Biohack

by J D Lasica

  “That’s what it’s all about. The best of nature aligned with the utmost in parental nurture.” Waterhouse interlocked his fingers and stepped forward to the edge of the stage. Off to the right, a sign language interpreter translated Waterhouse’s words.

  “I hope you’ve enjoyed the first day of your retreat. I know you haven’t had a chance to meet everyone, so let me call out a few names, with their prior consent.” Waterhouse shaded his eyes from the glare of the spotlight and scanned the room. “Are Judith and Renee here?”

  “Here!” Two women behind Valerie raised their hands.

  “Judith and Renee have decided to move ahead with their planned conception. Both women will be equal genetic contributors to their daughter. Judith and Renee will both be the genetic mother—a rarity, indeed. They’re in the process of choosing the male donor and surrogate and fine-tuning some of the baby’s attributes. Have you decided on a name?”

  “We’re thinking April,” one of the women said.

  “Excellent. The birth certificate will list two biological mothers. This, my friends, is the face of the modern family.” Waterhouse held out his hand toward the couple, palm upward. Applause filled the room, although Valerie noticed the guy to her right—the red-haired bearded man from the boat—was not clapping.

  “Where are Arjun and Siya?” Instead of looking out over the audience, Waterhouse looked to the side of the stage toward the interpreter, who conveyed the question.

  A few seat away a couple stood and began using sign language.

  “Arjun and Siya are active members of the deaf community in India,” Waterhouse said. “And they’re brave to share their story. They are ready to love and to raise a healthy baby boy. To deepen their family bond, they’ve specified that their son be brought into this world perfect in every way—and that includes being deaf.”

  Valerie’s heart skipped a beat. No, I must have misheard. She looked over and saw the couple, near tears, clasping each other by the hand.

  She shot a what-the-hell? look at Harrison, who was sitting to her left and responded with a what-can-I-say? shrug. She thought about her specially gifted students at the New Hope School. She had opened her heart to all of them without judgment. But how many of their parents would intentionally choose that path for their children at birth? None that she knew.

  “We welcome Arjun and Siya into our community,” Waterhouse intoned, “where we offer support, where we set aside preconceptions, where we cast not the first stone. This is a decision between this beautiful couple and their Creator. We’re in a safe space here. An island without judgments. Quite literally.”

  A smattering of nervous laughter rippled through the room as people remembered they were, indeed, on an island.

  “Let us honor their choice.” Waterhouse began applauding and the audience followed suit. The couple turned to their right and left, signing the words, “Thank you.”

  “It’s time for the special presentation of the evening.” Waterhouse paused for dramatic flair and then extended his arm toward the rear of the stage. “Send out the boys! ”

  And out they came, a half-dozen awkward little boys, all about ten years old. Caucasian, Hispanic, Asian American, African American.

  The two in the front were dark-haired Asian boys, skinny and gangly with light copper skin and big, bright smiles. They had identical short-cropped haircuts and were dressed similarly, in island shirts and casual chinos that rode a bit too high. They both gave a little wave to the crowd. Identical twins, for sure. Except that Valerie could see, in the bright spotlight, that one boy’s eyes were bright blue and his brother’s eyes were green.

  Well, that’s one way to tell identical twins apart, I guess.

  Waterhouse waved to a stagehand. “And now, send out the girls! Meet the first children who were products of Birthrights Unlimited. All of them bright and healthy and happy.”

  Someone’s hand poked out of the back curtain and created an opening. Then they emerged, strutting with confidence. Six little girls, all about the same height, dressed in playful but stylish outfits in pink, white, and lavender. Unlike the boys, though, these girls looked all dolled up, moving across the stage with poise, wearing makeup and glamour-girl smiles.

  They could all be beauty contestants . Or models. At age ten!

  All of the girls were thin and beautiful. They all had different hair colors and styles, and behind the smiles, they looked all business. Two of the girls were spitting images of each other, but one was blonde and the other brunette.

