The Soul of the Matter

by Bruce Buff

  “I’m extremely glad she’s fine. She’s a tough, wonderful little kid. But as a condition of me hearing you out tonight, and whatever that may subsequently entail, as I know something is coming, you have to agree to never exclude me from something like this again. I can stay out of the way or do whatever you want, but you have to tell me.”

  “That’s a fair condition. So, do you want to hear what I have to say?

  ”It had better be interesting.”

  “It is. Look, I know we . . . I . . . haven’t been the friend I should have been. And I admit I’m reaching out to you in need. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to improve things.”

  Dan was becoming open to the possibilities, though they had a long way to go to be genuine friends again, if that was even possible. But friendly might be enough.

  “That’s fine. Ava’s illness aside, I get the feeling that I’m about to be set up.”

  “I’m just using skills you taught me.”

  “They were meant for meeting ladies, not for manipulating supposed friends.”

  “How can it be manipulating when you know what I’m doing?” Stephen said as he shrugged with feigned innocence.

  Playing along, Dan answered in mock offense, “I want to remind you that I’m not easy. I need to be well fed, and it’ll take more than one beer.”

  “Easy is the last thing anyone would ever consider you,” Stephen quickly answered.

  “Careful! I haven’t heard what you have to say. It might not be as convincing as you think.”

  “It will be.”

  “Not so fast. One of my other conditions is that I have to see Ava before I do anything.”

  “Now you’re ruining things. As part of my devious scheme, I had planned on convincing you to drive me to the hospital tomorrow morning to pick up Ava and then drive down with me to the Cape, where Nancy and Ava would join us. And here you are insisting on something like it before I even have to ask.”

  “What about the interesting part?”

  “That’s a piece of cake. We’ll talk about that soon. The only problem for me is that I had planned on having to do all sorts of things to coerce you into doing what I wanted. I feel let down. You are easy after all.”

  “Actually, I feel like I’m getting pulled into something I know nothing about, that could be risky, all in the name of a questionable friendship,” Dan said with a sarcastic edge in his voice.

  Stephen quickly replied, “Taking risks on the behalf of others is part of life. Now, how about we cook up some nice rib eye steaks and have another beer? As I recall, you have a certain fondness for both, in sometimes unhealthy quantities.”

  “I’ll agree to that. And, by the way, according to your wife, I look pretty good, so it can’t be that bad for me.”

  “Enough about how my wife thinks you’re attractive. Let’s go.”

  Dan followed Stephen through the kitchen and onto the back deck, where a plate of steaks and vegetables were on the side tray of a hot charcoal grill. Dan picked two beers out of a nearby cooler. While the food cooked, they reminisced.

  Finishing his second beer, Dan asked, “In your well-thought-out schemes, how can I have more beers and get home safely?”

  “Oh, that’s easy. You take a car service. I have the number here. Then tomorrow, I drive your car to the hospital. You walk there. Together we pick up Ava and bring her back here. Then we’ll drive down to the Cape in your car. Nancy and Ava will follow after Ava’s piano lesson. It’s all part of the plan.”

  “You really do intend to take me for a ride, literally and figuratively,” Dan said while questioning whether he was setting himself up for a big fall by buying into Stephen’s plans.

  “It’ll be good for you.”

  “I’m wondering if you’re confusing my interests with your own.”

  “Don’t worry, I know the difference. In this case, our interests overlap.”

  “You’ll have to prove that,” Dan said with more meaning than he had intended.

  Stephen shot Dan a look, then said, “The steaks are done. Let’s sit down.” Savoring the juicy, flavorful meat, they ate in reflective silence, pausing only to sip from their beers.

  After they cleaned up, Stephen said, “I want to show you something you’ll appreciate. I recently added a theater system to the house. Come on downstairs. Then we can talk about what I’m dragging you into.”

  Dan followed Stephen down the stairs, into the finished basement, past the pool table, and into the theater room. It was done well. There were four rows of six seats, with a middle aisle, facing a large screen. Sound-damping tiles covered the walls and ceilings.

  Stephen picked up the remote control and turned to Dan. “So what do you think?”

  “Impressive, though I thought you were too practical for something like this.”

  “How about some music?” Stephen pressed a few buttons and Renaissance’s “Ashes Are Burning” started playing as colorful visual effects of lines, circles, starbursts, and other images appeared on the screen.

  Dan said, “Nice job.”

  “It is pretty good, though I didn’t build this room for entertainment.”

  “What do you mean?” Dan asked.

  “It’s actually—and this may seem strange at first—my only secure site for talking and working. The room is surrounded by double walls with sound, vibration, and electromagnetic damping. The only wires into the room are the electrical and the cable, and they’re electronically scrubbed to make sure nothing is transmitted out over them. For extra security, I have battery power, so when I flip a switch, the room is completely isolated. The air vents are also isolated. With your background, I thought you would appreciate this.”

