The Naked Eye

by Vasilis Afxentiou

"Dr. Hauge, what's this about making computer components out of people?"

Hauge sipped the last drops of his coffee. "Not out of them, dear man, for them: like a heart valve, a skin graft from artificially cultured cells, plastic arteries, and the like. Things that enhance and save lives such as pacemakers or artificial kidneys."

"Go on." Staring hard now, Reginald Marcus, President of International Medical Software Development, bit his lip. Never had he been offered anything to compare with what this young man was offering. In his mind flashed a menagerie of cyberpunk images and endless queues of eager, nail-biting clientele. Meanwhile, dim circumspection tainted him with doubt. Visions of hacked, and patched up heads and defiled torsos paraded in front of him. But in the end he nudged aside the stink of fear and reveled at a euphoria his released capitalistic fantasies induced. Looking out his penthouse window he gazed upon the azaleas flooding the terrace, the pointed and cubed tops of looming skyscrapers with their mirrored black windows, the steel and glass blocks of his empire where the thousands of men and women worked for him like anxious ants. And this man, this obscure Scottish scientist, would be his newest and perhaps most lucrative triumph.

"To put it simply," Hauge continued, "a sample of the subject's DNA is blown up hologrammically. The double helix is much easier to deal with that way..."

Something akin to hunger in that stare, Hauge thought as he lectured the billionaire. You never felt the bite of frost through torn shoes in deep Nor' Loch winter. Never had to eat stale bread and left-over mutton days on end in squalid, pest-infested, Auld Reekie ghettos to save up for coming tuition fees.

"...then the work begins. All genes not supportive to the preset parameters are extracted and replaced by modified ones: genes that heal the crippled, the blind, can make the deaf hear again; genes for mathematical acumen, for musical talent, for body stamina, business sagacity--you name it. The helix is then shrunk back down to its nominal size, superimposed on the original, and with the help of a broad-band laser beam is imprinted..."

Blood, Marcus? Is that what you want? Hauge remembered his own skeletal, pinched face crimping in concentration over voluminous texts. The explosive awakenings in the midst of nights by dreams in which cadavers he had dissected pursued him, threatening to flay him into so many lean strips. And that one child, the little girl, that expired in his arms slowly and lingeringly because the blood pool was empty and her parents could not pay Marcus, the world-wide provider of blood, for the rare vital fluid. What new deal were you striking up, Marcus, at the time?

"Pardon my limited knowledge of genetics," at last Marcus wrenched in the luxurious chair, his hulking ex-boxer's body coercing a tormented squeal from its frame, "but won't that just change the original chromosome's physical shape and not its quality?"

"Ah, but it will. Chromosome is the name of the strange fellow: body of colour. Very sensitive to color frequency modulations. The modified facsimile will be color stained--coded with transparent dye where effective changes are desired, and by a mirror dye where not."

"Still, that leaves you with just one little, altered chromosome." Reginald Marcus stood up grinning, his silvering hair wildly streaming in the blowing air vent close above it, his pearly teeth teasing with their perfect dental work. He patted his lips with an index finger.

"That can, and will, reproduce its exact duplicate," Hauge came back, "since the regenerative mechanism will not have been touched."

Marcus laughed, "I didn't know such fidelity, especially in the case of artificial encroachment, existed. But the building of a complete helix from half of one--a split helix--is done, if I'm not mistaken, with the aid of an enzyme," Marcus said.

"I didn't either--a decade back. But at University we managed, piecemeal, to weed out that protein strain and the aminos and anything else that could interfere." Hauge produced from his pocket a black cube the size of a die with a thin pig tail of tiny electrodes running from it.

Marcus craned forward for a better look. "Well, won't something else still rectify the mutated helix?"

"No. Now, the enzyme only constructs the mirror image of that which is in front of it. It does not compare chromosomes in doing so."

Marcus shook his head. "Hauge, it'll still give you a chromosome different from the subject's intrinsic physiology. Won't the body's defenses fight it off?"

"Does the immune system fight off radio-actively mutated chromosomes, tissue for that matter? If it did we would have the cure for AIDS--for most cancers. The same principle holds true here. Furthermore, this is controlled and meticulously guided mutation. Not to mention that it comes from the same contingency as its host's inherent genes."

Two million years of conditioning, Hauge thought. The sun. The moon. Lightning. Fire. The piquancy of light and the seductiveness of color and what they incite, all packed into an irresistible live blend of rays. Symbols of a revered, supremacy/servility evolutionary path. Ritualistic molds of castes and adherents to combat-based values--all now exposed, unguarded, before the raptures of subliminal intensities and hues, bolting through the optic nerve. Visible phenomena that silently cuffed and castrated willpower, the id, the superego--the brain's very identity.

