Page 94 - An Evening with Maxwell's Daemons
P. 94
Viral Assassin
choice of descriptive language can telegraph to the reader whether
or not the secret operation will be doomed, based on the character
of the protagonists. At the far end of that, of course, is burlesque—
a form in which few of us are talented enough to dabble.”
“Other sorts of irony are possible.” Felicity Tinderstack tried not
to look smug. “If you look at the way warfare actually has gone in
the past few centuries, you see an arms race. Obviously, there will
be a winner, but often not by much: otherwise there wouldn’t have
been a scramble by the Allies and the Soviets to grab German
scientists at the end of World War Two. These technologies are in
the zeitgeist, their scientific basis generally known or shared by
academic colleagues in different countries—and the competitive
juices flow whether a war is on or not. Therefore, it is quite likely
that the enemy is doing the same thing! How do you defend against
that? Every database of note gets hacked sooner or later: you can’t
assume your own leader’s DNA isn’t being examined in the enemy’s
laboratory for the same kind of weakness. My idea of an amusing
ending would be for both sides to have their bellicose war-
mongering commanders-in-chief wiped out more or less
simultaneously in a very personalized version of ‘mutual assured
destruction’. Followed, of course, by an outbreak of peace between
nations, etcetera.”
Brad Razeberry seemed amused.
“Why, that doesn’t even begin to cover all the potential cock-
ups, if you want this to fail. Humanity shares an awful lot of genes.
Let’s not forget the unresolved possibility of a pandemic virus
escaping from a lab in Wuhan. I believe part of the research there—
partially funded by the United States—was to see if a naturally-
occurring virus could be weaponized. If it escaped, and that was the
case, then the same thing could happen again—maybe attacking
only Type-A males. Another view of the arms race is technological
diffusion, from machine guns to nuclear bombs: before you know
it, everyone with a mail-order gene splicer will be looking for a nifty
way to eliminate old Aunt Emily and inherit her fortune. These
genies can’t be kept in the bottle, you know. And the blowback: our
agents could return home and spread it here.”
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