‘’Think positive, Hope for good!’’ isn’t what everyone says when someone is facing a massive challenge. Well, with the problems that I faced, thinking positive was a difficult task.  This story is about a protein in the brain that faces new challenges as the human body.  

Suddenly, I felt as if something was wrong, an internal feeling was building up in me. It was as if the environment around me was changing, but it was difficult to pinpoint where exactly the change was taking place. What’s happening? Now that’s a question even I can’t answer at this very moment. 

Where I live memories is what holds us together. The town is small, yet it contributes to the cities beyond. It is as if the whole world relies on us, on me, for a major part of their existence. 

Every now and then there are bright flashes of light randomly occurring, and my gut feeling tells me that this cannot be a good sign. 

We all ignored the flashes at first, but later on, now, as the intensity increases, it cannot be ignored. It’s the confusion that made it frightful for us in the beginning, but as things started to make more sense, that fear seemed to have slowly faded. The flashing was just one obstacle; the place we live in is somehow beginning to get smaller. When they say that small differences are harder to notice at first, it was nothing but true then. Nobody realized that the land was gradually becoming compact until weeks went by and differences couldn’t be ignored. Making new memories however was getting harder and harder, due to the space limitation. On top of that everyone seemed to have forgotten all the old memories as well. Everything was either complicated or confusing.

***

I know they have great hope for me, but I have to think as I go through this mission even after the latest programming. I have to think on my own and send back what I see and analyze. I am the latest nanobot, and I have to achieve this to find out what is going on inside because no one else can. After all those months of experimentation, the end result was better than ever. I had acquired many new skills that I can use to aid others. I could monitor everything precisely, be in control of the signals that go out, all from a location that makes it simpler. All things considered, everyone had begun to call me ‘’Global Superbrain’’, and I won’t deny it. I am really enjoying this new name. This latest update had made me feel confident, it  made me feel like I was finally able to achieve my tasks after all the failed attempts in the past. I could feel the update improving me, and making me more than ready for a mission. My programming was preparing me for the mission and to give this task 100%. I felt little in size, and enormous simultaneously, due to this chance that was given to me. 

The mission has been a failure on numerous occasions before, seeing it tends to be somewhat experimental, yet subsequent to accomplishing to remove various cons, we were at last prepared. 

I was given all the details about my mission, Starting with who I’m helping. From my eyes all I could see on the paper was; adventure, exhilaration, thrill, and the rush of being there. There was more than one way to get to where I have to be. It would sometimes be through the cave and down a hole, or through a tube-like structure that would put me in the exact location. Prior to this mission, they would prefer the ordinary tube method but the path taken through the cave has proven to shorten the travel time as well as take us straight to the location where we have to be. 

***

These changes happening around us were the only thing anyone could talk about. I mean it was a hard scene to ignore especially knowing that it was spreading quickly. I recently heard about these same occurrences happening in neighboring towns.  The difference was that people who lived in that specific area had to deal with changes regarding their behavior and judgment. There were sudden bursts of joy, while 2 seconds later an emotion of anger would take over. It was an impossible task to even predict what could happen next. Turns out that it wasn’t just this town that was unpredictable, but other places too, all with symptoms quite different than ours! I remember overhearing a conversation about people in a town nearby getting a negative effect on their language skills. While one was talking, the other one was unsure of what exactly the other is talking about. I overheard that situations seem to be getting only worse, and didn’t show signs of improvement as of now.

 There would be a day when the waste and toxins would be removed to keep the area clean, but ever since the changes started happening, the waste would continue to build up, and cause a negative reaction. When we would question why the waste is continuing to build up, there would be no answer in return making it more confusing for us all. Just when we thought there would be no more conflicts, we found out that there were random clumps disrupting the overall function of the town. 

This whole situation had come to the point where no one could even guess what would happen tomorrow, and the idea of not knowing what we have to face in the future was frustrating all the time. While some clung to the idea of a miracle happening, others felt it was all just a bad dream, and then there were those who used the path of logic to see if they can find out practical reasoning for this particular scenario. Now comes the moment nobody’s been waiting for, where life is in our hands.  

