by L. L. Fine
The small beep, which was designed to sound strange and disturbing, was suddenly a familiar face. It was no less than his racing gnat, which was programmed to notify him immediately on such things. And his heart skipped a beat, the result of an immediate, increased, activity in his adrenaline gland.
Already? Already! It was too soon. Couldn’t be!
Within a blink of an eye his fingers turned into a swirled flurry of clicks, when a line of programs was replaced by another, very long and secret line. One after the other frames were separated from the giant screen, giving a space to another, secret, hidden frame.
Wow.
There.
In Australia, Taiwan, India, England, Argentina, Pakistan, Israel, more than half the US states, most parts of Germany, France, New Zealand, Colombia, the Fiji Islands, Luxembourg, Italy, Greece and Turkey, millions of little ants woke up, looked right and left, and began to pull from their holes hidden treasures.
Zomy's screen broke into new life.
Lines started running, dropping down the screen, down and down. Trim, green lines. Occasionally replaced parts are yellow, sick lines, but the majority were green. Zomy snapped a few more times, and the lines jumped ahead, a few miles below.
Things happened.
Zomy looked at the screen anxiously. More and more yellow lines began to appear instead of the green. His frowns came regularly, some worried, some curious. These were the last millions of lines of code, so that he knew, and they turned yellow too fast. He leaned back in his chair, letting the program fulfill its goal, second after second, day after day. Despite the air conditioning, a tear of sweat formed on his forehead, trickling down.
Not every person looks at his own death, he thought. Not every day.
Then the program stopped. One line, red, stopped the entire process. He looked at it, again and again, read the text but did not understand it. Frustration finally overcame him, and he pressed the intercom button.
"Lia, come in here."
An hour later, he lay on the stretcher in the clinic, while Lia, wearing a doctor's coat, screened the computer printouts. Dozens of pages were on the floor, in a neat stack designed for shredding.
"Hmm ..." Lia uttered suddenly, an unseen voice.
"What?"
"Hmm ..." she continued, smiling at him suddenly, squinting.
"What?"
"Take off your shirt."
"What?" This time louder, puzzled.
"Take off your shirt, I want to see what nearly killed you when you were 15."
"Nothing nearly killed me at 15," he muttered angrily, but took off his shirt. Lia looked at him again, with a clearly non-medical look. How thin he was. Thin but cute, light-skinned with matted chest hair, cute as only innocent people can to be. Anyway, the doctor in her was back in control, not interested in his chest.
She felt his belly, on the right, dropping down below.
"Take off your trousers," she ordered. And he obeyed. "That's it," she said. And she stopped, slightly below the underwear line.
Her long-fingered hand slid further down and down, down the right-side of his belly. Down, down, feeling any flap of skin, each passing hair. She went down more, sliding under, little by little, under his underwear. Then stopped.
"Here it is."
"Here's what?" He got mad.
"You had an appendectomy when you were 15, that's what."
"I did?"
There was nothing like this. He was sure there was nothing like this! But then he remembered. Sometime in the closed room with Rabbi Eligad, he remembered a terrible stomach ache, the kind which slashes you like a sword from the inside. He remembered a whirlwind of faces, colors, he remembered white lights, and then a long sleep...
It was so long ago…so much had passed since…and he remembered lying in the room, dull pain in his right-side stomach, and the angel giving him juice and butter cookies.
"I've never had a surgery, Lia," he murmured.
"But that's the scar there," and she guided his finger to the small change in the skin texture, no more than an hair’s breadth of an old scab, no more than an inch long. "And it was an excellent surgery, you can hardly feel it. Who was your surgeon, can you remember? "
"No," he lied.
"Anyway, that's what almost killed you at 15. The genosimulation was not wrong. If you hadn't had the surgery, you would’ve died from infection, as the appendix would finally explode.”
"At the age of 15?"
"At 15," she confirmed. "That's what it was before modern medicine. People died from nonsense. Appendix, for crying out loud! But now what do we do? The simulation was stuck."
"Oh, nonsense. I'll just eliminate the disorder causer, and it should run on."
“We'll see," she said.
Three hours later, the lines were running back in his room. He slightly turned the computer screen, so that Lia could see. All lines were green, she noticed, except here and there a yellow stain.
"Well," she said.
And Zomy pushed the button that sent millions of ants back to their nests, where they continued to be busy in secret, under the eyes of their rightful owners. Very quietly, secretly.
Green lines disappeared off the computer screen, returning the screen to the usual frames. But Zomy didn’t feel like hunting down more ants now. Anyway, all this would be redundant soon. After the completion of his great plan, millions of new ants would be captured without any effort, using the honey trap. His favorite method.
"Want to go to the cafeteria for a drink?"
And she looked at the clock.
"Yes, why not."
The simulation had four more months of real-time working, until the next, harsh red line would appear.
*
Cruel Ruler: You know, I cannot believe it.
Mitochondria: That I had appendicitis at age 15?
