by J. R. McLeay
“Perhaps it’s just another instance of nature preserving the germ cells?” intoned Ethan.
“Perhaps.” Rick paused, adopting a more serious tone. “Or maybe it’s a case of a genetic mutation where these individuals are born incapable of ever developing to sexual maturity, and since nature knows they will never fulfill their essential biological function, it acts more quickly than usual to remove them from the competitive gene pool. It appears that Nature, unlike God, doesn’t care so much about you as an individual—or at least your corporeal soma—it only cares that you pass on your germ.”
Rick noticed the facial expressions of many in the assembly change as they considered the implications of this statement. For a few painful seconds, the only sound that could be heard in the lecture hall was that of students shifting nervously in their seats. Finally, one of the students broke the awkward silence.
“What does this mean for of all of us then, who have been rendered unable to reproduce in the manner nature intended?” asked Drew.
“Yes, it does sound a bit scary to mess with Mother Nature, doesn’t it Drew? It seems inconceivable that in such a relatively short evolutionary time, we might be able to find a way to improve on the natural development of species that billions of years of evolution has selectively perfected.”
Rick could see that many students in his class were growing increasingly uncomfortable, and he decided to ease the tension a bit.
“There are, however, a few promising mutations in nature that lend some credence and support to our little experiment. For instance, most insects’ lifespans are measured in weeks or months, but the enterprising cicada survives several years, because it burrows underground and rests in a state of suspended juvenile development called dauer. When it finally emerges from the ground and becomes sexually mature and active, it survives only for a relatively short six to eight weeks—just long enough for it to mate and lay its eggs. Incredibly, in its brilliance, nature adapted a special genotype of the cicada, aptly named Magicicada, who synchronize their sexual maturity to occur precisely every thirteen or seventeen years—six times as long an interval as their non-periodical brethren. Why do you imagine this cohort lives so much longer, and why exactly thirteen or seventeen years?”
“Do the periodical cicadas live underground longer as juveniles?” Rachel asked.
“They do indeed—but why precisely thirteen or seventeen years? What’s the significance of these regularly repeating numbers for every cohort?”
Silence fell over the room once again. Many students looked at one another, searching for clues. Everyone was stumped—no one could make the connection.
Rick decided to give them a clue.
“Who here has studied math? What is unusual—and yet similar—about both of these numbers?”
Everyone thought for a few minutes.
“They’re both prime numbers!” Gabriel finally blurted out.
“Yes, and what’s unusual about prime numbers, Gabriel?”
“They can only be divided by themselves and the number one—no other numbers.”
“So what is the advantage gained from this particular genotype of cicada, collectively emerging and reproducing in these exact frequencies? Think about it.”
Rick was having fun stretching—and tormenting—his students.
“Holy cats!” Drew cried. “If that many insects all emerged at once, that infrequently, they would overwhelm their natural predators, who presumably would not have adapted a similar periodical frequency, and this would help ensure more of those cicadas’ genes would be sown for future generations!”
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Rick remarked. “Talk about intelligent design. And yet—this intelligence isn’t applied for the individual benefit of the organism, or even for the benefit of any one species. It’s simply a random reaction to the competitive forces within nature, designed to reward those organisms best adapted to survive and pass on their genes—yet another example of reproductive fitness, and antagonistic pleiotropy.”
Rick was pleased with the progress the students were making but wanted to give them one more case study to mull over before next week’s class.
“We’ve got time to look at one other example of this issue occurring in nature before we ponder the ramifications for we uniquely evolved humans. Let’s take a closer look at the honeybee, which lives in highly evolved social colonies in three distinct forms: the unlucky male drone, whose only function in its short life is to mate and provide sperm for the queen, the sterile female worker bees, who collect food and protect the colony, and the queen, whose sole function is to produce offspring: thousands every day. The drones and the worker bees have a typical lifespan of about one to two months, but the queen lives fifty times as long—up to five years. Doesn’t this seem in direct opposition to our observation that fecundity is inversely proportional to longevity?”
“Yes—it doesn’t make sense,” replied Lauren.
Rick was disappointed the group’s creative momentum was ebbing. He knew he’d need to give them a break soon to digest the day’s learnings.
“Remember to focus on the collective as opposed to the individual. What’s different about the bee colony, especially as it pertains to reproduction, compared to most other species?”
“There’s only one reproductive female?” Ethan volunteered.
“Yes, so why might this one female—the queen—outlast all the other bees in the colony, even though it spends all its time doing nothing but producing new young, which appears in conflict with the rule that sex is generally deleterious for individual organisms?”
“It must have a different genetic structure,” Gabriel declared.
