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(Watts PoV)
"Stand up!" I ordered "Stand up!"
A shivering groan and the mass rose. It was slow to respond, but some response in general was far better than any of the other failures I'd examined.
My mistress was the sort that demanded success and so far I'd had none to show her. Even with the headstart which Merlot's notes had provided, the products of my experiments were, more often than not, nothing more than blood and mayhem.
Merlot was genius, then, somehow guessing the proportion for each enzyme and setting the CRISPR program just right. Merlot had been able to renormalize the partial differential equations involved in creating the retroviruses without quantum methods. He deserved to be applauded for his successes, surely.
However, Merlot was a poor scientist.
Merlot's notes were patchwork, often little more than chicken-scratch when he did record a success, though. Further, near as I could tell even after hours of combing through it, Merlot had somehow managed to reuse the same specimen over and over rather than using different genomic templates like my own processes did.
I firmly believed that Merlot's results would have been difficult for he himself to reproduce, let alone for me in my own lab and methods. Not to mention equipment. Merlot liked d-programming language derivatives whereas I used Monty. Fewer error messages.
Merlot had, however, saved dozens of copies of the template's genome from nearly every stage of the process. It was impossible to determine how he had made changes to the target's genome, nor even how total the engineering was to the specimen as a whole, but it was time stamped and it followed a sequence of previous trials all leading in a similar direction.
This would normally have led a clear path forward, especially with another clock, one using mitochondrial DNA for comparison, for example, there was a problem, however.
Ever paranoid, Merlot had only saved the x-chromosomes to the disk I had access to. Honestly it wasn't too much of a problem, and compared to everything else in Merlot's work, forty-five out of forty-six was sufficient.
Or it should have been. This subject, though alive in the technical sense, was blind. It didn't respond to any lights nor objects, though it did react to sound. It was an ideal step forward, I wasn't always able to grow a functional mind.
Not that this was particularly functional.
I terminated the experiment. I gestured through a hard light screen and muted its shrieks.
Functional meant different things to different people. The subject had all it's tactile senses and their derivatives working, I was able to tell as it was terminated. Further based on how it maintained its shuffling balance as it stood, I could postulate that most of its balance and ambulatory faculties were in working order.
I made a handful of notes, on flimsy. I didn't trust digital copies. I had, after all, designed my fair share of malware and I'd written many papers on cryptography that were widely used. In fact, it was the method that was most commonly used now.
The form of quantum encryption was used even by mad Merlot.
The problem with quantum encryption before my time was that each cipher had to be exactly as long as the message. I had found a solution to the NP problem which I kept unpublished. My own knowledge, unknown even to Salem. It was this that allowed me to develop my encryption methods. A method that even Pietr, despite his accomplishments on the other end of quantum computing, couldn't break.
I could, though. It was like a mathematical gauntlet of old.
I sighed as I made the notes. In my laboratory in Atlas proper, I had access to students. Real students. No computer could replace an inquisitive student. At least none I'd met which weren't themselves curious children.
I had sharp minds to assist me. I even had a protege I wanted to introduce to Salem. I had considered it at least.
In many ways it was like creating my own potential replacement, but the boy was sharp. A mind which, despite that he had had amongst the best tutors, they hadn't managed to dull in the slightest. Intuitive with a certain twisted amorality that Salem would adore.
He was perfect, ideal even for this exact task. I had noticed the way he casually renormalized equations regarding fluid flow. How could I not? In fact, it was at times a challenge to keep the boy's talent a mystery from himself, lest he slip away from me.
It looked in many ways like a test for me. From Salem herself, in fact. Did she already know about the boy?
Further, he would be of great use… Cinder had even managed it to a degree Salem had found acceptable.
I could do better still.
I shook it off. I needed focus and clarity. Only the best would serve and Salem would know if I had been sloppy.
How could I resolve this? My next experiment was progressing as fast as I could reasonably make it. Rushed science wasn't. Perhaps another solution was needed? But what? The only other person who could help me was Merlot.
Finding Merlot could only speed me along, however. He would have the answers I seek. I opened a holo-screen and made a few fast searches. I had access to a great deal of Ironwood's military hardware, even from here. No system was completely secure. Not even my own mind, Salem had shown me that. That meant that wherever Merlot was, I could find him. Information could not be destroyed, only lost, after all.
I just had to find him. It wasn't as though the idea hadn't crossed my mind or that of my mistress. She sent out seers and I'd dropped my own lures in Ironwood's database. I opened up an old web-crawler and swiftly modified it to breeze through Ironwood's data for mentions of Merlot's name.
If he was out there I would find him and he would answer my questions.
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-WG