Gregory Bear: Blood Music

The proteins would be more than just units of cell structure; other cells would be able to read them. Or RNA itself would be extruded to be absorbed and read by other cells Or—and this third option had presented itself after Vergil inserted fragments of bacterial DNA into the mammalian chromosomes—segments of DNA itself could be removed and passed along.

Every time he thought of it, his head whirled with possibilities, thousands of ways for the cells to communicate with each other and develop their intellects.

The idea of an intellectual cell was still wonderfully strange to him. It made him stop and stand, staring at the wall, until he jerked back to attention and continued his work.

He pulled up a microscope and inserted a pipetman into one of the tubes. The calibrated instrument drew up the dialed amount of fluid and he expelled it into a thin circular ring on a glass slide.

From the very beginning, Vergil had known his ideas were neither far-out nor useless. His first three months at Genetron, helping establish the silicon-protein interface for the biochips, had convinced him the project designers had missed something very obvious and extremely interesting

Why limit oneself to silicon and protein and biochips a hundredth of a millimeter wide, when in almost every living cell there was already a functioning computer with a huge memory? A mammalian cell had a DNA complement of several billion base pairs, each acting as a piece of information What was reproduction, after all, but a computerized biological process of enormous complexity and reliability?

Genetron had not yet made the connection, and Vergil had long ago decided he didn’t want them to. He would do his work, prove his point by creating billions of capable cellular computers, and then leave Genetron and establish his own lab, his own company.

After a year and a half of preparation and study, he had begun working at night on the gene machine. Using a computer keyboard, he constructed strings of bases to form codons, each of which became the foundation of a rough DNA-RNA-protein logic.

The earliest biologic strings had been inserted into E. coli bacteria as circular plasmids. The E. coli had absorbed the plasmids and incorporated them into their original DNA. The bacteria had then duplicated and released the plasmids, passing on the biologic to other cells. In the most crucial phase of his work, Vergil had used viral reverse transcriptase to fix the feedback loop between RNA and DNA. Even the earliest and most primitive biologic-equipped bacteria had employed ribosomes as “encoders” and “readers” and RNA as “tape.” With the loop in place, the cells developed their own memory and the ability to process and act upon environmental information.

The real surprise had come when he tested his altered microbes. The computing capacity of even bacterial DNA was enormous compared to man-made electronics. All Vergil had to do was take advantage of what was already there–just give it a nudge, as it were.

More than once, he had the spooky feeling that his work was too easy, that he was less a creator and more a servant… This, after having the molecules seem to fall into their proper place, or fail in such a way that he clearly saw his errors and knew how to correct them.

The spookiest moment of all came when he realized he was doing more than creating little computers. Once he started the process and switched on the genetic sequences which could compound and duplicate the biologic DNA segments, the cells began to function as autonomous units. They began to “think” for themselves and develop more complex “brains.”

His first E. coli mutations had had the learning capacity of planarian worms; he had run them through simple T-mazes, giving sugar rewards. They had soon outperformed planaria. The bacteria—lowly prokaryotes—were doing better than multicellular eukaryotes! And within months, he had them running more complex mazes at rates—allowing for scale adjustments—comparable to those of mice.

Removing the finest biologic sequences from the altered E. coli, he had incorporated them into B-lymphocytes, white cells from his own blood. He had replaced many intron strings—self-replicating sequences of base pairs that apparently did not code for proteins and that comprised a surprising percentage of any eukaryotic cell’s DNA—with his own special chains. Using artificial proteins and hormones; a method of communication, Vergil had “trained” the lymphocytes in the past six months to interact as much as possible with each other and with their environment– much more complex miniature glass maze. The results ha been far better than he expected.

The lymphocytes had learned to run the maze and obtain their nutritional rewards with incredible speed.

He waited for the sample to warm up enough to be active then inserted the eyepiece into a video pickup and switched on the first of four display screens mounted in the rack over the counter. There, very clearly, were the roughly circular lymphocytes in which he had invested two years of his life.

They were busily transferring genetic material to each other through long, straw-shaped tubes rather like bacterial pili. Some of the characteristics picked up during the E. coli experiments had stayed with the lymphocytes, just how he wasn’t yet sure. The mature lymphocytes were not reproducing by themselves, but they were busily engaged in an orgy of genetic exchange.

Every lymphocyte in the sample he was watching had the potential intellectual capacity of a rhesus monkey. From the simplicity of their activity, that certainly wasn’t obvious; but then, they’d had it pretty easy throughout their lives.

He had talked to them on as high a level of chemical training and had built them up as far as he was going to. Their brief lives were over—he had been ordered to kill them. That would be simple enough. He could add detergent to the containers and their cell membranes would dissolve. They would be sacrificed to the caution and shortsightedness of a group of certifiable flatworm management-types.

His breath grew ragged as he watched the lymphocyte going about their business.

They were beautiful. They were his children, drawn from his own blood, carefully nurtured, operated upon; he had personally injected the biologic material into at least a thousand of them. And now they were busily transforming all their companions, and so on, and so on…

Like Washoe the chimp teaching her child to speak in American Sign Language. They were passing on the torch of potential intelligence. How would he ever know if they could use all their potential?

Pasteur.

“Pasteur,” he said out loud. “Jenner.”

Vergil carefully prepared a syringe. Brows knitted together, he pushed the cannule through the cotton cap of the first tube and dipped it into the solution. He pulled back the plunger. The pastel fluid filled the barrel; five, ten, fifteen cc’s.

He held the syringe before his eyes for several minutes, knowing he was contemplating something rash. Until now, he addressed his creations mentally, you’ve had it real easy. Life of Riley. Sit in your serum and fart around and absorb all the hormones you need. Don’t even have to work for a living. No severe test, no stress. No need to use what I gave you.

So what was he going to do? Put them to work in their natural environment? By injecting them into his body, he could smuggle them out of Genetron, and recover enough of them later to start the experiment again.

“Hey, Vergil!” Ernesto Villar knocked on the doorframe and poked his head in. “We’ve got the rat artery movie. We’re having a meeting in 233.” He tapped his fingers on the frame and smiled brightly. “You’re invited. We need our resident kluger.”