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"Polly’s mother had warned her against marrying Leo. At the time, Polly attributed her mother’s doubts to the prejudices of an old-school patrician from Philadelphia, prejudices that encompassed Italians, especially southern Italians, and Roman Catholics generally. But Polly was coming to realize that she, like so many daughters, had underestimated her mother. The woman’s infallible social x-ray powers also extended to matters of character. Polly argued that Leo was a brilliant but vulnerable misfit who understood her own insecurities and needed her protection and support. She told her mother that every other man she met was threatened by her brain and alienated by her love of mathematics. With Leo, she explained, math was a shared passion that would provide a solid foundation to the relationship. But her mother had detected the seeds of an all-consuming ego lurking just below Leo’s benign surface. Polly now realized that it was this ego that, with time and success, had come to harden the man who had seemed so hurt and vulnerable the night they first met."
Chapter 2, Polly and Leo
“Leo had never told Polly, or anyone else, that the idea of conventional reproduction filled him with dread. As Leo’s study of genetics had progressed during and after graduate school, he became privately obsessed with the odd idea that conventional conception should be seen as the destruction of the self. Meiosis, the process by which sperm and egg are created, shuffles your genes and then rips asunder each chromosome, literally destroying the genome that makes that individual unique. And gamete fusion – the merger of sperm and egg – dilutes the genome of each parent by half. Leo was incredulous that this violent obliteration of the individual was sentimentalized as essential to marriage, epitomized by D. H. Lawrence’s wrong-headed view that marriage must be a combination and not simply an annexation. For Leo, annexation was the only type of marriage he could tolerate."
Chapter 5, Gamete Fusion
The younger man behind Vargas came forward and pushed his way awkwardly to the microphone. "I’m Abe," he said. "Abe Myers." His loud vest and clashing tie seemed to signal a cultivated eccentricity. "Do you all know the most dramatic extinction story in history? 1794 – a single flock of two billion passenger pigeons flew over Shelbyville, Kentucky. It took two hours for the flock to pass over the town. They were the keystone species for North America. But only 150 years later, in 1941, the last one, Martha, died at the Cincinnati zoo. Every single other individual out of this huge population of billions and billions of individuals was shot, netted, or hunted to death." The young man, obviously emotional, paced back and forth behind the lectern, his whole body expressing his anger. "And you know what happens when you lose a keystone species? All hell breaks loose, is what happens. Think it doesn’t affect you? In 1998 we were able to link the soaring levels of Lyme disease with the disappearance of the passenger pigeon. And now, now we can fix this. I’m going to bring them back. I don’t know if it’ll take ten years or forty years, but it doesn’t matter. It will happen. They were so beautiful . . ."
Chapter 6, Hacking Evolution
"Muir froze in mid-sentence. The two men had stopped a few paces before the mountainside trail took a sharp curve to the right. Muir saw it first. A massive light tan bear, with the distinctive shoulder hump of a grizzly, lumbered around the curve, stopping less than two yards behind Leo’s back. Seeing the two men, the bear reared up on its hind legs in surprise, and lifted a paw to take a swipe at the creature just in front of it. "Bear, get down. Duck. Now," Muir shouted. Leo fell forward to his knees, glancing over his shoulder as the bear’s paw swished only inches above his scalp. He tucked his head, gripped his knees, and curled into a defensive posture on the narrow trail. The uphill side was nearly vertical, the downhill side too steep for either bear or man to make an escape. As Leo fell forward, Muir reached back to remove the rifle slung over his left shoulder, but found the gun’s strap tangled with his backpack. While Muir struggled to free the rifle, the bear fell forward, pinning Leo under its body. Muir, one hand still trying to free the rifle, lunged forward, unleashing a volley of staccato kicks to the recumbent bear’s muzzle in an effort to distract its jaws and claws from shredding the man pinned underneath. Moments later, one of the bear’s claws swiped across Muir’s retreating shin, tearing his pants and drawing blood. As Muir fell backwards, the bear rose slightly, preparing to lunge forward. This created just enough of a gap under its belly for Leo to roll away to the side. On the second roll, Leo tumbled over the trail’s downhill edge, sliding about twenty feet on his stomach before his left foot hit a small outcropping of rock, breaking the fall. Leo balanced with one foot on the knob of rock and clutched at the steep stony slope with his fingers."
