Permian- Emissary of the Extinct

by Devyn Regueira

  “Fuck me.”

  “If you’re done fucking each other, gentlemen, I am pleased to say we have a match.”

  Like a herd of VCR era preteen boys jockeying for proximity to a screen where the only scene of Titanic they cared to watch drew nearer - Brady, Alvin, and even Guo moved with purpose for a glance at Melissa’s success.

  “But - I’ve had to mince the similarity threshold by forty percent to get it. So, effectively, this match tells us little about the patient’s gene apart from enjoying a sequential overlap with the protogenesis sample only just sufficient to overcome the margin of error. It’s impossible to say with certainty what the ultimate function of the matched gene is, or whether it’s even been expressed in the patient at all.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

  Alvin draped an arm across Guo’s shoulders, drawing the geneticist in for a discussion artificially deprived of the slimmest room for misinterpretation.

  “Twenty-two hours, forty-five minutes. One hour and fifteen minutes short of what your biological clock, and mine, and a dog, and a goldfish are wound to. That was the length of a day in the Permian. Better put - a five-point-two percent difference, on the god damn nose. Does that mean anything to you, Dr. Chen?”

  “Nothing of consequence, professor Bonman. Patient records indicate no adverse health effects related to that incongruity between geological and biological time. Those are precisely the sorts of possibilities our laboratory technicians have made a point to remain vigilant of.”

  “That was the case as of Ma’am’s last blood sample, six weeks back. We both know at least one thing that’s changed since then. What you don’t know is that she’s begun to lactate - a lot. Almost as if her body believes the egg is already laid and ready to hatch, and the uterine hormones are so concentrated because they’ve only just hit their peak. Sounds to me like little Ma’am Jr. has a 21st century appetite on a Permian budget.”

  “If you are implying that the embryo - better described as a clone, mind you, given the presumed mechanism for its conception - diverged genetically from the mother such that it has begun to develop in accordance with a twenty-four hour day…”

  Cheeks changing shade like an octopus to coral, the geneticist took a sharp breath he knew he would have been better served by rationing.

  “Well, professor Bonman, I can only assert my authority on the subject and reject your prediction as mathematically false. The sheer quantity of genes involved in the formation and regulation of the pineal gland, or any primordial equivalent, for that matter, forbids absolutely any pretense of attribution to random genetic error. Specifically in the case of asexual reproduction. Overwhelmingly when further accounting for the incredible preponderance of less convenient genetic manifestations - each iteration of circadian alteration to be regarded as presenting an equal likelihood of incidence to yours. In layman’s terms, professor Bonman, why twenty-four hours? Why not a twenty-five hour circadian rhythm? Why not a three hour day? Or a three day day! Simply said, you have a better chance of spontaneously combusting on your first day as president of Proxima Centauri b than you have of baring witness to such a coincidence. Nothing short of deliberate tinkering would bridge the difference remotely!”

  Dr. Chen’s glasses were askew, his face flush with passion dammed away for decades behind steel cliffs of political tact.

  “There are no coincidences, Guo.”

  Alvin backed away, sorry he’d infringed upon the geneticists personal space but resolved he’d found what he needed there.

  “Tell me, Dr. Chen. Is there such a thing? Deliberate tinkering?”

  “Is there such a - what? Such a thing as deliberate tinkering?”

  Guo’s disposition seemed, as he tested, cleaned, and retested his glasses, not unlike a cyclist struggling to exchange insurance information with the driver who’d just concussed him.

  “Does deliberate genetic tinkering exist? Is that your actual question, professor Bonman? Please do remind me which institution employs you. I would be delighted to visit the first public university built beneath a rock.”

  “Guo, you lovely man, I’m surprised at you!”

  It was Melissa, of all people, to attempt a humanitarian outreach.

  “I understand you’ve been under a great deal of stress, love, but that’s no way to go about the business of answering questions asked in good faith. Even I wasn’t privy to the specifics about your career until - what? A week in? Answer the man, Guo - it’s not every day you get an open invitation to boast of your accolades for an audience eager to hear them.”