  They’re too young to be dying their hair, so what am I seeing? Fraternal twins? Or identical twins with a twist?

  To the left of the stage, Valerie could see two older teen girls, vaguely Eastern European-looking, encouraging the girls to look and act their best. One of them straightened up her back to show how to properly prance across stage. The other used her hand to remind the girls to make extra-wide smiles.

  A photographer stepped in front of Valerie and began taking photos of the children on stage. He turned around and whispered, “Sorry, I’ll be fast.”

  “That’s all right,” she said.

  How cute, a photo shoot! Lance Harrison mentioned there’d be a photo album of the event.

  Waterhouse stepped between the boys and these pint-sized beauty queens and placed his hands on the backs of two of the children. “We all remember the days when it was simple: You had one mother and one father. Today, there are many paths that lead to parenthood.” He patted the shoulder of a Hispanic-looking boy next to him. “Carlos, tell us one amazing thing about yourself.”

  The boy took one rehearsed step forward. “I have five parents!” he announced with a smile.

  He stepped backward, and his twin brother stepped forward. “Me too!”

  Some applause and nervous laughter from the crowd.

  “And you, Sophia?” Waterhouse turned to one of the striking-looking blond girls.

  Sophia took a hesitant step forward. “I never had a biological mother or father,” she said, a little too brightly. “In fact, my mother was never born!” She turned to the girls next to her. “But I have all of you.” The girls all smiled and blew her kisses.

  Waterhouse applauded, and several in the crowd followed suit. To Valerie’s right, the bearded red-haired guy seemed to clap the loudest.

  “This is the new normal, my friends. The new parenthood. The New Enhanced Family.” Waterhouse checked his watch. “Our boys, and especially our girls, have traveled a long way, and it’s way past their bedtime, so let’s send them off with our thanks as they leave us with a song. Sophia, please take the lead.”

  Sophia stepped forward and paused at the front of the stage, scanning the crowd. Her eyes seemed to settle onto Valerie, and she smiled warmly. Then she began singing a cappella in a clear, sweet lilt:

  Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling

  From glen to glen and down the mountain side

  The summer’s gone, and all the flowers are falling

  It’s you, it’s you, must go, and I must bide

  The other girls and two of the boys stepped forward and joined her:

  But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow

  Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow

  I’ll be there in sunshine or in shadow

  Oh Danny Boy, oh Danny Boy, I love you so

  Valerie’s eyes misted up. Gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. And pitch perfect.

  The children all held hands and took a deep bow as the crowd applauded.

  “Thank you, children.” Waterhouse signaled to the right of the stage and they skipped off as the audience applauded. “Thank you to our friends at the Minsk Children’s Home for flying out the girls, and thank you to the boys’ parents from all around the U.S. for letting them join us.”

  People in the audience began to rise and chat with each other, but Waterhouse urged them to hold on.

  “One final announcement. Our lab technicians have been working all
day on the Child Mods you submitted on your tablets, based on the DNA samples you contributed this morning. Most of you will see the results tomorrow, after the morning activities. But we have one Child Mod’s Virtual Profile ready to go. Valerie Ramirez, are you here?”

  She held up her hand uncertainly. “Yes?”

  “Please see Lance Harrison, and then join your fellow guests.” He turned back toward the crowd. “Tonight, please enjoy a dinner of seafood and regional cuisine and an open bar. Alas, I have to fly out tonight but you’ll all find yourselves in good hands. Enjoy the rest of the retreat, everyone.”

  A final round of applause. Valerie rose and the woman next to her turned to her. “You’re so lucky. You get to go first.”

  Harrison came up to her side. “Care to accompany me to a private screening in the Multimedia Room?”

  As Valerie entered the Multimedia Room on the far side of the Great House, she expected to see banks of TV monitors on the walls or video equipment. But the room was small and spare with bare, eggshell-white walls, recessed LED lights in the ten-foot-high ceiling, an elevated table with a computer screen along one wall, and a love seat big enough for two people near the center of the room. The seat faced a round white elevated platform about six inches high.

