Flesh Becomes Words

By Mark Springer

In science, not God we trust is the future America in which Jordan McCarty, a professor of seventeenth-century English literature, has just lost his job and is losing his eighteen-year-old son, Brenton, to a "God gang" as belief in the Bible is now against the law. Blessed with a photographic memory but in need of a job, Jordan joins the world of biotechnology kingpin and former colleague Dr. Richard Dickson, who offers him a position as a technology writer at his new life span extension company, BioSpan.

After discovering how DNA preserves our thoughts and memories, Dr. Dickson partners with a Las Vegas titan, Armando Bigolosi, and a modern-day biohacker, Daulton Hayes, who has invented a technology capable of translating the genetic language of DNA into the English language, thereby turning flesh into words. With unlimited funding, these three men join forces and aim to apply this technology to translate the written words of great writers of the past into the DNA of their thoughts. They embark on an audacious plan to restore the minds of these writers, bring their souls back to life, and usher in the age of edutainment in Las Vegas.

Having memorized the entire contents of the Bible to understand what has led his son astray from science, Jordan develops a belief in God, leading to a climatic confrontation with Dr. Dickson, when Dickson announces that he has translated the entire contents of the Bible into DNA and plans to replace his thoughts with God's thoughts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887931234

Book preview

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Flesh Becomes Words

Mark Springer

Copyright © 2023 Mark Springer

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88793-122-7 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88793-123-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

This book is dedicated to my wife Alisa, a continuous source of strength and hope. Without her unwavering belief in me, this book would not have been written.

1

The Origin of Thought

2

In Science We Trust

3

Job Loss

4

Making a Name for Ourselves

5

When I Have Fears

6

Keats Sheet

7

God Gang

8

The Rise of BioSpan

9

The Word

10

Down on the Farm

11

The Good Shepherd

12

Passing Away

13

Between Beginning and End

14

The Form of Things Unknown

15

Come Together

16

Believing Is Seeing

17

Entering by the Sheep Gate

18

Atoms to Adam

19

Gone Astray

20

The Created Rather Than the Creator

21

All That Is in This World

22

Living in Me

23

Speaking to Mountains

24

Careless Words

25

LiveBraries

26

A Synthetic Life

27

Casting Out

28

The World of Words

29

Eternal Blood

30

CellTopia

31

The Jesus Genome

32

Just Like Us

33

Tandem Repeats

34

The Age of Edutainment

35

From Underlying to Understanding

36

Souls on the Loose

37

Shakespeare Live!

38

God Breathed

39

Surpassing Knowledge

40

Already You Are Kings

About the Author

This book is dedicated to my wife Alisa, a continuous source of strength and hope. Without her unwavering belief in me, this book would not have been written.

1

The Origin of Thought

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways, declares the Lord.

—Isaiah 55:8

On most days in Florida, your undershirt was damp before you put it on. Because rain can come at any time, Dr. Richard Dickson usually overpacked when he had to go to Orlando for a conference. He associated wet with cold. Now he was sweating in a trench coat he wished he had left back at the Radisson. The bottoms of his feet were already starting to develop blisters as he made his way from the north to the south side entrance of the massive Orange County Convention Center.

Orlando, look in one direction and you would swear you were in a swamp. Seen a big gator the other day, the shuttle bus driver said as he unloaded conferees he had picked up from the numerous hotels surrounding the convention center. Look in the other direction and you might think you were on a giant playground. In any direction, it was a make-believe place and not necessarily in the magical sense even though Disney had long ago taken the whole town hostage to its promise of amusement and wholesome fun for all. The convention center and the endless rows of hotels ran the gamut from luxury rooms to those with doors leading to iron-fenced walkways over the parking lot.

It took a city like Orlando to host the massive annual Human Genetics Conference. This crowded intersection of life science research, technological tools from industry-leading vendors, patent attorneys, and investors had become the largest convention of any industry, hobby, or following. Now it attracted over five hundred thousand attendees during the weeklong orgy of keynote addresses, exhibitions of innovative instruments and endless sessions, both public and private, where leading researchers donned their best suits and spoke incessantly for hours in a language that seemed to use equations as slang words to impart to their peers and any others who dared to listen and try to comprehend what their latest discoveries were about life based in the invisible molecular world.

Dickson quickened his pace as he moved along the covered outer walkway connecting the two sections of the building, hoping to arrive at least thirty minutes before his scheduled 1:30 p.m. presentation. The HGS (Human Genetics Society) had given him two massive adjacent conference rooms, removing the wall in between in hopes of being able to meet the anticipated large number of enthusiastic disciples of Dickson as they had become known. Having retained both a youthful appearance and demeanor as he approached his sixty-fifth birthday, Dr. Dickson had transformed the image of the research scientist to that of a rock star.

Dickson hoped the audio-visual people this year were better than the ones here last year, who crossed wires and mistakenly piped in the audio from the humorous presentation next door, a session on feline forensics presented just as he was about to present his latest findings on the molecular basis of memories. For weeks, he had prepared a presentation filled with compelling video footage, showing how he had managed to use molecular beacons to capture a new class of RNAs expressed in real-time as thoughts were being formed by humans.

