by John Fast
As I continued to read I kept glancing up at the library ladder, twisting it around in my mind’s eye to form the sculptural geometry of the double helix. I had memorized Watson and Crick’s Nobel Prize-winning note, and I began to recite it out loud:
“We wish to describe a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid .... This structure has two helical chains each coiled around the same axis .... [And] it is found that only specific pairs of bases [from each chain] can bond together. These pairs are adenine … with thymine … and guanine … with cytosine .... It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.”
As an eleven year old Highbrid I was fascinated by secret codes, but I thought DNA was the ultimate code, the hieroglyph of life. I lived and breathed its ciphers and I wanted to learn everything I could about it. And even if, in the process of that discovery, my very existence dissolved into nothing more than a few strings of letters in a vast genetic text, nevertheless I still wanted to trace the shapes of those letters and read as much of that text as I could. I wanted to understand the code that linked every living thing on earth. Those books on genetics and evolution that my father gave me fired my imagination. I felt as if I were exploring the fundamental mysteries of nature, the alchemy of transmutation.
*************
Lying in bed that night, I thought again about the alphabet of life.
“The genetic computer uses four basic data bits, ATGC,” I whispered into the darkness. “These four bits, in various combinations, form twenty different three-bit units. These twenty units, in various combinations, form a multitude of strings. These strings, in various combinations, form thousands of genes. These genes are lined up along the twenty-three chromosomes in the nucleus of each one of our cells. And these cells sustain the data flow of the human genome.”
In school earlier that day we had assembled a long, plastic, color-coded model of the double helix, and Professor Greenleaf had explained its micro-logic.
“The genetic machine reads, copies and processes huge amounts of data,” he said. “And it also makes mistakes. Some of these mistakes have serious consequences in terms of evolution and disease, but most of them have no apparent effect.”
As I finally began to fall asleep that night, I thought about my father’s work and felt a little queasy. André was analyzing huge genetic data bases spanning hundreds of generations and thousands of species. In effect, he was searching for the probability engines of evolution. In that last moment of consciousness just before sleep, I felt millions of tiny genetic springs winding themselves tight in my cells. And I wondered what secret mechanisms they powered. The thought carried me into the darkness.
CHAPTER 6.
A River of Ciphers
After school the next day I romped in the Genetic Institute’s leafy woods with Aster, Isabel, Michael, Printha and Xi Zhu. I ran right up to the edge of the Stony Brook and wondered if I could leap from rock to rock and reach the opposite bank. As I gauged the possibilities, I thought about Darwin, Wallace, Mendel and Miescher’s great discovery: all life forms are variable data streams channeled by natural selection, and some of those data streams are even further channeled by sexual, social, cultural and scientific selection. And I had emerged from that ever narrowing process.
I thought about my family history. My mother’s parents–Susan, an Irish biochemist; Erik, a Danish astrophysicist–were selected and paired as one of the thirty original couples of the Highbrid Protocol. They agreed to have four children, with the help of the surrogate mothers. When Jena turned twenty, she was selected as a Linear Thirty and paired with my father, a Non-Linear outsider.
My father’s parents–Marie-Thérese, a Dutch mathematician; Fernand, a Belgian engineer–were surprised when they were told about the Highbrid Protocol, and pleased that André had been chosen as a genetic partner for Jena. In their turn, Jena and André also agreed to have four children, with the help of another set of surrogate mothers. And when Aster, Isabel, Michael, and I turned twenty, one of us would be selected as a Linear Thirty and paired with another Non-Linear outsider. And so the genetic stream of the Highbrid Protocol would continue to flow, from generation to generation, into the distant future.
“However,” Professor Greenleaf had said in his follow-up lecture that morning, “of all the billions of data bits in the human genome, less than one percent are semantically significant for human physiology.”
He’d said that as few as twenty to thirty thousand genes generate the intricate complexities of the proteome: the collection of proteins, the three-dimensional biochemical stuffing that gives shape to the human scarecrow. And so he’d said it was something of a misnomer to refer to all three billion plus bits, all one billion odd units, as the so called ‘human’ genome. It was more like a river of code which included streams of human DNA.
As I stood on the edge of the Stony Brook I realized that, even with the careful scientific selection process of the Highbrid Protocol, uncharted currents of the past and future flowed through my body. Who knew what mysterious streams of code I swam in, and swam in me? I was leaning so far forward into my first jump that I slipped and splashed right into the shallow water: an automatic double-soaker. And yet once I got used to the liquid squish of my sneakers, I felt liberated. No stepping stones for me! I waded up and down the stream.
“I’m King of the Golden River!” I shouted.
The other kids saw how much fun I was having and they stepped right into the Stony Brook with me. However, the smooth slates lining the streambed were slippery with algae and in no time at all Aster fell right on her butt. Michael laughed so hard that he went down too. Printha, Isabel, Xi Zhu and I looked at each other and we all flopped down into the water. And for those few seconds I felt completely happy. Then I noticed that Aster was holding her left wrist, and she was crying. I got up, splashed over to her and asked if she was okay.
