July 26

Finally the day is here.  I’m  sort of numb now rather than nervous -  if this thing works it will be earth shattering.   We have worked long and hard and tried to anticipate everything.  I should be ready.  But boy am I nervous.  The funny thing is if I was running it from the outside I don't think I'd be nervous like this.  My own involvement is what makes this tough.  I wonder if it will change the experiment?  That is, will my observation change my experimental trajectory?  Kind of like quantum mechanics…
I want to focus on the positive – after all who wants to come into the world bummed out?  Babies cry of course, but who knows if they are happy or sad?  Probably sad – being ripped out of that nice warm womb into the cruelty of the world.  And this is the first time if all goes well and God Willing (ha!) that we are going to create a person without a baby, without a mom, without so many things.  Wow.  I am a little freaked.  It all seemed so theoretical, so easy, and now we are doing it.
I got up and went to take a leak.  Gotta keep all those functions moving this morning.  It would stink coming into the world and having to take a leak right away.  Better eat something too.  We had planned all that out and I should be keeping a dairy but I need to have a little looseness right now.
I looked in the mirror at myself, trying to read my own face.  But the control mask I put on long ago is still firmly in place.  I can’t read a thing.
I get to the lab early.  The lot is full of cars.  It looks like everyone – from workers to investors -- is there early too.  I pull right up into one of my two spaces.  The other has a car just like mine already in it.  If nano me wants to drive.
Jim is waiting, kind of looming – no better way of putting it – my perception is a little hazy – not quite foggy – just a little dream like, with Jim’s face in ultra relief and the rest of the world cloudily present behind.
“You ok?” he asks, little concerned but alert scanning my face for anomalies, treating me a little like a piece of meat, a specimen, not really caring (although he does) but being clinical about his observation.  I am his patient more than his friend now, his subject.  I tried to scan his face for the effects of last night but he showed nothing.  Hmmm….
“So, what happened?” I asked.  “Were they twins or what?” 
He smiled despite himself.  “Well they had certain…similiarities.  Now c’mon,” he siad, grabbing my arm to move me along, ”we have to get to work.  Di you take you vitals?  What was your BP…”  and his voice faded as I answered him automatically, allowign him to manuveur me though an unmarked door and directly into the nano room.  We had planned for me to be stressed, so Jim is the only one to communicate with me for now.  I assume the rest are scurrying about, but his job is simple.  Me.
The nano room has  dim lighting and water and wood and big dark one way glass and my connecting door to the next room.  I sit and feel a little better.  He leaves to let me alone.  I have this notebook and pull it out and bring it up to date.  I’ve been taped and observed since I woke up this morning at home and I’m not thinking really about the faces staring at me behind the glass.  The chair I am sitting in has sensors measuring everything that can be measured, as unobtrusively as we could, and the needle to place the implant in me.  I am feeling better here in the semi-darkness.  I am thinking about what I do.  But there isn’t much.  I sit, think happy thoughts, get flooded by nano.  The nano mold forms, they pull it out, move it to next door, an identical room, flood it with nano there, and nano me is created and takes his first breath and we are done.  The nano me then will start thinking too.  Will there be a gap for him?  For me?  We have a book there for him too to start writing right away.  No one will talk to him.  Except Jim.  He will move into the other room when nano me is created.  No one else.  Not even me at first.
I’m starting to feel a little bloated.  Or is that my imagination.  Don’t want to lose my cool.  This is history.  The tapes will be played over and over.  If I freak I’ll look like an ass.  I’m cool, I’m cool, I’m cool. I start to hear my heart.  Crap, what do I think about.  “Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name”  I lose focus, and random thoughts crowd through my mind, too fast to stop, what if the nano isn’t passive, what if Jim doesn’t come back, what if there is a God, whoa, whoa, where did that one come from, what if this doesn’t work, that water sound is starting to get on my nerves after all, I am sweating a little too much in this chair, I wonder what Maria’s doing?  Maybe if I focus on sex that will help…
“Ok, you’re done,”  Jim comes in quickly and I jump.  “Ow,” the needle implants the code.
“That was too quick, something’s wrong.”
“No we’re cool sunshine, you just lost it a little, you might have fallen asleep, which wouldn’t be surprising considering the neural flooding of your system.”
“Of course not, “ he says, and leaves, to go to the other room.
I sit.