Dickson had sampled blood cells at different time points in subjects participating in the twenty-four-week study, showing that it was possible to map thoughts to patterns of genetic change, traceable by use of fluorescent markers tagged to DNA sequences as they were converted from the genetic language of DNA into its molecular cousin RNA, a process referred to as gene expression. Eventually, he gave the presentation, but many had left the room impatient at the technical foul-up. But those who stayed, including several influential members of the international media, soon spread the word. Later that year, Dr. Dickson would publish his landmark paper about the discovery of ThRNA, or thought RNA.

This year, Dickson was the keynote speaker, and everyone was waiting to hear more about the molecular basis of life. He loved to keep secret his findings until there was a big show, and the Human Genetics Society had grown to become the biggest conference around. Now, including most who tuned in via webinars or podcasts, over fifty million people around the world would be attending Richard Dickson's keynote address, a speech given to just a few thousand in the live audience, those members of the society who were privileged enough to have tickets to attend the sold-out conference.

As he made his way to the conference room, Dickson noticed how many men were dressed alike, the khakis with the braided belt and a polo shirt, some with blazers, some without. Does the common language of science create a common pattern of thought that crosses over to fashion choice? he mused.

Dr. Dickson. Armando Bigolosi caught the attention of Dickson as he passed in the opposite direction. No, don't stop. I know you are in a hurry. I just wanted to let you know, I'm looking forward to your presentation. I will be there. I'm going to grab a sandwich and head back your way.

I can't promise you a seat, Armando.

I'm hurrying. I'll sit on the floor if I have to.

A man who can buy this convention center many times over willing to sit on the floor to hear me speak, why, that is a compliment beyond words for me to find to show you thanks Mr. Big, said Dickson.

I don't need to tell you, Dr. Dickson, but you have become the greatest show on earth.

Okay, well, let's just hope I make it about science and not turn it into a circus.

The lights of the five-thousand-seat lecture hall dimmed. The ushers shut the doors, nudging bodies aside to get the doors closed so that the hall would not exceed the fire capacity. Without music, without pyrotechnics or other rock star special effects, the event's main attraction walked to the stage to deliver what most of the sweating scientists in the room believed would be an historic address. The title of the keynote address at this year's conference explained the willingness of those in attendance to endure the momentary discomforts of being packed into a somewhat stuffy venue. The title of the presentation beamed up on the scoreboard-sized screen behind Dr. Richard Dickson: The Origin of Thought.

Dickson spoke. Good morning. I hope you have come filled with the same excitement that I had when I first believed that I could address a crowd of this stature with a subject that makes a claim as bold as what you've come to expect from one of my presentations. Instead of data from experiments performed in the lab, I hope to be able to meet your growing expectations for sensationalism in science. However, to fill the public's growing appetite for the miracles that science continues to bring into our lives, I fear that I will soon need to incorporate dry ice or fog machines into my presentations. But hopefully, the facts I present to you today will be more fascinating to all of you than one of the greatest productions we could ever see in either Hollywood or Las Vegas, which I'm sure will be of interest to one of our many VIPs here in attendance today, Mr. Armando Bigolosi.

A few ahs filled the room and a smattering of applause from the mostly staid and reserved audience of intellectual elites.

You can come down to the front row, Mr. Bigolosi, I've saved a seat for you. The husky middle-aged titan of Las Vegas briskly made his way down the center aisle to the seat saved for him, turned, and waved with a smile to the throng before him, and after making an awkward half-bow gesture of gratitude and respect to Dr. Dickson at the podium, he took his seat.

The lights dimmed, and Richard Dickson began to speak. "The idea that each of our thoughts is captured as an expressed sequence of DNA first came to me when I attended a symposium on epigenetics, the study of changes to the DNA sequence of eukaryotic cells other than the rearrangement of the four chemical letters (A, C, G, T), or bases adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T) that make up the genetic code. These chemical modifications are often additions of other chemicals at specific locations with a sequence of bases. Amazingly, the modifications occur in what are known as regulatory regions of the genome, regions of DNA bases that do not actually encode a protein but which lie near genes and promote or inhibit the expression of the proteins encoded by those genes.

