(2020)
(Part of A Matter of Time)
200 years hence
When the human species began to master the molecular machinery that underlay its own existence, the first applications were thoroughly practical. It eventually became simple to engineer viruses that, injected into one's bloodstream, would go hunting on their own for pathogens and cancerous cells, and destroy them instance by instance with a thoroughness and ruthlessness that would make an inquisitor shudder. It was not unheard, of course, that some of these viruses would escape control and become pathogens of their own, as any selfish mutant would necessarily enjoy an immense evolutionary advantage over its obedient brethren. But other waves of nano-cleaners would come to chastise the first, and it would be rare for more than one to rebel.
Bacteria and other such microbes would be tailor-made for all sorts of industrial applications. The cunning alchemies devised by four billion years of seething mutation and merciless selection could be gathered and placed together by the foresight of intelligence. Some would be sprayed over landfills and polluted rivers to break down plastic polymers, encase radioactive waste in glassy foam, strip polluting organochlorides of their flesh-warping powers. Others would swarm on metal structures and use the energy of sunlight to reverse the oxidation slowly eroding their beams; or sifted through mining waste to concentrate and purify metals. It was possible to translate any message into a sequence of nucleotides, and to store them safely in bacterial spores, packing terabytes of data in a droplet of water. All had been carefully crafted so that they could never survive within animal bodies.
Thence it was hardly a leap to cultivate animal and vegetal cells in aquaria and petri dishes. It became trivial to grow any tissue from a single cell; and soon later, authentic giant panda meat was no more expensive than chicken breast. The basest mixture of organic matter, down to dead leaves raked from a yard, could be liquefied into nutrient broth, and sown with the seeds of a feast worthy of royal courts. Rumors were heard of wealthy eccentrics dining on their own projected and multiplied flesh. (Conveniently enough, large swathes of humanity agreed that raising animals for meat was a moral outrage only a few years after synthetic meat had become cheap and satisfactory; though not large enough to prevent meat breeds from surviving as pampered status symbols in isolated regions of the planet.)
Bio-artists managed to grow whole functional organs out of stem cells; and then linked them with artificial nerves and guts and blood vessels, giving life to minimal creatures, networks of interconnected glands lying in a collection of petri dishes. These could turn food into colored secretions or pleasant scents, baring every step of the process to the gawkers. Miniaturized versions were later enclosed in a smooth carapace and sold as decorations, such as living lanterns that could produce a warm firefly light for a few drops of nutritive solution. Designing self-sustaining systems that could perform such functions on a spoonful of sugar became a common assignment for schoolchildren.
Some bioart companies released all-purpose "basic creatures" into which decorative organs could be plugged and exchanged at will, so that the same pulsing fleshsac could nourish a cluster of multi-colored lights one day, musk glands with the scent of lavander and pine resin the next, then a chitinous carillon or a battery-recharging orifice. Subcultures made a game out of the collection of functional organs. This resulted, for a while, in unpleasant exchanges of pathogens; and many owners found expensive organs swollen and oozing with infections. Specialized antibiotic vials became very quickly an indispensable accessory.
All the arts of the animal and vegetal kingdoms were repurposed for human enjoyment. Cephalopod skins were grafted onto the manufactured creatures, and stimulated electrically so that pigmented cells would expand or contract as commanded, serving as biological pixels to display pictures and videos. Swarms of fabricated insects danced in the sky in evanescent shrouds, painting streaks of light with the glow of their own bodies. Worm-like ribbons were wrapped around Christmas trees, or around columns and lampposts during public holidays, to fill the air with the colors of their photophores, or festive stridulations; artificial syringes and gular sacs modeled after tree frogs and siamangs to produce songs of staggering beauty and complexity, with an organic, animal quality that no mechanical instrument nor human voice could have produced.
