Tau

Howejtadt

Dr. Jarvis Tetch peered down the microscope and was amazed.  The cells before him had 46 chromosomes.  They could be human... and yet, he knew they were not.  The DNA analysis had only taken a matter of hours.  There were genes similar in nature to human genes, and the DNA had the same chemical composition, but it was the sheer number of genes that was incredible.  The estimate was around 200,000 genes, around 10 times more than humans.  The gene structure was also fascinating.  Around 10% of human DNA was made up of retroviral sequences that had inserted over time and bulked up the genome.  The cells in front of him had no retroviral sequences, as if they had never been exposed to the viruses.  What was most frightening, though, was that there were sequences in the foreign DNA that could well act as viruses to infect humans.  The DNA within these alien cells could well prove fatal to mankind.  Fortunately for Tetch, and his technicians, all work had been carried out using automated systems that were secure and biohazard safe.

'Fascinating.'  Tetch wondered at the nature of those 200,000 genes.  It was like discovering a treasure chest, but a treasure chest that was more like a Pandora's box... anything could come out of it, for better, or worse.  Tetch was excited to get the DNA out of the cells and into a human egg, to see what the result was.

For twenty years Tetch had worked for the Bio-Weapons Division of the Army.  They had engineered viruses, prepared lethal bio-toxins, but all these had been based on previously known diseases.  For many of the Bio-Weapons certain individuals would probably possess, or be able to develop immunity.  The new DNA sequences handed to him on a plate were almost alien in comparison.  As such, he suspected, if there were viral sequences there, they could well wipe out anyone they came into contact with.  That thought brought a smile to Tetch's bearded face.

And, apparently, someone had wandered into an African embassy with the samples.  The samples, too, were not identical, but were 14 variations on a theme.  To Tetch they were like beautiful symphonies of possibility: he couldn't wait to begin to play out their moods, harmonies and revel in the sweet music of what they could be or become.

His brief, now, was simple: clone the DNA into human eggs, see if it was compatible and begin analysis of the characteristics.  In theory human cloning had been banned, but the Bio-Weapons Division had already been working on augmented genes for troops and the rich, ruling elite.  If there was anything useful in these foreign 'African' samples, the genes could be spliced into the embrios they already had prepared, or new embrios could be made.  For Tetch it was like Christmas come early.

One of the projects that Tetch was overseeing was the production of the Away Task Group.  These would be geno-fixed individuals sent out to man space stations and bases on the Moon, Mars and beyond.  The Away Task clones had been engineered for increased life spans, resistance to radiation, and endurance of low and high gravitational fields.  They were also designed to thrive on reduced nutrition.  If the additional 180,000 genes of the samples proved useful, they, too, could be spliced into the DNA of the Away Task clones.

Tetch smiled once more.  He loved playing God.  It was then that his turned to just what the samples before him were.  If they were alien DNA, it looked like they hadn't been exposed to Earth viruses that had existed for millions, or even billions of years.  Comparison of genes similar to human genes showed they could be partly related, which was even more confusing.  He guessed that could have been due to 'convergent evolution', with similar functional genes arising because they did a useful function, but the similarity in some non-coding sequences would put the time for 'divergence' at a little over one million years ago.  Tetch could see no sensible way that the foreign DNA could be compatible with human genes, but he did think that the foreign DNA could act as viruses to infect humans and possibly bring in functional genes.  If that had happened the foreign DNA could well have affected human development, from around a million years ago.  The changes that had led human development from mere apes to modern humans could well be down to viral sequences in the DNA of the samples that now sat before him.

And, then, there was the 'bottle sample'.  To all intents and purposes it looked like water, but it contained DNA, RNA and proteins, but not in cells or on chromosomes.  Analysis of the bottle sample made it look like several million closely related viruses, yet, within these viruses were active and very complex genes.  The analysis of the sample was even more complex, because the sequences were not constant, but could recombine to produce new genes.  The 'bottle sample' was a pure enigma.

The more the 'bottle sample' was analyzed, the more they found.  The analysis of that sample could take decades.  Whereas the 14 blood samples seemed to come from distinct organisms, the 'bottle sample' seemed to be something totally different... or much more.  The viral sequences in the 'bottle sample' seemed to be related to every known virus, some bacterial genes, and any organism you chose to pick.  In short, the 'bottle sample' seemed to be related to everything on Earth... and that was an enigma.  The 'bottle sample', too, could prove to be extremely dangerous.

If the 14 samples were like Christmas come early, the 'bottle sample' was like all Tetch's Christmases come at once.  Again, all Tetch had been told was that the 'bottle sample' had been brought in to an embassy in Africa.  He began to wonder whether other Bio-Weapons groups, in other countries, had produced these samples, but, looking at their complexity, his suspicion was that they were totally alien.

Tetch scratched at an itch in his beard and then spoke to himself.

'In the beginning there was DNA... and boy was it good.'