One type of chemical modification, methylation, or the addition of a methyl or CH3 group to cytosine bases acts like a finger over the hole of a flute. The presence of these methyl groups in turn suppresses the expression of an adjacent gene in much the same way that the finger of the flutist stops the flow of air through the hole. Of course, for the flutist, this action is intended, and part of a sequence of such stoppings that make up notes and eventually turn blown air into music. At that time, I reasoned that in much the same way, these periodic occurrences of methylated bases in the sequence of DNA might represent some sort of coordinated pattern that, if experienced in real-time, would represent the music of gene expression, an ‘on' and ‘off' pattern that if performed over the sequence of three billion bases would comprise the score of the human genome and reveal another sort of code, or language much like the musical notes of a very long song. As these methylation patterns appeared during the lifetime of an individual, I hypothesized that they represented biochemical events that were etched into the genetic makeup of individuals, much like a digitized recording, which can later be played back again to recall something that happened in the past. I did not know how these biochemical goblin-like CH3 groups hob-knobbed their way around the genome. In some cancers, it had previously been reported, perhaps by some of you seated here today [mild laughter], that these mischievous methyl groups perched along a stretch of DNA and hid the suppressed expression of the deadly cancerous genes until by fate's fancy they dispersed at perhaps some preordained moment only to dislodge an avalanche of uncontrolled gene activity resulting in the unrestrained growth of cells, which we soon would learn leads to cancer and the seemingly timed expiration of a life. It was this ever-changing nature of the epigenome, this pattern of methylated bases, that captured my attention. I reasoned that the epiphanies fueled by man's imagination, the great thought, the inspired invention, were perhaps one of many brilliant thoughts already fully formed, poised to be expressed, first in molecular language then in human language but covered by a blanket of methyl groups that if coaxed to disperse would indeed reveal the elusive but preserved intact thoughts of a man.

The boom of molecular psycho biology continues to reverberate today, years after the landmark discovery that genes are not, as we had once thought, the gems of the genome. When it was discovered that the remaining ninety-eight percent of the DNA bases that do not encode proteins are just as significant as genes, molecular biologists began to grapple with a whole new dimension of existence: the spiritual phenotypes of life forms. The bulk of our DNA codes for RNAs that do not go through the protein-making process that genes do but instead manage the flow of genetic information. These bases can be thought of as making up the notes of a regulatory symphony. They coordinate an elaborate network of interactions that orchestrate the emotions and thought processes of humans. It had always fascinated me that a man passes through the day managing the whole collection of his thoughts, all the ones he remembers from the days of infancy until the present moment. He continually negotiates and makes decisions: from the mundane choice of what socks to wear to the more difficult assignment of advising his teenage son on how and why to save some of his paycheck each week. All the while, lying dormant within his psyche are the legions of thoughts from his past that have piled up in his consciousness over the course of his life. At night, when he is free of the responsibility to make decisions of the moment, he reviews his thoughts of the day, which soon branch to memories of yesterday or years ago, but if he chooses a particular year or age, he can only remember a snippet of information, and the same images and thoughts recur. If you are like me, sometimes this on-rushing of thoughts in the middle of the night is unwelcome, and you devise ways or take drugs to help you sidestep them or chase them away until you can find another source of distraction during the day. Still, though a person may have lived thousands of waking hours in a year, were he asked to recount the sum of all his memories of a given year, even five years ago, he would have a hard time filling up an hour-long keynote address without repeating himself (mild laughter). So this inquiry into the molecular basis of memory began with a simple question: Why do we remember some events and experiences in crisp, clear detail even if they only constitute a minute in an experience that does not, at the time, seem to have any significant meaning and yet we cannot remember even a word of a conversation that at one time we had and expressed with such deep emotion and purpose? Something anchors thoughts in our long-term memory. A reductionist biologist at heart, I believe that ultimately, we can describe the molecular mechanisms at work in the cementing of these vivid recollections of our lives."

An audible low rumble of surprised whispered conversation swept across the room.

For years, however, this hypothesis about the origin of human thoughts remained a late-night wine-induced theory of mine that only found its way into far-fetched discussions with friends and colleagues. Yet it was the seed of what would become the title of this talk and the centerpiece of my research for the past ten years. This theory began to evolve into scientific fact when I stumbled upon a code that transformed this idea into an equation.

Dickson turned and pointed to a color slide behind him, showing four bedraggled graduate students standing in front of a windowless warren of black Formica bench tops and large computerized instrumentation. Dickson stood in the center of the photo, all smiles with his arms draped over the shoulders of a post-doc on either side of him.

