Gene Mapper by Taiyo Fujii Page A

grind all the way through each data set.”
    Yagodo pointed to the cloud, a huge calculating circuit of virtual protein molecules composed of virtual amino acids. As I saw more and more of his technical chops, I was starting to feel embarrassed calling myself a gene mapper. All I could do was edit genome style sheets.
    “This is impressive, Isamu, but the samples weren’t collected properly. Mother Mekong’s samples were contaminated with material from insects and SR06. I mean, two hundred gigabytes …”
    Yagodo cut me off with a raised finger. “Mamoru, I told you two days ago: you have to assume the data represents a single organism. Now, let’s get to work— Sorry, let me shut down this model.”
    He spread his arms wide and swept them together. The cloud shrank to the size of a basketball. He suspended it deftly over the coffee table. “Mother Mekong uses a serial DNA sequencer, right?”
    I nodded. It went without saying. The holy trinity of genetic engineering was a serial DNA sequencer to read the data, an embryo printer to output the data in cell format, and Gene Analytics to analyze the data and model it with CAD tools.
    “What an invention,” Yagodo said, marveling. “Just touch a bit of tissue to the sensor and nanomachines unravel the double helix of the chromosomes in the cell nucleus. The DNA readout comes from a single cell.” He winked. “No contaminated samples.”
    “What?” Suddenly, I saw what he was getting at.
    “Sure, maybe you could get a contaminated readout if you took cells from more than one organism and ground them until the nuclei were crushed and mixed, but you’d have to go to a lot of trouble.”
    He was right. I had let the sheer size of the sample confuse me. If Mother was using a serial DNA sequencer—which only operates on single nuclei—then the data couldn’t be contaminated.
    “Well, what do you think we’re dealing with? What kind of organism would produce such a large amount of data?”
    “What do you think it is? Most of the sequences are probably junk. This molecular model is designed to save us time, but it will only handle a two-gig sample. With two hundredgigabytes, we could be dealing with any sort of organism.”
    “You think there’s something significant about the size?”
    “I don’t think anything. I hope it’s mostly junk DNA, that’s all. Anyway, let’s see if we can find a match to the legacy DNA you abstracted from the sample. We need to know what it is and where it was cultivated. Without that we can’t move forward.”
    There was a knock, and Yagodo turned toward the door. It went transparent. We could see Kurokawa reaching for the handle. There must have been a camera outside.
    “Morning, everyone. Sorry I’m late.”
    Kurokawa was carrying his briefcase. He was already normal size.
    “How did it go? I bet they’re pushing us to work faster.”
    Kurokawa dropped his bag on the sofa where he’d sat the day before. He had the same look on his face that I’d seen at breakfast.
    “Not exactly. They gave me a video message from Barnhard. It’s for the two of you, actually.”
    “What, me? I’ve never even met anyone from L&B.”
    “I tried to talk them out of it. We don’t need this kind of pressure right now, but they insisted. In fact they made a big fuss about it. Sorry, but you need to watch this now.”
    “Let’s use the translation engine and listen in Japanese,” said Yagodo. “English has a tendency to draw blood in situations like this.”
    “Thank you. I should warn you—Barnhard made me promise to play this back at life size. Sorry if it makes you sweat a little.”
    I sat next to Yagodo. Across from us, Kurokawa took a video file from his bag and laid it on the table. He paused, then tapped playback. Instantly, the huge man with the spherical gut was standing next to him. He was closer to six-eight than six-five. I almost had to look up at the ceiling to see his face.
    “—No, this kind of message only works