The Future of Human Existence

As many of you know, Andrea and I are expecting our first child any day now.

What we can reveal today is that our daughter has been part of an ongoing experiment into the future of human evolution. In collaboration with research labs around the world, we have embarked on the creation of a new hominid species with natural capabilities far in excess of our own.

Our daughter was injected with a customized package of nano-assemblers and artificial ribosomes in the sixth week of gestation.

As cell division and development of organic tissue proceeded normally, the supplemental nanomachines modified and extended the natural structures to provide the following upgrades:

• Optical channels in nerve axons: As axons grew, their growth cones were extended to replace the underlying structure with molecularly assembled fiber-optic channels, complete with solid-state monochromatic modulators in the neuronal soma and organic repeaters at each synapse.

  This allows for the transmission of neural signals at speeds up to 200 million meters per second, as opposed to the baseline tens of meters per second. This allows for a vastly increased “clock speed” in the brain, as well as preternaturally fast motor reflexes.

• Auxilliary cortical processing: the large fissures of the cerebral cortex were filled with graphene subprocessors using a networked architecture that interfaces with the cortical columns at the surface of the brain.

  These provide vastly increased scope for the formation of cognitive nections, allowing for greatly expanded memory and linguistic ability. In addition, they allow for conscious control of various autonomic systems, including temperature regulation, the fight-or-flight reaction, the mammalian dive reflex, and reproductive hormone levels.

• Electro-activated polymer actuators: woven into muscle fibers as they grew was a matrix of fullerene actuators providing increased strength and faster muscle response. Tendons and ligaments were supplemented with borosilicate woven fibers — which include perennial self-repair in order to provide swift recovery from joint injuries — to accomodate the increased stresses, and the calcium matrix of bone structures was likewise replaced with a bio-inert titanium honeycomb.
• Lens flexibility, retinal inversion and photoreceptor augmentation: the natural lens and surrounding muscular structure of the eye was replaced with a far more capable system, allowing for 100x telescopic or microscopic vision. The retina was inverted, putting blood vessels behind the receptor cells, which were modified to respond to an expanded spectrum far into the infrared and ultraviolet ranges. The density of photoreceptor cells was also increased by three orders of magnitude.
• Nictitating membrane: perhaps the easiest modification was a reactivation of the pre-existing mammalian DNA for developing a nictitating membrane to protect the eyes from foreign matter or the stresses of situations ranging from deep ocean pressures to the vacuum of space.
• Subcutaneous endosymbiotic organelles: dermal cells were augmented with a new organelle derived from cyanobacteria of genus Prochlorococcus. This allows for closed-cycle anaerobic respiration in conditions of low ambient oxygen. In addition, the outer layer of skin cells now incorporate a variety of chromatophores specifically tuned to reflect infrared at levels similar to full sunlight in a vacuum. These modifications, along with the nictitating membrane, allow for full function outside of a planetary atmosphere.

Our daughter’s original genetic material was fully sequenced, and a new set of chromosomes was created that incorporated all these modifications. This new DNA was then injected into her existing ova, allowing for unlimited reproduction of the new traits.

Unfortunately, this renders her infertile with the rest of baseline Homo Sapiens Sapiens. We are therefore soliciting volunteers to gestate corresponding male specimens in order to provide for the continuation of this new and glorious race.