Domesticating Dragons

by Dan Koboldt

  I liked a good clean lab. It spoke to the people in charge. I started to say as much, when I noticed the strange device on the floor beneath the printing chamber. It looked like something out of the Atari museum, a jumble of black plastic and looped wires about the size of a shoebox. Old-school status lights blinked erratic green and amber at the base. “What’s that?”

  “That’s the Redwood Codex.”

  Redwood Codex. The words carried an aura of intrigue. “What does it do?”

  “It’s the secret behind Simon Redwood’s successful prototype. But that’s a story for another time,” she said. “You want to try logging in?”

  I really wanted to ask more about Redwood, but she looked like she was in a hurry. “Sure thing.”

  She gestured me to the chair. I slipped into it and rolled up to the flat glass table. But there was no keyboard or mouse or anything. “Where’s the—”

  She took my wrist and guided my palm to the cool glass surface. A narrow line of blue-white light traced my fingers, followed by the muted glow of a palm scan. A soft chime sounded, and then touch-controls illuminated in the glass: keyboard, finger-pad, and some kind of an intercom. Two feet in front of my face, an opaque square appeared in midair. I fought the urge to wave my hand through it.

  Projection monitors. Oh, my sweet lord. I didn’t think I’d get them, too. I exhaled slowly, and my fingers found the keys. There was even faint tactile feedback as they slid into place. Incredible technology. “I’m in.”

  Evelyn’s tablet beeped. She glanced at it, frowned, and let out a little sigh.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing you need to worry about.” She shook her head, as if to clear it. “The systems group already ported your simulator code to our servers. Now you’ll just need to customize the interface to our design program.”

  “What are you using for that? GeneDesign?”

  “No. It’s something we cooked up in house.” She reached across to touch a button on the keyboard. A new application bloomed on the screen in front of me.

  “DragonDraft 3D,” I read. “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s our interface to the Dragon Reference. Every gene, every variant, every regulatory sequence.”

  I sensed a hint of pride in her voice. “You wrote this, didn’t you?”

  “It’s my claim to fame around here.”

  “Well geez, if you’ve got that then I imagine the dragons pretty much design themselves.”

  “In the hands of the right person, absolutely. Let me show you.” Her narrow fingertips danced across the keyboard. “We’ll start a basic flying model.”

  A grayscale dragon appeared in mid-screen, rotating slowly in two dimensions. It was a clunky low-res image. The triangular head reminded me of a viper, but the neck and body resembled a lizard on steroids. Evelyn hit a key, and the dragon spread its wide, leathery wings.

  Evelyn tapped another key to bring up a window of slide controls: Body Size, Wingspan, Musculature, and at least a dozen others. “We’ve mapped the genetic basis of key physical traits.” She slid down Body Size, and the dragon shrank. She nudged up Claw Length, and the talons on the feet grew from meek to downright frightening.

  She tinkered with more of the feature sliders, and I noticed something about the draft interface. Whenever she slid a feature downward, the number in the top right of the screen jumped up from zero. When she slid it the other way, the numbers descended. If it got to zero, the slider wouldn’t move up another hair.

  “What’s this number up here?” I asked.

  “Feature points. They govern how many advantages we can give to any one dragon.”

  “What if you need to increase something, and you’re at zero?”

  She shrugged. “You have to take them from something else. Speed for stamina, body size for cranial capacity, that sort of thing.”

  “Seems a little restrictive,” I said.

  “Remember that dragon you saw on your interview?”

  “The wild one? Yeah.”

  “What if it were twice as big and three times as smart?”

  “Oh.” I chuckled. “Good point.”

  “Besides, we’re trying to develop a prototype that’s calmer and less predatory.”

  That surprised me a little. According to everything I’d read, Reptilian’s hog-hunting dragons were a commercial success because of their aggressiveness. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “A predatory dragon has only limited market potential,” she said.

  “What would you do with a . . . non-predatory dragon?”

  “Do you know how many dog owners there are in the US?”

  “That’s easy. Zero.” A few years had passed since the outbreak of the canine epidemic, but dog populations still hadn’t recovered. Every descendant of the gray wolf proved susceptible to the contagion. That meant all dogs, no matter the breed. The epidemic had originated in Asia but quickly spread to other continents. There was no cure. No stay of execution. Once your dog developed the tell-tale lesions on his muzzle, it was too late. We kept waiting for them to announce a cure or some kind of treatment. Lots of smart people tried. Companies, too—after all, dogs were a billion-dollar business. None of it mattered. Nothing could stop the epidemic. After the fourth or fifth failure of a promising therapy, we stopped getting our hopes up.

  “Before the epidemic,” Evelyn said.

  I shrugged. “Probably twenty million.”

  “Try forty-five million.”

  “Wow, that’s a lot. But dogs aren’t coming back anytime soon.”

  “That’s the point.”

  Realization dawned on me then. “You want to sell dragons . . . as pets?”

  “If we can produce a domesticated model, yes.”

  I wanted to tell her she was crazy, but it probably wasn’t the worst idea. “All right, I’ll give it a whirl. How do I design one?”

