As a
Postdoc at Amsterdam Tech he had built some experience with the theory
and practice of disrupting genes in the university lab. At that time, he
was merely watching his colleagues in the
biology department engaging in this task. His research on plant
communication was still a relatively unexplored topic and his thesis
requested a lot of rather basic experiments with tubes, insects and
plants; there were less experiments on the genome level
required. His colleagues laughed at him and he had sometimes wondered
whether it was out of contempt or out of jealousy: Yes, he, Lex,
conducted old school science, with his hands literally in the dirt! In
the beginning of his academic career he made the effort
to scrub his hands and fingers after a long working day in the lab, but
in the end he did not even bother anymore to remove the black lines
under his nails. All of his colleagues, without exception, spent their
working hours behind digital displays. The only
aspect of plant life they saw was on the level of genomes.
After
his dismissal at the university, Lex took some of his favorite plants
home with him. He did not exactly know why; he just liked them. The
plants were really too beautiful to abandon them.
His fellow scientists, if they would notice the plants at all, would
only look at them in an instrumental way – or as something that was ‘standing in the way’.
In
his first long days of unemployment, Lex took care of the plants and
enjoyed their sheer beauty. It took months before he had the idea to
resume some small and simple experiments. The research
did no longer serve to earn him a life. Now it was more what others
would call a hobby – whatever that may be.
Just for fun he installed some tubes and grew insects. Yes, for the
larger part of the equipment one would not find a receipt.
He borrowed the inventory of his former employer. When Lex started to do
his experiments he went back to the university lab to talk to his boss.
Lex made a case. It made sense that Lex would take parts of the lab
inventory to his home: Lex was the only scientist
conducting these experiments in plant communication and now that he was
sacked, the university would, most probably, throw the equipment away.
His former boss had even helped him to transport a heavy apparatus to
Lex’ home – the way
his boss tried to get absolution for his utterly failure as a manager, Lex guessed.
It
was in fact madness to build such a laboratory, even minuscule as it
was, in his small apartment. A year ago, when he reached the point to
study the genomes of the plants, he was angry with
himself. Why had he not taken more of the inventory of the university
laboratory? Without the right gear for genome editing, he was stuck in
his research. He did not want to beg his former boss again. But soon Lex
discovered that genome analysis and even genome
editing was available for use at home for a small investment now. The
second hand market in the Dark Web was abundant. With the money earned
from Mr. Van Buren and other clients, he had ordered a toolkit for
genome editing in plants and mammals. The toolkit
was called Crib, and in his mind Lex called his recent hobby ‘Cribbing’.
The Crib toolkit enabled next-generation genome editing, reaching a new
level of targeting, efficiency, and ease of use. The system allowed for
site-specific genomic targeting in virtually
any organism.
Lex
walked to a plant: ‘Sorry guy, I will need some more material from you,’
and he teared off a young leaf. With a surgeon knife, he then cut off
an almost invisible part of the leaf, prepared
the sample, and looked at it through a microscope – again a present from his former employer. ‘It is already amortized’, his previous boss had said when he gave it to Lex –
both knowing
that this was a lie. Lex still accepted the present. Although it was
certainly no longer the best and the newest microscope, for Lex’
purposes it still sufficed. Lex had set himself the task to fine-tune
the communication skills of the plants by inserting genes
that would help the process and deleting genes that hampered
communication. In this plant he had deleted some of the jammer-genomes
and he had inserted genomes that could help in speeding up the
production of pheromones. Since the repertoire of pheromone genes
in humans is larger than in plants, he had used his body material to
combine with the plant. He looked at the plant. For moments he studied
the sample in a state of utmost concentration. Then he got up abruptly
and he kicked the wall with his bare foot. ‘Damn!’
His big toe hurt. He had expected a success after he had erased previous
errors in the experiment. For some reason, the insertion of his genomes
in the plant did not work. A fiasco, again. He rubbed his toe and
studied the sample once more. He got online to
investigate his failure and he sent his results to a few former
international colleagues to discuss them later. He looked through the
most recent publications and basic descriptions on genome editing. That
was it.
