The next morning, I was invited into Doctor Foster's office. I don't know why, but even though I pretty much passed out earlier than usual last night, I still felt tired, and more than a bit unwell for some reason. That morning, I had woken up earlier than usual with severe acid reflux in my throat.

I hate acid reflux, let me tell you.

While I'd been dealing with reflux for at least the last five years or so, today was the first time it was so bad that I almost threw up. My throat also burned raw, and was that the taste of blood I'd woken up with?

I felt the first pangs of anxiety, and tried to dismiss it as nothing. Still, I was eager to get it addressed with the doctor.

"Hi Doc," I greeted her without preamble. "Did my tests come back indicating anything?"

The sharp look that Rochelle gave me was frightening. Did she know something? Her face relaxed into one of resignation in an instant though. "Yes," she said simply. "But I want to come back to that in a moment. Did something prompt the question today?"

"Yeah," I sighed, still tasting the metallic hint of blood in the back of my throat. "I woke up early this morning, with a really bad case of acid reflux, and I thought I tasted blood."

Rochelle nodded. She seemed to expect I'd say something about this. Was there something in the environment that they weren't telling their subjects about? "Rick, I'm about to tell you something that your GP should have picked up long ago," she said, her tone one of taut professionalism, but I could hear an angry undertone to it.

"Go on," I prompted her.

"Well," Rochelle sighed, before continuing. "The preliminary results have come back from your blood tests and the scans we did of you yesterday. It's not good," she paused, turning the standard office LCD panel that was mounted to her desk, so I could see it. On the screen were side-by-side images of my chest X-Ray, CT scan and MRI from the area. Clearly there was something odd about the way the X-Ray looked, but I'm no medic, and could not understand the CT or MRI scans. "See the growth on the X-Ray? It's near your oesophagus and is likely the cause of your issues. I've no idea how long it's been there, because the last X-Ray you had performed on your chest was over three years ago, your last MRI was twelve years ago, and you've never had a CT scan before."

My head felt fuzzy, I could almost feel the blood drain from my upper body as my heart came to a sudden stop in shock. What the hell was this? "Cancer?" I breathed, unable to summon the strength to voice the thought too loudly. "How long?"

Rochelle held up a hand. "Let's not get into that, right now," she began to say.

Are you fucking shitting me, doc? I couldn't believe this. Here, she'd just given me what was probably the worst news of my life, news that meant I probably had months, if not weeks left to live, and she wanted me to fucking pause the subject to go on to something else?

"How long?!" I insisted feeling the anger welling in my gut.

Rochelle stopped and waited. "Take a breath-"

"Dammit, Doctor!" My heart was pounding in my chest, and I couldn't take much more of this. "How long, for God's sake?!"

Rochelle waited. "Either you take a breath, and calm down-"

"Please just tell me-"

"Or I won't tell you anything further and you can go back to your room for the day!"

I was stunned. She was treating me like a child who had misbehaved.

I had no choice. I needed to know what the fuck was going on, and it was clear that this... Doctor, was not going to play ball until I danced to her tune.

I glared at her, letting her know in no uncertain terms that I was not pleased.

"This tumour is precisely the reason why we are developing the nanomachines in the first place. It's the very reason why I have a job here, rather than in some other clinic," Rochelle told me calmly. "Everyone on this project from the top down has either lost family members or friends to cancer, survived cancer themselves, or knows someone who has been subject to cancer in some way." It was at that moment, I caught a brief glimpse of sadness behind Rochelle's eyes. Clearly she fell into the first category, though I had no idea who or what. "What I tell you now is the reason why you were made to sign non-disclosure forms to begin with," Rochelle continued. "We have working nanomachines already, and we're going to deploy them today."

My heart rate kicked up again. They were going to test these nanomachines today? I thought that Ray had been blowing smoke about these nanomachines the whole time.

They had actual working prototypes?

"You're going to inject them into me today?" I asked.

Rochelle nodded. "Our testing window is usually quite limited. If they were already on the market, then theoretically we could deploy them at any point as long as you were alive regardless of the stage of cancer you had, but this is a testing environment, and we want to make sure everything is controlled as tightly as possible to eliminate any variables."

"...Alright," I eventually replied, more than slightly shell shocked.

"Now, once we finish up in this office, I'm going to take you to the research lab off of the exercise hall to administer you your dosage of nanos, and then we'll give them a day to embed in your system. You'll feel no ill effects. Their programming is tightly-controlled and will be bound to your genome so as not to cause any issues as they get to work on your health."

"Wait," I had the Doctor stop. "What do you mean?"