  “Design privileges are something you’ll earn over time.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t have to fake my disappointment.

  “It’s your first day, Noah,” she said.

  And I’m an unknown quantity. “I guess have to prove myself, huh?”

  “Everyone does.”

  “Any suggestion for how I do that?”

  Evelyn smiled. “Get your simulator code up and running. Then we’ll talk.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  INTERLUDE

  I was twelve when I first got interested in genetics. My brother Connor was ten, and we spent every waking minute together. That’s probably why I noticed the little changes. He started to tire more easily, whereas I had boundless energy. He couldn’t jump as high as he used to.

  No one believed me, though. I tried telling my mom how there were some days when he couldn’t keep up with me. And that he had trouble getting to his feet sometimes. He’d get on all fours, then push his butt up in the air, and finally come back on his thighs. It looked weird. But she worked all the time to support us. Every night when she got home, I think she was just grateful to see we were still in one piece. She didn’t see Connor the way I did.

  Right up until the day he fell while we were out playing and couldn’t get up. She believed me that time. She called an ambulance.

  Somehow, we bypassed the emergency room and landed in something called the PICU. Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. That was probably a good thing, because it brought Connor in front of a rarity: a doctor who actually gave a damn.

  She was an older lady, short and sharp-eyed. She wore a bright floral blouse beneath a well-worn lab coat. If it weren’t for the coat and the stethoscope, I’d have mistaken her for someone’s grandmother. She bustled in while a nurse was checking Connor’s vitals. “I’m Dr. Miller. Want to tell me what happened?”

  “They were playing outside,” Mom said. “He fell and couldn’t get back up.”

  “How hard did he fall?”

  Mom looked at me, and so did Dr. Miller. I squirmed under their gazes. “Not that hard. It was
more of a trip.” I didn’t volunteer the fact that I was the one who tripped him.

  Connor didn’t either, but made a face at me behind their backs. The nurse left, and Dr. Miller began her own examination.

  “He’s behind in his growth curves,” she said.

  My mom waved this off. “He’s always been small for his age.”

  I smirked at Connor, who stuck out his tongue at me.

  “Any staring spells or seizures?” the doctor asked. Her East Coast accent stretched out the vowels, which made her a little hard to understand.

  “None that I saw,” Mom said. She looked at me for confirmation.

  I shook my head.

  Dr. Miller took out a reflex hammer and tapped Connor’s knees. His legs jerked out, but only slightly. She frowned and lifted his legs one at a time to examine his ankles. “Any problems with walking or running?”

  “He runs slow,” I volunteered.

  Connor punched my arm.

  “His heel cords are a little tight,” Dr. Miller said.

  “Is that significant?” my mom asked.

  “By itself, no,” Dr. Miller said. “But with sudden ataxia and the diminished reflexes, it could be the early signs of a muscle disease.”

  “Oh my God,” Mom whispered.

  “Are you the biological mother?” the doctor asked.

  “Of course, I’m his god—” she began, but caught herself. “Yes. Why would you ask that?”

  “They can run in families. Have you had any health issues? Especially muscle weakness or problems walking?”

  “No.”

  “What about fatigue?”

  “Who doesn’t have some fatigue?”

  Dr. Miller barked a laugh. “Fair point, Mrs. Parker. Does his father have any health concerns?”

  Connor and I waited for the answer, both of us holding our breath. Mom never talked about our dad. He took off when I was four. Connor had no memory of him. I thought I did sometimes—vague flashes of a deep voice and dark beard—but I couldn’t be sure.

  Mom frowned. “We’re not in touch. But I don’t think so.”

  “I’d like to do further testing to rule out genetic disease.”

  “What does that involve?” Mom asked, in a tone that meant, what does that cost?

  “We’d look at a panel of a couple hundred genes. Have you unlocked their sequence data?”

  Every newborn in Arizona had their genome sequenced, though the results were “locked” in a data vault, only to be consulted if there was a problem.

  “No. I don’t like the idea of that information being out there,” Mom said.

  “It will stay confidential, as part of your medical records.”

  “Can you guarantee there won’t be some kind of a data breach?”

  Dr. Miller paused. “No. But your genome is like the money in your bank account. You have to take it out to use it. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

  “Are there any alternatives?” Mom asked.

  “A muscle biopsy. It could confirm the diagnosis, though it’s a more primitive test.” She lowered her voice. “Not to mention uncomfortable.”

  In the end, my mom gave over. She signed the papers to unlock our genome data for genetic testing.

  The following week, the pediatrician called with news: Connor had a genetic variant in a gene called BICD2. That was short for bicaudal D homolog 2, and mutations in it caused a dominant form of spinal muscular atrophy. Mom and I didn’t have the variant. Dr. Miller explained that it was probably a newly arisen change, a so-called de novo mutation. Every person has fifty or sixty de novo mutations that they didn’t get from their parents. It’s a quirk of nature: The low-but-measurable error rate from copying our genetic code. Most mutations happen outside of genes, so they have no serious consequences. Connor was just unlucky.

