Coming of Age: Volume 1: Eternal Life (23 page)

Evolutionary design solved problems in form and function where the designer himself had limited knowledge, understood the nature of the choices involved and the test to be applied, but had no idea how the system under stress actually worked or what success might look like.

Microbiologists had been using “directed evolution” for more than a decade to improve the function of proteins such as antibodies, enzymes, and other biological agents. Without any knowledge of a protein’s folding pattern, molecular bonding sites, or its mechanism of operation, the researcher could set up a hundred or a thousand samples of the original DNA that had produced the protein, modify each DNA strand in some random way, code newly modified protein from those induced mutations, and test each new protein to see if it worked better or worse in the specified application. If better, the researcher kept the new protein and modified its DNA again. If worse, the researcher discarded it and started over with a fresh sample. By repeatedly applying random changes, testing the results, and discarding the failures, biologists could eventually cook up a protein that worked better at what they wanted—moderating a chemical reaction; breaking, joining, or copying DNA strands; fixing a blood clot; inactivating a virus; whatever the function was—without ever having to know what the internal structure of “better” might look like.

The same principle worked in the physical world, too. For example, an aircraft designer might create a new airfoil by knowing everything about curves and airflows, lift and drag, and other abstract principles. Or he could just take a flat piece of sheet metal, give it a whack to bend it, mount it in a wind tunnel, and see if it generated lift. Do this a thousand times with a thousand pieces of metal, keep any bent metal that moved the gauge, discard any metal that didn’t budge and replace it with new flat metal, and start randomly whacking everything again. Sooner or later, the designer would get a better airfoil in a shape no one had ever—or could ever have—imagined.

Of course, the evolutionary approach yielded its failures. A lot of failures. Mostly failures, in fact. Proteins that had been getting slightly better at their job through the baby steps of random mutation might take one more mutation to their coding and suddenly become totally useless. Nearly perfect airfoils might take one more whack and become junk. But with persistence, through sheer, dogged, blind keeping on with the task at hand, a researcher using directed evolution eventually produced a success. Evolution was cruel, too: a lot of individuals in any species—most of them, in fact—died along the way to producing something new that could hope to survive in a changed environment.

Tallyman Systems, Inc. was advancing the technique by applying vast, neurally networked computing power to directed evolution. They went beyond taking a physical sample, modifying it, and testing it in a petri dish or wind tunnel. A computer could model the intricate folds and bonding domains in a new protein, or the lift properties of battered metal in the laminar flow of a virtual airstream. A computer could mutate, test, and mutate again on a thousand or a million samples in the time it would take a human with restriction enzymes to modify just one strand of DNA, or bend with a hammer and test in a wind tunnel just one piece of metal.

The process wouldn’t work if the computer programmer didn’t understand at least some of the principles involved—like how a protein’s sequence of amino acids might actually fold and how that arrangement of positively and negatively charged atoms might interact, or how lift and drag might balance each other across a curved surface. But for well understood principles like chemical reactions, aerodynamics, fluid mechanics, structural stresses, heat transfer, and many other applications, the developing science of Iterative Stochastic Evolutionary Design, or ISED—where “stochastic” stood for the randomness of the changes to be made, and “iterative” for their many repetitions—was bearing results in all sorts of ways.

The process worked especially well in reverse, too. When you had a system in equilibrium with its environment, or under a certain amount of identified stress, and you wanted to see what changes were necessary to throw it completely out of whack, iterative stochastics were the ideal computer exercise. And that, of course, was the basis of the “grand enterprise.”

At the request—made privately, without competitive bidding or any such business niceties—of the Federated Republic’s Department of Cyber Warfare, Tallyman had been testing various models of the U.S. government’s operational systems. Under simultaneous analysis were its tax laws, revenue distribution patterns, monetary policy and financial regulation, Social Security and Medicare programs with their supporting algorithms, and the U.S. Pentagon’s systems for supplying, allocating, and distributing personnel and equipment. “Realpolitik” was an exercise in multi-front economic warfare. Its product was not a game program for bored teenagers with genius-level IQs, but a stream of small attacks, regulatory deflections, program interruptions, and seemingly unrelated service demands that the Federated Republic’s allies, cyber spies, and paid turncoats could inflict on the enemy’s economy.

