“Based on what stimulus?” Dicken asked. “Why acquire information at all? What starts it? What mechanism triggers it?”
“We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Kaye said, sighing. “First, I don’t like the word mechanism.”
“All right, then…organ, organon, magic architect,” Mitch said. “We know what we’re talking about here. Some sort of memory storage in the genome. All the messages have to be kept there until they’re activated.”
“Would it be in the germ-line cells? The sex cells, sperm and egg?” Dicken asked.
“You tell me,” Mitch said.
“I don’t think so,” Kaye said. “Something modifies a single egg in each mother, so it produces an interim daughter, but it’s what’s in the daughter’s ovary that may produce a new phenotype. The other eggs in the mother are out of the loop. Protected, not modified.”
“In case the new design, the new phenotype is a bust,” Dicken said, nodding agreement. “Okay. A set-aside memory, updated over thousands of years by…hypothetical modifications, somehow tailored by…” He shook his head. “Now I’m confused.”
“Every individual organism is aware of its environment and reacts to it,” Kaye said. “The chemicals and other signals exchanged by individuals cause fluctuations in internal chemistry that affect the genome, specifically, movable elements in a genetic memory that stores and updates sets of hypothetical changes.” Her hands waved back and forth, as if they could clarify or persuade. “This is so clear to me, guys. Why can’t you see it? Here’s the complete feedback loop: the environment changes, causing stress on organisms — in this case, on humans. The types of stress alter balances of stress-related chemicals in our bodies. The set-aside memory reacts and movable elements shift based on an evolutionary algorithm established over millions, even billions of years. A genetic computer decides what might be the best phenotype for the new conditions that cause the stress. We see small changes in individuals as a result, prototypes, and if the stress levels are reduced, if the offspring are healthy and many, the changes are kept. But every now and then, when a problem in the environment is intractable…long-term social stress in humans, for example…there’s a major shift. Endogenous retroviruses express, carry a signal, coordinate the activation of specific elements in the genetic memory storage. Voila. Punctuation.”
Mitch pinched the bridge of his nose. “Lord,” he said.
Dicken frowned deeply. “That’s too radical for me to swallow all at once.”
“We have evidence for every step along the way,” Kaye said hoarsely. She took another long swallow of merlot.
“But how does it get passed along? It has to be in the sex cells. Something has to be passed along from parent to child for hundreds, thousands of generations before it gets activated.”
“Maybe it’s zipped, compacted, in shorthand code,” Mitch said.
Kaye was startled by this. She looked at Mitch with a little chill of wonder. “That’s so crazy it’s brilliant. Like overlapping genes, only more devious. Buried in the repeats.”
“It doesn’t have to carry the whole instruction set for the new phenotype…” Dicken said.
“Just the parts that are going to be changed,” Kaye said. “Look, we know that between a chimp and humans, there’s maybe a two percent difference in the genome.”
“And different numbers of chromosomes,” Mitch said. “That makes a big difference ultimately.”
Dicken frowned and held his head. “God, this is getting deep.”
“It’s ten o’clock,” Mitch said. He pointed to a security guard walking down the middle of the road through the canyon, clearly heading in their direction.
Dicken threw the empty bottles into a trash can and returned to the table. “We can’t afford to stop now. Who knows when we’ll be able to get together again?”
Mitch studied Kaye’s notes. “I see your point about change in the environment causing stress on individual humans.
Let’s get back to Christopher’s question. What triggers the signal, the change? Disease? Predators?”
“In our case, crowding,” Kaye said.
“Complex social conditions. Competition for jobs,” Dicken added.
“Folks,” the guard called out as he drew close. His voice echoed in the canyon. “Are you with the Americol party?”
“How’d you guess?” Dicken asked.
“You’re not supposed to be out here.”
As they walked back, Mitch shook his head dubiously. He wasn’t going to give either of them any breaks: a real hard case. “Change usually occurs at the edge of a population, where resources are scarce and competition is tough. Not in the center, where everything’s cushy.”
“There are no ‘edges,’ no boundaries for humans anymore,” Kaye said. “We cover the planet. But we’re under stress all the time just to keep up with the Joneses.”
“There’s always war,” Dicken said, suddenly thoughtful. “The early Herod’s outbreaks might have occurred just after World War II. Stress of a social cataclysm, society going horribly wrong. Humans must change or else.”
“Says who? Says what?” Mitch asked, slapping his hip with his hand.
“Our species-level biological computer,” Kaye said.
“There we go again — a computer network,” Mitch said dubiously.
“THE MIGHTY WIZARD IN OUR GENES,” Kaye intoned in a deep, fruity announcer’s voice. Then, marking the air with her finger, “The Master of the Genome.”
Mitch grinned and jabbed his finger back at her. “That’s what they’re going to say, and then they’ll laugh us out of town.”
“Out of the whole damned zoo,” Dicken said.
“That’ll cause stress,” Kaye said primly.
“Focus, focus,” Dicken insisted.
“Screw that,” Kaye said. “Let’s go back to the hotel and open the next bottle.” She swung her arms out and pirouetted. Damn, she thought. I’m showing off. Hey, guys, I’m available, look at me.
“Only as a reward,” Dicken said. “We’ll have to take a cab if the bus is gone. Kaye…what’s wrong with the center? What’s wrong with being in the middle of the human population?”
She dropped her arms. “Every year more and more people…” She stopped herself and her expression hardened. “The competition is so intense.” Saul’s face. Bad Saul, losing and not accepting it, and good Saul, enthusiastic as a child, but still painted with that indelible marker that said, You ‘re going to lose. There are tougher, smarter wolves than you.
The two men waited for her to finish.
They walked toward the gate. Kaye wiped her eyes quickly and said, in as steady a voice as she could manage, “Used to be one or two or three people would come up with a brilliant, world-shaking idea or invention.” Her voice grew stronger; now she felt resentment and even anger, on behalf of Saul. “Darwin and Wallace. Einstein. Now, there’s a hundred geniuses for every challenge, a thousand people competing to topple the castle walls. If it’s that bad in the sciences, up in the stratosphere, what’s it like down in the trenches? Endless nasty competition. Too much to learn. Too much bandwidth crowding the channels of communication. We can’t listen fast enough. We’re left standing on our tiptoes all the time.”
“How is that any different from fighting a cave bear or a mammoth?” Mitch asked. “Or from watching your kids die ofplague?”
“They result in different sorts of stress, affecting different chemicals, maybe. We’ve long since given up on growing new claws or fangs. We’re social. All our major changes are pointed in the direction of communication and social adaptation.”
“Too much change,” Mitch said thoughtfully. “Everyone hates it, but we have to compete or we end up out on the streets.”