Kiran Subbaiah/Texts by KS/
The Genius’s Renunciation
Quite early in his life, when the world had already come to acknowledge the unmatched distinction of his thinking abilities, the Great Genius got down to thinking about how best he could apply his genius in order to serve the advancement of the world and to leave as significant a mark as possible of his life’s achievements in history. After having invested some time studying the important fields of anthropocentric scholarship - such as philosophy, politics, psychology and so on - the Great Genius came to be convinced that the contradictions in our behavior that were responsible for human conflict at large were caused by an inherent error in the composition of our DNA. He suspected that the code contained in it to activate our survival instincts was a little exaggerated, causing the human organism to overact upon trivial insecurities. Most evidently, the apparatus of so called self-protection fabricated by humans threatened to lead the entire species itself towards self-destruction. He realized that the central mission of the fields of humanities had indeed been to influence the evolution of the human genome, however indirectly, by recognizing the external manifestation of these errors in our actions and consciously making an effort to correct them; a process that we have come to call ‘civilization’. The Great Genius believed that civilization had been quite effective in changing our genes. Its proof lay in the extent to which humans had come to distinguish themselves from other organisms. But he doubted whether the process had influenced the human organism’s evolution for the better. Human conflict, he felt, had become more complex. The bug in the genetic kernel, so to speak, had developed its resistance against the influence of civilization and in turn become equally sophisticated in its ploys. It was the age when the best minds of the time were engaged in intervening upon the genetic core of living organisms in order to direct their evolution towards possible betterments. The technology of genetic engineering was in those days relatively new and scientists were yet to discover its full potentials. It didn’t take the Great Genius much study in the subject to recognize the immense transformation that could be possible through it. He believed that genetic engineering bore the promise of rectifying the errors in our genes, although it would require hard work and the involvement of intelligent people like himself. Compared to genetic engineering the process of civilization, he felt, was not too different in method and effect from the conventional natural process of evolution as explained by Darwin. Civilization at its honest best was nothing but the expansion of the animalistic survival instinct in us to include the human virtue of compassion. The method of upgrading the genetic code was identical and it was only over immensely long periods of time that changes came to be established universally in the organisms’ behavior. The technology of genetic engineering on the other hand offered the possibility of operating directly upon the DNA of organisms and its results could be a lot more immediate. And so the Great Genius concluded that the most sacred mission for the field of genetic engineering to undertake was to identify and fix the erroneous segments in the human DNA helices that were responsible for our underlying self-destructive nature. Initially his decision to specialize as a geneticist was welcomed with enthusiasm by all, especially by veterans in the field, for the technology was very much at its early stages of development and the Great Genius’s contributions to it would mean a more rapid advancement. However, like it often happens with individuals of true distinction, as the Genius proceeded with his research and began expressing his intentions more elaborately, severe opposition from experts in the field, human rights activists and religious institutions confronted him. A noted French philosopher and exponent of Transhumanism published a critical article in Créature partly supporting the Genius’s Human Gene Error Proposition while strongly objecting to his intentions of attempting an intervention, stating that this desire in the Great Genius to do so was instigated by nothing other than the very same error in his own DNA. The Genius took this as a joke but he knew that he was stepping on dangerous grounds by tampering with human genetic material. Even if he were careful to make sure that nothing went wrong, the results of his research could be misused and applied maliciously by others. Nevertheless, being convinced that his own intentions were for the best, he went right ahead to pursue his career as a geneticist. To avoid public attention and unnecessary legal entanglements the Genius tactfully feigned declarations of having abandoned research along such precarious lines while he pursued it in clandestine. As specialized technical information in the field in those days was still withheld from the commons, he spent his early years at corporate funded institutions that housed the world’s best wet-laboratories and gene databases, officially studying human genes for developing strategies for disease-prevention and other trivia, while he utilized the resources and experience gained therein to moonlight his true ambition. This illegal nature of his research added an inspiring thrill to his work making it more like