  Guo resembled a child on the playground, compelled by threat of administrative action to shake the hand of the boy with whom he’d traded insults from opposite ends of the monkey bars. Alvin, of course, felt no culpability in it - but he knew too much of people and their emotional idiosyncrasies to doubt whether Dr. Chen was having much the same thought.

  “I’m sorry if my point was taken as an insult to your intelligence, Dr. Chen. That couldn’t be further from the truth. If you’ll just humor me, I think it’s possible you’ll come to share Melissa’s perspective. This, all of this, has been in good faith.”

  “Humor you in which way, precisely?”

  “Explain how, or whether, the sort of genetic tinkering you mentioned can be done.”

  “You genuinely aren’t familiar with the CRISPR-Cas9 technique? Nor with the coming revolution in basic human experience to which it will have been absolutely formative?”

  “Not exactly my area of expertise, Dr. Chen.”

  Guo seemed to cling to his doubt for another moment, unburdening himself of it at last and with the understanding that it was to be replaced by the bitter shame of presumptuousness.

  “I am so very sorry for losing my temper, Alvin. I suppose a decade of authority over an intellectual echo chamber inhibits one’s sense of the outside world and its hierarchies of attention.”

  “I’ve said worse things for similar reasons. Please Guo, just fill me in. We can decide how naive I am at the end. I promise.”

  “Very well. To be brief, developments in the study of ‘Clustered Regularly Inter-spaced Short Palindromic Repeats’, or sequences present in various microbial genomes unique for their repeating constituent patterns, encouraged my country’s ruling party to establish a research laboratory dedicated entirely to investigating potential applications. As head of that team since its inception, I have also overseen independent recreations of various experiments with results considered fundamental to our efforts. One such endeavor involved reaffirming the function of Cas9, an enzyme so named for having been dynamically encoded by ‘CRISPR Associated’ families of genes. The great potential of CRISPR-Cas9 lay in that association, you see.”

  Alvin didn’t yet see, but he had the academic acumen to imagine the direction and scope of Dr. Chen’s CliffNotes memoir. Even Brady, self-admitted layman ever since his GPA’s narrow escape from prerequisite STEM classes, was at minimum attentive and arguably intrigued.

  “Between every twenty-nine pair repeating CRISPR sequence is one non-repeating thirty-two pair sequence called a ‘spacer’; a name which forgivably minimized their importance while research was in its infancy. We now know that their function cannot be understated. Those sequences, though not repeating, are the very antithesis of random. In fact, they might most accurately be regarded as biological bits of memory. Studies since the early part of this century demonstrated that the spacers identified in various microbial specimens were records of external DNA, copied from the genome of threatening organisms or viruses with which they interacted, available thereafter to be referenced in the construction of enzymes purpose built to locate and disassemble identical invasive DNA. These microbes, effectively, evolved a universal vaccine at the molecular level - a biological mechanism to cut-and-paste genomic sequences so broad in its utility that a failure to exploit it medically would seem tantamount to genocide.”

  Guo plucked a handkerchief from his pants pocket
by the frill, dabbing his eyes beneath the glasses.

  “For our purposes, however, the key word to be considered is “microbial”. No such function exists anywhere known in macro-biology, nor have we ourselves developed a procedural competence sufficient to influence the hormonal expression of an animal as it relates to circadian rhythm. I must reassert, with apology now and with humility, that your conclusion regarding the patient’s imbalances cannot be attributed to any such distinction in her offspring’s genome as it relates to her own. Statistics insist beyond doubt that so precise a divergence could not have occurred incidentally. Myself and all of science would agree that no mechanism, be it evolved naturally or incorporated artificially by a member of this team, exists which would have permitted whatsoever deliberate tinkering in any form.”

  “My dearest Dr. Chen?”

  “Please, Ms. O’Lear, I would prefer Alvin be given the opportunity to respond while my explanation is most present on his mind.”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary, love.”

