"Ringo, John - Council Wars 1 - There Will Be Dragons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

was an undersea view of a coral reef, the walls alight with schools of colorful
fish. The combination was both pleasing to the eye and soothing, with the
background noise of gentle music adding to the tranquilizing effect.
"Wha'?"
"It's complicated to explain," she replied with a frown. "And I have to have
your approval beforehand." She didn't mention that she had contacted his parents
as well and after a tremendous argument they had both agreed that they frankly,
didn't care what she did with him as long as she left them alone.
"A-anything!" the boy stammered. "If you 'ink it will 'ork."
"I want you to understand it first," she said sternly. "Especially that it is a
distinct risk andЕ it's not any sort of normal procedure." She held up her hand
as he started to protest. "Hear me out.
"First I have to explain why it's not a normal procedure.
"In the dawn of medicine, doctors could only treat one thing at a time. If a
person had an ailment, all they could do was treat the ailment. There was once a
condition called 'diabetes.' Its direct cause was a problem with the pancreas
gland. That problem usually stemmed from some other condition. But all that
doctors could do was treat the symptom because they didn't have a way to
practice true holistic medicine. Even after they began to understand gland
repair, they could only fix the gland, not the underlying causes.
"Back in those days there was something that killed old people all the time
called 'systems failure.' One part of their body would shut down, then another
then another. Sometimes the first one could be repaired, the patient might get a
heart or liver transplant or repair. But the very repair would throw extraЕ
weight on other systems. Then they would shut down faster.
"It was only with advances in nano-medicine that they began to be able to treat
the whole body, the whole amazing system that is the living human organism. And
since we began to understand how to do that, it became the norm. If you have a
problem with your liver, we find all the systems that are linked and either
taking damage from or contributing to the problem, or quite often both, and we
fix them all at the same time. You with me?"
"Yes, 'octor," he said. "Sort of."
"Well I think the only way to fix you is to turn back the clock," she continued.
"We can't fix you all at once because what is going wrong is all your nerve
cells, including your brain. We have toЕ work on one piece at a time. But in
very rapid succession. Shut down one nerve or a series of nerves, cut them out
of the system, repair or replace them and then reactivate that section.
"What we have to do is, in essence, kill bits of you and then bring them back to
life. Somewhat like a Frankenstein monster."
"A whuh?"
"Never mind, old, old reference. But you understand the general idea?"
"Yes," he said. "But 'hat aboutЕ you know." He tapped his head.
"That's the tricky bit," she admitted. "I'm going to let the autodoc do the rest
of your body more or less by itself. What I'll do is monitor the brain repair. I
think we can work our way through bit by bit. The brain is always active, but
bits of it are inactive at times. We'll work on them bit by bit."
"Oh." Herzer blew out a breath. " 'At'sЕ"
"Scary," she admitted. "In addition, beforehand, we'll take aЕ picture of you
off-line, something like a Transference. Because of your scrambled signals it
probably won't be a good picture. If we have to use it, I'm not sure that you'll