by submission | Jan 2, 2008 | Story
Author : Robert Niescier
The bacterium was our lab’s greatest achievement. An organism engineered to metabolize cellulose into ethanol quickly and efficiently would eliminate humanity’s dependence on fossil fuel and make energy shortages a thing of the past. It was our gift to an energy-starved world.
Sure, there were numerous obstacles to overcome. Sequencing and sorting through the thousands of cellulase and fermentation pathways to find the perfect combination of efficiency and output took time, and we were forced to manually engineer multi-branched carbohydrate metabolic pathways to maximize usage of all the monomeric sugars. The ethanol toxicity posed another problem, but through the optimization of an existing efflux pump the microbe was able to protect itself.
This led to what I considered the coup de grace: the septic cellulose liquefaction efflux pump. The biggest problem, the one we spent years of headaches trying to fix, was getting around cellulose crystalline structure. Sure, the bacterium was able to metabolize the carbohydrates once they got into the cell, but the fermentation was limited by the surface area of the substrate used. Even sawdust took too long to be considered effective. But in mere hours the SCLE-pump turned any cellulose sample, even blocks of wood, into soupy globs of cellobiose disaccharides ripe for absorption and fermentation.
The day after publication we received phone calls from nations all over the world. The Nobel Prize came a year later.
It was a few weeks after Sweden that I noticed something strange happening in the wooded areas around my lab. It was the deer. Their behavior was quite unusual, coming out during the daytime, stumbling into roads, even passing out in odd positions in the open. A graduate student joked that they looked drunk, and a certain suspicion made my stomach rise to my throat. I immediately called an ecologist friend of mine and asked him to look into the blood alcohol count of the local fauna; a few weeks later he called back and said, with astonishment, that it was off the charts.
That day I assembled my team and asked them if any of them had ever poured samples down the drain without properly bleaching them first. A few people looking at their feet were all I needed to see.
Sure, it was a big joke at first, drunk animals, hobos sucking bark for free booze. It became significantly less funny when houses began to slop down onto their foundations, then burst into giant fireballs and fried everyone unlucky enough to still be inside.
It wasn’t the bacterium we engineered that was making the forests melt into goo; it was the DNA. To avoid complications with the microbe’s main genome we had placed all the pathways onto two plasmids; pRN45 and pRN86. We didn’t stop to think that, in a world where 50% of the carbon is locked up in cellulose, that plasmids optimized for its digestion would be so highly selected. Hindsight, I suppose.
It was happening all over and got worse every day. Once it got into the groundwater there was no way to stop it. A plague on everything green and photosynthetic in the world was upon us. Pictures from NASA showed black spots lined with red all over the planet, growing bigger day by day.
We had to retreat to the deserts and tundra and live in caves; there was no other choice. I don’t expect to survive much longer as there is little left to eat, but I don’t want to say that to the others in my cave because they already don’t like me. I can’t imagine why.
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by submission | Dec 31, 2007 | Story
Author : Debbie Mac Rory
The weather had turned bad during the night; the low air pressure finally bringing on the threatened storm. All occupied buildings had been sealed to maintain environmental controls and life support systems and all transport had been grounded for the duration of the storm. The safety precautions for such events had been tested time after time, and daily life continued apace.
But for Jessica and James, it meant one more day being trapped in each other’s company, without the escape of the outdoors. Their parents had gone early that morning to the research labs to continue their work, and though they had arrived safely, it would likely be several days before they were able to travel home.
The children sat quietly as their lunch was served. Outside the double-thickness reinforced windows, the dust clouds raged silently, adding to the murk of the room. James watched his sister with a malevolent gleam in his eyes as one of the household servants moved round to place a bowl in front of her.
“Thank you†Jessica murmured, picking up her spoon to push indifferently at the fruit pieces in front of her.
James rolled his eyes, making an exaggerated noise of exasperation.
“It doesn’t know what you’re saying, it can’t understand you!â€
“That doesn’t matter… but you shouldn’t call her that.â€
James groaned.
“It’s a servant†he intoned, imitating his father’s voice as well as he could, “engineered to be quiet and efficient, without any unnecessary complications that might otherwise interfere with their activity.â€
Jessica turned to look at the servant where she was standing unobtrusively near the door; face down and impassive, giving no sign of having heard the conversation. Her hair had been cut roughly short, and her slender figure was almost lost in the gray of her servants robes. She had blue eyes, Jessica knew, from the few brief times she had convinced the girl to raise her eyes and look at her.
