Poem: "Mending Spirals"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This is the freebie for the November Creative Jam. It was inspired by a prompt from alexseanchai. It fills the "genetics" square in the Science Bingo Fest public card. This poem belongs to the project Nine for the Nebula's Heart.


"Mending Spirals"

"I don't understand," Kilikina said softly
as she stared down at the glowing orb
held in her coppery-gold hands.
"How could people want to just ...
erase themselves like that?"

Tamar sat down beside her.
"Some people think of themselves
as damaged goods, rather than
just being born different," she said.
"They don't feel like who they are, but
who they want to be. The Nebula's Heart
just responds to those thoughts."

"I'm a medic. I know about fixing people,
Kilikina said. "I'm just not sure that
changing someone's whole DNA
is really a repair."

"Maybe for some people it is,
and for others it isn't," Tamar offered.

Kilikina turned the fragile-looking sphere
over and over in her hands, held
above the hard floor of the ship.

"What if the Nebula's Heart decides
to do the same thing to us as well?"
she whispered.

"Don't worry," Tamar said, hugging her.
"We know that we aren't broken, and
the Nebula's Heart can feel that too."

* * *

Notes:

There are pro and con arguments for gene therapy, which raises many ethical issues. With some genetic diseases such as Down's Syndrome, gene therapy may constitute erasure of disability.



Per the terms of the source project ...

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Comments

[zeeth_kyrah]

I like the hidden pun in your title, hinting at Mendel, who wanted to understand his garden crops so he could improve them by method rather than chance.

Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith]

I'm glad you enjoyed that. I had fun with this piece.

Somewhere in between

[dialecticdreamer]

That's where my dreams /and/ my nightmares come from. Beautifully done.

Re: Somewhere in between

[ysabetwordsmith]

Thank you! I'm glad this worked for you.

[alexseanchai]

Oh, that's beautiful. I'm thinking of how a lot of trans people would see being physically remade as a godsend, and a lot of other trans people wouldn't.

(plz to be posting a link to the poem on the comm? I'll go put it on the masterlist now.)

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Oh, that's beautiful. <<

Thank you!

>> I'm thinking of how a lot of trans people would see being physically remade as a godsend, and a lot of other trans people wouldn't. <<

Sooth. It would certainly fix the shear between physical sex and mental gender, but not change the past of having been trans. For some people that would be an improvement, others not.

This comes up differently over in The Blueshift Troupers, where the jumpgates can change people and also there are some shapeshifters. So the "isness" of physical form becomes more malleable.

>> (plz to be posting a link to the poem on the comm? I'll go put it on the masterlist now.) <<

Do you want just the link, or shall I repost the whole poem?

Re: Thoughts

[alexseanchai]

Whichever you prefer. I've got the masterlist going to your post on your journal.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

I posted the whole thing to the project blog. Leave the link to the one on my blog, and people can also see the comments there.

Re: Thoughts

[alexseanchai]

Nod!

[thnidu]

Is... Was... Is the sphere SOMEBODY?

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

That depends on how you define "somebody," or which legends you believe. The Nebula's Heart is a mysterious artifact which can vary in appearance and effect. It seems to have some kind of awareness because it reacts to different people in different ways, often influenced by their needs or beliefs -- and not necessarily by what they think they want.

Re: Well...

[thnidu]

Ah... OK, so the sphere is the Nebula's Heart. I probably read that at some time, but have forgotten interim. I thought it was the person that Kilikina was talking about.