A Wish the Heart Makes : Fornever in Blue Genes

by: Tigger

 

From Walt Disney’s "Cinderella":

"A dream is a wish your heart makes
When you’re fast asleep.
In dreams you lose your heartaches
Whatever you wish for, you keep.

Have faith in your dreams and someday
Your rainbow will come smiling through.
No matter how your heart is grieving
If you keep on believing
the dream that you wish will come true."

From "Forever in Blue Jeans"
Written by Neil Diamond and Richard Bennett

"Money talks, But it don’t sing and dance And it don’t walk.
And long as I can have you here with me
I’d much rather be Forever in blue jeans.
Honey’s sweet,
But it ain’t nothin’ next to baby’s treat.
And if you pardon me, I’d like to say,
We’ll do okay Forever in blue jeans."

 

Prologue:

". . .e’s coming out of it, Doctor. We will need you here - stat!" The voice that spoke was soft, intense and controlled. The "On my way, Nurse," response had the digital purity that no real human voice could possess. Both speakers’ tones were just barely above whispers. Yet both resounded in his head like low order explosive detonations.

His eyes opened slowly against lashes sticky from sleep, and then winced back tightly shut against the sudden, almost unbearably bright light. Where the hell was he? It was the smell and the stark, unrelieved white he’d seen in that short instant his eyes had been open that tipped him off. *A hospital? OMIGOD! I made it! I’m alive!*

"Easy, Matthew. Let the sedation wear off completely before you try moving about too much." That voice! He recognized that voice. Slowly he turned toward the voice and reopened his eyes.

"Robert." His mouth slammed shut on that one word. His voice! What in god’s name had happened to his voice? After more than half a century, he knew the sound of his own voice and that was *not* his voice! Had he sustained some injury to his throat requiring a larynx reconstruction? Slewing his head around, he searched for and found what he was looking for.

A mirror.

For ten, infinitely long seconds, his groggy mind refused to accept what his eyes saw in its mocking, silvered depths. Then, finally, there had been no other choice.

And then, he heard that "not-my-voice" again, yelling for someone. . . something. The only answer to the call was a strange, scalliony taste in the back of his mouth, and the world went black once more.

 

 

Chapter 1. The End of the Beginning.

It had actually *worked* - there in his mirror was absolute, incontrovertible proof that thirty years of blood and sweat, research and study, success and failure, had finally born fruit. The feeling of triumph and vindication should have been nearly orgasmic.

The problem was that he hadn’t expected to be the first test subject for the process. Even when circumstances had made it his only chance at life, he’d certainly never anticipated . . . *this*.

"Are you all right?" a quiet voice asked from the other side of the bed. Awkwardly, he turned to face the man who had just spoken. Dr. Robert West was a short man, in fact, much shorter than Matthew had been. Was he still the shorter of the pair, Matthew wondered? From his prone position in bed, it was difficult to tell.

For a brief moment, uncertainty lined Robert’s normally cherubic face. As well it might, Matthew’s mind snarled angrily. Bob West had been his best friend and colleague for almost 25 years, and for him to have been even an unwitting party to this . . . this debacle was simply unbelievable.

The patient’s name was or perhaps more accurately *had been* Matthew Sorenson, but that did not seem important now. Nothing so mundane as a mere name was important compared to the stark reality that THE Project had been tested, very successfully, on its own creator.

Robert West was a physician and a geneticist - a brilliant one - a man whose own special dream had meshed and kept pace with Matthew Sorenson’s for most of their adult lives. He was sixty something years old, a bit paunchy these days and more than just a little absent minded, except when he was focused on *THE* (for Total Human Engineering) Project. It was that last characteristic that had permitted whoever was behind this heinous act to use him in their plottings.

THE Project was an outgrowth of the Human Genome Project started in the last decade of the previous century. The genome effort had ultimately required the use of more computing power than had existed cumulatively in the entire world before that time. Completed about 35 years ago, the Human Genome Project had developed the human DNA signature database, including documentation of its genetic implications.

Matthew Sorenson had been a graduate student at M.I.T. at the time the database had finally been published, studying semidigital bio-networks. Dr. Robert West had just joined the Medical School faculty and was working with Matt and his thesis advisor on a way to use bio-cybernetics as a cure for spinal injuries. Out of that backdrop had sprung Matt’s project of a lifetime - the systematic and non-destructive reprogramming of the human DNA molecule within the cell, or more correctly, within *all* of an individual’s cells.

Bob West had joined the quest. Their initial goal had been challenging enough on its own merits - to find tools to cure and eliminate all genetically transmitted diseases at their source, and to use genetic reengineering to improve resistance to other diseases. Hemophilia and sickle cell anemia fell first, followed by a host of other such diseases and infirmities. All could now be corrected in the womb, relatively cheaply when compared to the cost of a lifetime of post natal treatment. Even cancer eventually fell victim to their skills, provided that the disease was discovered early enough that their new treatments could still genetically turn off the cancer’s uncontrolled, wildfire cellular reproduction.

