Certificate of DN-a (preview)

I've been waiting a long time for this story to be in print. Very proud of how it turned out. Now in Cosmic Muse volume 4

DEBBIE WALKED DOWN THE TWISTING PATH THROUGH THE ATRIUM AT the Sagae Gallery, admiring the neon leaves and the star-shaped pine cones of the trees surrounding her. She paused at the images of human faces that grew on the leaves of the Façade plants—etched there by deoxyribonucleic acid instead of a knife. They produced those faces every time they grew new leaves. The museum sold the old leaves, preserved in glass, as souvenirs. Debbie had three of them hanging in her apartment. All portraits of the DNA artists who created the thousands of different sequences it took to grow these wonders.

In college, she had created species of her own. She’d had a few of them in pots at her apartment, plus the genomes on backup drives in case she wanted to remake them when they died. All of them were mere exercises in artistry. Making the plants move in response to sound. Giving plants cube-shaped leaves. Her best creation—and her graduation thesis—was to make a plant whose stem wrapped around one’s finger when touched, in realtime. Such things had been done before, but Debbie accomplished them with other plant genomes, no animal species at all, which set her apart from her peers.

And now she had the chance to be part of the art world here at the Sagae. The ink barely dry on her Certificate of Deoxyribonucleic Artist, she had landed a position at the most respected gallery in the country.

The next hall read Fauna.

On her right, behind plexiglass, a group of household cats played. All of them had canine faces, deer legs, and full lion manes. These were not the originals; the first specimens had died years ago, but the patented genomes had been remade in subsequent years. These were the authorized reproductions of the very first artistic creations involving household felines. Choppy and primitive by today’s standards of creativity, but still intriguing. Debbie moved on.

Dogs with transparent fur. Birds with tree leaves instead of feathers. Lizards covered head to tail in canine ears—nonfunctioning of course, but the surprising aesthetic moved her, even after studying the splicing techniques that made such a thing possible. Beauty on both a visual and technical level.

Elephants the size of leopards standing on thin chicken legs, just as Salvador Dalí had depicted—what once only existed in the painter’s imagination now lived and breathed. She paused to observe the Dalíphants in motion, face practically pressed against the glass, grinning wide and admiring how gracefully they moved, large bodies seeming to tip over with every step, but they balanced. As a child and even in college she had spent hours watching videos of them walking, climbing rocks in their enclosure. This is the first she had seen them in person, and tearing her eyes away from them took effort. She giggled as she moved between the patrons, breathlessly taking in each exhibit.

Finally she reached the amphitheater. It seated 600 in a horseshoe around an open enclosure surrounded by an electrified cage. She had made sure to arrive just in time for the afternoon showing, and she took a seat in one of the top rows.

The house lights dimmed, but the open roof over the enclosure kept the trees and dirt in full daylight. Debbie’s heart raced. She had only seen the authorized recording of this performance, and it was of the previous iteration of the creature.

 ... read the rest in Cosmic Muse 4, available in all major ebook and print outlets.