«Being Outside»

«This is a story of a scientist who did population genetics on some rabbits, mice or flies or whatever. 

He did his work alone. Tended to think kinda geometrically about genes and gene pools. Y’know, basic sequences are like a coordinate system creating a multi-dimensional space of possible genetic combinations. A genotype would look like a point in that space (in my head it’s colored, against a black background) and a gene pool like a cloud of those. 

He ended up simulating it on a computer — getting input parameters from the periodic DNA-screenings of the lab population. Being bored as hell at his place of work, he changed the environment of the population every once in a while. The gene pool reacted, the cloud shifted. 

Over time the alterations he brought into the environment — just as reactions to them — grew more sophisticated, vastly exceeding his expectations. Out of curiosity he analyzed the genetic history of the pool and started to realize quite a peculiar fact: 

He could apply the behavioral lens for interpreting the mere changes in the gene pool of some lab-dwelling population and get decent results. He could even predict the so-called “movements” of it inside the “gene-space”. 

“Yeah, this special kind of behavior that isn’t informed by perceptual data from the world in which it is supposedly occurring. Very curious indeed” — he told himself trying to dismiss the thought and failing utterly. 

Unwillingly, he kept making up different versions of rectifying that discrepancy. For instance, although the gene pool did not have direct perceptual access to the environment on which its survival was dependant, it could utilize it’s non-coding DNA for storing memories of the past experimental sequences that appeared in the unmapped and forever changing regions of the adaptive space overlaying the unforgiving and suspiciously cunning outside. And the rest of the junk DNA could contain the “cognitive machinery” required to process those memories. 

The more he thought about that, the more he couldn’t help but perceive the processes he himself supposedly caused in an agential manner. Eventually, an insane idea came to his mind and this time he didn’t try to resist it. 

Being so ingrained into the intricate mechanics of the internal and external gene flows of this population, he composed a genotype that he thought could serve as a signal in its internal language. An experiment that would decisively prove or disprove this gene pools cognizance. At least to him. 

He grew a specimen carrying his “signal” (and enhanced its fertility — to speed up the experiment) separately from the main population until it reached sexual maturity, then he let it join the rest and reproduce.

He continued the routine genetic screenings but decided not to analyze them until enough time has passed for a large enough number of slices to accumulate. Before the day he was planning to analyze the accumulated history, he also decided to run a testing simulation with input parameters of the day he sent his “signal”. It was going to take a couple hours, so he left the computer running and left for home. 

The next day he started his analysis from the genetic history of the real population, immediately noticing something: after his “signal” entered the pool and started spreading across the gene space occupied by it, the rate of mutations began rapidly decreasing. Strangely enough, not until (seemingly out of nowhere) appeared one which made the “signal”-carriers infertile, if it found its way into such a genotype. The rate at which it spread across the unaffected population was like nothing he ever saw. 

Eventually the “signal-carrying” part of the population died off, but the genetic traces of it could be found everywhere across the pool in the non-coding DNA. What made the situation even more bizarre was the “dynamic stagnancy” of it sustained up until this very moment: the pool ceased to produce “experimental” genotypes in the unmapped regions of the gene-space. In fact, it became more homogenous over time. Internally, however, it was rich with processes that often involved the traces of the “signal” meaning of which he didn’t understand. 

In order to find out more, he decided to check out the simulated version of events which turned out to be not identical but uncannily similar to the actual one. Thanks to the denser temporality of the digital pools environment, he could see whether the stagnancy phase ended on its own — and it did. 

After that, he started noticing particular genotypes appearing on the outskirts of the pool. Having taken a brief look at them he realized — with horror — that a part of their structure was very much akin to his original “signal”. He could not bring himself to decipher it and was ready to shut down the experiment and erase the data. 

Nonetheless, he did take a look at the following history of the simulated pool. Such occurrences became more and more often over time, the segments of the DNA supposedly carrying a response grew ever larger. Eventually, it ran out of non-coding DNA but that didn’t stop it — the response simply started replacing the coding sequences. Were they to be ever actualized, the unfortunate creatures would surely be monstrous. The pool was pulsating with adaptivity-wise wasteful, insane genotypes. 

This led to the slow withering of the virtual population in the environment as unforgiving as ever. And, nonetheless, not for a moment it stopped producing genotypes ever more overloaded with sequences assembled in a way so reminiscent to the one that started it all. 

This couldn’t continue forever. The later slices were all pitch-black.

While erasing the data and the population, the scientist was trying to drive away the thought that were he to decipher the outskirt genotypes, somewhere among them he would hear screams.»