by Judyth Baker
viii The Triton Oxygen Respirator (designed by Jeabyun Yeon) was announced as a breakthrough for scuba diving by gullible bloggers in 2014. It can extract oxygen from water and was promoted for use in scuba diving, with applications for firefighters and in hospitals, wherever water was available, but it was soon pointed out that this artificial gill device would have to pump about 6 liters of water through the system to get enough oxygen for one breath of air. “The average person breathes about 15 times per minute” one article explains, so the Triton would have to filter 24 gallons a minute to supply a scuba diver with enough oxygen to just float along underwater. Without going into more detail, write ‘impossible’ over Triton’s gilly forehead. However, an artificial gill system on an industrial level could extract oxygen at a commercial rate, this author argues, using wind, waves and tides for energy. See the math as to the Triton’s failure to impress here: http://www.deepseanews.com/2014/01/triton-not-dive-or-dive-not-there-is-no-triton/
Little Green Men
A letter to the Cyborgs from the Protector of Human Life Assessor Einstein.
Year 2075 CE.
Preamble:
I apologize for writing a letter as backup to our usual input, but wish to place into the record a hand-written history concerning our older DNA enhancement programs. There is a slight chance that a Murine Infestation can destroy some of my reportage on this topic at the cyber-level.
History and Discussion:
For purpose of example, concerning our past DNA projects, and why their histories must be preserved, we present the case of former US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, deceased Nov. 22, 1963:
In 2063, we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the murder of President John F. Kennedy. It had been well established by then that Lee Harvey Oswald had been framed for the murder, and a few years later, the greatness of the president who had been executed by government-sponsored snipers was finally proven upon full examination of his DNA and the DNA of his political and military enemies. There is no doubt that Kennedy was a great man with a powerful mind, who recklessly assumed he could make a difference in that hopelessly corrupt milieu. It’s a shame that he did not live to see how his DNA once more became an influence for good on the world stage.
For the record, in case prehistoric details are destroyed by the present Murine Infestation and removed from our History Files, Kennedy’s DNA had been totally analyzed by 2035, and after the Cyborg Revolution, technicians created scenarios with all available input from JFK’s childhood until his demise. This was successfully transferred into a suitable brain, enhanced with Kennedy’s DNA and kept in storage until wanted. By 2070, the current World President was elected with a virtual John F. Kennedy at his side, whom he pledged to consult as his Vice President. Virtual Vice Presidents had come into fashion only sixteen years before my present letter to you, beginning with former General and Revolutionary President George Washington, who became the world’s first virtual Vice President. Laws have now been passed so that no virtual Vice President can be activated more than once every 64 years, nor can they hold office more than eight years. After Washington, Mahatma Gandhi was brought forth. Now it is Kennedy’s turn. To keep these charismatic personalities from overcoming present leaders, and seducing public opinion, such brains are subjected to scheduled hibernation lockdowns.
As an Assessor, I, too, exist in order to advise, thanks to some old laws that demanded certified human oversight of Cyborg Rulers. We have had no problem getting along – I wish to make this clear in case some alteration of records occurs due to the current Murine Infestation.
As you are aware, I am one of a dozen such whose DNA has been enhanced with genes from the most prominent whistleblowers, innovators, geniuses, philanthropists and creative thinkers of the past. For example, I am endowed with the DNA of Edward Snowden, Albert Einstein, William Shakespeare, Charles Darwin, and the actor Paul Newman. I chose to look like Paul Newman, by the way, because his classic facial features exhibited character. All twelve of us are similarly infused with DNA from the world’s former best. Our lifespan of two hundred years can be extended by a vote of the people, so we are motivated to represent their welfare faithfully. When we meet, which we do regularly after traveling the world and monitoring events, we agree as to what findings we should present to you on issues of significance in world politics and the quality of life for all beings, human and otherwise, on the planet. Of course, this includes the well-being and immortal status of all Cyborg Rulers who still wish to remain alive. We recognize that you become weary and sometimes give up your position to a newcomer. When this occurs, we rejoice that you set aside ego, prestige and glory to do so.
Just as you, we Assessors have no families: our family is the life on the planet, including all plant and animal life.
Our Status
For the record, as it’s trivial and could be destroyed by the “Infestation,” we are laughingly called The Twelve Apostles, because we have a following of worshippers, so to speak, who come to us with problems Cyborg Leaders may rightfully ignore or misunderstand. These problems are becoming rare, as Cyborg Rulers constantly improve their sensitivity and flexibility. It’s obvious to me that our services will no longer be needed in another fifty to one hundred years, and we’ll just become adornments, or museum pieces. But while we are still occasionally useful, we’re doing our best to provide you with what information might still be needed to assure the best possible lives for all living things on the planet, in our dance of symbiosis.
Important Meeting Coming
Our next meeting at 23:00 in three days will address this sudden Murine Infestation problem. It is possible that we will be forced to terminate a new life form. If this becomes necessary, we will bring you a petition for the purpose, which, according to tradition, we assume you will ratify. Due to the discovery of a mass destruction of unusual historic records in the field of genetics, we urge you to create copies of all DNA records immediately, and to place them under guard. The rest of this message, which we have placed in the old vernacular form, is also encoded the usual way for backup. However, we felt it necessary to use this old form of communication, which we believe might be invulnerable to the Infestation. Thank you for your attention.
