EARS RECEIVED A CALL from the surgeon early Friday morning, and he asked to meet them at 10 a.m. With so many interviews cascaded together, the podcast team was unprepared with questions.

“We’re winging this one again,” Peter admitted while driving to the hospital, “but I can handle it, based on your conversation with him, Ears.”

“Yes. He’s a talker. The challenge will be to keep him on track.”

“OmniBev ran without too much heat from the hinterlands, right?” Peter asked.

Ears nodded. “It depends on degree, I suppose. I can’t judge how volatile things are when every breeze is a whirlwind. We may have broken twenty million on streams and downloads, but I’m not sure I appreciate the threats that ride along. The world is filled with crazies, a big boatload of scared nut jobs with weapons.”

“Hmm,” Molli observed, “I assume you are still forwarding the worst of those to our PD friends?”

“Yep.”

“Good, and we’re queued for having your girlfriend on today’s 4 p.m. run, Peter?”

“You guys keep teasing me about this gal, and now I’m finally convinced to make good on it. When I walked her out to her car, she asked me to give her another foot rub.”

“And you didn’t pick up on that? Are any male hormones flowing in your veins, big guy?” Ears joked.

“You’ll get no more direct hint from a woman than an invite for a massage, my boy. A woman could slap you in the face or wrap her legs around your waist with an offer, and you still wouldn’t understand anything about her intentions or emotions.”

“Yeah, um, I’m not so great with emotions. Born that way. But okay already, I’ll do it. Just been busy.”

Molli hesitated, feeling like their chiding was getting excessive. “We’re not forcing you, Peter; only teasing.”

Peter nodded his head and searched for a parking space. “No more garages for us, folks. Everything occurs out in the open.”

They met the surgeon at an outdoor patio off a waiting room on the ninth floor of the hospital. Although fall had arrived, it was a warm day in Boston, and the patio faced to the south.

Molli donned her sunglasses as they sat at a concrete table and bench. A large blue and white metal umbrella shaded them from the sun. After introductions, Peter started the interview.

“We’re so glad you could make the time to sit with us. For our internal needs, we called you ‘Oort Cloud.’”

He shrugged. “Oort Cloud as in solar system?”

“Yes. Most people don’t get the connection,” Ears advised, “and it’s a stretch, but the reference is relevant. If you visited the Oort Cloud, you’d find every shape of asteroid and comet and space debris you could ever imagine.”

The doctor shook his head, then rearranged his white coat to expose his sewn-on name tag.

“I get that and agree with you, given the context. Can we use an easier name during this interview? Can you call me Bill, my first name? It doesn’t matter if my colleagues recognize me, assuming they’re even away from work for enough time to hear a podcast. No secrets here since you can walk into any ER these days and get an immediate eyeful of what we experience constantly.”

“Great,” Peter replied, anxious to get the interview moving. “Let’s begin. We’re visiting today with Bill, a Boston surgeon who will discuss ramifications of the multitude of new geedee technologies and related impacts on medicine and the human body. Bill, can you give us a view on how the new technologies and extensions, whether clipper, chipper, or gripper, are impacting what you and your colleagues are doing in health care and treatment?”

“I’m pressed for time, so I’ll start right in. I prefer to ramble for a few minutes before you ask more questions. Are you okay with that?”

Peter was always on high alert when an interviewee wanted to take charge, finding some could easily veer off in tangential directions. But given the doctor’s time constraints, he agreed to accommodate the request.

“Sure. Go ahead.”

“In the very early days, most tech creators followed very modest genetic and related controls from the NIH, FDA, CDC, AMA, and the many sub-specialties. Name your three-digit acronym. They were generally well-aligned to ensure the right people were doing the right things under disciplined lab trials with proper supervision and controls. It was working. Not perfectly, but working.”

He paused to take a breath, and they could tell he was building a head of steam.

“Yet there were many things the medical community couldn’t control, by a long shot. As early as the late teens, budding genetic entrepreneurs were working in their garages to create geedee kits for elementary school classes. Can you imagine that? Third graders playing with the DNA of microorganisms?”

“Got it,” Peter interjected. The doctor’s observation was so commonly known that the mention seemed superfluous.

“And geedee tech is so compelling. Who wouldn’t want improved appendage functions or that new brain capability or an enhanced liver after ruining the first one with alcohol? Maybe have a go with robotic leg muscles if you did construction work. Who wouldn’t want to suspend or reverse aging or integrate reversalogues and senolytic drugs into their daily regimen? These discoveries and implementations were hailed as the miracle drugs, miracle cures, and sure as hell they were that and still are.”

He paused momentarily to pull out a handkerchief and wipe his forehead.

