= 37 =
An explosive sneeze rattled beakers and dislodged dried plant specimens in the Museum’s auxiliary botanical lab.
“Sorry,” Kawakita apologized, sniffling. “Allergies.”
“Here’s a tissue,” Margo said, reaching into her carryall. She’d been listening to Kawakita’s description of his genetic Extrapolator program.
“Anyway,” Kawakita said, “you start with gene sequences from two animals or plants. That’s the input. What you get is an extrapolation—a guess from the computer of what the evolutionary link is between the two species. The program automatically matches up pieces of DNA, compares like sequences, then figures out what the extrapolated form might be. As an example, I’ll do a test run with chimp and human DNA. What we should get is a description of some intermediate form.”
[261] “The Missing Link,” Margo nodded. “Don’t tell me it draws a picture of the animal, too?”
“No!” Kawakita laughed. “I’d get a Nobel Prize if it could do that. What it does instead is give you a list of morphological and behavioral features the animal or plant might possess. Not definite, but probable. And not a complete list, of course. You’ll see when we finish this run.”
He typed a series of instructions, and data began flowing across the computer screen: a rapid, undulating progression of zeros and ones. “You can turn this off,” said Kawakita. “But I like to watch the data download from the gene sequencer. It’s as beautiful as watching a river. A trout stream, preferably.”
In about five minutes the data stopped and the screen went blank, glowing a soft blue. Then the face of Moe, from the Three Stooges, appeared, saying through the computer’s speaker: “I’m thinking, I’m thinking, but nothing’s happening!”
“That means the program’s running,” Kawakita said, chuckling at his joke. “It can take up to an hour, depending on how far apart the two species are.”
A message popped on the screen:
ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETION: 3.03.40 min.
“Chimps and humans are so close—they share ninety-eight percent of the same genes—that this one should be fairly quick.”
A light bulb suddenly popped on the screen over Moe’s head.
“Done!” said Kawakita. “Now for the results.”
He pressed a key. The computer screen read:
FIRST SPECIES:
Species:
Genus:
[262] Family:
Order:
Class:
Phylum:
Kingdom:
SECOND SPECIES:
Species: Homo sapiens
Genus: Homo
Family: Hominidae
Order: Primata
Class: Mammalia
Phylum: Chordata
Kingdom: Animalia
Overall Genetic Match: 98.4%
“Believe it or not,” said Kawakita, “the identification of these two species was made solely on the genes. I didn’t tell the computer what these two organisms were. That’s a good way to show unbelievers that the Extrapolator isn’t just a gimmick or a kludge. Anyway, now we get a description of the intermediate species. In this
