“They are not intimidated by such an R-and-D budget, knowing that nanotechnology is already a seventy-billion-dollar-a-year phenomenon. They’re smart enough to know they’re getting a bargain, considering Nano’s leap forward with molecular manufacturing. It is incredible how quickly they can make up their minds, knowing they are investing in the future. From the very first meeting I had with them, they wanted to be part of Nano’s future. The only problem was that they wanted some proof that nanorobots would work as well as I said they would, so they made their investment in microbivores and future molecular manufacturing dependent on my showing them definitive proof. Someone high up the food chain apparently not satisfied in China’s performance in the Beijing Olympics says, ‘This guy has to prove this stuff works. If he takes a good athlete and makes him a world-class athlete, that will prove to us that he knows what he’s doing.’”

“What stuff?” said Pia. “You said, ‘prove this stuff works.’ What ‘stuff’ are you talking about?”

“It’s what I presume you saw in those two blood samples.”

“The blue nanorobots.”

“Yes. Do you know what they are?”

“My guess is that they’re respirocytes.”

“I’m impressed.”

“It had to be something that contributed to the athletes’ endurance. Superefficient oxygen carriers. I read about them when I first arrived at Nano at the same time I read up on microbivores. I suppose it would explain some of the medical anomalies seen with the runner.”

“The respirocytes supply oxygen to the athlete’s bloodstream far more effectively than regular red blood cells. A thousand times better, to be exact. They are so effective that the subject’s heart doesn’t even have to be beating for adequate oxygen to be available for several hours in a patient’s brain. Which is why the subjects who had cardiac arrest showed no neurological side effects after being heart-dead for up to an hour or two. As we later learned, the initial cardiac arrest problem was caused by the respirocytes simply because they worked too well. They triggered what we found to be a hyperoxic, hypermetabolic state resulting in a kind of heatstroke with cardiac arrest. The first test subjects simply got too large of a dose, even though it was only five cubic centimeters of the nanorobot suspension. We had no idea at how efficient the respirocytes would prove to be. It is a great harbinger for the success of the microbivores.”

“And the Chinese wanted proof that these nanorobot respirocytes, designed and manufactured by Nano, could make an athlete super-effective?”