Domesticating Dragons

by Dan Koboldt

  I swirled my cappuccino, admiring the perfect froth level. On my way back to my workstation, I noticed that all the designers were working on Sunday, too, other than the mysterious Wong. Everyone at Reptilian went the extra mile. I hoped I’d live up to the reputation.

  Thanks to the caffeine infusion, I banged out a couple more hours of work before heading home.

  Monday couldn’t get here soon enough.

  I crashed hard that night. When my alarm went off at six a.m., it was painful. But the promise of showing off my simulator got me up and moving. I beat most of the designers to work, but not Evelyn. She sat behind her desk, sipping espresso behind a phalanx of holoscreens.

  I knocked softly. “How would you like to test drive the new biological simulator?”

  She craned her head around a screen to look at me. Her brow furrowed. “You look exhausted.”

  I shrugged, uncomfortable under the sudden scrutiny. “I was up late.”

  “Again? You’ve been putting in a lot of hours, Noah.”

  “Have I? Hardly seems that way.”

  “Seventy-six hours last week, based on the server logs.”

  “I like to keep busy.” And I hadn’t realized she’d be keeping tabs on me, either.

  “You should pace yourself. But since you brought it up, let’s see what you’ve done,” Evelyn said.

  I came around her desk. “Already sent it to you.”

  She brought up DragonDraft3D in a new holoscreen and loaded a design. “This is the original dragon, the hog-hunter.” She launched the simulator with a flurry of keys. A three-dimensional dragon shimmered into view, rotating slowly in full color. It was lithe but muscular, with impressive sets of teeth and claws. The scales had a dull brown and green color to them that reminded me of Texas dustbowls. I mentally celebrated the fact that I’d thought to go full color.

  Evelyn gasped.

  “Do you like it?” I asked.

  “It’s very impressive.” She put two fingers on her touchpad and spun the model around. “The physical traits look spectacular.”

  “I thought so, too.” And I didn’t even cheat. I could have, too. I could have taken photos of the real-world dragons that hatched from Reptilian’s eggs, and made sure my simulator predicted them perfectly. But that would only work once, and someone at Reptilian would probably be able to figure it out pretty quick. I didn’t dare risk coming off as dishonest.

  “There’s another model I want to try it on.” She tapped a few commands. “Will your simulator run in real-time?”

  “It should.” The simulator would work on any organism, theoretically, though I’d done most of my testing on higher-order animals.

  She loaded a design labeled 48 and launched the simulator. The visualization took longer to load this time, even on the fancy servers.

  “It’s a little slow,” Evelyn said.

  Ouch. I couldn’t resist a parry. “You must have made a lot of modifications.”

  Her cheeks flushed a little, and I wished I’d hadn’t said that. Typical Noah, open mouth, insert foot.

  “Then again, I haven’t had access to your level of computational firepower,” I said. “I’m sure there are things I could do to speed it up.”

  The simulator finished loading, and the image of the resulting dragon appeared in midair in front of us. Right away, I could spot the differences from the hog-hunting model. An almost friendly stoutness had replaced the sleek lines of the hunting model. All the sharp edges had been smoothed out, from the ridges on the back to the size of the claws and teeth. They’d practically made it playful. From the size of the cranium, it would be smarter, too.

  “This is a very different dragon,” I said.

  “It’s meant to be.”

  “Not for hunting hogs, I hope?”

  “More like playing with kids.”

  I gave her a sidelong look. “You’re serious about that domestication thing, aren’t you?”

  “There’s a huge market if we can produce the right reptiles for it.”

  Again with the market talk. A hint of worry began nagging at the back of my head. “So how close are we?”

  “Not very. Our dragons want to be predators.”

  “That’s not too surprising, given the genetic sources,” I said. The Dragon Genome was a composite based on the genomes of lizards, snakes, and rodents. Predator instincts would be strong. “What have you done to tweak it?”

  “Already more than I thought necessary. Physical traits, intelligence, metabolism, the works.”

  “I assume you brought down some of the hormones.”

