(SPOILERS) Questions??

1) Why can't the military grade nanitis that Hector is inoculated with repair his arm? I can understand that he can't recover from a "demon" point of view but from a 25th century point of view his nanitis should be able to repair his arm over time. There was a paragraph in a previous book that told about the TF's ability to do almost total body reconstruction. An arm or hand should be in the realm of possibility.

2) What happened to the air cars and skimmers that the archangels used when they died out? Did the last one store them someplace or did they have an "OWL" of their own that took care of them when the last archangel expired?

3) If Merlin's nanitis could rebuild himself from almost nothing if his power plant is intact and they have lots of access to raw materials and lots of time why can't another PICA be built by creating another power plant and infecting a batch of raw materials with a bunch of merlin's nanitis? Unless of course the materials for the power plant are the limiting factor.

4) What martial art(s) will Hector need to learn when the recently disgraced Royal Corisandian body guard recovers and trys to kill him and Irys?

Just curious. I'm sure the answers are obvious but I'm too tired to think them through.

Yeah I know I've spelled nanitis wrong.

Spoiler Alert!

ID4ster wrote:1) snip

4) What martial art(s) will Hector need to learn when the recently disgraced Royal Corisandian body guard recovers and trys to kill him and Irys?

snip.

Just a thought. Can the full body VR unit like Ohliviah's be used to teach skills like martial arts? I know it is limited to real time. However, I wonder if wearing it while asleep can implant other information besides the experience of being inside a VR unit? Information is information after all.

1) Hektor's hand could be repaired but it would require a trip to Nimue's Cave. I think you're over-estimating the ability of the nanotech to repair major damage. Now in theory, it is possible that the nanotech could over time repair his hand but it's not something that the nanotech was "programmed" to do. It's likely that in the Terran Federation, the nanotech (in cases of this much damage) was intended only to preserve the patient's life until the patient could be gotten to a full medical set-up. So while the Terran Federation med-tech could do almost total body reconstruction, it was not done by the implanted nanotech.

2) Nobody knows what happened to the Archangels' tech toys besides David Weber and he isn't telling us.

3) We were told that building more than a PICA requires materials that OWL doesn't have enough of. It's likely that these are materials that have to be "manufactured" in orbit or otherwise require manufacturing processes that OWL doesn't have. Also, it's possible that Merlin was thinking that the nanotech could have reused elements/materials from his damaged body or used the materials stored in Nimue's Cave.

4) I doubt that the guard will be allowed anywhere near Hektor or Irys. IMO he's now a former guard and likely has been transferred to the coldest spot of the Charis Empire.

ID4ster wrote:1) Why can't the military grade nanitis that Hector is inoculated with repair his arm? I can understand that he can't recover from a "demon" point of view but from a 25th century point of view his nanitis should be able to repair his arm over time. There was a paragraph in a previous book that told about the TF's ability to do almost total body reconstruction. An arm or hand should be in the realm of possibility.

2) What happened to the air cars and skimmers that the archangels used when they died out? Did the last one store them someplace or did they have an "OWL" of their own that took care of them when the last archangel expired?

3) If Merlin's nanitis could rebuild himself from almost nothing if his power plant is intact and they have lots of access to raw materials and lots of time why can't another PICA be built by creating another power plant and infecting a batch of raw materials with a bunch of merlin's nanitis? Unless of course the materials for the power plant are the limiting factor.

4) What martial art(s) will Hector need to learn when the recently disgraced Royal Corisandian body guard recovers and trys to kill him and Irys?

Just curious. I'm sure the answers are obvious but I'm too tired to think them through.

Yeah I know I've spelled nanitis wrong.

Spoiler Alert...






My question has to do with Merlin's visit and role in Hector's recovery. On page 433 we read "The first was that and he'd long ago injected Hector and Irys--and Davyn and Earl Coris, for that matter--with the same nanotech with which he'd injected every member of the inner circle."

So what was Merlin's rush to get there? What was it that Merlin did to intervene to save Hector's life? It wasn't injecting nanites.. That had already been done "long ago." So what made Merlin's presence so critical that Hector and Irys had to be told the truth without being properly vetted?

Don

=2014/03/13=

I believe that:

The nanites simply have the effect of keeping the injured alive until medical help can arrive.

A hi-tech band-aid so to speak.

Merlin needed to administer advanced medical help as soon as possible before Hector finally truly died.

R
.

n7axw wrote:Spoiler Alert...