Rochelle then proceeded to explain, in surprising detail, that what the nanomachines were going to do was to bind to my body, and begin making changes at the cellular level. Over time, I would notice the effects. They would have an emergency programme embedded in their code to start reconfiguring the cancerous cells so as they would no longer be harmful to me, and then they would default to a general well-being programme that would look after my health in general. What exactly that entailed, Rochelle didn't explain in this meeting, and I suspected that they wanted to get this phase out of the way first. When I asked her to explain how they would be capable of complex instructions when they were too tiny for any real memory processing ability, Rochelle explained that they were designed from the very beginning to utilise swarm logic and shared memory.

Of course, the manner in which she did so suggested this was all from rote memory exercise, than from actual working knowledge of how such computational systems worked. While I was a technical support engineer in my professional field, I kept up on current technologies and had a pretty firm grasp of the concepts Rochelle was attempting to describe to me.

While they may individually be fairly simple machines, their logic was complex enough to allow swarm tasking, enough memory to be able to make this possible, and also a strong enough wireless adapter to make communication chaining possible at a short range; something of the order of double-digit micrometres. With the number of nanomachines injected into any given patient, this would allow a computational ability similar to most desktop computers within the last six years, which impressed the hell out of me.

Honestly, I gave it very little thought before I agreed to it, and Rochelle took me to the lab to receive my injection.

The syringe they injected me with contained a clear-blue substance that had an ever-so-slightly blue mist quality to it. Other than the usual discomfort of having a needle shoved into my vein to inject them into my bloodstream, I didn't feel anything out of the ordinary.

"There," the lab tech told me. "They'll start distributing themselves throughout your nervous system within a few minutes. Then the real work begins."

Rochelle nodded to the young man, and escorted me out of the lab and back toward the lift. "They'll start to get to work almost immediately."

"Wait," I called out, stopping her. "Don't they need to be programmed to do... What they need to do?"

"Yes," Rochelle told me. "I spent half the night on the programme last night."

I could have kicked myself. It was only now, I was realising how exhausted Rochelle looked. "Sorry," I started to stammer, utterly ashamed I'd been so selfish as to worry about my own problems when she was so busy trying to make me well again.

"You've had other things on your mind," Rochelle said to me, giving my arm a comforting squeeze.

It was nice, and I hadn't realised how much I'd needed that physical gesture.

"Still..." I found myself trailing off, staring off at a wall, plagued by guilt.

"Think no more of it," she told me, gently pushing me back toward the lift. "Rest. Put your feet up. Grab something to read, or whatever. I'll be back tomorrow to give you another examination, and then we can see how effective these machines are."

Her tone was encouraging, and I decided to do the smart thing and take her advice.

The following morning, I woke up to an irritating table alarm.

For the first time in years, I couldn't remember feeling any acid reflux during the night, and the taste of blood was utterly absent.

Weird.

In fact, I couldn't remember the last time I didn't feel some weird sort of heart palpitations.

I sat up. My head swam for a moment, but that was all, and that dizzy feeling lasted only a second or two.

Yeah, I was sure of it. That was far briefer than normally happened.

I stood, swallowed some saliva that had accumulated, and then realised that I had no difficulty swallowing whatsoever.

Alright, this was beginning to be surreal.

In the years that this cancer of mine had grown, I had slowly gotten used to the narrowing of my oesophagus and the increased difficulty in getting food into my body.

Strange, how I had not lost any weight that I was aware of.

Or had I? When was the last time I was on a set of scales? Well, let's do something about that now, I thought to myself, and then stood on the provided scales in my bathroom.

Twenty-four stone and three pounds. Three hundred and Thirty-Nine if you were an American. Still pretty bad.

I threw on the provided comfortable clothing, then I saw myself in the mirror. What a sorry state I was, I remembered thinking as I sighed dejectedly at the reflection of myself.

Sure, I was almost sixty, and this sort of thing shouldn't matter any longer, but it did. I still remember it like it was yesterday, when I was slim and fit, and didn't feel like having a fucking heart attack just from thinking about maybe going out for a walk next year sometime. Of course, this entire situation was my fault. I had not taken advantage of my earlier fitness, and now, here I am, paying for it in my later years.

I finished cleaning myself up and travelled to the lift. It was time to see the doctor again.

Rochelle was waiting for me.

She gave me a brief examination, then told me what she had found.

"I'll need to take another X-Ray today," she began. "Normally I would prefer to leave it a while, but given the unusual circumstances, I think it's worth doing to see what state the cancer is in."

I nodded. For some reason, I didn't feel quite so panicked today. Maybe the news of my cancer had settled into my mind, and the reality of my situation was no longer a surprise. While I was undergoing this experimental treatment, I didn't have to worry too much about my life expectancy, unless something went wrong. "I take it we have the usual round of tests as well?"

"Indeed we do," Rochelle told me.