  “If we lower them any further, the thing won’t want to get out of bed.”

  “Do you mind if I . . .” I gestured at the design.

  She slid over. “By all means.”

  I slid up next to her and scrolled through the design in DragonDraft3D. Jeez, she’s not kidding. I counted no less than thirty genetic modifications to the endocrine system. “Wow. Not bad.”

  She smiled. “You’re not the only one who can put in seventy hours a week.”

  “Touché.” I scrolled down the list of enhancements. “I don’t see any neurotransmitter mods.”

  She grimaced. “I don’t trust those. Too unpredictable.”

  “They’re a billion-dollar industry, you know.” Second only to lipid-lowering medication, the last time I checked.

  “Without a way to predict the outcome, I’ve been reluctant to tamper with those networks.”

  I shrugged. “A little mood-centering might go a long way. Otherwise it’s running on survival instincts.” Most wild animals lived by instinct: fight, eat, mate, survive. You almost had to target those pathways to domesticate something.

  Evelyn sighed. “It can’t hurt to try. Any recommendations?”

  “I’m partial to serotonin receptors.”

  She rolled back in her chair and gestured at her desktop panel. “Go ahead.”

  I felt the grin spread across my face. “Really?”

  “Sure. I’m in edit mode anyway.”

  I pressed three fingers down on the glass to resize the keyboard—she must have teeny tiny hands—and found the right menus in DragonDraft3D. To Evelyn’s credit, there were modification commands for every neurotransmitter pathway I’d ever heard of.

  I kept mine subtle: first, structural change on the serotonin reuptake channel, to slow it down. Serotonin stimulated positive reinforcement: the longer it stuck around, the more a dragon would be content with its current stimuli.

  Of course, satisfaction might not be enough to counteract the wild aggression of the juvenile Evelyn had shown me. A secondary adjustment couldn’t hurt. Dopamine seemed like the best option. I didn’t dare tamper with dopamine release; that would be akin to putting the animal on heroin. Instead, I goosed up the sensitivity of the receptor to help the dragon get happy, as they say.

  I double-checked the modifications and nodded to myself. “Let’s try that.”

  Evelyn copied my three-finger shortcut to resize the keyboard. “Looks like you’re getting comfortable with our systems.”

  Whoops. I’d spent so much time on them the week before, I didn’t realize how familiar it felt. “I’m a quick learner,” I said, chiding myself for such carelessness. The less she knew about how comfortable I was with their systems, the better. They still hadn’t taken away my sysadmin access.

  “So it seems. But we’ve made enough tweaks to this model. I think it merits a live test.” She hit a bright red rectangular button in the top right corner of the keyboard.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  She smiled, and her eyes glowed with joy. “The print button.”

  It took a lot of self-restraint not to run back to the design lab. By the time we got there, the God Machine had already whirred into motion, its robotic arms bobbing and weaving like the needles of a possessed sewing machine.

  “How long does it take?” I asked.

  “Seventeen minutes, give or take,” Evelyn
said.

  I pulled up the design simulation on my workstation while we waited. The specs looked good, but I didn’t really have a way to guess at the dragon’s aggression. If they really wanted to tap into the consumer market, the dragon would have to be gentle as a lamb.

  Finally, the arms of the God Machine went still. My conveyor belt purred into motion. I peered down into the darkness of the print chute. A round shadow appeared and zoomed toward me. Color bloomed when it hit the light: chestnut brown, with flecks of black and ivory. Kind of like a sparrow’s egg, except this one was the size of a small watermelon.

  “God, it’s gorgeous,” I breathed.

  “I never get tired of seeing them come out of the printer,” Evelyn said.

  “This one looks different from the one I saw on my tour.”

  “They’re all unique. Like snowflakes.”

  “Even eggs printed from the same design?”

  She shrugged. “The patterns are always similar, but there are subtle variations.”

  “Hmm. Biological noise?”

  “I suspect it’s from the Redwood Codex.”

  “I can’t wait to hear what that is. Other than a fire hazard, I mean.”