  Flamingoes on two feet, the heads of all three men swung again toward Melissa’s screen.

  “This here-” Melissa implicated a specific portion of the Google search results with her pointer finger, “is that your beloved twenty-nine pair CRISPR gene, Guo?”

  “Yes.”

  She cycled through the tabs, reminding herself not for the first time that afternoon to place more emphasis on organization. Eventually she arrived at a second page of responses.

  “And this one - this appears to be an adequate pre-ellipses, comma delimited representation of the list of ninety-three aforementioned Cas genes, is it not?”

  “Yes. I am pleased you’ve taken an interest in learning, Ms. O’Lear, but if you wouldn’t mind…”

  Melissa snatched him by the cold shoulder.

  “One more thing, love, and then I promise you’re free to go.”

  A click of the mouse and her software’s interface returned to the forefront of the screen. Another, and a PDF of her latest query’s results were generated.

  “Those there, heading either column of results returned from the query I ran as you, for lack of a better term, droned on about your trade - do you see them? Each is one of the two conditions I defined as the parameters of the query. An either this or that sort of scenario. That said - would you agree that either sequence following the words ‘Sequence is Identical to…’ is an accurate representation of the repeating bits of CRISPR and all the lovely Cas genes, respectively?”

  “They are, Ms. O’Lear.”

  “And would you be so kind as to announce the results listed thereafter for the less familiar in attendance?”

  Guo tested, cleaned, and retested his glasses, attempted to do read aloud as had been asked of him, and vomited instead.

  Melissa, for her part, remained polite throughout the near miss. For the first time in Alvin’s presence she vacated her seat, rolling her chair aside by hand in place of foot to create an avenue to her computer that didn’t intersect the puddle of breakfast and Jade oolong tea.

  “Pinch your nose and have a look, professor.”

  Brady wasn’t certain whether it were from the smell or the anticipation, but he came dangerously close to a spill of his own more than once during the thirty seconds Alvin spent reading and rejecting and rereading the document.

  “Al, times up. Just read the damn thing and give me the short version.”

  “There are matches to Ma’am’s DNA for both conditions.”

  “So what’s that mean for us, precisely?”

  “It means that genetic tinkering isn’t off the table.”

  Part sense of urgency, part wounded pride in a room swollen with genius worthy of international esteem, Brady tried his best to ask meaningful questions.

  “But - who is tinkering? Ma’am hatched, grew, spoke, predicted some accurate shit, predicted some outlandish shit, and… and she is what she is! Why would her chick be any different when its DNA has every reason to be identical to hers? Crispy genes or no crispy genes?”

  Melissa secretly enjoyed the feeling of delivering news of a vomit inducing quality, and saw in Brady her next opportunity.

  “It’s a good question, but you’ve already answered it yourself in a way, Mr. Thomas. Ma’am hatched, but not from an egg laid by a mother. She was assembled, by us, from a medley of basic elements combined and animated as per the precise instructions of that genome carved into those rocks. Her offspring, should it survive long enough to do justice to that title, will rise from the same medley - but with different instructions.”

  “And why is that?”

  As a mother would do for her child had she found him retching from a knee, Melissa absently stroked Dr. Chen’s back.

  “For the same reason we couldn’t find the protogenesis gene without lowering the threshold, lovely Brady. The CRISPR and Cas family matches, every last one of them, fall within the boundaries of the Komodo Dragon gene derivative. It says so right here in the results.

  “Ours is a conundrum of genotype versus phenotype; genetic existence versus genetic expression. It is a complicated distinction that I, now approaching a year spent at what amounts to Space Camp for geneticists, have learned to frame in terms of an analogy and adjust when appropriate. Imagine, if you will, the protogenesis gene to be a small town, and afterward that the gene can be regarded as expressed if and only if that town constructs a new school. Everybody in town knows everybody, nobody sells their houses - feel free to include as many cliches as you like.

