Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

“Hey, is Louise around?” I ask Andrea.

She shakes her head and pops a question mark.

“I was hoping to get her to look over my paper on the basal ganglia,” I explain. “She’s my go-to girl on all things neuroscience, you know? Any idea where she is?”

Andrea’s fingers dance as she nods, and a stylized plate, fork, and knife appear.

“I’ll check the cafeteria. Thanks.”

She gives me a smile and a wave and I head over to see if Louise is still there. She’s been hard to find lately, spending a lot of time in her room instead of out in the common areas. I could turn in my paper as-is, but I have a couple of questions that I think she can explain better than even Mr. Johnson can. He doesn’t bring the same magic to the life sciences that he does to math, physics, and chemistry.

Plus, I’ve missed Louise’s funny, sarcastic quips since she’s been secluding herself away. She said something a couple of days ago about needing to focus on her project, but it feels like she’s just being antisocial.

I reach the cafeteria and see her inside through the big front windows. She’s sitting alone in one corner, slumped forward in her seat with her head resting on her arms on the table. A plate of cold, untouched food rests off to one side.

“Hey,” I say as I approach. “You doing OK?”

“Hmm?” she responds, sitting up. “Oh, hey Noah. Sorry. What did you say?” Her voice sounds like she just woke up and her mouth is turned down in a miserable-looking frown.

“Are you OK?”

She turns her head to one side and takes a moment to answer, but when she does her voice is almost back to normal. “I’m fine.” Her face twists to a smile that looks right but feels fake. She pushes her tray of cold chicken further down the table. “So what brings you here?”

I take the seat next to her. “I was going to pick your brain about the basal ganglia, but now I’m worried about you. When I walked in here, you looked about like I felt that first day I got here. What’s up?”

She sighs. “I told you, I’m fine.”

“Come on, Louise. Whatever it is, you can tell me. I’m not going to judge. What’s going on?”

She sighs again, louder this time. “Just nervous about the trip, I guess.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t expecting that. Everyone else seems really excited for it.

“I haven’t been outside of home in almost a year,” she says, looking down. “Since I got my implant. I almost left a couple of times on Saturday excursions. But both times I freaked out and canceled. I don’t do well with new places.”

“Yeah, I noticed that you haven’t come along for those.” It’s not like she’s the only one who skips the trips, Jeff does too most of the time. But she’s the only one in my class who never comes. “I thought you were just working on your project.”

“You think that because that’s what I tell everyone. I do work on my project on those days. Or sometimes I just code. That’s how I had time to figure out the improved eye clusters. But it’s all backwards. I spend extra time on my projects because I don’t want to do the excursions. I mean, I want to go sometimes. When we were going to Vegas for the indoor skydiving a few months ago, I signed up. I even started to get on the bus, but then my chest tightened up, and started having a heart attack. I couldn’t breathe. I was dying.”

“You had a heart attack?”

“Well, no, it turned out it wasn’t, but it felt like one.”

“And how would you know that?”

“Because shut up, that’s why,” she says, then slugs me on the arm and smirks. I rub my arm, part for effect and part because she hits way too hard for her size.

“OK. It felt like cardiac arrest,” I concede. “But it sounds to me like you had a panic attack. My mom used to get those.”

“I don’t think so,” she says, shaking her head. “Like I said, I was literally dying.”

“Yeah, dying by heart attack.” I pause as she stares me down, daring me to question her again. “Which is a feeling you definitely know very well.” She nods approval. “But that sounds a lot like how Mom used to describe it. She used to get them when she was stressed out. Maybe you’ve got some agoraphobia or something, and the thought of leaving here triggers it.”

She thinks for a long, silent minute.

“Maybe. I guess it matches some of the symptoms in the medical literature, but it seemed way too severe to be something like that.”

“Oh, well maybe the medical literature,” I give the two words a couple of big air quotes, “doesn’t realize they can feel plenty severe. Mom’s did sometimes. She took some meds to control them when they got bad, but I’m not sure what. Hey, you know, Father just happens to be a doctor. Kind of a famous one. Have you talked to him about it?”

She shakes her head. “No, and I’m not going to. And you can’t ask about why.”

Well, that’s weird. Is Louise faltering in her paternal devotion?

“Maybe one of the staff pediatricians in the Residence’s mini-hospital then? Dr. Jepson, or the other one who’s name I always forget?”

“Dr. Gopalakrishna, you mean?”

“Yeah, her.”