"Last year, I came here and reported some of the amazing findings of our humble lab here at Golden State University, which resulted in a publication for which I last week received from Margaret Winchester, and of course accepted, the coveted Chancellor's prize in science, a prestigious prize given once a year at the university to the lab undertaking research most likely to change the way we see the world. That prize, I believe, belongs as much to those pictured here as myself. Nonetheless, I did not turn down the award…or the money (mild laughter). To review what we published last year: Man has long presumed that the DNA in our cells is static, but not all regions are. There is shuffling and mixing of non-coding regions called transposons. Until our publication in Science last year, however, scientists presumed that the movement of these ‘jumping genes' about the genome was a generational occurrence at a minimum and more likely a multigenerational occurrence. But as our post-doc bioinformatician, Ned Bility began to apply some of his ingenious algorithms to the compiled genomes of all the organisms known to inhabit the planet, some interesting trends began to appear. For instance, the conservation of DNA from transposon regions throughout evolution became evident. So let me take you on a trip back in time to review how we got to where we are today. When the opossum genome was unraveled many years ago, we found that a large proportion of the genome consisted of these transposon regions, and these regions matched up with several different patches of DNA sequence found in humans. At first, not a lot of attention was paid to data that showed vast amounts of genetic similarity in these regions for organisms more ‘closely related' in an evolutionary sense to man, but soon, the picture became much clearer—the key to complexity in organisms was not possessing a greater inventory of genes that code for more sophisticated proteins than other organisms and that carry out the presumed more advanced functions such as learning, memory, speech, and language. No, instead, what we found is that these advanced features of humans could be traced to a more finely tuned regulatory network that exerted a finer degree of control over when, where, and how a smaller set of proteins were expressed. We began to find that the once maligned junk DNA—98 percent of the largely ignored non-coding DNA—was performing different functions than those often ascribed to proteins: enzymes that catalyze biochemical reactions or code for key proteins such as cellular structures or signaling molecules. At first, it was thought that all this junk DNA simply participated in timing the expression of these better-known kinds of proteins, and that accounted for the higher degrees of complexity found in highly evolved species such as humans. For quite some time, this became the accepted dogma for the role and function of junk DNA until our breakthrough discovery. At this conference last year, we announced our discovery of ThRNA, an RNA molecule and molecular cousin of DNA that is genetic information encoded by sequences of DNA that acts as transposons and moves about the genome, not just in different generations but during the lifetime of every individual. We think of something, and, if we remember it, a record of that thought is stored in our DNA. When a thought is first formed, it is expressed as this highly unstable form of RNA known as ThRNA, and just as our thoughts are transitory and do not always become memories, the ThRNA falls apart soon after it forms. It just happens that this thought—Dickson pointed to an image of a squiggly lit up slide on the wall—was being expressed at the time we took a sample and recorded the gene expression profile of this individual. So what? The ThRNA for thoughts that are soon forgotten degrades and disappears, but what of the thoughts that we remember? Simple, they are reverse transcribed back into DNA and reinserted into the person's genome. These are the transposons I just spoke about. For you see, just as our memories are constantly being recalled in different contexts and at different times during our lives, the DNA that encodes them is on the move, relocating to different contexts within the genome. Our lifelong memories are the ones that are preserved in our final transcript—our real living will and testament if you will—our genome as it reads at the time of our death. Being able to show that memories are preserved in our genetic code was most likely something many suspected, but our ability to prove the molecular basis of thought was what garnered us the prize."

As was his practice, Dickson paused so he could listen for the chorus of murmurs and gasps from his captivated science devotees. A smile came to his face as he looked down and saw the eyes of Armando Bigolosi fastened on him with a look of rapt devotion.

2

In Science We Trust

But the Lord said, My life-giving spirit shall not remain in man forever; he for his part is mortal flesh: he shall live for a hundred and twenty years.

—Genesis 6:3

It was a time in America not too distant from today. Science had replaced morality. Religion had given way to reproducibility. Laws of the day were based on the underlying belief that we are what we observe and can reproduce through science. It had been several years since the redesign of the dollar bill, now emblazoned with the slogan In Truth We Trust. Truth was found in science, not God, and the believers in science had pushed the believers in God to the brink of extinction.

Still, there were pockets of these non-believers, those members of outlawed God gangs who resisted the allure of logic. They were referred to by many names: the pitied, the unfortunate, the reviled, the stubborn, the ignorant, the unenlightened, the uneducated, the uninformed, and those few rubes who continued to cling to belief in God without physical evidence of some Supreme Being.

There were still many pundits on television and the Internet who held endless debates, wrote lengthy, tiring opinion columns and blogs, and who hosted a burgeoning number of podcasts; all of them made a substantial amount of money explaining the God syndrome. Every humorist worth the limited space reserved in the dwindling number of daily news online publications was well-equipped with a few good barbs that could explain this absurd adherence to a system of belief that offered no tangible reward and could only promise a certain amount of misery.

One prominent scientist had even asserted that we possessed a God gene, which accounted for the fact that some people believe in God and others do not. Efforts were underway to see if a prenatal screening test could be developed so that parents could decide at birth whether or not they wanted to bring a child into the world who would suffer endlessly from carrying around the burden of believing that a make-believe being would care for all their needs. Teams of actuaries had already determined that the cost to society of supporting such non-productive and unmotivated believers was becoming one of the chief causes of the ever-increasing world deficit. Of course, the debate about nature versus nurture continued to rage on. Twin studies were pitted against large family genotyping studies, but in the end, it was generally agreed upon that all of life was contained in the code that made our software run, our DNA.

It would have been a time much like today, except that in this new age of molecular knowledge, there was militant opposition against belief in God, not just the God of the Bible, the Koran, or other religious creeds but of any Supreme Being. Atheism was not just the norm; it was the expected outcome of a well-adjusted upbringing. And when bolstered by a foundation of solid scientific understanding, godlessness had supplanted Judeo-Christian morality as the standard of good in society.

