Friday

8/1/25

The workweek has been atypically slow and arduous, but that's what happens when you're stuck dealing with inept management and unruly code. Unfortunately, I knew my home life wouldn't be much easier. Harley is still messed up over the situation on Monday, and my mind is no less chaotic than it's been all week. Harley has spent the majority of her leisure time either with a bottle of wine and a joint or half asleep on the couch. I honestly don't blame her or her coping mechanisms. It's not healthy, but I sure as shit am no better, so what can I really say? I've done what I can do best, console her when she'll have me, and incentivize a more solid diet. The silver lining to all the bullshit is that I've had more time for research during my late nights.

I haven't found much, to be honest. But over the many hours I have started isolating particular genes to experiment with, methods to possibly control them, and most promisingly, I now have people to talk to. Granted, they're nowhere near as blindly ambitious as I am, but it's a start.

One of the benefits of living in New York is the large population of wealthy tech and finance bros. Young egotistical men who have spare money, time, and deep insecurities. So, naturally, they turn to unconventional means to stay young and healthy. Not that I'm much better, of course. The normies among them have their trendy diets and absurd exercise regiments, but there's an ever-growing population of biohackers who have decided to take their biology into their own hands, quite literally. It's simple on the surface level, NFC chips into their palms so they don't have to pull their wallets or phones out to pay for drinks, or magnets in their fingers for electrical engineers to feel electromagnetic currents in wires. That's the surface level. But there's an ever-growing population of them who've actually started tweaking their genomes and biology as well. It's still super simple, single gene changes, eye color, hair color, etc. But it is a start, and they have communities, and resources. So I made my way into one of their larger Discord servers on Wednesday, and after a lengthy and expensive vetting process, got myself into a meetup tonight at a quiet bar in Bushwick.

Most people would be wary of these types of situations, but not me, I know these people. I went to school with them, partied with them, and worked with them on the regular. Behind all their desperate attempts at attention, immorality, wealth, and fame, deep down all they really want is love and admiration. Just someone to compliment their ideas, and tell them they're special. So that's my plan, join their conversations as eye candy, take notes, and use them for whatever I can. I'm most interested in speaking to the headliner of tonight's meeting, a man named Alton Ericks. He sequenced his own genome in his spare time, fed it into a custom designed neural net, and now uses it to recommend him medical treatments on a whim. He just feeds it regular vitals and bloodwork, and gets personalized medicinal regimens to maintain his "youth and vitality". I've spared you the bullshit and jargon, but that's quite promising for me. While creating a custom neural net isn't easy, I can do it with enough time and data, and I can easily feed it my genome as well. I just gotta tweak some output parameters to recommend what I actually want.

I've settled on what I actually want to do with this little pet project of mine. First, I'm going to start with simple trials, single gene tweaks that are easily visible. Namely, I'll try to change my eye color from brown to green. This is controlled by two genes: OCA2 and HERC2, but focusing on the prior should be more than enough, and ensure that I have my methodology down. I've always wanted green eyes anyway, and such a simple change has a very slim chance of actually hurting me eventually. So tonight's goal is to convince a tech bro to advise me, and potentially help financially. Just a foot in the door for future, more daring ideas.

----

I showed up for the event about 30 minutes late in a modest navy wrap dress with my hair down. Don't wanna distract them too much. The meet and greet was almost over, but I was able to grab a quick Negroni from the bar, and listen in on a remarkably dull conversation regarding using AI facial scanning to predict future diseases. Somehow, these guys can often make the most promising and fascinating topics bland and monotonous. I've been to this bar before, "Nowadays" usually had an eclectic mix of artsy types and families due to its large outdoor space. But today it was unusually quiet and reserved, the large majority of the crown having been seated in anticipation of the speakers in the spacious parklike venue.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

The first speaker would be Ryan Holmes, who claims to have the power to "disrupt the supplement industry with AI personalized homeopathic remedies". Followed by Johnathan Naz, a biomedical engineer who's trying to advocate for replacing functional organs with experimental implants so he can drink more.

