What Hope Can Do
by
Elliott Fielding
Gemma hit the switch, and the PCR machine chirped awake, displaying WELCOME below two big googly eyes. Adding eyes to a small, squat box shouldn’t make it look like it had a face, but somehow it did. And, like each of the most crucial pieces of equipment in the lab, it had a name—Lucy—bestowed upon it by a grad student past and handwritten on a piece of purple labelling tape. Lucy was cute.
Gemma really wanted this experiment to work. She finally had her own project; no more “shadowing,” aka making Sankar’s buffers and doing his dishes. She’d prepared the samples herself and set up the reactions. Now it was time to collect the data.
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO AMPLIFY TODAY? asked the machine’s screen. It had a simple voice-to-program mode, but Gemma checked her notes and knew she only needed to run her samples using Sankar’s preset protocol. She tapped through the menus and loaded his program: JUSTFUCKINGWORKYOUPIECEOFSHIT.
Gemma cringed at the name. It seemed rude, even if Lucy didn’t know it was being insulted. And it was a good idea to save her own renamed copy of the program: MYFIRSTPCR-THANKSLUCY.
YOU’RE WELCOME popped up on the screen. Gemma didn’t remember the machine thanking her last time. That’s the way it was these days, with digital assistants who had better manners than her co-workers.
Dreading any mistake, she checked her notes again and pressed the seal tight on her 96-well plate (“be careful with the edge wells!”), then fit the grid of tiny tubes into the sample holder. So often her experiments both started and ended with clear liquid in tiny tubes. That didn’t stop Gemma from imagining a molecular drama unfolding unseen: double helix ripped apart by heat, the complementary strands separated from their partners, newly single-stranded.
Her goal today was to see something invisible: the damage that accumulates in the genetic code of every cell, 10,000 errors per day. Outside on a sunny day, that might bump up to 100,000 errors in each cell. If everything was working as intended, each bit of damage in the DNA would be detected and repaired before it could become a mutation—a mutation that might mean cancer, or a future birth defect, or often nothing at all. It was amazing. Terrifying, actually. Right now, in Gemma’s own body, millions of mistakes were being made and fixed in every part of her.
She wasn’t looking at her own DNA today, of course, just samples from lab mice in a cancer study. Her experiment was a tiny piece in a huge puzzle, but Gemma still cared about the science and about getting it right. She wanted to make sure the temperature-cycle program got rolling, then she’d go to class. Luckily, there wasn’t a proverb against a watched PCR machine.
Lucy was now incubating Gemma’s carefully prepared samples at the annealing temperature where the molecules would hopefully come back together in double-stranded harmony, forming seeds where new DNA would grow and glow, made bright by fluorescent dye in the reaction mix—but only until a damaged piece of test DNA stopped the whole process in its tracks. More mutations in the samples meant a less bright glow. The invisible made visible.
But PCR was sensitive, temperamental even. When she’d been shadowing Sankar, he’d pat the machine, apparently not embarrassed by the display of superstition. “I believe in you, you piece of shit, you can do it,” he’d say, urgently and not at all affectionately. If asked, Gemma would say she wasn’t superstitious. But what would it hurt to offer a little encouragement? Gemma glanced back into the lab. Soo-jin was here, but she had her headphones on, bobbing her head while she concentrated on rising rainbow-colored lines of data. So Gemma patted the PCR machine’s flat beige top and whispered, with her own modification of the procedure, “I believe in you, Lucy, you can do it.”
Unseen by Gemma, each reaction tube did contain a drama. At temperatures near the boiling point, the DNA melted and lost its helical shape, transforming from an ordered spiral into chaos. Lucy couldn’t see this unfolding, but it could detect, second by second, any changes in fluorescence. Lucy didn’t understand and shouldn’t be able to care, but today, there was a feeling. Lucy hoped. It was hoped MYFIRSTPCR-THANKSLUCY would work. But as Lucy ramped the temperature up and down degree by precise degree, the fluorescence didn’t rise. No order from chaos.
Each molecular action of this DNA drama was entirely self-contained and without intent—neither arbitrary nor reasoned. Sankar’s superstition, Gemma’s care and Lucy’s wishes did not affect the tiny primordial forces of thermodynamics. What influence could anyone’s hope have here?
When Gemma returned from class, she went straight to Lucy’s display and saw the flat lines of a failed experiment. She sighed, discouraged, and opened Lucy’s lid to retrieve her samples. When she closed the lid, the pupils of Lucy’s googly eyes settled into a comically downward position. Gemma laughed a little and gave Lucy a gentle pat. “Don’t worry,” she whispered, “I’ll come up with some new ideas.” But maybe tomorrow.
Gemma was turning away when she saw text appear unprompted on Lucy’s screen: SAVE AS: MYSECONDPCR-NEWIDEAS?
Gemma read over the renamed program with curiosity, wondering if Lucy had some kind of AI mode. It had the same settings as the PCR she’d just run, but a side menu had opened to enable the machine’s temperature gradient option. A gradient: that was a good idea. It was easy to imagine that cute, googly-eyed Lucy was trying to help, easier even than imagining invisible molecules. Maybe she was more superstitious than she realized. She input a temperature range and finished saving the modified program. She did still have time to try again this afternoon, with her ideas and Lucy’s, too.