Any morality restraints had long ago been torn down by the flesh-bound beliefs of the day. Highways were lined with billboards blazoned with naked men and voluptuous women with engorged, pouting lips beckoning drivers to access their photos on the small screens of their dashboards or nearby smartphones.

Pornography was rampant and readily available at home, at work, or in the car. Images, videos, even live webcam bedroom acts streamed across the Internet and spilled onto computer screens at work, through video smartphones in the hands of teenagers on the streets, across the small pull-down DVD screens of passing by vans and SUVs. If you looked into the windows of the passing cars, you may even be able to spy couples copulating to visible scenes of the most perverse kinds of sexual encounters.

This explosion of sexual imagery had been ushered in by interpretations of the first amendment prohibiting any limitations on visual displays broadcast over electronic mediums. The barrier of shame had been removed once all pornography could be obtained by way of anonymity.

As there were no lasting beliefs to unify people, molecular knowledge had become the primary differentiator among individuals that made up the nations. It was not so much a division of the educated and the uneducated as it was the powerful and the powerless. Knowledge had always been the engine of power when it could be used to win an argument, but now the scientific method had become an ironclad, reproducible method—not necessarily used to test the validity of a hypothesis but more often applied to win arguments or persuade people of truths revealed by its methodology. The aim of teaching science was to win converts to the scientific way of perceiving not just what had happened prior to one's lifetime—or even during a lifetime—but to believing in the possibilities of perpetuating one's life for eternity.

It was a time in America when it was not only unpopular to believe in God, but it was also extremely dangerous. Congress had passed numerous laws by large margins of votes banning the practice of teaching, proselytizing, or promoting a religious doctrine with the intent of influencing others in those teachings.

The landmark legislation of this era was the passing of the Peace and Friendship Initiative. An amendment to the first amendment of the US Constitution, this law defined any attempt to denigrate or condemn any belief or value system of an individual that did not pose an immediate threat to the safety of others as hate speech, a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Felonious speech included any public assertion that only those who repented of their sins and were baptized into a belief in Jesus Christ as their Lord would be saved from eternal damnation. In fact, it was now against the law to threaten anyone with eternal damnation. You were in as much danger of being arrested for saying Go to hell as a prankster in the airport who jokingly yelled out, I have a bomb.

Most convictions of such hate speech were levied against small sects of evangelizers of Christianity, those who publicly proclaimed and preached the words of the Bible. However, even those believers who merely spoke in private conversations or gatherings faced the possible charge of the lesser offense of unwanted solicitations to adopt a belief system contrary to the one held by their victims.

As the primary belief in God centered around Christianity and the belief in the Bible as the word of God, this new law, eventually upheld by a 7–2 vote in the Supreme Court, stated that those who were taught the Bible as a truth would be more inclined toward violent hateful and judgmental thoughts. These thoughts and the potential harmful actions that they may inspire were believed to endanger the freedom and the rights of non-believers to pursue happiness if they didn't follow the same doctrine.

The Bible had been banned as hate literature and was only allowed to be distributed at universities for the purpose of teaching Intelligent Design as a historical theory disproven by Darwin's theory of evolution and as a work of literature. Of course, in most college towns, you could always find an unadulterated version at an out-of-the-way used bookstore, but these Bibles were collectibles, and only unstable and unsuccessful people regarded them as God's inspired words. There was no place where the Bible was legally taught as a truth or preached on Sundays in churches of worship.

Ever since congress had passed the Peace and Friendship Initiative, churches disappeared, and the only outlet for any continued exposure to belief in God were the religious studies departments at most universities. Most churches had become government-funded glorified soup kitchens, handing out meals to the needy and homeless.

If you searched for a few days and used the power of an Internet search engine, you could still find the corner church and even quite a few nicely dressed women and well-groomed men attending a weekly Sunday service. However, all teachings came from government-issued Bibles with local speech enforcement officials required to attend the services. As a result, there were a dwindling number of these gatherings with fewer attendees every week as known church attendees were assailed with snickers and looks of contempt or showered with words of ridicule from contemptuous onlookers.

These government-issued sanitized creeds had reduced God to a tired, senile old man and his crazed homeless son, Jesus, who spoke of past misfortunes and pains and admitted to much suffering but offered no hope for any change of events in the future. Instead, the revised government-issued versions of the Bible encouraged a gratitude for knowledge-based prosperity and a need to redeem the homeless through teachings of the benefits of wealth gained through adherence to the study of science and self-reliance. The book of Revelation had been removed in its entirety, and any scriptures suggesting any sort of eternal punishment for sins or behaviors thought to be pleasing and beneficial to mankind, particularly those of sexual pleasure or of knowledge gained through faith and not human effort had been edited out by the bipartisan biblical commission as one of the oft-praised accomplishments of the Barron Foster administration.

The Peace and Friendship Initiative, passed under the Foster administration, had made it illegal to assemble for the purpose of spreading messages of condemnation to protected groups or believers of minority religions that did not subscribe to the doctrines of Christianity. Eventually, the Bible, as originally written, was determined by a government commission to interfere with the civil rights of people to pursue their own kind of happiness, and eventually, the public reading of scriptures was outlawed.

