John Ringo: There Will Be Dragons

To make matters worse, he was a friend of her daughter. It was one of the reasons Daneh had avoided contact with his treatment; she knew that so close a relationship was asking for trouble. Furthermore, she and Herzer’s parents did not get along. From the first sign of Herzer’s “spasms,” his parents, Melissa and Harris, had begun shunning him as if the genetic damage was infectious. It was not until they had “given him his freedom” at the ripe age of fourteen and Herzer had personally approached her, that she was willing to take the case. Now, given his deterioration, she reproached herself for waiting so long.

But an end might be in sight. If Dr. Ghorbani had anything to do with it.

“It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, Herzer,” she said, watching the double helix form and reform. “Some genes won’t go with other genes, no matter how you cram them together. Sometime in your family’s history somebody decided to cram a couple of your genes together. And they don’t fit. The result is your nerves can’t regulate your neurotransmitters anymore.”

“Ye’, doct’or,” the boy said with a sigh. “ ’H know.”

“Yes, you do know,” she said with a smile. “I’m trying to think of a way to fix it. A way the autodocs wouldn’t.”

“Trie’ docs ’fore,” the boy said, trying and failing to focus on the hologram or even the doctor across from him. His head, though, steadfastly twitched out of line and he couldn’t get his eyes to compensate. “They can’ fin’ uh promem.”

“Oh, they can find the problem,” Ghorbani corrected. “You didn’t know that?”

“N-no,” Herzer replied. “Uh ’ought ’ey couldn’ fi’ it.”

“Those are two entirely different things, son,” she said softly. “The problem is that fixing it the normal way would kill you.”

“Whuh? Whah?”

“The problem is in neurotransmitter regulation,” Daneh said. “To fix it would require changing your DNA and then changing out all of your regulatory proteins. Since while that’s going on, none of your neurotransmitters are going to work at all, that’s tantamount to killing you. We might as well pump you full of neurotoxin. That’s why the docs won’t treat it; they aren’t allowed to take any chances beyond a certain parameter.”

“ ’Ange?” he asked. “Or a ’ansfer?”

“Both have ramifications under the circumstances,” she replied with a lifted chin and a “tchuck” that signified “no.” “I think it was a Change sometime in your gene history that was the problem; the complex that is interfering with the neurotransmitter production is nearly co-located with the site for a gill protein. And I see you have mer-people about three generations back. Trying to do either a Transfer or a Change would be chancy. A Transfer assumes that your nerves, your brain cells not to put too fine a point on it, are acting normally. Yours aren’t. I’d put about a thirty percent likelihood that if we tried to Transfer you to a nannite entity or something similar you’d either lose significant sections of memory, or base-level processing ability, or both. Lose base-level process and you’re going to be a semifunctional mind in a nannite body you can’t control. Not a good choice either.”

“Muh ’ody’s go’g and muh brain ’oo,” the boy pointed out. “Don’ ha’ ’oo ma’y ’oices lef’, doc’or.”

“Hmmm…” she said. “I have an idea. I’m not sure if it’s better or worse than Transference; I’ll have to model it. The problem is getting worse, but we’ve got a little time to figure it out.” She looked over at him and smiled. “I will figure it out, Herzer. I promise.”

“Ogay, doct’or,” he said.

“In the meantime, have as good a time as you can. I’ll get back to you in no more than a week.”

“Ogay, doct’or,” he repeated. “I can go now?”

“You should go now. All the usual. Get rest, drink fluids, exercise if you can.”

“I ’ill,” he said with a sigh. “ ’Bye.”

“Take care,” she replied as he disappeared from the chair.

She leaned back in her float-chair and stared up at the ceiling for a moment, then waved at the hologram to dismiss it and snapped her fingers. “Genie: Chile.”

The transfer was the closest thing to instantaneous so a moment later she closed her eyes and let the ocean breeze blow over her as the sound of surf and waterfall filled her ears. The small wooden cottage was on the slope of a ravine near Puntlavap, overlooking the Po’ele Ocean. A large stream cascaded down the ravine to meet the crashing waves twenty meters below and the combination of sounds both soothed her and aided her focus.

But today it didn’t seem to be working.

She opened her eyes after a few moments and balefully regarded the clouds that were sweeping in from the west.

“It’s there,” she whispered. “I can feel it.”

She stood up and began striding back and forth on the cottage’s deck as the first blast of wind from the approaching storm blew through. The wind caught her hair, blowing it into her face but she barely noticed as she stopped and stared into the approaching storm abstractedly.

“A jigsaw,” she muttered, as the rain started to fall, the droplets streaming off of the barely visible force-field. “Do it one piece at a time?” She was sure there was an idea there, if it would just come into focus. It was close.

At that moment there was a faint but increasing chiming.

“Yes? Genie? I told you I didn’t want calls here,” she said in exasperation.

“Except from a limited list of individuals,” the disembodied male head of her genie popped into midair and grimaced. “It is Sir Edmund. He says it is an urgent message.”

“Put him through,” Daneh sighed, all thoughts of jigsaw puzzles blown away as if from the storm. “What is it, now, Edmund?”

The image of her former gene-mate had changed little in the last two years; he was just as broad and heavily muscled and his face was still barely creased with lines. Maybe there were a few more gray threads in his beard, but not many. His demeanor, however, was… odd.

“Daneh, thanks for letting me talk to you,” he said. “I’d like you to consider donating your excess energy credits to the Wolf 359 Terraforming Project. Wolf Four requires a major refit including the removal of trillions of tons of crustal material and the Wolf 359 Terraforming Project needs your help.”

“WHAT?!” she shouted. “I come here to get away , Edmund! I’ve got a very sick boy I’m trying to heal and I do not need you soliciting me for terraforming funds! And just what do you care about terraforming? It’s going to take a half a million years to form a viable planet! You’re the one who always pointed that out to me .”

“Terraforming is essential to the future, not just of the human race but of life itself. In a few million years, this planet will be consumed by our own sun. If we do not have new planets to move to, planets that have been prepared for terrestrial life, all life on Earth, the only planet with significant life yet found in the galaxy, will be destroyed.”

“Hold on,” she said. “What are you? You’re not Edmund Talbot, are you?”

“I am a legally authorized message from the Wolf 359 Terraforming Project, a project that needs your help.”

“ Genie! Spam! ” she shouted as the image disappeared. “Oh! Oooooo! Genie, contact Edmund, use an avatar, tell him his image has been hacked. And tell my sister, too.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the personal program replied. “I asked if it was an avatar of Edmund Talbot and it said it was.”