Cruel Ruler: No, no. I mean all this thing, the genoshit, the story of the computer software which is our genetic code. It's too engineer-y to me. Where’s God in the story?
Cruel Ruler: Especially considering your background…you didn’t ask these questions?
Mitochondria: God is in the story, believe me. Very much in the story.
Mitochondria: Sure I asked. I'm the first to ask.
Mitochondria: God is very much in the story.
Cruel Ruler: Are you kidding me? It's all about software, without any divine intervention. We are all robots. Programmed.
Mitochondria: First of all: where there is a program there should be a programmer, right?
Cruel Ruler: Evolution, Darwin, you already know these answers. So there are several billion commands in the genome, so what?
Mitochondria: You say that because you really don't know the whole story.
Cruel Ruler: What you have said so far…there isn’t even an element of choice, of will, in the genes. Everything that is coded there, this is what happens. We are robots, with simplified software.
Mitochondria: No, no.
Mitochondria: This software is not simplified at all. It’s so complicated that you have no idea. It's tricky even in my terms.
Mitochondria: The genome is a dynamic software. It changes while operating. Your genome tomorrow will not resemble your genome today.
Cruel Ruler: ?
Mitochondria: Computer software is something permanent, understand? What it says – that's how the computer works. The software itself doesn’t change. But genome varies from day to day. Whole sections of it are getting away from one place and moving into another. It is also very timely, like clockwork.
Mitochondria: Like a few million watches, basically.
Cruel Ruler: I lost you again.
Mitochondria: Why does a fly's life lasts for two weeks and a human's life more than a century?
Cruel Ruler: Because that's how it was determined?
Mitochondria: Because the DNA has a clock mechanism, that determines what will happen to you at any moment, and when to die.
Cruel Ruler:
Well, it just said. All written.
Mitochondria: So how does this relate to God, Lord of the Universe?
Cruel Ruler: Don't you see my point? I'll explain one more time.
Mitochondria: Explain.
Cruel Ruler: First of all: do you believe in God?
Cruel Ruler: Please note that I didn’t ask if you are religious.
Mitochondria: I don’t have to believe in God. To my sorrow, I know he exists.
Cruel Ruler: Why to your sorrow?
Mitochondria: Because the fact I know he exists frightens me.
Mitochondria: Very much.
Cruel Ruler: Why?
*
"Welcome, welcome." Rabbi Eligad's eyes were bright, and he drank some tea from the cup next to him.
Zomy looked around, as always during these visits. Nothing changes here, he thought. Same room, same chairs, same carpet - maybe a little more worn than the first time he had seen them before…how many years ago? Fourteen? Maybe more. Everything is as it was. As if time had no effect on this place, on this…man.
"Thank you, Rabbi," and he sat on the chair in front of him, letting himself to get used to this place, which was his home more than any other place. "Where ...?"
"She went on a mission," smiled Rabbi Eligad, without having to hear the name.
"To foster more orphaned children?" he smiled back.
"There are many orphaned children today, unfortunately. More than ever before," Rabbi Eligad sighed gently. "But no, she did not go in that direction this time. She has new missions, and this is unfortunate, too"
"What?" Zomy frowned. He had never seen the Kabbalist so thoughtful. "Anything I can help with?"
"Of course there is," came the faint smile. "And you do it the best way possible. Tell me, son. Tell me about what undermined your world so recently."
And he told him. At length.
More than two hours passed, two hours in which Zomy almost never stopped talking. He told Rabbi Eligad about everything that had happened since their last meeting, a few months before. He went deeper, especially into the last genetic research he was helping with. Zomy was not a geneticist by training; he knew very little about the structure of the genome before he was brought to the project.
From time to time he stole a glance at the eyes of Rabbi Eligad, surprised, almost angry, to discover again and again the same knowing, tough, never patronizing smile.
"I'm not telling you anything new, ah," he said finally. He’d just finished, at that moment, an especially long sentence, which tried to explain, in simple words as possible, the roles of the DNA and the RNA in the intracellular process.
Rabbi Eligad shrugged his shoulders.
"All is already written," he said.
"Where does it say?" Zomy was almost overwhelmed.
It was clear what the rabbi was talking about - the Bible, of course. And Zomy, who knew almost all the scriptures by heart, did not like it. First, no part of the Bible even mentioned the subject, he was certain.
The second reason was prosaic. Zomy came here not only to ask how the rabbi was, or because the rabbi ordered him to come to him from time to time. He came here to renew something to the rabbi. Give him something meaningful, just as the rabbi, years earlier, had given him so much. And if the rabbi knew all that - what was the point of visiting him? What can you give the person who has everything? What can be renewed for those who already know everything?
"No details, of course," interrupted Rabbi Eligad. "But…both of those you told me about, the DNA and the RNA, are mentioned explicitly, including their roles. You, too, are mentioned there."
Rabbi Eligad's eyes made Zomy, not for the first time, break into a cold sweat. DNA, and RNA mentioned? And he himself…mentioned? Zomy knew too much to assume that Rabbi Eligad was wrong, or worse.
"What does DNA do, son?"
