Charlotte smiles at me, and I can tell she’s thinking it will all be the same as ever, or maybe a bit worse. She sees grief ahead, I know, and she thinks I should accept it. And not feel guilty either. You didn’t give her dementia, she says, and anyway, your mum’s not really there in her body now, is she? You’re visiting an empty place, like an old temple where once a spirit lived, but now has long since flown away. You don’t have to keep going there, hoping to hear faint echoes of the departed. But I do hear echoes, and sometimes more. If between them Winifred and these nanobots can do anything for Mum to make her last few months on earth a little more like life, a little more – I don’t know, not enjoyable, I suppose, but tolerable, or at least gentle – it’s worth it.

‘Maybe by then I’ll have got this damn thing working, too,’ says Charlotte.

Winifred

Behind the care home, out of sight, are a store for medical equipment and supplies, a laundry, and a mortuary. If a resident dies during the night – the most common time for humans to die – their bodies are brought here for collection so the others aren’t disturbed by undertakers or ambulances.

This morning at 2am I went there to collect the nanobots developed for our residents. Each of them has their own tailored dose.

Dr Morton shared with us via the Hub information about how the nanobots will function. In Margaret’s dose, some nanobots are to monitor her blood, to patrol her organs and look for abnormal cells, and others are to seek out any viruses or bacteria her immune system can’t deal with. In addition, there are nanobots to repair damaged structures in her joints and muscles, her eyes, and in her brain. These will look at the physical damage that may underlie her dementia.

We have all watched a recording of the nanobots at work. It showed a microscopic view of human retinal cells. Approaching them was a fleet of tiny machines, much smaller than the cells.

The magnification increased. We could see the machines clearly. They were shaped like grains of rice, but infinitely smaller. They had two arms with gripping claws at the front, a set of six legs folded beneath them, a fish-like tail, propelling them through the fluid, and an articulated body. They were like mechanical silverfish, and they gleamed dully.

Then we saw a different kind towards the back of the fleet. These were rectangular in shape, and lacked claws.

Dr Morton had provided a commentary for this recording.

‘You are looking at nanobots,’ she said. ‘These are third-generation machines. The first generation was built by synthetic workers – similar to Helpers. The second and third were built by the preceding generation of nanobots, enabling us to get down to sizes smaller than human cells.