TFN Ep 2 - JR Gets the Message
Bobby viewed a face that cannot be anyone but the one pictured
Episode 2
As he drove to work that morning through Vancouver’s beautiful Fraser Valley to his position as a junior lecturer in genetics at Trinity University, JR ruminated on being contented with his unlikely role in this life, given his unique circumstance and birth. He would joke to his fellow post-ops that he had been ‘snapped off an army blanket- born in a banjo’ in reference to the fact that 25 years ago a Johnny Cash fan, looking for something to do with his billions, beyond Seattle yachts, decided he would collect Cash memorabilia, especially his guitars.
His fellow lab workers knew the rest of the story – how Allan Boehm one day had an older guitar tested for remnant DNA, and when it came back strong enough for a biolab to fortify, he thought he’d push the envelope. The biolab was in Puerto Vallarta, MX, comfortably out of the influence of ‘ethics committees’ and it made no secret that SCNT regeneration of mammals was its forte – usually prize horses, dogs, but mostly pig and cattle breeding. Boehm offered the funding for the lab to pursue the same process with human DNA. There were some trying moments when the surrogate mother became equivocal, late in the process, but a few million pesos assuaged her family.
In 2009 Boehm and his wife came home to Marin County with an infant who certainly exemplified the notion that DNA can be persuaded to regenerate itself, as an identical twin, on demand. The ‘Singularity’ people didn’t like Boehm or his confrere Martin McGlade, a humanist philosopher he worked with. Their issue was that cloning a human would not transmit the memories, or the brain that harboured them, into the future. McGlade throughout his career had championed DNA alone as the center of personal identity, but there were a hundred Big Pharma spinoffs that wanted everyone to think brain uploading would somehow, some day become Transhumanism.
Boehm realized one thing during his research in his quest to understand identity – that was confirmed for him later by his Asian associates: SCNT transfers exactly one copy of DNA when inserted into the barren embryo, and that DNA seeds everything after it. This consequently describes biological ‘continuance’.
Such were his thoughts, alive with the prospect that AI was about to make the deep difficulties of ectogenesis addressable, when McGlade’s daughter Marky pointed out a curious email message left for ‘To whom it may concern’.
It was not unusual for JR to have to answer any number of questionable emails each morning. It had been five years since the excitement of the announced cloning of Johnny Cash had quieted down to a murmur, now reduced to little more than a rumor— that some guy in the Pacific Northwest who was a doppelganger for a young Cash had got away with something akin to an impersonation tribute of him, with a dash of AI imagery thrown in. And that was how JR wanted to leave things, it is hard to be responsible or accountable for a life you never yourself actually lived. And nobody believed him when he said he wanted to be a geneticist rather than a singer. Eventually the tabloids gave up.
The sender was allegedly the Campaign for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and was addressed to their lab Admin, requesting information on the current disposition of the news stories of 2017, and who to speak with about the veracity of those claims. JR was electrified by the implications of the inquiry, as he was among the myriad West Coast people who hoped that Kennedy would claim the presidency that fall.
“Jesus H. Christ!” he exclaimed. “My father worked with RFK Jr. when they cooperated on native Indian water claims during the 90’s - a reservation on the Hudson River was losing its fishing rights. Bobby and Pete Seeger had made sure that didn’t happen-Cash had played at one of their rallies.
Marky suggested they discuss the email with Martin McGlade, the department head upstairs and they walked into his office and suggested a talk on the matter, at once.
McGlade had a dual role at Trinity University. He and Tom Leahy had arranged for this small college to take on the challenge of a Biology faculty when it had otherwise been a liberal arts college with an emphasis on business education, largely for foreign students willing to pay its high fees.
Silicon Valley tech billionaires paid even more, it too was interested in funding research on how it was that Johnny Cash had come to be cloned, Some prominent members of their Calico initiative had founded a Trinity chair in Genetics, to integrate with the new SFU teaching hospital being built in Surrey and dedicated to women’s health. If the human species was to revolutionize its means of reproduction, it was completely evident to all that women would have to be at the center of it.
McGlade looked across his desk at JR and Marky with a look both of astonishment and of seriousness.
“The message doesn’t really say anything, so of course we must reply and find out further if they were just looking for a donation or whatever, towards his campaign. But I suspect that it runs much deeper than that, and that someone on their election team believe the more rational stories of 2017, and have been instructed to inquire further. How do you prefer that we handle this, JR?”
JR was circumspect as he considered this latest impingement on his privacy. He had his wonderful wife Danielle to consider, with a child due. He realized that people would again expect him to be some facsimile of his ‘father’ and he was tired of that. At the same time, if the imminent president of the United States wants to know more about you— one has to listen.
“I’m ready for another go at it,” he said to Martin.
'“I can handle it, should be fun. If Bobby can use some help in his campaign, or with the things he intends to do, I’m all for it. Big Pharma and Calico don’t necessarily support things like my work on AI gestation, but Bobby and Nicole understand medical terminology and concepts better than anybody in that office, past or present. Should we reply as the HU, as our genetics department, or myself as an individual, Martin? Or just talk to Bobby first, if we can?”
“Just call him up and zoom in with him. Marky can set that up, just weasel your way up his campaign bandwagon. I’ll leave it for you two guys to put it together - with one provision. I want to watch that man’s face when he sees yours, given that he knew your father in person. Therein lies the miracle of everything we all work for. Regen and reality become partners.”
Later that day, Kennedy was relaxing in his campaign trailer outside Seattle processing messages, when he decided to also ask Perplexity what this story of Cash being regenerated was all about. An instant later he had its summary of the key points:
· 25 years ago, a wealthy Johnny Cash fan named Allan Boehm funded a biolab in Mexico to clone Cash using DNA from one of his old guitars. The cloning was successful, resulting in the birth of “JR Boehm”.
· JR now works as a junior lecturer in genetics at Trinity University in Vancouver. He is modest about his progeny, stories of his lab origins, and active in the Catholic Church.
· Boehm worked with a humanist philosopher named Martin McGlade, who believes DNA alone defines personal identity.
In the right column of its answer, Perplexity offered a social image of JR gleaned from a yachting magazine, that corroborated his position as a lecturer at Trinity.
Bobby saw something that went beyond twins, family and offspring.
Something that would change his perspective on life and destiny, forever.