- Author's Note: I wasn't planning on continuing this story, but 1.14 had more "science"-fiction that I just needed to logic out, and this was the result.
Special thanks to xyber116 for beta'ing this technobabble-y chapter.
I don't own the characters or Revolution; I'm just playing with them for a bit for fun, not profit. Spoilers for 1.13 and 1.14
Beth Warren had insisted that Aaron and Rachel spend the night before continuing their journey to 'finish some business in Colorado.' Rachel was relieved; this would give her a chance to search Jane's house for some vital information about how to shut down The Tower.
Beth settled Aaron and Rachel into the guest bedroom and said good night. Dr. Jane Warren didn't want anything to do with her guests, and was nowhere to be found. Rachel was wondering how long she should wait before beginning to search for Jane's notes – for any self-respecting science would keep a lab notebook – when Aaron interrupted her thoughts.
"Do you know what happened to those militiamen; how they got magically charred?" he asked.
Rachel tried to ignore the question, and sat down upon the queen-sized bed, but Aaron insisted, "You must know! You didn't look nearly as surprised as you should. Those men burnt up from the inside, and you barely blinked."
Rachel sighed, and asked Aaron, "What do you know about microwaves?"
Aaron, taken aback by the implications of the question, stuttered a bit before straightening up and launching into an Aaron Pittman lecture (patent pending), "Microwaves are a class of electromagnetic radiation, like ultraviolet light or gamma rays. They are longer and have less energy than ultraviolet, visible, or infrared light, but are shorter and more energetic than radio waves. Microwave ovens used to use light of this length to excite water in food. The radiation would cause the water to 'dance,' which would cause the rest of the molecules in the food to heat up by friction."
Rachel smiled at the lecture, started unzipping her boots, and began her explanation, "When I said I couldn't get the nanites to transmit energy, that wasn't completely true. I could get them to transmit incoherent – unfocused – microwave radiation. Enough to fry someone from inside out –"
Aaron interrupted, "Like before." Then he sat down on a wooden chair in the corner of the guest bedroom.
Rachel continued, "Yes, like before; but it wasn't coherent enough to power any devices. Dr. Jane Warren was working on using pinpoint microwave lasers – or masers – to irradiate and kill cancer tumors, a fairly ambitious project at Johns Hopkins University, when Randall brought her in.
"But even she couldn't directly solve the coherence issue. However, she did figure out how to 'tune' the nanites to exactly the right wavelength to excite water – 112 millimeters. She even determined a way to transmit a programing signal in a directional beam to get the nanites to transmit the radiation –"
"Like the microwave ray gun?" Queried Aaron.
"Exactly," answered Rachel, tossing her boots to the floor, before continuing, "But even that little 'microwave ray gun' she used earlier was nothing compared to her masterwork."
Rachel curled her legs up under her chin and took a breath, "Dr. Warren figured out a way to instruct nanites in a limited area to microwave foreign bodies. In her wife Beth's case, she programed the nanites to heat up and kill cells with abnormal cell-membrane markers, typical of her metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma – liver cancer. I don't really understand whick markers the nanites were programed to look for, or how the nanites actually recognize them, but Jane always explained it to me as a way to turn the nanites into little killer T-cells."
Aaron interrupted to ask, "Killer T-cells?"
"Well, cell biology is not my forte, but killer T-cells are part of the body's natural immune system. They look at the markers on the outside of cells for signs of trouble. If the killer T-cell detects a marker indicative of a virus infection they pop the infected cell open. Killer T-cells also look for cancer cells – a by-product of the process of becoming cancerous usually includes changes to the outer membrane markers. Different kinds of cancers change the cell-membrane markers in different ways, and the same cancer in different people can have different abnormal cell-membrane markers. Jane also said the nanites would have never worked with a cancer that changed its cell-membrane markers upon metastasis, like many kinds of breast cancer."
Rachel took a pause to decide if she should mention Danny and the capsule designed to reprogram nanites to help his condition, but decided that Aaron had enough to think of for right now. "Anyways, the microwave radiation function of these nanites has kept Beth Warren alive these past 16 years. You can understand why Jane is more than a little annoyed with us for asking for her help to get to The Tower and shut them down."
Aaron nodded understandingly. Rachel added, trying to fluster and divert Aaron from asking any more difficult-to-answer questions, "What do you want to do about the bed situation?"
It worked – Aaron was flustered and tried to work out an equitable sharing of the bed. Rachel was faintly amused; little did he know, but she had gone through things much, much, worse – orders of magnitude worse – than simply sharing a bed with a benevolent, non-threatening, friend.
I guess I will continue trying to make scientific sense of Kripke's explanations for how the power went out, and if the writers ever explain Danny's condition, I'll try to logic that out too. I hope the writers don't turn the nanites into little panaceas, but we will see.
I hope you guys like it, and it is comprehensible. Reviews and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated, heck even non-constructive criticism would be okay.