“Also no. And you also can’t ask why about that either.”

“Well, fine. Don’t get meds for it, then. Maybe start with a simple home remedy. Mom always said that breathing helps.”

She gives me a funny look.

“No, really. Breathe in real deep, hold it, let it out slowly. Do that for a couple of minutes, you’ll feel better.”

“You’re so weird, Noah.”

I laugh. “Just try it. Next time you get the feeling, do the breathing. My mom used to do it all the time. I could tell when she was having an attack. She would stop whatever she was doing to breathe for a few minutes. Then she’d go back to whatever she was doing. Or if it was a really bad one, she’d take a pill.”

“OK,” she says, still looking skeptical. “I thought it was because of something I did, but I’ll give your idea a try. If it helps, I’ll call it good for that favor you owe me.”

I wonder what she thought she did that could have caused her to start having panic attacks. Obviously something with the implant, based on the timing of when she started having them, but I can’t think of what it would be. Maybe it’s something in the options Father hasn’t unlocked for me yet.

“If you don’t believe me, you can look it up. But don’t just look in your fancy medical literature. Check the online forums and see what people who actually have them say about it. Maybe you’re the only one here who gets them, but they’re pretty common out in the big crazy world that I’m from.”

That seems to satisfy her a little more. “Thanks, Noah. It’s kind of embarrassing, so don’t tell anyone, OK?”

“Sure, Louise. It’s just between you and me.”

“Seal it with a secret,” she demands. “And not just that you sometimes manage to get yourself locked out of the dorms at night. Tell me something that no one else knows about you. Something embarrassing.”

“For real?”

“Yeah, for real.” Her serious look tells me she means business. I glance around to make sure we’re still alone in the cafeteria.

“OK. But you carry this one to your grave. When I first got here, I didn’t know what the Butler Institute was. That it was only for the family. I thought it was just a private school that Father founded. You remember that first morning? When I stood there like a zombie while you and everyone else said hi to me?”

“Yeah, I remember that day. Most exciting day around here in a long time. You looked pretty messed up. I was worried we’d taken in some kind of freak.” She gives me her playful grin.

“Can’t say you weren’t right about that,” I concede. “Anyway, keep in mind that at this point, I emphatically did not know that I was related to any of you. Here’s the embarrassing part: when I first saw you and Andrea, I thought you were both super hot.”

“Really?”

“No lie. Like Ted on Hillside High, when he moved to Hillside and totally crushed on Marsha. It was like that, only for both of you. It lasted from the time I met you until computer lab that day. It was just a little bit awkward when I found out you were my sisters.”

Louise laughs. “OK, that’s worth it. Secret keepers now, you and me.”

I don’t know if it’s the reassurance about her panic attacks or my embarrassing secret, but she seems to be feeling a lot better now.

“So what was it you did that you thought caused it?” I ask her.

“What?”

“You said you thought something you did caused the panic attacks.”

She pauses a moment. “Well, since we’re keeping each other’s secrets,” she says quietly, “you know how Father has it blocked off so you can’t hook up stimulus to the nucleus accumbens?”

“The nucleus accumbens? That’s actually part of my paper that I wanted you to look at. The pleasure center in the brain. The thing that deals with chemicals like dopamine and opiates.”

“That’s the one.”

“I didn’t realize that was blocked off. I haven’t gotten into the nitty gritty of mapping out that part of my brain yet.”

“Well, it’s blocked in the implant software. You can’t do anything that would send a signal to it. But you can bypass the block if you know the trick. I figured it out not too long after I got the implant. Once in a while, I hit it with a signal and give myself a little boost, release a little bonus dopamine to brighten things up. Just when I’m having a tough day, not very often. I thought my freakouts were a side effect of doing that.” She gives me her most serious look. “And now you know why I can’t talk to Father or the docs about it. That one for real you can’t tell anyone. Father would kill me if he found out, or worse, he’d fix it so I couldn’t do it anymore.”

“Don’t worry. Secret keepers, you and me. But you have to show me how you do your trick. I might have a tough day sometime that needs a little brightening.”

“Yeah, I get that. I’ll show you later,” she promises. “But let’s do it when you’re not due back in Father’s lab every weekend. I don’t think it leaves any indicators, but I don’t want to take any chances.”

“Fair enough. Now, since we’re already talking about the basal ganglia, you want to help me with my biology paper? This stuff is killing me.”

“Sure,” she says, giving me a smile that finally feels sincere. “Let’s see what you’ve got so far.”