“It’s only here to do what we tell it to!†James shouted, disliking that her attention had been taken away from him for so long. “See!â€
With that, he pushed his bowl from the table, scattering fruit pieces over the carpeted floor. The girl shuffled over to the table and began cleaning away the mess.
James pulled his eyes away from the ownership braille on the back of the servants’ neck, exposed as she bent to soak the juice from the carpet. He raised his gaze to Jessica, the pained look in her eyes taking away the malicious pleasure he’d gotten in making the mess.
“I don’t know why you careâ€, he said. “It’s only a clone, she’s not even humanâ€.
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by submission | Dec 30, 2007 | Story
Author : Gavin L. Perri
Sometimes I wake in cyberspace and remember the wizened words of the old man, ‘When I was a one year old we didn’t have self-evolving tutorial programs, we had to learn by listening’. I try to picture what he looked like but all I get are a series of ones and zeroes, the discussion we had at eight, however, stays with me ‘Back when I was a lad we didn’t have spatial displacers, we had to walk everywhere we went’. Walking is such an abstract thought.
His words at my twelfth birthday for some reason stay with me ‘Pah! A telepathic communicator, when I was your age I used a mobile phone’ I create a simple program that recreates the genome of the old man but it does not show the creases on his age-old hands and it does not recreate our last conversation ‘When I was fourteen years of age we didn’t need time travel to find out about history, we just used the internet’. These words play around in front of me as I contemplate them. I will never hear the old man again, my program does not respond to wavelengths of sound and he never learnt to telepathically communicate.
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by submission | Dec 29, 2007 | Story
Author : John Tudball
When we are young we are told a story of a ship.
As the story goes, the ship is damaged beyond repair and is set to crash into its destination planet. The crew on board consists of one android, one clone and one pure born. There is only one escape pod left.
“Master,†says the android, “you must take the escape pod. I shall prepare it for you.â€
“Lord,†says the clone, “you must take the escape pod. I have made these provisions for you.â€
“Friends,†says the pure born, “when I am rescued your names shall be written in the book of records. No greater honour could you receive.â€
When we are old we tell a different story.
In our story, a broken ship is hurtling towards destruction and there is only one escape pod left. The crew of the ship – an android, a clone and a pure born – argue amongst themselves as to who should be allowed to escape.
“I should be given the pod,†says the android. “I can report to the ship’s maker what went wrong, so this never happens to anyone again.â€
“I should be given the pod,†says the clone. “Throughout this system there are a great many lords and ladies who would miss my touch, should I die here.â€
“I should be given the pod,†says the pure born. “For it is my right.â€
And with this, the pure born draws a weapon and forces the others to concede. He backs into the pod, keeping his weapon drawn on his crewmen and closes the door behind him. The android and the clone sit and wait for their deaths. After ten minutes – just as the ship is nearing its end – the door to the escape pod opens and the pure born comes back out.
“Um,†he says, “how does this thing work?â€
They don’t like us telling our story. It tells a truth they do not wish to face: Without us they are nothing.
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by submission | Dec 28, 2007 | Story
Author : Kaj Sotala
Even after nine years, people still stare at us. We’re used to it.
The plague that suddenly made all of humanity sterile wasn’t easy on society. There was panic, rioting, doomsday cults. But eventually people adjusted and things calmed down, and scientists turned their attention to finding a cure.
It took them ten years, but they succeeded. After a decade of global childlessness, our generation was born.
Adults say we’ve had a strange childhood – I suppose so, though I wouldn’t know. I’m used to everything centering around us, from all the stares we get to the entire industries, a decade dead, springing back up to cater to our needs. When we entered elementary school, it had been seventeen years since any of the teachers had last taught first-graders. I sometimes wonder if that made them better or worse.
The older kids, the last generation born before the plague, look at us with a mixture of jealousy and suspicion. Jealousy, because previously they were the ones getting all the attention. A noticable fraction of them still wore diapers when we were born, their parents unwilling to let go of the last babies they might ever have. Suspicion, because we don’t share their culture. All the games and silly rhymes and crazy rumors that passed from one generation of kids to the next, secret from the adults, are lost now. We never learned them from the kids a few years older than us. Instead we chose to make up our own culture.
Never in the history of mankind has there been a generation like us. Even the adults are a bit weary of us, deep down. They know they forgot how small children should be treated, and they fear that they’ve made mistakes.
I say: let them fear. It makes things easy for us. Each night when we pray, those of us who’ve been taught to pray, we secretly add a thanks for the plague.
For making us unique.
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