The Watch in the Sand: Part 2

July 2, 2012

MIT and University of British Columbia scientists develop a new method of treating disease using tiny capsules containing DNA and other biological machinery for making a drug. The nanoscale production units are tiny spheres encapsulating synthetic RNA like that found in living cells. The resulting nanoparticles produce active proteins on demand when the researchers shine a laser light on them.

August 3, 2012

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration grants approval for “ingestible sensors” invented by Proteus Digital Health. These 1 square millimeter devices are embedded in pills, and relay information about the insides of a patient to a doctor or nurse. The sensor transmits that information through the skin to a stick-on patch, which in turn sends the data to a mobile phone application or other authorized device.

August 13, 2012

A team of British researchers develop a new algorithm that can predict people’s locations for the next 24 hours. The algorithm combines an individual’s tracking data with data from everyone in their contact list, and finds correlations between their movements. Even when individuals change their typical paths by huge margins, the algorithm’s error rate is only about 65 feet — less than an average city block.

Janurary 13, 2013

The German Federal Court of Justice rules that, because having an internet connection is so significant for a large part of the German population, a customer whose service provider failed to provide connectivity for three months was entitled to compensation. According to the court spokeswoman, “It is the first time the court ruled that an Internet connection is as important a commodity as having a phone. The plaintiff is entitled to compensation for the lost DSL line because the Internet has been a crucial part of people’s economic living standards for a while now.”

9:50 pm, June 2, 2014

Doctor Wilhelm Klein’s eyes snapped back into focus. He had zoned out again, staring at the small blinking cursor on his phone. It was the lab computer’s command line, proudly displaying the last commands he had typed in. Before he left for the bar, he had connected his phone to the lab’s computer. The computer, in turn, was connected to the Chamber, a massive artificial environment currently sulking in the basement of the lab. Wilhelm and his team built it one year ago. It was an odd design, shaped like a long blocky couch with a large ovular lump towards the side. When you stood at one end it only came up to your chest — but when you stood at the other it towered over you like a Monolith. Lenny had made the reference first, and because Wilhelm was such a fan of the old classics, the name had stuck. Now he couldn’t help but hear “So Sprach Zarathustra” in his head every time he saw it.

The last command he had sent to the Chamber was the first ever run command. His team had held a little ceremony before he pressed the enter key — singing along with him with a loud “Daaa Daaa Daaa DUN DUUNNN” and making the other scientists laugh. They had toasted each other’s efforts, drank some cheap champagne, and now they had all gone out to the bar to begin wasting the twelve hours before the results would be ready.

Now, the command line sat patiently waiting for the Chamber to finish its work. As soon as the program finished, it would spit out a brief response, listing a few results from the run. For now, the cursor blinked white at Wilhelm, like a ticking clock counting down the seconds until the Team’s five years of research, sleepless nights, quarreling, begging for money, and two divorces came to fruition. Wilhelm tore his gaze away from the cursor before it hypnotized him again. He rocked his shoulders back and forth, then leaned his head from side to side, pulling on his neck to stretch the sore muscles. He looked around the bar, blinking his blurry eyes.

“You still alive?”

Wilhelm jumped a few inches off of his stool, to a flood of giggling from behind him.

“Sorry, sorry,” Kim Ihmahara placed her hand apologetically on Wilhelm’s shoulder as he collected himself. “I didn’t mean to startle you — I just wanted to check up on you and see how the life of the party was holding up.”

“It’s fine,” Wilhelm wiped his face with his forearm. Kim smiled at him, patting his shoulder with forced levity as she slid onto the bar stool next to him and set her beer on the bar.

“Good! I thought I’d keep you company for a bit. What are your plans for the next twelve hours?”

Wilhelm smiled back, weakly. He liked Kim. A lot. But how could he possibly have plans? It was hard enough for him to come to the bar with the others; he couldn’t imagine leaving the bar for anywhere other than the lab to work on data sheets. For five years now, their team had worked together for days on end, focusing their whole lives towards a single goal. After sacrificing so much, how could he just up and leave before the program was complete? It felt like quitting, or leaving a co-worker to cross the finish line alone while you read a book. He cleared his throat and shrugged.

