Chapter 242: Brain Death (7)

“The lab?” Young-Joon asked.

“Yes,” Rosaline replied.

“... I thought you were going to say something like a zoo or an amusement park?”

“Well, I really want to go there, too. But I want to go to the lab, hold a pipette, and do cell experiments myself,” Rosaline said. “Since I’ve only done experiments indirectly through you.”

“You’ve had control of my hands, though.”

“You don’t know what that feels like. It just feels like controlling a robot with a joystick, not actually controlling your own body,” Rosaline said. “I controlled your body when you were unconscious from a car accident before, but I wasn’t impressed.”

“I see.”

Young-Joon nodded.

“And there’s something I want to check in the lab.”

“What is it?”

“Why did the creation of life only happen in your hands?” Rosaline said. “Elsie and Doctor Ref said they failed, right? I thought life creation had something to do with your obsessive sense of ethics, and Elsie said something similar recently.”

“But...”

“No. Do you honestly think your obsession with bioethics is humanly comprehensible? You even tried to give me up instead of sticking a pin inside Kim Hyun-Taek’s nose.”

“I didn’t give up. I was just trying to find another way,” Young-Joon said apologetically.

“I’m not blaming you. I knew you would do that. Your obsession with morality, especially for bioethics, is almost pathological and certainly far above the norm for humans. If that has some sort of genetic basis, and if that’s what led to my creation, it explains everything.”

“Wait a minute.”

Young-Joon cleared his throat.

“When you say genetics, you mean there’s like a morality gene or something?”

“Yes.”

It had long been suggested that there were genes in the human body that regulated morality. And certain research groups in biology had been studying it for a while. They took monks and other respected teachers from various religious groups to analyze their genes and find out what made them different from the average person.

Unsurprisingly, these attempts were often criticized at the hypothesis stage.

“Morality is genetic, it’s social,” Young-Joon said. “For example, some villages in India think it’s immoral for widows to eat fish. But in other parts of the world, it’s not. Morality is a reflection of the culture of each region and time period.”

“Genes don’t determine the details,” Rosaline said. “But the propensity to choose a learned code of ethics over immediate gain in a moment of moral crisis leans heavily on genetics.”

“Really?”

“Because it’s our genes that mold much of our personality.”

“...”

“There’s a disease called Williams-Beuren Syndrome. People with this disease are overly friendly to other people and don’t shy away from strangers at all. They’re incredibly sociable, even though they have a slight decrease in intelligence and problems with their health and appearance,” Rosaline said. “The cause of this disease lies in a mutation on chromosome seven.”

“Hm...”

“And empathy is also determined by how much GABA[1]is released by the SST inhibitory neurons in the anterior cingulate cortex. If this doesn’t work well, you become a psychopath. Conversely, if you fix it, a psychopath can gain empathy,” Rosaline said. “Compassion, altruism, and the ability to self-reflect are all deeply rooted in genes. And morality, of course, is heavily influenced by that.”

“...”

Young-Joon thought for a moment, confused.

“Do you know the location of those genes in the DNA?” he asked.

“It’s not caused by a single gene, but by the interaction of more than two hundred genes. It’s so complicated that we’ve never been able to find it with such little fitness, even in Synchronization Mode.”

“But now that your fitness is eighty million, you can find it?”

“No, then I’ll be using too much fitness. I’m going to save it, and that’s why I want to experiment,” Rosaline said.

*

Young-Joon chose the Life Creation Department for Rosaline’s lab. It was for two reasons: one was that it was a meaningful place to her because she was created there, and the other was that the lab was still empty. He could walk around with Rosaline and not disturb people or draw attention.

But still, there was nothing Young-Joon could do about drawing attention to himself at the entrance to the lab.

‘I’m probably the only CEO who is crazy enough to go to the company on his day off. I’ll be bad-mouthed by my employees for this.’

Young-Joon held Rosaline’s hand and walked into the lab. The employees at the entrance stared at him with wide eyes.

Then, they began to approach him, one by one.

“Sir!”

“Sir?”

“I thought you weren’t coming in today...”

“Wait, you used your vacation day to not do your duties as the CEO and come to Lab Six instead?”

The employees at Lab Six stared at him in disbelief.

“Haha... I just dropped by for a visit. Don’t mind me, and continue with what you were doing.”

The employees also took an interest in Rosaline.

“Who is she?”

“Is she your daughter? She looks just like you.”

“I’m not married. She’s a relative from the United States.”

Young-Joon smiled awkwardly and went inside, holding Rosaline’s hand.

“Oh, Mr. Ryu!” shouted someone from above, rushing down the stairs.

It was Gil Hyung-Joon, the director of Lab Six.

“What brings you here all of a sudden and without any notice... We didn’t prepare anything to welcome you.”