William Paul Einstein, POHL Assessor.
“So they got a hand-written letter?” Marilyn asked me. She had the face and body of Marilyn Monroe, a lovely actress from the past whose high IQ was sufficiently compatible with the other personalities inside Marilyn’s DNA-concocted brain: specifically, Sir Isaac Newton, John Milton, Jane Austen and Nikola Tesla.
“It’s probably the first letter they’ve received, written by hand, in their lives,” I told her. “How much time do we have left, to look into the Murine Infestation?”
“It depends on how close Walt gets to the mice,” she answered. Walt Napoleon Disney was our best friend among the twelve Assessors. He was perhaps the most flexible, creative, and open-minded among us, having the most curiosity about non-humans, and therefore a close relationship with nonhuman mammals. His other DNA components, besides Walt Disney and Napoleon Bonaparte, were Mother Teresa, the brilliant geneticist Martin Kerry (who was murdered in 2050 during the Clone Corruption Scandal) and musician John Lennon.
We were waiting for Walt’s arrival, which was of course carried out in secret, as were all our meetings involving emergencies such as the Murine Infestation. It was a problem that had suddenly erupted after Walt had come upon an extraordinary colony of mice. After all, mice were Walt’s passion. It was in his genes.
When Walt showed up, he brought with him a kind of projector, to give us a review of the problem. [Important note: what follows next is the uncontaminated, official version of this historic event, which resulted in the termination of two Murine Diplomats who had tried unsuccessfully to escape our infallibly inescapable punishment system.]
Walt had the face of a young Walt Disney, complete with mustache, but he had chosen to use the voice of John Lennon. For some reason,
his voice was soothing to animals, which was useful, since his interests concerned the quality of life for the remaining non-human mammals on the planet. There weren’t enough of them, but due to his efforts, that was changing. The mammoth had returned, there were snow leopards again, and most recently, he had made contact with the mice.
We greeted him warmly, then he set up his lecture just for us. “I don’t exactly trust the other Assessors with what I’ve learned,” Walt explained. “But you, he pointed to me, have Newman’s tough philanthropic bent, and you,” he pointed to Marilyn, “have the sense and sensibility I’m after. As for me, Mother Teresa has moved me to feel some compassion for these mice.”
“I need a lot of convincing,” I told him. “If the Cyborgs knew what kind of destruction the Murine Infestation has been causing, they’d order all mice to be wiped out. No questions asked.”
Walt frowned. “I know. It’s bad.” He wiped some sweat off his forehead. Walt had opted for primitive body odors so the animals he encountered would be able to remember him and learn to trust him. Regulated hunting was still a problem for many mammals: Numerous species had become much smarter, having been genetically modified to provide better hunting experiences for legal poachers. His sweat and body odors were not noxious because there were no bacteria or fungi involved anymore, but the pheromones involved made Walt unusually attractive to Primitives –humans who had opted to live as their ancestors had done, minus the diseases and famines. Nevertheless, Walt’s sweat was visible – and we had never seen it visible before, at this temperature. He was obviously agitated and worried.
“I have to show you some history, first” he explained. “I warn you, some of it is boring. But bear with me.” Up flashed a photo of a snake with a baby. “This is from way back in February, 2013,” he explained. “Island of Guam. Brown snakes invaded Guam during World War II. Came on ships. Because there were no predators, by 2013 there were some 3 million snakes on this small island. That’s 20 or 30 snakes per acre of land. They ate all the birds. The island became covered with spider webs, because the spiders then reproduced out of control. The solution was to lace thousands of dead mice with acetaminophen, a painkiller harmless to humans, but deadly to the snakes.1 Poisoned mice are just one way we used the Murine Race for our own purposes.”
[Note well: we have always been in total control of the murine population. The Murine Infestation problem will also soon be solved, in due time.]
Walt flipped from the photo to a screen full of written words. “Sorry for the inconvenience, but we’re using this form to communicate, for security reasons,” Walt whispered. “To continue, many other ways we used the Murine Race in the past were just as brutal. Billions of mice were used for scientific experiments of every kind, some of them unbelievably cruel.”
“We’re aware of the cruelties in the past conducted upon animals for scientific experiments,” Marilyn replied. “But that’s over.”
“But what if it turned out that the mice remembered how they were treated, long ago?”
“I don’t see how they would,” she replied.
“How would they do that?” I asked.
“It turns out, we have lost the records of our total dominance over them,” Walt explained. “And how? The Murine Infestation was dedicated to their destruction. Now the rebels are moving into other areas. Underground. Chewing at things. Destroying things, as never seen before. Oddly, it seems the mice didn’t want us to remember what we had done to them.”
“This is getting a little weird, Walt,” I said.
“I got close to some of their leaders,” he went on. “So close … and that’s how I got my hands on some records they wanted us to forget about. Look at these … and please, do read them. I know that’s tough on you. But do it! Our lives may depend on it.”
