Singularity's Ring

by Paul Melko

  The door to the lab slid open and Khalid walked in. One of him saw the paper in Scarlet’s hands, and he flushed.

  “I didn’t mean for you to see that.” He took the paper from Scarlet’s hands.

  They shared the lab with two other postgraduates at the Institute. It wasn’t big enough for all four of them to work together at one time; it was barely big enough for Redd and Khalid. His thoughts mingled with hers, pungent and wrong.

  “Who gave you permission to do this?” Martha asked.

  One of Khalid shrugged, while the rest examined the paper.

  “Tell me, or I’m going to Yeats.”

  “Yeats already knows!”

  “Where did you get this code?”

  “You don’t think I could do this?”

  “I know you couldn’t do this.”

  Khalid crumpled the paper up. “Well, you’re wrong. It’s possible that some us are as smart as you.” Tossing the paper into the trash at the door, he said as he left, “Your undoing will be your arrogance, Redd.”

  Idiot!

  Cretin!

  Vivian retrieved the paper from the trash. It was only a high-level summary of the genome. The sequences themselves were stored in the gene-splicer. Khalid was trying to build a viable set using standard donor sequences. When he was done, he would build RNA strands that would modify the DNA in an egg, which would then be transferred to an artificial uterus.

  Rachel checked the rows of uteri inside the clean room; it was kept at a positive pressure and behind preatomic steel. There could be no chance of contamination or stray gamma rays in the womb room. Beavers and dogs, but no humans. He hadn’t gotten that far yet.

  He shouldn’t be doing this.

  What if it’s approved?

  We would have heard!

  Let’s ask Cahill.

  Dr. Cahill, Redd’s advisor, a trio, and an expert in human cloning, was in her office.

  “How’s the work coming?”

  “Slow. We have a question on something else. Some work someone else is doing in the lab.”

  “Yes. Is this a safety concern?”

  “Sort of. Someone is building a quintet.”

  Dr. Cahill’s lips pursed. “I know.”

  She knows!

  “Did the Eugenics Department lift the ban?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Then …”

  “We’re anticipating a change in the department’s policy. We want to be prepared. Khalid’s work is hypothetical until the egg is implanted.”

  Scarlet smoothed the crumpled paper and handed it to Dr. Cahill.

  “He’s already got an RNA sequence. He’s ready to implant.”

  Dr. Cahill took the paper. “Rooting through the trash, Ms. Redd? That isn’t appropriate.”

  “I didn’t root! He left it on the sequencer!”

  “Be that as it may—”

  She’s brushing us off.

  “Does Yeats know?”

  “Of course the chairman knows,” Cahill replied. “I know there’s competition between you and Khalid. I know that some of this may be driven by professional jealousy.”

  Let’s go.

  She’s turning things around on us.

  “Good day, Dr. Cahill,” Martha said, and Redd left.

  She found herself walking through the housing district of the Institute, lights beginning to flicker on in the dusk. What had seemed her home, where she had strived all her life to be, was ominous and strange. Dr. Cahill’s defensiveness unnerved her.

  Let’s visit Nicholas, Martha suggested.

  He’s busy studying for term exams, Rachel sent.

  Too busy for us?

  A spark of arousal washed away the odd feelings. They had met Nicholas in an economics class. He’d helped her through a rough section on pre-Singularity capitalism, and she had helped him through a required biology class. Neither of them had needed that much help, but it had been an excuse to drink coffee together. They’d been lovers for a year.

  Nicholas was three males and a female, handsome all of them, and he greeted her with a smile.

  “Finishing up a paper. Almost done really,” he said.

  “Then you deserve a break,” Martha said. “And we need a break too.” All four of Nicholas smiled at the invitation.

  The apartment was small, and when all eight of them were together, with thoughts mingling together, it was cozy. If they hadn’t been intimate, it would have been claustrophobic.

  They cleared the apartment, and Nicholas pulled down the beds from the wall. The hour they spent was a welcome release.

  “Shouldn’t you be in the lab?” Nicholas asked. One of him stood to open a window. The room was stuffy suddenly. Gleaming bodies sprawled across the beds.

  Vivian flushed the toilet and said, “It’s Khalid.”

  “Him again. You spend so much time talking about him, I was worried you and he were attached when we first met.”

  A bolt of annoyance flashed among Redd. Nicholas caught it and shrugged.

  “I didn’t mean anything by that.” Redd nodded.

  I’m glad he has a female within him, Scarlet sent.

  It was not the first time she had thought that. Khalid was entirely male.

  “I know. He’s just … unbearable in the lab.”

  “We economists don’t have to share our calculators, at least. You geneticists don’t have enough gene-splicers to go around.”

  He—his female part—brought water from the refrigerator, a two-liter bottle that they passed around playfully before spilling half on a pillow.

  “He’s building a quintet.”

  “I thought that was illegal.”

  “It is! That’s the point.”

  “Oh, if he’s doing illegal conception work, shouldn’t you tell your department head?”

  “I told Cahill, and she said it was approved.”

  “Well, there you go. All settled.”

