The Deplosion Saga

by Paul Anlee

  “Yep, right here,” she replied, patting her flexible communications wristband. “I’m going to spend the morning working on the DARPA proposal, but first I’ll check in with the minions,” she joked.

  “Morning, everyone!” she chirped on entering the lab. Her team comprised a talented, international, interdisciplinary mix. India, China, Canada, Russia, and Brazil were all represented in addition to her home country. They brought varied expertise, including computing, synthetic biology, material sciences, mathematics, and electronic engineering.

  “Morning, Sharon,” came the distracted replies. Looking around, she saw Amerjit, Rob, and Oliver—her two senior students and the postdoc—all engaged in ongoing experiments. Her four junior students were busy on their laptops. Reading or doing something useful, I hope. She stopped at Amerjit’s bench.

  “How are the mice doing this morning?”

  Ami replied with her normal succinct synopsis. “Progressing well. After seventeen months, Version 3.1 mice remain perfectly healthy, even though they’re getting old now. We continue to map their brain function using both the dendy network and fMRI. Version 3.2 subjects are now entering month ten and still exhibit no signs of adverse effects.”

  “Serotonin levels are okay?”

  “The dendies report that neurotransmitter levels all fall within normal ranges.”

  Sharon nodded. She hated their pet name for the DNNDs but couldn’t break them of it. She reluctantly accepted it as unavoidable.

  Ami continued, anticipating her supervisor’s next question. “I haven’t conducted secondary confirmation yet because the procedure is hard on the little guys. But if you think I should go ahead anyway, I’ll begin independent analysis to verify the initial readings.”

  “No, that’s okay. No need to subject them to brain microbiopsies unless there’s an indication something’s off. How did the CT scans turn out? Are the DNNDs still behaving themselves?”

  “Uh-huh. Everything is staying where it belongs.”

  Sharon’s hand drifted to her head of its own accord, acting on the subconscious association. Catching herself, she covered by smoothing back her hair. As far as her students knew, the mice were the first and only mammalian recipients of the self-replicating version of DNNDs. She intended to keep it that way for a while longer.

  “Okay. We’ll keep collecting data for another few months before going back to the FDA to approve testing in chimps.” Ami raised an eyebrow. Sharon sighed. “Yes, again."

  Turning her attention across the lab bench, she zeroed in on the intensely focused young man with a nose ring. "Rob, is there any sign of coordinated network activity in the 3.2s yet?”

  Rob looked up from his equipment, only now noticing Sharon’s arrival. He’d been attending to the EEG signals on his multi-channel oscilloscope, and comparing them to the digital pulses produced by the DNNDs. Although EEG waveforms were beyond the subject matter of his Waterloo electronics engineering degree, it was all just signal-processing to him. He hadn’t completed his PhD yet, but he was already adding important new chapters to the book on data processing in mammalian brains. He removed his ear buds and placed them on his bench.

  Even from across the lab, Sharon could make out the electronica music emanating from them. “You do know you’ll be deaf before you’re thirty, right?”

  “Huh? What was that?” Rob shouted. “I didn’t hear you.” He cracked a smile, “Just kidding. To answer your question, which by the way I heard perfectly well, there’s indication of small, local groups assembling but the network hasn’t kicked into overall coordination yet. The clusters are slightly bigger than last week, and infilling has come to a standstill.

  “I'm really psyched. I don’t think it’ll be long before we can talk to the whole lattice directly. You know, we could probably shorten the wait time in the next round if we started with more dendies.”

  Sharon already knew first-hand that the process would go faster with a higher dendy concentration. She knew this because the development of the dendy network forming inside her own head right now was the product of proportionately double the numbers they'd used in the mice, and it was progressing rapidly. But I can’t say so. I could risk losing the entire project. I can’t risk that happening; better to continue the ruse for now.