After
two hours in his mini-lab he gave up, still irritated that he could not
understand why his experiments had failed. It was only during the clean
up of his laboratory when Lex noticed he
was hungry. He got online and he was about to order a healthy, high
fiber, vegetarian, and spicy meal at the restaurant he frequented quite
often. He liked the service of this restaurant: all meals were
drone-delivered within 15 minutes. He was about to verify
his payment details when he noticed the price. This could not be true!
The restaurant charged 78 eCoins for this meal! All other times, it had
been around 20 or 30 eCoins. Lex cancelled the order and tried other
restaurants. Bad luck! Either the meals he wanted
were not available, or they were priced in a similar bandwidth. Lex was
puzzled. Was it a sudden inflation that Lex was unaware of? Instead of a
cooked meal, Lex ordered some basic ingredients from the super market.
In his research of the prices of meals, he
could not find indications for inflation or any other plausible theory
for this sudden price rise.
It
took some time to assemble his meal, but he was still dissatisfied that
he was unable to crack today’s puzzles. While he ate his meal, Lex
watched a documentary that was part of an
educational module on the world population. He regularly followed
courses and programs online, and this module compiled by an esteemed
Chinese researcher on life expectancy and world population, just seemed
right to him. In these interactive documentaries,
he often changed the parameter settings for fun – and he got to see
different presentations of the program when he pretended to be a
teenager or an elderly woman, for example. But this time he kept his
default login. He watched the video as a heterosexual,
highly educated, white, single, twenty-something-year-old European. The
attractive female robot-presenter, Silvia, showed some graphs about
world population growth, and developments in life expectancy. Since he
had identified himself as a biologist by training,
the video skipped all the basics and showed the more interesting facts.
At present, the current life expectancy for a new-born was 125 years –
as everyone knew. Some bold scientists claimed to be on the verge of
inventions that could help to reach an average
age of 250 years and beyond. The consensus in genetic biology though was
that an average of 145 years was achievable within 10 years. These
facts about life expectancy were then presented in one frame with the
world population figures. The graphs showed the
current situation with a life expectancy of 125 years and 11 billion
people, other graphs projected what would happen if the average would
grow to 145 or 165 years. Subtly, the label changed from ‘world
population’ to ‘overpopulation’.
Silvia
explained that, given the new scientific insights, new demographic
policies had been put in place. One offspring was still allowed, but
only when certain conditions were met. These conditions
were: genetic value and fitting; geographic location of birth;
willingness to emigrate to other regions and of course – but this goes
without saying – a high SocialCitizenScore. From now on, there were
serious repercussions if a baby was born without the governmental
approval beforehand.
Big
Data about the personal behavior of the mother and the potential father
would identify consumption habits and also changes in blood consistency
and that of other body fluids that were constantly
monitored. A report would automatically be sent to the authorities,
which would initiate an abortion, if the baby belonged to DownGraders.
The same would happen if the genetic material would be identified not
good enough for the smart society of the future.
At
this point, Alex stopped watching the module. He thought he had
launched an educational module but it turned out that government used
this series of lectures to push its policies. He was
irritated and logged in to leave his comment in the ‘Open Science
Engagement Platform.’ Whatever he commented, disappeared. He re-opened
the site, gave new oral commands, re-set his default settings. Nothing
happened. It must be a flaw in the platform, he thought.
For
the remainder of his meal, he watched the news. The annual summit of the
Geo10 took place in Amsterdam this week. Lex saw a short impression of
the gala dinner yesterday evening at the
Rijksmuseum. Lex could relate to this location, since the museum was
literally around the corner. In the central hall of the museum, a long
table with white damask was set right under Rembrandt van Rijn’s
painting the Night Watch. Ten world politicians and
ten powerful industrial leaders were dressed up for the occasion. The
main issue on this Summit was how to regulate the access to and
ownership of harvesting raw materials from other planets. One of the
participants of the Geo10 delegation, a Chinese lady,
attracted Lex’ attention. She was tall, especially for a Chinese woman.
