Scardown-Jenny Casey-2 by Elizabeth Bear

got a few ideas on how the stardrive works. It has to be ducking the Einsteinian speed limit somehow. Superstrings, probably—” he rattles on, sketching diagrams in space. They hang glowing between his fingers; the joys of VR.
    Man's got a gift. My eyes don't quite glaze over when he starts talking about eleven-dimensional reality.
Dick, the worm
.
    “It's not a worm.”
    Whatever. What does it do?
    His face rearranges itself around a tangled smile. “I'm going to have to block-redirect part of it before I get out of your head. It logs brain activity, for one thing.”
    Thought police? Damn
.
    “Not exactly. But I was using up a hell of a lot of your processing capability when I was living in your head, and it will pick that up, so I need to fake some logs. Here's the coolest thing—the surgical nanites are still active in your system. Still laying networks to help you interface with the
Montreal
. And VR linkages. Have you noticed my voice and image getting stronger? There's more room in here every day.”
    I thought that was practice. Great. I'm full of bugs.
    “You're full of bugs that are still repairing all the old scar tissue and neural damage. Jenny. It's radical—”
    What?
    “You might get smarter. Even more interesting—”
    I catch myself holding my breath. I wonder how much of this Valens knew before he shot me full of these things. Koske is wearing them, too, though. As were the pilots killed in
Le Québec,
the
Li Bo,
the
Lao Zi
.
Interesting, Dick? We're talking about my
brain.
    “Sorry, Jen. Organic repair is continuing. You had some liver damage, some age-appropriate arthritis in addition to all the scardown and trauma around your implants, artificial joints, and prostheses. And did you happen to notice that half the
Montreal
is sick?”
    He's nattering. “I noticed Gabe and Valens both wiping their noses.” And I've never felt better. Who have always been able to catch a cold by looking at a sick person across an empty room.
Richard, the scardown was supposed to reverse. Look. I can touch my toes. Haven't been able to do that since I was twenty-four. Damned ceramic hip was always too stiff
.
    “Yes. Supposed to reverse. So was the neural damage, the demyelination, the flashbacks and the seizures, the symptoms of MS. How about the liver and kidney damage? Was that supposed to reverse, too?”
    Something chill settles between my shoulder blades.
Liver damage . . . Richard? What are you telling me?
    “Not enough evidence yet to know, Jenny. But you're getting healthier. And I checked. Koske hasn't been on sick call since he went through the procedure, and he was a lot worse off than you were.
He
had the induced-Asperger syndrome symptoms you mostly ducked, in spades. In fact, he still does.”
    “Holy hell.” I think about Earth, the unforgettable blue-white sweep of her face seen from the panorama lounge on Clarke Station. Starving, fevered Earth—brutal winters and searing summers since the shutdown of the global thermohaline conveyor, the cold Atlantic rising along river valleys and pressing dikes. New Orleans floating on barges, Houston abandoned to the sea. I think of Gabe's daughter Genie and her thick, choking cough. And maybe I feel a little pity for Trevor Koske, after all.
    Dick. You're trying to tell me I'm not getting any older. That the ship tree
—Charlie Forster's word—
nanites are actually healing more than just the scar tissue and the neural issues.
    “That's what the evidence suggests. Yes.”
    Is this going to affect Leah?
    “Not with the neural VR implant she has now, no. But if she goes through the full enhancement, and survives it—yes.”
    You're talking about an end to disease. You're talking about global overcrowding on an unimaginable scale.
    “That's the least radical possibility. But there's something I'm not sure any of the Unitek and armed forces types have considered. Other than Dr. Forster, who's a nice boy, but a bit—naive.”
    What's that,