play - fire-play. He had been forced to conspire against humanity for its own good. And no doubt he made rapid progress. That’s to say that he made tremendous progress in terms of a single individual on an unpaid side job, whereas in terms of reaching his goal he remained way behind, even after having spent a significant part of his early years at it. There were two primary limitations to his secret undertaking. Firstly he worked single-handed doing most of the time-consuming donkeywork himself to maintain secrecy, and secondly his funds were limited to whatever he could salvage from his official budget and save from personal earnings. So at a point of time, when the evidence of his accomplishments allowed him to gauge that his lifetime would be far too insufficient for the completion of the task, he had to stop and take pragmatic decisions about making his goal more realizable. In those days the two major streams of development in the field of genetic intervention were artificial replication and modification of organisms. Only certain assignments in his job had necessitated experimentation with replication for cloning minor organisms. He understood that the procedure for it was relatively less complex, as there was always the original organism with which results could be crosschecked while a replica was being developed. Modification was the direction he had been mastering to head toward his intended goal. Genetic modification or deviation was the more complex procedure especially where precise results had to be achieved. The Genius had thus far experimented only with stem cells of certain primates that were commonly used in wet-labs as substitutes for human cells for ethical reasons. The method of identifying and isolating sequences in the DNA responsible for the specific characteristics, perfecting the technique of extracting them in vivo without causing incidental damage, determining the right composition of segments to serve as replacements- all that required lengthy processes of trial and error. Often when he hit upon a solution of some sort, other unexpected errors of worse consequence would show up elsewhere. His experiments were however not absolutely in vain - serendipitous discoveries enroute served as solutions for other trivia related to his official job, for which he won much acclaim. Back in the past, before having embarked on a career in genetic engineering he had often mused over the idea of creating clones of himself. The logistical crisis he was undergoing with his current agenda somehow brought back memories of that childhood fantasy, but now with the accumulation of his learning, the idea did not seem so fantastic anymore. Though not easy, it was surely not going to be as complicated to undertake as his mission in modifying erroneous human genes. After all at some point of time, he would need specimens of the human organism to carry out his modification experiments too. The whim of cloning himself, however, gradually turned into an obsession that absorbed him to the extent of making him oblivious of its actual purpose. The concern of applying his genius to aid the evolution of humans and saving them from self-annihilation, the desire to leave his mark in history, all those original intentions he had set out with now seemed childish and escaped his interests. He no longer wished to create improved human organisms but simply, ones that were identical to himself. When the possibility of cloning humans had showed up to the world, there had been universal objection towards promoting such technology on obvious moralistic grounds. But for those who were for it, the desire was strong. Parents wanted to resurrect their dead child, the narcissist foresaw in it the sole means for his longing, and the wealthy considered it a novel method for attaining immortality and eternal youth. It didn’t bother the Genius that he had no such concrete reasons for wanting to clone himself. All ethical justification seemed needless and lame for this mysterious yet lucid calling which had begun to charge his spirit like as though it were a divine command. God had just chosen the time to show man that such a thing was possible and the Genius was the man chosen to do it. With his gift, commitment and half a lifetime of effort the Genius managed to avoid all unethical means whatsoever to device a parthenogenetic method of creating a perfect human clone. All inferences had been crosschecked; the necessary apparatus was set up, his chromosomes were ready in the viral vectors and conditions for the operation tested positive. But when the moment was at his disposition, the Great Genius couldn’t get himself to take the final action that would have triggered the conception of his own clones. The reason for retracting at that moment was mysterious, even to himself. If his life were a story, and God its author, it were like as though the Author, who had conducted him thus far with such a keen vision and the ability to succeed, suddenly put His pen down and called it the end of the story. The Genius retired early that evening from his laboratory and decided to take a walk around town before heading towards his quarters. On his way he stepped into a cafe for a drink. He looked at the people around him, especially at women. He was looking out for an appealing woman. Not just for the night, but someone to fall in love and raise a family with.
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