Making New From Old

I was listening to a Scientific American podcast the other day while at the health club, and they ran a story about Alaskan dogs that were part of the Iditarod. Among the facts that the story gave was that these dogs burn an incredible number of calories while participating in this race, some ridiculous number like 12,000 calories a day. I mean, yikes. Totally awesome when you think about it, especially given the relative size of these animals.

Humans should get along on a couple thousand a day, for example.

These dogs, it seems, can also modify their systems to begin to dram energy from those calories directly from the bloodstream rather than letting it go through the liver first. Pretty danged fascinating, eh?

Anyway, the story got me to thinking about what would happen if humans used genetic material from a dog, which then got me to remembering a story I had written some time back. It was sitting firmly in my trunk, but I dug it out and looked it over. It is a story that uses the idea of building humans with genetic code from a specific animal in order to make use of its genetic processes.

I’m not in the habit of doing this because most, if not all, stories I put in my trunk are put in there for some very good reasons. This one, though, I decided I liked. And quite honestly, I’m a better writer now than I was when I first wrote it. I could see lots of big issues. But I’ve spent the last two days cutting it up and doing it over again.

And, of course I’m pretty happy with it. It’s always good to have a new story to put in the post.

Still, I don’t think I’ll be trunk diving anytime in the near future. Too scary as a rule. [grin]

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Posted in Daily Writing, Short Stories.

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