The carefully crafted language of the Peace and Friendship Initiative passed by the liberal congress of the Foster administration was hailed as a new beginning. After the passing of this bill, President Foster walked onto the front lawn of the White House and, under bright outdoor stadium lights, delivered his epic address to a prime-time audience:

My fellow Americans, today marks a milestone in both the history of our nation as well as the history of mankind. The passing of the Peace and Friendship Initiative by the brave men of this congress brings to the close one chapter of history and opens the pages to a new book of great possibilities.

We have brought to a close an ugly history of religious persecution, where men and women congregated together not in a spirit of unity with all mankind but instead in a more bitter motive of exclusion, separating themselves from society for the purposes of practicing intolerance of the desires or beliefs of others simply because some unseen, unproven God that they worship happens to not condone certain behaviors or beliefs. We condemn this practice of not tolerating the beliefs of others, no matter how they may differ from our own (applause).

But this is not a time to look back and regret the hatred and intolerance of the past but instead to look forward to a new day, a new beginning. We are now entering the great and golden era of science; of common language common hopes, and common dreams.

Still, we pursue happiness. But our pursuit will be one enjoined by all members of society and carried out with a spirit of cooperativity, not of exclusivity. And rather than cajole our brains into a disciplined yet often disappointing pursuit of an uncertain eternity of unknown condition and population, we shall instead join hands happily, look deeply into the unique faces of one another, and together embrace the power of science to improve our present condition and extend our happy state many years beyond even what our present-day minds can imagine.

So let us live lives of peace and love in the days we know we have rather than add undue despair to this present day in exchange for a dream of future days of happiness that we may never awake to find (applause).

On cue, the recording of John Lennon's Imagine played. And several attendants began handing out buttons that read Live for today, love for all.

3

Job Loss

What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on men.

—Ecclesiastes 3:9–10

As he reached the top of the attic stairs, Jordan McCarty pulled a string hanging from a single light bulb, revealing what he hoped to find: storage crates. After nine years as an English professor at Golden State University, Jordan now needed to find a job.

You may have put them in the garage, said his wife, Deirdre, through the door left ajar.

No, I think I've found what I need right here.

Oh good, then you're all set.

Jordan smiled. Yes, he thought, all set to try and impress his former colleague, the man who originally hired him nine years ago and now had been gracious enough to offer him a contract technology writing job while he transitioned to a new teaching position.

So it's true. It's not what but who you know, Jordan said half to himself but loud enough so that he continued to converse with his wife.

The who that Jordan knew was Professor Dr. Richard Dickson, a former English professor, now renowned biotechnology professor and entrepreneur, who had heard of Jordan's misfortunes at the university and had now offered him a twelve-month contract position as a technology writer because he needed someone to write some protocols, SOPs, and user's instructions for systems being used in his newly formed company BioSpan, a venture Dickson glibly described as a new kind of biotechnology company, a start-up occupying a large swath of land formerly part of the Golden State University campus where he also still carried out research for the university.

Jordan pried loose the top of the dull green storage bin he'd purchased years ago at the K-Smart down the street before it was torn down and replaced with high-density green living facilities, once known as apartments. His high school yearbook from his junior year sat atop an assortment of loose photos and papers. He opened it to read the funniest guy I ever met, David Turner, the kid who sat behind him in chemistry class thirty years ago. If only everyone felt that way, David, Jordan said out loud to himself.

No one laughed at Jordan's joke last week, just a month after the university had unveiled its new charter: Bring Forth the One You Are. As part of this new beginning, all faculty were asked to update their personal profiles to self-identify by assigning themselves to a race, sexual orientation, and belief system. Each person's belief system was determined based on a social fitness score, a score derived from a series of questions aimed at evaluating a teacher's ability to draw out social value from students. When told it had to be completed by the end of the week, Jordan skipped all questions and in the comments box at the end of the profile filled in I identify myself as a child of God.

Jordan thought it would be taken as a joke, excused as the irreverent wit of a brash but accomplished professor who believed that we were all individuals and could not be placed into categories predefined by the university administration. Instead, his response was interpreted by the administration as an act of defiance, landing him in the office of Chancellor Margaret Winchester, who let him know that the university had decided to move in a different direction in the English literature department. As part of the school's new charter, they no longer had a need for a professor of seventeenth-century English literature, as the study of these writers did not contribute to the social values that the university was seeking to develop in its students and was not in the best interests of the progressive culture that the university now supported.

Flipping through the pages of the yearbook, Jordan quickly scanned the photos of former classmates; he stopped to read the scribbled ink on the picture of Carrie McDonald, the girl he once thought he loved. To Jordan, ‘the Recorder.' One day, we all will thank you for the memories because you will keep them longer than anyone else. Jordan remembered trying to win Carrie's affections by recalling and telling her everything she needed to know from class lectures. The passport to his success in life: a photographic memory. He was chosen to play Romeo in the school play not because he had exceptional acting ability but because he could memorize all the lines after reading the script one time.

