Thicker Than Blood Read Online Free PDF

and held Mark's shoulders, "Why did you tell him?" "He's cool," Mark uttered. Joe couldn't even tell if Mark believed himself. Lucy and Joe stared at Mark. After pausing a for a second, Mark turned to Joe. "I know you guys don't trust Amman. He's pretty mysterious about things we share, but I believe he is a good-hearted guy. We would have been up the creek without his knowledge. I told him what you said, and he stopped me. I wanted to put the blood in the fridge and he suggested that we should wait until we knew what we where dealing with. He put them under a microscope and thought he was looking at a gigantic virus. He called somebody, and we picked up a scanning tunneling microscope." Mark began to digress. "It's so cool, the nanites have these little recessed squares, they have to be..." Lucy started talking over Mark. "I'm still not seeing how he saved us Mark." She didn't look convinced. "He stopped me from following Joe's instructions. We experimented with a few nanites and put them in the fridge. It's great for blood cells, but it destroys the nanites." Mark looked at Joe, "They break into about fifteen pieces. Looks like they were designed to fail if they get too cool. We've been keeping them at ninety-eight degrees ever since." "Oops." Joe was turning red. "In my defense I was a bit delirious." "Point taken." Mark said. Mark looked at Lucy. "Okay. We can't make him un-know," Lucy said. She strained her face into a half smile. "One small problem," Mark said, "They don't do anything. Maybe they were just being used for data collection?" "Even then they would need to be powered on to communicate," Joe said. His friends watched him stare into space. "I think I know why," he continued. Joe didn't elaborate. He focused on recalling his time in the hospital. "Okay want to share?" Mark asked. "No." Joe matched Mark's sarcasm. "I think my aunt turned them off. That's why I almost died."
    "Oh." Mark paused. "How?" "A machine," Joe muttered. He was staring intently. "And gee I thought it would be a sacred dance." Mark was smiling. "Hey why not. Doctors definitely don't have enough fun," Lucy said. The guys both looked at her, eyebrows raised. "It could be done that way with nanites in the eyes... What?" "There was a paddle, attached to a wheeled machine with a screen, and a laptop." "A defibrillator on low power!" Mark shouted. "Who's the man? Who's the man?" He began do dance around the room. "Watch out, you'll turn them on." Joe said, laughing. "So let's go. I want to see them," Lucy said. "Okay, we need to get over to the shop. Wait. Let me call Amman and tell him how to turn them on." Mark circled around changing his direction three times. He walked out of the living room. When he emerged, he was talking on a phone. "Hello Amman. You turn them on with a low power defibrillator, and some kind of laptop signal current control thingy. Yes, I'm sure. That's what Joe saw from his bed. Okay, we'll be there soon." Mark hung up the phone. "Amman is going to try some basic signals with current. This is going to be so cool!" "Don't you think you might fry them if you send too much power out?" Lucy asked. "Nah. Amman's been separating them one or two at a time to experiment with. We must have ten thousand in that sample." Mark seemed confidant. "Let's get some lunch." "Sounds good to me. I'm starving," Joe said. Lucy looked deep in thought. "You know, I think you are a little off." "Yeah, so?" Mark reached out to grab his keys. "A defibrillator is still way too powerful and too simple to turn the current down that much." "Should I call Amman back?" He started to walk toward the phone. "No, but we will need to stop at the store on the way. We need a chip and probe," Lucy said. "What did they use on me?" Joe asked. He was trying to read Lucy's face. Lucy touched her stomach. "One paddle not two, right? And a big screen?" "Yeah, that sounds right," Joe replied.
    "It sounds like an ultrasound machine." Lucy smiled.
Chapter 7
    Joe looked