The completion of the Human Genome Project is very exciting news, and already a survey has shown that close to 0.0087 per cent of our readers understand what it is all about. It is rather complicated, of course, and quite a number of readers had difficulty filling out our questionnaire, though we did our best to couch it in clear English.
Gratifyingly, most people were aware that some sort of scientific advance had definitely been made. Others were not quite so sure, but being the sort of people who hate to leave unchecked boxes on a questionnaire, some tipped Italy for Sunday's big match, while others said they watched Anna Kournikova at Wimbledon solely to pick up tips on volleying, and quite a few raised the contentious issue of our beloved President referring bills to the Council of State instead of paying them herself.
Anyway, everyone now knows that for the first time we are going to hold in our hands the set of instructions to make a human being. The contents page for the book of life! Anyone who is at all handy at DIY, or ever put a model aeroplane together, should have no problem assembling a fairly ordinary human. Indeed, even people who think they can't hang a picture on a wall should be able to get the hang of the genome construction crack after a few attempts.
Still, niggling worries remain. People might make mistakes yet carry on with the job without realising the consequences. Chromosomes might easily be inserted in the wrong place. There could be a lack of quality control. Say you are down in a pub in the wilds of north Kerry for example, Castlegregory maybe, for a few days' summer break. It is a grand Friday night, though oddly dark for the time - about 10 p.m. - and the inside of the pub is nearly pitch black. However, you edge your way to the bar where a completely invisible and silent barman serves you a pint of Guinness, identifiable in the gloom only by its familiar creamy neck. How absolutely quaint, you murmur to yourself in delight, what an interesting people we are, would you be up to us at all.
Your pleasure is short-lived. Gradually, you become aware of a baleful presence near you, but cannot make it out. Slowly, with a hideous dragging sound, it edges closer, to become your neighbour at the bar, a large hulking brute of a human being (presumably) with great tufts of red hair emerging from its ears, and stooped shoulders whose cuffs do not reach its alarmingly hairy wrists.
The thing nudges you, almost toppling your pint.
You turn around and, by means of a blackened fingernail at the end of a tiny finger, the pithecanthropus indicates in his ham-like fist a grubby sheet of paper. Spreading across his long rat-grey face like some grotesque tropical rash is what you realise to your horror is a grin, while a single great bloodshot glistening orb above it slowly disappears under a wrinkled curtain of skin, then reappears even more hideous than before: the thing is winking at you, its owner making a fearsome whinnying noise that with him must pass for laughter. Your gut contracts. Over the next hour the horror unfolds. The creature apparently has something in his possession that might interest "a man of your intelligence". His voice is alarmingly female, a loathsome seductive whisper. You are shaking with terror. What in the name of God is this fellow trying to tell you, or sell you?
Now, the filthy scrap of paper is lovingly placed in front of you on the bar counter, where it begins to absorb the beer spilt nervously from your pint glass. A strange bluish light has pierced the darkness, and you see that the paper is covered with weird hieroglyphics, in every colour of the rainbow, along with ideoglyphs, logographs, sinister runes and Kanji riddles, mysterious hieratic glosses and subtle Iroha algebraics.
The slow shuffling sounds you have been aware of in the background now intensify, and you feel a clammy multiple presence about you. Sweating profusely, you turn around to see the hitherto invisible pithecoid patrons of the public house, all bearing a freakish similarity to the prognathous creature at your elbow, crowding ever closer in the near-darknesss, all staring in religious awe at the tattered, filthy piece of paper lying on the bar.
The question - Dear God, what is it? - gurgles almost inaudibly from your parched throat. A moment's deathly silence, then a sussurus of exultation rises from the devilish throng, as, all together, they incline their enormous heads skywards, cyclopic eyes closed, and intone, in rising chant, and with the softest of Kerry accents, "Liber Vitae, Carta Humana Mundi - it's us, it's us, it's us."
The Lord save us, Lucia, give us a large gin and tonic there, the stories some people tell you would make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.
