Chapter 2
They continued walking and went into a huge elevator. Beside them was a big huge elephant.
“Which floor?” asked the elephant.
“We are going into the child-care unit. South East wing,” said the nurse.
“OK then that floor it is,” replied the elephant as he pushed the button to the destination floor with his trunk.
As soon as he pushed Nomi could hear some motor roar and gears grinding. The elevator shook a bit, which seemed to scare Nomi a lit bit. Zeus picked up on that.
“Don’t worry its normal elevator behavior around here,” he said.
The odd group traveled for several minutes on the mechanical device. It stopped a few times to gather a few more patients and staff from the hospital. Then it went up for a bit more and then it reached the destination floor. Most everyone got out. Except mister elephant who was going for a magnetic image on the four hundredth floor of the hospital.
The group left the elevator and traveled a few corridors and met a lot of strange people and creatures along the way. They saluted a lot of people and then they finally reached the hospital wing where they had to go to. A huge automatic pneumatic door opened for them. They stepped in and saw several corridors with a circle shaped office in the middle where all the corridors seemed to meet.
The nurse went to the station and asked for the head nurse and, a few moments later an automaton appeared. She looked newer than the other ones. She was shapelier and more appealing to the eyes than the other staff that was going around in and out from the different rooms nearby.
“And that is why I like to come here from time to time,” said the old man, giggling.
“I am Cassandra. Head nurse of the child-care unit. I was told you were coming,” she replied in a soft gentle voice that was more organic than robotic.
“You must be Nomi Nivag?” she asked to the young teenager.
“Yes, I am and this is my friend Mister Chiffon,” Nomi replied.
“Pleased to meet you both,” replied the nurse.
“We need your help and you are the only one that can help us out. We need to operate on Gregory and we need to do it soon or all is lost for him,” said the nurse.
“We will need to put you in a special suit and send you into him to destroy the bad cancer cells that are ravaging his body,” said the nurse.
“Normal treatment is not working?” asked Nomi.
“No,” replied the nurse.
“We have tried every treatment available and you are our last resort. We have an experimental treatment that we can use, but robots are not compatible to operate the machinery that is needed to save Gregory,” continued the nurse.
“What do I need to do?” asked Nomi puzzled at the situation.
“We need to put you in a special suit and then shrink you. After that, we need to inject you into Gregory and have you zap out the bad cells until he is completely cleaned out. Once that is done, we can stabilize him and nurse him back to health. The problem is that we have never done that before and every attempt at using a machine in Gregory has resulted in failure and made his condition worse. We have not other option but to send you,” said the nurse.
“Your body does not obey the same laws of physics as ours in this universe. We can shrink you without any problem and send you in a probe vehicle inside Gregory,” she continued.
“We have an experimental machine that can alter organic matters, but it fails with metallic ones. So we have to send in a human being. All our staff is automated so we can’t use them. Lord Zarara recommended you because of your past exploits and courage,” said the nurse.
“Come, let us go meet our little friend and his parents. They have been advised of what you are going to attempt to do for their son,” said the nurse.
And so they traveled down the corridor that was full of lively children paintings on the walls. Nomi enjoyed them and the colors. They were so vivid and full of life. She saw multiple rooms with different children in them being tended to by robot nurses and doctors.
The head nurse finally stopped in front of a room and opened the door. There, Nomi saw little Gregory in some sort of incubator tent. His parents were beside him. They looked very sad and burned out.
“Come child, let us get you acquainted with little Gregory,” said the nurse.
They walked over to Gregory’s parents. They looked at Nomi for a moment. They could not believe that somehow she might be able to save their little son.
Gregory’s father got up and went to hug Nomi and started to cry on her.
“Anything you can and will be able to do to try to save my little boy is fine by me!” said the man with a trembling voice.
Nomi’s stomach started to shake. She was suddenly feeling the pressure of the situation. She was holding someone’s life in her hands. She did not want to panic, but she had a very uneasy feeling inside. Gregory’s father finally let go of Nomi and then her mother got up and looked at Nomi too. She did the same for Nomi. After a few minutes they all went closer to Gregory, who was intubated. He was breathing heavily and you could hear his irregular heart rate on the monitoring device. It was a faint sound, but a sound that no one ever wants to hear stop when they are sick.
Nomi looked at Gregory for several minutes. The old man had been permitted to go inside too, and was looking at Gregory too.
“Poor little kid. I was visiting him for the last month. He is fading away. I hope that you can help Nomi. He represents everything to his parents,” said Zeus, as he looked at the little boy and Nomi.
“I hope I can do something too,” she replied.
Nurse Cassandra came back in the room and she called Nomi out.
“We need to go see the doctors now and try the experiment,” she said.
Nomi stepped out of the room and followed Nurse Cassandra to a room at the end of the wing.
There she opened another humongous door. The room was huge and full of equipment and steam. Electric sparks gave light to the darkness of the room from time to time.
