Staring at the peg board of notes, Jimmy clearly recognized a familiar form. Despite the spliced diagram and incomprehensible notes, it was a picture of a spider. "What's this you're working on, here?" He pointed, looking to Dr. Abbot, who turned from his Sudoku for a moment.
The good doctor glanced just enough to see what was being indicated and shook his head. "Oh, Jimmy. You know, there is much you don't have the clearance to hear. You're technically not even cleared to loiter in this area, and as much money as they pour into this place, I would expect that it's bugged."
"Because of the spiders?" Jimmy deadpanned, drum rolling the counter top.
"What? Oh! Hah, a pun, yes. I mean, no. Not because of the spiders.." He moved some papers out and about on his work area into a manila folder.
He shrugged and blew a raspberry. "Who am I going to tell, doc? Isn't this why I signed the non-disclosure?" Dr. Abbot said nothing. "I didn't mean to pry. I was just curious. You're always encouraging me to be curious." He didn't like this feeling of suddenly realizing their vast difference in status.
Dr. Abbot seemed uncharacteristically serious. "You could be a sleeper agent and not even know it." He had turned to look him dead in the eye when saying this, as if reading his reaction.
There was that distance. Jimmy had overstepped. He should have known better. "I'm sorry. I do realize that what you guys do here is important, and I'm just a janitor. Well. Bio-disposal agent person. Thanks for letting me back here.." He had to stop talking because he could feel the warmth in his face and the tightness in his throat, and he was hoping that it didn't show. They'd been getting along excellently all week.
Dr. Abbot put his hands up apologetically. "Thank you for your assistance, as always. I'm glad you're.." The doc sighed and rubbed at his nose beneath his glasses. "Alright. We are.. I am.. making a super spider. It's an attempt to combine all the desirable aspects in much the same way that hybridization of plants will strengthen the overall.."
"Jesus Christ! Why would you do that?" Jimmy shuddered at the thought. "Spiders are horrible enough."
Dr. Abbot grinned. "Horrible? I find them interesting. They are quite possibly the most adaptable species on the planet, able to survive and endure such a wide array of environments that they have flourished everywhere but Antarctica. There is probably no other species as indicative of a thriving ecosystem. Have you ever tried to stomp on a spider? Yet, sometimes they live. Think of how much more you weigh than a spider. Proportionately for their size, the potential for speed, reaction time, strength.."
Jimmy put his hands up in surrender. "You heart spiders. Got it, but why do it?"
Dr. Abbot patted the envelope. "It's a proof of concept. If we can prove our ability to do this, DARPA has promised an essentially unlimited funding budget. Imagine what it could mean for soldiers in the field if we could combine all desirable physical attributes into a single person. They haven't explicitly said as much, but.." The doc trailed off shaking his head.
"Wow," Jimmy sat down on a stool, letting that roll around in his head. "So, this is huge." He looked to Dr. Abbot, who was not smiling with the pride which Jimmy had expected. "You could be changing the world. How do you feel about that?"
"It's amazing. I never thought I'd be living in the era when mind controlled 3-D printed limbs were real, when flying robots protected the skies, where genetic breakthrough happen on a daily basis, and a part of me hates it," he nodded slowly, biting his lip.
Hate. Not a word he expected from Dr. Abbot. "Why? You can do anything you want after that."
His expression was steely. "Yes, and so can they. As a scientist, I deplore the notion that my work will be utilized not for the love of knowledge or discovery or betterment or to improve our quality of wonder but for the tactical advantage of those who exist to posture their power against other people."
Jimmy frowned. "I don't think it's that they would use it against people. Why say that? I'm sure it'll just be used by the armed forces and stuff for defensive purposes."
Dr. Abbot stared down at the table and closed his tablet to its home screen to give his full attention. "No. To seek to be more powerful than others lends itself to abusive behavior. The Ring of Power always corrupts its wearer. That's what power does. Take for example the Stanford Prison Experiment or the Milgram Experiment. Power over others always leads to abuse. For mere cooperation, equality is sufficient."
He drummed his fingers on the table. "I just meant.. You know, there are always going to be people who are not going to cooperate willingly and play nice, like terrorists. Other nations aren't going to stop trying to hurt us just because we stop trying to defend ourselves."
The doctor closed his eyes a moment as if in disdain of the words. "How do I even un-bundle a statement like that? To cooperate unwillingly is a contradiction in terms. That's called coercion, and those who would coerce others through the threat of force so as to cow them into fear are terrorists, yes? Are you suggesting that we terrorize others into not terrorizing us? That we bomb them until they're peaceful? That we weaponize until there is disarmament? That cycle is endless escalation, not a solution."
Jimmy shrugged. "It's the same as carrying a gun so you don't get shot. I just mean.."
Dr. Abbot wrung his hands in the air. "Is terrorism the answer to terrorism? What, then, does the word even mean? What a meaningless catch all!"