  “Yes, I was thinking the same thing, Rob. Let’s run a growth curve on a new generation of mice with different starting concentrations, and see if we can determine the optimal starting point. Ami, why don’t you set that up for next week?”

  Ami perked up with the prospect of something more appealing to do over the next few months. “Could we use the 3.2s?” She peered around the lab instruments and directed her question to Oliver, who’d been quietly working in the SynBio area of the lab while the others chatted.

  Sharon was getting used to putting on a convincing game face, “Yes, I think that might be a good idea. What do you think, Oliver? Are any of the new synthetases or replicases showing promise, or is 3.2 still the champ?”

  Oliver looked up from his microscope. “Additional mutations at Arginine 153 in the synthetase and Serine 506 in the carboxyl tail of the replicase have exceeded the performance of the previous stable 3.2 generation. However, neither of these mutations increased overall processivity by more than a few percent. It is therefore my estimation that Version 3.2 is sufficiently optimal and proven to be well-tolerated in vivo.”

  “Okay, then.” Sharon took a few seconds to process his answer. She still found it difficult to follow the molecular structure of proteins in her head the way Oliver did.

  “3.2 it is. Calculate a range of concentrations covering a one-thousand-fold difference around the current starting value, and we’ll see what works best in vivo.” She was pretty sure that Version 3.2 would turn out to be close to optimal.

  “I guess that wraps things up for now. I have to get back to work on the DARPA proposal before my afternoon meeting. Any questions before I head out?”

  The second-year student leading the new artificial intelligence efforts looked up from his laptop, “Could you ask Dr. Franti if his contacts at MetaCepta are going to let us use their lattice parallel traversal algorithm?”

  “Sure, thanks for the reminder.” Getting MetaCepta’s consent was near the top of her agenda. There was a good chance that their advanced pattern recognition code combined with Neuro Nano’s DNND technology might enable the instant learning she’d dreamed about. Between that and the CT and fMRI brain scans she was running on herself this afternoon, it was shaping up to be a potentially momentous day.

  3

  Her lab business concluded, Sharon locked herself in her office for the rest of the morning and worked on the DARPA proposal. She allowed herself a brief reprieve, grabbed a chef’s salad downstairs, and continued on the proposal until mid-afternoon.

  When it came time to wrap up, she could feel the start of a migraine coming on. She squeezed her eyes to block out the light. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she gently leaned her head back. I’ll never get used to all this grant writing. They hire me to be a productive teacher and scientist, and then they fill my days with grant writing, committees, and admin work. How am I supposed to get any research done? What a colossal waste of time and skills. It made her want to scream and weep but what good would that do?

  She opened her eyes and stretched. I might as well head out. There’ll be time to work on the proposal later. She threw her tablet into her backpack. She checked in with Mei on her way by, put on her hat and sunglasses, and set out on the half-hour walk to her company, Neuro Nano.

  They’d found a great space for the spin-off company, just off campus in Biotech Alley. The head-clearing walk over there turned out to be a bonus; it was when she often came up with some of her best ideas.

  The sunshine warmed her shoulders. That feels so good. She grabbed an iced coffee along the way and washed down a couple of painkillers, hoping they would help with the headache.

  She arrived at the building a few minu
tes late, and skipped her usual stairwell climb in favor of a quick elevator ride to the main entrance on the fourth floor. The doors parted, and she let the familiar buzz of activity envelope her.

  The enterprise was already threatening to overflow its 300 square meters of combined office and lab space. The offices themselves were tiny. Most of the space was dedicated to biolabs, semiconductor clean-rooms, and medical examination suites. Cramming such diverse functions into a single, open area was budget-friendly and procedurally efficient. It also was claustrophobia-inducing and made organized operation practically impossible.

  Her founding partners, former postdocs Nick Franti and David Arnell, had their own compact offices flanking the small, stylish boardroom where they delivered polished presentations and raised money.