“Actually,” he mumbled, “it’s more like thirteen hours. The program has to correlate and run a few tests on the data.” Wilhelm glanced at the cursor on his phone, flickering its way towards completion. Somewhere on the lab’s network, a file was slowly being filled with information — a log of the Chamber’s exploration. Once already tonight he had to resist the urge to open that file. It wouldn’t tell him anything he didn’t know; he had worked with Lenny for two years on the math. They had run countless tests and computer models to make sure the Chamber would work. Gases, atomized vapors, chemicals, and various cellular cultures were all being mixed and stimulated with electric current in a strange alchemical dance, deep in the Chamber’s belly. Of course, things could be going wrong, they always could, but Wilhelm had faith in the math.

Faith. Hope. Possibilities. Chance. Wilhelm took a big drink of courage, rubbed his face with his hands, and turned to face Kim.

“I don’t have any plans. Do you?”

“Not really,” she pushed her glass around the bar, aimlessly. “I was thinking of catching a movie in a few hours.”

“Did I ever say I’m sorry about Hugh?” Wilhelm asked. Kim’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. She slowly shook her head, taking another drink. Kim had been one of the two team members who had to deal with a divorce during the project. “Well, I am.”

“It was mutual,” she shrugged, staring into her glass. “We weren’t really married anymore, just co-habiting.” Wilhelm nodded in what he hoped was a very sympathetic manner, as he glanced again at his phone. He swallowed, fingering his glass nervously. For a few seconds, neither of them spoke. Wilhelm tried to think of something to say, but he was horribly aware of Kim’s hair brushing her shoulder, and her slow and steady breath.

“So what do you think is going to happen?” Wilhelm finally blurted out. Kim cocked her head, an odd smile on her lips.

“I’m sorry?” she asked. Wilhelm looked back at his drink.

“The Chamber, I mean,” he fumbled lamely. “What do you think will happen?”

“I think we’ll grow some protein factories,” Kim said, her tone betraying her confusion. “Why? Do you think something will go wrong?”

“No,” Wilhelm shook his head. “I just wondered what you were thinking…You know, we’ve been working together a long time but we’ve never really talked. I mean, we’ve talked about the project, but I don’t know what you think about it…” His voice trailed off as he shut himself up with more beer.

“Well, we have a practical grasp of the principles now,” Kim shrugged. “We’ve created a very specific environment in there, carefully monitored and regulated. The right amount of energy at the right times and in the right places, and these things grow like crystals in brine. We may not know what shape the crystal will take, but we know they’ll grow.”

“You have faith, then?” Wilhelm asked, carefully.

Kim laughed in surprise. A small part of Wilhelm’s brain was sending warning signals, demanding he avoid this topic of conversation. The beer was making this voice easier to ignore.

“Faith in science?” she asked, her smile dangerously close to a sneer. “You don’t have faith in science. Science is observation and facts. If you can’t prove it — if you have to believe it, you don’t get to call it science.”

“So do you believe in God?” Wilhelm said, before he could stop himself. His heart pounded as she finished another drink.

“To be honest, I don’t know what you mean by that,” Kim said, turning herself around and leaning on the bar. Wilhelm tried not to stare at her figure.

“Well, I mean…” Welhelm blinked. “I mean do you believe in… are you religious?”

Kim turned her head to look out at the bar patrons, her fingers tapping gently on the bar. She let out a long, slow, breath. “They say there are two things you should never talk about at work — religion and politics.”

“I know,” Wilhelm looked at his beer, watching the white foam slowly circumnavigate the glass as he nudged it. “They’re important subjects that destroy relationships. There’s nothing closer to how we define ourselves. How we see ourselves in society, and how we see our place in the universe. If someone disagrees, they’re not just disagreeing, they’re denying things that define you.”

“So why do you ask?” Kim was looking at him, her brow furrowed. Wilhelm flashed a hopeful smile as he glanced at his phone.

“I’m curious how you see yourself in the universe.”

