A Visitor to the Future - 137 - Starstruck
A few labs down, Formerly pointed us to another window which looked positively mundane in comparison to the sights we'd seen so far. It was a white-walled room with a fist-sized camera in the middle, wired up to a console with several projection displays. There were three people in the room poring over the data being displayed in a quite animated fashion. Two had biological bodies and identical jumpsuits, and the third was probably a CI, with a dark-green aesthetic and matching clothes. Formerly's recent explanations had really challenged my confidence in determining whether someone was a CI or human at first glance.
It was unusual to see a large camera like the one in the center of the room. Regolith had once explained that miniaturization meant the Consortium system could place high-quality cameras almost anywhere they were required, only requiring bulkier devices for spacefaring and other high-fidelity purposes. He'd pointed out the tiny cameras on the Boiling Point to demonstrate. It constantly amazed me how comfortable most people were being observed by the Consortium - but that was a level of trust built through generations of transparency, checks, and balances.
Sarkona also glanced at the camera, but it was the other contents of the room that had my friend taken aback for a moment.
"Uh, Formerly?" Sarkona asked, seeming to shy away from the window, "Is that Verdon?"
There was a note of a smile in Formerly's reply, "Yes, it is. Would you like me to introduce you? He won't mind."
"I had no idea he was part of your group!" said Sarkona, "Uh, could you?"
"Yes, but we'll wait for them to finish their round of experiments first."
We watched as the two people in the room with biological bodies took turns in front of the camera, then pushed off the wall and floated back to the group. I couldn't read the displays from this distance.
I whispered to Sarkona in the meantime, "You seem surprised to see Verdon here. Should I know who that is?"
Sarkona gave me a nervous smile and replied in kind, "No - I just, I'm... a little shocked. I think I remember telling you once that celebrities don't really exist in today's day and age. Not in the same way you would be used to, anyway. Well, if there were someone I looked up to growing up, it would be Verdon. He really inspired me."
"Was he a bio-dev by any chance?"
Sarkona shook their head, "Amazingly, no. Which is why I've sort of been thrown off here. He's a musician, and an influential one, too. There was a time I listened to his music several times a day. He practically invented lobrid rock as a genre."
"I've never heard of it," I said.
"Think rock meets punk with traditional Mars string instruments. I'll send you some samples when we're back on the ship. My point is, seeing him here is like finding out your favorite scientist also goes to your gym. I can't believe he's doing bio-dev work! With the Abnormals!"
"Would it surprise you to learn he's been with us for the last forty-eight years now?" Formerly interjected, seemingly oblivious to our whispering, "Though it is not something he advertises too much."
"Why is that?" I asked.
"Because every now and again a fan of his musical or songwriting talents will find out he is here and visit, asking for some advice about life or their daily struggles. Some leave satisfied and others disappointed. Paraphrasing here, but he will generally tell them that his profound musical impact upon the Union of Mars does not mean he possesses all the answers of life. I believe he wrote a song about that very subject."
Sarkona blinked in shock, "Wait, that's what Ashes of Success is about? Wow. I'd never thought of it like that."
"Neither had I - until Verdon explained it to me," said Formerly, "His early works are full of subtleties."
Sarkona nodded, "Yeah. Oh, Nat - Verdon's early works were focused on the time around the first CI uprising. I'd recommend listening to them - many are based on firsthand accounts. History meets music, in many ways."
"They appear to be finished - I will open a communications link," said Formerly, doing so, "Verdon, we have some visitors today who are curious about this project. Could you explain what you are working on?"
"Seyho," said Verdon casually, waving a palm in our direction. His voice had a unique resonance - delicate but low-pitched. "Yeah, I can explain. Don and Juani here are using biological proxies to test our CBE using image-based RG."
"Could you perhaps elaborate?" asked Formerly, "Assuming that our visitors here have not read Juani's latest paper?"
"Oh, right. My bad," said Verdon, "You fill your head with this stuff and you begin to think everyone knows it." He floated over to the camera and gestured at it. "People have been toying with the idea of Reverse Genetics, or RG, for decades at this point - the idea is that if you can get enough details about the properties of a biological body, you will eventually be able to work out the DNA that led to its creation. That's theoretically possible because the human genome is fairly well understood - we know most of what leads to what. For example, if you have brown eyes, it means that you will have the genetic instructions that will create brown eyes. Is this better, Formerly?"
"Much," said Formerly, "Please continue."
"So yeah, you can take that further. If I can figure out the length of your bones, the depth of your fingerprints, the position of body hair - I can begin to figure out the genetic information that led to their formation. And eventually by applying that to the whole body, you can figure out a lot of someone's DNA. With enough detailed observations, you might even be able to start to piece together how their internal organs work - maybe even bits of how their brain works, if you have godlike computing power."
"Why might someone want to do that?" I asked.
Verdon shrugged, "RG has great potential for bio-dev diagonstic tools, if we could get it working reliably. But with things as they are, honestly, there isn't much need for RG. This project is based on some old whitepapers I rooted out of corporate archives."
"So you're trying to improve reverse genetics?" asked Sarkona.
Verdon shook his head, "Nah, the opposite - we're trying to defend against it. Protect the genome by introducing a second factor for the outer body. We call that Complex Biological Encryption or CBE. Then any RG results you'd get are for the second factor only. Separate the body and brain so RG returns useless information, and any DNA samples aren't useful, you know?"
Sarkona nodded, seeming to grasp the concept. "How is it going so far?" Sarkona asked.
