Page 8 of CHOICE Lover
How could he be so stupid? He and Lextr knew this was a possibility—GROW, it seems, proved that. But instead of just pulling CHOICElover’s pre-2050 line, he approved the trial. Now there is a real human woman on the other side of his bedroom door grappling with her fate. He hasn’t even told her the worst part—how she ended up in the DNA pool.
She died. They all did. They weeded out the famous ones, like movie stars and political figures, or vectors with telomeres so aged, the DNA wouldn’t survive the replication process without mutations that would corrupt the integrity of the specimen. Outside of that, DNA from anyone in the past is fair game. Soon, he’ll have to tell her.
The thought makes his stomach clench. Perhaps he can delegate the task to Tommy.No, she’s your responsibility.Zorgdamn his curiosity. It pushed him to get CHOICElover off the ground—well, his curiosity and the guilt, his constant companion.Not dwelling on that.
Motivations aside, his curiosity has been a benefit more often than not. It led him to experiment until he developed a nearly flawless product, and when his research direction became public, the competition to get a product on the market exploded. He won. CHOICElover was the first and the best. When kept in check, curiosity is a good thing, especially for a scientist. So, sure, he was curious.
Restless.
The word pops into his mind, unwelcome. Is he restless? Is that why he allowed the trial? Is running CHOICElover not enough anymore? Did he get bored, or worse, complacent?
He shakes off the concerning thoughts, finding himself hovering outside her door.Herdoor . . . Having her in his space, a real woman right on the other side of the door, makes his blood pressure spike. He keeps pacing. She’s a liability. An existential threat, one he’s terribly physically attracted to—which normally wouldn’t be an issue—who is primed to disrupt the stable life he’s cultivated.
He should have pulled the line and kept on . . . living, or whatever this is that he is doing.
That’s it. He needs something to do, or he’s going to drive himself mad overthinking. Maybe Lextr has pinpointed the biochemical synapse relay stage responsible for triggering memory activation.
The DNA samples GROW inadvertently used, which resulted in solvent NAM expression, probably originated from the brain tissue of the vector. Though why GROW would have used physical samples instead of the industry standard synthesized DNA was anyone’s guess. For the experiment, Lextr selected hundreds of DNA samples from vectors with perfectly preserved prefrontal cortex tissue along with samples from various areas of the body as the control group. As the experiment got underway, the vectors from the control group showed failure markers early in each trial. On average, the brain matter group made it much deeper in the grow period before failing, until the final successful vector made it all the way to activation.
That brings him full circle to the beautiful, real woman in his bedroom. He glances at the door for the twelfth time. What is she recording on the tablet? He can’t even guess, because that woman, Electra Lynch . . . She’s soalive. . . and those freckles . . . they’re something else entirely. If he is being honest, a very small—infinitesimally small—part of him finds her utterly—
The point is, he needs to go to the lab and speak with Lextr.
He marches toward the bedroom door and pushes it open. “Hello?” Poking his head inside, he eyes the inconvenient woman. “Is everything okay?”
Electra absently glances up from her tablet. Her eyes widen as they land on him.
“I need to run back to the lab,” he says. “Will you be okay here while I’m gone?”
She gives him a subtle nod.
He narrows his gaze. She looks so small sitting there on his bed, as though whatever bravery she drew upon earlier has run out. Did her bottom lip just quiver, or is that his imagination? Where’s the spunky woman who marched into the bedroom with the tablet? Strike that. It doesn’t matter. Her new reality is shocking, so if she cries, it is perfectly natural. Excellent. He’ll leave her to it, then.
“I’ll bring back food,” he states crisply. “Shouldn’t be long. A few hours.” With that, he spins out and flees his unit.
Res6 studies the dozen 3D DNA models Lextr has pulled up on the center panel of the Spot-Gene Interface. The enormous set of screens spans the entire wall of the conference room on the R&D floor of CHOICElover’s main operations hub. “You’re saying a key gene sequence didn’t get spliced correctly, causing her embedded memory expression to be solvent?”
Sure, they couldn’t erase the memory data, which his early research proved nearly a century ago. So, his team developed an effective strategy to make sure the original vector’s NAM stayed repressed while also accepting their programming since it accessed the same gene sequences as for memory suppression. Isolating the necessary genes, psion-splicing in their proprietary LifeLikeTMprogramming, and ensuring only their programming’s expression during activation proved to be his team’s biggest hurdles.
They used AI simulations to run thousands of experiments before they ever brought the experiments into the real world. Fortunately, they were able to decommission the clones the moment the failure markers appeared—before the vector ever opened its eyes and it became an ethical dilemma.When his team finally tried a live activation,they were confident that the vector’s memory was repressed. The clone opened its eyes a blank slate. They’d succeeded!
The next challenge was depositing actual information, like language, into the human genome, and even trait expression if, say, the customer didn’t prefer the original vector’s eye color. Truly, the applications were endless. Sharing that bit of genetic engineering with the government was part of what got him the final approvals he needed to take CHOICElover to market. His work had ultimately benefited humanity. Not only did CHOICElover pave the way for an entire new industry, it outshone every other competitor in every way, from its innovative technology to its rigorous testing—a large part of why he found the woman's existence so concerning.
He clears his throat, waiting for an answer. Lextr and Tommy share a glance.
“I synthesized the damage, yes,” Lextr says. “I hypothesized that the old plasmid storage vectors from that period might have stability issues. They maintained integrity during the replication process, but during the accelerated protein compounding phase, the specification period to be exact, a slight increase in the electrical transmission caused our LifeLike protocols to be overridden by the sample’s original code expression.” Lextr shrugs as if what he’s saying isn’t startling. “We knew sending varying electrical synapses to an unstable DNA source might have unintended consequences. This was all in the experiment design you approved.”
“Could you try a bio-gel substrate next time?” Tommy asks.
“Wait, I thought the DNA purity of the pre-2050 line was the variable?” Res6 asks, pointedly ignoring the interjection from his assistant.
Lextr sighs. “It is. One of the several factors listed. Maintaining NAM solvency seems to require a perfect storm of factors.”
“No more experiments.” Res6 sighs. “As best we can tell, if during the specification phase, the sample doesn’t remain stable during a variableelectrical load, it may cause our programming to fail and lead to the expression of the sample’s stored NAM?”
“Pretty much,” Lextr confirms. “I ran a comparison using a random sample of CHOICElover units from the past few decades and the sample we extracted from your unit. They’re identical except for this area here where you can clearly see our LifeLike sequence. Our mRNA instructions appear to be dormant, giving the subject access to their retained NAM data, causing memory expression. I’m adding these data points to our catalogue of failure markers should it become relevant at some point.”
Lextr points to two of the samples on the screen, which enlarge, and he takes a section of each, comparing them side by side. Beneath, a series of nucleotide codes appear. “I reviewed your early research since your trials never brought back a vector . . . wholly restored.”
