To Hold Hope

Lena stopped the elevator with the emergency stop button.

The middle aged scientist sat down on the ground in her lab coat as panic gripped her and her thoughts raced. Sweat poured down her face and her heart felt like it would jump out of her chest.

She didn't know what to do and it was unlike her.

In defeat, she closed her eyes and gave in to the internal dialogue on her dilemma. Like judge and jury she hoped that if she followed the arguments to the end, a solution might take shape, or if not a solution, perhaps she might receive a sign from the universe.

Lena's thoughts were as follows.

Scientists have always stood upon the shoulders of those that came before them in order to do great things. Often, it was like a cheer pyramid: a collective, cohesive, and stable upward expansion of knowledge. Other times it involved crawling over and kicking your elders, unethical experimentation, the removal of cancerous growths from the framework or burning the base out entirely and starting over.

Still, overall there was a net positive gain.

But every once in a while, the science involved things that, even though they were great in stature, even though they had the capacity to yield positive results, should never have been studied at all.

Some things were better left a mystery.

Lena had been unable to determine which category her discovery fell into and the conundrum had driven her to the edge of insanity.

As she stood upon the brink of her mental abyss, all she could think to justify her actions was how it all had stemmed so innocently from a child's curiosity.

An avid student of history and geology, Lena was highly skilled at understanding the past. But her heart lay not in the science, it beat within the story the research told. Narratives being her truest love, Lena viewed the entire timeline of existence like a piece of literature, and she wanted to read every chapter that had ever been written and ever would be written. She also longed for the whole truth — not just what had been recorded by the victors or documented about the wealthy.

She could never forget the moment in her childhood, somewhere around the age of six, when she suddenly comprehended her own mortality and how it meant that she would never know the ending of the story. She would never live to read about the next three hundred years, let alone the next 3000 or 3 million. There would be no "Eyewitness: The Resurgence of Humanity After the 6th Extinction" book like there had been about the Fall of Rome.

It pained her to the point of tears and lack of sleep on more occasions than she cared to admit — then and now. But she had hidden away her pain from her family and friends, conscious it was not a topic that would have been given either the consideration or emotional support required in order to safely let anyone know about it.

She had always been the weird overthinking kid and always would be. The kid that wondered if maybe she should learn how to make antibiotics, just in case the dark ages came back again.

Even now, no one knew her real reasons for becoming a leader in the field of interdisciplinary science. Deep down she was still that tender little girl wanting to read the end of the book; or at least a few chapters longer than she was entitled to by nature.

And today, just minutes before entering the elevator with her research ready in hand to show her boss, she had found the answer to her life's obsession. Lena had discovered a way to imitate the tardigrade's process of horizontal gene transfer.

Why was this so earth shattering you ask, dear reader?

Normally, an organism comes by their genes through inheritance. Horizontal gene transfer, however, is the ability to absorb what is best about a neighbouring plant, bacteria or fungi's DNA and use it to enhance yourself. It enables tardigrades to possess a spectrum of 6000 genes besides their own. It is how they survived all 5 global mass extinctions since life began on earth.

Imagine it as if, after deciding you liked someone's eyes, you could simply tap into their DNA, copy the code that grew the eyes and then grow them yourself if you so desired. Freaky perhaps, but not necessarily an existential threat.

But what if you tapped into something more insidious? Such as a tardigrade's capacity to form a "tun", a method of constricting their bodily functioning using cryptobiosis? In a tun, a tardigrade can essentially freeze dry themselves in a state of youthful, good health until their environment becomes suitable again and then return to life, as if no time has passed. Basically, they can press "fast forward" and ignore life's commercials (and wouldn't we all enjoy that from time to time.)

Just to hammer it home, this ability to enter a tun state means it is quite literally impossible to say for sure whether some tardigrades are not still alive millions of years after the first mass extinction 445 million years ago. Outside of science fiction, they house the closest tangible possibility of extending one's life to the point you are more of an alien time traveler than an organism. Perhaps they already are.

Done right, a human employing horizontal DNA transfer and cryptobiosis would have the unfathomably privileged opportunity to read the end of the book, or as near to it as possible before the sun burns out — longer if they migrated galaxies.

Current science has been chasing the idea of cryo-storage for many decades. They get closer all the time.