Her shoulders were downright muscular, even more accentuated in the
bright turquoise silk dress with bare shoulders. The voice-over informed
that she was the CEO of China’s most successful
company these days, importing and exporting rare minerals. To Lex she
looked more like a triathlon athlete than a CEO. The last shot showed
some spontaneity. While the group photo was taken, an American
politician stumbled on his way to the stairs and the Chinese
triathlete offered her arm to support him. She laughed friendly to him,
but the man did not return the friendly gaze. ‘Probably his male pride
is hurt’, Lex thought.
Lex
switched off the news and searched for a jerry can in his cupboard.
Damn, he swore he placed it here after the last time he used it, but he
could not find it. Then he remembered he stored
it under his bed, with other hardly used stuff. He swept off the dust
and called Splinter. Without a preconceived plan, Lex walked to the same
spot in the park as the day before. Lex took a bench and watched
Splinter sniffing and searching and running up and
down. Suddenly, Lex noticed a cat right next to the bench. The cat was
too absorbed to notice that Lex had taken his seat. Lex took a closer
look and saw that the cat had caught a mouse. However, rather than
eating it, the cat was playing with the mouse. Whenever
it put its paw on the ground, the mouse would jump in the air. The cat
seemed to find this funny. To Lex’ surprise, the mouse did not run away.
‘It must have been hypnotized’, he concluded. Finally, Splinter noticed
and hunted the cat, while the mouse escaped.
Lex
threw a few sticks for his dog. He was already on his way home when he
spotted Seldon. The old man smiled friendly. ‘Good to see you, tree
hugger! I have been thinking about you. Do you
have some time?’ Lex had not noticed before but now he saw that Seldon’s
appearance was a bit shabby. All his clothes were wrinkled in various
degrees; no single article was perfectly clean. Was it a lack of vanity
of an old guy having lived for ages without
a woman, or was it just a matter of money?
Seldon asked Lex to tell him more about his research on plant communication.
‘Plant communication is more sophisticated than most people think’, Lex started his lecture.
‘So you told me last time’, Seldon nodded to encourage Lex.
‘Plants make use of a 200-character “alphabet” – somewhat comparable with Chinese characters. Each character is a different combination of pheromones. The only
difference between the 200 “characters” is the dose of different chemical substances.’
Seldon asked what the communication entailed, what kind of messages were passed.
‘Plants can communicate
amongst plants, and also between plants and insects, or between plants
and other forms of life. For example, plants can ask the help of wasps
to attack the caterpillar
on their leaves; or they can warn fellow plants of caterpillars in the
neighbourhood. To make it even more complex: plants may inform wasps not
to attack the caterpillars this time since fellow-wasps have already
laid eggs within the caterpillars, so
they would soon die. Plants can warn fellow plants to speed up the
growth process since the caterpillars are about to approach the top of
the flower… there are numerous possibilities.’
‘This
is amazing!’ At that moment, Seldon’s and Lex’ dogs were sniffing each
other, Splinter got visibly interested in his female friend. ‘Now even
humans are no longer free in their choice
to produce offspring – sorry Splinter’, Lex talked to his dog. Seldon
sighed. ‘So I heard. But tell me more. On which aspect of the plant
communication did your research focus?’
Lex
had forgotten how it felt to talk to someone who is really interested in
your research. Sure he had his daily interactions, mainly online, but
now he could feel his own enthusiasm again.
And it felt good!
‘I wanted to prove the
possibility of the communication between plants and mammals. For me the
question was how humans could, potentially, pass messages through a
network of plants to another human being. There
are of course problems with this type of communication. One is the
delay. You can call it genuinely slow communication’, Lex laughed. ‘The
message has to go from one plant to another plant in a network. The
receiving plants needs to be within the vicinity of
the sending plants. And of course you can easily make a mistake in the
composition of the “character”, resulting in a misunderstanding.’
