Chapter 8

                                    

                                          

  
I was in my last class when I got a message from Brad.
  
Meet after school. Science lab.
  
I counted down the minutes, glaring at the clock, then rushed to the science room. When I entered, the others were looking at a bunch of white mice in a cardboard box. 
  
"Ten?" I counted.
  
"You said you wanted to move quickly," David said, adjusting his glasses. 
  
"You did this?" I asked. I was surprised—I thought David wanted to be careful. Which meant he'd probably done it for me.
  
"Brad and I took last period off."
  
"What?" Amy asked. "David skipping school? No way."
  
"So walk us through it, Sherlock," I said. Amy and I had spent the last few days working on the app, while the boys ran simple programs on the bots to see how they would respond.
  
"Mice have short lifespans and a fast metabolism. We should be able to see changes sooner. I guess we only got about half of Megan's original dose, and the human to mice dose conversion is about 33."
  
"Megan's a lot bigger than 33 mice," I said. "Even half of her is."
  
"It's based on surface area, and body weight. You said she's 92 pounds, so half of her was 46 pounds, which would be about 33 mice. I'm pretty sure the calculations are right. An hour ago, I gave each of these mice a shot of peebots." 
  
"Are we seriously going to call it that?" Amy asked.
  
"What should we call it, zee formula?" Brad said, faking a German accent.
  
"Let's just call them therabots," I said. "That's what people know. No use hiding it. And we'll need to use the hashtag that's already trending."
  
"Peebots is funny," Brad said.
  
"Maybe to you," Amy said. "But a lot of people won't see the humor in it."
  
"Whatever," David said, "I shot the mice with the bots. Then I figured out a patch to put them in a dormant state. After they do their thing, with no further instruction they'll attach to a bone cell and hibernate until the next command. You'll still lose some, even our skeleton renews every year. But they should last three months or so. Maybe six months, depending how much you're using them. You'll lose some after every mod, because not all of them will find their way back to a bone before they're flushed out."
  
"So, how are they doing?" Brad said, picking up the box and shaking it.
  
"Knock it off!" David yelled, grabbing the box. "Stressing them out could skew the results."
  
"Chill, dude," Brad said, as David placed the mice carefully back on the counter.