"Good," said Verdon, "We've only been using biological proxies though. This is really an aldev project over anything directly useful - the reality is there is already a much easier way to accomplish what we want to do by using a proxy body that is engineered not to grow a brain in the first place, or using something completely non-human looking."
"And your one use case, diagnostics, means they'd have access to the genetic material anyway?" Sarkona noted.
"Yep," said Verdon, "We were thinking about possible hostile uses of CBE too. Seems to us that any situation where CBE is useful is one where absolutely everyone in the Consortium has it - which is never going to happen - or you know in advance there's a risk, and so you apply CBE. In which case, why aren't you avoiding the risk? CBE is a solution looking for a problem. But it's an interesting project, and Juani thinks there could be transferable findings from the end result. I'd recommend her paper, it's good reading." One of the others, presumably Juani, smiled at the compliment.
Formerly interjected. "Thank you, Verdon. Our visitors will be joining us later, if you'd like to talk more. I'll let you return to your schedule."
"I think I got about twenty percent of that," I said, looking at Sarkona, "I could use a summary?"
"They're trying to make it so you can't steal the DNA responsible for brain development from visible factors or body samples. Say you leave some skin cells somewhere - they wouldn't be useful. Really niche, but a super interesting project!" Sarkona explained, as we began to float down the corridor.
I thought aloud, "When I saw the camera in that lab, I was just thinking about how the Consortium is always watching - and how comfortable people seem to be with that. Now you're telling me it's actually possible to steal someone's DNA using a camera? I could see the appeal of CBE."
"Hmm, I see your point. Reverse Genetics is limited, though," said Sarkona, "Because it involves a lot of modelling, iteration, and guesswork. To give you an idea, when I studied bio-development I took a module on bacterial development. We were asked to create bacteria that could perform a particular industrial purpose - and provided with an example of the finished thing. It took me months of study to actually put together how it worked and make something similar - and that was just for a single bacteria, with access to reference data and bacterial templates!"
"Ah, so much longer for humans?"
"Much. Humans are far, far more complex - no-one in the Consortium has successfully used reverse genetics to determine the makeup of a brain, and its massive computing resource use and inaccuracy is why we don't use it routinely as part of bio-dev analysis tools. Besides, why bother with thousands of hours of guesswork when you could simply use a sample of someone's DNA - a process which we do understand very well. By the way, taking or copying genetic information without consent is super illegal."
"I would also add that observed behaviors and properties are not necessarily due to genetic factors," noted Formerly, "For example, even if you could determine the genetic makeup of an individual brain, it would tell you nothing about what is actually stored on it - behavioral traits, learned knowledge, and so on. Bone length can also vary based upon nutrition and the level of gravity a person is raised in. Don, Juani, and Verdon's project is far more speculative than practical - a proof of concept for a proof of concept, more than an actual, working solution."
"Could you think of a productive - and legal - way to use reverse genetics then?" I asked.
Sarkona's answer was instantaneous - my friend had clearly thought about this before. "In theory. There are animals that are completely extinct with no DNA on file but the Consortium has a great deal of reference footage of them - everything from mating to hunting habits, that sort of thing. If you were motivated enough you may be able to recreate a fair approximation of that animal. But it wouldn't be the real thing. It might make an interesting, if extremely complex and drawn-out bio-dev project. And then, even if you succeeded, you'd need Governance approval to actually bring the creature to life... then you'd need to care for them or introduce them into a biosphere - it'd be quite the commitment."
"I recall Takesh working on something similar once," said Formerly.
"How did it go?" I asked.
"Terribly," said Formerly candidly, "Though it was a personal project. Perhaps with a greater investment of resources, a better result could have been achieved. However, even if successful, it would be a mostly theoretical project. Bio-dev work on animals is restricted to that required to keep them fit and healthy. Some of us also refuse to work on autonomous creature concepts as whole."
"Why is that?" I asked. It seemed like a curious stance for a group so devoted to bio-development.
Formerly's tone was subdued, which was odd. "Many of us personally remember the horrors of the combat hybrids created in the 2500s. The creation of such hybrids is banned - and many feel that working on autonomous creatures is a dangerous step back toward those practices."
I suddenly thought of Dela, the only truly engineered creature which I knew of. It seemed like a large leap to me from friendly lynxes to combat hybrids. "Is the slope really that slippery?" I asked.
"No," said Formerly, "It probably isn't. What I do know is that I feel a lot more comfortable with the idea of a human, CI, or the Consortium in control of something I create than I do with creating something that could operate on its own. Giving one of my own creations its own autonomy is offputting and raises questions of morality."
"Do you feel the same?" I asked Sarkona.
"I'm not sure," answered Sarkona, "I'm not sure I feel that strongly about it, but I'd definitely put a lot of thought into it before making something autonomous. But part of the reason Governance approval for the creation of living creatures is in place is precisely because of what Formerly has said - there are important questions of morality to be answered prior to doing so. I wouldn't create something just because I could."
"What about creatures like Dela? I can't help but think about how happy she makes the people around her." I asked.
"Creatures like Dela - a friendly lynx, Formerly - are a weird case," said Sarkona, "It would be a lot more difficult to create them today due to the Governance approval process - as they existed prior to the Consortium, they skipped the majority of that. But don't forget there's case of survivorship bias here. Dela is safe to be around. You haven't seen the hybrids that didn't make the cut."
"I've heard about them, though," I said, "Regolith once told me they're in cryocontainment on Mars. Kept as a lesson for others."
"They would be worth visiting," said Formerly, "It may help you to understand our perspective."