  “I do.” Dan hesitated, frowned, and then said, “Are you in danger?”

  Chapter 19

  The man, esteemed within influential circles throughout the world and known within The Commission as Sarastro, entered his private study. The room was modest in size for a man of his means and it was paneled with ornate walnut woodwork. Heavy green curtains parted just enough to let slivers of light enter the room. Marble squares formed a black and white checkerboard pattern on the floor.

  The Commission itself was composed of a select group of like-minded people from top leadership positions in important institutions throughout the world, whether government, academia, business—even religious organizations. They thought of themselves as enlightened, powerful, and entitled, though compassionate and magnanimous. Their mission was to direct humanity for the good of all, provide for those who could contribute, and in time gently weed out those whose existence was a burden even to themselves, all the while ensuring humanity’s future, and The Commission’s members’ positions within it, as humanity was transformed from a flawed, mortal existence to immortality and prosperity. No more would humans be limited by mere biology.

  Walking over to a small rolltop desk by a closed door, Sarastro opened the top left drawer, placed his right hand on a small touch screen, and said, “Identity: Sarastro. Command: Access communications room.”

  A magnetic lock released, and a hidden door in the nearby wall opened a few inches, revealing a six- by nine-foot room with bare white walls and a large flat-screen monitor mounted opposite the door. Sarastro entered the room and the door closed firmly behind him. A single desk with a keyboard, touch pad, and microphone faced the monitor.

  Sarastro sat in the chair, placed his hand on the touchpad, and issued a series of commands. Six squares appeared on the monitor, each displaying the face of another member of The Commission’s nucleus. Together, the people in the nucleus directed The Commission’s activities without the rest of The Commission being aware of how they, like the rest of humanity, were being directed.

  Although the seven members were supposed to be equals, in actuality, Sarastro worked quietly behind the scenes as the effe
ctive, but unrecognized, leader. When the time was right, he would assert his authority and assume his rightful role as the supreme among the elite.

  The nucleus was assembled to discuss the serious matter of Dr. Stephen Bishop. Unbeknownst to Stephen, The Commission had manipulated its connections to people within HBC, and its relationships with other scientific researchers, to ensure his placement at the company. When Stephen’s daughter had been diagnosed with leukemia, a highly fortuitous event from The Commission’s point of view, Stephen had sought help in developing experimental treatment and getting around FDA authorization.

  A Commission intermediary, from outside HBC, contacted Stephen. In exchange for help researching and developing experimental medicine, Stephen had agreed to share all of his research—only now, it was clear that Stephen had not kept his side of the bargain. Something had to be done about that, not just for The Commission’s benefit, but for Sarastro’s. Unbeknownst to The Commission, he had been recently diagnosed with a progressive neuromuscular disease. His mind would remain intact as his body became useless, an unfit vessel for him. The disease might progress slowly and it might not. He couldn’t afford to take the chance.

  Speaking first, Sarastro said in low voice, “As you all know from the report that was sent to each of you beforehand, by all indications, Dr. Bishop has achieved incredible breakthroughs in decoding DNA and its relationship to human development. None of the information he’s uncovered about it, however, is stored at HBC.” Sarastro stopped speaking to let others take the discussion in the direction he wanted it to go anyway.

  A well-known health and spiritual figure spoke. “ How can that be?”

  A top US government official said, “You have the report. He’s done it, and we don’t know how or where. This is a big risk. And now that he’s resumed contact with Dan Lawson, a cybersecurity expert, it appears that Bishop has no intention of providing us with anything of value. We might not be able to get it from him.”

  Then a Chinese leader, the only person who inspired any trepidation in Sarastro, quietly added, “This cannot be allowed to continue. Effective action must be taken immediately. We cannot have any more mistakes.” The last statement was a rebuke at the failed attempt to compromise Alex Robertson and subsequent efforts to monitor Stephen.

  “Steps are already underway,” Sarastro assured him. “A series of events will make the cost of noncooperation and the extent of our power increasingly clear to Stephen Bishop. We will make plain to him the benefit of being a member in good standing of The Commission—an invitation we will extend and ensure he accepts. At the right time, I will reveal myself to him and confirm his compliance.”

  The one woman among the seven said, “Are you sure it is wise to reveal yourself? I think that is a matter for us to discuss and decide. Preserving our anonymity is critical.”

  “The shock of my identity will destroy his defenses and convince him of the futility of trying anything else. I will ensure he is beholden to us,” Sarastro said.

  After a few minutes of discussion, the Chinese official said, “We will give this plan one week to succeed. If it does not, I am prepared to provide an environment more hospitable for Dr. Bishop’s research and cooperation.”

  Everyone nodded their consent, though moving Stephen Bishop to China would be the last thing Sarastro would allow.

  Stephen’s research would help Sarastro realize his ultimate ambitions, including being one of the first to achieve immortality through the merging of man and machine. Nothing would stand in the way of that.

