“. . . and another reason I came here to Boulder was because of Will McKinley’s osteomyelitis infection in his skull. If you haven’t guessed, I feel overwhelmingly guilty about his condition. Indirectly, I was responsible. My hope is that we can use nanotechnology in the form of a microbivore-based antibacterial treatment on him. We’ve got them here at Nano, and they work. What is needed at this point is FDA approval, which is what we’re going to be working for as soon as we finish preliminary safety studies. Ever since I’ve been here I’ve been working with these microbivores. They are amazing.”

“Microbivores? You’ll need to fill me in a little.”

“George, you weren’t listening. Didn’t you hear what I was just telling you about what I’ve been doing here for eighteen months?”

“My mind wandered a bit,” George admitted. His uncertain smile returned. The hoped-for rapprochement with Pia was testing his less-than-perfect diplomatic skills.

“I’m not supposed to be talking about what we are doing before all the patents are formalized, but what the hell. I haven’t breathed a word to anyone. I trust you will keep what I say under your hat.”

“No problem,” George assured her. He wanted to encourage her. Counting on his confidence was a suggestion of intimacy, for which George hungered.

“It’s going to be a new type of antisepsis,” Pia continued. “The antibiotic era of fighting bacteria is near its end. I mean, bacteria are developing resistance faster than new antibiotics can be found. The hope is that medical nanotechnology will come to the rescue and provide rapid cures, particularly for sepsis. Specifically, I’m convinced it could cure Will’s osteomyelitis.”

“How will nanotechnology help Will?”

“As I said: by using the microscopic nanorobots called, appropriately enough, microbivores, which I’ve been working with for almost two years. They are much smaller than red blood cells, and they eat bacteria and other microorganisms when introduced into the bloodstream of a living animal. They’ll even be able to be programmed to seek out, eat, and digest infectious proteins like prions or the tau proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease, which antibiotics are useless against.”

“I’m sorry to have to admit this, but my knowledge of nanomedicine isn’t the greatest. I mean, I know how it has contributed to sun screens, but that’s about it.”

“Well, you are going to have to catch up or you’re going to be left behind. Medical nanotechnology is the future. It’s going to totally change medicine, probably as much as regenerative stem cell technology. Between the two, five or ten years from now, the practice of medicine is going to be completely different.”

“Microbivores coursing around in the body eating up bacteria. Sounds like that old science-fiction movie Fantastic Voyage.”

“I guess. I never saw it. But this is not science fiction.”

“And they are smaller than a red blood cell?”

“Absolutely. The ones I’m working on are ovoid, with their long axis about three micrometers long, which is six times smaller than the width of a human hair.”