Jimmy stood back up. "I've never heard you raise your voice. Are you mad at me? I wasn't trying to piss you off, man."
The doctor sighed out a shaky breath and reached out to touch Jimmy's arm. "No, I'm not mad at you. Sit. Sit." Jimmy slowly took his seat back, grinning hesitantly. "I am angry at the idea. The enemy is not people. The enemy is a way of thinking, of turning off thinking, and that is my point. Those who wish to control others always resort to two things, almost universally. One, they want you to be scared, so that you feel it more urgent and needful to react than to think or assess the situation. Two, they want you to be angry, so that you are willing to dehumanize and demonize whoever it is they wish you to accept their own inhumanity against. Whether you are calling someone stupid, or evil, or terrorist, or the man you are calling a terrorist is calling you an infidel, it's all just a way to dehumanize the person you wish to harm so that you can distance yourself from the guilt you would otherwise have to feel if you empathized with them as just another human being. It's name calling. That's all it is. It's name calling intended to make you destroy like an animal instead of ask what caused the problem and how you can fix it. I am angry at any view that tells me it's more important to see strangers as my enemy than it is to be free to think for myself. I turn off my mind for no one!"
"We were.. talking about spiders.." Jimmy laughed, but this time the doc did not laugh with him. "You obviously have some strong opinions on it. I've never really gotten into politics, but I feel you. I just meant.. I don't think other people are going to stop wanting to harm you just because you want to be nicer. Psychopaths aren't going to say oh wow, you've shown me the light, let's hug it out. They're going to take advantage of your good intentions and see you as a sucker. We gotta arm up."
The doc frowned. "Nothing I've said has been about politics. Your dismissal is very telling. I don't take you to be a cynical coward, Jimmy. Why act like one?"
He stood up again, kicking his stool away in frustration and surprise. "Oh-ho! Who's name calling now? You think I'm a cynic. I think you're being naive."
Dr. Abbot sighed, and shook his head sadly. "Jimmy. You're not processing. You're reacting. Sit. Listen. We're just talking. If you don't like the way some things I'm saying feel, that might be something else to sit with. You think it's naive to say there must be a better way than endless escalation. I think it's naive to presume power will only be used with the best of intentions, but with great power comes the ability to evade responsibility."
Jimmy sneered. "I see why the teacher's said that about you now. You like to pretend this benevolence, but you really think you know better than others."
"Ask yourself why you feel the need to lash out. If I'm wrong, tell me how and I will listen." The calm of his voice was just pissing Jimmy off worse.
"You're allowed to get mad, but I'm not? That's what I'm talking about. You're always talking down to me, telling me stuff.." His throat was tightening up again. The room seemed to be pressing in on him. He wanted to put his hands out to press the walls back.
"What's really bothering you? Tell me why you're mad."
He threw his hands up. "Seriously? Because you're being an asshole to me." He paced back and forth. "I think I've finally made a friend, and you go asshole on me. This is what life does to you. As soon as something good.."
"What life does to you?" Dr. Abbot leaned against the counter. "Jimmy, speaking of psychopaths, do you know what almost every psychopath and aggressor has in common? They almost all have that same victim narrative. The entire world must be cold and cruel, because it was cruel to them, so that's how things work. And they're just giving theirs back. Finally getting even. In their darkest moments, they feel righteous indignation."
"So, now I'm a psychopath, too?" He glared chagrin. "Anything else?"
Dr. Abbot crossed his arms challenging as he had in the kitchen a week ago. "This is what they want you to feel. Whoever you think that enemy of the world is against you, this is what they want. For you to be angry. As John Lennon said, once they've got you violent, they know how to handle you. They can feed you any agenda at all, and you will dance on the strings of any song of fear or outrage they play you. Y2K. Anthrax. West Nile. SARS. Bird flu. Swine flu. All the flues! Weapons of Mass Destruction. Terrorists. Economic collapse. Oil spills. Foreigners. There will always be some new end of the world to keep you reacting instead of thinking. Whoever decides what you're responding to decides what you do with yourself so that you do not. You say this is what life does. Maybe you're right. But, what was the first question I asked you, Jimmy?"
He thought of why he never much cared for the mindless chatter of a television or the radio. Intuitively, he had always felt it was propaganda and that had annoyed him, the notion that everything on seemed to be trying to sell him something. A product. A world view. Someone else's agenda. More than that, though, he hated the mindlessness of the noise when he already had enough in his own head.
"I asked what YOU thought. I wanted to know that you think for yourself. You do. You showed me that. So, control yourself. Sit. Listen."
Jimmy shot him a look and smirked. "Control myself and do what you tell me?"
The doctor grinned back this time. "See? That's what I like about you. You won't be told. You're like me. You have to challenge notions. You can't help yourself. Just make sure that if you reject an idea it's because of your own, and not just because of what someone else told you or something you feel. I'm a scientist. I will reject your oversimplifications. I will challenge you back. I shoot straight with you precisely because I do appreciate you."