  Chapter 20

  I hope I’m not in danger,” Stephen said, in response to Dan’s question. “But I have pretty good reasons to take these precautions.” He gestured around the home theater. “Before I get into that, though, I need to bring you up to speed on my work on the human genome. As you probably know, the genome was completely sequenced thirteen years ago.”

  Dan nodded. Most people who followed science were familiar with that.

  “That was the easy part,” Stephen continued. “The hard part is figuring out how it all works—what’s the actual language of the genetic code, how it interacts with the rest of the cell, and, most important, how it makes a person a person.”

  “When we started sequencing DNA, geneticists had expected to find over one hundred thousand genes. As the sequencing progressed, geneticists lowered their estimates to thirty thousand, then actually found only twenty thousand, an unexpectedly low number for an organism as complex as a human being.”

  “Does that mean individual genes do more than originally thought?” Dan asked.

  “Some very much so, but that has big implications that I’ll get to shortly.”

  “In the end, will it matter much if there are one hundred thousand genes or ten thousand genes with ten times the expected information?” Dan asked. “The total DNA in genes is the same.”

  “Actually, there is a lot less useful DNA than expected. Of the three billion DNA base pairs in the genome, a significant portion of them had been assumed to be junk left over from evolution, though now far less than we had once thought. Regardless, a large part of the known, useful genome controls how chromosones are utilized, such as indicating where genes stop and start, turning them on and off, correcting for informational errors and many other genome regulatory functions. There really isn’t much left over after all of this.”

  Stephen paused, then added, “So while people talk about the incredible amount of information in the genome, it’s a lot more complicated to direct human development than we had once thought. When you start with three billion base pairs, you would think that would be plenty for all the information you need. After all, most of the hundreds of different cell types have the same proteins and structures in common.”

  “Yes, I’ve read a decent bit about it,” said Dan.

  “Well, it turns out that it’s not that simple. What gets tricky is that many of these cells, such as those that pertain to the brain organization and the shape of the human body, have information that is specific only to them. For us to see and think, many of the individual neurons have to be ‘pre-wired’ to each other in a precise way and that requires instructions on how to do it. Likewise, if observable behavior is as strongly influenced by genetics as many assert, then there also has to be a lot of hardwiring, and that, too, requires an enormous amount of genetic information.”

  “Even though it’s the same cell types that get used over and over?”

  Stephen nodded. “Absolutely. For the body, and the organs within it, to grow into the shape that it has, there has to be exact, cell-­specific information on how cells divide and communicate. That means that the information for this also has to be in the genome. All of a sudden, we’re not sure how this is done. There are way more things that need individual instructions than there are base pairs of DNA, even if every one of them is useful for human development, which they are not. Three billion isn’t that big a number when you’re dealing with thirty-seven trillion cells in the human body, one hundred billion neurons in the brain, each with up to a thousand synapses with other neurons, and one hundred million photoreceptors in each eye.”

  “In other words, there is a huge gap between how much useful DNA exists and how much appears to be needed.”

  “Exactly. Even if just ten percent of human cells require targeted instructions, that is over one thousand times more instructions than we have of base pairs of DNA. And when you factor in that it probably takes multiple base pairs for a single instruction, and factor out the non-instructional DNA, it’s clear there aren’t remotely enough base pairs for human development to be based on direct linear translation from genome to organism function.”

  “Can you say that in regular language to make sure I understand?”

  “Sure. I’ll give you an analogy,” Stephen said. “In a recipe, each instruction results in one or two things happening, such as mixing one s
et of ingredients. If that was the case with the genome, then we are missing an enormous amount of information as the number of possible instructions is far less than the number of specific outcomes, e.g., a cell divides a certain way at a certain point in time, needed to get us. For our ‘recipe,’ the ratio of instructions needed versus the amount of useful, informational, DNA is at least several thousand to one.”

  Incredulous, Dan asked, “Are you saying that there is some sort of non-DNA genome information that hasn’t yet been found?”

  “No. The solution to what otherwise seems like too little DNA came with the idea that the translation is not always direct, that there are algorithms—”

  “Mathematical?” Dan asked, immediately thinking of the connotations.

  “Sort of like equations or minicomputer programs. They turn a small amount of DNA into a much larger number of instructions,” Stephen said. “This really shouldn’t be surprising, as body symmetry—how the left and right sides of creatures are mirror ­images—can only come about if they are developed off the same set of instructions.” Stephen sounded just like the college professor he once was.

  Dan paused, thought a bit, then asked: “What type of algorithms could account for these things?”

  “Right on. Watch this.” With the remote in his hand, Stephen proceeded to show a series of amazingly complex images. They were all based on the image Dan had seen on the screensaver upstairs.

  “Dan, each of the images you just saw was produced by iterations of the exact same, simple equation, otherwise known as the Mandelbrot fractal set. You’ve heard of it?” He scribbled a formula down and showed it to Dan:

  Zn+1 = Zn2+C