Kendall watched an electric golf cart glide silently along that road, climbing toward their position, passing by gates that opened automatically before it. A triangular yellow sign with a black lightning bolt hung on the neighboring fence, indicating that each level’s barrier was electrified.
Worry dampened his momentary wonder.
Cutter stood to the side, scanning the nearby walls, as if searching for weeds growing in his fantastical garden. “Ah,” he finally said. “Down here. Come see for yourself.”
He opened a gate along the landing’s railing and climbed down a steep set of metal stairs to the stone road winding by at his level. Kendall kept his gaze away from that long central drop. It was so far down that he could barely see the bottom, especially with the morning sun still low on the horizon. Still, he noted what appeared to be the crowns of giant trees down there, possibly a piece of the Brazilian rain forest trapped below.
With great care, Kendall stepped from the steel stairs to ancient sandstone. He retreated from the edge of the road, away from that yawning precipice. On the far side spread a series of raised beds, about ten yards deep. They rode up against the cliffs, merging with the thick cascade of green growth that draped the walls. Narrow walkways crisscrossed those plantings. It all could be easily mistaken for some organic vegetable garden, but Kendall suspected what grew here was something far more insidious and anything but organic.
He noted a string of long-legged ants, each the size of his thumb, parading along the edge of one box.
“Paraponera clavata,” Cutter named them. “Commonly known as bullet ants. Those little buggers got their nickname because their bite is considered one of the worst stings. The very top of the Schmidt sting pain index. Victims compare it to getting shot, and the pain can last for up to twenty-four hours.”
Kendall took a step back.
“I was able to double their venom load.”
Kendall glanced harshly at Cutter.
“A bite from one of these will leave you paralyzed and in excruciating pain. One of my workers accidentally got stung. He broke his back molars from the grinding pain. But that’s not all. Come a little closer.”
No thank you.
Kendall stayed rooted in place.
Cutter picked up a broken piece of a branch. “Bullet ants—like all ants—are ground-locked members of the Hymenoptera order, which includes bees and wasps.”
He poked a reddish-black straggler, which responded by flaring out small membranous wings, all but invisible before. It flew a few inches away, then landed amid its stinging brethren, stirring them up.
“It was easy to return their wings to them,” Cutter said. “Just a matter of splicing in genes from a tarantula hawk wasp. Especially as the two species share the same genetic heritage.”
“You created a chimera,” Kendall finally choked out. “A genetic hybrid.”
“Precisely. I haven’t been able to give them full flight yet, so far just those little buzzing bursts like you saw, but hopefully with time and environmental pressure, nature will do the rest, getting them flying as readily as their waspish cousins.”
“How?” Kendall sputtered for a moment. “How did you accomplish this?”
“It was not all that difficult. You know as well as I that the technology is currently available. It was just a matter of having the will and resources to do it, free of oversight and regulation. You already saw my lab is equipped with multiple stations that use the latest CRISPR-Cas9 technique. A process I’ve refined further, by the way.”
That was chilling news. CRISPR-Cas9 could already engineer any part of a genome with such precision that it had been likened to editing individual letters in an encyclopedia without creating a single spelling error.
“And you’re certainly familiar with the MAGE and CAGE processes developed by George Church.”
Kendall felt the blood drain into his legs. Like CRISPR, those two new techniques—multiplex automated genome engineering and conjugative assembly genome engineering—were sometimes referred to as evolution machines. These two gene-editing technologies were indeed just that, capable of automating thousands of genetic changes at the same time. They could introduce millions of years of evolution within minutes.
MAGE and CAGE held the promise to alter synthetic biology forever, taking it to new heights—but where would those heights take us?
He stared in horror at the row of large ants.
Cutter twiddled the small twig in his hand, seemingly disappointed by Kendall’s reaction. “I read in a piece you wrote last year that you advocate using MAGE and CAGE as tools for resurrecting lost species.”
He was right. These new gene-editing technologies held great promise. Researchers could take the intact genome of a living animal—then start making edits and alterations to the DNA, slowing converting it to the genome of a related species that had gone extinct.
“Start with an elephant and you might be able to resurrect a woolly mammoth out of its genes,” Kendall mumbled aloud.
Not only was it theoretically possible, a Russian had gone so far as to create an experimental preserve in Siberia—called Pleistocene Park—where he hoped to allow these soon-to-be-created woolly mammoths to roam free.
“De-extinction was the word you used in the article,” Cutter said with disdain. “It’s such a sad distraction. To use such promising technology for this narrow preservationist agenda. All you’re doing is choking nature’s ability to respond to the damage wrought by humankind.”
“And this is your answer?” Kendall mocked, waving to the line of marching black ants.
“Only a small part of a larger picture. Where you and your colleagues dwell in the past, looking to de-extinction for salvation, I turn to the future, to prepare for what’s to come with a plan for rewilding.”
“Rewilding?”
“To reintroduce keystone species—animals and plants that have the most impact on the environment.”
“Like your ants.”
“I’ve engineered my creations—all my creations—to be stronger, with the necessary tools to survive us. Along with newer innovations.”
Cutter took his twig and encouraged one of the ants to climb atop its tip. Before it could clamber up and bite him, he flicked it into a neighboring planter box. The ant landed on a wide leaf of a bromeliad and scrambled along its length. Thin wings vibrated in irritation.
Then from a pore in the leaf, a glistening bubble erupted, enveloping the ant in a thick gelatinous sap. The squirming insect fought, but in seconds its legs dissolved away, followed shortly thereafter by the rest of its body. After that, the jelly bubble quickly liquefied, trickling down the inside of the leaf to feed the root ball at the base.