That Archelogy Question, Revisited

Markings would work, too.  Artisans usually sign their work somehow.

We actually were joking about "Another fine product brought to you by…"

Phelps-

Excatly where would tool marks be on a living creature? That’s why I think Archeology is the wrong discipline for this question.

There’s pieces of junk DNA which have been thoroughly studies to reconstruct descent. Junk DNA accumulates mutations at a predictable rate, so you can get a pretty good estimate of how many generations back was the most recent common ancestor of two people by counting the number of differences in their junk DNA. We use Y-chromosome DNA to check specifically for male ancestors and mitochondrial DNA to check specifically for female ancestors.

If Zsallia’s junk DNA is very, very different from any living human tested, that would imply that either her ancestors diverged from the rest of humanity a very long time ago, or her DNA was artificially constructed. You can make the differences arbitrarily large, to imply that the common ancestor would need to be tens or hundreds of millions of years ago, which would be utterly inconsistant with her obvious humanity; this would leave artificial manipulation as the only plausible conclusion.

I like the idea of using Zsallia’s mitochondrial DNA to at least narrow down her age. Stuff like that is enough in the news that it shouldn’t be too confusing.

Carbon dating is pretty much out of the question, I would think, unless she has a Clovis Point stuck in her body somewhere .

I think we are looking at two intertwining pieces of evidence. First, her Mitochondrial DNA indicates she’s extremely old. Second, there must be some sort of biopsy performed on her ‘tumor’, something that categorically identifies it as NOT part of her body.

rambling, here

  To be honest, the first thing that popped into my head was that Dean was toying around with finding an arrowhead or something like that in her body…

It would have to be one hell of a mutation to create what amounts to a new body organ that functions as a get-out-of-jail-free card where death and injury are concerned, don’t you think?

One thing I want to clarify: I was deeply disappointed we dumped the original ending, especially because I thought it was deeply tragic and cathartic, especially the desert scene after the dramatic reveal (and I don’t know if John ever put that up online or not, but I think it contains some of our very best writing as a team). But when we couldn’t agree to keep that, or on any obvious alternatives, I also pitched the idea that we table it until further notice and write a much more ambiguous ending to book 1, involving something like Zsallia chickening out at the last minute and simply disappearing on everybody, with our narrator and everybody else wondering where she went and discussing why she did leave and wondering how it would work out for her and what this all meant for humanity and all that rot.

Which would I think have been a bit more satisfying than the way we did end, but would also leave things wide open for a sequel to start pretty damn near anywhere and anywhen we wanted if we ever did figure out where we wanted to go.

John’s stubbornness on refusing to do THAT was what made me so frustrated I just didn’t know what to do.

Creative frictions, they happen. His frustration with me is that I had an ending I loved so much, I pretty much batted aside all his objections for over a year until we got to where we had to take the plunge and he still wasn’t happy. I should have listened more, earlier on, and I did not.

I was very stubborn in many ways on many other things, such as I’m certain he often wanted to punch me. Yet I think we’re both really proud of what we accomplished together and we really want to go on. We’ve actually got a surprising amount of stuff already in the can that’s ready to be fleshed out, and ideas for more, but, if we can’t agree on a mutually satisfying ending then we’re never going to finish because, basically, we’re both stubborn bastards.

When we do book 2–and I’m increasingly thinking we will–I’m not sure if her pet Tyrannosaur, Skippy, will ever appear, but he just might. (That’s an in-joke just between John and I.)

Immortality in the human realm requires that the currently living entity is able to control the death process within each specific life to engender rebirth for the next human life.  

The real question is whether that process is a natural result discernible through scientific analysis available to medical testing, dna results or the erudition of Dr. Kelso.  

The genuine answer abides within the mind of
Zsallia, not Dr. Kelso nor the parasite on the plasma screen.

This is all fiction, right ?

On the other hand maybe Dr, Kelso needs a metaphysician or more classes in neuroscience.

Dean:

I can’t say I fully understand the scope of what you are talking about, but if you are trying to come up with a definitive means of demonstrating that a human being is artificial, as opposed to organically generated, then here are a couple of things  to think about.

Human DNA, like all DNA in all organisms, is a hodge-podge of genes and genetic sequences, some of which are dormant, some of which are canceled out by other portions, and some of which are actually detrimental to the organism.

If I were to design a "super human" from the DNA up, I would remove some of those redundant, unnecessary or (particularly) potentially dangerous sequences. If an examination of someone’s DNA were to show that those specific parts were missing, that would be a powerful indicator of artificiality. I would specifically look for areas of known genetic weakness where DNA is known to be prone to error leading to genetic diseases.

Also, if I were to design DNA from the ground up, I would probably succumb to the temptation to "sign" my work. It would probably be pretty easy to insert a section of nonfunctioning DNA which had an encoded "signature" in it. By comparing the artificial DNA to actual DNA, this sequence could potentially be isolated and eventually decoded.

Finally, I would expect a designed organism to have some specific enhancements over organically evolved ones, particularly in areas where evolution has created difficulties for itself. Perhaps the tendons of the individual would have carbon-filaments woven into the fiber. I would look closely at mitochondrial DNA for specific design improvements since that’s the basic energy mechanism for the cell. This not only would provide a "signature" proving artificiality, but could also explain any "super human" abilties of the artificial human.

Or you could just do a BladeRunner and have a serial number embedded in every cell in the body.

CosmicConservative’s last blog post..WoW update?. # whatever?

OK, so what  you do is you compare her somatic to her genetic DNA and demonstrate that the somatic has been modified, while her genetic DNA has not.

In other words, her egg-producing genes would not benefit from the enhancements, while her body would. This means that her enhancements, including her immortality, would not breed true. The fact that her reproductive DNA was not modified would prove she was originally human.

I believe that this sort of somatic genetic engineering is feasible since I know that there are somatic mutations that do not affect the reproductive DNA, and as such do not breed true.

CosmicConservative’s last blog post..WoW update?. # whatever?

That fits nicely with the approach I’ve suggested. As such she would never have had reason to investigate her own reproductive cells. You could even suggest that this hormonal imbalance is critical to her "abilties" and the loss of reproductive function is a feature, not a bug. In other words, it was designed into her for a purpose.

CosmicConservative’s last blog post..WoW update?. # whatever?

I just want to thank everyone who has commented here or corresponded via e-mail. You’ve proven yet again what a diverse and thoughtful commentariat surrounds this blog.  You’ve all given us things to chew on and we appreciate it very, very much.