And, according to the chairman’s report this morning, after three years of subtle and continuous pressure, they were now thirty-five days ahead of schedule.

* * *

Antigone Wells’s internist referred her to a urologist, Elise Paterson, MD, who had an office in the same building and an opening in her schedule. The woman was polite but brisk. At the second visit, following up on a battery of tests, including a cheek swab for genetic analysis, she said, “You have kidney disease—specifically, autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease—although the conditions are a bit unusual.”

“What do you mean, ‘unusual’?” Wells asked.

“For one thing, the onset is late. Normally, you should have gotten this in your thirties or forties, and you’re what?” Paterson consulted her computer screen. “Sixty-seven. And no history of urinary tract infections?”

“One or two.” She shrugged. “Years ago.”

“No history of back pain? Headaches?”

“I just thought everyone got those.”

“But not enough to see a doctor?”

“Not really. But … you said I ‘should have gotten’ this thing years ago. Is that because this is a disease for younger people?”

“No, because it’s genetic. And you have the pattern.”

“So … what’s happening to me?”

“The CT scans show your kidneys, both of them, are already starting to grow clusters of large, fluid-filled cysts—bubbles about the size of double-ought buckshot. They break down the organ’s structure and impede its function. Sooner or later—possibly sooner—your kidneys will quit entirely and you’ll go into end-stage renal failure.”

“Dialysis?” Wells made a face.

“It’ll save your life,” Paterson said.

“And leave me sick for half of the time.”

“Things are much better now. And we can look into organ replacement.”

“There’s only my sister. I don’t know that she’d give up a kidney for me.”

“They’re doing wonderful things with stem cells, these days.”

“I know. About ten years ago I got brain support after a major stroke. But … if this is a genetic disease, won’t the regrown kidneys have the same kind of cysts?”

“Eventually, maybe. Are you planning to live another thirty years?”

Wells squinted at the doctor. “For as long as I can.”

“You know, those parts boys are pretty smart. By now they should know how to patch up the genes before inducing pluripotency. With this disease, you might go on to get cysts in your liver and pancreas one day, eventually even your heart valves and brain. But the new kidneys will be pristine.”

“And when those new cysts start to form?” Wells asked.

“Then some other doctor will chase them down and make you a new liver and whatnot.”

“When do we get started? I mean, assuming we want to avoid that end-stage stuff and go straight to the fix.”

“I’ll book you an appointment at the Mayo Clinic.”

“Thank you, Doctor. I’ll clear my schedule.”

* * *

The electric shock of the TT-109 stung the inside of Lieutenant Colonel Brandon Praxis’s wrist like a wasp. He actually jumped in his seat. So did his staff officers—G1 Manpower and Personnel, Major Frieda Hammond, and G3 Operations, Major Stephen Swarovski—who both rubbed surreptitiously at the bands on their wrists.

Brandon had gathered the two into his office that morning to discuss the latest FUBAR. An outbreak of salmonella poisoning in the chow hall had taken another forty-three combat effectives off the line. And then the hospital had run out of packaged rehydration supplements, with no resupply in sight, and was now dosing its growing number of dehydration patients with plain tap water, which lacked the necessary electrolytes. Estimated time of his people’s return to duty was the full seven days. But the simultaneous shock from all three of their wrist units signified a message that was both urgent and operational. His subordinates were eyeing him expectantly.

“Okay, take a look,” he said, and turned his own wrist over to read the screen.

The time stamp was 1459 UTC, which translated to 1059 local. The originator was simply CIC, which translated to the Office of the President—a step above even the Joint Chiefs. The message content was simply: “All units stand down.”

“What the hell?” Swarovski muttered.

“We
are
down,” said Hammond.

