Authors: L.L. Fine
Because suddenly, so suddenly, he really understood why the
door was locked all this time. Why he was provided hot meals whenever he
wanted, no matter how strange the time. He understood why a sleeping bag was
provided on the old mattress over there near the wall. It was so obvious,
suddenly.
It felt like a new encounter with a deep book, which he first
read as a child. The words were the same words, still. But their meaning had
changed completely. As if corks had been removed from his ears. As if he wore
eyeglasses for the first time.
And he looked at Rabbi Eligad, as if seeing him for the
first time. Perhaps as no one ever saw him. All his life suddenly received a
completely different meaning. Looked completely different.
He looked around, at the keyboard. And he saw it not only as
a plastic surface with buttons, but as a window to the past, future, and
present. He looked at his desk, and his pupils widened. It was not a table
anymore, but a large number of tables of different sizes and shapes, there were
different and strange computer monitors, large and colorful.
He raised his hands to his eyes and he saw a small baby’s
hands – as well as older, hairier hands than his own, hardworking and drier.
Suddenly he understood, he understood it all, he understood the white shoes of
Rabbi Eligad. He understood the incessant treading across the room, he realized
the thousands of hours of conversation with the rabbi, the insistence on
certain issues, the ignoring of others.
Suddenly he understood everything.
His body’s awakening, his body’s responses to Talia, who
spent the night with him, around him, her eyes shining blue, in utter darkness.
Suddenly he realized who Talia was and was not, and what Rabbi Eligad was, and
his pupils widened further as he looked at him again, see him staring back at
him, with infinite patience.
Suddenly he understood everything.
After four hours, in which Rabbi Eligad waited patiently,
still near the door, he blinked.
"What do you want me to do, Rabbi?"
*
Mr fate: A real illumination.
Nucleotide: Yes
Mr fate: And how did you feel when that happened?
Nucleotide: Hard to explain. Suddenly, everything was clear.
Mr fate: Never had such a thing. Maybe with drugs.
Nucleotide: No, it's not about drugs. How can I explain?
Nucleotide: Have you ever solved a complicated mathematical
problem?
Mr fate: I have a 6 in math.
Nucleotide: Oh, right. I remember. This means that most
problems are difficult for you.
Mr fate: Yes, yes, genius, go on.
Nucleotide: So it's similar to the moment the problem
becomes clear.
Nucleotide: I don't mean the solution itself, but once you
understand how to solve…
Mr fate: And that is - illumination?
Nucleotide: Yes, only it's a million times more powerful.
Nucleotide: That isn’t a mathematical problem, but the
entire world. Or at least, yourself.
Mr fate: Sounds strong.
Nucleotide: I hope I managed to explain to you a little bit.
Mr fate: Enough to understand that there are millions of
question marks around you.
Nucleotide: In time you will know everything. It took me a
lifetime to understand what's going on around me, and you want to know
everything in two weeks?
Mr fate: Yes!
Mr fate: But it’s clear that it isn’t practical, but for now
it just gets more complicated.
Nucleotide: You can't understand all the Torah in two weeks.
Mr fate: Maybe we'll try on one leg?
Nucleotide: And kill your neighbor.
Mr fate: ???
Nucleotide: Just joking. It's an old Jewish saying. Forgive
me, it's late.
Mr fate: Almost five in the morning.
Nucleotide: And soon we must get up to go to work.
Mr fate: You may get up - personally, I am going to sleep.
Nucleotide: Sleep well. I'm getting ready for a flight.
Mr fate: Yes? To where?
Nucleotide: America.
Mr fate: Awesome... For what?
Nucleotide: Need to complete a stage in my project. It's
actually a great moment, a very significant one.
Mr fate: May I know what?
Nucleotide: I can't give any real details...
Mr fate: And still?
Nucleotide: Let's just say it’s one more step against
cancer.
Mr fate: Really? Wonderful! What is this, a new treatment?
Nucleotide: LOL…no. Far from it.
Mr fate: So...?
Nucleotide: I can't say here. It will disclose too much. I
can only say that you’re helping me with this.
Mr fate: What, in our conversations?
Nucleotide: LOL…no. You have other ways to help me, you
don't even know.
Nucleotide: You and a few million more like you.
Mr fate: To hell with you!
Nucleotide: Patience, by the end you'll understand.