  She laughed. “That fire hazard is the reason we produce living dragons, and our competitors do not.”

  “What does it do?”

  “You’d have to ask Simon Redwood.”

  Oh, please be serious. I’d have killed for five minutes him. “Sure. Where’s his office again?”

  “He doesn’t have one.”

  Damn. “Have you met him?”

  “Once, very briefly.” Her eyes glowed.

  I leaned close to her. “What did you think of him?”

  “I thought, this man is crazy as a loon.” But she smiled, and I knew she was kidding. In fact, I got the distinct feeling that maybe she was a Redwood believer, too.

  The arrival of the hatchery staffers prevented me from asking a hundred more questions about Redwood. The handlers hefted our freshly printed egg into their foam-topped cart and whisked it away to the hatchery.

  “They don’t waste any time, do they?” I asked.

  “We don’t like the temperature to drop more than a couple degrees. And the hatchery staff are . . . attentive.”

  Now there’s an understatement. “When will the egg be ready to hatch?”

  “Almost two weeks.”

  “Aw, why so long?”

  “We’ve pushed it down as much as we could,” Evelyn said. “Any faster and the lungs won’t develop by hatching.”

  “It’s going to kill me to wait that long.”

  Evelyn gave me an indulgent smile. “That’s what I said about Design 36.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Distance to Target

  Reptilian took over my life, expanding like a gas to fill the entire vacuum of free time. I had an air tablet hot-linked to my workstation, so I could work whenever I wanted. Of course, that way lay madness. There was nothing to do but wait until Design 48 was ready to hatch, at which point things would get incredibly busy. I had to find something to fill the gaps.

  In college and early grad school, I had all kind of hobbies. Ultimate frisbee, trail running, pickup soccer. I spent almost as much time outside as I did inside. Grad school eventually put the kibosh on that: the round-the-clock work schedule and tiny living stipend didn’t leave much room for recreational activities. What little time I had left, I used to spend with my ex-girlfriend, Jane.

  Now, for the first time, I had a regular work schedule. And more importantly, a regular paycheck. Sure, it was a trainee’s salary and there were student loans to pay off, but it was still more money than I’d ever seen. The health insurance was better, too, though it came with strings attached. To avoid stiff surcharges on my premium, I had to log regular physical activity. They called it a wellness incentive but it was essentially forced exercise. I refused to run or ride a bicycle in Arizona’s oppressive heat.

  Thousands of acres of rugged desert and sparse timber still surrounded the Phoenix’s outer limits. Tonto National Forest, Gila Reserve, all the big-name parks were within reach. I bought myself pair of decent hiking boots and went exploring.

  It got me outside and gave me something to do, but I grew bored of it. Even after I almost fell off a boulder trying to take a selfie with a saguaro cactus.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Design 48. Between my tweaks to the serotonin system and all the adjustments Evelyn’s other designers had already made from the hog-killing dragon, it was hard to imagine our prototype wouldn’t be compatible with domestic life. Even so, a sharp little sliver of doubt began to poke at the back of my head. This was the forty-eighth attempt to domesticate Redwood’s reptilian predator. Evelyn knew her stuff, too. I’d seen that not just in her design, but in the underlying code of DragonDraft3D. It was encouraging that she’d wanted to print a prototype based on changes we’d done together, but I still felt like I was missing something.

  On the walk back to the parking lot after said boulder incident, I passed a young couple headed out into the park. Both of them stared so hard at their watches that they nearly walked right into me.

  “Thirty-five degrees, fifty-six point two zero nine minutes north,” the man said.

  “Same here,” the woman replied. “Fifty-six point two zero nine.”

  The numbers sang to me. What strange voodoo is this?

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Do you mind if I ask what you’re doing?”

  “We’re on a geocache,” the woman said.

  “Oh. Right.” I nodded as if this made perfect sense.

  “You have no idea what that is, do you?” she asked.

  I laughed. “Not a clue.”