For a moment, neither of them moved. It was odd, Wilhelm reflected. As a scientist, he’d been asked the question many times, from news reporters and activists, theists and atheists of all stripes, and while he knew it was better to avoid the topic, no matter how often he was asked, he always found he desperately wanted to tell the truth. Was Kim having the same struggle now? Was she weighing the pros and cons of bearing her beliefs in front of him? Was she deciding between risking her beliefs being scorned, and simply not answering?

Finally, Kim turned around again, swallowing the last of her beer. “What do you mean by God?” she asked, her head tipping back to the ceiling. “Do you mean do I believe a man with a white beard is sitting on a cloud somewhere scratching his nose? Which one? The Christian God? There have been thousands of deities throughout human history, how about Zeus? Or Odin? Anubis? Or do you mean some divine energy? Some formless sentience that guides all life on earth? Some religions believe that all souls are connected on some higher plane, and all life is one. Or what if it isn’t sentient, but some cosmic law, like gravity, that gives life — is that God? And what do you mean by believe? Do you mean like I believe I’m a good person, which is really more a hope? Or like I believe the sun will rise tomorrow, because I’ve seen it happen before?”

“I was just curious…” Wilhelm swallowed the last of his drink, and waved to the bartender, gesturing at their empty glasses.

Kim sighed. “I’m sorry,” she muttered, scratching the back of her neck. “You didn’t grow up an agnostic in a… a very devout family without getting sensitive to the issue. I’m used to saying that whole speech very quickly before you can walk away.” Wilhelm smiled to let her know it was okay, and he didn’t really mind. She smiled back, and shook her head. “Honestly… I think anything that is powerful enough to create the universe we live in is far beyond my comprehension,” she said, carefully. “If there is a God, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to see it, or feel it.”

“What about his fingerprints?” Wilhelm asked. He snickered at Kim’s confused look. “It’s something my father used to say. ‘We’ll never see God, but we’ll see his fingerprints.’ It was his word for coincidence. But still… haven’t you ever wondered where those flashes of inspiration came from? When we were stuck with this project, did the answers really just appear in our brains from nowhere?”

“Who knows,” Kim shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to prove it either way.”

“I didn’t feel that way when I was young. I looked everywhere for giant fingerprints in the ground.”

Kim laughed lightly, and accepted the new drink from the bartender. Wilhelm desperately wanted to talk longer — to talk about his father who was religious, and his mother, who was not, and how he never felt pressured but still somehow felt guilty. How his first girlfriend dumped him because he didn’t go to the right services, or say the right words, and how he met his ex-wife at church. How many times he prayed before his tests in school, or by his sister’s hospital bed, or how many commandments he had broken. But something in his stomach made him stop. He glanced at his phone instead.

“Where do you think this is going?”

Wilhelm froze.

“How do you mean?” Wilhelm asked, carefully.

“I’m just asking the question you asked me. I haven’t thought about it too much, but it certainly seems like you have,” Kim tossed her hair behind her shoulder. “Have you thought about where these adaptive nanomachines will take us?”

“There’s no way to know for sure,” he shrugged, as the flicker of hope died in his chest. We might be able to guess what will happen next year, but we’re advancing fast enough that there’s no knowing what will happen in the next decade. Could the Wright Brothers have imagined space flight? Or Graham Bell the Internet?"

“Maybe not, but they could have imagined in-flight meals and telemarketing,” Kim smiled. “I’m just curious how you see your place in the universe. Apparently it’s with the Wright Brothers?”

Wilhelm grinned, and placed his chin in his hands.

“My dad used to talk about proving God, and how if you were walking in a desert, and found a watch, you wouldn’t think it just popped out of nowhere, it had to have been designed. I think we invented a watch. Back in ancient times, there was just sunup and sundown. That was all people had to measure time. Then someone invented the watch, and now people can’t imagine a world without watches and clocks — without something ticking away somewhere, keeping us all walking in step. The International Date Line is a constant throughout the world. Time unifies us. It brings us together. I think these things will do the same. It used to be healthy, or sick. Soon, I think we’ll have a better understanding of our bodies and our health than ever before. I think we’re at the cusp of a discovery that will redefine what it means to be human, and make the world a better place for everyone.”

Wilhelm looked at Kim. She was smiling. If nothing else, he thought, the world was definitely looking better for him.