“Actually, you might be surprised to learn that the queen bee and the other female worker bees share precisely the same DNA structure—so their remarkable difference in longevity obviously has nothing to do with their genes. The only thing that causes a queen bee to develop differently from other females in the colony is the way she is fed—with a special concoction of royal jelly, a protein-rich secretion emitted from the glands of worker bees. Therefore, her extraordinary longevity has to be an environmental adaptation.”
“Perhaps the queen is over-compensating for the lack of other sexually producing females,” Rachel mused.
“Or perhaps nature needs to keep her alive until another queen can be produced— otherwise the whole colony would die,” Rick suggested. “It seems to always come back to reproduction with Mother Nature. Apparently we humans are not the only ones obsessed with sex.”
The group snickered. Rick decided to up the ante and make his students reflect a bit harder before next week’s class.
“Which brings us to the end of another lecture—and the riddle to consider for our next session. I’d like you all to ponder this: Since all of us have seemingly been placed in an extended state of suspended juvenile development much like the cicada, but also rendered effectively sterile like the Progeria patient, and since our Queen cannot reproduce as frequently as in the bee colony, what are the possible implications for our particular cohort of humanity?
22
Calvin James shifted uncomfortably on his concrete bunk in a holding cell at the 5th Precinct in lower Manhattan. He’d been taken there after the incident yesterday at the Garden of Eden church, where he’d threatened the Child Services agent after she indicated she was taking Elias into protective custody. Even though Calvin had been bound with handcuffs and dazed by stun guns, it had taken ten juvenile police officers to fully subdue and transport him to the station.
Calvin knew he couldn’t be detained for more than twenty-four hours without charge, and he was anticipating a visit by his court-appointed lawyer any minute. He hadn’t slept at all overnight, as his mind was racing with all manner of scenarios for retribution. He fully expected to be released after his arraignment before a judge, provided he promised not to act on his threats or commit any other crimes.
His overriding concern now was Elias. His
plan to spirit Elias away before he could be given a hypophysectomy was now almost certainly spoiled, not least because the Child Services agency would be reluctant to disclose his new location, and because he would be protected behind a phalanx of locked doors and armed guards. His only hope now would be to negotiate a meeting with Elias, where he could try to convince him one last time to resist the operation and save his soul.
But Calvin had other concerns as well. He’d carefully crafted a plan that went far beyond saving his son, and it would require his freedom and mobility as well as the ability to communicate freely with his followers, whose assistance he would need to carry out his plan. Since Calvin had no family other than Elias, he placed a call after being taken into custody to the one person he felt he could trust.
Although they’d known each other only a few short months, Nathan Taylor had come to Calvin in confidence to express his concerns about developments with the Global Longevity Initiative, and the two had subsequently begun to share ideas about how they might fight the program. Of special interest for Calvin was Nathan’s position of influence as a senior manager at the giant pharmaceutical company and the fact that he had other resources at his disposal. Nathan could easily post bail in the unlikely event that Calvin was formally charged with a criminal offense and could act as his proxy if he had to spend more time in jail. Unfortunately, the two would now have to be more careful in their collaboration, as Calvin would be under heightened scrutiny and surveillance.
The events of the last twenty-four hours had only intensified Calvin’s rage, and he was now committed to exacting revenge on an even grander scale. His initial plan had been fashioned in incremental steps, but with Nathan’s ingenuity and resources he now had the means—and the motivation—to implement his plan on a global level. If he couldn’t save his son from the forces of evil, Calvin believed he’d at least save the next generation of God’s children. Pacing excitedly in the narrow confines of his prison cell while contemplating his next steps, he heard a loud metallic rap on the steel door.
“Please step away from the door sir,” the armed guard announced with a certain degree of trepidation, “the magistrate is ready to see you.”
23
The morning sun sparkled across the whitecaps of Santa Monica Bay as Rick and Jennifer drove north along the Pacific Coast Highway toward the Sierra Nevada mountains. They’d flown from New York to Los Angeles late Friday afternoon, and gotten up early Saturday to make the long trek to the Inyo National Forest near the border of California and Nevada, where they hoped to find the world’s oldest living tree and harvest its seeds.
The six hour drive was scenic and beautiful, and the two marveled at how dramatically the landscape changed as they turned east toward the interior of Owens Valley. The many ecosystems of Central California were a dendrologist’s dream, having some of the oldest and most beautiful trees in the world, and Rick reveled in the opportunity to share its bounty with Jennifer.
Crossing over the San Gabriel mountains framing the city of Los Angeles, the palate suddenly shifted from verdant green forests to the flat dusty-red mesa of the Mojave Desert, blanketed with olive-brown creosote bushes and the occasional stunted tree.
“Wow,” Jennifer exclaimed, as they crested the mountains and began their descent into the valley. “Talk about a change of scenery.”
