Every journalist paraphrased vis subjects; if I’d flatly refused to employ the technique, I wouldn’t be working. The trick was to do it honestly – which was about as difficult as imposing the same criterion on the editing process as a whole.

I cut in some stock molecular graphics of ordinary DNA, showing every atom in the paired bases which bridged the strands of the helix, and I color-coded and labeled one example of each base. Landers had refused to specify exactly which non-standard bases he was using, but I’d found plenty of possibilities in the literature. I had the graphics software substitute four plausible new bases for the old ones in the helix, and repeated the slow zoom-in and rotation of the first shot with this hypothetical stretch of Landers-DNA. Then I cut back to his talking head.

“A simple base-for-base substitution in the DNA isn’t enough, of course. Cells need some brand new enzymes to synthesize the new bases – and most of the proteins which interact with DNA and RNA need to be adapted to the change, so the genes for those proteins need to be translated , not just rewritten in the new alphabet.” I improvised some graphics illustrating the point, stealing an example of a certain nuclear binding protein from one of the journal articles I’d read – but redrawing the molecules in a different style, to avoid copyright violation. “We haven’t yet been able to deal with every single human gene which needs translation – but we’ve made some specific cell lines which work fine with mini-chromosomes containing only the genes they need.

“Sixty per cent of the stem cells in my bone marrow and thymus have been replaced with versions using neo-DNA. Stem cells give rise to blood cells – including the cells of the immune system. I had to switch my immune system back into an immature state, temporarily, to make the transition work smoothly – I had to go through some of the childhood clonal deletion phases all over again, to weed out anything which might have caused an autoimmune response – but basically, I’m now able to shoot up pure HIV, and laugh about it.”

“But there’s a perfectly good vaccine—”

“Of course.” I cut my own words out, and made Landers say: “Of course, there’s a vaccine for that.” Then: “And I have symbionts providing a second, independent immune system, anyway. But who knows what’s coming along next? I’ll be prepared, whatever it is. Not by anticipating the specifics – which no one could ever do – but by making sure that no vulnerable cell in my body still speaks the same biochemical language as any virus on Earth.”

“And in the long term? It’s taken a lot of expensive infrastructure to provide you with all of these safeguards. What if that technology doesn’t survive long enough for your children and grandchildren?” This was all redundant, so I ditched it.