Page 873 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"Yes," said Han Fei-tzu. "You may go."
"You misunderstand me," said Ela. "I don't need your permission to go. I have more to say before I go."
Han Fei-tzu bowed his head. "Please. We are listening."
"Yes," whispered Wang-mu. "I'm listening too."
"There is a possibility-- a remote one, as you will see, but a possibility nonetheless-- that if we are able to decode the descolada virus and tame it, we can also make an adaptation that could be useful on Path."
"How so?" asked Han Fei-tzu. "Why should we want this monstrous artificial virus here?"
"The whole business of the descolada is entering a host organism's cells, reading the genetic code, and reorganizing it according to the descolada's own plan. When we alter it, if we can, we'll remove its own plan from it. We'll also remove almost all of its self-defense mechanisms, if we can find them. At that point, it may be possible to use it as a super-splicer. Something that can effect a change, not just on the reproductive cells, but on all the cells of a living creature."
"Forgive me," said Han Fei-tzu, "but I have been reading in this field lately, and the concept of a super-splicer has been rejected, because the body starts to reject its own cells as soon as they're genetically altered."
"Yes," said Ela. "That's how the descolada kills. The body rejects itself to death. But that only happened because the descolada had no plan for dealing with humans. It was studying the human body as it went, making random changes and seeing what happened. It had no single plan for us, and so each victim ended up with many different genetic codes in his or her cells. What if we made a super-splicer that worked according to a single plan, transforming every cell in the body to conform with a single new pattern? In that case, our studies of the descolada assure us that the change could be effected in each individual person within six hours, usually-half a day at the most."
"Fast enough that before the body can reject itself--"
"It will be so perfectly unified that it will recognize the new pattern as itself."
Wang-mu's crying had stopped. She seemed as excited now as Fei-tzu felt, and despite all her self- discipline, she could not contain it. "You can change all the godspoken? Free even the ones who are already alive?"
"If we are able to decode the descolada, then not only would we be able to remove the OCD from the godspoken, we would also be able to install all the enhancements in the common people. It would have the most effect in the children, of course-- older people have already passed the growth