genetic-deficiency diseases will begin to disappear.”
“If only it were that simple,” Chan lamented. “Alas, we shall probably be required to keep the models long after their human analogues have become mercifully extinct. Already there are redundant models mingled with the others, mere library specimens sustained in case they should someday become necessary again. Naturally enough, you are thinking of the most obvious applications of the new technology—the battle against Huntington’s disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, phenylketonuria, and all the other crippling conditions our new model armies will allow us to defeat. Those models are, of course, the ones that wear their names with pride. But what of the others?”
He paused so she could prompt him, but she was still distracted by the temporary play of the unusual light as it filtered through the few portals left to it by Mouseworld’s architects. The pattern of the reflections that redirected the mellow beams into the corners of the vast room seemed quite amazing. Some of the compartments now had faces resembling rose-tinted lenses; others seemed to be ablaze with the glory of Armageddon.
The tenor of the conversation made it remarkably easy for Lisa to imagine Mouseworld as a human world writ small, its seething masses confused by all kinds of myths and apocalyptic imaginings. People fixated on dates had become particularly agitated in December 1999, and again in December 2000, but the lack of any outrageously peculiar event on the thirty-first of either month had only made them look even harder for signs of apocalypse in the everyday world, which continued on its stubborn course regardless of their hopes and fears. How many of them had seen, or even heard of, Mouseworld? How many had wondered whether the plague of people might be the mysterious Fourth Horseman of Revelation? Momentarily lost in these imaginings, Lisa had to bring herself back to earth with a bump in order to ask: “What others?”
“What of those new subspecies that hide their transgenic lights behind carefully placed smoke screens?” Chan continued seamlessly. “Are we so naive, you and I, that we take it for granted there are no mice in Mouseworld designed to model human factors whose problematic aspects are far more controversial than fatal diseases? Are there gay mice in Mouseworld? We suspect so—but you and I cannot pick them out, because they are closeted, carefully unlabeled by their investigators. Are there mice whose makers dare to hope they will be more intelligent than their common kin, mice whose makers hope they will be stronger than their common kin, mice whose makers hope they will far outlive their common kin? Yes, yes … undoubtedly. But which? The strangest thing about the H Block that lies at the very center of Mouseworld is that its society is subject to all kinds of hidden hands whose motives and methods are unclear. Is that not a telling mirror of the world in which we Uve? Is it not testimony to the true momentum of history, the fundamental paradoxically of progress?”
“This is a university, not some top-secret research establishment in the Arizona desert,” Lisa reminded him. “The people who are doing these experiments will publish the results in due course.”
“Will they?” Chan asked. “They feel strongly about it, for the most part—Morgan Miller more strongly than most—but the culture in which they operate is not merely more powerful than they are, but more powerful than they can imagine. The universities are already adopting, explicitly as well as implicitly, the same habits of confidentiality, the same obsessive interest in intellectual property, and the same blatant cupidity as their commercial rivals—and could not help so doing once they accepted the view that they were indeed rivals of the biotechnology companies. Yes, the H Block was planted in the dead center of Mouseworld, surrounded by the proud relic of an earlier age—but
“If only it were that simple,” Chan lamented. “Alas, we shall probably be required to keep the models long after their human analogues have become mercifully extinct. Already there are redundant models mingled with the others, mere library specimens sustained in case they should someday become necessary again. Naturally enough, you are thinking of the most obvious applications of the new technology—the battle against Huntington’s disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, phenylketonuria, and all the other crippling conditions our new model armies will allow us to defeat. Those models are, of course, the ones that wear their names with pride. But what of the others?”
He paused so she could prompt him, but she was still distracted by the temporary play of the unusual light as it filtered through the few portals left to it by Mouseworld’s architects. The pattern of the reflections that redirected the mellow beams into the corners of the vast room seemed quite amazing. Some of the compartments now had faces resembling rose-tinted lenses; others seemed to be ablaze with the glory of Armageddon.
The tenor of the conversation made it remarkably easy for Lisa to imagine Mouseworld as a human world writ small, its seething masses confused by all kinds of myths and apocalyptic imaginings. People fixated on dates had become particularly agitated in December 1999, and again in December 2000, but the lack of any outrageously peculiar event on the thirty-first of either month had only made them look even harder for signs of apocalypse in the everyday world, which continued on its stubborn course regardless of their hopes and fears. How many of them had seen, or even heard of, Mouseworld? How many had wondered whether the plague of people might be the mysterious Fourth Horseman of Revelation? Momentarily lost in these imaginings, Lisa had to bring herself back to earth with a bump in order to ask: “What others?”
“What of those new subspecies that hide their transgenic lights behind carefully placed smoke screens?” Chan continued seamlessly. “Are we so naive, you and I, that we take it for granted there are no mice in Mouseworld designed to model human factors whose problematic aspects are far more controversial than fatal diseases? Are there gay mice in Mouseworld? We suspect so—but you and I cannot pick them out, because they are closeted, carefully unlabeled by their investigators. Are there mice whose makers dare to hope they will be more intelligent than their common kin, mice whose makers hope they will be stronger than their common kin, mice whose makers hope they will far outlive their common kin? Yes, yes … undoubtedly. But which? The strangest thing about the H Block that lies at the very center of Mouseworld is that its society is subject to all kinds of hidden hands whose motives and methods are unclear. Is that not a telling mirror of the world in which we Uve? Is it not testimony to the true momentum of history, the fundamental paradoxically of progress?”
“This is a university, not some top-secret research establishment in the Arizona desert,” Lisa reminded him. “The people who are doing these experiments will publish the results in due course.”
“Will they?” Chan asked. “They feel strongly about it, for the most part—Morgan Miller more strongly than most—but the culture in which they operate is not merely more powerful than they are, but more powerful than they can imagine. The universities are already adopting, explicitly as well as implicitly, the same habits of confidentiality, the same obsessive interest in intellectual property, and the same blatant cupidity as their commercial rivals—and could not help so doing once they accepted the view that they were indeed rivals of the biotechnology companies. Yes, the H Block was planted in the dead center of Mouseworld, surrounded by the proud relic of an earlier age—but
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