My question has to do with Merlin's visit and role in Hector's recovery. On page 433 we read "The first was that and he'd long ago injected Hector and Irys--and Davyn and Earl Coris, for that matter--with the same nanotech with which he'd injected every member of the inner circle."

So what was Merlin's rush to get there? What was it that Merlin did to intervene to save Hector's life? It wasn't injecting nanites.. That had already been done "long ago." So what made Merlin's presence so critical that Hector and Irys had to be told the truth without being properly vetted?

Don

n7axw wrote:Spoiler Alert...






My question has to do with Merlin's visit and role in Hector's recovery. On page 433 we read "The first was that and he'd long ago injected Hector and Irys--and Davyn and Earl Coris, for that matter--with the same nanotech with which he'd injected every member of the inner circle."

So what was Merlin's rush to get there? What was it that Merlin did to intervene to save Hector's life? It wasn't injecting nanites.. That had already been done "long ago." So what made Merlin's presence so critical that Hector and Irys had to be told the truth without being properly vetted?

Don

At a guess, and it is only a guess, Hector's heart was actually damaged, not "nearly" hit. While the nanites could stop the blood loss, they could not repair the beating heart like they could with other muscles. The other factor is, how were they going to explain Hector's survival to Iris. If Hector lived without medical intervention and without Iris being in on the story, there would have been all those unanswerable questions from the medical community. Without Iris's informed help, the charade couldn't be pulled off. In that case Merlin was needed to prove to Iris that what she was being told was true.

Agree.

The nanites have limits and the injuries to Hektor were greater than the nanites could handle.

While we don't know all that Merlin did, I suspect that it was more than "just insert more nanites".

Merlin may have had to do surgery (aided by OWL) to save Hektor's life.

kbus888 wrote:=2014/03/13=

I believe that:

The nanites simply have the effect of keeping the injured alive until medical help can arrive.

A hi-tech band-aid so to speak.

Merlin needed to administer advanced medical help as soon as possible before Hector finally truly died.

R
.

n7axw wrote:Spoiler Alert...






My question has to do with Merlin's visit and role in Hector's recovery. On page 433 we read "The first was that and he'd long ago injected Hector and Irys--and Davyn and Earl Coris, for that matter--with the same nanotech with which he'd injected every member of the inner circle."

So what was Merlin's rush to get there? What was it that Merlin did to intervene to save Hector's life? It wasn't injecting nanites.. That had already been done "long ago." So what made Merlin's presence so critical that Hector and Irys had to be told the truth without being properly vetted?

Don

DrakBibliophile wrote:Agree.

The nanites have limits and the injuries to Hektor were greater than the nanites could handle.

While we don't know all that Merlin did, I suspect that it was more than "just insert more nanites".

Merlin may have had to do surgery (aided by OWL) to save Hektor's life.

A minor aside: do you think that the MedComp has the capability to use someone's implants, or a PICA, to control their limbs and perform surgery that they themselves couldn't do. Leads to interesting possibilities if a person is effectively incapacitated, but the MedComp can still control their limbs. Self-surgery, anyone?

Of course, on alternative is that the med kit contained larger (say, insect sized) robots to aid in surgery. Or a robot arm.

I recently purchased my nephew a hobbyist robotic arm, so this brings to mind a variety of imagery.

Just an idle thought.

-- Bob G

I suspect closing the hole in the lung was one of the things Merlin did. The nanites may prevent infection and MAY slow blood loss, they don't breath for you and they don't drain a flooded lung.

Hi Ksangren,

Quite true.

I believe the other holes were worse than the sucking chest wound, which Irys and the healers all recognized for what it was (indicating their level of training) which if plugged by Maikel wasn't the immediate mortal wound (though it could have killed him eventually), but draining the lung was important and something the nanites couldn't do and although Maikel might have been able to do it if properly coached, assuming OWL's local SNARC's could have made the chest drainage tube quickly and delivered it which is unlikely, NTM all the questions about how Maikel knew what was needed, and where did he learn it, why has he been hiding such useful knowledge etc.

Leaving it as a miracle of Irys's nursing is MUCH simpler.

I expect the med-kit also applied internal 'natural bandages' that stopped the various internal bleeding wounds which healed 'naturally', the nanites then stealthily removing any material that wasn't needed anymore.

L

ksandgren wrote:I suspect closing the hole in the lung was one of the things Merlin did. The nanites may prevent infection and MAY slow blood loss, they don't breath for you and they don't drain a flooded lung.