‘Did you manage in the end to establish this communication?’ Seldon asked.
‘No, I did not, unfortunately. What I did prove, however, was the theoretical possibility.’ Seldon looked at Lex with the most open and friendly face Lex had ever encountered. ‘And if I am right, you are not the kind of guy who is stopped by the incidental fact that he is no longer employed by a certain institution. My guess would be that you are still engaged in your plant research. Am I right?’
Lex laughed. Seldon seemed to know him. Lex gave an update on his experiments, including his recent failures in genome editing. Seldon nodded and asked the right questions, basic as they were.
‘No, I did not, unfortunately. What I did prove, however, was the theoretical possibility.’ Seldon looked at Lex with the most open and friendly face Lex had ever encountered. ‘And if I am right, you are not the kind of guy who is stopped by the incidental fact that he is no longer employed by a certain institution. My guess would be that you are still engaged in your plant research. Am I right?’
Lex laughed. Seldon seemed to know him. Lex gave an update on his experiments, including his recent failures in genome editing. Seldon nodded and asked the right questions, basic as they were.
‘Plant communication is
not my field. But I know that scientists are sometimes caught in a
tunnel vision. It can be helpful to talk to someone else. If you want, I
could go over some parts of the research with
you and see whether I see something that you have not noticed before.
Moreover, I could try to help you with my contacts at Amsterdam Tech to
find researchers and equipment that can solve some of the problems you
are encountering.’
Seldon paused and Lex felt he had to respond, but he did not know what to say. Seldon continued: ‘Anyhow: if you want, I would like to be your sparring partner.’ He elbowed him in a friendly way. ‘What do you think?’ Seldon laughed and held up his hand for a high five, a youthful gesture that did not entirely fit the grey guy. ‘Let’s do it!’, Lex did not think too long and returned the high five.
Seldon paused and Lex felt he had to respond, but he did not know what to say. Seldon continued: ‘Anyhow: if you want, I would like to be your sparring partner.’ He elbowed him in a friendly way. ‘What do you think?’ Seldon laughed and held up his hand for a high five, a youthful gesture that did not entirely fit the grey guy. ‘Let’s do it!’, Lex did not think too long and returned the high five.
Lex
was thinking in terms of the new possibilities just offered by Seldon:
activities that could be done in an up-to-date university lab; things to
be done today and tomorrow; how he could
set up his experiments and how and what he could discuss with Seldon –
a layman when it comes to Biology, but generally a smart guy as far as
Lex could judge. Then it came to his mind he should also show interest
in his conversation
partner.
‘I
realize that I have not asked you anything about yourself. What is your
field of research at Amsterdam Tech? I know you are in the Mechanical
Engineering Department, and an expert in deep
learning of humanoid robots, right?’
‘I did not ask you about your research to make you return the courtesy, my friend. I asked you because I am curious – full stop. ’ Seldon paused for a small moment and then teased a little bit. ‘But ok…’ He told briefly about his research he had performed the last decades – the mechanical behavior of robots and how they learn to interact with their environment. ‘Today, my research is all pretty mainstream. However, in the beginning my focus in mechanical engineering was as mysterious as your plant stuff. Nobody believed it would lead anywhere.’
‘The combination of mysterious and mechanical engineering intrigues me’, Lex laughed. He imagined the students and academic staff of Amsterdam Tech. Yes, if you searched well, you could find a few obscure types on campus, no doubt about that. They could be found in the department for communications with extraterrestrial life for example; or in the school of organisms and energy. But if there was one species on campus looking most like 20th century workers in a bicycle repair workshop – it would have to be students and academic staff from the department of mechanical engineering. Plain, solid, collected. That is a mechanical engineer.
