Authors: L.L. Fine
"And the RNA?"
"I have already said, it is compatible with the DNA, its
perfect copy, or parts of it. It connects it with the rest of the body. The DNA
isn't able to create proteins, so the RNA creates them instead. Sort of
animating the data written on the DNA.”
"Draw them for me. Both these materials, DNA and
RNA."
"Molecules," Zomy corrected.
"Molecules, of course. Draw them for me."
Zomy stood up and walked to the corner of the room, where a
little, old table stood, with a neat package of papers, and the same number of
pens and pencils. He began scribbling clumsily, the classic structure of the
DNA: a double helix, slim width, but very high - ascending to heaven, far
beyond the page's frame.
In practice, of course, he would need several thousands of
such pages to illustrate the proportions between the width and the length of
the DNA, but it was enough for illustration.
"Here." He handed Rabbi Eligad the page.
"You drew only one of them," commented the rabbi,
and handed him the paper. "Draw them both."
"But the other looks the same," claimed Zomy, not
very convincingly.
"Who will you submit half a work to?" asked
Eligad.
"Myself," the answer came quietly. But Zomy
painted, painstakingly, the RNA molecule, linked to the DNA molecule. At the
end of the work he handed the paper back to Rabbi Eligad.
"That's what I thought. What does it look like, my
son?"
Zomy looked, as if for the first time, at the painted
molecules. What does it look like? What does it look like? They were similar to
a lot of things, actually. What did the rabbi mean? Zomy looked up at him,
knowing that the answer would come.
"Genesis, Chapter II, IX. Remember?"
" The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the
ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of
the garden were the...." Zomy quoted with a nostalgic smile, then quickly
wiped it from his face.
" …The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil...."
*
Cruel Ruler: Are you kidding me?
Mitochondria: Unfortunately, no.
Cruel Ruler: I have nothing to say. Tree of life and tree of
knowledge. This interpretation - I've never heard…
Mitochondria: Now you know, and you’ll write it in your
book.
Cruel Ruler: If it ever gets published.
Mitochondria: When it is published.
Cruel Ruler: You're the one who sees into the future, not me.
Mitochondria: A mistake. I cannot see into the future. I
just...
Mitochondria: I just live a life…
Mitochondria: Doing simulations of my own life.
Cruel Ruler: Trees of life and knowledge. I have to think
about it.
*
"Come on," responded Zomy after a few minutes of
bewilderment. "It doesn’t mean anything."
"Really?" said Rabbi Eligad, his face blank.
"Tree of Knowledge, which is your DNA, soaring to the sky, filled with
information and knowledge, embodying the secret of life. Tree of Life? Equal and
distinct from it, rooted near it, it brings the life, which is written in the
Tree of Knowledge."
"I'm not sure I like this chapter very much," said
Zomy.
"You do not have to like it. You know the rest."
" And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to
eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly
die.”" Zomy continued quoting.
"Thus it is written," sighed Rabbi Eligad.
"And it's my job? That you talked about before? That's
what's written?”
‘ “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the
woman. For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and
you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” ‘
Zomy got up from his chair, upset. He walked around the room
restlessly, looking for a place to put his mind at ease. The lemon tree, calm
as ever, met his gaze out of the window. How do fresh lemons, so big and fresh,
ripen at this season, he thought. And where is this tree? He had never seen the
garden in which its roots were.
God knows that, when you eat from it your eyes will be
opened.
Zomy knew the story by heart. There were parts in which he
didn't want to be. Definitely not.
Rabbi Eligad let him rage. Let him think, to turn things in
his head. To remember, give interpretations. Zomy finally returned to the
chair, looking straight at the rabbi.
"So am I the snake? This your intention? That's the
role I fill so wonderfully?"
"No …" Rabbi Eligad chuckled lightly.
"Certainly not, my son. You are too innocent to be a snake. Innocent,
innocent. And too pure." And he continued to giggle for long minutes.
*
Cruel Ruler: So what’s your role there? Who are you there?
Mitochondria: I'm quite ashamed to tell the truth.
Cruel Ruler: You're not ashamed in front of me???
Mitochondria: Let's leave it. Maybe I'll tell you that
later. Maybe you'll even find it by yourself.
Cruel Ruler: Well…I can accept that.
