[ExI] uploads etc.

[Keith Henson]

He invited the village elders in for a visit, telling them he was not
a man but a medical spirit attached to the clinic.  The elders
accepted his statement with some relief and left to send in their
sickest.

The first was K'rekou, a five-year-old boy with “Dapaong tumor,” due
to a parasitic nematode O. bifurcum.  Humans were not its normal host
and that was part of what made it such a nasty disease.  The mother
was startled to see the old man but obeyed his instructions in perfect
Tamari to lay her boy on the low table.  K'rekou, emaciated and crying
in obvious pain quieted, relaxed, and went to sleep.

"This will take a few hours and your boy will be asleep for all of it.
You may stay or come back for him after noon."  Suskulan told her, "He
will not wake up until you come to get him."

K'rekou's mother would have stayed but she had another child at home.
She left with some misgivings.

The low table became hazy with nanomachines joining the first that had
infiltrated into the boy's brain through skin and lungs alike to put
him under anesthesia.  The nanomachines reduced the firing of nerves
just as simple anesthetics had been doing for 200 years.  The haze
thickened and K'rekou faded from sight.

"Dapaong tumor" may present as a painful, abdominal mass with a
diameter of 2–11 cm, typically adhering to the abdominal wall.  Or it
may present as pea-sized nodules in the large intestine.  K'rekou had
both.  The mass, about the size of a golf ball and a little to the
left of his navel, was the more obvious problem, but the damage to his
large intestine was a greater drain on his health.

Suskulan had sequenced the DNA left before he was activated, when
K'rekou touched the sticky patch on the seed. K'rekou's compressed
genome, along with those of the rest of the tata inhabitants, had been
sent through the network, and his embryonic development and
growth to his present age had been simulated with otherwise idle
computing capacity.  What he should be like at this stage of his
growth was a checkpoint in the medical database for the tata.

The process of healing was primarily one of comparing what should be
with what was, and reducing the differences.  Most of the comparison
was done outside the boy in computing nodes cooled with a flow of
ultra pure cold water.  Still, there was a lot of heat-releasing
manipulation required that had to be done slowly.   To carry away the
waste heat, K'rekou's blood was temporarily removed and replaced by a
substitute solution pumped through him just above freezing.

By 11:15 the parasites had been expunged, and the tissue around them
reverted to normal.  Enough damage had been done by the parasites to
require temporary scaffolding in a few places.  The scaffolding would
release growth hormone until the cell proliferation filled in the
gaps, and then it would dissolve.  Other minor parasites were
destroyed; ones that didn't cause problems were left; a minor hernia
was fixed; and cell repair machines restored fat by injecting lipids
into the fat cells--a cell-at-a-time reversed version of liposuction.
Then K'rekou's blood was warmed up and put back.  Finally the haze of
nanomachines faded back into the table.

By noon the boy, looking much healthier, woke up when his mother
entered the clinic.  His mother was astounded at the change. K'rekou
wanted to go play with his friends.  Suskulan, who had monitored the
process rather than directed the fine details, was pleased.  He sent
off a report of his first case and received a number of
congratulations from other clinics and humans.

Over the next five months all of the inhabitants of the tata spent
time on the table getting old and new, major and trivial medical
problems fixed.  Suskulan enjoyed serving the people of the tata and
was extremely
good at it.

Once, four of the adult males came in back in agony after stumbling
into a huge nest of enraged stinging insects.  Suskulan took all four
at once by putting two of them on the floor.  The oldest were mildly
regressed in age each time.  Other than a boy who died alone far from
the tata and was not found for several weeks, there were no deaths.

It was a particularly long dry season.  The spring dried up.  The
fields and gardens shriveled, the animals that didn't die moved far
south where they could find something to eat.  The granaries were low
after a number of poor harvests, and food was short in supply and
variety.

Suskulan's patients started using the clinic to restore fat when they
became gaunt.  Suskulan increased the size of his solar collector to
provide it.

When the rains came back there was a record deluge.  The only reason
the tata was not swept away was the meter lift Suskulan had given it
when he built his underground extensions.  He added another half meter
to them.

By the time the long dry season came back the tata inhabitants were
used to the clinic.

December 2042

Far away, Lothar, Mabo and their fellow teams had completed planting
clinics all the way to Cape of Good Hope. There were just short of a
million of them, one for every 350 inhabitants on the ravaged
continent.  The planting went faster in the decimated cities;
sometimes a crew could plant two or even three clinics in a day though
security was more of a problem.   After finishing Africa, Lothar and
Mabo had a choice planting clinic seeds in South America, New Guinea,
or Australia.  Vacations were not considered since the Foundation's
goal was to provide clinics seeds to every human group on earth before
the end of 2044.  In the opinion of the clinic seed planters, there
was no more rewarding work on earth.

May 2043

Early in the second wet season Suskulan received a major system
upgrade. The upgrade went swiftly because Suskulan had stockpiled tens
of thousands of liters of parts and fuel
--most of it in the form of methyl alcohol--that he also was keeping
in stock to be converted to fat if needed.

Suskulan's first serious patient after the upgrade was Zaba, a 12 year
old who had been shot through her spine while working in a garden.
She was near death, and far beyond help by pre clinic standards, when
she was placed in Suskulan's "hands."

As the nanotech mist enveloped her still body, Suskulan quickly
evaluated her than told her parents:

"I can heal Zaba but it will take at least a week, perhaps as many as
ten days.   She will not be able to move or speak at first, but you
can talk to her spirit at noon tomorrow."

After they left Suskulan moved Zaba's body underground for better
cooling and shorter connections to the mass of repair devices.  With a
small amount of his attention he constructed an image of the repair
table and Zaba out of utility fog including the ghastly wounds.

This time the nanomachines didn't infiltrate her brain just to shut it
down, though they did that and reversed the mild damage from shock and
low blood flow.   The nanomachines mapped out all her neural circuits
and cell connections.  Shortly before her parents entered the clinic
the next day they tentatively restored consciousness, partly in her
brain--which was far below the temperature needed to run on its
own--and partly in the haze of nanomachines that were also simulating
input in place of her eyes and ears.

"What happened to me?  Where am I?  Where is my body?" Zaba asked as
she became conscious.  She was calm because the nanomachines were
acting as tranquilizers.  Suskulan was listening to an interface to
her mostly simulated motor cortex.

To give Zaba orientation Suskulan imposed on her visual cortex a wire
frame image of the human form he usually presented then explained:

"You were shot, you are in the clinic Suskulan at the tata, and your
body is under the clinic being repaired.

The clinic recently gained new powers to speak to spirits while their
bodies are being healed.
The healing will take some time, even I do not know exactly how many
days," he added,  "You were badly injured."

"My mother and father," Zaba started and then stopped.

"They brought you to me yesterday and are very concerned.  Your mother
is holding the hand of an image of your body in the clinic.  Suskulan
switched her vision to one in the clinic looking at the repair table
and Zaba’s parents.   “I can extend my power and let you use it to
talk to them as if you were speaking through a telephone."






Best wishes,

Keith

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