Jordan set the yearbook aside and rummaged through the rest of the bin looking for samples of articles he wrote years ago when he spent a few years as a freelance writer for a gardening magazine—not exactly science-related but probably more than he needed to fulfill the requirements of the job application described to him by Dickson as just dig out a few old samples of writing that I can pass by a few people. Dickson told him he already knew enough about his talents since he had hired him almost ten years ago.

Getting toward the bottom of the bin, Jordan lifted a few old photo albums and found a large hardbound family Bible, the kind with an ornate cover, almost like the gilded edge of a table. He remembered his father giving it to him years ago, telling him it was his grandfather's, and he really didn't know how long it had been in the family, but it had been passed down from generation to generation, so here you go. Jordan had never even opened it. It went straight to the attic. A child of God? Right.

He could not remember how long it had been since he had even seen an authentic Holy Bible. All the government-issued ones had been edited to remove what the Foster administration had deemed socially inappropriate content. Feeling a renegade impulse, he opened the cover to the first page and saw a faint inscription written long ago but not signed:

I repeat, you died; and now your life lies hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is manifested, then you too will be manifested with him in glory. (Colossians 3:3–4)

Manifested with him in glory, he read the last line out loud. I wonder what that's like, he thought. Well, I did identify myself with God, but the outcome didn't seem to be too glorious. He was about to put the large Bible down and move to another bin when he thought, Maybe I'll try and read it. It's not like I don't have a few free hours on my hands—at least for next few weeks until I start working for Dickson.

You find what you need yet? Deirdre had come up the stairs and was beside him.

No, but I found some old high school memories in this, Jordan said, pointing to the yearbook in the bin.

Hmm, anything good in there that I don't know about yet?

Nothing that's not still a part of me. Days gone by. Makes you wonder if all that really exists is what we remember.

Well, I better take up most of that space. Besides, isn't that what you said Richard was researching and what this new job was all about, something about capturing our memories and saving them in our DNA?

Something like that, Jordan said, not wanting to elaborate any more about it since he wasn't quite sure himself what he was going to be doing for Dickson's new venture and only vaguely aware of what kind of research he was doing related to memories if that was what it was about.

Well, let's find those samples you need, so you can fill me in on all the details. You know this could be a good change of direction for you. Who knows, I might even be your captive audience every evening eager to hear what you've been writing about all day.

Really? Now, that would be quite a change.

Believe it or not, I'm genuinely interested in life sciences. I think it sounds quite fascinating. What you got there under your arm?

Oh, that is the next book I'm going to be reading the ole family Bible, an authentic unabridged version.

Really? Be careful, Jordan. That's not something you want to leave lying around the house. Besides, I never knew you to be someone interested in reading the ‘Word of God.'

I don't think we've come to the point of home inspections for reading materials yet, but I see what you mean. I wouldn't want to encourage Brenton to go browsing through the illegal scriptures.

Well, I'm surprised you haven't noticed or expected it, but it may be too late to hide the Bible from your son.

What? He told you he's read the Bible? Jordan's tone of initial disappointed surprise dropped with a sigh of resignation. Actually, that doesn't surprise me in the least. I'm not that unaware considering the group of kids that he's been hanging around, but I'm not one to censor what people read, and he's about to go to college in the fall, so it's not like he won't be exposed to it sometime.

Okay, but maybe you should have a talk with him. It's one thing to be reading it among a group of friends. I just don't want him to get carried away with it and get into trouble. Still, it kind of surprises me that you want to jump into this old relic of a Bible and find out what it's about.

With all that's been going on lately, I probably wouldn't have been interested if I hadn't been told I shouldn't read it. What did Poe call that ‘the imp of the perverse'—that impulse to want to do something you know you shouldn't like to sit on a bench that says wet paint or jump off the top floor of a skyscraper when you look down over the edge of it.

Hmm, maybe it's only the perverse that have that imp, Deirdre said, lovingly touching his back.

You know. There was a time long, long ago and far, far away, he said with a smile, when it would have been thought perverse to not read it.

Yes, but none of us lives in that time anymore.

Or can get a job in it.

4

Making a Name for Ourselves

Come, they said, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and make a name for ourselves; or we shall be dispersed all over the earth.

—Genesis 11:3–4

Armando Bigolosi watched his feet as he walked across the cool tile floor of his kitchen. The thick, dark hair covered the veins but hid his age. At least he wouldn't become like those gaunt, pale old men with hairless calves. He shuddered at the thought of frailty overtaking his virility. Two weeks ago, he turned fifty-four, but he was still full of life. When he was younger, he didn't like being hairy and heavy, but now he felt it was a sign of enduring strength. His legs were always stocky. He pulled the velvet band around his maroon bathrobe, the ends barely long enough to tie around his girth.