“However, demand for this tech far outstripped our ability to adapt during the mid-to-late twenties. So now, new crap is spewing from every possible source. No government bodies are big enough or resourced enough to withstand the crush of demand for new products. In fact, the first to bend and break the modest rules we had in place were the folks making the rules and laws. You know about this, of course. Those get-rich-quick medical miracle stories in the news, with every congressman and regulator having their hands in the till. That’s back page at this juncture. News no longer.”

Peter wanted to clarify the purpose of the interview. “And how’s this affecting your job?”

“I can’t go there yet. You asked me to give you context, and I’m not quite finished. It was the unexpected, exploding demand that inundated the system. And it wasn’t as if an interested and willing person requested only one augmentation or modification. That one guy might want ten or twenty simultaneous genetic changes – some big, some small. If he had the money, he could get that.”

“Access to geedee tech certainly wasn’t equitably distributed, for sure,” Peter added.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Thing is, it started out as legit tech with rigor and discipline about how it was made, distributed and applied. But worse than we all could have imagined, meeting the market’s needs for elective genetic modifications quickly devolved into devising code changes for any flippant purpose. Even more horrific, any damn backyard garage barbeque latex glove science maven could make the stuff. All it took was a little high school chemistry and a thousand bucks to create the next popular and enriching genetic upgrade.

“But the smaller gene editing entrepreneurs weren’t the biggest problem at first, were they?”

“By no means. I’ll mention this without vilifying any specific countries, though we both know who they are. Most countries don’t have our regulatory structures, our safeguards and protections. In fact, we clearly know these nations would never create or apply them anyway. Their only focus is superior tech, meaning superior human beings since humans are certainly tech. Maybe their goal is to enhance their national defense or produce enhanced workers for commercial use. They’d be happy editing citizens to their specifications, similar to a factory chicken farm creating superior meat. The side benefit to the few in power, as seen in umpteen media reports, was to proliferate untested, unworthy, unholy tech while lining the pockets of the wealthy, the politicians, and their lackeys.”

“You’re talking geedee tech?”

“Sure, but not all geedee tech was crap. Your friend here, Ears, for instance. Hey bud, just by looking at you, I can tell you had the best tech there was at the time.”

He turned back to Peter. “Problem is, most people never get that high quality. Most people are buying their stuff off the internet or in a back alley then injecting or popping or rubbing it on. And voila! Within a few weeks or months a malformed arm is growing out of their ass.”

Peter was reminded of his friend Dirksen. “Yeah. Seen too much of that.”

“If you went back, say, twenty years ago, you might have predicted this. You could have anticipated that genetic tech would provide capabilities and features beyond the imagination. It’ll allow you to experience a month-long orgasm, if that’s your taste. You can enjoy the sweetness of honey no bee ever knew, or grow a new lobe of your brain to process math like a supercomputer. Back then, you could have predicted the rush, the fervor, the frenzied demand for this tech. But you could not have predicted the insane speed of adoption. I would have guessed a hundred years to get to where we are today. Not ten or twenty as happened.”

“We could say that about AI, social media influence, metallics integration,” Molli added.

“Sure, don’t even get me started on secondary influences. But back to the early days of adoption, which was only a few years ago. Who would have seen the degree to which other countries would influence what happened in our country? If China was producing vastly superior intellects in their children, do you believe a competitive executive in Silicon Valley would stand by and say, ‘bully for them, but my kids won’t get that?’ Really? The black market tech flowing from other countries overwhelmed us. It was cocaine and drug cartels times ten or a hundred. We understand that dynamic now, though it’s too late. Certain lucky people won. What you see on the mass-produced news feeds are stories of those who’ve won. But other people lost, many other people. The leagues of unfortunates are relegated to backwater lives of misery and overfilled hospital wards.”

Combing back the small tuft of hair on his head, Peter was impatient. During the last decade, the media had reported all of what he mentioned, and the doctor’s accounting of it lacked the first-hand excitement and emotion he hoped for.

“Understood, Bill. Can we now move to how this impacts you in your profession?”

“Okay, I’m finished with that tirade, I suppose. I’ll recall what my grandmother used to say: ‘It’s a shitstorm in the middle of a hurricane.’ I’m not implying negatives about the medical profession’s response to this calamity, by the way. The entire health care infrastructure is doing what it can to mitigate this burgeoning catastrophe. This hospital, for example, is filled with heroes who do their best to cure, fix, and correct.

“Just this hospital?”

