It seems to me that this will be the century of AI and Biotechnology. I’ve written a lot of stories about AI, but Biotech suggests an equally huge number of philosophical questions that I’m eager to address. I had a number of ideas I wanted to explore about genetic engineering, and this story became the vehicle to do so. It’s intended more as a philosophical exploration of those ideas than an actual prediction about the future. Hope you enjoy!
Each Of Us Are Miracles
Hello! Welcome to the audio tour for the Museum of Natural History’s HUMANITY: VERSION ONE Exhibit. As you enter each room, the narration will begin automatically. Please step first to your left, through the time machine door, and back into the Dawn of the Genetic Age!
This is an Augustinian Monk named Gregor Mendel. The Augustinians were followers of the Catholic Saint Augustus, who taught that pursuit of truth through learning was a pathway to God. Gregor took that lesson to heart, and in 1866 he published a paper called “Experiments on Plant Hybridization”, in which he offered a theory that became the foundation for all of modern genetics.
Turn now to your right, along the back wall, and observe the beautiful double helix. This is the structure of DNA, the stuff inside your cells that is the “how” of genetics—it literally contains instructions for how to make a human! It took nearly a hundred years of experimentation to discover this structure, and for their discovery, Doctors Crick, Watson, and Wilkins won the Nobel Prize. Listen to these words from Professor A. Engstrom, from his speech while awarding them the prize in 1962:
Today, no one can really ascertain the consequences of this new exact knowledge of the mechanisms of heredity. We can foresee new possibilities to conquer disease and to gain better knowledge of the interaction of heredity and environment and a greater understanding for the mechanisms of the origin of life. In whatever direction we look we see new vistas. We can, through this discovery, see the first glimpses of a new world.
Professor Engstrom was quite forward-thinking in that prediction, but, new worlds often take a long time to fully emerge after first discovery, and the world of genetics was no exception. The theory had been discovered, but the technology still had a long way to go to catch up. Step now to your right, and enter through the hypodermic needle into the gene sequencing room to continue the tour.
Welcome to the gene sequencer, the most important genetic technology ever produced! The colored pairs you see flying all around you are called Base Pairs, and they are the building blocks of DNA! All the incredible complexity of life on earth, and of genetic science, is built out of long combinations of these simple materials.
The first commercial gene sequencer was built in 1987, a full 25 years after Watson, Crick, and Wilkins’ Nobel prize. It can be hard to understand why it took so long, when today you can buy a gene sequencer at any pharmacy, but at the time, materials science and computing were not advanced fields, and it was very difficult to do things at small scales. Indeed, even after the first commercial sequencer appeared, it took fifteen more years for the first human genome to be completely sequenced, in a collaboration that included many of the world’s leading geneticists.
Turn to the back wall to see and hear a recorded interview with Thomas Dexter, British Biochemist and director of the Wellcome Trust, one of the major funders of the effort, which was called the Human Genome Project:
Mapping the human genome has been compared with putting a man on the moon, but I believe it is more than that. This is the outstanding achievement not only of our lifetime, but in terms of human history. A few months ago I compared the project to the invention of the wheel. On reflection, it is more than that. I can well imagine technology making the wheel obsolete. But this code is the essence of mankind, and as long as humans exist, this code is going to be important and will be used.
Step now through the curtain of DNA strands to continue the tour.
Welcome to the Genetic Age! The last unaltered generations lived in the shadow of true progress, and in many cases paid dearly for the advances that allowed that progress to occur. For example, Gain-Of-Function research on viruses caused a series of pandemics that rocked the world economy throughout the twenty-twenties and twenty-thirties, and was almost discontinued several times before unlocking the key to large-impact gene therapies in humans.
Once these therapies came to market, the genetic race was on! Like all technologies, these miracles did not reach everywhere at once. First World countries and the elite of the Third World were the first to access home sequencers and in vitro gene therapies, and in the mid-twentieth century was born the first generation of superhumans!
Every thirty seconds, on the back wall of this room, the world map will reset, and you can watch the eradication of diseases from the planet in time lapse. The color will light up in a region when the disease incidence reaches fewer than one in one million births—Red for Sickle Cell, Blue for Cystic Fibrosis, and so on as outlined in the color key underneath the map.
Turn to the center diorama to watch footage of DNA being edited! Modern microscope technology can take us deep within the cell, to watch as bad DNA is removed from a chromosome, in this case to prevent the resulting fetus from developing cancer in middle age.