Mr fate: You don't help me understand! And now you're going
to disappear again!
Nucleotide: On the contrary, from abroad it's easier to avoid
detection. I use an Internet café, send it, and run away. Once we talked
from New York and you didn’t know.
Mr fate: A frequent flyer, then?
Nucleotide: Yes. I travel a lot
Mr fate: So talk to me?
Nucleotide: Sure thing. Bye.
Mr fate: Bye.
New York, New York, what a wonderful city. I am pleased to
inform you that the mission I was sent on passed off successfully, and I
managed to arrange something quite big. I can't tell you everything here, this
is an insecure line and I know it's tapped, but I think that the solution to my
illness could be much closer than I thought.
I also received good news from my lovely doctor. Not "I
love you", yet, but indeed a breakthrough in the "save Zomy"
project, which makes me feel on top of the world (not far from where I am, by
the way).
Sorry I have not written before, I was pretty busy.
We'll talk.
Mitochondria: Want to save me?
Cruel Ruler: What??? How did you find me here?
Mitochondria: Anyone who has access to your computer knows
exactly where you are every second.
Cruel Ruler: Great, smartass. Where have you disappeared
again?
Mitochondria: Flights, enterprises, many ends to be tied.
Listen, you run a great deal of your sex life on the net!
Cruel Ruler: Tell that to my wife.
Mitochondria: I don't need to, she knows. Besides, she also
has her own...
Cruel Ruler: You came to provoke quarrels?
Mitochondria: God forbid. Just do me a favor, don’t pick
your nose when you're on a network camera.
Mitochondria: Hey, why did you turn it off?
Cruel Ruler: !!!
Mitochondria: Wait a bit, I'll turn it on again...
Cruel Ruler: ?
Cruel Ruler: What??? I can't believe it.
Mitochondria: Great, Smartass. Rotate the camera.
Cruel Ruler: All my free will’s gone.
Mitochondria: So we'll not talk? I'm going...
Cruel Ruler: No!!! Stay. What's up with you?
Mitochondria: I thought you’re into whipping now.
Cruel Ruler: The whips are gone. I'm only with you now.
Mitochondria: And now I know you're telling the truth. You will
have to apologize to her, you know.
Cruel Ruler: I'll be fine. Well, tell me what happened.
Mitochondria: Only good happened, actually. I got the
computing power I need. And probably my medicine will be ready soon.
Cruel Ruler: Who are you?
Chromosome. Tell me the truth.
Mitochondria: I told you, until now, only the truth.
Cruel Ruler: Not even a small part of it. It's not fair, I
have no idea what you want from me, I don’t even know how to treat you, except
as one who is both a computer criminal and one who knows to keep a secret he
says he will reveal.
Mitochondria: A shady character, am I?
Cruel Ruler: Very. Show some of your cards. Seriously. I’ve
had enough half-truths. Who are you, what is your project, what is all this?
Trust me.
Mitochondria: I trust you, it's okay. Look, the bottom line
is you know who I am. I am the major computer man on an Israeli secret project,
designed to decipher the human genetic code. Here, the whole truth.
Cruel Ruler: And how do you know you're going to get cancer?
Cruel Ruler: Are you here?
Cruel Ruler: You disappeared again.
Cruel Ruler: Well .... say something.
Mitochondria: I'm back.
Cruel Ruler: ???
Mitochondria: Yes. Like the ape I told you about.
Cruel Ruler: Bobby
Mitochondria: Yes, we foresaw his death accurately.
Cruel Ruler: Small step for man, a great sorrow to mankind.
Mitochondria: A brilliant statement! May I quote you?
Cruel Ruler: Only if you let me also quote you.
Mitochondria: You have my permission.
Cruel Ruler: And everything is predetermined.
Mitochondria: Respect! You know some Jewish philosophy.
Cruel Ruler: Come on! What! Is!
Genosimulation????????????????????????????
Cruel Ruler: !
Mitochondria: Well, well, don't be angry. I'll explain
immediately.
Mitochondria: Genosimulation, the truth is, it's quite a
private term that only a few know. But it is quite simple to understand:
simply, a simulation of the genome.
Cruel Ruler: And that means...?
Mitochondria: Gee… simulation is an imitation, you know?
Cruel Ruler: Like a flight simulator?