In the middle of the room was a huge desk. There were two very different beings that were looking at some contraption. They were somewhat arguing about what was transpiring before them.
One of them was what seemed to be a gopher and the other was an octopus that wore a helmet full of water. The vast room was filled up with weird equipment. Things were all over the place. You could see wirings coming down from the ceiling. Shelves upon shelves filled with weird-looking parts. Clothes were hanging on the back of old chairs. In the middle of the room was a huge looking tube that reached for the ceiling. It was a huge contraption, but had a smaller capsule part. Tons of hoses were connected to the device. Steam was venting from the machine and wires were all over the floor around it.
“Darn it, the thing is not calibrated right,” said the gopher to the octopus.
“I tell you that it will hold under pressure,” replied the octopus.
“It’s just a minor glitch in the movement system of the suit, nothing to fear,” continued the octopus.
“I tell you William, this can prove dangerous for the little girl. We cannot fail Gregory. And we have no alternatives but this,” said the gopher.
The octopus had multiple tools going on around the contraption that they were working on. He was tightening things apparently or making some kind of adjustment to some sort of suit while the gopher was going all around him. Trying to peer at what he was doing.
“No. Not like that,” more here and less there. Here, let me have a go at this,” said the gopher.
The octopus moved out of the way and the gopher turned a knob on the front of what seemed to be some sort of yellow space suit.
Then all kinds of bells and whistle went on in a data screen that was close to them.
“There, you see. It is OK now,” said the gopher.
“Ahem,” said Nurse Cassandra.
“I have the test subject here, if you are not too busy arguing with each other again,??
? said the automaton nurse.
Both persons turned around and looked at the nurse. They both scratched their heads.
“So, this is the person Lord Zarara sent to us to help little Gregory?” asked the gopher.
“Yes, and no sarcastic remarks,” said the nurse.
The gopher moved out from behind the lab desk and in front as well as the giant octopus. He had a white coat on and some weird looking glasses. He wore white tennis shoes and had a bunch of pens and pencils sticking out of his pockets.
“My name is Doctor Dumont and this is Doctor Chalmers. We are the doctors who will help you save little Gregory,” said the gopher.
“My Name is Nomi,” said the young Miss.
“Please to meet you,” said the octopus to Nomi.
“We are going to put you in that suit that you see over there and then inject you inside Gregory where you will go and destroy all the bad cells so we can nurse him back to proper health,” said the gopher.
“I am going to go inside Gregory in that suit?” asked Nomi.
“Yes, that is the plan, that is if you don’t explode in a trillion atoms in the shrinking process,” replied the octopus.
“OK, I am officially scared right now and I am freaking out!” replied Nomi.
“You don’t have to, young woman. The chances of you getting totally destroyed are about one in a hundred,” replied the octopus.
“The risk is minimal, considering the situation,” he continued.
“This is so crazy,” replied Nomi.
“Not really young child. We are the top most experts in the field of nanotechnology. We have decades of experience combined,” said the gopher.
“We think we have done enough research to help little Gregory properly. We just need someone to get into this apothecary suit and travel inside him and kill every cancerous cell until he is fully cleansed,” said the gopher.
“This is insane said Nomi. I have never seen this done before,” she replied.
“I know, but we have no choice. If we don’t try this, Gregory will be passed on by the end of the week and we just can have that. We have to try and sacrifice everything to save him,” replied the gopher.
“It is our sworn duty to save people’s lives. We have sworn to Gregory’s parents that we will save him, no matter what,” continued Doctor Chalmers.
“We have designed the suit for you. Lord Zarara had advised us of your measurements. The size of your chest was a bit of a problem but we managed,” said the gopher looking at the young woman.
“I beg your pardon?” said Nomi.
“I meant that your ample chest gave us a few design problems, but we have been able to manage,” replied the gopher.
Nomi looked at her chest and saw what the doctors were talking about.
“Yes, I guess it’s the good genes that my mother gave to me,” she said, surprised at the sudden twist in the conversation.
Nomi had started to develop into an adult earlier than most kids and she was teased a lot at school because of this. It was something she did not like because she felt alienated from most people in her age group.
“Let us hurry child. Please step up,” said Doctor Dumont.
“Yes,” said Nomi as she stepped around the desk to go towards the suit contraption.
She looked at the suit and it looked more like a space suit than anything else she could recognize.
“This is what you will wear,” said Doctor Chalmers.
“Yes, I guess it may work,” she replied a bit skeptical.
“What about Mister Chiffon? What is he going to do?” asked Nomi.
“Mister Chiffon will be your copilot in your craft,” replied the gopher.
“Craft, what craft?” replied the girl.
“That craft!” said Doctor Dumont as he flipped a switch. A part of the room became illuminated and there was a small stand with a small globe on top of it.
“I don’t see anything except that globe,” said Nomi.
“Well, it is there. Trust me,” said Doctor Dumont.
He opened a screen facing them and up came an image of the vehicle that Nomi was to be put in.