As I was browsing through my old files to see which ones I could delete to free up some precious disk space, I chanced upon a Word document that contained a science fiction that I wrote for my brother’s science assignment two years ago.
Since the assignment was due the next day or the day after next, I wrote the story without caring what the readers would think. All I wanted was to write a story that my brother could submit to his science teacher on time.
After having read the story again, I’m amused at myself for having written the story at such short notice. 
Now that I have no more use of the story, I’m thinking of deleting it from my computer. But then again, the story has some sentimental value for me. As lousy as the story might be, it was the first sci-fi story that I have ever written. That’s why I decided to post it here:
Nanoworld
Year 2050. It has been 50 years since Planet Earth has welcomed the beginning of the third millennium. Back then, the world was on the verge of destruction. Though the world witnessed rapid scientific and technological advancement, it was also on the verge of destruction as the very reason behind its progress was also the same reason why it was headed for destruction.
Who would’ve thought that halfway through the 21st century, Planet Earth would be able to take a 180-degree turn and be able to maintain the delicate balance between industrial progress and environmental conservation?
Fighting to preserve this balance had been long and arduous. The battle did not transpire in battlefields of land and seas but began in laboratories of scientists eager to make small but powerful machines to help rid the world of pollution and disease and later on spread against the world as these nanorobots were launched on their mission to save the planet. There were phyto-nanobots programmed to help plants and trees that were dying because of the chemicals that had found its way from the soil to their roots. There were hydro-nanobots that were released into the waters to clean them up. There were also medical nanobots that were used in hospitals to cure patients of various diseases, from the common cold to cancer.
These nanobots were the life’s work of a group of professional scientists and science enthusiasts, among them Jack, who had volunteered to help design, develop and test medical nanobots out of sheer interest in nanotechnology, a scientific breakthrough that incidentally, had saved his sister’s life. His sister (since the main character in the story is my brother, the “sister” is supposed to be me), resident programmer of the Luna XXV, a space shuttle carrying a team of seven people on a space expedition to the moon, had contracted a disease in the course of their journey. The disease, caused by a recently identified bacteria endemic to the moon, was slowly eating away her tissues. She was quickly brought back to Earth, quarantined, and subjected to the most advanced treatment—medical nanobots. Fortunately, the latest version of medical nanobots invented by the research and development team where Jack belonged to was able to kill the bacteria, heal her sister’s damaged tissues, and regenerate tissues that had been destroyed due to the illness.
As Jack laid listlessly on the hospital bed, he prayed silently that nanotechnology will once again work wonders, this time not for his sister but for the world. Yes, this was no ordinary visit to the doctor for his annual physical exam. Jack was on a mission.
A batch of medical nanorobots had been released to a hospital in Switzerland. This batch contained nanobots that were supposedly discarded due to bugs in their programs. The programs in these nanorobots caused them to kill the healthy cells in the body. Supposedly, the nanorobots would circulate freely throughout the body, and would periodically sample its environment by determining whether the binding sites were or were not occupied. Occupancy statistics would allow determination of concentration. The cancer killing device suggested here could incorporate a dozen different binding sites and so could monitor the concentrations of a dozen different types of molecules. The nanorobots could determine if the profile of concentrations fit a pre-programmed “cancerous” profile and would, when a cancerous profile was encountered, release poison that would kill cancer cells.
Among the patients administered with these faulty nanorobots was Princess Mei Lin. Princess Mei Lin would be crowned empress of China when and if she recovers from her illness. Otherwise, her eccentric and power-hungry third cousin, General Jun Tao, would be crowned emperor of the kingdom. With General Jun Tao crowned as emperor of the most powerful country in the world, there is no stopping him from realizing his plans of advancing industrial progress to the point of destroying the ecological balance.
Interpol had discovered General Jun Tao’s plans to reactivate seven nuclear plants that had been closed down and sell the energy that these plants would produce to the alien community in Mars. In preparation for the realization of this plan, the general has already formed an alliance with a number of political honchos, military leaders, and business tycoons who, like him, do not care whether or not the world will be destroyed just as long as they can get their hands on money.
It had also been discovered that a couple of General Jun Tao’s scientists had infiltrated Jack’s team. These two were the ones responsible for releasing the buggy nanorobots to the hospital where Princess Mei Lin was being treated. They had deliberately introduced bugs into the nanorobots’ programs in order to aggravate the princess’ illness. Foreseeing that the good guys might want to fix the nanorobots by re-programming them with the use of a remote control attached that can control the nanorobots individually or as a group, the minions of General Jun Tao disabled the nanorobots’ transceivers so that they will not be able to respond to whatever form of communication that their remote controls send to them. Now cruising the bodies of their victims with nothing to control them, the nanorobots had become General Jun Tao’s one-way ticket to power and Princess Mei Lin’s cause of death.
The impostors that carried out General Jun Tao’s plans of killing the princess were caught. However, the capture was already too late as the Princess had began to weaken considerably one day after receiving the new batch of nanorobots that was supposedly going to treat her.
She had been showing signs of remission prior to the installation of the nanorobots in her body but now that the nanorobots have started to do their dirty work, Princess Mei Lin’s condition had drastically changed. Day two after the installation saw her slip into a coma.
It was during this day that the Interpol approached Jack’s team to ask for their help. Together, Jack’s team and the Interpol formulated a plan that would hopefully save the Princess from her impending death and eventually save the world from the evil hands of General Jun Tao and his plans to destroy the world for money.
