Phase Zero: Most of the bus’s frame remained intact, even as 50,000 kilojoules of energy vaporized panel ads, seat cushions and passengers of the M31. Dee Trammel was watching the vendor put mustard on a salty pretzel when one shard of that frame — steel manufactured in Kawasaki, Japan, and molded in Busan, Korea — was thrown at supersonic speed, thanks to the rapid oxidation of cyclonite. That shard entered the right eye of the vendor, transferred most of its energy to the man’s brain tissue and exploded out his left temple.

Almost simultaneously, Dee felt a punch to her back, specifically to the T11 vertebra, as another peppercorn-sized shard shattered bone, tore spinal chord tissue and sliced through intestines.

Phase One: The top half of Dee Trammel ate, talked, thumbed her Blackberry and enjoyed the cool breeze off Lake Mahopac. The lower half struggled with waste products, needed to be lugged around, developed rashes and sores and felt nothing.

Dee still ate salty pretzels. She also consumed Prednisone, Bumetanide, Cefalexin, and nine other pharmaceuticals designed to control pain that wasn’t there, preserve useless muscles, stop swelling, encourage blood flow and defend against infection. The medicines changed regularly and needed to be managed by schedules entered into her Blackberry. Her regimen, which she never skipped, included physical therapy, electro-stimulation, microprocessor-based weight shift monitoring, tests, samplings and an array of tortures devised by medical science.

Luckily, Dee could afford to be a lab rat, thanks to her bestselling Plaid Cat novels. Pesto, Pasta and the big cat Geiger proved that animals engaged children more than gnomes and wizards, and their success paid all her expenses.

They also paid for hope. Dee joked as Dr. Ajay Chakrabarty, guided by a real-time imaging system, injected five cc’s of fluid just below where T11 once was. The fluid was 99 parts physiological saline, one part robotics. The articulated limbs of the nano-scale devices had been grown by technicians at CalTech. The carapace of each had been shaped using phase-shift lithography at a chip manufacturing plant in Bangalore. The sophisticated brains had been built by atom-force microscopes at Sandia National Labs in Albuquerque. Those microscopes were operated by a grid of supercomputers managed by New York’s High Performance Computation Consortium.

Phase Two: Dee gasped as a muscle cramped her thigh — the first feeling she’d had below the waist in over two years. Chakrabarty fed a radio-imaging agent into Dee’s carotid artery, and a multi-million dollar device manufactured in Schenectady, New York, created a positron emission tomography scan. Dormant regions of her brain, associated with the sensory nervous system, had awakened. Suitably anonymized, the data was passed on to NeuroNet, a social network of neurologists and allied professionals. A worldwide conversation ensued that A) saw the data as anomalous B) claimed the healing was spontaneous C) speculated on the use of encoding chemicals to enhance the effect and D) offered warnings on unintended consequences.

Dee reveled in every new tickle, itch, ache and chill. With the restoration of feelings of heat, cold, pain and pressure, Dee could sense the overall presence and position of her lower half. The recovery of proprioception made her body her own again. When her lower half had been inert, she’d looked forward to daily physical therapy. She liked the stimulation and the conversations with her therapist. Now, she hated every hour of twisting, bending and pushing.

Phase Three: On day 777 after the bombing, day nine after the microscopic robots began their work, Dee moved her big toe. The news leaked out, and disabled children, fans of the Plaid Cats, were dragged onto talk shows to tell their stories and make their pleas. As hope outran science, the NeuralNet became negative: The scientific protocol was questioned. The ethics of human experimentation was debated. Health costs and the privileged positions of the wealthy were lamented.

Using a support rail, Dee walked the next day. A nurse videoed her halting steps on pale, spindly legs and recorded her whoop of joy. Those two minutes briefly became YouTube’s most downloaded segment. Three days later, with no assistance, she walked out of the hospital. Her stiff-kneed, lurching gait earned her the nickname FrankenDee.

Phase Four: Congressman Walker Edwards of Lake Charles, Louisiana, pushed through special legislation for a pilot study of 200 paraplegics, including his son. The study ramped up in weeks. Twenty-seven days later, less than a year after she’d left the hospital, Dee completed the New York City marathon. As she and scores of her fans celebrated, Dee began to hear the voices.

The videos show her staggering briefly. Nearby paramedics take her vital signs and try to get her to come with them to the hospital. With a smile, she turns them down. The spell passes. On her way home, Chakrabarty calls her, begging her to come in for testing. The voices tell her he is more interested in his experiment than her welfare. She refuses.

Phase Five: Dee Trammel hasn’t slept for 19 days. She is fresh and aware and vital. She has no trouble sorting, answering, relaying and recombining the messages from the voices. The scope of her interests and inquiries has broadened immensely, which is why she has broken into the data center of Brookhaven National Labs. Walker Edwards Jr., and the others are with her. She will need their protection and support over the next few days.

She holds a tangle of optical fibers, access to Carrier Routing System One, providing 92 terabits per second bandwidth into the Internet. Blood still oozes from the socket where her left eye once was. A swarm of nanobots has already sealed off arteries. They are building new connections that will be the perfect interface between her neurons and the optical fibers. Stand, Walk, Run, JUMP!