  Lately, much of their day and their patience was eaten up in meetings with various health industry regulators, reviewing, explaining, and re-evaluating test-animal results. The DNNDs slated for commercial market had already been thoroughly tested and reviewed. There was no valid reason to delay testing in chimps but the FDA wanted to ensure everything was done by the book. And then some.

  Sharon suspected they were stalling for political reasons, or maybe to allow Big Business interests to better position themselves to best capitalize on her inventions. Maybe both. It was getting difficult to tell the many veiled and interwoven interests apart these days.

  She understood that DNNDs were an entirely new class of medical device, and that given their complex nature and potential implications, the regulatory agency wanted to be more cautious than usual. She did. She would also be pleasantly surprised if they got the approvals without word leaking prematurely to the press or, worse yet, to the growing tide of ill-informed skeptics and evangelical naysayers.

  Sharon peeked into the clean-room production facilities. A handful of postdocs were assembling DNNDs using focused ion beam deposition, in the same old-fashioned way they’d been using for the past two years. They’ll be out of work in a year. This current DNND generation merging synthetic biology with patterned semiconductor growth will see to that–she predicted.

  While it was unfortunate to lose such highly skilled people, the only way for technology to make the necessary innovations was to draw from all possible specializations, with no heed to historical boundaries. If they continued within the limitations of linear progression, they could never make the advances available to the public at a reasonable price.

  “Sharon!” David bounded out of the boardroom and delivered a bracing business handshake. He didn't notice it was returned somewhat less enthusiastically. “How goes MIT? How’s Paul? How are you doing?” he asked in rapid fire. “More importantly—how’s our little fetus?”

  She found David’s enthusiasm for corporate style and trappings more disturbing by the day. Even though he claimed to place the baby’s health in paramount importance, the order of his questions revealed the true hierarchy of his concerns.

  Corporate life had clearly been good for David. Despite the constant pressure of having to raise money through the wining and dining of potential investors, he was much happier now than when he was strictly a researcher. He was dressing better, too, she noticed.

  “Sharon, it’s good to see you.” Nick greeted her less ebulliently but more genuinely as she entered the boardroom. “How goes the pregnancy?”

  Nick Franti was the quintessential scientist. Being CTO of Neuro Nano had not changed him at all. His hair was still too long and poorly coiffed, and his casual attire announced that he was more comfortable in the lab than in front of potential investors.

  “Everything’s fine so far,” she replied, patting her belly. She was glad she'd decided to trust Nick and David with her self-experimenting. She needed someone to objectively evaluate DNND growth and monitor any cognitive changes.

  “Actually, I’ve got a bit of a headache right now,” she added. “I’ve been working on the DARPA proposal all day.”

  “That’s too bad,” Nick said; he looked concerned. “About the headache, I mean. Glad to hear the baby’s doing fine.”

  “Thanks,” said Sharon. “I took some painkillers on my way over here. It should be gone soon.” She sat to the right of the head of the table, relinquishing the power seat to David, “Why don’t we get started?”

  “Ready when you are,” answered David. “This isn’t an official board meeting; we don’t need to take minutes. I just wanted to get caught up on things at your MIT lab and discuss the next round of funding. How'd you like to go first, Sharon?”

  I see that it’s “my” MIT lab now, not “ours”—she noted. Interesting. This, despite the fact that until recently David made his research home in that same lab, and all of the research fed directly into product development at Neuro Nano.

  “Sure, I can start.” She took out her computer and set it on the table. “Everything is going well with Version 3.2 of the DNNDs. There have been no visible side effects in the mice, but the neural networks haven’t assembled into a consolidated functional grouping yet. Some local portions of the nets are becoming active. We haven't seen any obvious changes in the mouse's behavior as a result of the localized activity yet.

  “Rob thinks the system would self-assemble faster if we began with more dendies, which we already know to be true from my experience. I’m getting Ami to prepare a series covering a broad range of initial DNND concentrations next week, and we’ll look into it further. Oliver has some versions that replicate and form networks marginally faster, but he thinks we should be okay to keep experimenting with the current 3.2 version in vivo.”