Synthetic pets came into demand, offering more flattery of human biophilic instincts in lieu of the cleanliness and efficiency of pet robots. They were built at first in imitation of slugs and shrimps (without unpleasant secretions, and built to withstand the manipulation of impatient children), then of birds and mammals. Soft textures, pleasant sounds and smells, endearing features were agreed upon in bioaesthetic committees, endlessly simulated in virtual ontogenesis, and finally translated into proprietary genetic code and packed into a convenient egg. Clean and sexless they were made for families that would feed them daily with patented formulas; and others were made in less innocent places for less innocent purposes.
Brain-designing teams became accustomed to threading a very fine needle, creating minds that were developed enough to avoid most frustrations of pet-owning, without crossing the threshold that would grant them the same personhood and self-ownership granted in extremis to the last gorillas and elephants. Years of poring over the daedalus of neurons with the resources of industry and its hunger for results uncovered many secrets that would feed the next waves of the vital arts.
The following wonder was of course the return of recently extinct species, the delicate-hued passenger pigeon, the reptile-jawed Tasmanian wolf, the purple-cheeked orangutan. Century-old plans were fulfilled as ruddy herds of mammoths wandered once again the pale tundra, although they had to be relocated to a thawing Antarctica. Much clamor was raised by the announce of restored dinosaurs, which were later revealed to have been manufactured out of modified emus and hoazins. Still they enjoyed a great popularity, in increasingly bizarre forms, that eventually resembled more the drooling monsters of ancient movies than the breathing animals of the Mesozoic. They were joined by other false resurrections, the living effigies of clankering sea scorpions, wheezing proto-tetrapods, and gibbering australopithecines.
The orangutans enjoyed the greatest success of all resurrected creatures; they established a thriving population in the half-sunken ruins of a once-great megalopolis in Southeast Asia, whose surviving inhabitants had long since moved to floating swarms of pelagopoleis. For many decades the reborn apes could be sighted from the sea, sitting placidly under red shawls of fur, on the greening roofs and rusting pylons. Apparently jealous of their own new life, they disappeared quickly into the thickest brush, or into galleries believed to extend deep below the sea level of that time. Many fantastic conjectures were made about their secret existence, though nobody quite managed to probe it by force or deceit. Presumably, when the War came some three decades later, the resurrected orangutans fell for the second time into the chasm of extinction.
In the later phase, mammalian and even human brains were produced, some apparently capable of nervous activity. There were many ways to expose it to the world: in some cases it was translated into a musical codex; in others, the outer cortex was made translucent, and the flow of neurotransmitters could be seen as a warm-colored glow. A Museum of Qualia was briefly opened in a northern city, where one could experience the colors of distant longing, the textures of sexual rapture, the notes of filial love, and the taste of divine inspiration. It became simple, then, to induce the same sensations in natural brains, and make everyone into a poète maudit and a prophet of God.
Most synthetic brains were mercifully awash in endorphins for all their existence. But in one infamous case, a particularly mad artist had their farmed brain glow with neuronal activity in ways consistent with excruciating pain. The debates were fierce, on questions both of fact and moral, and after a few months the damned creature, if such it was, was disconnected from support and incinerated. Its luckier brethren followed it soon. The natural-born brains that had been stored and preserved in view of a future reanimation, which for the time trauma or decay had made impossible, were kept in storage as long as dutiful heirs or charitable organizations funded it, and not one minute longer.
This one scandal marked the zenith of popularity of the vital art, and from there it swiftly withdrew from public exaltation into the pockets of practicality – food production, medicine, waste treatment – where it could not be abandoned, and where people had long accepted it as normal and natural. People would still dine on vat-grown meat – who but a savage would prefer another kind? – and saved their loved ones from death with any necessary mean. But year after year, the breathing infrastructures were quietly dismantled or fell into disrepair, and the synthetic companions lost much of their appeal.
Many countries of the world banned the applications of the art that were not essential, and some of those that were. Quickly the wealth of volumes written on the manipulation of life became little more than a catalogue of past curiosities, a glimpse into the alien thoughts and values that so recently were the rule.
In the last few years before the War, new developments of the vital art only occurred in secret, in the laboratories of tyrants and revolutionaries, meant not for unscrupulous creation, but for exceedingly scrupulous destruction.