It was a technical advance worth communicating, worth explaining, worth demystifying . Whatever the social implications of the HealthGuard implant, they could no more be presented in a vacuum, divorced from the technology which made the device possible, than vice versa . Once people ceased to understand how the machines around them actually functioned, the world they inhabited began to dissolve into an incomprehensible dreamscape. Technology moved beyond control, beyond discussion, evoking only worship or loathing, dependence or alienation. Arthur C. Clarke had suggested that any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic – referring to a possible encounter with an alien civilization – but if a science journalist had one responsibility above all else, it was to keep Clarke’s Law from applying to human technology in human eyes.

(Lofty sentiments … and here I was peddling frankenscience, because that was the niche that had needed filling. I salved my conscience – or numbed it for a while – with platitudes about Trojan horses, and changing the system from within.)

I took the Delphic Biosystems graphics of assayin in action, and had the console strip away the excessive decoration so it was possible to see clearly what was going on. I threw out the gushing commentary and wrote my own. The console delivered it in the diction profile I’d chosen for all of Junk DNA ’s narration, cloned from samples of an English actor named Juliet Stevenson. The long-vanished “Standard English” pronunciation – unlike any contemporary UK accent – remained easily comprehensible across the vast Anglophone world. Any viewer who wished to hear a different voice could cross-translate at will, though; I often listened to programs redubbed into the regional accents I had most trouble following – US south-east, northern Irish, and east-central African – hoping to sharpen my ear for them.

Hermes – my communications software – was programmed to bounce almost everyone on Earth, while I was editing. Lydia Higuchi, SeeNet’s West Pacific Commissioning Executive Producer, was one of the few exceptions. It was my notepad that rang, but I switched the call through to the console itself; the screen was larger and clearer – and the camera stamped its signal with the words AFFINE GRAPHICS EDITOR MODEL 2052-KL, and a time code. Not very subtle, but it wasn’t meant to be.

Lydia got straight to the point. She said, “I saw the final cut of the Landers stuff. It’s good. But I want to talk about what comes next.”

“The HealthGuard implant? Is there some problem?” I didn’t hide my irritation. She’d seen selections of the raw footage, she’d seen all my post-production notes. If she wanted anything significant changed, she’d left it too damn late.

She laughed. “Andrew, take one step back. Not the next story in Junk DNA . Your next project.”