“As I mentioned back at the apartment,” Pia continued, “Nano has made major strides in molecular manufacturing so they can build complex devices here atom by atom, such as the microbivores.”

All of a sudden Pia stopped, and George stopped, too. “Does it sound like I’m giving you a lecture? Maybe you don’t want to hear all this. You can just tell me to shut up. I’m really excited about what I’m doing here. I might have come to Colorado mainly to get away from New York and my father, to deal with my guilt about Will, and to clear my mind career-wise, but work here has taken me over. I find it as engaging as what I had been doing back with Rothman before he died.”

“I want to hear about it,” George said, eager to keep Pia talking. “Really, I do.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay, because I think you’re going to be intrigued, provided you listen instead of zoning out like you did in the apartment.”

“I’m listening!”

Pia started walking again, gesturing with her hands as if she were fully Italian rather than just half. George followed, keeping up with her, watching. In truth he was only half-interested in the details of what she was saying. The other half was just enjoying her company, her excitement, and her remarkable physiognomy, with her almond-shaped eyes; incredibly long, dark eyelashes; delicately sculpted nose; and absolutely flawless skin. George would be happy to follow her anywhere. He was a basket case, but so be it, even if he had little understanding of why.

Pia took George at his word and kept talking: “Each individual microbivore has more than six hundred billion atoms arranged in its elaborate structure. It’s actually a bit more than six hundred billion, but what’s a few billion here or there?” She laughed at her own humor. “They are tiny, functioning robots with movable arms that seek out and grab pathogenic microbes and guide them into a digestion chamber, where they’re eliminated. It’s incredible. Okay, here we are.”

Pia stopped in front of a blank door protected by another iris scanner. She positioned herself, mostly her head, so that the sensor could scan her iris. A light over the door clicked green. George was about to follow suit when she restrained him. “You don’t have to do anything. This scanner is just to get the door open.”

Once inside, George immediately thought of Professor Rothman’s lab back at Columbia, but this was larger and more modern. He heard the familiar low hum from the vent hoods and from the array of medical machinery dotted around the room.

“Impressive,” George said.

“It is. My boss keeps telling me there’s fifty million dollars’ worth of equipment in this lab alone.”

“Your boss, this Zachary Berman guy?”

“No, he’s the big boss. My direct boss is a woman named Mariel Spallek, who’s not my favorite person in the world.” Pia didn’t elaborate. She put down her backpack, picked up a ledger, and moved over to a central display console with readouts from all the biotech equipment. With a pencil Pia ticked off some boxes in the ledger and wrote in others.