***

It had taken me a long time to memorize the dos and the don’ts. Looking around I noticed everyone do what they were told to do, and assuring myself to not make a mistake. In this world, mistakes are not affordable. It seemed like everything was going smoothly until the overconfidence took over. I was trying to avoid a barrier, and accidentally turned a bit too much to the right, and that’s when the problem began.  

When I was learning everything about the human body, the words free radicals had come up a couple of times, so I remembered it easily because of the repetition. When we have too much of something, it can have a negative impact on us, and that would be the same situation with the free radicals. When someone has too much of those free radicals it can disturb everything. Just me being around them could be dangerous, so I had to quickly move away from them to avoid future complications. I quickly used my legs to direct myself away using all the strength I had in me. Trust me when I say directing myself in a different direction is way harder than it sounds. It can’t be easy because of the crowd. I made a mistake, but I had avoided all the complications by simply understanding my mistake quicker. This situation also gave me the opportunity to show myself the idea of self-learning, and even self-adaptation to the surrounding environment that I am put in during this mission. 

The complications of redirecting myself put me behind everyone else; I had to catch up while making sure that I don’t damage my surrounding by speeding or being left behind at a slow pace. Before entering I was coated in nanogel, so it helped me in making sure I don’t damage anything while I swift through. 

***

A rumor was going around about a group of nanobots coming to save us from this disease. In the beginning, no one could guarantee whether or not the rumor was true, but as time went by, it turns out that nanobots really are coming to resolve this issue. When these nanobots enter, they would then directly head towards the neocortex, which is one of the most advanced places in this area. They would act as guards for part of the time making sure of what goes and comes. 

Although these nanobots were our only hope, even though they weren’t sure whether this would resolve everything that was happening around us, they were sure about the chances of slowing down the process to provide the people on the outside with more time. Slowing down the process seemed like the best option at the time, because now time is the only thing that can help is patience and time. 

Days have gone by with no news on the nanobots and their whereabouts. I realized we discussed persistence yet watching everything fall before your eyes can be hard. It was getting hard to watch until I heard that the nanobots had at long last advanced over to the barrier, which is a divider isolating this particular region from the rest.

The Nanobots had made their way to the barrier, which meant that soon they could slow this process down and find a way to completely put an end to this chaos. 

***

You could call it absurd, but It was as if I  could feel the vibrations in the body, watching and waiting for me to put an end to this chaos. 

It was a long excursion from the beginning to the end destination, yet it tends to be either simple or testing relying upon what the barrier endorses while permitting things past it. There are numerous severe principles when getting endorsed yet we have been renewed to move beyond any extreme situation we are in. There were others in my group and when they attempted to push ahead wishing to move beyond the barrier, and shockingly moving beyond was 10x simpler than I had speculated.

It is said that the brain supposedly gets smaller as the disease of Alzheimer's slowly takes over the brain, and causes damage to your health. Our nanobots weren't the answer for this infection yet; rather we were the main choice for getting together data and sending them out for the information that is required for tracking down a fix.

Each one of us nanobots decided to spread apart and stand bordering the brain, hoping to catch the signals that are going either in or out. This was the step when our only option was to wait and gather even the smallest of the details. The way our data was traveling from us to the outside was through the drive located in us, transferring everything we receive to the computers on the outside within seconds after collecting. 

It had been days and weeks since we had entered the body now. It felt even longer because of how slow time was going for us, the moment had come for us to leave and let the others do the work now. 

Nanobots are only being used in these situations for collecting the information that a scientist can’t do with the same precision as us. Now that it was time for us to exit the body, we had to make our way out by going through the digestive system. First, we would have to get past the free radicals without crashing into them, as I did while going towards the brain. 

***

We could feel the change around us, a feeling that we had long hoped for. Memories, lost in the process, started to return. The neurons who had been breaking apart now were reactivated, bringing back by reliving the past,  but just as important giving us the chance, to again, form new memories. 

Months later, the brain has shown signs of improvement, and we proteins will do all we can to make sure it stays this way.

This is my story as a protein in the brain, who after living a long life faces a disease like Alzheimer's. We proteins have a duty to make sure all is well throughout the human body, but sometimes we can’t help but do anything in these specific situations. Like every story, we too had a hero, except for us, the hero is nanotechnology