  There was a problem, though. Connor’s mutation had never been seen in a muscular atrophy patient. Or in the DNA of healthy people, for that matter. The genetic testing laboratory classified it as a Variant of Uncertain Significance, or VUS. It might cause disease, or it might not. The lab couldn’t say for sure. Insufficient evidence, they claimed. They wanted to know if it would be possible to get a sample from Connor’s biological father.

  “Never gonna happen,” Mom said.

  Dr. Miller understood, but her hands were tied where the diagnosis was concerned. Connor’s variant remained a VUS.

  In some ways, that almost made things worse. Without an official diagnosis, we didn’t know what to expect for Connor’s future. Some mutations in his gene caused only mild muscle weakness. Others caused a severe and progressive disease. The uncertainty hung over our family like a specter. Maybe he had the disease and would start getting worse. Maybe he had something else entirely. BICD2 disease had no cure. Because of the uncertainty, Mom couldn’t get him into any clinical trials. All she could do was sit back and watch.

  Twelve-year-old me called bullshit on that. If there was no way to prove that Connor’s mutation caused disease, well, I’d just have to invent one.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Design 48

  The utility of a biological simulator in a place like this was obvious, at least to me, but I’d still have to get the design team on board. I believed in my program’s logic—so did Evelyn, or she wouldn’t otherwise have brought me in—but integrating it with the existing design program was a major challenge. It had to be seamless, built right into DragonDraft3D so that the designers could run simulations at every step of their process. That’s a lot harder than it sounds. The design interface was unknown territory. I had to understand it inside and out before I could do anything.

  I probably put in seventy or eighty hours that first week. Day blurred into night. One particular advantage of installing a new software package into Reptilian’s systems is that I was temporarily granted high-level administrative access. And so, while my main focus was installing the simulator code for everyone, I also created a private virtual workspace for myself. A place where I could tinker with genetic code and dragon designs without anyone knowing about it. As long as I kept file sizes reasonable and didn’t use too much computing power, this little testing ground would give me a private sandbox.

  I was going to need that privacy. Indirect as it might seem, the path was pretty clear to me. Get my simulator up and running. Establish myself as a key part of the design team. Then I’d have access to the company’s computing resources and their all-important God Machine. That’s when the real work, the work I’d actually come here to do, could finally begin.

  At the moment, however, dragons were the bread-and-butter. The visual models produced by DragonDraft3D were clunky, monochrome things. The general shape and number of limbs were correct, but that was about it. My simulator already offered a dramatic improvement, but I knew I could do better. The company’s private servers—the Switchblades—offered more computing power than I’d ever imagined. So I expanded my code as I went, adding new subroutines and deeper features. The designs evolved into ever more precise biological models. Evelyn was going to love them. I’d have shown her right then, but it was Sunday. How did it get to be Sunday?

  It was probably for the best—I still hadn’t tested the latest updates. But first, I needed coffee. My legs carried me out of the pentagonal design lab. Only when I passed through the sealed door did I notice that the entire room had a soft, deep hum to it when the God Machine wasn’t running. It had a smell, too: a faint hint of metal and oil beneath the hot silicone.

  The door whispered shut behind me, dampening the noise. A new aroma wafted to my nose, and I followed it like a moth to a flame. Down the white LED-lit hallway, around the corner, and into the break room. Evelyn had pointed it out once on my tour, and I’d mentally bookmarked it for a closer look. A rectangular glass table sat in the center of the room, flanked by half a dozen ergonomic chairs.

  Swedish-made furniture, by the look of it. High-end stuff. But my tired eyes skimmed right across it to the counter on the fa
r wall. There was a second machine in the building that made dreams come true. This one dispensed not dragon eggs but liquid delight from a dark master. The screen brightened as I got near it. A wonderful array of drink options beckoned. I pressed the rectangle that read Cappuccino.

  The panel flashed a confirmation, then opened a new window: a live camera feed of the machine’s interior. My cup took shape in red plastic on the metal platform, the 3D-printing arms spinning around it as they shaped it. The instaplastic material hardened in seconds, while puffs of steam announced that the milk was ready. Part of me thought this was too cool, too easy to be real. So when the panel slid open to reveal my serving of freshly-made coffee, it was quite a moment.

  I cradled the still-warm cup in my hands, brought it close. There was even a little Reptilian Corporation logo etched on the outside. Steam drifted up from it. I closed my eyes and inhaled. “Ah, sweet elixir.”

  Frogman shuffled in, headphones on. “Hey.” He hit the button for black coffee.

  I watched the vidfeed over his shoulder. “This is a hell of a coffee machine.”

  He grunted. “They like us well-caffeinated.”

  “They?”

  “The board of directors.”

  “Oh.” I nodded sagely. “I suppose I thought Robert Greaves called the shots here.” That’s what most of the industry-analysis articles claimed. Redwood, despite his founding the company, let his old friend run the day-to-day.

  “Who do you think runs the board?”

  Good point. “Is Simon Redwood around much?”

  “If he is, I haven’t seen him.”

  I felt a small stab of disappointment, because I wasn’t lying when I told Fulton that I had a slight Redwood obsession. Granted, Frogman didn’t strike me as the most observant person in the world. Redwood could probably dance a jig in the corner of his module and he might not notice.