Gil Hyung-Joon was very confused. Usually, he would go to the headquarters to meet with Young-Joon for the lab director meeting. Young-Joon rarely came to the lab, and when he did, he usually called ahead.

In his head, Gil Hyung-Joon was quickly counting the number of lab safety violations that were present right now. They were probably breaking small rules that were easy to break, such as not storing glass reagent bottles on high shelves.

Normally, they would do a full inspection and hide or move things around when an audit came up, but they didn’t have the time for that this time.

Plus, Young-Joon was scarier than an audit.

“I-I heard you had a day off...”

“I did, but there’s an experiment I want to do. It’s a simple one. I was thinking about where to do it, and I thought that the old lab for the Life Creation Department would be empty. Can I use it?”

“Sure... Are you just going to be inside?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry, I won’t look around the lab or anything,” Young-Joon said with a smile.

Gil Hyung-Joon was finally able to relax.

“But who’s the kid beside you?” he asked.

“She’s my niece. She wanted to look around the company.”

*

Young-Joon came into the Life Creation Department’s lab with Rosaline.

“You don’t know what this place feels like to me,” Rosaline said as she heated up some cell culture medium.

Most of the samples were discarded or transferred as the Life Creation Team moved to A-GenBio headquarters, but the lab still had memories of that time. Thick data sheets rolled in the drawers, and unused cell lines sat idle in the deep freezer.

“Does it feel like home?”

“Kind of.”

“It’s nice to come back.”

This is where Young-Joon was transferred, where Rosaline was born, and where Kim Hyun-Taek collapsed.

“We still have the liquid nitrogen. Do you want to see it? They’re the cells that couldn’t become you.”

Young-Joon pulled out an iron rack out of the liquid nitrogen tank. Inside were sample boxes containing numerous Rosaline experiments.

[Rosaline v1.1]

[Rosaline v1.12]

[Rosaline v1.2]

...

“It’s weird seeing them like this,” Rosaline said.

Then, she took out a small needle from the shelf.

“Shall we begin?”

She glanced at Young-Joon as she shook the needle. He held out his arm, and she drew some blood.

“Thank you.”

“I can’t believe a day has come where you’re doing experiments on me, Rosaline.”

“My ancestors in the liquid nitrogen tank must be shocked.”

Rosaline centrifuged the blood and carefully transferred and collected the blood cells that had settled to the bottom.

“A-GenBio is working on a genome sequencing project of one hundred million people, right?” Rosaline said.

“Yeah.”

“If we compare the average from them with your morality genes, there will be a huge difference in expression and the pattern. You have a mutation in those genes,” Rosaline said. “We’ll be able to get a rough idea of where those genes are if we trace them.”

She took some of her own cells and spread them on the bottom of a petri dish, set up a semi-permeable membrane, and placed Young-Joon’s blood cells on top

‘Transwell co-culture assay.’

Young-Joon knew what Rosaline’s experimental setup was. It’s one of the experimental methods used to determine the relationship between two cells. Under this setup, the substances secreted by Young-Joon were transferred to Rosaline’s cells.

“I’m going to manipulate a small group of candidate morality genes in your cells that are isolated at the top of this dish. They are loci that significantly differed from the average data of the genome project. If those genes are essential for my birth and survival, then messing with them will change the substance your cells release, which will make my cells worse.”

“Is it okay to use fitness to manipulate genes?” Young-Joon asked.

“Testing all two hundred genes in Simulation Mode would be a huge fitness drain, but setting up a real-world experiment like this and changing the expression of the genes slightly is fine,” Rosaline said.

Then, she began to manipulate groups of genes in Young-Joon’s cells in small increments.

*

At the Next Generation Hospital on the next morning, a major operation that was rescuing the person who was closest to death was beginning.

The members of the Life Creation Team brought the artificial heart and lungs.

The standard of death was cardiopulmonary and brain death; they were going to replace both the heart and the lungs, the two key elements, and revive the dead brainstem.

Ten people were involved in the transplant surgery, including nurses and two professors of cardiothoracic surgery. The medical team looked a little nervous.

Young-Joon arrived at the operating room a little late. He was watching the operation through a monitor outside.

‘I can really use Synchronization Mode, right?’

Young-Joon asked Rosaline.

—Of course. Watching surgery for a couple of hours doesn’t consume that much fitness.

‘Don’t cause any problems while I’m gone.’

Rosaline was in the hospital director’s office right now. She didn’t need anyone else’s protection, but he couldn’t leave her alone or bring her into the operating room.

—But I broke a plant pot.

‘Oh...’

—But the director said it was okay. Don’t worry.

‘I don’t think it’s okay.’

“Let’s begin,” said Professor Kang Sung-Guk, the surgeon leading the operation, from inside the operating room.

Young-Joon turned on Synchronization Mode.

1. Gamma-aminobutyric acid is a type of neurotransmitter ☜