The Geneleon - A Short Story
Some accessible speculation on the consequences of humanity's future mutations.
Hi! If you’re here to read my entry then feel free to skip the intro below and dive straight into ‘The Geneleon’ short story. Enjoy!
There’s been a good deal of breathless, yet valid, commentary on modifying human DNA to treat inherited diseases. Current gene modification theory and practice remain sound where medical knowledge of a disease is certain. But scalability and quality control issues still limit the broader applications for accurately altering erroneous base pairs. Looming over all these nascent trials and tribulations are difficult questions related to immutability, inheritability, reversibility and even immortality. Humans are already hell-bent on a path to bootstrap themselves and history suggests there’s no turning back.
I worked for a company which supports such efforts with highly specialised equipment, reagents and clinical manufacturing processes. One of the many projects I was involved with investigated the viability of blockchain technologies to support such life-changing techniques within a clinical setting. It’s just one of my experiential slices of life which I can draw on to inform my speculative writing.
The ethics of such scientific practices are heavily debated, with varying degrees of passion and ignorance. Suffice to say, improving the quality of life for millions of people is a worthy goal, never forgetting to apply the utmost rigour to whatever changes you introduce. You are dealing with the chemical expression of a living entity, arguably the very essence of who a person is.
Fortunately, you can unshackle your mind when creatively extrapolating such practices into future times and places. Roaming on a trajectory both wider and deeper, it’s easy to escape the commercial confines of legality, confidentiality and constrained ideation. Current technology, with its attendant cultural and social influences, is yours for the mutating.
So, when I dare to delve into our future, what if “erroneous” becomes unwanted, “unwanted” morphs into unfashionable and “unfashionable” mutates into the outright criminal? How distorted might human identity become when you can’t even trust the building blocks on which a person is fashioned? And how would you even know?
Let’s see how hard it might be, with this troubling short story of simple folk facing a difficult dilemma.
JR
The Geneleon
The knock was polite and expected, as was its owner. Her looks were unlike the current family, maybe a second cousin at best. White and willowy, her sugar smile could have knocked my boy sideways, but I was more concerned with the splices she had tucked inside. They’d insisted she might be a match – much as they’d said for every other huckster who’d tried their luck in the years since Pa’s death. Family and money had again proven to be a powerful fuel for igniting the worst in people. I’d long grown sick of it, but it had to be done, else the lawyers would keep chipping away at the legacy we were due, like termites infesting a house.
Bobby now kept his suspicions close after so many false hopes, our emotions more fragile with every sent visitor. It was his natural way, but on a bad day, I’d accuse him of selfishness. By the next, I’d be chiding myself for thinking such a thing.
After the usual polite introductions, he made sure she shook his gloved hand and passed him the needed paperwork. He then scurried away for the first test, hope sprung again in his step. I made us some tea while we waited, as I had for everyone who’d come knocking, no matter their real intent.
She liked it strong with sugar – as had my husband, rest his soul – which placed her more than halfway to my finish line. But that wouldn’t be enough for Bobby. He wanted one so bad, but they still had to be exactly right. I looked into her eyes, trying to fathom if her presence would do us good or ill. Corn-blue clear they were, the dark holes into her soul still simple circles, with none of that city flummery I’d seen in most others. She smiled before sipping silently from her cup. I’d been fooled before into thinking such demureness wasn’t a deliberate act, just natural shyness. Others had taken a big slurp, to show some strength of character had been left inside their heads, unlike my remaining family. I wanted more of that, but they still had to test right.
Taking her for what she claimed to be, we sat in the front room like I had with so many others before her; me in my comfy chair and her perched on straight-backed wood, pert as a spring robin. I recited the usual questions: where you from, how you fixed, anything that wasn’t fixed. For the last, turned out owning a baby was the most problematic. But they wouldn’t be unblocking those ties for a while, if ever. I gave her my sympathetic smile. The one Bobby said made me look soft, even though he knew better. Others claiming to be our kin, despite being no such thing, hadn’t seen me smiling when their visit ended. We knew how skin and words could still lie, but we still believed in the science which had made us.
Another of her patient smiles greeted Bobby when he emerged from his chemical divinations. His left hand was shaking, usually a sign he’d uncovered another liar, but his flustered face was the confused opposite. I needed to play this one with more care.
I leaned forward in my chair from long habit of low expectation, ready for the usual denials to roll off her tongue, framed by a pair of perfectly designed lips. But she just brushed a wisp of blonde hair from her too-pretty face and stayed silent, expectant even.
“What you got, son?” I asked, keeping my voice calm.
“She seems legit, Ma. Can’t find nothing wrong with her. I reckon we—”
“You sure you tested the sweat proper?”
“I done it a thousand times before, and I did it three times just now. That tube lit up greener than Mr Tamby’s fake lawn.”
I turned to the girl, my eyes narrowing to help blank any hope from my face. “Looks like you got some close family inside you – no matter how you appear, young lady.”
