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Chromosome is the name of the strange fellow: body of colour. Very sensitive to color frequency modulations. The modified facsimile will be color stained--coded with transparent dye where effective changes are desired, and by a mirror dye where not."
"Still, that leaves you with just one little, altered chromosome." Reginald Marcus stood up grinning, his silvering hair wildly streaming in the blowing air vent close above it, his pearly teeth teasing with their perfect dental work. He patted his lips with an index finger.
"That can, and will, reproduce its exact duplicate," Hauge came back, "since the regenerative mechanism will not have been touched."
Marcus laughed, "I didn't know such fidelity, especially in the case of artificial encroachment, existed. But the building of a complete helix from half of one--a split helix--is done, if I'm not mistaken, with the aid of an enzyme," Marcus said.
"I didn't either--a decade back. But at University we managed, piecemeal, to weed out that protein strain and the aminos and anything else that could interfere." Hauge produced from his pocket a black cube the size of a die with a thin pig tail of tiny electrodes running from it.
Marcus craned forward for a better look. "Well, won't something else still rectify the mutated helix?"
"No. Now, the enzyme only constructs the mirror image of that which is in front of it. It does not compare chromosomes in doing so."
Marcus shook his head. "Hauge, it'll still give you a chromosome different from the subject's intrinsic physiology. Won't the body's defenses fight it off?"
"Does the immune system fight off radio-actively mutated chromosomes, tissue for that matter? If it did we would have the cure for AIDS--for most cancers. The same principle holds true here. Furthermore, this is controlled and meticulously guided mutation. Not to mention that it comes from the same contingency as its host's inherent genes."
Two million years of conditioning, Hauge thought. The sun. The moon. Lightning. Fire. The piquancy of light and the seductiveness of color and what they incite, all packed into an irresistible live blend of rays. Symbols of a revered, supremacy/servility evolutionary path. Ritualistic molds of castes and adherents to combat-based values--all now exposed, unguarded, before the raptures of subliminal intensities and hues, bolting through the optic nerve. Visible phenomena that silently cuffed and castrated willpower, the id, the superego--the brain's very identity.
"Matter of fact its encapsulation is entirely too exaggerated. The active device inside is much, much smaller. It will be designed to interface directly with synapses. But the filament connections make it presently impossible to reduce any further. Working on it."
"And its quota?"
"Varied solely by the subject's needs and by the subject alone." Hauge pinched two of the exposed fine wires on the end of the die's pig tail.