Chapter 7, The Glacier
"Think of it this way. Every trait we share in common with, say, Homo erectus or Homo habilis, can’t be what defines man because they were shared with other species, and thus are not unique to Homo sapiens. So how do we go about finding out what is unique to man? What makes man, man?" Clip chimed in. "Obviously, you need the closest relative. The delta between that species’ genome and our own is what makes humans human." "Exactly. Our closest living relatives, the Chimps and Bonobos, are really quite distant in an evolutionary sense. Thus the need to sequence the genome of our closest cousins, the Neanderthals. It’s the differences between their genome and ours – differences that are truly unique to man – that tells us what man is." "And the answer?" asked Leo. "Well, turns out we’re not so special, at least quantitatively. Out of a genome consisting of roughly 3 billion base pairs only about a hundred thousand base pair positions are different. So it turns out the genetic recipe for making a modern human is not so long." "Professor, can’t we look at it the other way around?" Clip asked. "I mean, you’re also saying there aren’t so many edits needed to make a Neanderthal." "That’s not what this is about. The interesting thing isn’t the differences in the genome, it the differences in the phenotype – what traits are uniquely human? One thing is clear, it’s not the story we’ve told ourselves for years. It’s not intelligence or language, for example. Neanderthals had both. And, by the way, not all of the differences run in our favor. Humans lack a gene Neanderthals had that allows wounds to heal faster. We’re only at the very beginning of correlating the differences in the genomes to actual traits. But eventually, it’ll give us the full picture of what it is to be a human." "Dude, what the fuck is the point of that?" Playg had been looking bored and distracted, fidgeting in his chair, and not even trying to put on a façade of deference to one of the most respected scientists in the world."
Chapter 8, Was ist der mench?
"And now, finally, her labor started. Hers were typically fast and easy, but these contractions had begun over twelve hours ago. The doctors, huddled around the various monitors that circled the bed, repeatedly adjusted the position of her pelvis using electronic controls and small hard foam wedges. After the obstetrician announced "12 cm," he told Amina to push. Usually a few hard pushes were all she needed. But this time, she was told to push only when instructed, and to take long rests in between. After a couple of hours of this, the doctor in charge nodded toward the glass and said "Now." Leo had ordered that, in the absence of a medical emergency for which their help was needed, the assembled team should not be permitted to see the child that emerged. Within seconds, only Agnes, still holding Amina’s hand, Shen, standing to one side, and the obstetrician, peering between her legs, remained in the room. When the baby finally emerged, he reminded Amina of the almost 5 kilo giant she had brought into the world a few years ago. The doctor was facing her as he picked up the infant from between her legs. Amina saw him recoil before he quickly turned away with the infant in his arms. Taking the child, Agnes said "Yes Doctor, some babies are downright ugly, but they’re all beautiful in the eyes of God, and their parents don’t love them one iota less. Nor do I – he’s an angel." When the wrapped baby was settled in a high tech cart and wheeled into the adjacent laboratory, Agnes turned to Amina. "Don’t worry, dear. He’s perfectly normal, a healthy baby boy. You did great." Then, turning toward the one-way window, she asked in English, "So, Leo, what shall we call him?" The intercom crackled to life and Leo’s disembodied voice came out of speakers in the ceiling. "His name is Ned."
Chapter 11, Parthenogenesis
"That night Ned, wide-awake, sat in front of his Mac. Leo’s engineers had succeeded in firewalling Ned’s access to all Ned-related content, but they had neglected to firewall the sites that contained the instructions on how to hack the firewall. These Ned had found and – following the broken-English instructions from some disaffected teenager from Novosibirsk – had hacked his way through the defenses built around his devices. And now, in every spare moment, he clicked from place to place, weaving together the picture of a world fixated on him. He read it all. The debates about whether he was a monster or a savior, and whether he belonged in a zoo or in prison. The world’s most eminent scientists asserting that Leo had crossed a line. Saturday Night Live spoofs in which panicked clergymen prayed for protection from an oafish caveman. Hard-to-follow theological debates regarding whether he was the Anti-Christ. Philosophers reminding the world that Neanderthals were a type of human and should be accorded all the same moral and legal entitlements of other people. Accusations from Chinese bloggers that the US was building a Neanderthal army and China needed to catch up. Posts and comments speculating about his genitals, and even a dozen sites claiming to offer Neanderthal on human porn. As one anthropologist wrote, it was as if the resurrection of the enemy from some ancient war had triggered an alarm implanted by humanity’s ancestors deep in our DNA."