Then, five years ago there had been a breakthrough in computing technology that would change forever the way science and engineering approached the physical world. Before that breakthrough, the scope of genetic reprogramming was computationally limited to only a few gene sites on only one or two chromosomes at a time. Remarkably, that had been enough. Most genetically-vectored diseases were remedied once one or two protein chains had been corrected or enhanced. There had been more than enough computational power to control that type of genetic modification. However, what was economically and even technologically feasible before the breakthrough had been completely inadequate to the task of making any substantial changes in the human organism as a whole.

Inadequate, that is, until some genius finally reconciled the seemingly insurmountable conflicts between the theories of quantum mechanics and of complex structures. This work, given the unfortunate name of quantum chaos theory by the press, changed everything. Computing structures and system designs truly changed overnight.

Matthew had personally done a great deal of the actual original theoretical work. The end result of Matthew’s researches was that the area formerly blurred by Hiesenburg’s Uncertainty Principle became an easily detectable hard line. The ability to store and order data in really minute bits was no longer limited as it once had been. Computational power seemed to grow orders of magnitude with each passing day.

When it had first been proclaimed "complete", the staggeringly huge Genome Project DataBase (now simply called the GPD) and its five completely redundant backup copies had consumed almost 1% of the data storage capacity available to humanity at the time. With the advent of the First Generation QuantCha (pronounced "quant - kay") machines and data structures, all of that information fit onto something as small, portable and common in the 21^st Century as floppy disks had been in the late Twentieth Century. Improvement in computational speed had been just as dramatic.

Much of this new power was immediately focused on trying to find a way around Einstein’s still prevalent General Theory of Relativity, and thus find a means to travel faster than light. The stars still beckoned, and once again, humankind wanted to answer that siren call to boldly go where no human had gone before.

But Matthew Sorenson had heard a different song, had dreamt another dream - genetically re-engineering as nearly "perfect" a human being as was "humanly" possible. Of course, this was not a widely popular idea. Over the course of Robert’s and his incredibly successful and beneficial work on genetic cures, the pair had been regularly harassed by various groups for "tinkering with things beyond mortal ken". With that response for fixing little glitches in the genetic program, the outcry they might expect to their wholesale "revision" work did not bear thinking about.

So, they had sold their old company and started all over again, but kept the new company’s true purpose a closely guarded secret. The huge payoff from the sale had been invested to start up a new company - BioCybernetics. Supposedly a research firm for developing new bio-material- based computers, the new company was really a front for Robert and Matthew’s real goal: developing technologies intended to re-engineer a living human being.

Only four people - the medical genius, Robert West, Matthew Soreson himself, the company’s legal eagle, Adam Jacobs, and their chief of security, Catherine Donovan - knew the entire picture. Everyone else working on the tightly compartmented Project only knew their little piece of the puzzle along with some cover story that explained why they were doing that work. The spinoffs of those puzzle pieces helped keep up appearances, helped keep the multi-media tabloids off their personal and corporate backs, while helping to pay the bills. And what bills they had, because tinkering of this type was not cheap.

And now, they had succeeded. Nerves still on overload, Matt looked into the mirror again, just barely stopping himself from reaching out a hesitant hand to touch the person who looked back at him. Marshaling his considerable will power, Matt tried to clear his vision, tried to make sure the image was still unchanged because he still could not (or perhaps did not really want to) believe what had happened to him. The reflection stubbornly refused to change.

No fifty-five year old, two meter tall (6’6"), slightly overweight 120 kilogram (260 lbs) male with gray eyes and rapidly thinning dark brown hair liberally shot with gray looked back into Matthew’s eyes.

Of course, he’d expected to be different when, or rather *if* he woke up from the nightmare his life had become. Certain changes had been absolutely required, given the circumstances, if he was going to survive that disaster. He’d even been ready (hell, HAPPY) to face the changes that would have been evidenced in his mirror if the few personal requests he’d slipped in had worked, but *nothing* had prepared him for what he saw in that mirror the first time.

No, the image in the mirror was more than a quarter of meter shorter, massed out at about 60 kilos tops, had blue eyes and auburn hair, and appeared to be about 25 years old, plus or minus five years.

And, oh by the way, that reflected image was female.

Spectacularly, dramatically female.

Matt pinched himself one last time to make sure that he really was not dreaming some drug induced nightmare, and yelped. He wasn’t. It might very well be a nightmare, but he was definitely awake and living it. He, or rather *she* was all homo sapiens-female, complete with the "right" internal plumbing, at least as far as she’d been able to discern from the secretive exploration of what was "down there" she’d done earlier with "her" finely boned and slender fingers.

A coughing sound broke through his near fugue. Blushing furiously at being caught checking herself out, Matt gave himself a stern mental shake back to the present before turning his face back Bob once again, "As all right as I can be expected to be," Matthew responded, recalling the question his friend had asked him however many moments ago. "But I think I’m still in shock."