  “No it’s not. If the Institute had approval for a quintet, it would be common knowledge.”

  “Not to the economists.”

  “It would be big news, at least in my circle. It most certainly wouldn’t be a surprise to me. I’m in the department!”

  Nicholas frowned. “I guess so. But if Cahill …”

  “I don’t know what it means. Maybe the department is doing this secretly. Maybe they hope to have viable humans before anyone finds out.”

  “They wouldn’t be any different than other pod-modified humans, right?”

  “They’ll be different. More pheromonal through-put. More natural propensity for consensus.”

  “But they could pod-bond into a trio or a quartet or a quintet, right?”

  “But he’s planning to make a quintet!”

  “Okay, okay. What are you going to do about it?”

  “I don’t know,” Redd said.

  “Nothing nefarious, I hope.”

  “No, nothing like that,” she replied, but her mind was already working.

  Let’s hack his computer, Scarlet sent.

  No, we can’t do that, Vivian replied.

  Well, we could do that, Martha added.

  But we won’t!

  The thought of hacking Khalid’s computer came and went. She doubted his security would beat her dogs, but getting caught would get her kicked out of school.

  We wouldn’t get caught, Scarlet sent.

  Instead, after getting home to her apartment, Redd posted a message to the genetics board, asking if anyone had heard of research being done on quintets. The board was for genetics grad students, but was frequented by a number of postdocs and professors. As she half expected, her post started a flame war, but before it started she’d ascertained that no one knew about quinary work going on.

  The next morning she had a private message in her in-box. Under her heading of “Quintet Research Ongoing” was a single line, “Why? What do you know?”

  That’s a Eugenics Department address, Martha sent.

  If we
rat Khalid out, the department will get ripped apart.

  If his research is unapproved.

  There would be a hint if it was!

  Scarlet typed, “No, just a rumor from someone I know at the Eugenics Department,” and sent it off.

  Redd got to the lab early for her shift, early enough to see what Khalid was doing. Khalid was chief postdoc in the shift before hers.

  She found him in the womb room, flushing one of them for cleansing.

  “There is no authorized quintet research,” she said.

  Khalid cocked an eyebrow, then grinned. “As far as you know.”

  Smug fucker!

  “I checked with the Eugenics Department.”

  One of him blanched, and Redd didn’t fail to notice the musk of chemical thought surging between the four.

  Scared him.

  The Institute is stepping outside Eugenics’s mandate.

  “What—?”

  But a wave of control swept though him. He smiled and shrugged.

  Bluff.

  “I told my friend over there that you were going to do some quintet work. He was very interested.”

  “What proof do you have? You’re just guessing.”

  Vivian pointed to the gene-splicer in the outer room.

  “I sent him a printout of your supersecret formula.”

  Khalid paled again.

  “You—” he started, then he flushed and ran past her.

  Hit something there.

  Khalid had left the womb open, so one of Redd finished flushing it before returning to help the other three in the lab. She was deep into the analysis of her gene sequence, when an undergrad came by to say that Dr. Cahill wanted to see her.

  Uh-oh.

  Cahill waited for her with three pairs of hands folded together.

  She’s not happy.

  “Yes, Dr. Cahill.”

  “I’ll be blunt, Dr. Redd,” she said. “If you release unauthorized information regarding Institute research to anyone at all, your postdoctoral status will be terminated and your record marked accordingly.”

  Scarlet barked a laugh, faster than they could consense.

  Cahill glared.

  The bitch, Scarlet sent.

  She’s threatening our career, Martha replied.

  They’re scared, Vivian sent.

  Scared of what we could spill, Rachel added.

  But what is it? Martha asked.

  Scarlet sent, Fuck her.

  Veto surged from the other three. All right, Scarlet replied.

  “Isn’t the Institute funded by the Eugenics Department?”

  Cahill frowned. She hadn’t expected Redd to change the direction of the conversation.

  She expected us to roll over.

  “Some of it.”

  “Some meaning ninety-five percent, if I remember last year’s budget numbers. I doubt my career could be that damaged if I reported findings to the group who hired us to do the work.”

  “This work isn’t funded by the OG!”

  Gotcha!

  “What work? And who would be funding it?”

  Cahill stood as one, and said, “Remember what I have told you if you value your career.”

  Redd said at the door, “I value mine probably as much as you value yours.”

  For the remainder of the afternoon, Redd set her students on rudimentary lab chores to keep them out of her hair while she consensed. The world ten years after the Exodus was simple; there was the Overgovernment, which funded everything. No private corporations were allowed, though the OG funded certain enterprises, and sometimes even competing enterprises. Nicholas had called it “emergency socialism with faux-capitalist tendencies. It’ll never work for long, but no one can think of anything better. Pods are born socialists anyway.”

  Redd could think of no one who would be funding quintet research. The singleton enclaves? It wasn’t even imaginable. Another institution? Why pass the glory to a competitor? It made no sense.

  She left the lab early and walked to Khalid’s apartment; she’d been there once to grade mid-terms. Khalid opened the door in pajamas.

