Chapter 277: NRSA
Jack watched as the last few people filtered into the large conference room. The last to enter were Lars Jensen and his granddaughter Astrid. As soon as they entered, Astrid rushed up to Jack and gave him a crushing hug.
"Thank you, Jack! Thank you so much!"
Nora and Katie had informed him that they had successfully treated Lars and his cancer was effectively cured.
"I didn’t really do anything. It was Nora and Katie that treated him."
"I know," said Astrid. "I already thanked them. But it was you that made it possible. Without you, my grandfather would still be dying."
"I’m just glad it all worked out," said Jack. "Why don’t you sit down and we can get this meeting started."
She stepped back and looked at him in a way he had come to recognize, before stepping aside to make room for her grandfather.
Lars stepped forward and stuck out his hand. "Thank you, Jack. Not just for making my cure possible, but for providing us this opportunity to be part of your plans."
Jack shook the man’s hand, noting that Lars looked healthier than when they had first met.
As Lars and Astrid sat, Jack surveyed the room. Besides Lars and Astrid Jensen, four of his girls, Madison, Nora, Rina, and Isabella, were sitting at the table along with Heidy Oakland and Cindy Larkin, Phineas Dermot, Helga Eldridge, and Orin Blake were also present.
"Thank you all for joining me. Let’s get down to business. Nora, I understand your work to cure Lars led to something more than a custom cancer treatment?"
"Yes, Jack. We were able to make something that could target and destroy cancer cells within a few days. The problem was, it worked too well and caused tumor lysis syndrome. We needed to find another way to remove the bulk of the cancer cells in his pancreas."
"And I’m assuming surgery wasn’t an option?" he asked.
"Correct. The cancer had spread throughout his pancreas in filaments. Removing all those filaments would have shredded his pancreas. In the end, I invented a new form of robotic surgery."
"Calling it a robot is like calling a monkey a fork!" said Katie. "It’s like nothing out there."
"What is it? How does it work?" asked Jack.
"It’s a computer-controlled, nano-biotic fluid that can separate and reattach tissue, identify tissue types, and remove tissue targeted deep inside organs. We used it to remove the bulk of the cancerous tissue from Lars’ pancreas before administering the original treatment to find and kill the remaining cancerous cells."
"It was amazing, Jack," said Katie. "No bleeding, no stitches, it only took an hour to remove all the cancer. And there was no scar, even at the point of entry. This thing will revolutionize surgery treatment!"
"So, is it like some kind of smart-metal?" asked Phineas?
"I really hate that name," muttered Nora.
"Why," asked Jack.
"Because the fluid isn’t metal and isn’t smart. The nanobots are mostly carbon and silicon based, and all the smarts are in the computer that controls it. Katie and I tried to think of a name for it, but all the names we came up with are either wildly inaccurate or creepy."
"Yes," said Katie. "Surgical slime just doesn’t work."
"What about nano-fluidic surgical assistant?" asked Madison.
"That’s better. I guess," said Nora, "but it doesn’t roll off the tongue."
"Autodoc?" asked Cindy.
"No," said Nora. "It’s not automatic. It still requires human control and direction."
"Nano-doc?" asked someone.
"N.R.S.A?" asked Rina.
"Narsa?" asked Jack.
"Yes. Nano robotic surgical assistant," Rina replied. "Or N.F.S.A., if you prefer nano-fluidic surgical assistant."
"Let’s table that decision for now and move on to the larger question. Do we want to make this thing available to the public? And if so, when and how?" said Jack.
"Yes," said Nora. "Yes, we need to make this available. It will revolutionize surgery. Especially difficult surgeries like brain surgery. But it’s not ready for release yet. We still need to do a lot of testing to make sure it cannot accidentally sever nerves or arteries."
"I’m sorry if this is a stupid question," said Cindy, "but could you make an autodoc? Is that possible, or just science fantasy?"
"It’s possible, theoretically," said Nora. "But we still need to improve the imaging technology and make significant improvements in AI. What we created is close to what I would call a semi-autodoc. Smart enough to do most of the tedious work, but still needing oversight and direction from an experienced surgeon."
"I assume it would require a lot of animal trials before even being approved for human trials? Then even more trials before it’s approved for medical use?" asked Jack.
"Yes," said Nora, "though I think we are still at least a year away from having something that I would be comfortable making public."
"Plus, the software needs a lot of work," said Rina. "What we used we trained specifically for Lar’s surgery. I would not trust it to do the same surgery on someone else, even if they had the same kind of cancer. Medical software needs to be deterministic and reliable. Lives depend on it."
"Alright, great work, Nora, Rina, Katie. I want us to develop this technology, but let’s not shift our priorities for now. Our main focus is getting a foothold in the VR and AI markets, and developing photonics."
"Why photonics?" asked Heidy. "I understand how much of boost to computational power it could provide, but why would we want to prioritize that over a life-saving medical technology?"
"We’ve been using massive quantities of supercomputers to brute-force the search for solutions to problems. It’s what I used to create NRSA. When Rina enabled us to upgrade our Cerebras cluster to a giga-cube cluster, we gained a 250-times increase in compute power," said Nora.
Then she added, "And that 250-fold increase meant a 250-fold increase in how fast I could find solutions to nanotech problems."
"Ah, I understand," said Heidy. "If you can crack photonics, you might get an additional 100 to 1000 times increase in compute power. Which will translate to an even faster problem-solving speed."
"Yes," said Jack. "I think we can solve any remaining issues with Narsa faster if we focus on photonics first."
He then turned to Astrid.
"Astrid, I understand you’ve been working with Rina on the designs for the fabricators we need. Can you share your progress and any issues that remain unsolved?"