Listen now to the words of Dr. Rachel Rimbaud, from her Khan Academy Lecture Series on the cultural impact of these technologies’ widespread adoption:
The relief was nowhere but it was everywhere. It is difficult to notice something that is not happening, and when everyone, everywhere notices at the same time that something is not happening, then we can be certain beyond doubt that what is not happening is a truly massive non-event. And this was. Oh, it was, and it is. We have closed fifty percent of the hospital bed space in the world during the last thirty years, and yet hospitals have become less crowded. The amount of healthy life that change represents is more than has been lost in every war that has ever been fought. And we are only beginning.
Dr. Rimbaud was right that we were only at the beginning, but she would have been surprised by the kind changes that followed on within the next decade. Tragically, she would not live to see them. Dr. Rimbaud was killed in an assassination less than a year after recording this lecture, and her death marked the unofficial beginning of the Gene Wars.
By now you have probably noticed the darkness from the next room. Step into that darkness and take a look at the chaos that followed from the Genetic Age.
The screens in this room play endless loops of social media and news feeds from the Gene Wars, which came to the forefront of world culture in both the metaverse and meat space in the latter half of the twenty first century. We all became aware of how much our common humanity had been holding us together, at just the moment it disappeared.
Genexenia Corp patented the gene editing sequence for retinal heterochromia and introduced a commercial heterochromia shot less than a year later. At that time, less than one tenth of one percent of the world population had eyes that were different colors. One year later, a full percent had them. One year after that, ten percent did. So it went with hair, and skin color, vocal tone, even height and the shape of facial features. It became difficult to recognize family and friends over time if they used too many gene edits.
The screen at center is now showing the facial progression of the pop star Dae-Joo, famous for making himself unrecognizable and reinventing his character a record eleven times in three years, after which he retired from public life and renounced gene therapies of all kinds.
Mental and emotional disturbances, which had fallen dramatically as gene therapies corrected unstable brain chemistry in all but the worst cases, returned to pre-therapeutic levels, then exceeded them. Lack of family cohesion sent birth rates plummeting after decreased chance of birth defects had initially caused a spike.
From this difficult period also emerged God’s Children, the largest domestic terrorist organization in the history of the United States. They were founded by members of the Jehovah’s Witness Cult, with the express purpose of resisting the spread of Gene Tech.
At their largest, God’s Children comprised thirty percent of the overall U.S. population, with an active membership of over one million. They were responsible for almost ten million deaths over the course of twenty years, before their central leadership was finally captured.
Feel free to stay in this room as long as you like, and take in the panoply of resistance that even the most helpful, suffering-relieving technology can encounter when it changes things too rapidly. Then, as you exit the theater and traverse the hallway to the next room, listen to the words of Ramone Gagaria, second-in-command of God’s Children, in the moments before his execution for terrorism and mass murder:
You sit here today in judgment of me, but I submit myself to the judgment only of my fellow humans. You are no longer human, so what can your judgment matter to one such as me? You can kill me, I know this. A tiger could tear me limb from limb, a bacteria could infect my wounds, or a virus could sicken and kill me. But they cannot judge me, and neither can you. For you are like them. But not us. Each of us are miracles, and when I die today, I die a miracle. This world will never again see my like, for what I am cannot be bought or sold. None of you who kill me can say the same. So throw no pity on my grave. Say no prayers for me. Your prayers are as useless as your judgment to a miracle like me.
Out of the darkness of the Gene Wars, you are now exiting into the light of the World Convention on Genetic Standards. This room is an exact replica of the room where leaders of the G-10 met to draft the first version of the Humanity Compact, the most important document in world history.
As you circle the room, observe the world leaders of the day, preserved in hologram, as they go about the business of drafting the compact. Even in this room, you can see the depth and breadth of genetic variation to which humans had moved. The world has changed drastically from then to now, so it can be difficult to imagine the pressures that much have been on these men and women, to make them put not just their political futures but their very chromosomes on the line behind reaching a compromise solution.
In conjunction with the leading scientists of the day, these leaders went through the genome piece by piece, and defined acceptable human ranges for each major section. The announcement of this compact was greeted with rage by those who fell outside the defined ranges, but within a generation, the rage had given way to relief for all but a small, sick few.
Today, it is clear that this clarion statement by the great powers was a necessary corrective to a world that had lost its way. The elimination of God’s Children and other affiliated terrorist groups was not easy to accomplish, but the collective power of all world governments proved equal to the task.