“It’s nothing,” she insisted, wiping her eyes with the palm of her good hand.
“Then why are you crying?” I wondered, feeling annoyed.
“Just because,” she replied, standing up, dripping wet, as the others joined us.
I glared at her, demanding an explanation.
She hesitated for a moment, and looked at everyone.
“Okay,” she finally said. “Have you ever thought about where we come from? I mean, what are we? Genetic experiments? Strands of DNA? What?”
“I’ve thought a lot about that,” Xi Zhu replied, nodding his head. “I’ve often wondered who or what I’d be if just a few of my genes were slightly different.”
“I was just thinking about that too,” I admitted, now that I understood why Aster had been crying. “What Professor Greenleaf said in class this morning … it’s all about us really.”
“I’ve had nightmares,” Printha confessed. “A couple of nights ago I dreamt I was having brain surgery. I was awake, but I couldn’t tell them to stop. But don’t tell my parents because they’ll send me to the school shrink.”
“And that might screw up your chances of being selected as a Linear Thirty,” Xi Zhu said.
“Whatever that’s worth,” Michael added.
“Whatever happens,” Aster stated solemnly, “we should stick together.”
We gave each other the secret handshake: hooked thumbs followed by bumped fists.
Then Printha asked, “Who’s that?”
We looked up and saw a guy standing about a hundred feet away. He was tall, with a ponytail and sunglasses. And he was watching us.
“Who are you?” Xi Zhu called out. “What do you want?”
The guy didn’t wave or say anything. Instead, he just turned around and walked back toward the Genetic Institute.
“Who was that?” Printha wondered.
“He could be Security,” Aster guessed.
“Security?” I asked, staring at her in surprise. It was the first I’d heard about it.
“Yeah,” she replied. “The Genetic Institute has hired some security people to keep an eye on us.”
“Why?” Printha asked. “What are they worried about?”
“Oh, you know, the usual suspects,” Aster replied casually. “Kidnappers, spies, skimmers. Professor Greenleaf said that Highbrid DNA is worth millions on the black market. Everybody wants super-smart babies these days, and some people are willing to pay anything to get them.”
Printha’s huge eyes went wide with fear.
“He never said that in class,” Xi Zhu protested.
“No,” Aster agreed. “He was talking on the phone, in his office, and his door was wide open. I didn’t mean to listen, but you know how loud he is.”
Xi Zhu nodded and said, “We should go home.”
It was a soggy walk back to our neighborhood, with water squelching out of our sneakers every step of the way. My cheeks were flushed and I was tired and hungry. When we passed the corner where my sycamore tree stood, I gave it a quick glance and kept going. If I’d been alone I would have slapped the trunk in greeting, but I never touched it when I was with my siblings or friends. My mysterious fall had become one of the legends of our collective childhood and I was tired of trying to explain what had happened to me that night, already three years in the past. And I was in no mood that afternoon to be teased about it again. So I was glad everyone was too wet and too hungry to notice we were passing under the tree. Then I remembered what Aster had said when we were standing in the Stony Brook, and I felt confused. Who are we? I wondered for the thousandth time. What are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Who is spying on us?
I glanced at Aster and she glanced back.
“We’ll be okay,” she said.
I wasn’t convinced.
CHAPTER 7.
The Principles of Shape-Shifting
My siblings and I left our wet shoes in the front hall of Jena’s house and went straight up to our bedrooms to change out of our wet clothes. As I was peeling off my blue jeans, I recalled something else that had bothered me in school that morning. It was something else Professor Greenleaf had said in class.
“Overall, the process of evolution takes a very long time to unfold,” the Professor had noted. “However, some adaptations occur very rapidly. Darwin himself talked about these rapid adaptations with his fellow pigeon breeders. He knew that within just a few generations some traits could be further developed, and others further repressed. A team of modern field biologists has been studying these same kinds of rapid adaptation in the finch population of the Galapagos Islands–another one of Darwin’s favorite examples. The climate and food supply of the Islands sometimes favor the larger beaked finches, and sometimes favor the smaller beaked finches. As a result, the local finch population can shift, in just a few generations, from one predominant type to the other.”
Professor Greenleaf had scratched his beard before finishing his thought.
“Other, more recent, studies in evolutionary biology,” he’d said, “have revealed that these kinds of physiological variation often involve the same hierarchical sets of genes, which are modified over and again. Even more astonishing, the master genes that control these hierarchical sets not only allow some forms of life and disallow others, but also operate across species: from bird beaks to fish jaws, and beyond. In other words, the varied forms of life don’t necessarily require radical innovations in order to emerge. Sometimes they come from conservative re-alignments within existing sets of genes.”
I froze in the middle of my bedroom as I finally realized why Professor Greenleaf’s lecture had bothered me so much that morning.
“If evolution can work so fast and so easily,” I said to myself, “and if the Highbrid Protocol makes it work even faster and even more easily, and if, as the old joke goes, the Highbrid Kids are thousands of years older than their parents, then how different from them am I, really?”
