Lilith answered on the third ring. She had fallen asleep in her hammock on the slowly rotting porch on her winter digs in Savannah. It was ‘Jupiter’, the woman she had met on the Reddit forum a few weeks back. She hadn’t said directly, but Lilith had a good inkling that ‘Jupiter’ was in fact the planet-named R&B singer from Atlanta who had blown up on Twitter last week for her skin problems. Too light. Rumor had it she was approaching Irish hues these days, but it was hard to say for sure, just flashes of whiteness behind a too large a scarf and dark glasses.
u/SkyJupiter had first posted on the body mods Reddit forum Lilith moderated about four weeks ago. The photos of her skin then had been ash-like, a slow greyscaling out, a slow inversion from black to white. It was too weird not to take an interest in. Lilith had given Jupiter her Signal number; Jupiter had mailed Lilith her DNA and her twin sister’s. Her fraternal twin sister, who was black, solid black, still.
It had taken longer than she’d hoped but Lilith had, believe it or not, found it. There wasn’t much to writing up the parsing scripts to locate the differences in the two genomes. Identical twins would have made it much quicker, but it is what it is. Originally triplets, supposedly, Jupiter had mentioned a third that had died in childbirth, at Lilith’s prodding about family history. Mom had died a few short years later, suddenly. Mars didn’t remember much about her death. There were some dark days and then an accident. Her dad still lived in Dallas, a marketing executive for PepsiCola.
‘Jupiter’ was on the line now. It had been a week since Lilith had sent her a message letting her know that she had found it, found the reason for the growing whiteness. Lilith picked up.
“Hey.” It was Jupiter.
Lilith responded. “Hey I’m glad you called. How’s it looking?”
“It’s not getting better Lilith. I’m fading, fading out. It’s almost to where no one will recognize me. Lilith, I…” Her voice cracked. She paused. “My eyes are turning red Lilith.”
“That’s normal for albinos, unfortunately.”
There it was. The drop. The truth that Mars hadn’t wanted to see, that was staring back at her from her vanity mirror.
“Fuck. What. Albino. Fuck no. How? Lilith. What the actual fuck. Hang on. I. Let me call you back.”
The line went dead. Lilith rolled over, taking in the chilled humid air and leafless trees of her quiet street. It was warm-ish for February; it was always a bit warm in February but today had been an absolutely stunning day with a high in the mid-seventies.
The phone rang. Lilith hit answer, turning on the speaker.
“Lilith what the fuck! How? Why? Jesus Christ please explain.”
Lilith laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Yeah it’s weird as fuck, I know. Look, something… something is not right with your gene-set. I found the albinism markers by scanning your sister’s DNA for departures, that was incredibly helpful to have for comparison. I hope it wasn’t too hard to convince her to give it to you. The markers I found are recessive. She’s got it too but it’s covered by the dominant expression. You, on the other hand, don’t. It’s a weird configuration though; no one I’ve showed it to has ever seen this particular expression for albinism before.”
Mars was silent. Lilith sighed and continued.
“Look, I don’t know how to say this if not bluntly — given the gene pattern it looks like your DNA was edited. I don’t know how that’s possible, most DNA editing tools have only been around for the last decade, and crudely if that. I had a hunch and ran it up against the models they have on Huntington’s. The alterations match up almost exactly. The onset time is the same, mid-thrities, but the expression is … not Huntington’s.”
The world was spinning. Mars’ head hurt, it was too much to take in. She put the phone down, set the speaker on, and laid down next to it on the thick pile wool carpet.
“That can’t be Lilith. How can that be?”
“I think the geneticist fucked up Mars. You should have Huntington’s disease. Or rather, no disease at all, ideally. That small edit kept you from getting it, but they just swapped out your death sentence for another kind of horror. I’m so sorry Mars. You are Mars, aren’t you? Mars Ibiza.”
She said it with a finality that pulled Mars back from the slow, confused spiral her thoughts had taken on. Huntington’s. On-set. Gene editing. Mistake. She had known her and her sister were IVF, one of the first out in Berkeley. Their mother had worked at a small genetics start up. She knew this. She knew all of this. She knew Mom had died suddenly and without much explanation, that Dad had never said anything about inherited diseases, about gene edits. Fucking gene edits.
“Is it reversible? There’s CRISPR now, surely we can fix this. I get it, I should be dying but I’m not I’m turning into a zombie. Fuck. Albino. I’ve got money Lilith. You can fix this. I know you’re the one behind the Mentals. If anyone can fix this, it’s you. Help me out here.”
Lilith sank deeper into the hammock and sighed audibly. “It’s true Mars, gene therapy has come a long way but we’re not there yet, not for this particular mutation. We can fix embryos and single cell organisms but reliably editing a whole human isn’t possible, not yet. Look, if it’s ok with you I’ll add it to the database my friend Humberto is building. This number is unlisted right? The data is public — someone will contact you if they think they can help.
Still dazed, Mars mumbled her ok, then hung up.
She brought up her sister’s name on her phone, then put it down. What do you do? She messaged her Dad instead — “hey we need to talk. i’m catching a flight down to see you tomorrow. it’s about the huntingtons. wtf dad.”
to be continued.
Daybreak at Gale Crater; “This computer-generated view depicts part of Mars at the boundary between darkness and daylight, with an area including Gale Crater beginning to catch morning light.” Source: NASA