Infinity Curve - Lamentations to Unseen Friends Across the Vastness of Space

EP. 71 - ON FRENETIC GENETICS

"MY LAST TOPIC COVERED from this morning was on the aftermath of the Debacle. How I lament the pace at which I must work through these various learnings that I am imparting. Poor Sofia is on the receiving end of continuous pressure from the powers that be, the long arms of the oligarchs and the infrastructure to ensure control. So time is of the essence. This monologue pours from me, but it's clipped and sputtered under the intensity of pressure I feel."

"As I said, things are happening outside this tiny room, causing me to worry we will be caught and reprogrammed at best or eliminated at worst before I can send this transmission. Their surveillance tech is so refined, exact, pervasive, and invisible anymore, the risks compound at every passing moment."

"But it's not my intent to inform you about this insignificant being's pressures and troubles. I have a job to do, and I intend on meeting my commitment to complete this task. I much prefer to leave this life with the right thoughts in my last moments, knowing my purpose was fulfilled."

"Enough on that repeated topic. Now I will discuss our frenetic genetics that helped lead us to where we are now, the brink of our final days."

"Human lives are built on biological code, the code of DNA. It's only in the last century that our scientists came to realize this. And in the last five decades, the infinity curve on manipulating this code has hit the vertical."

"A few years after scoping and sequencing human DNA, we created the tech to straightforwardly modify our DNA. There were various names for this, but the term CRISPR stuck with society."

"With CRISPR and its multiplicity of derivatives, a combination of tools were used. Delivery mechanisms of modified DNA were mostly viral and bacterial in those early days, enabling segments called nucleotides to be injected into very specific areas of the DNA molecule. This capability allowed a human cell or cells to take on desired characteristics and spread those changes through normal processes of cellular replication. Initially, the tech was used to modify germ cells, as if we'd be patient enough to wait umpteen years to see the presumably beneficial effects in our children."

"Impatient as we are, ingenuity drove us quickly beyond that early stage. We discovered how to drive these same modifications into living humans and have the effects disperse throughout the body. This enabled us to create the desired effects instantly, thus obviating the need to embed the desired traits solely in germ lines. It was the age of geedee, or gene drive, technological advancements."

"And advance we did, climbing that infinity curve at a rapid pace. Given low cost and ready access to the raw materials, we could easily democratize this technology. Ingredients to do so became readily available on a mail order, next-day delivery basis."

"So what happens when 'everyone can play with it?' Well, everyone starts playing with it. Any half-wit could become an instant geneticist, or a genetic application scientist, with all the requisite components and Internet tools to show them how. One could watch a video about how to modify their own or another's DNA almost as readily as learning how to change a flat tire."

"From this tech, humanity now had the capacity to create virtually anything it desired in any combination, whether plant or animal or hybrid. Note that I truly meant 'in any combination' as garage experimenters quickly developed websites and instructions for illicitly sharing their findings and coordinating experiments. Some of these rogue geneticists, by the way, were still in elementary school."

"And so began an unruly, and some think 'unholy,' revolution in the concept of humanity. Ten years before that time, you'd not even consider integrating DNA code from an insect, another mammal, or even a plant into the human body."

"It didn't take long, however. Faster than one might imagine, new hybridizations were created. As people began to experiment on themselves or others, most of the resulting hybrids or varints substantially retained their human characteristics but integrated small segments of transgenic code from the various host organisms or even manufactured DNA."