Brandon turned to the computer screen on his desk and keyed up the newsfeeds. The rolling ribbon at the screen bottom was headlining another ceasefire which, in the blink of an eye as the clock moved to the hour, became an armistice. The United States of America and the Federated Republic of America had just signed an electronic treaty pledging them to end the fighting. He held his breath.

“That’s what? The seventh one so far?” asked Swarovski, who was reading over his shoulder.

“Thirteenth ceasefire, but the sixth armistice,” said Hammond.

“Do you think this one will hold?” the major asked.

“Do we have a choice?” Brandon said.

The two subordinates stared at him. “Sir?” they echoed each other.

“Well, look around you,” he said. “Are we combat effective? We barely got out of Atlanta with our lives. This army hasn’t had a win in the field in the last eighteen months. Our navy and air force can’t blockade their ports and ground terminals. Their GDP is up; ours is way down. Their currency is strong; ours is still weak. We’re not just losing this war, we’ve already lost it.”

“We still have our nuclear arsenal,” Swarovski observed.

“And you’re going to use that on
Americans?
” Hammond scoffed.

“This is defeatist talk,” Swarovski warned.

“No, the colonel’s being a realist.”

“Still, we should report—”

“Oh, shut up, Steve!”

“Pipe down,” Brandon said. “The both of you.”

After a pause, Hammond raised her head. “So, what comes next, sir? I mean, assuming this armistice holds.”

“If we’re smart, we apply to join the Federation. Then we ask for assistance.”

“That didn’t work too well the last time, did it? I mean …” She shrugged. “Reunification. Reconstruction. Carpetbaggers and scalawags. Destitution and humiliation.”

“That was a victorious republic reclaiming the secessionist states and punishing them for breaking away—as well as for the institution of race slavery,” he said. “I have to believe this time will be different. We’re both working from the same set of governing documents, after all. We just had a differing interpretation about the uses of power. Besides, this time the secessionists will have proved their point.”

“And what point was that?” Swarovski asked.

“I’m a military man, not a political theorist.”

“Go ahead, sir,” Hammond said. “If the walls are listening, we’re all cooked anyway.”

“Well, just that you can’t control everything. Hayek and Freidman were more or less right about the nature of human activity and the generative power of markets. Keynes and Greenspan were more or less wrong in thinking they could fine-tune an economy with decisions made at monthly meetings in Washington, D.C. … Or that’s my worm’s-eye view.”

“Get ready for the scamsters and con artists,” Swarovski said.

“Well, maybe there will be some of that. But I remember the unification of East and West Germany a couple of decades ago. That went off pretty well, and they started from a lot farther apart.”

“I hope you’re right, sir,” Hammond said.

“Not like we have a lot of choice, Major.”

* * *

When his daughter had first broached the subject of finding a second opinion about his adrenal glands, John Praxis said he didn’t think that was allowed under the California Medical Service.

“Nonsense,” she replied. “Even doctors agree they’re not infallible.”

“Sometimes.” He smiled. “But it’s useless to contradict them.”

He had already explored his options under the law and found that, for a person of his age and income level, one diagnosis was deemed sufficient. And if the State of California wouldn’t pay for another, it wasn’t going to happen.

“Then we’ll find an out-of-state doctor,” she said next.

“It’s a federally mandated system,” he said. “No doctor outside of California will touch my voucher. Nothing in it for them.”

“Well—Jesus, Dad! Then we go over the border to Phoenix. They still practice medicine over there.”

“You might get a visa, I guess, with your Italian citizenship. I would be an enemy alien. It wouldn’t solve my problem to be interned or shot.”

So the matter stood between them until the day of the armistice, or at least the day after. And then Praxis advised his daughter to give it another week, to see if the treaty would hold this time, to see if it might result in peace. And all the while he became weaker, now with joint and muscle pains. He fatigued more easily, had more fits of low blood pressure, and lately unexplained bouts of nausea and diarrhea. He spent more time in his favorite chair, trying to read and dozing off.

Finally, Callista packed him a bag, as well as ones for herself and Rafaella, rented a car she could drive herself—having gotten used to driving in Italy—locked up the house, and headed out of the Bay Area and across the Central Valley.