“Welcome to the Great Basin of America,” Rick declared. “Those mountains we just passed over rise ten thousand feet. The prevailing winds from the Pacific collect the warm, moist air rising off the ocean and condense it into precipitation that falls primarily on the windward side of the range. Very little moisture falls on this side—so little in fact, that none has a chance to accumulate in the watershed and flow back to the sea. Consequently, it’s a pretty unforgiving place for most types of flora and fauna.”
“Apparently not all flora,” remarked Jennifer, noticing the stubby little bushes dotting the landscape. “What are all those little brown shrubs? It looks like they’ve at least figured out how to survive here.”
“Those are creosote bushes, a very interesting little tree indeed. They have the ability to reproduce both sexually and asexually by dropping its branches to the soil, which subsequently take root and form new shrubs. By so doing, they avoid the perils and high mortality of the early seedling stage in this harsh environment. Because the asexually cloned part of the tree shares the same DNA as its parent, many people consider it immortal and have dubbed it King Clone.”
“Does the original tree survive?”
“No, eventually it succumbs to the stress of extreme drought.”
“So it’s not really immortal then?”
“It depends I suppose, on how you define its meaning,” Rick said, recalling the animated discussion on the subject of cloning from his last Bioethics class. “If the new bush is simply a part of the original one, then when the older part dies off, isn’t a piece of it still alive? In this sense, for species that reproduce through cloning, every individual is theoretically as old as the species.”
“That’s a bit heavy for me this early in the morning,” Jennifer laughed. Her eyes caught an unusually shaped tree standing alone amongst the passing brown landscape. “What’s the story with that tall cactus? I suspect it has a slightly different survival strategy.”
“Actually, that’s a type of palm, called a Joshua tree. As we get closer, you’ll notice the long bayonet-shaped leaves arranged in dense spiral formations on its arms make it look from a distance like a cactus. It was so-named by early Mormon settlers because it reminded them of the biblical story of Joshua reaching his hands up to the sky in prayer. Its unique adaptation is the ability to germinate under larger nurse plants as a form of protection from the elements and predators, until it’s hardy enough to survive on its own.”
Jennifer shook her head.
“It seems nature finds a way to make room for anything that discovers how to adapt to its unique surroundings.”
“That’s the beauty and the brilliance of it,” Rick said. “And what draws me so far from home.”
Jennifer glanced to the northwest and saw the glittering snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada range rising from the desert floor.
“Well it’s certainly a long way from the canyons and skyscrapers we’re used to in New York.”
“This is all natural—there’s nothing man-made up there. Those mountains were formed millions of years ago, long before humans roamed the earth, by colossal tectonic forces as the Pacific plate was forced under the North American plate and drove that chaotic scramble of rocks into the heavens.”
Jennifer looked at Rick and smiled. She knew he was excited to explore this new terrain, and she didn’t want to deny him an opportunity to share his unique knowledge of its biology and geology.
“Tell me more, wise one. What makes these plates move like that?”
“Most geologists believe it’s caused by a kind of convection current that moves the magma in the mantle of the earth. The cooler, denser material at the periphery of the plates solidifies into a hard outer crust that sinks, and the hotter, molten material in the core rises, creating circular currents which continually break the crust and create these rifts.”
“It all sounds a little too fire and brimstone for me,” Jennifer sighed, as she watched thin streams cascade down the mountain through the thick green canopy of trees. “I prefer to focus on the more tranquil forces of nature, right here on the surface.”
“Me too,” Rick said, following Jennifer’s focus to the lush forest carpeting the leeward slopes of the Sierras. “Don’t you just love those majestic trees? California redwoods. Sequoias—the largest trees in the world.”
“It’s hard to grasp their scale from this distance.”
“Some of those trees are taller than many New York City skyscrapers, rising almost forty stories. There’s one tree on the other side of the ridge, named General Sherman, that is more than thirty feet in diameter.”
“Is that the ta
llest tree?”
“He’s the heaviest, but not the tallest. That honor belongs to Mendocino, near the coast, who is almost a hundred feet taller.”
Jennifer couldn’t help snickering.
“Why do all these trees have human names?”
“Only the grandest ones,” Rick chuckled. “I suppose it’s our need to anthropomorphize those things onto which we project our human characteristics and emotions. It mightn’t be such a crazy idea though. We do, after all, share this unique habitat together with all the species of life so tightly interwoven and inter-dependent, sharing similar biology and habits. Even the DNA between various species isn’t so different.”
“What about the infamous missing link?”
“There’s not much missing any more. After the human genome was mapped over a hundred years ago, it was discovered that over ninety percent of our genes were the same as those of mice. Even the DNA within the cells of plants appears remarkably similar: the famous double helix that looks like a twisted ladder.”
Jennifer was eager to finally add some of her own expertise to the equation.
“And the material within those molecules are made from the same four chemical building blocks or nucleotides.”
Rick nodded.
“It seems the only thing that separates us from plants and other creatures is the way these nucleotides have been randomly sorted from one generation to the next.”