Chapter 23, Hate
Chapter 2, Polly and Leo
“Leo had never told Polly, or anyone else, that the idea of conventional reproduction filled him with dread. As Leo’s study of genetics had progressed during and after graduate school, he became privately obsessed with the odd idea that conventional conception should be seen as the destruction of the self. Meiosis, the process by which sperm and egg are created, shuffles your genes and then rips asunder each chromosome, literally destroying the genome that makes that individual unique. And gamete fusion – the merger of sperm and egg – dilutes the genome of each parent by half. Leo was incredulous that this violent obliteration of the individual was sentimentalized as essential to marriage, epitomized by D. H. Lawrence’s wrong-headed view that marriage must be a combination and not simply an annexation. For Leo, annexation was the only type of marriage he could tolerate."
Chapter 5, Gamete Fusion
The younger man behind Vargas came forward and pushed his way awkwardly to the microphone. "I’m Abe," he said. "Abe Myers." His loud vest and clashing tie seemed to signal a cultivated eccentricity. "Do you all know the most dramatic extinction story in history? 1794 – a single flock of two billion passenger pigeons flew over Shelbyville, Kentucky. It took two hours for the flock to pass over the town. They were the keystone species for North America. But only 150 years later, in 1941, the last one, Martha, died at the Cincinnati zoo. Every single other individual out of this huge population of billions and billions of individuals was shot, netted, or hunted to death." The young man, obviously emotional, paced back and forth behind the lectern, his whole body expressing his anger. "And you know what happens when you lose a keystone species? All hell breaks loose, is what happens. Think it doesn’t affect you? In 1998 we were able to link the soaring levels of Lyme disease with the disappearance of the passenger pigeon. And now, now we can fix this. I’m going to bring them back. I don’t know if it’ll take ten years or forty years, but it doesn’t matter. It will happen. They were so beautiful . . ."
Chapter 6, Hacking Evolution
"Muir froze in mid-sentence. The two men had stopped a few paces before the mountainside trail took a sharp curve to the right. Muir saw it first. A massive light tan bear, with the distinctive shoulder hump of a grizzly, lumbered around the curve, stopping less than two yards behind Leo’s back. Seeing the two men, the bear reared up on its hind legs in surprise, and lifted a paw to take a swipe at the creature just in front of it. "Bear, get down. Duck. Now," Muir shouted. Leo fell forward to his knees, glancing over his shoulder as the bear’s paw swished only inches above his scalp. He tucked his head, gripped his knees, and curled into a defensive posture on the narrow trail. The uphill side was nearly vertical, the downhill side too steep for either bear or man to make an escape. As Leo fell forward, Muir reached back to remove the rifle slung over his left shoulder, but found the gun’s strap tangled with his backpack. While Muir struggled to free the rifle, the bear fell forward, pinning Leo under its body. Muir, one hand still trying to free the rifle, lunged forward, unleashing a volley of staccato kicks to the recumbent bear’s muzzle in an effort to distract its jaws and claws from shredding the man pinned underneath. Moments later, one of the bear’s claws swiped across Muir’s retreating shin, tearing his pants and drawing blood. As Muir fell backwards, the bear rose slightly, preparing to lunge forward. This created just enough of a gap under its belly for Leo to roll away to the side. On the second roll, Leo tumbled over the trail’s downhill edge, sliding about twenty feet on his stomach before his left foot hit a small outcropping of rock, breaking the fall. Leo balanced with one foot on the knob of rock and clutched at the steep stony slope with his fingers."
