Itโs predictable that, when a progressive Texas county school board announces gender-neutral homecoming court elections, teenagers will be, well, teenagers. Gary Greene, a student with gender preference uncertainty, has been miraculously cured of leukemia, thanks to nanoscale robots injected into his bloodstream. When he returns to school, he is greeted with a mixture of sympathy and ridicule, which manifes ...Full description
Itโs predictable that, when a progressive Texas county school board announces gender-neutral homecoming court elections, teenagers will be, well, teenagers. Gary Greene, a student with gender preference uncertainty, has been miraculously cured of leukemia, thanks to nanoscale robots injected into his bloodstream. When he returns to school, he is greeted with a mixture of sympathy and ridicule, which manifests as a humiliating hazing incident in the boys' locker room. Mysteriously, the boys bullying Gary suffer โburnsโ when the tiny robots in his blood react in defense of their host. Gary learns that there is a relationship between his emotions and the behavior of the nanites coursing through his blood. Through experimentation, he realizes the nanites make a binary โfriend or foeโ determination about foreign DNA, attacking only the cells they sense as threatening. Gary determines to train the nanites to keep them from hurting other people, but he canโt control them when things go awry at the homecoming dance.