Mitochondria: Kind of. With simulations good enough and
close enough to reality, you can get pretty far. You know that a large amount
of nuclear tests are taking place today only as simulations?
Cruel Ruler: Explain
Mitochondria: Today we know the atomic structure quite well,
and the behavior of all kinds of materials under extreme conditions. So instead
of blasting off a bomb, feed the data to the computer, and then run the
software. The computer can give you very accurate observations of what will
happen in the moment of the explosion.
Cruel Ruler: Temperature, destruction radius, and such?
Mitochondria: Much more. A computer powerful enough will
allow you to track - at the level of a millionth of a second - everything that
happens in the process of explosion, and movements of each particle separately.
Cruel Ruler: Sounds impressive.
Mitochondria: Very impressive. Also spares the world real
explosions.
Cruel Ruler: But it requires a supercomputer, right? Cray
something?
Mitochondria: You have some good knowledge. Most computers
in the world which deal with real simulations are built by Cray. Israel has
only two such computers, but they are under American supervision and can't be
used for whatever we want.
Cruel Ruler: Explain, explain.
Mitochondria: These computers are classified by the US
military as weapons at the level of an atom bomb because of their ability to
perform such complex simulations. Cray aren’t allowed to sell them to anyone,
and when they are they place strict military supervision on them.
Mitochondria: Anyway, the computers in Israel are too weak
to do the kind of calculations we want.
Cruel Ruler: Which are simulations of the genome?
Mitochondria: Exactly.
Cruel Ruler: So how do you do it?
Cruel Ruler: Wait a minute.
Cruel Ruler: What minute? You’re going away from the subject
again. What is a genome simulation? You didn't say.
Mitochondria: The genome is the program of the living being.
It's the genetic code. You understand?
Cruel Ruler: Yes… and...?
Mitochondria: It's far more complicated than anything a
normal computer can decode, because it is based on quadratic code and binary
code.
Cruel Ruler: You've lost me there.
Mitochondria: A normal computer has a binary code. Binary =
Double. It knows electrical states of either zero or one. For example, 10, is
the number two.
Cruel Ruler: I know binary. What is quadratic?
Mitochondria: The genome is not based on zero and one, but
four letters, ATCG, that generate different sequences. It is far more
complicated to calculate.
Cruel Ruler: Well then? What is this simulation?
Mitochondria: A little hard to explain to those who do not
know. Do you know how the human body is built? What determines the processes in
it?
Cruel Ruler: God.
Mitochondria: Sure. But how does he do it? Like this: any
combination of these four letters, let's call them a word. Your DNA - it's a
molecule consisting of three billion such words, each word part of a series of
code, sometimes more.
Cruel Ruler: What does it mean?
Mitochondria: Simple language: this is an insane program
with three billion base units in a language we do not really understand, each
word can be belong to several lines of code like this, and, oh yes - all the
entire software is the size of a few thousandths of a millimeter.
Cruel Ruler: And that’s what you try to decipher?
Mitochondria: Come on…it's just the beginning. Until now,
scientists in the world have succeeded, and only to map the genome. This means
knowing exactly where the location of each and every word on this scale.
Deciphering, this is still far above us. Meanwhile only a drop in the ocean was
deciphered. This, too, is quite amazing. But we’re still light years away from
full deciphering.
Cruel Ruler: It’s getting hopeless. Simulation. Come on,
what is the simulation?!
Mitochondria: You’re jumping ahead. Wait, listen,
understand. Do not piss me about now I'm on a roll.
Cruel Ruler: Go on.
Mitochondria: So how this software, which is the DNA, builds
hardware – which is an adult body, or a body of a microbe for that matter…
Cruel Ruler: How?
Mitochondria: Even standard computer software, if it wants
to display something on the screen, builds it from another hardware which is
the screen – an electronic beam that blasts the screen. Or the program of an
automobile factory operates hundreds of robots which take the metal and build a
car. So where are the robots who build the human body? How does DNA construct a
person?
Cruel Ruler: Oh, I understood the question. Really, how?
Surely there aren't any robots.
Mitochondria: There are, sort of. A single, very smart and
multi-purpose robot. The answer is that once the DNA is formed, it affects its
environment, because each of the letters that make up the words of the program
is a protein that attracts another protein, in simple chemical terms. What
happens is that in a short time, a DNA constructs for himself, using that
chemical attraction, a molecule just like him but opposite. Its name is… do the
viewers at home know?