She nodded, eyes down, not uttering a word, her hands clasped loosely. Too calm, too composed. A doubt crept up my spine, and I fidgeted to stop it turning into a shudder of dread. I needed more reassurance, no matter how much we’d dreamt of this moment.
“Best you still get some blood out of her, Bobby. Run every test you got.” Her head lifted as Bobby turned on his heel, heading for the smaller of our refrigerators. We’d had a lot of visitors and the clinic had tired of sending us single test kits. I was the only one smiling as my gaze met hers, her baby-blues finally clouded with doubt. “It won’t hurt, sweetheart. He’s done it before.”
“How many times?”
“A few. Most don’t get this far.”
She nodded, extending her arm for the wrapped tourniquet. Patient. Compliant. Not even flinching when the needle was pushed into her arm and three vials were filled with our cumulative hopes. She then pressed a white cotton-ball onto a welling red drop of fate like it had happened plenty before. Was she a chancer, playing on the new gameboard of non-random life? I examined her skin more closely in the afternoon light. The china-doll milkiness had disdained any melanin, the pale-blue veins of her arms unpricked, save for Bobby’s needlework. No blemishes, no imperfections. Too perfect.
Fresh from her rebirth, from whatever remaking they’d deemed right.
We’re alone once more, Bobby muttering in the converted backroom, his centrifuge whining. I poured us more tea and offered her a cookie, like they did back when we still donated our fluids. My voice still soft, not daring optimism to intrude, I asked: “While we’re waiting on Bobby, you can tell me about your parents.”
Her eyes went wide, and I was secretly pleased. “My parents?” she asked.
“Your real parents.” These days, everyone knew what that meant. You were genetically illegitimate until you proved otherwise. Especially when claiming what she had.
When she answered, her natural reassurance had returned: “They came to the labs when they were first set up. For the extensions.”
“So they’re still alive?”
“They… they’re being kept longer than most.”
“Good for them. I hope you’re carrying their best in you.”
“I’d rather be carrying something young and living than old, frozen splices.”
“Wouldn’t we all, child. The older sure is colder.”
“You’ve had Robert. That’s lucky.”
I make sure I don’t even blink. “We’ve been blessed with luck. That’s why you’re here.”
“Yes. Yes, of course,” she said, her head dropping to stare at the polished floor. Maybe she knew her mistake, maybe not. It didn’t matter.
“I never called my son Robert to your face, did I? He only gets called that when I’m angry. With him.”
She didn’t look up as a delicate rose bloomed onto each of her pale cheeks. It was a primitive connection they still hadn’t figured how to cut; a reflection of shame to a supposed superior. Someone like me, I guess; someone she’s claiming every cell given to her was linked to mine. I put down my cup and rose quickly from my chair. “Bobby!” I called.
Instead of quitting and leaving, she started pleading: “Please. I… I need this. I need you, both of you. Don’t send me back. You don’t understand.”
“I understand you and your kind just plenty, and I’ve heard it all before. You ought to go. Now.”
As Bobby rushed into the room, he saw my face and looked unsure.
“She needs to leave,” I said to him, firmly. “She’s sniffed around before turning up. She knows us.”
“But the blood tests, Ma. They’re saying the same. She’s good. She’s genuine.”
“Matching every point?”
“Everything we got. No-one else has gotten this close.” He’s as excited as I should be. I should show some kindness to her, or at least relief. We’ve searched for so long I’ve forgotten how to trust folks.
Dimples replaced flowered red as our blue-eyed girl smiled, reburying her true self, surfacing only what she’d chosen not to hide. Thinking of the effort to tease the two apart triggered a new weariness within me; a fatigue even greater than the tiredness that constantly resided in my bones, borne from all I’d done to make sure only the truth would be chosen and held close. I can see Bobby returning her smile and their mouths somehow bear a similarity, despite the thousands of choices separating them.
There and then, I put aside every larger game of chance, for the sake of my first child. I’ve decided. “Call the insurance folks, Bobby. Tell them we found her.”
“For real, Ma?”
“For real. You got yourself a genuine, breathing sister.”
His whoops filled the house as I turned to look through the window at the unnatural corn swaying in a torpid breeze. Her arms closed around me in gratitude, her skin as cold as I expected, the lightness of her limbs in contrast to the darkness my true parents chose for me.
For years, I’d thought my false family ties should have been left to die. My younger self’s naive assumption of my future life a frozen lie. So summoning sufficient warmth into my heart to greet this unthawed connection was hard, but continuing to deceive my son would be much harder.
To forge a new relationship with an old decision was a price worth paying for his happiness. I still needed to bury forever the dark truth about her, a young design carved from my older past, so she might never hurt us. But in this moment, as his warm cheek touched mine, and his arms enfolded both my past and our future, I allowed myself a smile to match hers.
This is intriguing and very well written. I have a question: The young woman is a clone of the mother? Or was created from her genetic material and is her daughter?