‘I did not ask you about your research to make you return the courtesy, my friend. I asked you because I am curious – full stop. ’ Seldon paused for a small moment and then teased a little bit. ‘But ok…’ He told briefly about his research he had performed the last decades – the mechanical behavior of robots and how they learn to interact with their environment. ‘Today, my research is all pretty mainstream. However, in the beginning my focus in mechanical engineering was as mysterious as your plant stuff. Nobody believed it would lead anywhere.’
‘The combination of mysterious and mechanical engineering intrigues me’, Lex laughed. He imagined the students and academic staff of Amsterdam Tech. Yes, if you searched well, you could find a few obscure types on campus, no doubt about that. They could be found in the department for communications with extraterrestrial life for example; or in the school of organisms and energy. But if there was one species on campus looking most like 20th century workers in a bicycle repair workshop – it would have to be students and academic staff from the department of mechanical engineering. Plain, solid, collected. That is a mechanical engineer.
‘Spot
on. My research was very atypical for mechanical engineering at that
time. To be honest, it was a hobby that got out of hand. I studied the
possibilities in computer programming to influence
decision making by individuals in such a way that the system level
outcome was more beneficial for society. It was for a huge public health
project. The aim was…’ Seldon looked at his wrist display. ‘Ah, damn. I
have to go. Home logistics. You are saved by
the bell, young man, from a very lengthy lecture. What shall we
say…tomorrow, same time, same place?’ After two steps, Seldon turned
around suddenly and said clearly: ‘And I forgot: leave your devices at
home when we meet in future, will you?’ He did not wait
for Lex’ answer and walked away swiftly – the fat boxer had some difficulty to keep up with his boss.
Lex
called for Splinter, but his dog was not in the mood. He was following
trails back and forth; licking stones and grass and peeing on every
slightly higher located object –
the usual stuff dogs were doing. Normally, Lex was amused by this
behavior but today Lex was in a hurry and he touched the collar-icon on
his wrist display. Maximum intensity. Splinter cringed, and then howled.
It returned without delay to his boss. Lex did
not pay attention. He was making plans for tomorrow’s experiments in his
apartment, but first he had to make a stop at the pond. He filled his
jerry can with water. This amount should do for a week for his plants.
When
he was nearly home, Lex decided to take a different route from the way
up to the park. This decision was a remnant piece of advice that a
headmaster gave to him when he completed elementary
school: ‘If you can avoid it, never take the same route twice.’ Lex was
11 years old at that time and although Lex forgot most of the other
stuff he was supposed to learn at school, these words somehow stuck with
him.
Lex
took a left and followed the lane that led him past the Rijksmuseum.
Some of the areas were not accessible, probably due to yesterday’s
dinner of the Geo10 inside the museum. When Lex passed
the main entrance, a group came outside. They were all smartly dressed,
men in tuxedos and women in ball gown-like dresses. There were a few
photographers and other journalists. All of a sudden, Lex recognized
some of the faces of the world politicians. He
also saw the female Chinese CEO he had seen earlier today on the news.
She was tall indeed. This evening, however, she did not wear a turquoise
dress, but a purple one. Her shoulders were bare, just like the gown
she wore during the gala dinner yesterday. Next
to her, a man stumbled. The Chinese woman offered her arm and smiled
friendly to him and the man did not return her friendly gaze – just like yesterday!
Lex
was confused. Had he really seen the news, or did he imagine he saw an
identical sequence of events on the news? At home, Lex found the news
item he was looking for and indeed, the Chinese
CEO, in a turquoise dress, helped her American colleague. There was no
image on the Internet of the Chinese lady in a purple gown. Lex tried to
get more information on the Geo10 and whether this bevy visited the
Rijksmuseum indeed two nights in a row –
despite the journalists in front of the Rijksmuseum, there was no
coverage of a second event. There was no mention whatsoever on the
athlete “rescuing” a male colleague twice. Lex was fond of puzzles, but
he could not make any sense of this one. This was really,
really strange!
Novel by Willemijn Dick, inspired and introduced by Dirk Helbing
License: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)
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