, the scanning's done." Surprised, Kyle got up and asked,

"Already?"

"Yes," Steven replied while going through the results, "So far, I'm seeing all the expected afflictions; high level of mercury, damaged immune system, but there's also a mostly healed fracture in the right radius and high level of cholesterol in the bloodstream."

"The broken radius's from a motorcycle accident I had few weeks ago and the cholesterol's most likely from the burgers I ate for lunch for the last few years. But I don't understand where the high level of mercury and damaged immune system is coming from."

"The most common source of mercury would be from seafood..."

"Well, I do eat sushi quite often." Kyle interrupted and Steven nodded,

"There you go. The damaged immune system actually is becoming the norm among the humans living on earth due to all the pollution that they are emitting into the atmosphere."

"So can these be fixed?"

Steven chuckled, "Of course, these are simple problems to fix." He pressed yet another button on the wall and a small horizontal pad came out of the wall at bed level and he told Kyle to press his finger inside the green oval circle on the pad. Kyle did and felt a prick then the oval turned red. At a gesture from Steven, Kyle removed his finger and asked about the pad,

"The pad's a DNA scanner, it break down your DNA and tests it. When it's done, it will show any genetic quirks or defects you may have."

"All this information from just a drop of blood."

"Yep. Ah, here it comes." The results came up on the wall screen and Kyle went to stand just behind Steven and looked over his shoulder to read it. Unfortunately the results were composed of all those medical terms. Kyle sighed and said,

"You're going to have to translate this for me."

"No problem," Steven paused while reading some more then, "Bad news, you have genetic code for APP, Amyloid precursor protein, on the 21^st chromosome."

At the sight of puzzled expression on Kyle's face, Steven explained,

"APP is one of three genes that put you at very high risk for Alzheimer's disease. Don't worry," Steven reassured Kyle, "We can treat that one too."

"Really, how?"

"Just a little bit of gene therapy and you're safe."

"Good, are there any other defects?"

Steven continued reading, then shook his head, "Hmm, no, no, there's nothing else."

Kyle sat back on the bed and shook his head,

"Alzheimer, jeez," He thought of something and lifted his head to Steven, "You said that I was at high risk with just the gene but couple this with all other crap in my body. Would I definitely have got the Alzheimer?"

"If you didn't have the high level of mercury, I would've said that the odds were slightly higher but with mercury, I would say absolutely."

"So what's the treatment for all these?"

"All except for APP can be treated with nanobots. The APP, however, will require at least three courses of gene therapy. This will take at least six hours, because each treatment requires two hours to be at peak efficient."

"That long?"

"Afraid so," Steven turned to Maggie and the rest, "Because of the high level of mercury, I'm going to put off the neurological scans until after the treatments so the scans will be much more accurate."

"You're the doctor, whatever you think is the best." Maggie replied and Steven turned back to Kyle,

"What do you say we start the treatment now and get it over with?"

"Yeah, I like that."

"Ok." Steven directed Kyle to lie back on the bed, "Now, what's going to happen is an energy shield will cover you and the bed. Anesthesia will be pumped inside the energy field and once you're sedated, the treatments will start. Do you have any questions?"

"No."

"All right." Steven activated the field and the anesthesia, "Breath deep."

Kyle did and was almost immediately unconscious. Once Steven ensured that Kyle was truly unconscious, he typed something into the wall and at Kyle feet, what looked like mercury begun to pump into the field. Paoli shivered and spoke up,

"I still can't get over how much that look like mercury."

"I know," Steven replied, "good thing it's just nanobots."

"Yeah, so it's the standard treatment?"

"Yep, after that I'll give him the first injection."

"Contact us when the treatment's done."

"Sure, no problem Maggie." She nodded and she along with Paoli and John left the medical bay.

Six hours later, a groggy Kyle woke up to a dry throat; fortunately, Steven was already there with a cup of ice water. After sipping some of the water, Kyle asked,

"Is it done?"

"Yes," Kyle tried to get up but Steven held him down, "whoa, wait few minutes for the anti-anesthesia shot to kick in."

"Anti-anesthesia?"

"Yes," he explained, "normally, on earth, the doctors just wait for the anesthesia to wear off but we use anti-anesthesia to reduce the recovery time to ten minutes. I gave you the shot about five minutes ago. You should be feeling better by now."

"Yeah, the dizziness's fading."

"Ok, why don't you try and sit up slowly."

Kyle did and as he put weight on his right arm, he didn't feel the expected twinge of pain and looked down at his arm.