Mitochondria: Anyway, I hope this answered you about the role
of God in this business.
Dear Liron,
You were not online, so I send you this as a telegram,
before I go to New York again. Well, there are updates.
First of all, for my illness. So Lia thinks we have found
the cure, only to assimilate it will take a long time, and I hope I don’t fall
prey to it before that, as it will be harder to repair the damage, and perhaps
even prevent me from functioning properly.
In general, even the medicine we're organizing - and you
won’t believe it when you hear what is it – it isn't clear what effect it will
have, or what will become of it, or if it’s effective, or maybe affect other
things as well. It's not exactly in the free-medicine list, you know.
Do I sound afraid? Maybe it's because I am afraid. I
suddenly get it. Last night I dreamed again about my father and how he looked
in his last months. It's different when you talk about this from a distance, or
when you feel your time is near. It's like you think you will die at the age of
ninety, so why think about it today?
But if it happens tomorrow? Or even a few weeks, in my case?
One cancer cell suddenly forms and begins to reproduce itself without end,
without control, without anything to stop it. And it eats you from the inside. It's
suddenly scary, and I think about it more and more. Death, scary. And it's not
just a death, it is a nasty cancer death, making you a walking, vomiting
skeleton. This is what I expect for myself. It surely would happen to me if I
was not who I am and in the place I am.
Then I would discover it in about a year, with metastases in
the whole body and brain, because sometimes it's a fast cancer, and I would die
a sorrowful death. Even as a child I didn’t have to read chapters from the
Talmud. Maybe I should have. Why should I ruin another man’s life, with my
fucked-up genes?
Forget it.
Soon I’ll know if it happens to me or not. Or other things
will happen to me, the story is dangling by a thread. I promise to update you
about what happens, when it happens. I will also tell you how Lia wants to
solve the problem, which is by killing me a little bit, I think.
About the second issue, the honey trap I told you about - a
really good idea, I'm surprised I haven't thought of it before. But better late
than never, as my teacher used to say.
I flew to New York to close some loose ends, then give it a
try. Or not, I'm not sure of anything lately. I'll let you know when that
happens, too. Here, I'm pretty sure it will work well, then I (I!) will have
the most powerful computer anyone ever had. It makes my fingers tingle to know
I have such power…mine are tingling, anyway.
Anyway, I checked your computer, and I'm glad to tell you
that you will definitely be a partner in this new effort. It won’t hurt you,
you won’t feel it, but you'll be glad you helped me.
Thank you.
And by the way, thank you indeed. For everything.
Yours.
*
I think this was the first time I was really moved by him.
It was, without a doubt, the first time I really believed him, believed every
word he said.
*
A new fragrance sweetened the air of the Enchanted Garden.
It was not a revolutionary innovation, of course. The
Enchanted Garden was accustomed to new scents. Evening, morning, thousands of
new trees grew there. Evening, morning, tens of thousands of fragrant shrubs
were created within it. Evening, morning, millions of fascinating flowers were
enchanted in it, billions of small leaves, insects, vermin, and other strange
creatures were engineered inside it, making sounds in the ever-changing foliage.
Evening, morning, the Enchanted Garden turned into something else. Always.
But this morning change was sharper than usual.
And the new scent was sweeter than normal. Intoxicating.
Infectious. Even the oldest, wisest, did not remember scents like it. Scents
winking from afar, pulling to the nectar spring, causing all who tasted it
getting excited, and infecting others with enthusiasm.
This was something in the nectar that lifted their spirits.
It had an ancient, warm, friendly aroma. Flamed like a bonfire at night. A warm
hug in a room full of strangers. There was something soothing, about this
nectar. Both relaxing and exciting.
And it had a special quality: everyone who tasted it
experienced an amazing feature: suddenly they could talk to anyone else who
tasted the nectar. Without effort. Without knowing, even. And the garden is so
huge, so global, so full of strangers, this nectar was something contagious.
Something addictive.
One, two, ten, nine hundred, fifty thousand, a million. The
number of ants partaking of the nectar has grown at a dizzying pace. Exciting.
Whole hives were washed in it, full colonies suddenly dived in it.
As in a huge feast, the garden started changing to the color
of golden nectar, filled with strange huddle of high and low voices, feminine,
masculine, and other. Evening, morning, there was sound. More nectar features
were exposed. More and more wonders.