  “Please make yourself comfortable,” Harrison said.

  Valerie sat in the love seat while he stood in front of the computer monitor. She felt a little unnerved about what was about to unfold.

  Harrison turned to face her. “Have you ever heard of the FBI’s ‘age progression’ technology? They take a photo of a missing child and then produce a visualization of how that child could look ten or fifteen years later. It turns out to be uncannily accurate.”

  “That sounds familiar.”

  “Well, we’ve gone the FBI one better. We can sequence the DNA of a zygote—just a one-cell organism—and create a rough visualization of how that person may look at different ages. When we extrapolate, the algorithm produces a 3D visualization based on statistical probabilities. For example, there’s a better than 99.9 percent chance the child will develop ten fingers and ten toes. A ninety-six percent chance he’ll have green eyes. An eighty-seven percent chance he’ll have brown hair. A fifty-six percent chance his cheekbones will develop just so. And so on and so on—hundreds of traits analyzed, thousands of genes mapped.”

  “Okay. So what are we talking about in my case?”

  “You’re one of the easier cases, that’s why you’re here first. For most of the people in that room, they’ll have a number of genetic wildcards to contend with. But your case is different.”

  “Why?”

  “This morning you brought in items that still bear traces of your late son.”

  She felt the familiar twinge of loss and emptiness.

  “That’s what we’ve been working on all day today,” Harrison went on. “Sequencing his genome, then plugging the data into our Virtual Profile Simulator. It’s only because we have access to an array of quantum computers that something this complex could be handled in such a short period of time.”

  Her pulse began to quicken. She kept reminding herself, This is science, not science fiction.

  Harrison handed her a pair of Eyewear—the latest stylish model of augmented reality smart glasses. She slipped them on.

  “In your case, you won’t have to choose from a dozen different profiles,” he said. “There was only one Jordan, and we’ll be making you a later-born identical twin, if that’s what you finally decide. Are you ready?”

  She nodded but thought, Not really.

  Harrison turned away from her and began talking to the wall, and she now noticed a gridlike pattern of small holes on the otherwise smooth white wall. “Number Six, initiate hologram protocol for client Valerie Ramirez.”

  “Initiating now,” a disembodied female computer voice replied.

  Valerie clasped her hands and leaned forward, staring intently through her Eyewear at the platform, only three feet away.

  Moments later, the visualization crystallized—a realistic, full-color, lifelike hologram of an infant took form. The baby was cooing and gurgling and then laughing, lying there naked on the platform. Was it Jordan? She couldn’t tell. It could be. But babies did look alike, and it was so long ago. She reached out and tried to pick up the baby and found her hands grasping at cool air.

  “Sorry, I should have mentioned that earlier.” Harrison eyed her carefully, studying her reaction to the hologram. “You won’t be able to interact with the subject.”

  She leaned backward and nodded. “Of course.”

  Harrison addressed the computer. “Number Six, advance Ramirez prototype to age thirty-six months.”

  Moments later, the baby digitally dissolved and re-emerged as a naked toddler, standing on the platform, wobbling a little and looking with keen curiosity at Valerie. Her heart jumped. Yes. Yes! It was Jordan! Jordan, with his sweet, soft mouth and limpid hazel eyes and tufts of busy dark brown curls. Jordan with his gaze that shot right through her heart. Was this really possible? Could she get her do-over?

  She wiped away a tear. Come on, steady yourself, you can do this!

  Harrison studied her and said, “Number Six, advance Ramirez prototype to age six.”

  The toddler dissolved in a digital swirl, and a moment later a young boy appeared. This time the hologram was wearing clothes: a white T-shirt, form-fitting jeans, and white tennies.

  Valerie felt her heart tighten. Her breaths came quick and shallow, and she smoothed her sweaty palms along the top of her thighs to calm herself.

  “This was what your son would likely resemble in first grade,” Harrison said.

