“Is your name Logan Ramsay?”
“Yes.”
She checked off the first question.
“Do you live in Arlington, Virginia?”
“Yes.”
Another check.
“Have you ever been dishonest with someone?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to be dishonest with me during this interview?”
“No.”
She checked off her question and studied her tablet.
“Have you ever changed your own genome?”
“No.”
“Have you noticed any changes in your body since you were injured in Denver?”
“Yes.”
“Have you noticed any changes in your mind since you were injured in Denver?”
“Yes.”
“Have you told anyone about these changes?”
“No.”
“Have you told your wife?”
“No.”
“Have you told your daughter?”
“No.”
“Have you told your sister, Kara?”
“No.”
“Have you told any friends?”
“No.”
“Did someone send a text to you yesterday that said ‘They know you’re changing’？”
“Yes.”
“Do you know the identity of this person?”
“No.”
“Are you the son of Miriam Ramsay?”
“Yes.”
“Is your mother still alive?”
“No.”
“Have you been working with her?”
What? “No.”
“Did Miriam Ramsay change your genome?”
“No.”
“Do you know who changed your genome?”
“No.”
For the first time during the questioning, she looked at me instead of the sheet of paper or her tablet.
“Are you lying to me right now, Logan?”
“No.”
“Are you controlling your breathing right now, Logan?”
“No.”
“Are you controlling your heart rate?”
“No.”
“Are you controlling your blood pressure?”
“No.”
Hana touched the tablet’s screen again. “That’s it,” she said.
The door to the cell opened.
Edwin waited in the doorway as Hana gathered up her things.
He said to her, “I’ll have your report…”
“Before the end of the day.”
Edwin entered the cell and took a seat at the desk. I noticed he wore an earpiece.
He looked back at the man-beast and the woman holding the Taser. “Wait outside.”
After they shut the glass door, I said, “Why are you asking me about my mother?”
“Because she’s alive.”
“Fuck you.”
He took out his phone and placed it on the table.
“One year ago, she broke into my house and sent me a video of her standing in my kitchen, holding a wineglass.”
I pressed play.
If the video was a deepfake, it had been masterfully done.
Miriam’s hair had turned silver, she’d made numerous cosmetic changes （probably to elude facial-recognition AI）， and her face was gaunt and lined with more wrinkles than the last time I’d seen her. But it was unquestionably my mother. I would’ve known those eyes—dark and frighteningly intense—anywhere.
I grew lightheaded.
And then she spoke: “The GPA and its foreign counterparts are destroying scientific research and discovery.” Her voice. No question in my mind. “If substantive policy changes aren’t enacted immediately, including letting universities and private businesses return to responsible genetic research, I will take matters into my own hands. I’ll release a viral gene drive.”
As Edwin took his phone back, he said, “We ran the print on the wineglass and tested the DNA from the hair she deliberately left behind. There’s no question it’s her.”
My vision swarmed.
Chest tightening, hands tingling.
“Are you all right?” Edwin asked. “They’re telling me your heart rate is soaring.”
I was shaking with rage.
“I understand you’re upset.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t know if you were working with her. I didn’t know if she would try to reach out to you. I had your phones tapped. Your house bugged. You’ve been under surveillance for almost ten months.”
I wanted to spring across the table and get my hands on him. I felt confident he’d be dead before the guards got inside the vivarium.
“How did you not tell me this!” I shouted.
The guards started toward the vivarium, but Edwin waved them away.
I had grieved for her. I had processed her death as well as such a thing can be processed.
I choked down a gulp of air, utterly destroyed.
Edwin said, “Soon after, she sent me an encrypted message with her demands. I responded, asking what species she would target with her gene drive.”
“Homo sapiens.”
“Bingo.”
“With what sort of changes?”
“She wasn’t specific. Just called it a significant upgrade. She also promised to give me a demonstration of her abilities.”
I was the demonstration. Of course, I couldn’t know this for sure. But I knew.
I could feel my emotions evolving from the shock of seeing my mother to the horror of what she was threatening.
A gene drive is the most powerful genetic engineering tool ever conceived. Normally, when a child is born, it gets one copy of each gene from both parents, either one of which might end up being the dominant one of the pair. But if you can insert a gene-drive-targeting system in one parent, you can upend those normal laws of heredity. The gene-editing mechanism—CRISPR-Cas9, Scythe, or whatever it might be—is passed on from the targeted parent into the child’s DNA, along with instructions to sneakily rewrite the other parent’s copy of the targeted gene as the embryo develops. Say the mother has brown eyes, the father blue. With a gene drive, you can overwrite the mother’s genes for eye color in the embryo, thus guaranteeing that their child will have blue eyes. But the real kicker is that the child will pass on the targeting system to their children in turn. All of their children will now have blue eyes too, and so on.
Within a few generations, the gene drive will pervade the entire population—and the natural, unedited copy of the gene will be wiped out completely. All Homo sapiens will have blue eyes.
A gene drive can be used for immense good. Before the Ramsay famine, one was used to make all of the offspring of the malaria mosquito male. Since only female mosquitoes of the Anopheles genus are capable of transmitting human malaria, this eradicated the spread of that disease, and eventually that species of mosquito.
Gene drives could also be used to great detriment, because they don’t just alter the genetic makeup of one person, plant, or animal. They have the power to alter the evolutionary trajectory of an entire species.
“If you’ve been surveilling me,” I said, “then you know I haven’t had any contact with her. So why am I here? I’m not working with my mother. I didn’t know she was alive until five minutes ago. You test me every few years. You can’t possibly think I’m stupid enough to have altered my own genome.”