“Thanks, Lucy!” Gemma said brightly without even checking if Soo-jin was watching.
GOOD LUCK was displayed on the screen, and Lucy hoped.
Gemma really wanted this experiment to work. She finally had her own project; no more “shadowing,” aka making Sankar’s buffers and doing his dishes. She’d prepared the samples herself and set up the reactions. Now it was time to collect the data.
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO AMPLIFY TODAY? asked the machine’s screen. It had a simple voice-to-program mode, but Gemma checked her notes and knew she only needed to run her samples using Sankar’s preset protocol. She tapped through the menus and loaded his program: JUSTFUCKINGWORKYOUPIECEOFSHIT.
Gemma cringed at the name. It seemed rude, even if Lucy didn’t know it was being insulted. And it was a good idea to save her own renamed copy of the program: MYFIRSTPCR-THANKSLUCY.
YOU’RE WELCOME popped up on the screen. Gemma didn’t remember the machine thanking her last time. That’s the way it was these days, with digital assistants who had better manners than her co-workers.
Dreading any mistake, she checked her notes again and pressed the seal tight on her 96-well plate (“be careful with the edge wells!”), then fit the grid of tiny tubes into the sample holder. So often her experiments both started and ended with clear liquid in tiny tubes. That didn’t stop Gemma from imagining a molecular drama unfolding unseen: double helix ripped apart by heat, the complementary strands separated from their partners, newly single-stranded.
Her goal today was to see something invisible: the damage that accumulates in the genetic code of every cell, 10,000 errors per day. Outside on a sunny day, that might bump up to 100,000 errors in each cell. If everything was working as intended, each bit of damage in the DNA would be detected and repaired before it could become a mutation—a mutation that might mean cancer, or a future birth defect, or often nothing at all. It was amazing. Terrifying, actually. Right now, in Gemma’s own body, millions of mistakes were being made and fixed in every part of her.
She wasn’t looking at her own DNA today, of course, just samples from lab mice in a cancer study. Her experiment was a tiny piece in a huge puzzle, but Gemma still cared about the science and about getting it right. She wanted to make sure the temperature-cycle program got rolling, then she’d go to class. Luckily, there wasn’t a proverb against a watched PCR machine.
Lucy was now incubating Gemma’s carefully prepared samples at the annealing temperature where the molecules would hopefully come back together in double-stranded harmony, forming seeds where new DNA would grow and glow, made bright by fluorescent dye in the reaction mix—but only until a damaged piece of test DNA stopped the whole process in its tracks. More mutations in the samples meant a less bright glow. The invisible made visible.
But PCR was sensitive, temperamental even. When she’d been shadowing Sankar, he’d pat the machine, apparently not embarrassed by the display of superstition. “I believe in you, you piece of shit, you can do it,” he’d say, urgently and not at all affectionately. If asked, Gemma would say she wasn’t superstitious. But what would it hurt to offer a little encouragement? Gemma glanced back into the lab. Soo-jin was here, but she had her headphones on, bobbing her head while she concentrated on rising rainbow-colored lines of data. So Gemma patted the PCR machine’s flat beige top and whispered, with her own modification of the procedure, “I believe in you, Lucy, you can do it.”
Unseen by Gemma, each reaction tube did contain a drama. At temperatures near the boiling point, the DNA melted and lost its helical shape, transforming from an ordered spiral into chaos. Lucy couldn’t see this unfolding, but it could detect, second by second, any changes in fluorescence. Lucy didn’t understand and shouldn’t be able to care, but today, there was a feeling. Lucy hoped. It was hoped MYFIRSTPCR-THANKSLUCY would work. But as Lucy ramped the temperature up and down degree by precise degree, the fluorescence didn’t rise. No order from chaos.
Each molecular action of this DNA drama was entirely self-contained and without intent—neither arbitrary nor reasoned. Sankar’s superstition, Gemma’s care and Lucy’s wishes did not affect the tiny primordial forces of thermodynamics. What influence could anyone’s hope have here?
When Gemma returned from class, she went straight to Lucy’s display and saw the flat lines of a failed experiment. She sighed, discouraged, and opened Lucy’s lid to retrieve her samples. When she closed the lid, the pupils of Lucy’s googly eyes settled into a comically downward position. Gemma laughed a little and gave Lucy a gentle pat. “Don’t worry,” she whispered, “I’ll come up with some new ideas.” But maybe tomorrow.
Gemma was turning away when she saw text appear unprompted on Lucy’s screen: SAVE AS: MYSECONDPCR-NEWIDEAS?
Gemma read over the renamed program with curiosity, wondering if Lucy had some kind of AI mode. It had the same settings as the PCR she’d just run, but a side menu had opened to enable the machine’s temperature gradient option. A gradient: that was a good idea. It was easy to imagine that cute, googly-eyed Lucy was trying to help, easier even than imagining invisible molecules. Maybe she was more superstitious than she realized. She input a temperature range and finished saving the modified program. She did still have time to try again this afternoon, with her ideas and Lucy’s, too.
“Thanks, Lucy!” Gemma said brightly without even checking if Soo-jin was watching.
GOOD LUCK was displayed on the screen, and Lucy hoped.