He nodded at that. "Even though we succeeded beyond my most optimistic projections, I expected you’d have that reaction. That’s why I have you mildly sedated with a depression block. Come, Matthew, let me help you to a more comfortable seat. Nurse!"

Slowly, Matt sat up and let the doctor and nurse each take one of his, um, her thin little arms. They didn’t have any trouble practically carrying her to a nearby easy chair. Even seated, his new body felt very strange. His sense of balance was way off. Mass distribution was all wrong. Body parts were not where they were supposed to be. Hell, some body parts were gone and some new ones added. The unfamiliar weight high on his chest was particularly disconcerting. He felt like the slightest ill considered movement, even in the chair, might cause him to overbalance and fall face-first onto the floor.

Carefully, thinking consciously of each minor movement, he eased the unfamiliar body further back into the chair. "Thank you, Robert." That "not-my-voice" was a low, husky alto. If he’d still been a male, those rich, sultry tones would have definitely caught Matthew Sorenson’s interest. Now, there was an interesting thought. He voiced it cautiously. "Am I still Matthew?"

"What the hell does that mean?" Bob asked incredulously.

Taking a deep breath, Matt gathered resources to withstand the blow he fully expected to come next. "Am . . . I . . . still . . . Matthew Sorenson?" Each syllable clipped off, and spat out individually.

The question left Robert momentarily nonplused, then he recovered. "Oh, you mean legally," he smiled for the first time since the surprise scene following the reawakening. "Reasonable question, since we didn’t have any time to discuss the legal niceties when you arrived back on earth. To answer your question, yes, you are. There is absolutely no doubt about that, legally or otherwise."

Skepticism shown so clearly on Matt’s face that Robert moved on quickly. "Yes, well, once I started decoding the program file you had under personal security lock and saw the physical characteristics that you supposedly wanted now that you had to become the first test subject, I called Adam Jacobs back and conferred with him."

Matt nodded, understanding. Adam served as Matthew Sorenson’s personal lawyer in addition to being the company’s lawyer.

"Since your expressed wishes were," Bob stopped as he reconsidered what he’d say. "Ummm, since we had so little time to do the optimizations and viability checks to ensure your program would work, I gave all the official documents over to Adam. He has assured me that everything that was needed was done to assure your continued control of the company and that your . . . transition was fully and completely documented. Legally, there is no question - you are as you were - Matthew Eric Sorenson and the majority owner of BioCybernetics, Inc. At least, according to Adam and the best brains in our legal department."

Frowning, Matthew struggled to digest all that. "But why did you do this? This is NOT what we discussed during my rather hasty return from the Moonbase. It certainly isn’t what I put in my personal "wish" file. All I wanted was to be a little shorter, a lot lighter, have a killer metabolism and no male pattern baldness. Everything else was to remain essentially the same. I damn sure didn’t want to end up a GIRL, for god’s sake!"

"I know that now, Matthew," Robert said with quiet dignity. "But I only had what was in your DNA secured wishfile to go by until you woke up and told me that this was not your desires. I admit that, at the time, I was greatly surprised at what was in your wish file, but there wasn’t a helluva lot of time to waste at that point, and I couldn’t very well ask you. So we trusted your computer security system and did what your file said you wanted."

Then, another thought came to mind and the beautiful face pierced Robert with as steel-sharp a gaze as he’d ever gotten from Matthew. "Hell, Robert, more to the point, how could that file pass muster well enough for you to even consider attempting something like this? I thought we agreed on psychological testing, documented credentials and oversight when and if we ever attempted a gender change." Raw emotion seemed to make the very air about Matthew shimmer. "Dammit, Bob, how did you get my approval as CEO to proceed with a sex change? I never okayed any of this."

It was too much, too fast. Matthew swayed in his chair, and overbalanced just as he’d feared earlier, but Bob moved surprisingly quickly and caught him easily. "As to all that, my old friend, I think you should talk to Adam." Nodding in agreement, Matthew tried to stand, only to be stopped by Robert. "Later. You should talk to Adam, later. Your body and mind are exhausted. The transition drained you and now you are still reeling under the shock. You need to rest."

A pro forma protest was cut off with the imperious wave of a physician’s hand as Bob and the nurse helped Matthew back into the large hospital-style bed. "No, I’ll watch over you. Somebody’s used me to betray you. It won’t happen again. Sleep, now, and face tomorrow when tomorrow comes."

An icy coldness froze the skin of his arm and a strange, scallion-like taste built up in the back of his mouth. The hypo-sprayer that Bob had evidently been hiding in his pocket, now rested against that strange, smooth skin. The drug took hold, and his strange, frighteningly new world once again receded into the blackness as one thought played over and over in Matthew’s still numbed brain.

*How did this all happen . . . to . . . meeeeeee?*

 

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© 1996 by Tigger. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.