[Note well: the over-concern of Walt has been reported with candid frankness, but he was totally misinformed and over-reacting to the slight infestation problem as it actually existed. At all times, the infestation was only a very minor problem.]
One by one, the old records came up on the screen. Saving us the trouble of wrestling with text, Walt began reading the material for us:
January, 2005: An informal ethics committee at Stanford University endorses a proposal to create mice with brains nearly completely made of human brain cells… the board was satisfied that the size and shape of the mouse brain would prevent the human cells from creating any traits of humanity. Just in case… the committee recommended closely monitoring the mice’s behavior and immediately killing any that display human-like behavior.2
April 26, 2005: A US government-sponsored committee advised that, “…approval by a review committee should be secured before any human embryonic stem cells are put into an animal.”3
April 29, 2005: NBC News reported that sheep were also being injected with human cells and that: “Particularly worrisome to some scientists are the nightmare scenarios that could arise from the mixing of brain cells: What if a human mind somehow got trapped inside a sheep’s head?” The “idea that human neuronal cells might participate in ‘higher order’ brain functions in a nonhuman animal, however unlikely that may be, raises concerns that need to be considered…”
Sept. 17, 2014: Huffington Post: “An international team of researchers have created unusually intelligent mice by giving them the human version of Foxp2, a gene that’s common to both humans and mice. The brainy rodents proved their extra cognitive oomph by navigating a maze significantly faster than ordinary mice. But don’t worry – scientists aren’t about to unleash hordes of mutant mice into our cupboards…”
February 20, 2015: “Scientists Use Human Genes to Grow Mice with Huge Brains”:4 “The team found that humans are equipped with … a particular regulator of gene activity, dubbed HARE5, that when introduced into a mouse embryo, led to a 12% bigger brain than in the embryos treated with the HARE5 sequence from chimpanzees.”
February 26, 2015: The Guardian reported that Germany identified “a strand of DNA that … drives the expansion of the human brain and helps to make it the most complex structure in the universe … ramping up dramatically the number of neurons in the neo-cortex, a brain region that is central to reasoning, language and sensory perception… Tests on mouse embryos confirmed that the gene can have a profound impact on brain development… [Some] grew larger brain regions and … developed the crinkled brain surface that humans have.
The folds allow more brain tissue to fit into the same sized skull. [Dr.] Huttner’s group is now keen to breed mice that carry the gene into adulthood to see how their brains develop, and crucially to see whether any changes boost their intelligence, memory and learning skills.”5
Walt turned off the screen. “Of course there’s more, but this is how it started.”
“Just how smart are these mice now?” Marilyn wanted to know. “After all, how much intelligence can you pack into those tiny little brains?”
“Their brains aren’t that tiny, after all,” Walt told her. “It turns out that mice are real survivors. So they spontaneously began to develop a second area of brain cells using the neurons in their hearts, guts and spinal cords. We have lots of neurons in the same places, but they’ve been ignored, insofar as enhancing them to provide more functioning intelligence.”
“I think I’ll demand some of that enhancement!” I declared. “Einstein is excited!”
“At any rate,” Walt went on, “Some wildcat geneticists didn’t understand that these new mice were on the verge of becoming geniuses. Then some moron decided to help them along. Give them opposable thumbs and other primate characteristics.”
This was more in my line of expertise, thanks to Darwin, so I put in my own two-cents’ worth: “We humans have opposable thumbs for fine tool use, ball-and-socket arm and leg joints, so we can rotate them, stereoscopic 3-D vision due to frontal eyes, color vision, and the world’s biggest brains to handle it all. It took millions of years of evolution.”
“But in modern tim
es, it took only a few decades to give these characteristics to mice,” Walt added.
“But why?” Marilyn wanted to know.
“Cheap slaves,” came the brisk answer. “To use in space travel. Lightweight, cheap, and energy efficient. To be used on colonies wherever we’ve wanted to send humans, but feared we might lose them. Many colonies began using them as pets to do a lot of labor for their owners.”
[Note: we have been very kind to the mice, kinder than any who have owned them hitherto. This version is retained to reflect what Walt was erroneously led to believe were actual facts.]
“But what about oversight by our Space Travel and Colony Assessor?” Marilyn asked.
“She was in on it,” Walt said, rather sadly. “She had her life extended another hundred years, using bribes under the table. The space frontier is like the Wild West of yore.”
“I can’t believe it!” I fumed. “Not with her personality mix!”
“Maybe that was the problem,” Walt mused. “The conspirators behind this switched Neil Armstrong DNA for Lance Armstrong DNA. Once it took effect, she was willing to take other enhancers that are forbidden.”
That explained a lot. The DNA of exceptionally tenacious individuals in sports had been used to enhance the performances of many athletes and space travelers. The Lance Armstrong DNA set was a cheap sports competition enhancer used by DNA pirates. Just like the Mike Tyson enhancer, it had its drawbacks and was black market material only.
“We caught the pirates when she caught our attention by biting off people’s ears,” Walt said, with a straight face. To our shocked reaction, he laughed. “Just joking. It’s the John Lennon in me! Of course, she was terminated when the corrupt DNA showed up in a routine check, but by then, these mutated rodents were scattered across the colonies.”