Chapter 7, The Glacier
"Think of it this way. Every trait we share in common with, say, Homo erectus or Homo habilis, can’t be what defines man because they were shared with other species, and thus are not unique to Homo sapiens. So how do we go about finding out what is unique to man? What makes man, man?" Clip chimed in. "Obviously, you need the closest relative. The delta between that species’ genome and our own is what makes humans human." "Exactly. Our closest living relatives, the Chimps and Bonobos, are really quite distant in an evolutionary sense. Thus the need to sequence the genome of our closest cousins, the Neanderthals. It’s the differences between their genome and ours – differences that are truly unique to man – that tells us what man is." "And the answer?" asked Leo. "Well, turns out we’re not so special, at least quantitatively. Out of a genome consisting of roughly 3 billion base pairs only about a hundred thousand base pair positions are different. So it turns out the genetic recipe for making a modern human is not so long." "Professor, can’t we look at it the other way around?" Clip asked. "I mean, you’re also saying there aren’t so many edits needed to make a Neanderthal." "That’s not what this is about. The interesting thing isn’t the differences in the genome, it the differences in the phenotype – what traits are uniquely human? One thing is clear, it’s not the story we’ve told ourselves for years. It’s not intelligence or language, for example. Neanderthals had both. And, by the way, not all of the differences run in our favor. Humans lack a gene Neanderthals had that allows wounds to heal faster. We’re only at the very beginning of correlating the differences in the genomes to actual traits. But eventually, it’ll give us the full picture of what it is to be a human." "Dude, what the fuck is the point of that?" Playg had been looking bored and distracted, fidgeting in his chair, and not even trying to put on a façade of deference to one of the most respected scientists in the world."
Chapter 8, Was ist der mench?
"And now, finally, her labor started. Hers were typically fast and easy, but these contractions had begun over twelve hours ago. The doctors, huddled around the various monitors that circled the bed, repeatedly adjusted the position of her pelvis using electronic controls and small hard foam wedges. After the obstetrician announced "12 cm," he told Amina to push. Usually a few hard pushes were all she needed. But this time, she was told to push only when instructed, and to take long rests in between. After a couple of hours of this, the doctor in charge nodded toward the glass and said "Now." Leo had ordered that, in the absence of a medical emergency for which their help was needed, the assembled team should not be permitted to see the child that emerged. Within seconds, only Agnes, still holding Amina’s hand, Shen, standing to one side, and the obstetrician, peering between her legs, remained in the room. When the baby finally emerged, he reminded Amina of the almost 5 kilo giant she had brought into the world a few years ago. The doctor was facing her as he picked up the infant from between her legs. Amina saw him recoil before he quickly turned away with the infant in his arms. Taking the child, Agnes said "Yes Doctor, some babies are downright ugly, but they’re all beautiful in the eyes of God, and their parents don’t love them one iota less. Nor do I – he’s an angel." When the wrapped baby was settled in a high tech cart and wheeled into the adjacent laboratory, Agnes turned to Amina. "Don’t worry, dear. He’s perfectly normal, a healthy baby boy. You did great." Then, turning toward the one-way window, she asked in English, "So, Leo, what shall we call him?" The intercom crackled to life and Leo’s disembodied voice came out of speakers in the ceiling. "His name is Ned."
Chapter 11, Parthenogenesis
"That night Ned, wide-awake, sat in front of his Mac. Leo’s engineers had succeeded in firewalling Ned’s access to all Ned-related content, but they had neglected to firewall the sites that contained the instructions on how to hack the firewall. These Ned had found and – following the broken-English instructions from some disaffected teenager from Novosibirsk – had hacked his way through the defenses built around his devices. And now, in every spare moment, he clicked from place to place, weaving together the picture of a world fixated on him. He read it all. The debates about whether he was a monster or a savior, and whether he belonged in a zoo or in prison. The world’s most eminent scientists asserting that Leo had crossed a line. Saturday Night Live spoofs in which panicked clergymen prayed for protection from an oafish caveman. Hard-to-follow theological debates regarding whether he was the Anti-Christ. Philosophers reminding the world that Neanderthals were a type of human and should be accorded all the same moral and legal entitlements of other people. Accusations from Chinese bloggers that the US was building a Neanderthal army and China needed to catch up. Posts and comments speculating about his genitals, and even a dozen sites claiming to offer Neanderthal on human porn. As one anthropologist wrote, it was as if the resurrection of the enemy from some ancient war had triggered an alarm implanted by humanity’s ancestors deep in our DNA."
Chapter 23, Hate