But not on the scale of DNA transfer, not using our own individual capabilities at will instead of external methods of freezing oneself.

What Lena had discovered was the ability to create an entirely new human race; one with the endless capacity to incorporate new DNA and turn themselves on and off.

What would it mean to extend not just longevity in years, but also good health into old age?

Sit with that idea a moment.

Sit with Lena in her elevator as she contemplates informing her university, reaping the rewards, awards and contracts and praise. Join her in mentally designing the ways in which to employ such a process and manage a frozen body long term, how to navigate the legalities involved in inheriting a human relative the same way one might inherit a piece of property. Revel, fellow history buffs and literary creatures at the dark satisfaction of finding out whose dystopian novel was closest to reality. Rejoice in knowing that someone you care about who has a crippling disease or infirmary would be able to wait in peace and comfort as the science to cure them develops — perhaps you might even choose to wait with them.

The myriad of positive uses for cryptobiosis were endless.

But so were the negatives.

While developing the science, Lena had not given the negatives much thought. She had been too lost in the stupor of her own zeal for knowledge.

Now, the negative scenarios thundered through her mind like an avalanche of boulders swept up in a glacier whose sharp edges were scourging her soul.

There were, of course, the obvious factors, such as capitalism and discrimination and how that would influence who got to enjoy Lena's discovery and who didn't. These already play out in the healthcare system. But what about genetic warfare? The possibility of a quarrelsome country committing a nuclear atrocity on another while safely sheltering their own genetically modified citizens and waiting out the fallout period? You might call it genocide via time travel.

Could she really be responsible for such an occurrence? Was she prepared to be the mother of the new nuclear threat? Was this how Oppenheimer and Groves felt? If it were possible to ask them, might they tell her they regret their decisions and urge her to destroy her research?

Worse yet, she knew that this was merely one example.

She was admittedly a brilliant literary scientist, but she was also deliriously naive in her hope for humans to be foundationally good and not evil. She must not overlook how history has shown time and again that humans have the capacity, desire and willpower for utterly despicable cruelty and destruction. There was no telling what might be done with her discovery if it were to fall into the wrong hands.

That was enough thinking, she decided. Time to reign it in.

She scanned the space for cues to ground herself. Her eyes rested on the elevator's information panel and the words,

"Maximum capacity"

It was like being doused in ice water and shocked with electricity.

The sign was more than just a sign. It was THE sign.

Maximum capacity.

Setting aside all the global catastrophes and super villains, the most obvious and immediate problem with over-extending the life span of the human race was overpopulation. The science for galactic migration was centuries away at best. Life had to end to allow space for new life to be born. Dropping her research now would cause a population crisis and mass suffering. She couldn't be responsible for forcing humanity to choose who lives and who dies and who gets to procreate and who doesn't. Not even if it meant someone's beloved sick relative died young. Nature and her great wheel of fortune was the best and only mistress for impartial judgments of fate.

Lena unstopped the elevator and changed the direction to return to her lab.

Pandora may have already released the evils into the world, but, Lena decided, she would be the woman to help her to once again hold hope in the box.

Instead of dedicating her life's work to the future, she would now dedicate herself to preserving the present: starting with the destruction of every post-it, notebook, cloud file and test-tube.

A fire was the simplest she decided. After wiping her computer and her backup, Lena pulled the fire alarm. She waited fifteen minutes for her colleagues to evacuate before discreetly returning to her lab and setting off an inferno of chemical fires. Lastly, she added some cyanide to her cold coffee. She had accepted that since her mind was susceptible to being manipulated, she must therefore be destroyed as well.

As the flames neared her corner, her last thoughts were of her inner child and how she had failed her. Instead of living an extended life, she was now cutting it off short. The tragedy of her mental vision manifested into an apparition. She saw herself at six years old again, hovering in front of her like a specter in a Victorian novel. Her child's hand reached for her adult hand. She accepted it and the touch was of forgiveness and peace.

Lena raised the cup to her lips.

*

Further Reading if desired:

https://frontlinegenomics.com/everything-you-need-and-want-to-know-about-tardigrades/

First published by Call Me Les on Vocal Media March 2025. All rights reserved. Entered into the "Life-Extending Conundrum" contest.