The plan was that since the medical nanorobots could not be controlled with the use of a remote control, they would have to shrink a human being to the size of a nanocentimeter and sent to course through the Princess body until he finds the faulty nanorobots. Once he finds them, he would manually insert a nanodisk into the head of the nanorobot. Once the operating system of the nanorobot automatically loads the contents of the nanodisk, it will be re-programmed to perform what it was originally programmed to do—locate cells, determine whether they are healthy cells or cancer cells, and kill cancer cells. Once the head nanorobot will be re-programmed, it will immediately transmit the new program to its member nanorobots. Member nanorobots tuned in to the head nanorobot will be reprogrammed as well, and hopefully, all will be well. If this plan fails, Plan B was to disable the head nanorobot. Before its termination, the head nanorobot will be made to signal its member nanorobots to self-destruct.
Jack was especially involved with the plan since he personally felt that it was not right for some greedy general to destroy what he and other people have worked so hard to protect. They had had spent countless sleepless nights cooped in the laboratory to research on a possible technology that would carry out their plan to save Planet Earth on the molecular level. Much to his chagrin, the technology that they developed for the good of the world was being used to destroy it. Because of this, Jack did not think twice about volunteering to be the person that will carry out the mission.
Now, he is in the same hospital as Princess Mei Lin. Soon, he would be in the greatest adventure of his life—not scaling the heights of the world’s tallest mountains or surfing the big waves of the Pacific Ocean. He would be cruising on the bloodstream of Princess Mei Lin, headed towards the faulty nanorobots, and possibly his own death.
The team of doctors and scientists that would shrink him was yet to arrive. While waiting for them, Jack surveyed the doctor’s clinic, looking for something that can occupy his mind in order to avoid boredom. His eyes rested on a laptop on the table beside the hospital bed. It had a sticker that said “Nanotel IV”.
The doctor seems to be keeping abreast with technology, he mused.
Nanotel IV was the latest release from Nanotel, leading manufacturer of nanoprocessors. Nanoprocessors were half the size of microprocessors with twice as much processing speed. Nanotel IV was especially amazing, since it was able to perform a thousand tasks at the same time without a significant decrease in performance and speed. He knew the work behind the technology since the nanorobot, which he helped develop, was a very small machine that was created with transistors very similar to those found in the nanoprocessor.
To create the nanotransistor for the nanorobot, Jack and his team cut metallic nanotubes in order to form electrodes, and afterwards placed one or two organic materials to form a semiconducting channel between the electrodes. As he saw the laptop, he wondered at how something so small could be so powerful. Then his thoughts turned to how something so powerful could be so dangerous. Just like the nanorobots.
From the side of his eyes, he caught sight of a flurry of white enter the room. They were the doctors and scientists that had come to shrink him. They were accompanied by a representative from Interpol. He was briefed on the mission and was asked to prepare. The shrinking laser had been positioned above him. It was attached to the laptop that he had been looking at a while ago. As the head doctor input the values that would control the shrinking laser, he turned to Jack.
“Are you ready?,” he asked.
Jack nodded yes.
“I will count one, two, three. On the count of three, I will press enter, and you will become a one-nanometer human being. Don’t worry. This has been performed successfully on a number of people and they were able to go back to their original size by reversing the input to the shrinking laser.”
“You will wear a specially designed suit that will protect you from the acidic conditions of the stomach. The suit will also make the princess’ white blood cells think that you are part of the body so that they will not attack you,” the doctor continued.
“You will ride in a specially designed transporter that we will set on the water that will drip from the I.V. into the princess’ bloodstream. This laptop beside you will help us see where you’re going and we will remotely control where you’re transporter is going until you reach the Princess’ colon. It’s all you from there.”
“Okay,” Jack said. He wanted to back out at the last minute but then he knew that it was too late.
The next few minutes were a blur. The doctors and scientists were fast and efficient, and soon he was in the transporter that coursed through the Princess’ bloodstream.
The transporter reached the stomach in another few minutes. Just as expected, he saw the faulty nanorobots poisoning the healthy cells of the colon. He identified the head nanorobot as being the largest of the group of nanorobots. Perhaps the head nanorobot identified him, too—identified as a healthy cell, that is—and charged towards him. Jack quickly got out of his transporter and with the little skill he has and lots of chance at that moment, that he managed to ride on the back of the nanorobot and slipped the disk into the disk drive of the nanorobot. In a few seconds, all the nanorobots stopped until the head robot whirred back to life.
The head robot was making a mad rush towards his transporter. Could it be that the old program of the head robot could not be overridden by the new program that was written to correct the old one?
Jack was sure that that was the end of him. He closed his eyes and prepared for his own doom.
Until he was shaken off the head robot. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the head robot was charging towards a deformed and malicious-looking cancer cell. When he looked around, he also saw the other nanorobots attack the other cancer cells. The healthy cells were left unharmed.
Jack let out a big sigh of relief. He boarded the transporter, crossed his fingers, and smiled. Hopefully, everything would be okay.
His mission was a big success. Three days after the mission was completed, Princess Mei Lin woke up from the coma. Though she admitted to feeling a little weak, the various medical tests that she underwent yielded positive results. General Jun Tao was arrested and sentenced to lifetime imprisonment in the world’s most tightly guarded maximum security prison. The alliance that he formed broke up when its members learned of his arrest and imprisonment.
Though Jack and the other people involved in saving the princess were asked by the Interpol to keep everything a secret, the unsung hero was happy in knowing that he had taken part in something that could be loosely defined as saving the world.
Jack went back to working on nanorobots with the rest of the team. However, this wasn’t the only thing that kept him busy. He participated in whatever effort any organization exerted to help preserve the ecological balance and help ensure that nanotechnology will always be used for good.
It is the year 2050… and the battle for saving the world from destruction continues.
