I blew the dust away, so I could see better. I was hoping to see a loose battery connection, or a memory chip that had popped up from heat, anyway something that would be easy to fix. I squinted at the chips, trying to read the writing. The writing on one chip was obscured, because there seemed to be some kind of-
I paused.
"What is it?" Eric said, watching me.
"Hand me that magnifying glass."
Eric gave me a big glass, and I swung my high-intensity lamp low, and bent over the chip, examining it closely. The reason I couldn't read the writing was that the surface of the chip had been corroded. The whole chip was etched in rivulets, a miniature river delta. I understood now where the dust had come from. It was the disintegrated remains of the chip. "Can you fix it, Dad?" Eric said. "Can you?"
What could have caused this? The rest of the motherboard seemed fine. The controller chip was untouched. Only the memory chip was damaged. I wasn't a hardware guy, but I knew enough to do basic computer repairs. I could install hard drives, add memory, things like that. I'd handled memory chips before, and I'd never seen anything like this. All I could think was that it was a faulty chip. These MP3 players were probably built with the cheapest components available.
"Dad? Can you fix it?"
"No," I said. "It needs another chip. I'll get you one tomorrow."
" 'Cause she slimed it, right?"
"No. I think it's just a faulty chip."
"Dad. It was fine for a whole year. She slimed it. It's not fair!" As if on cue, the baby started crying. I left the MP3 player on the garage table, and went back inside the house. I looked at my watch. I would just have time to change Amanda's diaper, and mix her cereal for dinner, before the pot roast came out.
By nine, the younger kids were asleep, and the house was quiet except for Nicole's voice, saying, "That sounds pretty serious. That sounds pretty serious. That sounds ... pretty serious." She was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at herself and reciting her lines.
I'd gotten voice mail from Julia saying she'd be back by eight, but she hadn't made it. I wasn't about to call and check up on her. Anyway, I was tired, too tired to work up the energy to worry about her. I'd picked up a lot of tricks in the last months-mostly involving liberal use of tinfoil so I didn't have to clean so much-but even so, after I did the cooking, set the table, fed the kids, played airplane to get the baby to eat her cereal, cleared the table, wiped down the high chair, put the baby to bed, and then cleaned up the kitchen, I was tired. Especially since the baby kept spitting out the cereal, and Eric kept insisting all through dinner that it wasn't fair, he wanted chicken fingers instead of the roast.
Chapter 4
I flopped down on the bed, and flicked on the TV.
There was only static, and then I realized the DVD player was still turned on, interrupting the cable transmission. I hit the remote button, and the disc in the machine began to play. It was Julia's demo, from several days before.
The camera moved through the bloodstream, and into the heart. Again, I saw that the liquid of blood was almost colorless, with bouncing red cells. Julia was speaking. On the table, the subject lay with the antenna above his body.
"We're coming out of the ventricle, and you see the aorta ahead ... And now we will go through the arterial system ..."
She turned to face the camera.
"The images you have seen are fleeting, but we can allow the camera to cycle through for as much as half an hour, and we can build up highly detailed composites of anything we want to see. We can even pause the camera, using a strong magnetic field. When we are finished, we simply shunt the blood through an intravenous loop surrounded by a strong magnetic field, removing the particles, and then send the patient home."
The video image came back to Julia. "This Xymos technology is safe, reliable, and extremely easy to use. It does not require highly trained personnel; it can be administered by an IV nurse or a medical technician. In the United States alone, a million people die each year from vascular disease. More than thirty million have diagnosed cardiovascular disease. Commercial prospects for this imaging technology are very strong. Because it is painless, simple, and safe, it will replace other imaging techniques such as CAT scans and angiography and will become the standard procedure. We will market the nanotech cameras, the antenna, and monitor systems. Our per-test cost will be only twenty dollars. This is in contrast to certain gene technologies that currently charge two to three thousand dollars a test. But at a mere twenty dollars, we expect worldwide revenues to exceed four hundred million dollars in the first year. And once the procedure is established, those figures will triple. We are talking about a technology that generates one point two billion dollars a year. Now if there are questions ..." I yawned, and flicked the TV off. It was impressive, and her argument was compelling. In fact, I couldn't understand why Xymos was having trouble getting their next round of funding. For investors, this should be a slam dunk.
But then, she probably wasn't having trouble. She was probably just using the funding crisis as an excuse to stay late every night. For her own reasons.
I turned out the light. Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling in the dark, I began to see fleeting images. Julia's thigh, over another man's leg. Julia's back arched. Julia breathing heavily, her muscles tensed. Her arm reaching up to push against the headboard. I found I couldn't stop the images.
I got out of bed, and went to check the kids. Nicole was still up, emailing her friends. I told her it was time for lights out. Eric had kicked off his covers. I pulled them back up. The baby was still purple, but she slept soundly, her breathing gentle and regular.