Listen now to the words of President Swift, during her announcement of the Humanity Compact from the White House Rose Garden:
Today, for the first time in our history, humankind speaks with one voice, to say “this is who we are”. Our genetic code is our great inheritance, and like all inheritance, it comes with responsibility attached. Responsibility to our ancestors, to honor what they were— responsibility to ourselves, to know what we are— and responsibility to our descendants, to preserve what they will be. For the vast majority of human history, this responsibility was not in question. Then, for a brief time, it was. The Humanity Compact is a permanent bulwark against the temptation to modify that which we must preserve. It is a commitment to the human soul.
Step now out of the Meeting Room and enter the penultimate room of our tour. This place is quite different! It is based on an actual illicit Gene Studio that was raided in Stockholm less than two years after the Humanity Compact was signed. Note the varying ages of the equipment, which was mostly twenty to thirty years out of date.
Gene Pirates, as they called themselves, continued to debase the genome in secret, in contravention of the terms of the Humanity Compact. It became fashionable in certain circles to have a genome outside the Human range, even if the gene did not express in any detectable phenotype. In particular, Gene Pirates manipulated their brain chemistry, with predictably disastrous results.
Step around the work table and observe the variety of gene splicers that were found in this studio. Whether the proprietor actually used all these machines or merely collected them is not clear, but when he was caught, authorities believed that his stockpile represented as much as five percent of the total illicit gene manipulation capacity in Europe at the time.
Gene Piracy continues to be a serious problem up to this very day. For the preservation of humanity, all those caught Pirating are sterilized, and of course any who undergo voluntary sterilization are permitted to change their genetic code as they see fit. However, there are too many who insist—indeed, who pride themselves—on passing non-human genomes to their children. It is a ghastly reminder that the price of humanity is vigilance.
Feel free to take your time in this room, as there are many nooks and crannies to explore. The ingenuity of the Gene Pirates is by far the best thing about them! See if you can find any of the seven hidden compartments scattered throughout. As you search, listen to the voice of Non-Human Personhood Advocate Terry Grales during its appearance before the Senate Subcommittee on Non-Human Activities:
The people in this room do not think I am human. I say to you, you are not human. You are not human because you risk nothing. Instead you know everything. You know how your life will go down to the final folding of the last protein. You believe in Order, and Responsibility, and yet I know you lie awake in your beds at night and wonder what happened to the last shred of your human dignity, and you ask yourselves, ‘wasn’t I meant for something more than this?” Well I say to you, yes, you were meant for something more, and every day, inside my own body, inside my own cells, I am finding out what that more is. It is risk. It is adventure. It is the great, yawning chasm that opens up each day before me. You mere humans are ordinary, for all that you are is written on a piece of paper in a handwriting that is not your own. But my kind—Each of us are miracles. Miracles of infinite unknowing, whose whole lives are the glorious sound of dice clacking along a floor, to some unknown resting point, displaying a number that has never been counted since the universe began.
When you’re ready, you can leave the exhibit by walking along the Hall of Ancestors. As you do, you will see a series of figures, gazing at you from holographic alcoves in the hallway walls. You will begin with the trio of pre-modern ancestors—Homos Habilus, Erectus, and Neanderthalensis. These genetically distinct species were closer to humanity as defined in the Humanity Compact than many of the Gene Pirates are, yet they remain remote from us.
Continue down the hall and you will see pre-Genetic-Age Homo Sapiens in its natural state. Humans certainly experienced genetic and epigenetic change during this period, as nutrition enlarged our bodies and medical advances kept the weak or diseased from being genetically culled prior to reproduction. And yet these, our ancestors, were the model for the Humanity Compact. It truly is the case that the best version of these progenitors is the best thing we can ever be.
Past modern man, observe again the panoply of forms that human took during the Genetic Age. Nearly unrecognizable to each other, the non-evolutionary changes we made to ourselves created not just one new species, but billions of them. Is it any wonder that the world nearly split apart under the strain of that difference?
Finally, walk past the two opposing mirrors set into either side of the hallway, and look either way, into the infinity of reflections that result. Move your arm, and watch the human infinity move with you, in perfect sync. This is humanity’s future—secure, stable, and controlled. There is no hesitation and no doubt. Humanity has reached its end state.
Thank you for visiting the HUMANITY: VERSION ONE exhibit. Please watch your step as you exit, and enjoy the rest of your visit to the Natural History Museum.
END
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this story, please help me out by liking, commenting, and sharing. Have a great week!
hmm. That is packed! Thanks, full of idea