Wetware (2002)
By Craig Nova
Genetic code; Genetic engineering; Science fiction
In the year 2026, Hal Briggs engineers human and animal life by encoding biology into digital form. But when two special prototypes escape, the trouble begins.
Hal Briggs works as a bio-tech engineer for Galapagos Wetware, a company that produces everything from animals that sing, alarm clocks in the form of attractive, semi-sentient women, and human drones created to perform the jobs people don’t want to do by translating genes into digital form. The gray, dull drones are programmed with only a few servile words and gestures, little intelligence and no capacity to enjoy beauty, love, or life. Then a demand for more human-like wetware that can perform complex jobs, like assassin and law enforcement officer, leads Briggs to develop two new prototypes: Kay and Jack. Unbeknownst to his employers at Galapagos, Briggs programs Kay and Jack with an array of illegal qualities: human desire, musical virtuosity, verbal and mathematical genius, assassin-like abilities with cues to activate those violent behaviors, and the ability to reproduce; but Briggs also creates Jack to be his best friend and instills in Kay a longing and love for him that she cannot deny. Meanwhile, a side story follows Leslie Carr, another employee at Galapagos, and her love affair with financier Wendell Blaine. When Leslie is abandoned by Blaine, she takes her revenge by secretly adding to Kay and Jack’s programming and then releasing them out into the world. As a result of their escape, Briggs is demoted and begins to search for his creations, motivated not only by his love for them but also by his worry that Kay and Jack could carry communicable diseases new to the human race. Kay and Jack live their lives, slowly figuring out how to survive on their own, but Kay is torn by the contradictory programming by Briggs and Carr; her original genetic make-up compels her to love and seek out Briggs, while Carr’s interference leads her to seduce and destroy Blaine. After a series of encounters with both men, Kay exercises her own will and warns Blaine of Carr’s plot, refusing to carry it out. She reunites with Briggs, and he is able to find a vaccine for the fatal disease that Kay and Jack are indeed carrying, a disease which has already claimed the lives of a few humans the pair have encountered. Eventually, Kay’s counter-programming and realization that she and Briggs cannot live a normal life together drives her mad. She murders Jack and some of the Galapagos henchman who are seeking to hurt Briggs. In a climactic scene, she alternatively threatens to kill Briggs and herself before ultimately committing suicide. The novel ends with Briggs taking care of Gloria, a woman impregnated by Jack.
Nova’s novel draws upon ideas about cloning and genetic experimentation and approaches man’s capacity to engineer of life in a different way: through digital code. In the world of Wetware , characters can encounter wetware anywhere, from the most mundane objects to the staff at a local restaurant. The power of Nova’s work lies in the questions he raises about the genetically-digitally created creatures that are just like us, complex and flawed, and the complications that arise because of this likeness when their every trait has been programmed to serve the needs of others or the needs of the creator himself. Kay’s breakdown—and Brigg’s turn from his own creations to a normal human woman—at the end of the novel suggest the novel’s stance on such genetic innovation: it may be more than we can handle.
Evaluation: An interesting novel more concerned with the implications and repercussions of genetic-digital engineering for both creators and created than it is with the actual science behind the narrative. Many of Nova’s characters overstep the boundaries of what they can contol, showcasing the great deal of responsibility, and danger, involved in humanity’s artificial creation of its own kind.
– Lauren Wood Hoffer