My Ultimate Sign-in System Made Me Invincible

As the clinical trial continued, it progressed smoothly. The staff picked up the next set of volunteers observers. Two volunteers— 85, 86 — from Nursultan Nazarbayev International, Astana, Kazakhstan and three &— 32, 33, 34 — from Charles de Gaulle, Paris, France.

Their arrival increased the number of volunteers at the Base to 11

They had their two hours of rest after arrival at the Base, before they were taken to the clinical trial section, and take into their individual rooms.

After that, their assigned nurse assessed them for the last time, then read them the consent document, making sure they understand before signing.

When they got to the livestream section, two of the volunteers agreed. One of them was a 42 years old male from France, and his condition was stage 3 ALS.

He stated something, as he gave his consent.

“I want to do my part in giving the world hope. I came in a wheelchair and I hope to walk out on my two feets.”

The second volunteer that agreed to the livestream was 42 years female from Kazakhstan, suffering from severe lupus.

Their concession to be on the livestream, increased the number of volunteers on the livestream.

The number of viewers watching the livestream had shot up from 4.8B when it first started, to 6.3B in just over twenty four hours.

No physical changes occured in the first set of volunteers even after more than thirty hours of nanites deployment.

But after the 48 hours mark, the patient that had physical condition, started noticing physical changes.

By then the third set of volunteers had observers had arrived at the Base. The volunteers were about to start receiving their nanite deployment.

The new volunteers were ten in total and they came in from Auckland Airport, Auckland, New Zealand — 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 100 — and from El Dorado International, Bogotá, Colombia — 12, 13, 14.

On the 48 hours mark, Diego saw his legs slowly regrowing, shocking him. He exclaimed, calling for a nurse.

A nurse rushed into his ward but stopped in the doorway, at the sight in front of her.

Her hand was still on the frame and her feet had not moved, because what was happening on the bed had interrupted the signal between her brain and her legs.

Diego was sitting upright, both palms pressed flat against the bed surface, his eyes fixed on his own body with an expression she had never seen on a patient’s face before. It was an expression that said that he could not look away from what was happening and could not fully believe it either.

The nurse saw that the stumps had changed.

That was the only word her training gave her and it was immediately insufficient. Changed implied a difference between before and after. What she was watching had no after yet. It was continuous, moving, happening in the present tense in a way that her eyes confirmed and her brain kept refusing.

Tissue was building at the terminus of each residual limb. It wasn’t the slow process she had read about in regenerative medicine literature. This was visible. This was trackable. She could watch it happen if she held her gaze steady and did not move and did not breathe too hard.

The shape of a knee was emerging from the left limb. The tissue was layering from the inside outward, the surface changing texture as it built, the color shifting through stages she had no clinical vocabulary for.

The right limb was slightly behind, perhaps thirty seconds of progress behind the left, and she could see the difference in stage between them if she looked quickly from one to the other.

Both of Diego’s hands were shakin, but not from pain. His jaw was set and his eyes were bright and his breathing was controlled with deliberate effort, as he was trying to stay calm in the face of something so overwhelming.

Marco had also rushed into the ward and he said nothing when he saw what was happening.

The nurse finally moved. She crossed the room to the monitoring display and looked at the data, and what she saw confirmed what her eyes had shown her but made it no easier to hold.

The nerve regeneration indicators for both limbs were moving so fast the numbers blurred at the edges. The tissue reconstruction queue was active across seventeen parallel tracks. The blood vessel formation sub-process had its own column and it was climbing.

She looked at Diego again.

He looked at her, and in his eyes was a question he didn’t have the Spanish for and didn’t need, because the answer was already on her face.

She pulled the only thing available to her — a long, slow breath — and she said, steadily: “Your legs are regrowing.”

Marco translated without hesitation, from where he was.

Diego looked back at his legs.

His hands, still shaking, moved from the bed surface to the edges of his thighs, pressing lightly, as though he could feel through his palms what was happening underneath, as though touch might make it more real than sight already had.

He said something, very quietly.

Marco’s voice, when he translated, was not entirely steady. “He says he can feel them coming back.”

Diego wasn’t the only one experiencing changes. The remaining five volunteers were experiencing them also. But some were more noticeable than others. Especially for those that had more physical condition like Diego.

***

The past two to three days has passed rather quietly for the first set of observers that arrived at the Base.

But it wasn’t as quiet as the indicators they were watching from their section of the monitoring room, was moving and changing rapidly.

Observers had joined the first set in the monitoring room section, and they all were really shocked by the data they were able to get from the indicators.

Then the window for the first set of volunteers changed.

Dr. Amara Diallo saw it first. She had been mid-sentence in her notes, writing about a careful, measured observation she noticed about the nerve regeneration sequencing, when her pen stopped moving.

The tissue at the terminus of Diego’s left residual limb was building.

She knew what she was looking at. She had the vocabulary. Fifteen years of field medicine in West Africa had given her a clinical language extensive enough to describe almost anything the human body could do or fail to do. But her vocabulary did not cover this.

Beside her, Dr. Sorensen turned from his own notebook and looked at her face before he looked at the screen. Her expression was not one he had seen on her before. He looked at the screen and his notebook closed. He did not close it deliberately, as his hand simply tightened and he held it against his chest without looking at it.

The shape of a knee was emerging. That was the only way to say it. Emerging. From within. The tissue layering outward through stages that had no clinical name because the process had never existed to be named.

The other observers had the same or slightly varying reaction, but shock was a constant.

Nova stood at the center of the room, watching the indicators display on the monitoring room’s massive holographic screen.

She saw that the nerve regeneration indicators for both of Diego’s limbs were moving faster than the numbers could cleanly render. Seventeen active parallel tracks in the tissue reconstruction queue. The blood vessel formation column was climbing.

The audio feed from Diego’s room carried Marco’s translation into the monitoring space at low volume.

He says he can feel them coming back.

The observers who had recovered slightly and had started taking notes heavily, paused when they heard what Marco said.