Garden dwellers found they could make friends through it, to
fall in love with it. Different beetles, more cautious by nature, sipped nectar
- and were gilded immediately. Bee nests, colonies of wasps, fast-flying flies
and hard-shelled snails, the nectar aroma reached everyone. And many drank it.
Two million, fifty million, two hundred million. Nectar for
everyone, rich and delicious nectar, sticky and juicy nectar. Just come to the
spring and drink, and the nectar will always be with you. Just come and drink,
come and taste, come and indulge.
And in the heart of the fragrant spring, where the nectar
was so concentrated you couldn't see anymore, Zomy opened a joyful eye, and
began to pump, gently, a little bit of the vigor of the addicts to this
goldenness.
And they? Did not feel it at all.
Chromosome: It happened.
Looking for a Challenge: Who? What?
Chromosome: I got the shot a few hours ago.
Looking for a Challenge: Injection?
Chromosome: Against cancer. The injection.
Looking for a Challenge: And ..?
Chromosome: That's all. Waiting.
Looking for a Challenge: Is Lia with you? How do you feel?
Chromosome: Nothing. Meanwhile. Waiting.
Chromosome: Yes, she’s with me.
Looking for a Challenge: I thought it wasn't going to happen
yet! You said it would take months!
Chromosome: The onset of the disease will take months. Maybe
not so much. The serum took a week to develop. I haven’t tried it before. Lia
says it's madness.
Looking for a Challenge: Real stupid.
Chromosome: I know. But I don’t think I would have acted
differently if we were checking it on mice.
Chromosome: Well gotta go. Bye.
Looking for a Challenge: What? Wait a sec!
Looking for a Challenge: Sec…
Looking for a Challenge: Shit
*
"It's cold."
Lia glanced at him. A small, thin, man, lying alone on a
foreign hotel bed, covered with a thick blanket. One hand on some attached IV bags.
The second hand twisting pink, old toilet paper. Goosebumps on his skin.
From the corner of her eye she saw the window, partially
obscured by a thick curtain. Somewhere, behind it, New York shook off the last
remnants of winter; the cheerful sun shone on the park. It will soon be very
hot here, she thought.
But Zomy was cold.
And for good reason. A large bag of ice lay on his chest,
deep under the covers.
"You have to weaken the immune resistance of your
lungs," she told him before. "It's like a cold - the body should be
cold for the viruses to have good conditions to work."
For several hours.
She looked up at the sophisticated monitor which was really
nothing more than a mobile computer and a thread. 38.4 degrees Celsius, the
sensors reported from his anus, deep under the thick blanket. Rapid pulse,
almost 110.
She didn’t need a monitor to know his condition. Series of
coughs, getting worse and worse, attacked Zomy every few minutes. He also
contributed to the diagnosis, and reported, casually, a growing feeling of
suffocation. A hint of the percentage of oxygen in his blood, steadily
declining as his lungs became less and less effective.
Without a doubt, Zomy was sick. Very much so.
"What’s happening?" he wheezed.
Lia came to him with a soothing, fake smile. Soft hand wiped
a bead of sweat from his forehead, and strengthened the smile.
"It'll be okay. What are you worried about?"
But she was worried. Very. She had never seen such a case.
The first signs of deterioration began little more than half an hour after she
shot him the virus culture. Lia was also surprised by the violence as it all
started to happen. Even internal burns in the lung, she tried to calculate,
were less aggressive than what raged in Zomy.
She almost heard his lung bubbles expire one by one, as
nylon explodes in the hands of a hyperactive child. Peck. Fitz. Peck Fitz.
And such bubbles, stopped, lowered the efficiency of the
lungs. Peck. Fitz. Peck Fitz. Groups of bubbles disappeared and made Zomy's
blood poorer in oxygen, bluer. Peck. Fitz.
How long did he have? Lia didn’t know. The virus she
engineered hadn’t been tried before. It was all a guess. Its effectiveness
hadn’t been tested before. True, it had to be aggressive. But how? She just
guessed. And Zomy didn’t let her check it out in simulation. He didn’t let her
try the serum on even laboratory mice, which could be sacrificed without giving
explanations to anyone.