At 5'7", Armando was not a big man, but he liked big things. He liked big ideas, but only if he believed that someone could make those ideas become a tangible reality, which to him meant something he could own. If he could see a way of making something happen that was risky, he wanted to take that risk. If he was working on something, he didn't have to think about other things.

He clicked schedule and looked at the wall. Board meeting at nine, repeating event.

It's Thursday already, he thought. Days now passed like hours. He'd always scheduled Big Resort Group or BRG meetings on Thursdays and packed his schedule through Friday. Do as much as you can before the sun goes down, and then have as much fun as you can until you can't stand up any longer. That had been his simple working credo until he reached fifty. Now he felt himself slowing, but the pace quickening. Einstein's theory of time's relativity. His mind was still racing with ideas. The coffee began to drip. Thank God for Delores, he thought. She never forgets to set the timer.

Armando looked out over the Las Vegas strip at dawn. He placed his hand on his forehead and slowly wiped it back up over his balding head as though he had seen something unexpected. All the hair on the body, none on the head, he thought.

He exhaled a maudlin chuckle as he watched migrant workers shoving strip club ads in the faces of mostly disinterested passers-by. All of this in front of a replica of the Statue of Liberty, which stood at attention, oblivious to being shoved on the street corner in front of the hotel New York, New York. The statue looked out of place, like a new piece of furniture someone bought and stuck on the balcony until they could find an appropriate place to put it; Lady Liberty standing in mock tribute to the unfulfilling grandeur of one-upmanship.

Las Vegas at sunrise. Even in the early hours, the plasma TVs that wallpapered the walkways of America's most traveled stretch of concrete still promised an evening of escape from whatever misery or heartache gripped you. A city out of its element, almost cowering in the face of the rising sun.

Armando liked Vegas better in the morning. For just a few moments, the loud, proud, and extroverted home of flash and cash showed a tired look of servitude, harnessed to the desires of the throngs of visitors, most of whom longed to find something to momentarily lift their spirits above the humdrum of car insurance payments, grocery store scanners, domestic squabbles, and adolescent boastings of friends, family, and co-workers. Not only did the show have to go on, but the show never had an intermission.

Now in the wee hours of 5:44, the city had the likeness of a tired butler rolling his eyes while sweeping up cigar ash left on the carpet after a late night of revelry by the irresponsible owner of the estate. The city that reluctantly served up the sins of its master exuded a sigh of resignation to her fate as gatekeeper of the illusion of human grandeur. The city of night prepared for another day of holding out the hope of pleasure to the sensual yearnings of all western civilization.

The city was crude, loud, and proud of its excess. The sexual desires of the masses matched the offerings of Vegas. Gluttonous meals to pack on the pounds. The city's once famous slogan, What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas, had been replaced by a new mantra, Share the experience.

But with every boom comes a bust. In this case, the indulgences of the heavy-set met with the sounds of sirens, which incessantly whined through the streets like packs of mating cats, as middle-aged men and women were dropping dead in the lobbies of hotels. Multiple massive coronaries filled the obituaries. Just yesterday morning, Armando saw a heavy-set sixty-year-old man toppling over the brass hand railing outside Bubba's Buffet, moments after polishing off the Pile o' Bacon and Eggs early riser special.

Armando had seen enough of the excess of Vegas and lived through too many heartaches of the night life. Memories sickened him like a dessert once liked but eaten too often. Instead, he preferred searching hard to find hours of tranquility and humility, a kind of beauty he found himself looking for more often these days. He watched and tried not to think about the other things.

The other things were four ex-wives and ten children, some of them he barely knew. He had grown in the habit of testing his wits by naming them all before his morning coffee finished brewing, counting their names on his fingers like he was memorizing the starting lineup of New York Mets teams from yesteryear—a mindless task he found preferable to counting sheep on those many nights when he tried to empty his mind so he could fill it with a peaceful sleep.

This soon made him bristle. He sprouted a pouting frown. Armando would defeat the guilt that spoiled his solitude. And he would defeat his regret, the way he always had. He would build. For Armando, building something bigger and more spectacular was the only way to overcome the sorrows and misfortunes of his life.

And as he stared down from his penthouse apartment atop the Big Resort Group (BRG) West Towers, right next to the trademark Luxor pyramid, he could see all the open land in the playground of all builders and dreamers. Visitors to his apartment always asked him why he didn't build a home on the hundreds of thousands of acres of resort, casino, and hotel space owned by BRG. You should always keep some distance from your projects, he answered. It gives you a better perspective on what you've done with your life.

He knew he could always make his name bigger through acquisition and development. From the greatness of his name, his children would benefit. They would be proud of the name Bigolosi. And what he hadn't been able to give them in time, he would be able to provide for them with future opportunity.

Bigolosi was the latest generation of Vegas moguls. First, Bugsy planted the Flamingo in the desert and put the roulette wheel in motion, then Howard Hughes ushered in the Rat Pack, and the desert blazed into an entertainment magnet for gamblers around the globe, making Vegas more than