  “It’s like a treasure hunt with GPS. You navigate from one waypoint to the next, until you reach the end.”

  “So you just, what, use your phone?”

  The man shook his head. “Not reliable. You want a dedicated GPS unit, or a watch.” He held up his wrist so I could see it.

  A hobby with tech gear? Sign me up. “Thanks. I’ll let you get back to it.” I hustled past them toward the trailhead. Hiking was a bust, but this geocache thing might hold some promise.

  Come on, this was basically following a satellite-guided treasure hunt. How hard could it be?

  I found out a week later when I set out on my first-ever geocache. I’d opted for a higher-end GPS watch, figuring that even a slight technological edge might save hours of frustration. Hundreds of geocaches existed right under the noses of Phoenix metro residents, and twice as many could be found in the surrounding desert. I opted for one of the latter, a geocache called Lone Luna.

  The cache was supposed to be a straight shot from the parking lot southwest about a mile and a half. The moment I turned off the highway, a loud steady crunch from underneath the jalopy’s worn tires announced a gravel parking lot. Perfect. The description for this cache said something about it being straight down a trail, so I’d opted to wear sneakers instead of my hiking boots.

  Trouble was, once I’d parked and while I waited for my watch to sync with satellites, I didn’t see any trails. My watch double-beeped its readiness; sure enough, the distance to target came up as 1.55 miles.

  “Time to find this thing.”

  Five steps later, a sharp pain jabbed the top of my foot. “Ow! Shit!” Barrel cactus. I’d been looking at my watch and walked right into it.

  The worst thing about barrel cacti isn’t running into one. It’s what comes afterward. The spines are curved like fishhooks. I spent two torturous minutes extracting myself from that mess while the sun beat down mercilessly on me.

  Distance to target: 1.54 miles. Not an auspicious start.

  I skirted the barrel cactus, stumbled on a pile of loose rocks, and caught a thistle-branch right across the midriff. “Damn it!” I plucked the branch free with my pocketknife so that it wouldn’t prick me again. This didn’t qualify as a trail in my book. I had to backtrack to get around t
he brambles.

  Distance to target: 1.56 miles. Son of a bitch.

  So far, I didn’t understand the point of this hobby. The treasure-hunt aspect appealed to me, but raw desert terrain offered little comfort for crossing terrain. If I wasn’t careful, I’d walk into a ravine or step on a rattlesnake.

  I plucked the last errant thorn from my midriff, stifled a sigh, and pressed on. The land sloped down into a shallow vale, where the brambles mercifully gave way to hard dirt. The only obstacles were occasional patches of creosote and bur sage, which I skirted while trying to keep my bearings. The distance to target ticked steadily downward, until I had less than a tenth of a mile.

  Strangely, after fighting my way from one torturous hazard to the next, I kind of looked forward to finding this thing. I picked up my pace to a jog, stumbling over loose rocks and clumps of dead weeds. I dodged a last patch of creosote and saw the target: a moon-white boulder about four feet tall. How it had come to rest here, I couldn’t even begin to guess, but I knew the logical place to hide a cache when I saw it. Hell, it even fit the name of the cache.

  Well, where is it?

  I skirted the boulder, expecting to find a box or container or something at the base. But I came up empty. Worse, I noticed someone had scrawled curse-words on the side of the boulder. Someone else used a marker to just write the word “Boo.” Clearly, I wasn’t the first geocacher to get this far and not find the prize.

  There was no cache any longer.

  “Well, shit.” In retrospect, maybe I should have checked the comments or something. It sucked not having a tangible object to mark my first geocache, but I figured the boulder was good enough.

  You’d think that after coming this far and failing to find a cache at the end of it, I’d be sick of geocaching. But that’s the thing about me: coming this close only made me want it more.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Aggression

  During the incubation period, everyone at work tried to concentrate on something but Design 48. I finished fine-tuning the behavioral module and showcased it to the other members of the design team. Evelyn schooled me on some of the finer points of DragonDraft3D. She challenged me with test cases—adapting dragons for various physical environments and lifestyles.