Lastly was Alton, who I'm really here to speak to, sadly the first two speakers were exhausting and verbose, so by the time Alton stepped onto the stage I was weary and tipsy, not enough to cause me issues, but certainly enough to reduce my social aptitudes. Alton was about 5'8 with ear - length curly brown hair, sporting a green button down shirt and brown trousers. Not particularly attractive, but certainly better than the majority of the group. He went on for about 30 minutes describing in painstaking detail just how he designed his neural net, followed by another 16 minutes of his future ambitions, which of course included anti aging and personalized fitness regimes. But it was worth it for the quality notes I was able to jot into my phone. As he concluded his presentation and stepped off the stage demurely I recognized my time to shine and prepared myself for the conversation. I waited patiently for him to refill his drink at the bar, eagerly respond to viewers' questions, and get a minute to himself. That's when I approached.

I decide to sneak up from behind and open with, "So the infamous young scientist actually does get time to unwind?" In my sing-song teasing voice. The confidence is fake, of course, but years of manifesting self-love has taught me how to deceive others much better than how to deceive myself.

"It seems I'm not as popular in this crowd as I thought I'd be, maybe it's my accent. He had a mild British accent at best, nothing too strong, but it probably made him feel special, so I used that.

"I actually think it's quite sophisticated. I'm curious though, how did you come up with the idea of training an LLM on nucleotides?"

He took a solid 30 seconds to look me up and down before replying rather slowly. "It's not that crazy, is it? Genomes are practically a language, it's like translating Kanji to English, with less grammatical rules, and larger stakes. The model is a black box anyway, I just fed it training data and refined my outputs."

I followed his appraisal with one of my own, just to throw him off and even out the discomfort before I replied. "I get that, but how did you perfect the training system, there's much less syntax and grammar than there is in natural languages, you can't exactly analyze nucleotides as if you would words."

He waited patiently as I slowly formed my question as precisely as possible for maximum bandwidth, lovingly caressing his glass in his right hand, and pondered the query for a solid minute before replying. "What's your name love?, let's start off simply before we get into the real weeds. I'm Alton, as you likely know."

"Vivie....Vi" I respond curtly, correcting myself. Best not to be too forthcoming at this point. "Sorry, I was a bit excited."

"No trouble, Vi, it's a pleasure to meet you. "As for the answer to your question, this is probably not the best venue for such in depth conversations. I could lecture for hours on the most trivial topics. I am intrigued, though, what sparked such a curiosity in you? You don't exactly seem like the type of girl for such an event."

He finished that question with an exaggerated glance around our surroundings and the crowd.

I let out a brief chuckle before responding, "Fair point, I apologize for bombarding you out of nowhere. I'm new to this whole scene."

I say while gesturing vaguely around me. "To be honest, I was researching changing my eye color for typically vain reasons, and eventually stumbled my way here. But I am a software engineer, so I do have a modicum of relevant knowledge. Where do you think would be a more appropriate place for such discussions, Alton?"

"Can't say there are many better places, Vi, but how about my home? I don't mean to sound forward, not that you're not... cute, but that's where my lab and equipment is. Maybe we could help each other, considering our backgrounds?"

Well shit, either that was easy because he's coming on to me, or he genuinely is that friendly, but I'm not going to let such an opportunity pass me by. Fuck the consequences, I need the insight. "Sounds good, when and where?"

He looked me in the eyes and gave me a savage little smirk before gently grabbing my hand and saying "Tomorrow, noon, enjoy your night Vi." He winked and proceeded to walk away before I could even ask him where the fuck he lives.

It wasn't until I snapped out of my reverie that I realized I was holding something. A business card? I didn't feel it at first because it wasn't the right size and shape. But lo and behold was his name, address and phone number printed on a delicate piece of material. Except it didn't feel like fabric at all, it was a tan color, somewhat supple with thin rounded edges, and engraved black text set into the larger texture of the material. It almost looked like... skin? No fucking way could it be, but goddamn it did look and feel like the real thing.

I guess I'm either gonna learn a lot this weekend, or seriously regret my choices. Only one way to find out...