  “A dreadful fire, representing - for the purposes of our analogy - organic asexual impregnation, devastates the next town over. Chief among the consequences is the hurried relocation of its substantially different population to our own charming little neighborhood. Among the newcomers are CRISPR families, friendly enough, and Cas gene families, too. The CRISPR parents bring their darling little thirty-two pair spacers along, and the Cas couples, envious, set to work producing enzymes to fill their new homes with laughter. With so many knowledge-starved younglings running about, and so abruptly amenable the tax base, our town commissions a new school be built.”

  Melissa grinned from cheek to cheek, still stoking Guo’s back as though he were not a decade and a half her senior.

  “That will be the case for Ma’am’s little one, anyway. As for Ma’am herself, any instructions for splicing bits of existing genes were never expressed because protogenesis was not the mechanism for her conception nor her resultant gestational development. She’s not a miracle virgin birth, she’s a test tube baby. We doused the fire ourselves before it had the chance to build the school.”

  “But - but how different can they possibly be? Different sleep cycles, eye colors? How many edits are we talking about here and what does that mean exactly?”

  When at last Dr. Chen had gotten his stomach under control and his legs underneath him, he drew the handkerchief across his lips, laid it flat atop the pool of bile, and managed to thank Melissa for her comfort without imposing his breath upon her.

  “Over one-hundred-thousand CRISPR matches, about half as many Cas genes detected. Fifty-thousand edits to her genome. At the very least, Mr. Thomas, it means an individual no more identical to Ma’am than I from my brother or you from your son. It means tinkering, and of the most deliberate sort.”

  Alvin was reminded, by the degree of their departure from one absurdity to another, of which between them necessitated his involvement in the first place.

  “What does it mean for Ma’am?”

  “If the results are to be believed -”

  Guo straightened his collar on the way to the door, himself undecided as to whether his next destination would be the lab or the sick bay.

  “- then the egg must be removed without delay. So, professor Bonman, I suppose it means we should make her comfortable.”

  Installment Seven

  “Welcome back. In response to the authority’s case articulated this morning regarding charges of
‘Wanton Obstruction of Protocols Two, Five, and One’, ordered here by magnitude of severity, Dr. Bo Nilsson has expressed intentions to speak in his own defense. In so doing, and in full awareness of the fact, he forfeits any claim to rights of abstention should the panel be inclined to request any clarification, elaboration, or whichsoever detail it deems pertinent. Dr. Nilsson, you are invited to take the stand.”

  “An invitation graciously accepted, and an introduction warmly regarded. Thank you.”

  Bo nestled into the makeshift stand, lowly beside the makeshift judge on his makeshift bench. Of that conference space - arranged into a courtroom as if by memory and staffed as if by Joseph Stalin - Bo Nilsson, wherever it was he sat or stood, was focal. Now he smiled at the man selected to preside over the occasion, one judge of a panel of seven, his vote equal in weight and his authority restricted only by the altitude of his fancies. The retirement-averse Texan was haggard and stooped and jowled by chronic discontent, and Bo would not have smiled but for the mental image of this man in a Victorian wig.

  “Feel free, Dr. Nilsson.”

  “A potent choice of words, your honor, and an opportune foundation from which to support my initial postulation; the outcome of this tribunal should be my immediate release in light of time served.

  “Tragically, it has been some four months since I’ve had cause to feel free, as you say. Four months counting stitches on a padded wall for entertainment. Four months pacing from bed to bath for exercise. Four months conducting my hygienic affairs in a space so lacking in privacy that the Ancient Greeks would consider it an affront to basic sexual modesty.

  “Allow me to put it another way. If floors and ceilings are to be excluded, a position I myself have come to endorse, the simple arithmetic of my incarceration yields just one padded wall’s worth of intellectual stimulation per thirty-day experiment in the most reprehensible incivility. If one were to remove their perspective altogether from the inhumane square-footage contained therein, one might question with some measure of distaste why my arithmetic is such when all the world outside those walls seems all the more positive for my actions.”