Boy 2.0: Chapters 8–9

Coal took an early shower and contorted himself trying to extract the splinters from hard-to-reach places with a pair of tweezers.

Mr. Ransome turned toward the bank of computers. “We don’t have any books like that, but there might be scientific articles.” He pulled out a chair for Coal and clicked through to the public library’s database. “You can go here and search through medical journals.

At Mirror Tech we’re dedicated to optimizing human potential. Your DNA is the key to opening up a world of possibilities. Find out what you are made of.

Coal kept his eyes alternately on his phone and the landscape of New Jersey rolling past. Slowly. It was the weekend and they were on a local bus. Nearly an hour later, the landscape changed to cityscape. Straight ahead, a huge Mirror Tech sign loomed against the walls of a silver building.

The Mirror Tech lobby was pristine white with smooth, curved surfaces that subtly led first toward a series of mirrors on pedestals, and from there, toward a bay of glass security gates to get farther inside.

Coal followed one of the curves to the closest pedestaled mirror. As soon as he got close enough that only his face was reflected, the surface clouded like a sudden storm, turned black, and a directory brightened on the screen.

“I’m Dr. Hunter Achebe, the founder and CEO of Mirror Tech,” he said, in a deep Nigerian accent.

“My idea for Mirror Tech comes straight from my heritage. From the work my mother did in genetic engineering focused on crops”—the image shifted to the left and one of a man who looked like an older version of Dr. Achebe, leaning against a desk, with the same wry smile, widened to its right—“and the business my father ran, which was a very successful employment agency.”

“My idea for Mirror Tech comes straight from my heritage. From the work my mother did in genetic engineering focused on crops”—the image shifted to the left and one of a man who looked like an older version of Dr. Achebe, leaning against a desk, with the same wry smile, widened to its right—“and the business my father ran, which was a very successful employment agency.”

“My mother’s work was in developing drought-resistant crops that farmers could rely on even in harsh weather. My father developed a computer program that connected people with certain skills and personality types to their perfect employer. Between the two of them, I learned that people want to know what they’re good at, and how they can use their innate abilities and individual resources to their advantage. We all want to live our best lives.”

“One day while I looked into a mirror in my childhood home, I wondered what if the me in the mirror was a better, more engaged, more fully realized person? Plants and job placement don’t seem like they necessarily go together, but I started looking for ways to use technology and biology to unlock hidden potential and help people nurture it.”

“Which brings me,” he said, visibly relishing the moment, “to poop.”
A few younger kids ewww’d as a photo of six different poops in varying colors filled the screen.

Dr. Achebe continued. “What if you didn’t have to go to the doctor? What if your own toilet could diagnose you? No sitting forever in the waiting room. No cold doctor’s office exam table. No flimsy paper gown. No painful blood draws. Just the comfort of your own home, and a diagnosis from doing something you were going to do anyway, with the potential to catch a disease even before you show symptoms.”

“How about something bigger than you or me? Something bigger than all of us? There’s no denying global warming is affecting every ecosystem on the planet. And everything evolves. We’ll adapt. But the environment is changing quickly and we’re not. At Mirror Tech we’re working on helping humans deal with the effects of climate change on our own bodies, bringing people and the world around us back into harmony.”

He clasped his hands together. “Which brings me to all of you. Each one of you is unique. Each one of you is the result of millennia of adaptation...."

He clasped his hands together. “Which brings me to all of you. Each one of you is unique. Each one of you is the result of millennia of adaptation...."

“You know, since I was a kid, I’ve always had waxy ears.” He chuckled. “It was a running joke...that I was a bad listener because my ears were filled with wax. But when I looked at my DNA, I found out that my ancestors lived in the desert. The Sahara. And earwax traps sand before it gets inside the ear canal and injures the eardrums. There’s a good reason why my body works like that. Nobody has to choose their life based on their ancestry, but it’s useful to know why it works the way it does.”

“This is what we’re about. Helping people rise to their full potential by understanding their core makeup. Creating products that are ethical, environmentally friendly, and harm-free. Finding the intersections of biology and technology that work for the whole of humanity. And with that, I welcome you all to Mirror Tech.”

They rode up to the third floor, where the doors opened on an expansive lab behind a wall of glass.

Dozens of people in crisp white lab coats with a silver MT logo were working at stations with microscopes, remotely manipulating machines inside glass cubes, using pipettes, typing into computers...all of them busy and focused.

“This,” Dr. Ramaswami said, “is an extinct flower. We have an impression of it, and we can’t reconstitute it, but we were able to figure out what it smells like.”

“This,” Dr. Ramaswami said, “is an extinct flower. We have an impression of it, and we can’t reconstitute it, but we were able to figure out what it smells like.”

He encouraged them all to step up and feel it. Few took him up on the offer. It seemed like everyone had had enough of the lab. “The fabric is mutable. It will take on the color of its environment when it’s programmed properly.”
Coal looked up.
“Like the cells in a chameleon’s skin.”

Dr. Ramaswami continued. “The hope was that if we programmed each cell of the fabric, we could create a mimetic military uniform that adapted to look like the environment around it and reduce the costs of having several different uniforms for different combat situations.”

“That’s a great idea!” Dr. Ramaswami said. “This fabric isn’t adaptive in that way—it can change its appearance, but it can’t become warmer or more waterproof—but it would be great to engineer one that was. You know, we have interns here. Maybe you could join us in a couple of years.”