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The second and far more disruptive shock wave was the fourth industrial revolution: synthetic biology. What was once manufactured was now increasingly grown by custom-designed organisms—algae, yeasts, bacteria. Automobile bodies grown from chitin. Biofuels from custom E. coli bacteria. Deathless meat and cultured dairy products from sustainable cellular agriculture. Biofacturing instead of manufacturing. Life itself harnessed to the human will.
It was difficult to pinpoint the year Singapore became the technology capital of the world. Economists usually placed that somewhere between ratification of the UN Treaty on Genetic Modification and the second wave of moon landings. But certainly by the dawn of the Gene Revolution, the technological crown had shifted from America.
Synthetic biology was the transistor of the twenty-first century.
wasn’t thrilled with the idea of bespoke animals. However, neotenic pets—the cuter and more juvenile, the better—were all the rage these days.
“My algorithms have located hundreds of illegal CRISPR labs in dozens of countries—but we weren’t looking for individuals. We were looking for a pattern of illicit commercial activity—a specific location that attracted would-be or existing parents who matched a consistent profile. Parents who had recently deviated from their established behavior patterns. Spent money on fertility treatments. Changed their usual travel and social patterns—especially after meeting with friends who’d recently done the same. We’ve issued Orange Notices to police agencies based on that analysis, but not Red Notices
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Police software immediately identified the hashtagged video, pulled it from public streams, and stitched it together into a live 3D video feed of Durand’s chase from constantly shifting civilian perspectives.
Drug smuggling was a thing of the past in most countries now—not because of any great advances in drug treatment or human nature but because of synthetic biology. Just as algae, yeast, and bacteria were being custom designed to grow food, chemicals, and products—so, too, were they being harnessed to synthesize narcotics.
Custom highs were the drug business now. Your drug was synthesized as you ordered it—specialized just for your DNA, to create the perfect high.
It didn’t take much to get high these days. Just a few milligrams would knock you on your ass for hours. Any more could kill you. But then, drug printers knew the precise dose their customers could handle. Big data had entered the black market, and the drug printers knew more about their customers than social media companies knew about theirs. The printers also knew dead customers weren’t repeat customers.
Picking it up, he could see it was a grown knife—probably a keratin-silica hybrid from some vat in Thailand or Vietnam. Highly illegal in Singapore. Nonmetallic and thus difficult to detect on scanners. He squeezed the handle where it felt soft, and the blade retracted like a cat’s claw into the handle. He squeezed it again, and the blade reappeared. It felt organic, like some hunter’s souvenir from a big game hunt.
They served as wireless wallets for small amounts of digital money. They typically required physical contact between a terminal or another bitring to transfer funds—and were usually tethered to a parent device for loading money or setting up transactions. Bitrings were no safer than carrying cash really but were never loaded with much. It certainly beat connecting your main device to a potentially malware-infested point-of-sale terminal.
There were a dozen popular blockchain cryptocurrencies now—ChiCoin, ThaiCoin, Biocoin, SinCoin—most linked to a central banking authority. Cryptocurrency providers had concluded in the early 2020s that it was better to sell blockchain software solutions to central banks than to enter the heavily regulated banking industry on their own. More libertarian-minded flavors, like Biocoin, still existed (named because it used cell division and mutation inside a bioreactor as a calculation engine to unlock coins, while simultaneously generating intrinsically valuable biomass).
Plus, biometrics had fallen into disfavor back in the 2020s. Once spoofed by a hacker, they were burned, and an individual couldn’t very well invalidate their own retinas and get new ones (with the sole exception of Durand perhaps). So instead, biometrics were used in combination with revocable credentials—fobs, chips, passcodes, and one-time codes.
“You could think of them as genetic tattoos. They appear identical in structure to that of a chameleon—the topmost layer transparent with subsequent layers containing various pigments; xanthophores for yellow, erythrophores for red, cyanophores for blue, melanophores for brown—you get the idea. In a chameleon the colors are locked away in tiny vesicles so they don’t normally appear. But they react to the central nervous system and are sensitive to chemicals in the bloodstream, making their colors visible when under duress or—” “Excitement. Emotion.” “Precisely. Mood. Most people think the
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Meow brought them into a ballroom dotted with dozens of small cultured-wood cocktail tables and matching chairs. They were clearly grown in their present shapes, since not a seam or joint was visible—a subtle demonstration of genetic mastery.
I didn’t like my mother’s taste in drapes, so I sure as hell wouldn’t want her choosing my cheekbones . . .” He gestured to the stage. Durand could see a line of half a dozen boys there displaying a range of numbered cheekbone heights.
“Our other DLG3 line of edits. We call it ‘Worker Bee.’ Creates laborers of low IQ. Low food requirements. Designed for docility. They can be trained to perform tasks too simple for robots to perform cost-effectively. Sterile, of course.”
These children are designed to grow into reliable soldiers. They will not fall prey to conscience, or be tormented by memories of horror. Nor do they fear death. They obey and tell no tales of what they’ve done. Likewise sterile. Don’t want these nasty fuckers breeding.”
It’s not like the Huli jing will have a Yelp listing.” “What’s a Yelp listing?” “Never mind. It was a thing.
“I lived here in Thailand for years. When I first left the States.” “Then you speak Thai.” He laughed. “No. When I say ‘live,’ I mean like an American.”
I might be a genetic engineer, but I think the demise of natural selection has been greatly exaggerated. Nature did not select for empathy and social bonds because Nature was kind—but because those were survival advantages. Completely selfish, unfeeling people don’t care for the greater good. They don’t appreciate goals beyond themselves. And that limits them.”
“Like I said: Tang liked his privacy. These are all prepaid. Bought by surrogates from all over Thailand. He even kept receipts.” Frey smirked. “You know what they say: when privacy is criminalized, only criminals will have privacy.”
“Though I suppose transhumanists might use this ‘change agent’ technology to edit their lungs to metabolize a different gas mixture—then there will indeed be a big struggle over saving the environment. Whose environment?
“You forget what the Huli jing is doing, Mr. Durand. Anonymity is what they’re selling. True anonymity. A post-identity world. A cleansing of earthly sins. There are no fingerprints or iris scans or even DNA scans that can identify their clients. There is only money and desire.”
“DNA is DNA. Merely information. Which means that human beings are merely information. And there is a long-established legal precedent that information can be owned.”
“Smart people will make certain to own and copyright their bloodline: 51 percent ownership in a certain sequence of DNA would be a controlling interest. There are all sorts of fractional ownership scenarios.”