  “What do you want? Didn’t you get spanked enough today?”

  “Who’s funding the research, Khalid?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  Goad him.

  “Where’d you get the gene sequence? I know you aren’t smart enough to come up with that on your own.”

  His arm twisted; he wanted to slam the door in Redd’s face. Instead he snarled. “You’re just jealous! You wanted to be the one who worked on this. But they chose me.”

  “Chose you because you wouldn’t report it to the Eugenics Department. Chose you because your moral fiber isn’t as strong as mine.”

  “Because I’m better!”

  “Because you’re malleable and weak!”

  Khalid flinched. “Where’d it come from, Khalid? Who’s funding it?”

  “Screw you!” The door rattled in its frame.

  That went well, Scarlet sent.

  When she got back to her apartment, the data dogs she’d set out that morning came back blank; there was no sign anywhere of quintet research. The only things that it brought back were blogged references to her own initial query. It had seemed innocent a day before—a mere request for data—but now it was like a black hole of information, with hundreds of particles accelerating around it toward the event horizon.

  She paged Nicholas but his avatar said he was at a department dinner. It asked her to leave a message, but then one of Nicholas came on her screen.

  “Hey, Redd. The department went out for beers.”

  “Where at?”

  “Oswald’s.” He frowned. “They pulled their beer fruit a week too early. It’s sour.”

  “But you’re still drinking it,” Martha said with a smile.

  “True, true.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Oh, nothing. But, wait. I have a question on economics.”

  He laughed. “No one has questions on economics these days unless they can’t help it.”

  “Who has the wealth now? I mean, who could fund some really large amount of research?”

  “Looking for grants?”

  “Something like that.”

  “The OG, of course.”

  “Besides them.”

  Nicholas looked away, consensing with the rest of himself.

  “The OG controls most accessible wealth and production equipment. There’s some wealth within the singleton enclaves but they have no genetic-engineering capabilities and most of them are on barter systems. In a few years, the OG is talking about putting limited capitalism back in place with a chit system for private citizens, but that’s a ways off. We’re still on basic subsistence work units based on value of work, which is why you pull in coupons for steak, and I get soyfalfa soup. No one values the economists.”

  “So the OG has all the wealth. I—”

  “The accessible wealth. All the real wealth on Earth is in the Ring and the other Community structures. Nanoforges. Space tech. Low cost to orbit. We have none of those things. Just gengineering. Big whoop.”

  “But the Ring is empty.” Redd pulled up a memory of a decade before, when they were ten, of dead bodies in the street where they had fallen, all of them with interface jacks. Not dead, evolved, some whispered. But the bodies were dead, billions of them.

  “Sure. No access to that wealth for anyone left on this side of the rapture.”

  “Thanks, Nick. Can I stop by later? What time?”

  “Sure. I’ll be stinking drunk on bad beer, so expect a fight when you make your moves.”

  “Sure. When have you ever fought?”

  Redd broke the connection.

  The Institute had discretionary funds. Perhaps they were just reallocating some postdocs on quintet research to see if they could get around the Eugenics Department’s ban.

  The next day, the wombs were full, each of the twelve with an embryo. Redd went to open
the door to the womb room, but found her code didn’t work. It took her thirty seconds to override the door and step through the overpressure lock.

  Each of the dozen units had a label. One read “optimized spatial-oriented embryo for quads.” The word “quads” had been underlined. As if that alone would deflect her attention. She pulled the genotype up on the first womb. It matched what she had seen the day before. But it was weird, extensively changed from what she knew of pod DNA.

  For forty years the pod geneticists had been working from Forsythe and Jergens initial DNA sequence, making minor changes, optimizing where they could. But no one had proposed something as radical as this. It varied from her own DNA by one point five percent. More radical than the differences between a bonobo and a human. There were proteins defined that she had never seen before.

  There was no way Khalid had anything to do with this.

  Redd found a public terminal in the undergrad commons. The place was a swirl of pheromones and thoughts.

  As Martha typed the message, Scarlet asked, Are we jealous?

  No!

  Of course not. What Khalid and Cahill are doing is wrong.

  No peer review.

  Martha paused on the send button. Well?

  Do it!

  Do it.

  Okay.

  Their anonymous note to the Eugenics Department sped through the network.

  The sound of gunfire and a scream broke Redd from a close consensus as they studied a folding protein.

  Scarlet dashed to the door, glanced out and back inside.

  An image from her: a military duo with rifles the length of their arms, black and deadly.

  They’re coming for the fetuses.

  Why?

  Because we told them!

  The emergency exit.

  No. We can’t leave the babies.

  We have no defense against guns!

  The wombs were immobile. There were no other doors out of the womb room.

  The door, Scarlet sent. We can block the outer door open, and the inner door will remain locked due to the overpressure.

  Scarlet pushed the rest of her pod into the inner room and began reprogramming the outer door panel.

  Inside! she sent.

  Martha, Rachel, and Vivian stopped, suddenly understanding what Scarlet was planning.

  No! You can’t.

  I can’t trigger the door until you’re through the airlock.

  Then we all stay out here.