Insistence of Vision by David Brin Page A

hundred million years ago.”
    He nodded. “Seems a likely explanation. But what’s puzzling you –”
    “– is why the capability has been hanging around all this time! Lurking in our genome, never used!”
    George held up a hand. “I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First, let’s admit that humans have now changed the balance, the equation. We are now mammals who can lie around for weeks or months while others feed us. First family and tribe, back in the Stone Age, then town and nation –”
    “– and that increased survival rates after serious injuries,” I admitted. “But it never resulted in organ regrowth!”
    Abruptly I realized that half a dozen grad students had lowered their tools and instruments and were sidling closer. They knew this was historic stuff. Nobel-level stuff. Heck, I didn’t mind them listening in. But shirking should never be blatant! I sure never got away with it, back when I served my time as a lab-slave. My withering glare sent them scurrying back to their posts. Oblivious, as usual, George simply blathered on.
    “Yes, yes. For that to happen, for those dormant abilities to re-awaken, it seems we need to fill in all sorts of lost bits and pieces. Parts of the regrowth process that were mislaid across – what’s your estimate, again?”
    “A hundred million years. Ever since advanced therapsids became fully warm-blooded, early in the age of dinosaurs. That’s when major organ regrowth must have gone dormant in our ancestors. Heck, it’s not surprising that some of the sub-processes have faded or become flawed. I’m amazed that any of them – apparently most of them – are still here at all!”
    “Are you complaining?” he asked with an arched eyebrow.
    “Of course not. If all of this holds up,” I waved around the lab, now quadrupled in size, as major funding sources rushed to back our work, “the therapeutic implications will be staggering. Millions of lives will be saved or improved. No one will have to languish on organ donor waiting lists, praying for someone else to have bad luck.”
    I didn’t mention the other likely benefit. One more year of breakthroughs and the two of us would be shoe-ins for Stockholm. In fact, so certain was that starting to seem, that I had begun dismissing the Nobel from my thoughts! Taking for granted what had – for decades – been a central focus of my life, my existence. It felt queer, but the Prize scarcely mattered to me anymore. I could see it now. A golden disk accompanied by bunches of new headaches. Pile after pile of distractions to yank me from the lab.
    From seeking ways to save my own life.
    But especially from finding out what the heck is going on.
    The cicada labors seventeen years
    Burrowing underground,
    Suckling from tree roots,
    Below light or sound.
    Till some inner clock commands
    “Come up now, and change!
    “Grow your wings and genitals
    “Forget your humus range.”
    So out they come, in adult form,
    To screech and mate and die.
    Mouthless, brief maturity,
    As generations cry.
    We dived into the genome.
    One great 20th Century discovery had been the stunning surprise that only two percent of our DNA consists of actual codes that prescribe the making of proteins. Just 20,000 or so of these “genes” lay scattered along the forty-six human chromosomes, with most of the rest – ninety-eight percent – composed of introns and LINEs and SINEs and retro-transposons and so on...
    For a couple of decades all that other stuff was called “junk DNA” and folks deemed it to be noise, just noise. Dross left over from the billion years of evolution that has passed since our first eukaryotic ancestor decided to join forces with some bacteria and spirochetes and try for something bigger. Something more communal and organized. A shared project in metazoan life.
    Junk DNA. Of course that never made any sense! It takes valuable energy and resources to build each ladder-like spiral strand of phosphates, sugars and