I stood, completely naked, in front of the full-length mirror that hung on the back of my closet door and studied my body. I flexed my biceps and bent my knees. Then I walked over to my wall screen, on the other side of the room, and spoke directly to the Voice Interface.
“Zeta-Morphs, please,” I said.
Jena had taught us to be polite to our computers because she believed that people tend to speak to each other in the same way that they speak to their machines.
A grid appeared on the screen, an index to all the known flora and fauna.
“Fauna, mammals,” I requested. “Homo sapiens sapiens, contemporary,” I specified.
The images of a contemporary female and male appeared.
“Male only, eleven years old.”
The female disappeared from view and the male version scaled down to the proportions that approximated my height and weight.
“Scroll Box, please.”
The Scroll Box appeared in the lower left corner of the screen.
“Eight-thousand forward.”
The Scroll Box read, “8000+.”
I held my breath as the image of the contemporary boy morphed into the image of the future boy. He looked exactly the same, and I let out a sigh of relief. Then I leaned into the screen and studied the new boy’s eyes.
“Split screen. Homo sapiens sapiens, contemporary male, eleven years old; Homo sapiens sapiens, eight-thousand forward, male, eleven years old.”
The images of the two boys appeared, side-by-side.
“Frame, isolate, magnify both sets of eyes.”
The boys disappeared, leaving only their enlarged eyes to stare back at me.
“Juxtapose Homo sapiens sapiens contemporary eyes and Homo sapiens sapiens eight-thousand forward eyes.”
The split screen moved together and the two sets of eyes became one set, except, as I’d suspected, they didn’t quite match.
“Mark differences between images. Save. Display differences.”
The wall screen cleared for a second, then displayed the new traits in the eyes of the future. The irises had a more intricate and detailed pattern, and they were distinctly bigger. I walked back to the mirror and studied my blue-gray irises for a moment. Then I returned to the screen.
“Photo. Self-Portrait.”
A simulated camera lens appeared at the top of the screen and winked at me.
“Load and display.”
A digital image of my face appeared on screen, next to the eyes of the future.
“Frame, isolate, magnify my eyes.”
A close-up of my eyes appeared.
“Juxtapose my eyes and eight-thousand forward eyes.”
The two sets of eyes became one set. And they lined up, not perfectly, but they lined up.
“I’m a finch,” I whispered. “I’m a selected adaptation of the future.”
I sat at my desk, switched on my tablet and wrote eight pages in my journal.
CHAPTER 8.
The Language of Automatons
I already knew back then, in the sixth grade, that if I had any hope of decoding the cosmic tree, and decoding myself, I would need the help of a very sophisticated neural net. That is, I was an overdetermined boy with an overdetermined imagination and I knew I needed an overdetermined machine to answer my questions. So I sat in the front row of my computer science class that year and absorbed everything I could about the subject. I recall a rainy morning in May, when Professor Bell reviewed the history of the algorithm.
“In its early modern sense,” Professor Bell began, “an algorithm is any one of the mathematic formulas of arithmetic. Two plus two equals four is a simple, old-fashioned algorithm. However, in its late modern sense, an algorithm is a rigorously logical step-by-step data process, with a strict symbolic vocabulary and a strict symbolic grammar, which generates new information. Our computer programs are algorithms in this extended sense of the term. And whether you’re a quantum physicist or a fractal theorist, even the simplest algorithm offers a powerful allegory of the fundamental logic of the universe.”
Of course, my boyish obsession with computer science was inseparable from my boyish obsession with Professor Bell. She was dazzlingly smart and very pretty, with glossy chestnut hair and brilliant blue eyes. I hung on her every word.
“As you know, class,” she continued, “Pythagoras and Plato dreamt of a logical universe and a universal logic. And then Aristotle searched for traces of that logic in the natural world. In the ninth century Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khuwarizmi pursued that quest with the help of algebra. In fact, it was his Latinized name, ‘Algoritmi,’ that mutated into ‘algorismus,’ and mutated again into ‘algorithm.’ In the seventeenth century, Leibniz not only invented the first modern mechanical calculator that could add, subtract, multiply and divide, but also invented, independently of Newton, the calculus. Leibniz dreamt of reducing all knowledge to a symbolic code which could be used by another machine, a Calculus Ratiocinator, to answer any question. Then, in the nineteenth century, Boole took up the quest.”
The sound of Professor Bell’s voice washed over me like a warm breeze. And when she looked at me with her glistening blue eyes, I felt as if I were being caressed.
“Boole recognized that the everyday logic of propositions could be transcribed into mathematic notations,” she explained. “In other words, Boole went beyond Pythagoras’s mystical numbers, al-Khuwarizmi’s algebraic formulas and Leibniz’s integrative symbols to transcribe whole series of logical phrases into mathematic terms. After Boole, Frege took the next big step. Now, class, who can tell me about Frege?”
Professor Bell scanned the room and called on the boy sitting next to me.
“Emilio?”
“Frege published Begriffsschrift, his masterpiece on symbolic logic, in 1879,” Emilio solemnly intoned.