"Matter of fact its encapsulation is entirely too exaggerated. The active device inside is much, much smaller. It will be designed to interface directly with synapses. But the filament connections make it presently impossible to reduce any further. Working on it."

"And its quota?"

"Varied solely by the subject's needs and by the subject alone." Hauge pinched two of the exposed fine wires on the end of the die's pig tail. Marcus saw the inside begin to whirl and soon turn to murky grey, dull cream, and, finally, to diamond brilliance.

Marcus got up and came close to look at the sparkling jewel the other held between his fingers. Coruscating sprays of rainbows caught, filled and dominated his eye. Its pristine radiance bathed his retinas making him blink. His eyes watered carelessly in the multi-chromatic glow.

"It's sin, itself!" he nearly drooled and kneeled before the Scot to have a better look. "Where is the agent?"

"A tiny shimmer--the star, if you look hard, in its geometric centre," Hauge said and pinched more wires. The liquid swirled, sparkling, spewing needles of rainbow light throughout Marcus' posh office and into the amazed president's eyes.

That did it. Now Marcus, and his empire, belonged to him.

"Get off your knees, old fellow," Hauge said, offering his chair. "Take this too."

Marcus pinched and gawked as the scientist laid the tiny, gleaming machine in his palm.

"Are you with me, man?"

Marcus watched the die in his own hand turn into a green emerald, a blue sapphire, yellow citrine, fire opal... "Eh, yes. Absorbing sort of...prettiness... so, pretty!" Marcus's parched voice was weak and reedy.

Hauge rose, walked to Marcus' communicator, and punched the red button. "Ms. Atwood," Hauge remembered the little plaque on the slight, bespectacled secretary's desk, "would you come in," he said, now bending over the intercom and standing behind Marcus' elegant desk.

The secretary entered, seeming riddled over the sitting man playing with his empty hands. "So, so pretty..." Marcus raved on.

"Is anything wrong, Mr.--"

"Mr. Marcus will be leaving now. Oh, and, Ms. Atwood, would you be kind enough to bring your pad with you when you come back. We have changes to make."

An enigmatic expression cast on the young lady as she faced Hauge, sitting behind the great desk. For a moment, Hauge thought amused, she must have taken me for someone else. "Yes, sir," she said, lingering her dispersed, fishbowl stare a while.

The Scotsman observed and humored the other's fascination as she watched intently the die in his hand turn cornelian pink, hyacinth red, amethyst violet, lazurite blue, peridot green...

"Have one," he said, reaching again into an empty pocket, knowing it would be the most important thing on her mind from here on. "Anything else, Ms. Atwood?"

"No, oh not a thing, sir. So pretty!" she chirped and gawked at her empty hand, sighed deeply and escorted her charge out.

"Ah, one more thing. Change Mr. Marcus's flight for Marakesh instead, and accompany him personally till he boards." The climate should be more akin to Texas's, he considered, and put the real die back in his coat pocket.

He always wanted to see how it felt to be a megatherium of business, unfettered to make and supply freely as much blood as needed for poor, needy people and little girls like his late sister, Margaret. But he wasn't sure if he had what it took. Clearly, though, all one needed was a dab of cheek and a spot of hypnotic power at his touch. Everything else then just couldn't help coming your way.

The board members will be the true challenge, the Scot thought, after Ms. Atwood had left.

"Into the maelstrom!" he hollered and quailed at his own sound.

It was noon, the sun out of view, and the show-case window clear. Marcus's empire was spread before Hauge's surveying eyes. He'd have to call upon more compelling reserves than the single die for the board. At that rumination, there was a knock at the door.

A meek Ms. Atwood peeked in. She took off her bone-rimmed glasses with their thick, round silver lenses. The secretary's irises gave forth a brilliant show of light to rival that of the hypnotic cube.

Hauge quickly looked away--but not quick enough.

Ms. Atwood was careful not to look directly into the bar's inlaid looking glass on her left as she refitted the eye glasses. At times like these, she thought, a mirror could prove to be one's own worse enemy.

"The saddest part of all this business, Mr. Hauge," Ms. Atwood said, leading the catatonic man slowly out from behind Marcus's massive desk, "is not recognizing your competition and not inquiring why one needs to wear thick, silvered glasses inside this glare-free building. The naked eye, Mr. Hauge, can often be quicker than a die."

END