Cruel Ruler: RNA?
Mitochondria: Respect! You do understand something of your
life. Literally …
Cruel Ruler: My head’s starting to hurt because of you. Why
won't you tell me more stories from Bnei Brak?
Mitochondria: LOL, want some? I have quite a few.
Cruel Ruler: No! Genosimulation!
Mitochondria: In short, not to make things too complicated,
the DNA builds the RNA, and then gets separated from it, and sends it across
the human cell, which will attract more chemicals, and so begins the chemical
building of materials and processes.
Mitochondria: Now don't hold me to that, that's not exactly
what happens there, but for one who understands biology at your level, it
should be clear enough. Don’t forget that I'm not a geneticist myself, but a
mathematician and a programmer, this is not exactly my field.
Cruel Ruler: I forgive you. Now what does that have to do
with the simulation?
Mitochondria: Oh!!!! Now our brilliance!
Mitochondria: The whole world’s trying to figure out what's
going on within the genome, crack the language by medical means - we went
differently. Sit tight.
Cruel Ruler: Sitting.
Mitochondria: I want to see you on the camera.
Cruel Ruler: I don't want to!
Mitochondria: Bye.
Cruel Ruler: ??? Are you crazy?
Mitochondria: Camera! Now!
Cruel Ruler: Ok, ok, deviant.
Mitochondria: So you're sitting - oh, there. You look good
shaved.
Mitochondria: We decided on two things.
Mitochondria: a. The genome is a code like any other code,
and for that we have established a team of programmers and cryptologists who
deal with its decoding. I'm not exactly the team leader, but the number one
there.
Mitochondria: b. If we have a complete map of the genome
program - and we have, in means I will not tell you about, all it takes is to
let it run. Put the three billion lines of code to work, just like it happens
in the human cell.
Mitochondria: The human cell also doesn’t understand the
language, just like us. It only has chemicals which recombine into other
materials and so on.
Mitochondria: So, what did we do? We built a supercomputer,
the most powerful in the world, guaranteed. And we let it run a three-billion
words program, when all it has to do is to attach proteins to each other,
virtual ones, of course.
Mitochondria: Got it?
Cruel Ruler: I think so
Mitochondria: So explain it back to me.
Cruel Ruler: You don’t try to understand the language, you
just act according to it. This means that your computer receives three billion
words, then builds several billion other words as RNA molecules, then begins to
attach proteins to the business to see where everything is evolving?
Mitochondria: Bravo. This is exactly what happened. Of
course this is only the beginning, because immediately all kinds of complex
compounds were created, and the computer should realize that –for example - a
high concentration of calcium creates bone and tooth molecules and so on.
Mitochondria: What can I say, a real project.
Cruel Ruler: Sounds like that.
Mitochondria: It took us a long time until we were able to
put together a virtual bacterium from its DNA. But when it happened… it was
amazing.
Cruel Ruler: And that is the Genosimulation?
Mitochondria: Yes. A computer simulation that follows what
the genome is making, step by step.
Mitochondria: Then it processes these steps to biological
and physical terms.
Mitochondria: I can only tell you, those simulations have
taught us a thing or two about the nature of life. And every other study’s
going in the wrong direction, but what do we care about them? Let them waste
their effort.
Cruel Ruler: And that's what you did to your ape? Geno
simulationshit?
Mitochondria: Yes. We took Bobby's DNA, and we did a
simulation of it. It took nearly two years for the computer to process all this
information, to the point where biologists diagnosed a heart muscle failure
that was slowly being created. That way we could know when he would die of a
heart attack.
Cruel Ruler: And it really happened.
Mitochondria: Yes. It happened.
Cruel Ruler: And about you?
Mitochondria: Yes.
Mitochondria: I have a family history of cancer. It's genetic.
There’s a fear of it. So last year I decided to do a private simulation,
without the commander’s knowledge.
*
A small beep.
He did not notice it at first.
He was too busy in complex calculations, making a series of
mental maneuvers in the dark, making the greatest computer grid in the world
slightly more efficient.
As always, his mind wandered to distant places, thought and
spoke in its own language. And in his thoughts small computers became busy
ants, larger computers were beetles, and security codes and firewalls were no
more than water ditches in the garden. Above, it was necessary to establish
bridges of twigs, or make an ant get to work digging.