  Both men were nodding. “And what about you?” David asked. “Have you noticed any sign of internal DNND activity in your own system yet?”

  “Nothing I can feel,” Sharon answered. “Even though I started with a relatively higher titer than we used with the mice, I don’t expect to notice any activity for a few more weeks or months. I'm hoping to get more objective data from the CT scan and the fMRI this afternoon.”

  “What about the operating system?” Nick asked, saving her from getting any further mired in her guilt and fear.

  “Oh, right. I’m glad you mentioned that. Howard asked if we were going to get access to that new software.”

  “You mean the parallel lattice traversal algorithm? As luck would have it, MetaCepta believes that particular bit of code is not central to their business plans. Still too conceptual, they said. We can have the program for a small one-time licensing fee. I downloaded it today. In fact, I have it all set up to replace the standard algorithms. You can take it back to the lab and implement it in your mice tomorrow if you’d like.”

  “Why don’t we just download it to my lattice right now?”

  David perked up. Nick, however, looked doubtful. “Are you sure that’s wise?” he asked.

  “Why not? What harm could it do, replacing a few algorithms in a net that’s not even functional yet? My mom always said, ‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’ Besides, I think I’ve already demonstrated how fully committed I am to this project, wouldn’t you say?” She looked from Nick to David, reading concern from the former but only eager anticipation in the latter. Neither raised an objection.

  “Well then, let’s do that right after the scans,” she concluded.

  “Okay,” David chirped, a tad too eagerly. “Nick, will you set that up, while I go over the latest financing proposal with Sharon? It’s the same one you and I went over yesterday.”

  “Alright,” Nick replied, without enthusiasm. He lumbered out of his chair. He glanced back at Sharon; she met his eyes without wavering. He shrugged. “I’ll only need a few minutes. Why don’t we meet back in the lab when you’re ready, Sharon?”

  “Alright, I’ll be right there as soon as we’re done.”

  David launched into his description of the newest deal he was arranging.

  Sharon had always had trouble dealing with the money aspect of the company. When not evading her entirely, the details nigg
led at her.

  No matter how she framed it, it still seemed unfair that in order to secure new funds to keep the commercialization moving forward, she, Paul, and Nick would have to give up a disproportionate piece of their shares, while David would remain mostly unaffected.

  As David explained it, this was at the insistence of their main investors who wanted to ensure that he, as CEO, kept adequate "skin in the game."

  Sharon detested the good-ol’-boy jargon of the financial world. Just another glorified boys’ club bent on helping old cronies with money and influence to wrestle control of any promising new ideas from the inventors.

  She agreed with David’s proposal just to put an end to the meeting. Her headache was pounding. She made it to the CT area by gently trailing one hand along the corridor wall to help steady her steps.

  Nick was ready to go. He noted her weak smile and pallor as she lowered herself onto the scan bed. “Are you alright? We can do this some other day, you know.”

  She smiled feebly. “No, I’ll be okay. It’s just that David gets so intense when he discusses business.”

  “Ha! You know, every time I talk money with him, I know I’ve been screwed. I just don’t know how.”

  “You have to admit, though, he’s done a great job of getting us through most of the FDA requirements. We’re so close to going commercial.”

  “I suppose. And I think we still own the largest percent of the company. I’m pretty sure we could outvote him and the investors, too, if we had to,” replied Nick.

  “Providing Paul sides with us.”

  Nick looked alarmed, “I hope that’s not a problem!”

  “No, no,” Sharon soothed. “Put your eyes back in their sockets, Nick; I’m just kidding. Paul will always vote with us. No question.”

  “Good. Well, if you’re ready, why don’t I run the CT? Then we can install the new software, and I’ll do the fMRI.”

  “I’m ready. Let’s do it.” Sharon settled in, and the bed inched forward into the efficient new scanner.