  Yes, yes. The resemblance was still there. My beautiful, beautiful boy! All those lost years we never had together … kindergarten … face paintings … birthday parties … pee-wee soccer. She remembered how much her life had centered around Jordan. Even the sound of his crying made her heart burst with love. And then her little boy was gone.

  “Valerie, do you want me to continue?” Harrison said, looking concerned. “We can resume this tomorrow.”

  “No! I want to go on.” She wiped away a tear. “How far can you advance this?”

  “Currently the Child Mod algorithm cuts off at age twelve. After that, it’s too much guesswork.”

  Age twelve. Jordan would have been twelve if he were still here.

  She closed her eyes to steady herself. I feel a little guilty for wanting this so much. It’s a little scary that science can make my fantasy come true.

  “Okay, let’s do age twelve,” she said.

  Harrison instructed the artificial intelligence to advance to age twelve.

  She kept her eyes squeezed shut, trying to imagine how her boy—her little boo—might have grown up. Jordan today would have shaggy hair … maybe braces to go with his killer smile … street smarts and a dry wit like his mom …

  I don’t know if I can bear to look. I’m afraid.

  After a few more seconds, she willed herself to slowly open her eyelids and saw her son, aglow in a white T-shirt and tight-fitting bluejeans. He was tall and gangly, with dark, unkempt curly hair, a shy smile, and her nose.

  Shock, astonishment, and wonder filled her senses, seeing her son as he would have looked today if the universe were fair and just.

  The hologram looked down at her wistfully, blinked its eyes, and tilted its head.

  “Mom?”

  She gasped. Oh my God! One part of her brain knew this was only a simulation and that the data scientists had programmed the voice. But she wasn’t paying attention to her brain. Her heart swam with pain … and regret … and the thought of all those lost years.

  Jordan! My beautiful son!

  She stood straight up, tossed her Eyewear on the love seat, and raced to the door. She left without saying a word, sobbing as she went.

  7

  Dallas, Texas, August 12

  J ust back from the weekend retreat, Sterling J. Waterhouse stro
lled through the Data Zone of the Birthrights Unlimited campus toward the main Data Operations building. Every time he took this walk he congratulated himself on his foresight, tying together the latest in laboratory advances with state-of-the-art big data analytics powered by quantum artificial intelligence.

  Even five years ago, when Birthrights Tower opened, none of this was possible. Back then, the Genomics Lab was the beating heart of Birthrights Unlimited. Today the real superstars were the data crunchers in the Data Zone.

  What to do with all that data?

  Competing genomics companies were always chasing their tails by going after the hottest new gene therapy drugs. Not us , Waterhouse thought. He knew the rules of Washington and Wall Street, and he had no desire to take the company public and wade into a quagmire of regulatory filings, SEC disclosures, and all the other crap that went with being a public company .

  Gene therapy trials that required waiting months for approval from the National Institutes of Health? No, thank you.

  Go-to-market drugs with years of strictly controlled and exhaustively documented testing, as required by the FDA? Thanks, but we’ll pass.

  In fact, the freedom to innovate, the escape from regulatory rigmarole, was the reason he and Henry Lee had decided to build their U.S. headquarters in Dallas. Safety regulations and labor laws were all but nonexistent in the cowboy culture that still held sway in Texas.

  Hell, in Texas you could dump a tanker truck filled with toxic chemicals in front of the Statehouse, light it on fire, and nobody would bat an eyelash.

  Waterhouse entered the main Data Operations building and took the elevator to the top floor.

  “Afternoon, Chief.” Lance Harrison swept past a bank of computer workstations to greet him.

  “It is indeed.” Things were looking up.

  Harrison had recruited a world-class Bioinformatics team and support staff—big data specialists who had three tasks.

  First, take advantage of other labs’ generosity. The prevailing culture of the genetics world was to freely share their latest research findings. Birthrights could exploit tens of billions of dollars of publicly available genome research without spending a dime—and without giving anything in return.