But what would it help? Anyway, the serum was designed to
work on humans, not mice. Correction: on Zomy, and Zomy only. On the special
structure of his DNA. Herself, it would affect differently. Apparently.
"Take Advil," she said, and handed him two caps.
The ibuprofen in them was not supposed to interfere with the viruses, but it
would probably lower the fever slightly. 39.7 degrees. Now, ice or no ice? Zomy
burned externally, a signal of the internal struggle that occurred within.
What a crazy bet, she thought again and again.
What madness.
And she told him. She told him it wasn’t going to be easy,
even if it succeeded. Even if the serum worked, there are always the side
effects. Even if Zomy survived the process, it’s likely that other things would
happen.
"Lungs aren't hands," she told him. "Do not
play with them!"
And she begged him not to hurry, they still had time.
"Let's check it again, let's see what happens at least
with mice! With dogs! Let's at least do another simulation of the
process."
"Let there be at least one fucking successful
simulation," she murmured finally.
At last one.
But Zomy was not listening. She had never seen him so full
of fire, almost fanatical about the idea of the medicine. Like a Roman general
on a gladiator diet, she thought. "Give it to me! Shoot the
bastards!" he yelled at her this morning, a complete contrast to this gray
shadow, now trembling under the covers.
And she knew, then, how much worse it could be. The
simulations they had done were not positive. The previous generation, the first
of the virus, led to the death of virtual Zomy in two days. Signs, she remarked
to herself, those signs.
So, yes, they fixed the virus. So what? Small jaws could
still kill. Peck, Fitz. Peck Fitz.
He’s likely to die, she thought suddenly. Here, now, in the
next hour. He’d prepared for it - rented her another hotel room on the other side
of the park. Made sure to buy her tickets to a Broadway show just in the
critical hours. She arranged the perfect escape route, and made sure she would
know exactly where she should be and what to do next.
They had not come up to this room together. She crept up to
this floor an hour after he was already there, in a time window of three
minutes when all the hotel's surveillance cameras mysteriously stopped working.
He also told her when to escape the room. "If I'm not
functioning by then, you take yourself and run out. You won’t have a second
chance."
She looked at the clock. She needed to move in a few
minutes.
So she couldn’t even get him to the hospital in time.
Anyway, there was no doctor in the world, not even she, that could save him.
Now he was alone with his battle. Alone, alone.
Cause of death, she knew, would be something like 'sudden
respiratory failure’.
And no physician in the world would know why.
*
"Listen, there is a certain probability that it will
work!" she remembered herself shouting to him a few months before.
"What’s a certain probability!?" he demanded to
know. Both of them were on the beach of Rishon Lezion, enjoying the cool,
strong breeze, which prevented the possibility of anyone eavesdropping on them.
Despite the winter, they were dressed only in the minimum necessary.
"A few percent!"
"How many?"
They already knew what the problem was with him.
Genetically, at least. One of the sections of the DNA, designed to grow young
tissue where cells died, failed to get a stop command after completing the
restoration work. Following this, the cells continued to build. Without a
break. Without limit. Without restraint. And to no avail.
A more interesting definition of cancer, she could not think
of.
And just the night before, she had found a new Australian
study report after a frantic search for all the knowledge in the world on the
subject.
Zomy's defective intron, the piece of DNA that controls the
“tissue engine” was losing exactly 15 layers, and going out of action. The
result was lung cancer. Particularly violent. Incurable.
"So how do you think to cure it!?" he shouted into
the wind.
"Not to cure! To vaccinate!"
"What?!"
"Before it starts! Fix your DNA!"
"How?"
The wind whistled intensely and Zomy drank it deeply,
enjoying the salt water crispness, feeling free, feeling power that only the
wind can give. Lia, however, had suffered enough. It was too cold and too hard
to scream into the wind.
"We'll replace the damned part!"
"Yes, how?" he repeated the question.
"Well, there's only one thing in the world that can get
into the DNA and replace the defective part."
"A virus!?"
"Exactly!"
Viruses, he knew, were no more than pieces of pure DNA,
wrapped in a protective coating of protein. No metabolism, no trace of 'meat'. Pure
pieces of information of genetic blueprint just waiting to stick to a living
engine, and control it.