So, for the next few hours, I found myself again on the treadmill, facing the X-Ray machine, and then having more blood drawn. This time, they only drew a small amount of blood, and as I watched it being withdrawn, I could see that it was ever-so-slightly different, but I couldn't identify how.

Maybe it was the nanomachines that I now had running around in my veins?

After the tests were concluded, I sat back down with Rochelle in her office.

"Fantastic news," she told me, her face alight for the first time since I met her. "Your cancer is being shrunk!"

I'm going to live?

I'm going to live!

I felt giddy. I wanted to run a marathon and jump for joy. I felt all kinds of light and I just didn't know what to do with myself. These machines were going to save my life! The relief I was feeling flooded me, and maybe it was that relief, I still have no idea to this day, but I started to sob. Great big heaving sobs, wracking my body.

Rochelle was there, immediately enveloping me in a hug.

"Sorry," I tried to say, but she merely rubbed my back as she rocked me in her arms, back and forth.

"I imagine you're feeling relieved right now," she asked me, and I could tell her voice had broken as well. What could possibly be going through her mind right now? Had she lost someone and was being reminded of the fact that these machines could have saved them? "God, I'm so happy for you!"

I hugged her tight, as I shared in her pain and in her joy at my likely recovery. "Thank you so much," I told her, my voice choked, and then I stopped trying to talk any further.

It was a while before I was composed enough to be able to leave the room, but I did so with a much lighter frame of mind, and a major dose of gratitude for Rochelle's part in all of the work done here.

I spent the next week going through an increasingly-rigorous exercise regimen. It began with a slow walk on day one, then a slightly brisker walk day two. Day three, I had graduated to a walk-jog cycle. Well... It was more of a walk-hobble cycle, with me walking for a minute, then hobbling along for thirty seconds, before dropping back to a walk and repeating the process fifteen times. By the end of the week, I could walk for a minute, barely jog for another, twenty times.

At the start of the week, just walking would make me feel like I needed open heart surgery. By the end of the week, while I still struggled with my breathing, I was able to get through it far easier.

There were other changes.

I actually lost some weight. I had managed to drop down to twenty-two stone, or slightly above three hundred pounds. My joints seemed to move more easily, and my knees stopped freezing up whenever I tried to stand. I still felt old, but I no longer felt like I was at the end of my life.

Also, while it might have been my imagination, I felt more clear-headed. I could retain thoughts for longer, and my attention remained focused for longer when needed. I found it far easier to recall short-term facts than I used to.

During my daily meeting with Rochelle, she made a suggestion that surprised me.

"Cryogenic suspension?" I asked, astonished.

"Yes," she told me. "We want to see how the nanomachines perform in extreme cold. They've been tested in liquid nitrogen at below a hundred celsius, and they still operate just fine. Now we want to see how they perform maintenance."

"Has anyone else volunteered for this project?"

Rochelle nodded enthusiastically. "We have twelve subjects already in deep freeze. Most of them are the pinnacle of health and serve as a baseline for monitoring how nanomachines maintain their state of health while they're out. We are wirelessly receiving intel from their nanomachines keeping us updated on their state of health. It's fantastic!"

"So why do you need me?" I asked skeptically.

"You'll be one of the first test subjects with a medical condition," she replied. "Your cancer is still getting smaller. It'll soon be eliminated from your body, but that'll be a few months from now. I'm very interested to see how well the treatment the nanomachines are administering proceeds while you are under, so to speak."

This was a little frightening. On the one hand, sure, it was useful research. It would help to determine if nanomachines could be usefully deployed to help keep someone healthy during cold sleep. On the other hand, it seems as though it had never been attempted before, and there would clearly be some risks.

After some thought, I decided to take the risk.

The following morning, I found myself sat on the edge of a gel bed, in what looked eerily like a sarcophagus. They had given me a new set of medical scrubs, a set that seemed slightly too small for my fat arse. There seemed to be sensors all over the pod, and a wrist attachment. Rochelle sat with me as she injected a general anaesthetic into my arm.

"You'll be under for about a month," she said to me, as she read a display with medical information. "Your vitals are good. Much stronger than they were nearly ten days ago. You'll be fine," she added reassuringly, squeezing my wrist.

She was pleasant, I realised, and her bedside manner was reassuring. I could see why she was chosen to oversee this project. "Think I'll feel any different?" I asked, realising that the general anaesthetic was starting to take hold.

"Other than healthier and younger?" Rochelle winked as she let go of my wrist and keyed in a few details on the attached keyboard next to the display. "Lie back," she ordered, and helped me into the gel-bed. "Take a deep breath, and relax. The general is taking effect."

I did exactly as I was told, breathing in deeply, feeling my heart rate slow as I slowly drifted off.