"It's software. Source of knowledge, it's the one which monitors all the processes in the cells."
"And the RNA?"
"I have already said, it is compatible with the DNA, its perfect copy, or parts of it. It connects it with the rest of the body. The DNA isn't able to create proteins, so the RNA creates them instead. Sort of animating the data written on the DNA.”
"Draw them for me. Both these materials, DNA and RNA."
"Molecules," Zomy corrected.
"Molecules, of course. Draw them for me."
Zomy stood up and walked to the corner of the room, where a little, old table stood, with a neat package of papers, and the same number of pens and pencils. He began scribbling clumsily, the classic structure of the DNA: a double helix, slim width, but very high - ascending to heaven, far beyond the page's frame.
In practice, of course, he would need several thousands of such pages to illustrate the proportions between the width and the length of the DNA, but it was enough for illustration.
"Here." He handed Rabbi Eligad the page.
"You drew only one of them," commented the rabbi, and handed him the paper. "Draw them both."
"But the other looks the same," claimed Zomy, not very convincingly.
"Who will you submit half a work to?" asked Eligad.
"Myself," the answer came quietly. But Zomy painted, painstakingly, the RNA molecule, linked to the DNA molecule. At the end of the work he handed the paper back to Rabbi Eligad.
"That's what I thought. What does it look like, my son?"
Zomy looked, as if for the first time, at the painted molecules. What does it look like? What does it look like? They were similar to a lot of things, actually. What did the rabbi mean? Zomy looked up at him, knowing that the answer would come.
"Genesis, Chapter II, IX. Remember?"
" The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the...." Zomy quoted with a nostalgic smile, then quickly wiped it from his face.
" …The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil...."
*
Cruel Ruler: Are you kidding me?
Mitochondria: Unfortunately, no.
Cruel Ruler: I have nothing to say. Tree of life and tree of knowledge. This interpretation - I've never heard…
Mitochondria: Now you know, and you’ll write it in your book.
Cruel Ruler: If it ever gets published.
Mitochondria: When it is published.
Cruel Ruler: You're the one who sees into the future, not me.
Mitochondria: A mistake. I cannot see into the future. I just...
Mitochondria: I just live a life…
Mitochondria: Doing simulations of my own life.
Cruel Ruler: Trees of life and knowledge. I have to think about it.
*
"Come on," responded Zomy after a few minutes of bewilderment. "It doesn’t mean anything."
"Really?" said Rabbi Eligad, his face blank. "Tree of Knowledge, which is your DNA, soaring to the sky, filled with information and knowledge, embodying the secret of life. Tree of Life? Equal and distinct from it, rooted near it, it brings the life, which is written in the Tree of Knowledge."
"I'm not sure I like this chapter very much," said Zomy.
"You do not have to like it. You know the rest."
" And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”" Zomy continued quoting.
"Thus it is written," sighed Rabbi Eligad.
"And it's my job? That you talked about before? That's what's written?”
‘ “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” ‘
Zomy got up from his chair, upset. He walked around the room restlessly, looking for a place to put his mind at ease. The lemon tree, calm as ever, met his gaze out of the window. How do fresh lemons
, so big and fresh, ripen at this season, he thought. And where is this tree? He had never seen the garden in which its roots were.
God knows that, when you eat from it your eyes will be opened.
Zomy knew the story by heart. There were parts in which he didn't want to be. Definitely not.
Rabbi Eligad let him rage. Let him think, to turn things in his head. To remember, give interpretations. Zomy finally returned to the chair, looking straight at the rabbi.
"So am I the snake? This your intention? That's the role I fill so wonderfully?"
"No …" Rabbi Eligad chuckled lightly. "Certainly not, my son. You are too innocent to be a snake. Innocent, innocent. And too pure." And he continued to giggle for long minutes.
*
Cruel Ruler: So what’s your role there? Who are you there?
Mitochondria: I'm quite ashamed to tell the truth.
Cruel Ruler: You're not ashamed in front of me???
Mitochondria: Let's leave it. Maybe I'll tell you that later. Maybe you'll even find it by yourself.
Cruel Ruler: Well…I can accept that.
Mitochondria: Anyway, I hope this answered you about the role of God in this business.
04/20/01 Email
Dear Liron,
You were not online, so I send you this as a telegram, before I go to New York again. Well, there are updates.
First of all, for my illness. So Lia thinks we have found the cure, only to assimilate it will take a long time, and I hope I don’t fall prey to it before that, as it will be harder to repair the damage, and perhaps even prevent me from functioning properly.
In general, even the medicine we're organizing - and you won’t believe it when you hear what is it – it isn't clear what effect it will have, or what will become of it, or if it’s effective, or maybe affect other things as well. It's not exactly in the free-medicine list, you know.
Do I sound afraid? Maybe it's because I am afraid. I suddenly get it. Last night I dreamed again about my father and how he looked in his last months. It's different when you talk about this from a distance, or when you feel your time is near. It's like you think you will die at the age of ninety, so why think about it today?