A simple and a deadly act. Once the contact is made between
a virus and a suitable living cell, the virus sheds its protective protein
capsule and infiltrates the cell. Now, without physical defenses in front of
it, everything is open. The virus enters the cell nucleus, taking over the DNA,
modifies it and starts producing copies of itself.
Of course, such an invasion of a virus that changes the DNA
sequence impairs the functioning of the cell. Usually irreversibly.
The wind whistled with less intensity, and they both walked
on the beach, waiting in silence for the next increase of its static noise.
Without realizing it, Zomy's hand found that of Lia, putting their fingers
together.
The wind accelerated and their hands parted.
"So you mean to engineer a virus that will replace the
intron that’s fucking me up!?"
"In theory it could work!" she shouted back.
The wind accelerated more and more, freezing them, stabbing
them with the shards of cold water and salt. They both wished separately for a
hot shower.
"I think I'll stay with radiation and
chemotherapy," he said more quietly.
"What!"
This time it was Zomy’s turn to fight a particularly strong
gust. The wind penetrated his mouth and lungs, and for a moment prevented him
from speaking. Finally, after a second breath, he blurted out, "I said
I'll try chemotherapy!"
"It won’t work! Not type this cancer!"
"Why?"
"Because it just will not work! There's no cure yet!
Maybe surgery will help!"
"In the lungs?!"
"I said maybe - this cancer has almost one hundred
percent mortality!"
*
The problem was, of course, they were partisans.
None of the other team members knew about Zomy’s private
genosimulation, and certainly none of his superiors knew. It was a completely
private initiative, without assistance, without an orderly time frame.
Partisans in the corridors, in the laboratories, partisans in a so far unknown
research field.
So far, only a few genosimulations had been made. Most of
them were flat worms, bacteria, mice. More on the list: three dogs, one
chimpanzee and one offical human genosimulation.
No, not of Zomy. The official human genosimulation was of
someone else entirely, said to be an anonymous prisoner who later died. Zomy,
in turn, had another theory. It was hard not to recognize her once the
subject's adult face was revealed. It was hard not to smile.
Officially, the study was not easy, and devoured huge
computing resources. They, as partisans, were able to utilize only a fraction
of those resources. While Lia was one brilliant genetic engineer, she was not
the most senior. Although Zomy was the all-capable computer man of the complex,
he was not the only one.
Resources were allocated and stored carefully.
"It's like hitting one specific pigeon out of hundreds
of pigeons, flying fast, just a few hundred yards above the head, with a
gun."
"With or without a sight?"
Zomy was the mathematician of the pair; he did not need her
to calculate his odds.
And yet they loaded the gun with some bullets.
It was not easy. Creating a completely new virus was not an
option, although its rules came from experience. No. Better by far was to base
it on an existing model. A prototype.
"It was engineered a few years ago," she told him,
"as the basis for carrying DNA even under extremely high heat."
"And to whom does it belong?" he could not resist
asking.
"It’s a mutation of Anthrax that will withstand the
explosion of a missile."
"Oh."
"It has a very interesting mechanism of DNA housing.
Well, well… don’t underestimate it."
"Underestimating? Am I?"
"I know that look. In a nutshell, there’s a mechanism
that I have developed. It's in the form of protein that folds in the shape of a
hamantash biscuit. Why are you laughing?"
Even encoding the amino acids themselves wasn't a special
problem. The real problem was to lead them to exactly the right place, the
necessary floor in the tower of the DNA, a billion storeys high. This
complicated the matter completely. Landing in the wrong place, they both knew,
might not only neutralize the effect of the new genetic encoding, but might
also interrupt the function of another genetic code, as yet unknown. What might
be the consequences?
"Couldn’t be worse than has already happened," said
Zomy. And rightly so. He had nothing to lose. Even in the short term.
By the end of the process, they could not encode an engine
sufficiently accurate. The compromise was to magnify the replaced part in
Zomy's DNA. The dangers? Enormous. The bigger the replaced part was, the more
his production would contain potential errors.
"Rather than shoot with a pistol, we'll do so with a
cannon," Lia described the move with dry humor. "Cannon in a flock of
pigeons. Well, well. Let's run this computer."
They didn't need to wait more than five hours to see a red
line on the screen. "Immunological respiratory failure," she
interpreted the data. And back to work. It took a very long time to achieve a
more satisfactory result.