“No, every hospital. ‘Shitstorm’ is a figurative word for what this off-target crap is doing to people’s lives. Do you know what I do each day? How many people I see damaged by defective geedee tech? I don’t want to pick on that tech exclusively, as the debacle cuts across every implementation and hybridization – clipper, chipper, and gripper-mechs. Those same basement garage surgeon biologist chemist geneticist capitalist innovators are doing their own chip and metal integrations into bodies. They often unintentionally use off-target crap like hastily developed pluripotent stem cells or their derivatives. Imagine what happens when you integrate a chip incorrectly into a nerve. I’ve had people come to emergency in such horrific pain, their mouths were frozen open and they could no longer scream, like that famous painting.”

They noticed the doctor’s eyes well-up with tears.

“But this is no painting. It’s a twelve-year-old kid who got street tech from a back-alley acquaintance who said it worked just fine. He grabs instructions off the internet and tries it himself. Then he dies after two days of horrific suffering from off-target salamander DNA that slowly turned his lungs to jelly. And all he wanted was a pair of gills to show his buddies.”

Molli noticed her heart was beating rapidly. She had never known firsthand the suffering he described.

“How do they know when and where to find help?”

The doctor blinked his eyes, trying to hold back the tears.

“Some of them finally realize a physician can sometimes repair a little of the hell they’re living in or temporarily alleviate the pain. We had a twenty-something male patient a few days ago who arrived after rubbing street tech crap onto his skin with a cotton swab. He yearned for larger feet like elves in the movies. So he bought what he understood was a bottle of the good stuff from Thailand, and it wasn’t cheap. I watched as they wheeled him in on the gurney for pre-op. He had three small legs or stubs of different shapes protruding from his left shin bone. Nerves, mind you, physical nerve bundles, were radiating from the skin. Every wisp of air was like breaking a bone. Every minor bump was a car crash for him. In sad irony, this guy’s feet were mangled beyond repair. The poor ortho surgeon who spent ten hours working on him said he’d never seen it that bad before. But then, he and I and my colleagues repeat that every day now.”

Both Molli and Ears wiped tears from their eyes.

“But to answer your question more directly, Molli, I can’t impart to you the suffering he went through. I can’t easily say how many days or weeks the problem takes to present itself. This new tech like rapid scroll speeds normal physical growth processes so differently, depending on the individual. Either way, it ends up being that simple thing called embarrassment, for God’s sake, that prevents people from getting help. They’re afraid to admit they screwed their bodies forever in an innocent desire to differentiate themselves from others, or to ride the wave of the latest fad.”

“Is that case you mentioned an exception, or are they all that bad?” Peter wondered.

“I’m not saying that guy was typical, but every case we see these days is atypical. There is no typical off-target geedee varint case. We try to counter it using legit geedee with approved stem cell lines and gene drives and scroll, but you never know what you’ll find when you mix the two. Might be better, might be worse. You end up performing good old surgery in many cases and do your best to improve the bad situations. Sorry if this is too much reality, but we see it in droves every day. Unfortunately, the lines where they’re queueing up get longer and longer. I love medicine, it’s my life, but I wish somewhere along the way we’d slowed things down. It’s the pace of change that’s the killer. The pace.”

Peter knew he needed to close the show and let Bill go back to his world of human calamity.

“Well, Bill, that gives us much to consider; much to consider. As a final question, what do you recommend to anyone considering geedee?”

“It’s the same as any other tech, I guess. A substantial burden rests on those who are less able to acquire quality genetic tech. The consequences, however, can be far, far more egregious. Sorry, my watch just buzzed and I need to run. Anything else?”

“No. Again, thank you for your time today. Very enlightening and helpful to our audience.”

He thanked them and hurried back inside while the trio sat for a minute.

“I feel bad,” Ears confessed, “or guilty for having come from a wealthy family. My parents intervened on me when I was younger and gung-ho and had to use it. There was peer pressure to proceed without thinking, but they made sure I had the best tech. I see stories all the time and have geedee friends who are damaged, but this really impacts you.”

“No reason to feel bad, bud,” Molli assured him. “This is the way it has always been since we dropped from trees. Some are luckier than others and get to procreate, and others get eaten by the lions.”

“Odd, isn’t it?” Peter wondered.

“What?” they both responded.

“Odd we came out of trees three or four million years ago, and the tech that OmniBev suggested might put us back in them. Reminds me of that band from the eighties, Devo, I think, implying de-evolution. Are we evolving or devolving, or does it matter?”

“You’re getting very philosophical, Peter,” she expressed, wanting to change subjects. “Kids, one more down and how many to go?”

Ears counted on his fingers. “Five more. We’re screaming through these and might be done with interviews the week after next, assuming they get queued for play and replay. Holidays, here we come! Geez, I can’t wait for our fun winter vacation at Peter’s parent’s house in Toledo.”

Peter smirked. “You two are so persistent."