John Cramer - Einstein's Bridge

“Yes,” said Alice, remembering that Iris was also the goddess of the rainbow, the bridge between Olympus and Earth.

“Of course,” said Roger, “but may I ask why you are a child and a female? Is Tunnel Maker also a young female?”

Iris laughed, a pleasant tinkling sound. “The concept of male and female is no longer appropriate for the Makers and has not been for over a thousand years, since we learned to Read and Write. The age of Tunnel Maker is half a gross of orbits, about seventy-two of your years. He is not particularly old, but neither is he young. You should understand that I could have emerged from your ocean in any form I chose: a goddess, a monster, a bird, a giant, a dragon. I could even, with minor modifications to accommodate the local environment, have emerged in the form of the real Tunnel Maker. However, if I had, all of you would have run screaming from the beach. I chose to be a young human female, in order to be as nonthreatening to your race as possible. You find humans most familiar, children less threatening than adults, and females less threatening than males.”

“You said that your race had learned to Read and Write,” Alice said. “Those words occurred occasionally in our conversations with Tunnel Maker, but he was evasive in explaining what they meant. It is clear, however, that they mean more in your world than simply learning symbolic language skills.”

Iris nodded. “One of the reasons I have come into your world is to teach you three, as representatives of your race, to Read and Write. These are skills that we learned through contact with another race, the Baltrons, who reside in another Bubble. In a way, Alice, it does involve learning some symbolic language skills. But the language is the genetic code, and one must Read and Write in the media you call DNA and RNA.”

“I don’t understand,” said Roger. “Surely DNA genetic coding is not a universal language that extends from one bubble universe to another, from one species to another that evolved separately. Surely the genetic patterns of your race have nothing to do with ours.”

“There is more similarity than you might think,” said Iris, “but you are partially correct. Your language of English differs greatly from Russian or Sanskrit, yet knowing one language makes it is easier to learn another. For carbon-based life-forms the proteins are much the same from one evolved species to another, and therefore the DNA that controls protein synthesis is also very similar. There is less variation in the separate carbon-based genetic codes than in human languages. The coding details may differ, but the basic underlying principles for carbon-based life-forms are always the same, from species to species, from Bubble to Bubble. We have found no violations of this principle.”

“But, in a sense, we are already Reading and Writing” said George. “Our molecular biologists over the past decade have extracted the coding of the human genome. It now resides in a huge computer database and is being intensively used to develop drugs and to combat genetic diseases. We can also do genetic modifications, using synthesized retroviruses. Isn’t that what you are talking about?”

Iris smiled again. “We too were doing such things before we contacted the Baltrons. The difference is, we now can Read and Write in a natural way, within ourselves. Each Individual can do it. We do not require machines to assist us. In fact, Writing has become our way of making machines, and we use Reading and Writing to control and communicate with them.” She held out her hand to Roger. “I would like to Read you now,” she said.

She took Roger’s hand. He sat passively, gazing at the silent child. His face had been looking more and more haggard with each passing day. Alice wondered how long it would be before he had another seizure, how much longer he might live.

Finally Iris spoke. “You have a very high level of intelligence for your race, and you are particularly adept at abstract thinking, perhaps less so at focusing on concrete objectives. Your vermiform appendix is subject to infection, and perhaps it has already been removed. The dynamic range of your vision is peaked toward focusing on nearby objects. I presume that is why you suspend artificial lenses before your eyes.”

Alice smiled. The child sounded like a fortune-teller.

“Your mother had blue eyes,” Iris continued, “but yours are brown. Your father became bald, starting at the crown of his head and progressing. You will begin to do the same in a few years. You have a tendency toward cancer of the colon. You…” Her eyes widened. “Your life is severely threatened by a series of seizures, and you will die soon. I did not Read that from your DNA, but from some messenger RNA that I came across almost by accident. Were you aware of this, Roger?”

He nodded. “I took an experimental drug, a neuroprotein that increases intelligence. The seizures are an irreversible side effect.”

She looked closely at him. “I believe I should correct that condition immediately. Do you agree?”

Roger swallowed hard, then managed to say, “Yes!”

Iris placed her index finger in his mouth and seemed to be concentrating and breathing hard. “There. It is done,” she said. “You will have no more seizures.”

Alice felt a wave of relief. Her concern about Roger’s condition had been like a weight, dragging down her usually optimistic outlook.

“I corrected the neurostability problem,” Iris said, “and also increased the natural supply of the neuroprotein you wanted. Your neural processes will henceforth function at the level you wanted, but without the side effect. Is it usual for your race to accept such risks for such a purpose?”

“Roger is rather special and unusual in that regard,” said George. “How were you able to do that?”

“It is the product of what you would call genetic engineering,” said Iris. “My body, this body, has special chemical receptors and manipulators in the hands that can isolate and read DNA and RNA very rapidly. My brain has a special pattern-recognition section devoted to decoding the information received and reconstructing what the implications of that coding are for the organism from which it comes. You might call it online genetic modeling. That is what we call Reading. It feels quite natural to me. It’s really no more difficult than the pattern recognition done by your vision centers. It is only pattern recognition applied in a different domain.”

“And Writing?” asked Alice.

“It’s the reverse process. If you understand how an organism works, you can see how to change it for the better or to accomplish some particular purpose. The manipulators in my hands can produce DNA, RNA, or retroviruses that can alter the genetics of an individual or produce a new organism or nanomachine with the desired characteristics. It’s a little harder than Reading and takes more training and concentration, but it works the same way.

“I should add that there is a strong compulsion that comes inextricably with these abilities. When you use these skills, you will always feel compelled to do good for the target organism involved, never harm. That’s quite inconvenient on some occasions, but it is for the best.” She smiled.

“A wired-in Hippocratic oath,” said Roger, who now looked more relaxed.

“And you’re going to teach us to do these things?” asked George. “Why?”

“There are two reasons,” said Iris. “First, Reading and Writing are gifts of contact that we received from the Baltrons and that we are obligated to pass on. When your race has received these gifts, you will incur the same obligation.”