Jimmy leaned against the counter as well. "You have a funny way of showing that."
The doctor looked down almost meekly, speaking quietly again. "I know. I have a lot of funny ways." He looked back up into Jimmy's eyes with that intensity that was still unnerving. "Not to ring my own bell, but I have four doctorates and am still under fifty. I'm the top earning in my field in the United States. Even my opponents seem to agree that I am pioneering new ground. Do I seem to you like someone who wastes his time?"
"No.." He didn't know why, but the sketchy racing chatter in his own head had ceased again. He felt a stillness.
"The other thing most angry people have in common is, they feel disconnected. They feel unheard, unwanted. They see a world of aliens and they feel like one in the world. That's why dehumanizing works to make people enemies. I think humanity can be more than an arm's race. Because I don't think it's necessary to live in that isolation. I think we can let someone in that position know... that they're not alone."
This talk seemed to make him feel both more and less comfortable. "I feel you." He air punched at Dr. Abbot's arm.
The doc shook his head. "Don't do that. Don't distance yourself from it. Don't be a coward."
He felt embarrassed but he couldn't say why, but he made himself meet the doctor's gaze. "So. We were talking about spiders.."
The tension came off in mutual laughter. "Yes. I don't mean to brow beat you. Spiders." The doc pointed to the mystery machine. "Are you familiar with the Traveling Salesman Problem?"
Jimmy shrugged. "I figured that barely happened anymore. People mostly shop online these days."
"No," the doc laughed to himself, "never mind. Let me short hand it. The problem with the earlier transgene methods was the level of inaccuracy that made avoiding undesired side effects of modification that led to mitotic catastrophe, apoptosis, and unpredictable protein production that ultimately made the new organism less instead of more hearty.."
"Okay, question." Dr. Abbot had emphasized before that interjecting to ask a necessary question for clarity is not rude, and when it doesn't happen in the lab, it can actually lead to costly mistakes. "How really can you do what you said? Don't different spiders have different numbers of chromosomes and such?"
The doctor grinned, seeming pleased he'd thought of it. "You must abandon this notion that chromosomes are particular to species. All life is a molecule made of the same building block materials. You have almost certainly eaten tomato with fish genes in it, but to say they were fish genes is also erroneous. Guanine, Thymine, Cytosine, Adenine. Everything that has DNA is made of that. You, me, broccoli. They are primarily just long chain fatty acids. But! This new method doesn't deal merely with chromosomes. It dissolves those down in an enzyme bath to the core particle nucleosomes where the important modifications can happen between the linker sites to code recombinant variants to factor bind transcription changes."
"Whoa whoa. Too much jargon. Pretend you're the Beastie Boys, doc. Break it down."
Dr. Abbot laughed. "I get that reference!" He pointed, a bit too proudly. "Basically, the Traveling Salesman Problem points out the exponential difficulty of working with possible combinations of solutions that no single algorithm could reasonably calculate. If you have three destinations of varying distances, what's the shortest route to take to reach them all as soon as possible? One can brute-force smaller combinations easily enough, but what if there were fifty locations, or five hundred, or in the case of DNA, trillions and trillions of possible combinations? You could drive to all the places before figuring out the quickest route to them. What the machine essentially does is emulate mother nature. Whenever we are stuck on the engineering end, the tendency is to look to how nature has already solved the problem. We did that as best we could here."
Jimmy blinked. "What does that mean? How?"
"You know I can't entirely specify the machine's working, or the recipes for unbinding enzymes or binding proteins.."
"No, right, I just mean.."
Dr. Abbot put his hand up, needing silence to think a moment. "It's like this: We use a series of learning algorithms for anomaly detection. The combinant fragments are left free to try to bind in various combinations. The scans detect the point at which markers indicate the combination failed, and then retry combinations from that specific marker by forcing mitosis from that juncture for further transcription. This continues rapidly until the end result is a non-apoptotic cell, whose success is then measured against other successful combinations."
"So, it's like survival of the fittest."
The doc smirked. "Well, Darwinist evolution models are tautological, I find. Why is it fittest? Because it survived. Why did it survive? Because it's fittest. Nature has no idea what is fit or not fit. It just tries everything. Look at a tree. It doesn't grow up through only the most lighted path. It grows out, in every way that it can. It experiments and explores. It hedges its bets."
"I thought only god could make a tree, doc." Jimmy snickered.
Dr. Abbot smiled. "Yes, well. Last month I saw a god fly over this building. The possible is wide open, my friend. The possible is nearly anything, and I believe this method will find it. The end result will be a life-form that can transcript its variants through t-cell carriers regardless of chromosomal difference. But, Jimmy.."
"Yeah, doc?"
"We are eventually going to talk about that anger."
