Page 98 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

The Vorax

experimental technology; you know, Edison’s search for a light-bulb
filament and all the rest of the semi-serendipitous discoveries made
by puttering and jury-rigging elements approximating the desired
product until dumb luck provided the answer. No, genetic
engineering is the application of known principles to the raw
materials of inheritance. Anything unexpected derived from such
scientific endeavors is easily observed and eliminated or controlled.
In the case of the Vorax, I am doing the same work at electronic
computational speed as nature requires millennia to perform.
Failures never leave the drawing board nowadays—at least for those
who know their business.”
He implicated himself among the cognoscenti thereby; I certainly
wasn’t going to ask for an objective endorsement of that assessment.
If he already had assured himself of the success of his creation, that
made my job all the easier.
“So,” I said slowly, stroking my jaw instead of his ego, “what you
need is enough money to get these things from concept to mass-
production and distribution. How long would that take?”
He looked at me hungrily—I dared not think Voraciously. “I have
been working on this for almost a decade. The theoretical
groundwork is laid, and I can assemble the first unit from what are
essentially off-the-shelf modules. Once it checks out, I will ship a
million in vitro embryos to your people along with the patent filing
donating all rights to the people of the world. But even though I can
do this on a shoestring budget, it won’t be cheap. I would have
financed it myself by now if I had the money or could have
convinced anyone of sufficient means to back me.”
“Then, sir, please tell me how much it will take.”
He did not hesitate, rattling off items on an order sheet and their
total. It was almost Al Magnus’s limit. I asked him for some sort of
documentation I could send to the finance minister of Ambergistan
describing the project, and told him to open a business account into
which I could transfer the funds. By the time I left he could barely
contain himself, waving his arms and whooping with sheer joy. I tried
to match about a tenth of his enthusiasm; after all, we had just solved
all of mankind’s problems. Definitely an occasion for mutual
congratulation!
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